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5/19/05

11:30

My habit seems to be to open the file up early in the day and make intermittent entries, so I've decided to just put the time in each time I return to it. I think that that'll make things make sense.

I wanted to mention dinner. Last night, Steve came home at his old usual time (a little bit after six). The baby was sleeping on me, and I handed her over and went and made dinner while he held her. Finally she was ready to be put down and we went off to eat. However, Cara decided that this was not to be. We wound up eating with a crying baby in her bouncer in the kitchen, taking turns getting up and putting her pacifier back into her mouth to get a few minutes of quiet. The thing is, though, that this seems to happen an awful lot! Dinner is not Cara's favorite meal of the day, clearly.

Cara has not slept quietly in her play yard for quite a while, it seems. Last night I was not able to put her down, but wound up sleeping with her on the couch. I fed her at ten thirty or eleven after we held her all evening, and she stayed kind of cranky and hungry, so eventually, having fed her all I could, I gave her a bottle. I think that around one we went to sleep. I woke up at five, put her down, went to the bathroom, and found her awake. I fed her, and we went back to sleep on the couch. I was nervous because I wanted to sleep more and I knew that Steve would get up very soon, but I waved at him once around 6:30 and then slept soundly (as did Cara) until almost eight.

Things have been kind of touchy all morning. I left the baby alone and took a shower; she was kind of noisy but still seemed sleepy. It's very hard to tell, sometimes, whether she's asleep or awake. She really will be peacefully asleep, then suddenly scream for a moment, and then subside into angelic peace. She also, and I still think it's really weird and sometimes I find it disturbing, grunts A LOT in her sleep. I ate breakfast. I fed her around nine, but she only ate for five minutes and then went to sleep. I tried putting her down eventually, and she woke up. She ate for five minutes and went to sleep. Now I have put her in her bouncer and she seems to be doing better than she did in the play yard. There is still some grunting, though.

I said that I had lots of plans for our time alone. I want to take a walk every day, assuming that she doesn't scream the whole time. I want to do at least two household chores each day, apart from simply cleaning up after myself. Short term, I have lots of errands to do. Today I want to pick up something for dinner, and I have to buy Steve new shoe laces. I have to do this today, because I asked him to give me a shoe lace to take along as a sample, and so he has cut his shoe lace in half. This is the lace for his good brown shoes that he wears to work almost every day. This lends some urgency to that task. I hate buying shoe laces.

Today I scrubbed out the shower upstairs in one of the 20-minute periods of quiet. I think that, now, I will go get out the vacuum. I also plan on washing my car, so maybe I'll check out the outside temperature. I don't want to go out right now, because she hasn't eaten much. I'm hoping that eventually she'll really sleep for a while, wake up hungry, do a good job eating, and then go to sleep nicely in her car seat and we can go out.

12:30

Well, the baby is still in her bouncer, grunting away. She really really does scream in her sleep. It is weird.

I washed my car (No, I didn't do a really good job or anything, as I would under the supervision of my father, but it looks a lot better. I didn't wax it. I don't have any wax. I may get some.) I vacuumed the game room, which almost always really needs it these days, since that's the door we all use to get into and out of the house, and what with all of our shoes and the stroller and all the pollen and various THINGS outside, the carpet gets awfully messy awfully fast. I hate it, because I really like that carpet. I would never have selected it myself, but it's a deep dark red and it's really soft and nice. I washed off my strawberries and I am cooking some artichokes.

When the baby wakes up I will change her, feed her, and go out. I want to go to Barnes and Noble and hang around and look at baby books and stuff. Then I can also do my errands. I hope to take a walk when we get back (notice how the exercise part gets shunted to the end of the queue?) She's yelling now and may actually be awake.

