11 hours

That’s how long she slept last night. I woke up at 2:30 thinking she needed to eat because I heard a little peep, but nope, she slept right through. Hoping she keeps it up!

Weekend Recap

 

Just when I thought Fiona’s outfits couldn’t clash anymore, John brings her to me dressed like this:

The day before she was wearing the same onesie with purple polka dotted pants, and I thought that was bad! I LOVE the Monkey pants, but they just do NOT go with the onesie.

Lately, I’ve noticed that I spend an awful lot of time sniffing my daughter’s behind to see if she pooped. I think I understand how dogs feel. I also had a gross parent moment, when I realized that I picked up something that Fiona spit out and ate it without even thinking about it.

John took Friday off and we stayed home and did almost nothing. We went to a coffee shop and some other errand that neither of us can remember, and then stayed home with Fiona and cuddled and played and napped. It rained most of the day. Saturday we went out to lunch and finally purchased a real mattress for the bed in our guest bedroom. Previously my old mattress from college was on the bed, on top of a futon pad. Now there is a mattress and box spring, and I can start using the climbing wall in the garage again.

Today, I took Fiona with me to a breakfast party for a pregnant friend of mine. It was the farthest away from home that Fiona has ever been, about 52 miles. She was great in the car, sleeping and then waking and playing quietly on the way there, and sleeping the entire way back!

Here are John and Fiona playing in the kitchen while I make dinner:

And here they are napping together. Note how she is sprawled sideways on him. She slept like that for about an hour.

  

Here she is sort of standing:

She’s been working on standing all weekend. However, true to form, instead of trying to pull up on something like every other baby that I know, she tries to stand in the middle of the floor where there is nothing to hold on to.

Here is Fiona looking like she is crawling. She isn’t really crawling, but she doesn’t need to. She gets around really well using a combination of sitting, pivoting, and rolling. I think she might never crawl for that reason.

John watched her while I was getting my hair cut. When I got home, he showed me these photos:

Apparently Fiona made her way to the bottle, took it in her hands, rolled onto her back and began drinking. He said he feels like she doesn’t need him anymore. I think she still needs him (see photos above of her napping on him).

Not long ago, we put Panda in her crib. Panda is her first stuffed animal and he kept her company in her isolette and her crib in the NICU. Sometimes she plays with him before falling asleep. Sometimes when I come to feed her in the night, or when John gets her up in the morning, it looks like she’s cuddling Panda. Could this be her first Lovey?

Speaking of sleep, and I know I’m probably jinxing myself, but Fiona basically slept through the night 5 out of the last 7 nights. And for two nights in a row she slept from about 7pm until 4am or later, then went back to sleep until after 6. Today John got her up at 6:30. I really hope this is a trend and not a fluke. I have been waking up at 3 every night expecting to need to feed her. I know that the night that I finally do not wake up at 3, she will.

And, Fiona tried egg the other day. It was a small piece of omelet. She wasn’t too interested in it, but she didn’t spit it out either. I’ll probably wait a little longer to give it to her again.

Fiona’s First Cheese!

Today Fiona had cheese for the first time! It was some sort of brie like cheese that a friend of mine who is mostly vegan brought. It was not vegan cheese though, it was real cheese. I had some on a cracker and I gave her small tastes of it on my finger. I think she liked it because she didn’t make a sour face and accepted seconds and thirds. I also had champagne for the first time in ages, with a strawberry and prickly pear lemonade mixed in.

Where did all this take place, you ask? My friend Jenny had a Lia Sophia party. Lia Sophia is direct sales jewelry, sort of like Tupperware or Mary Kay beauty products. Jenny provided all sort of delicious food while we browsed necklaces and bracelets. I won a free necklace and a Starbucks gift card.

Here are some photos that Jenny took the other day:

   

In the first few photos Fiona looks very serious. She can sit in the middle of a room full of lots of other babies, who will be crawling or rolling around near her or even on top of her, sharing toys with each other, and she seems sometimes not to notice them at all. She plays by herself, seemingly oblivious to everyone else around her. I play with her at home a lot, but it seems as soon as I take her out of the house, she is a different baby.

She stares at things and people intently. I tell people she is imprinting because of the way she looks at them, as though they have antennae on top of their heads and not in a good way. She is very interested in the goings on of other adults and children who walk and talk, but not so much babies her own age. In a restaurant, she will be fascinated by the waiter or waitress and will follow them as they walk by. Who she smiles at is anyone’s guess. At home, she smiles a lot, and she smiles at my mom and my friend Nicole all the time, but out of the house, it’s really hit or miss. A random old lady in Target told her to smile and she did as if on cue. But a mom friend of mine smiles at her and Fiona stares back at her, as though she is speaking a foreign language. At her NICU follow up she was all smiles and play, as if she and the staff had never parted, and everyone thought she was doing great, but I really wonder about her sometimes.

On another note, it is raining again! I love the rain! It makes everything green and cleans the air. And I LOVE the sound of rain. This is not like the hurricane we had last weekend, just a gently, steady shower.

And Fiona slept 7 hours last night. Please let it be a pattern and not just a fluke.

Lazy Rainy Day (and Trickster Fi)

First, the trickster Fi: In my last post I mentioned that Fiona had a good night’s sleep. On Monday night it was even better. We’ve been inching her bedtime up slowly, so now she’s in bed by 7:15. She slept from 7:15pm until 4:15am! That’s nine hours in a row of sleep! The most she’s ever had. Of course last night she was back to 11pm and 3am feedings, but hopefully soon she’ll give us a repeat of Monday. It seems like she only does stuff like that when one or both of us has to get up early. In this case it was John, who overslept a little because he uses Fiona as an alarm clock (she wakes up between 5 and 6).

