Baby's first trip

At 3 1/2 months old, Amalie is at a wonderful age for traveling. Although she will not remember the sights and sounds like we will, she will at least tolerate the journey in relatively good spirits. We figure that as soon as she's crawling and walking, she will want to plan her own travel agenda, which will make carrying out our agenda a little more difficult.

The plan was to spend three days in Seattle, drive along the coast of Oregon and Northern California, and then finish up in San Francisco for two days. In the end we could not adhere to the ambitious schedule completely, so San Francisco got shortchanged. However, we had a fabulous time meandering at our own pace.

She fared well, consisdering that we drove 1,100 miles over 9 days. A bit of diaper rash and a little fussiness about riding in the car near the end were the only outward signs of road wear. We slowed our pace and tried to give tender bottoms as much airing out time as possible, and the rash cleared by the time we flew home.

Here is Amalie with Jon in Seattle, aboard a state ferry to Bainbridge Island.

Pike Place Market is a massive open-air market in downtown Seattle, famous for the fish vendors who toss their wares through the air, but offering much more. Think giant farmer's market, arts and crafts show, and Renaissance festival all wrapped up in one. This giant piggy bank houses donations for the poor, but it also doubles as a photo op for little ones.

From Seattle we traversed southern Washington, all of the Oregon coast, and northern California via Highway 101. Along the way we encountered sea lions, lighthouses, spectacular ocean cliffs and roaring waves, and giant, majestic redwoods. It was cold and windy along the Oregon coast, so we had to limit the length of each outdoor excursion. However, we saw plenty of breathtaking scenery and met many wonderful people along the way.

Finding her voice: Ten weeks

Once Amalie started smiling and gazing at objects, she went through about a four week period in which she was satisfied with her behavioral repertoire and kept things pretty much the same. I wondered when she would decide to start interacting with the world directly. Then, almost right on her two-month Birthday, she began reaching for objects and making verbalizations that were more than just grunting and crying.

I took this video with my phone when Amalie and I were in my office a couple of days ago. Amalie was getting fussy (she doesn't much like office visits!) and I was about ready to pack her up to go home...but then she started "talking" to her little stuffed bunny. I almost perished from glee. My heart wants so badly to know what Amalie has to say to the world.

Amalie has the most delightful personality. She has several different types of smiles, including an "ecstatic" smile that involves a wide-open mouth and a head tilt, and she uses them often. She seems to have a robust sense of humor and loves it when Dad and Mom make fools of themselves.

Two months old and starting to "talk"

Happy two month birthday, Amalie! In the past few days, our little girl has begun sleeping for six-hour stretches at night (woo hoo!). Also in the past couple of days, we have seen an upsurge in cooing and babbling. Her favorite syllable is "awr" (while pursing her lips), but there are also some "guh"-type sounds. We can tell when she is about to speak, because she really concentrates as she works up to it.

Here she is "speaking" to Mama:

The mobile is still a huge hit. (Kimono outfit courtesy of Great Uncle Rick and Great Aunt Nancy.)

She is also starting to hit and grab on to things if we put them right in front of her hand. It is difficult to tell if she understands what she is doing yet, but it is funny to see her punch a dangly toy (she has TWO elephant toys that make chiming noises when they're hit) over and over as she smiles in delight.

Unfortunately, another new development is increased reflux, which means that furniture, clothes, and Mom and Dad are covered in spit-up, and Amalie is uncomfortable after she nurses. We're hoping it will pass eventually.

Peaceful Kingdom

Flecks of brown

Hey, there's a world out there!

Amalie turned six weeks old this past Wednesday. I have to say that the past week-and-a-half has been rewarding for Mommy, because little girl has started noticing things outside of herself. At four weeks she started really, truly looking into our eyes, and at 4.5 weeks or so she gave us her first smile in direct response to our voices and gazes. Now she smiles reliably to us and to her favorite visual stimuli.

The most popular is her Zanzibar mobile. The zebra and elephant are particular favorites. Jon jokes that the mobile is like "baby heroin", because it is guaranteed to make her smile and gawk unless she's in complete meltdown.

The other favorites are black and white patterns. She has flash cards and a Powerpoint filled with black and white clip art. She takes note of any high contrast stimuli, including the ceiling fan and picture frames, if they're dark enough. She loved visiting Grandma Driscoll's art studio yesterday.

Mom report: I am experiencing some anxiety over all of the things that are on my "to do" list for work that aren't getting done. I feel like I have snippets of time that could be used for writing my grant proposal, but my cognition and motivation are impaired by the sleep deprivation and my new "milk truck" role.

I understand completely that it is silly to worry about the "to do" list when I should be relaxing and enjoying this special time with my daughter. I think that the drive for productivity has been so ingrained for so long that it cannot be separated from my identity, at least not very easily. After all, it has served me well professionally. This will be an opportunity to grow, to think about how I frame my life priorities. Amalie and Jon are always going to be first, which will mean NOT having guilt about making work second. Guilt is a fascinating phenomenon that reveals much about the person experiencing it, including assumptions that we make about our world, baggage that we carry from earlier in life, expectations that we have and assume that others have for us.

Happy One Month, Amalie!

Amalie turned one month old yesterday. Jon says "she's one!", and I say "she's thirty!". Every day has been its own adventure, so I like to commemorate all of them.

At her one month pediatrician's appointment, she officially weighed 9 pounds, 0.5 ounces. This puts her in the 50th percentile for weight (she was in the 25th percentile at her 1.5 week visit), which is welcome news to Mom, who has been constantly worried about milk supply. As for length, she is closer to the 75th-90th percentile at 22 inches.

The pediatrician remarked that Amalie is particularly alert and focuses well visually. With those gigantic eyes, I would hope so! My mom said that I was highly vigilant and wide-eyed when I was a newborn too.

Important landmarks: her umbilical stump finally fell off at 2.5 weeks, and she got her first "real" bath. Note how curly her hair is when it is wet!

At around the same time, she really started unfurling and playing with her hands. The pediatrician says this is unusual for an infant this young. But Peanut certainly does have amazingly large hands and long fingers! Some say "basketball player", others say "piano player". I did both of those things as a kid, but I also played bassoon; and given that I was recruited by the band teacher to play bassoon because of the size of my hands, then perhaps Amalie will be similarly charged.

Amalie's been using her arms and hands for a while, and I think she really started hitting me out of frustration (with a fist) if I did not get her situated for nursing quickly enough when she was only a couple of weeks old. However, at about 3.5 weeks, Amalie found a new use for her hands that unfortunately hurts HER: she grabs her very thick hair, pulls, screams in pain, but does not yet know how to let go. So we have to disentangle her. This originally worried me a bit (signs of impending stereotypy?....sometimes I wish I didn't know any psychology or neuroscience), but then Kristine relayed a far worse tale of her son Cooper, who grabbed something MUCH more sensitive when he was about the same age. I guess it's a good thing Peanut is not a boy.

Right at the week 4/one month point, Amalie demonstrated her first social smiles. She's been smiling in her sleep for a couple of weeks, and she began sleep-laughing about three or four days ago, but the actual waking smile, in response to our voices, just started a couple of days ago. It is fleeting and infrequent, but it is the most wonderful thing to see after several weeks of blank stares. I've tried to catch the smiles on film, but fleeting as they are, I'm mostly getting the tail end of them. Here are some attempts:

Not many have made comments about whether Amalie looks like Liam. They are definitely unique, but I notice that she looks like Liam in some of his photos when she is nursing. It's the profile from above, and I think it is particularly the nose and the double chin that I'm reacting to. Given that that specific view is one that only I can have, I can't really get a second opinion.