7:30

She was awake, or I awoke her. I changed and fed her, and we went out. Well, I put her into her car seat, she started crying, I took her out and fed her again, and she got sleepy and I put her in her car seat and we went out. We went to Panera (a nice bakery, which is a chain, so really I should try to find a non-chain bakery and buy my bread there to support my local business, but that's just too bad) and bought some bread. We went to Michael's and bought photo corners so that I can work on the baby book. I looked at picture frames there, too, because I want to get one for Steve so that he can have pictures of the baby on his desk. I bought a picture frame at Bed,Bath and Beyond. Then we went to Barnes and Noble. I got a fancy drink and a cupcake and looked at baby books, which brought up many interesting issues.

I looked up sleep a lot. One book said that babies are noisy sleepers. Another said you should call the doctor if the baby grunts in her sleep. I looked up colic. I'm not sure whether she's colicky or whether she ever was. She certainly has had episodes of uncontrollable crying, but lately (knock on wood) that hasn't been so bad. All of the books say different things. One thing they talk about is premature babies. Apparently, you're supposed to count from their due dates when considering their development, which would put Cara at about two weeks. She's certainly beyond that. I think she's pretty much a normal six-week-old. She's strong and growing fast.

I would like to know how much of the day she's supposed to spend asleep. I confess that I just don't know what to do with her when she's awake. I mean, she can't do much except look at things, and then she cries. I do need to start giving her more tummy time. She spends time on her tummy when she's sleeping on me, but that's about it. She is strong and able to push herself around, though. Steve and I have both noticed her being in places in which she was not put down when we have picked her up.

Around 3:30 Cara and I got to the supermarket. I got her a buddy poppy for her car seat. We bought groceries. She started crying. I went to the checkout (I use the self-checkout). When I put my hand in my pocket to get out my bonus card, I found Steve's shoelace. I had to leave my paid-for groceries at the front and take my crying baby to the shoelace section.

We hurried (crying) home to eat. I fed her, off and on, from 4:00 to 5:45, at which time I put her down in her crib. Cara seems to fit part of the description of a "cluster feeder," who fits a few feedings in and then sleeps for a long time. She's awake now, so scratch the last part of that definition.

Anyway, I quickly made dinner (I got a little bit manic--Steve got home and I ordered him to slice the bread, no "how are you?" or anything) and we ate a nice meal. I even cleaned up and got to start working on this journal before she woke up again.

Now it's time, I think, to return to the eternal task of feeding that baby. I'll get Steve to create a new week and post this.

5/20/05

9:00

Well, it's finally a rainy day. They seem to have been predicting rain for weeks, and we never seem to have a real rainy day. For some reason, I've found myself looking forward to one. I think it's because it just feels different to be inside when it's raining. On the other hand, it means I can't go for a walk today, unless I go to the mall or something. I might do that; it depends (of course) on the baby's schedule. I think I should do laundry today, and Cara will have a nice bath and change her clothes, which is much more exciting now that we are wearing new and different outfits.

By the way, Cara has graduated from Newborn to Size One diapers--what a smart girl! Cara's mother, taking a cue from her mother-in-law, has been using only half a wipe on Cara at each diaper change. Now that the baby is six weeks old, she has discovered that it is much easier to tear the wipes WITH the grain of the fabric rather than the other way, as she has done with great care and great effort every time. What a smart girl!

I never talked about my sling. It's just a big piece of cloth with a couple of metal rings that it gets threaded through. It comes with an instructional video, of which I've watched about half. I can now assemble and wear the sling, but I can't figure out how to put the baby into it. I DID try it on Shelby with great success. I tried taking pictures, but it really didn't work. I'm sure that some will eventually be taken and posted, though.

Cara is a living room baby. She lives in the living room. She has slept in her play yard rather than her crib all her life. This is probably because I sit on the couch to feed her. Also, I guess Steve and I felt like she was more accessible down here than up in her nursery all alone. Now, however, I have been trying to transition her. A couple of times she has actually slept in her crib. The funny thing is, when she's asleep upstairs, I feel really anxious about noise--much more than when she would be sleeping in the middle of the living room! Cara is clearly not the only one who needs to be transitioned.