Today was a rainy day and Fiona and I stayed home alone all day. I didn’t even change out of my pajamas. We played together a lot and even baked chocolate chip cookies. I only made about half the cookies and froze the rest of the dough for later use. Fiona is squarely on three solids a day. Today’s extra solid was carrots that I mushed using a mouli. I had to add some milk because they were really thick and unseasoned. She ate them all up. She is also getting some dessert now after her Lovely Lentils dinner – full fat Greek yogurt with pear. I am going to cook some blueberries to put in the yogurt as well, because she definitely is not a fan of plain, cold yogurt (very unlike her mommy who loves plain Greek yogurt).

Here are some photos from the day. I think they might be a little fuzzy if you enlarge them, but should be in focus if they stay small.

Fiona eating a banana. She doesn’t actually like banana (anymore) but I eat them and I think she wants to imitate me, so she holds the banana and puts it in her mouth and sort of chews on it. The second photo shows what she really thinks of it:

One of her new favorite toys is a cereal box:

Just sitting there:

Seconds before she was trying to chew on that sun mirror that is handing just to the left of her head. She saw her reflection, stared at it, then she tried to chew on it. She chews on everything, including my watch and occasionally my leg.

If you have ever been to a laundromat, you know that once in while, you find someone else’s sock or shirt in your wash when you get home. This is what I found in my basket after I emptied out the drier:

I think I’ll keep it!

Fiona found the magazine basket. She is very partial to People StyleWatch:

The mess she left after she was finished playing:

 

Hanging out while I clean up after cookie making. I made the cookies while holding her on my hip. I used my KitchenAide upright mixer that John bought me last year. It enabled me to make the dough with one hand because it did all the mixing. It also took a lot less time than mixing by hand. And I learned that I can crack eggs with one hand and not get shell into my batter (a first for me):

The rain:

Today I saw her take two objects and clap them together. John says she’s been doing it for days now, but it was the first time I saw it.

Yesterday Fiona and I went to both the library and the book store. You see, I ordered a book from Amazon.com because my local library cannot find it anywhere in the county system (the had many copies, all have disappeared). The book arrived very quickly, except it wasn’t the book I ordered. I wanted Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin and instead got Lewis Black’s Me of Little Faith. These two books are not even close to being in the same genre. The bookseller was very apologetic and refunded my money, but it meant buying the book somewhere else. While I was in the bookstore, I picked up more books for Fiona. I got Mr. Brown Can Moo, Can You? and Hop on Pop by Dr. Seuss, The Very Grouchy Ladybug and The Mixed Up Chameleon by Eric Carle, and a set of books that have photos of various animals with little patches of “fur” intended for feeling more than reading. Fiona couldn’t wait to get her hands on one of the books. Here is what she did to it in the car:

Yes, she tried to eat it.

Silly Fi!

 

UPDATE: She’s woken up twice since I started writing this entry. Every hour! Oh Fi, please sleep! The bags under mommy’s eyes are carrying their own purses.

Neptune’s Net

Today Fiona and I went to lunch with my dad. We drove down Highway 1 to Neptune’s Net in Malibu. The weather was beautiful and sunny, and the sky was amazingly clear. The islands were visible and sharp in the distance. Lunch was tasty. Both my father and I had crab cake burgers without tartar sauce. Fiona ate apple sauce with oatmeal cereal and cinnamon and few puffs. I ate a few puffs as well. In fact, I think I eat more of her puffs than she does. She might eat three at most in a sitting, but I eat them by the handful. Well, they’re just for fine motor skill practice anyway, not for any serious eating.

Here are some photos from the day:

She sat so nicely during our meal and ate her food very daintily. Here is my dad feeding her:

 

Here are some photos from a month ago when I last went to the zoo. They were taken by my friend Jenny:

Fiona is a really serious baby sometimes. I am not sure what she was thinking here:

No other developments to report today, other than she slept really well last night. She ate at 7, was asleep by 7:30, woke to eat at 1:30, and then didn’t wake up again until after 6. She slept in on the one day that John needed to go to work early. It’s so dark when we wake up that we thought it was 3am, but it wasn’t. I’m off to bed now, hoping she repeats last night’s sleep pattern!

Untitled (Because I Can’t Think of a Title)

 

Yesterday we gave Fiona yogurt for the first time. We gave her a couple of spoonfuls of full fat Greek yogurt. She ate it, but didn’t seem to like or dislike it. We’ll try again soon. She’s moving around so much now, not crawling, but sitting up, rolling around, sitting again, turning, scooting, pivoting. We can no longer put her down and walk away. I’m really excited, but in some ways, I’m sad. My little girl is growing up before my eyes. Sniff.

Here are some photos of her:

Her first time out:

    

Just kidding! She was trying to eat the wall.

Praying? No, just trying to eat the carpet (yes, she tries to eat everything):

Eating puffs (they are good for fine motor skill practice because they are edible ad dissolve easily in the mouth, should they make it that far):

 

Puffs get everywhere:

Do these pants make her bum look puffy?

Looking out at the rain. It has been raining cats and dogs and cows and horses today:

You lookin’ at me?

At least she’s going to sleep like normal again. There were several nights last week that she had a hard time going to sleep and staying that way for any length of time. I’ve been so tired all week. I hope this week is better.

On a sad note, Aunt Cathy and Uncle Ron lost their dog today. Moxie was almost 15 years old. She lived a full life and I can attest that she was a real sweetheart of a pooch. She will be dearly missed.