Last night we held Cara and watched Easter Parade, which I have just gotten on DVD. It is really a great movie, and we hadn't seen it in a very long time, it turns out. I may put it on again today, just as background. There were some disruptions last night, and it's a lot easier to feed the baby with the TV on than with a book. I can give her all of my arms (all of them!) and pay her a little bit more attention, which sometimes helps.

Again, Cara and I slept on the couch. It's probably my fault; I'm sure I could do a better job of putting her down. I just find myself snuggling up with her against me under the sheet, and I don't think I would like being taken out and put down alone in a cold crib, either! We slept from about eleven until seven, though--with a break in the middle, naturally, I mean, but still that's plenty of sleep.

Here's the cool news: when Cara was awake last night, I put her down on her jungle play mat and she looked around a lot. She seemed pretty calm, so I turned her over on her tummy. She didn't really like it, and she was crying throughout this next part, but she can creep! She lay there yelling and kicking and wriggling, and I put my hands behind her feet. With something to kick off from, she really can move! She pulls herself along with her hands, and her legs are also very strong. She crept right off the blanket and had to be hauled back, only to start off again. Unfortunately, she doesn't really hold her head up, so it just gets shoved along. Also, she has no real destination of interest in where she gets or in getting anywhere, really. (Nowhere to go, nothing to buy and no money to buy it with--sorry, I teach To Kill a Mockingbird and my brain seems to be permanently infected with often irrelevant quotes from it and I just ITCH until I haul them out)

Cara is in her bouncer now in her nursery. I brought her upstairs in it while I showered; she was awake and I let her sit and look at things. I am afraid it makes me a bad mother that I didn't sit and pay attention to her but instead went off to shower. One book suggested bringing a crying baby into the bathroom while the shower was on, because the white noise would be soothing. Cara wasn't crying, though. I think I should have stayed and played with her. Anyway, I'm pretty certain she was crying while I was IN the shower. When I got out, she was asleep. She has been asleep up there since, give or take some grunting and stretching. The cats have been looking at her and I have been looking at her. Not much is going on. I last fed her starting around seven, so she should be up again soon.

The cats, apart from that one time with the ball, really don't interact with the baby. They smell her once in a while, and they do look at her occasionally, but there's not that much interest. Cara displays even less interest in them, but for their sakes I dread the day she discovers them. I can picture poor Shelby being chased by a baby. Buster, I think, will be aloof enough for safety, but I'll bet that Shelby will walk right into harm's way. She's also very fluffy and it would be terrible if she got sticky. Actually, I'm kind of wrong about the cats not being interested. They spend a lot of time in the nursery, especially when we are in there. They do seem to like to know what's going on. Maybe they DO have some interest in the baby.

You know how everybody always pictures baby rattles as things with handles and a round part that makes noise? Well, if Cara had a rattle like that, maybe she could grasp it in her hand and wave it around. All of her toys seem too big for her to grab. I want to get her something that has a skinny part like that that she can get her little fingers around. I'll have to look around. I know that all of her toys are designed to be safe for her, but still I'm disappointed in them in a way. Maybe, though, if she were going to grab things she'd just grab them anyway. She seems to be getting more control of her hands now; she grabs less reflexively. I kind of miss the time when she would close her fingers around anything that got near them. I hope, though, that she's starting to get the idea that her hands are her hands. I'm not 100% certain that that's happening, but a mom can hope.

I'm having fun writing this, but it's a little bit disappointing that I can't go read the Baby Journal and see anything new. Maybe Steve can write in once in a while, at least on the weekends. I could get him to use a different font! (Or he could just put his name on his entries, I guess.)

1:00

Well, the baby woke up around 10:30. I fed her without changing her, because I wanted to give her a bath and it would be a waste of a clean diaper. Then, of course, she fell asleep as soon as she had eaten. I put her down in her play yard, and she woke up, so it was off to the races. She had a nice bath--I would swear she almost fell asleep in the water; she likes it very much. I let her sit in the bath after she was all clean, just looking around at her room and moving her little limbs around. The part that makes her cry is when she comes out of the bath. I think she gets cold, so I wrap her up tight really fast, but she still screams. Anyway, she got clean and she got a clean diaper and a clean new outfit. The outfit is a little bit big, but that's okay. I turned her over and she crept across her crib, but she screamed the whole way and I felt guilty. I fed her a little bit more and she got sleepy.

I decided to try going to the mall. I got her into her car seat and got all ready, and then the rain picked up. Now, at the mall I can park in the garage and not get rained on, but there's no way to get to my car from the house without braving the elements. I was all set, in fact I had the car doors open, but I decided that the cold air would certainly disturb the baby, so I changed my mind. I brought her back upstairs, and she is still all bucked up, sleeping peacefully in the corner on the floor.

I've realized that I'm doing things backwards. Cara is being trained to sleep on her own during the day and spend all night with me! Oops.

I ate lunch. I ate too much and I would still be eating, were it not for a great deal of will power. The prednisone I'm taking has turned me into a great glutton, beside making my poor face huge. I'm trying to eat relatively healthy things, so that it's not TOO bad that I eat almost constantly. Actually, I haven't been that bad for the past few days.

I think that now I will go start my laundry, clean up from Cara's bath, work on my baby book, and write thank you notes. Those are my afternoon jobs. Then I hope to have a nice dinner with my husband and then I hope to sleep tonight.

Tomorrow is a big day. Steve and Jim and Claire and I are seeing the new Star Wars movie at 10 in the morning while Cara hangs out with her grandparents. That means that Cara and Steve and I have to get ready to leave the house by 9. That should be doable, particularly since time, tide, and babies' appetites wait for no man, and I've been feeding her around seven every day this week, I think. It'll be interesting, though. After the movie we are getting Mexican food for lunch--takeout from our favorite restaurant, which I'm really really excited about. In the afternoon and evening we plan on going to Cruisin' With the Oldies, a festival in Red Bank, where my parents live. There will be vintage cars, big crowds, music, and lots of food, which I plan to eat. I plan on walking there, but some of us should drive so that we have a car there in case the baby gets crazy. I figure we can't all drive in, because it'll be hard enough to park one car! It also might rain. I'm sure we'll find something to do.

Babies have very flexible necks. Cara sleeps in very very funny positions, slumping over happily in poses which I cannot emulate. Right now I am reminded of this by Shelby Foote, who is sleeping on my lap but has unfortunately chosen to pillow her little chin on my heel, from which it regularly slips, giving her a sort of bobbing-head action that I am sure is very disruptive to her slumber. However, all of that is about to end, as I am going to post this for the day (probably) and go do my chores like a good girl.

5/22/05

Well, we were out ALL DAY yesterday, so I couldn't post. The night went fine, and of course we all get up very early in the morning, so we had no problem getting out of the house on time. We packed the play yard, the stroller, bottles, formula, the bottle warmer, many diapers, a few outfits, two pacifiers, and the baby. We got down to my folks' house a little bit after nine and left them with all of those items while we went out on the town with Jim and Claire. Her grandpa gave Cara a bottle and put her down to sleep, which apparently she did for the next few hours.

Cara slept on her tummy. Of course, in today's society this is taboo. Even our diapers constantly remind us about the Back to Sleep campaign. However, when I snuggle with Cara and put her to sleep on my chest she is basically sleeping on her tummy. Thousands upon thousands of babies have slept on their tummies. I am leaning towards letting her sleep on her tummy sometimes, if she's comfortable and it gets her to sleep on her own. This makes her daddy very very nervous.

Cara was good all afternoon. When we got back from the movie I fed her and then we put her in her stroller and went out. She sat nicely while we ate lunch and then she rode happily around with us while we got ice cream cones and looked at vintage cars. Aside from the ice cream, though, Cruisin' With the Oldies was disappointing. It has been scaled back a lot from what it was a few years ago. My mom and I walked home from Red Bank with Cara, who basically slept and occasionally commented on our conversation with little peeps.

Cara woke up eventually and spent the next five hours showing my family how much fun a fussy baby can be. She probably had some indigestion or something--that's what my mom figured. I get really upset when I try to nurse her and she doesn't want to eat or is too upset to eat, because feeding her is the big, important thing that I can do and it makes me feel very helpless. Anyway, she wouldn't or couldn't eat, wasn't going to sleep, and basically wanted to be carried around and fight with people.

Unfortunately, Cara also has a rash. It looks like little pimples on her face and neck--even on her little ear! We've decided that it's probably prickly heat. I thought at first that that was unlikely, because it's just not that hot, but I've decided that she may have gotten it from sleeping with me. She had been sleeping with her little head pillowed directly on my biceps, and we get kind of sticky. Now I'm trying to wear long sleeves, so that our skin doesn't make too much contact. The rash doesn't seem to bother her at all, which is good, and it may be fading. Dr. Spock says it will go away.

We got home around ten and got ourselves unpacked and Cara ate. (Finally) Steve stayed up and messed with her until about one, while I slept on the couch, and then he gave her to me and went to bed. We slept together on the couch again. I made sure that I wasn't really touching her skin. I put her down around five, I think, though, and she stayed in her play yard. She was kind of noisy, but I just went to sleep anyway. We got up around eight.

Today doesn't look like a pretty day, and I'm still cranky from yesterday.

10:00

I think that the rash is fading (knock on wood). Cara had a nice bath and was pretty good all day. Steve and I were able to eat a nice meal, and I took a little nap. I fed Cara at five o'clock and she slept on me for the next three hours. It was pretty cute, especially at first, but she did wind up kind of sticking off the sofa, so I had to use both hands to hold up the blanket she was on. Steve has helpfully posted a picture of it, which I think is quite unflattering for both me and Cara. I fed her at eight, and then I walked around with her for a while, but she was up again and ate for some reason at 9:30. Now she is NOT sleepy.

There were two things from yesterday that I forgot to mention. One is that Cara impressed everyone (except her loving parents, who already were aware of her skills) by being able to cry quite vociferously with a pacifier in her mouth. We are very proud. The other is that Cara very much enjoyed dancing with her Aunt Claire. She's danced with other people, of course, but not with anyone who really knew what they were doing. Cara likes to rumba, I believe. This naturally raises two important questions: how long can Claire keep this up, and when is she available?

Cara's daddy has to go back to work tomorrow, so I guess I had better get ready for the night shift.

5/23/05

1:00

The night went okay. Cara and I slept on the couch, as usual. Steve got up when we were up, between three and four, I think, and helped me change her. I was up and fed her finishing around eight, and then Cara and I sat in her room and sorted out her clothes. I took everything out of her drawers and looked at the weight limits on the labels. There are quite a few things that she really can't wear anymore--sadly, there are a couple of things that she never wore that are certainly too small. We just have to put everything away and hope that, when we have another baby, it's a girl!

Many of the things that Cara has to wear now are sleepers with skirts rather than legs; they're the kind that are open at the bottom. I'm sure Cara will have much success getting herself out of them. I just hope to have as much luck getting her into them! All the things she's been wearing have been very very easy because you can just lie the baby on top of the outfit and snap the whole thing up around her. She has a lot of onesies to wear now, too, which will go on over her head, and she has some pants. That should be fun.

4:30

Cara woke up, and I fed her lying on the couch, and we took a nap. Now I have gotten up and hope to have a drink and maybe change my shirt before she wakes up for real. I have to change the gerbil's cage, and I think that that's a job Cara could help me with, if she decided to be quietly awake. She really hasn't slept on her own today, except for a 45-minute period while I took a shower, so we're doing everything together.

I took her to the mall, because I wanted a walk and it is kind of chilly out. She slept while I walked around, but then I took the elevator, and she woke up and that was that. I walked for another 40 minutes, but she was awake. I had to get my lunch to go and bring it home. I put her in her bouncer with the vibrations on and ate, and then I did a little bit of journaling, but that was that.

Good news: my daddy has tracked down my glider, which will be delivered tomorrow! Also, my in-laws are coming up, so they will stay with Cara while I go do my groceries. I know that I can do groceries with Cara, but she takes up an awful lot of room in the cart!

Now she's sleeping nicely on the couch, so I have to take my chance to go to the bathroom!

5/24/05

9:30

It was in interesting night. First, a miracle occurred. I fed Cara around five and put her down in her crib at six. She slept there until eight! That's very very good. In that time, Steve came home and I made dinner and cleaned up! We also ate. It was nice. We did chores. Then I fed Cara and she got sleepy and I put her down again, but it didn't take. Then Cara got to spend some time with her daddy, who held her for an hour or so while she slept.

I actually did accomplish things yesterday. I cleaned out Cara's drawers, changed the gerbil cage, and cleaned some things in the kitchen. Overall, I'm not too disappointed. I got a phone call from the man whose daughter I used to tutor. He wants me to come back. I have to call him today and figure that out. I may be able to do it. I don't REALLY want to, but it's a good thing to do if we can work out the scheduling.

Anyway, back to the night. I took Cara around 10:30, and she decided she was hungry. I fed her. She was not sleepy. She was nice when I walked her around, but she got hysterical when I sat down. One very funny part was when I lay down to try nursing her again, and she just wouldn't stop screaming. Finally I gave up and sat up to walk her around more, and she instantly fell asleep. Maybe I'm training her to sleep alone on the couch, too! I believe that that lasted only about ten minutes, though. Somehow or other we wound up asleep on the couch together before midnight. Iron Chef was almost over, but I muted it and went to sleep anyway.

I woke up at quarter to four, and it turns out that Iron Chef is on at three as well as eleven. It was the same episode, at the same place that I had muted it four hours before! I went to the bathroom, and the baby slept on the couch. She was sound asleep when I came back down, so I decided to sit up until she woke. I had my book handy, and she slept for about another hour! I certainly didn't expect that. I'm not really sure she was awake when I finally picked her up; she may just have been sleeping loudly. In any case, I fed her and we went back to sleep. We slept through Steve getting himself together and leaving (I wake up enough to say hello, but I had decided that I needed to sleep late today) and got up around 8:15. Now Cara is in her bouncer, vibrating upstairs, and I am going to go take a shower.

3:30

I just put Cara down in her crib. We had a nice day. Cara's grandparents came up and took care of her while I went out and did the groceries--I spent a million dollars and bought everything. We gave Cara a nice bath in the morning and I fed her before I went out, but perhaps she didn't eat enough. While I was out Cara got very fussy and it's very lucky for her that her grandparents love her very much. Sometimes she eats for a few minutes and gets sleepy, but she hasn't eaten much and doesn't last as long as she ought before she's hungry again. Now, though, she's eaten a LOT.

Unfortunately, my glider is not coming today. It was damaged and has to be reordered, but I will get a substitute glider in the meantime. The lady at Babies R Us is going to drop it off herself tomorrow, which is awfully nice of her, I think. They are also waiving the $65 delivery charge. I just hope that, when they do drop off the actual glider, they will take back the extra one!

So, I've done a lot today. I went to the pet store and the grocery store and bought important things, and they're pretty much all put away, and I've done laundry (although Janet took it all out and folded it for me while I was out), which I have to put away, and we have food to eat for dinner for the next few days, and we have good leftovers for lunches. I also did a little bit of vacuuming. I am pleased with myself and hope I do more.

5/25/05

12:00

Yesterday Cara slept on the couch for a few hours while I made dinner and Steve and I had a nice evening. He has suggested that I try to be more clear about what time of day I'm talking about, so I'll try not to just use numbers!

It wasn't really a good night. Cara was kind of loud. She was fussy until about midnight, which is the same time she was fussy until the night before, I think. In any case, even though my glider did get here yesterday, we still slept on the couch.

The glider is nice and it DOES help. I can rock vigorously instead of walking with her, and it keeps her quiet. I feel bad when she's loud at night, because I'm afraid it wakes up Steve, and I feel like I'm not getting my job done. Sometimes, though, she just screams.

Today I had to wake Cara up in the morning at 8, change her and feed her and hit the road, because I had an appointment with my gastroenterologist at 8:45. The sleepy Cara was cooed over by all of the nurses, and the appointment went well. There's always a lot of time, though, when I'm just sitting there in the examining room, and poor Cara woke up and got mad, because she really didn't eat enough at 8. She just did about five minutes and fell fast asleep, and I packed her up and we left. We hurried and got home and I fed her around ten.

Yesterday I found a product in the grocery store designed to reduce gas in infants. I didn't buy it, because I wasn't sure the pediatrician would approve. I called and asked, and Dr. Chen said to give it a shot. I'm hoping it will reduce some crying, too. I was going to pick it up today on the way home from the doctor, but the baby was hungry and it wsa raining. I'm tired of rainy days now. It makes it way too hard to go anywhere.

Steve has a book on tape to return to the library, and, normally, I would drop it off for him. Since Ihave summers off and get out of work a lot earlier than he does under normal circumstances, we've gotten used to me doing a lot of errands and chores. Now, though, it's really hard. I have to wait until it's a good time for the baby, pack her up, and then carry her everywhere or take out the stroller. The library doesn't have shopping carts! When it's raining, especially, I just don't feel like I can go out and do things. Maybe on a nice day I'd feel different. Today, I'm considering asking Steve to pick up the gas stuff on his way home. I want to try it as soon as possible, but we just can't get out of here!

3:00

Cara and I spent a nice hour in our glider, eating, rocking, and crying, with a break in the middle to change a poopy diaper. Shelby is very curious but has not gotten onto the lap of anyone in the glider. She does come into the nursery a lot when I am in there with the baby, though. Perhaps I need a little cat bed next to it.

Having said all that about not being able to get out of the house, I just went out and got the gas drops. It's a long story. The car seat comes with this padded attachment to keep the baby's head erect. When Cara was born she was too small for it, so the hospital told us not to use it but to brace her with rolled-up blankets instead. She's clearly big enough to sit by herself now, so we haven't been using the blankets, but we never put this piece back in. Today, I did. Traditionally, Cara has slumped over in amazing positions in her car seat. She really seems to enjoy it, honestly, and whenever we have stuck things in there to keep her more erect, she has just slumped the other way. Now, though, she seems fairly upright. I hope she likes it.

Anyway, after I fed her she got a little bit sleepy but didn't go to sleep. I put her in her bouncer again (she slept in it, vibrating, for a couple of hours earlier) but with the toys attached. She kicked, and lights and music went off. I think she liked it; she was watching the lights. That lasted all of five minutes, and she was crying a little bit while I finished unloading the dishwasher. Then I put her in her car seat, took Steve's library book, and headed out with my awake baby.

Cara was fine in the car on the way down to the A&P. It isn't really raining out now, so that was okay. I put her in her stroller and in we strolled. The car hadn't put her to sleep, but she seemed okay. We walked directly into the store, up the aisle, and back to the checkout (self-checkout, no waiting!), but I had to stop and put in the pacifier to quiet the crying baby. I decided that we really couldn't go to the library like that, since it IS a lot quieter there. Crying babies get drowned out a little bit in places like supermarkets (she wasn't at full volume), but she'd be pretty obvious in the library. We got home, and her eyes were still open. I left her in the car while I unlocked the door, went back to get her, and she fell asleep the instant I picked up the car seat. She is still, I believe, asleep, fairly upright, in her car seat, downstairs.

So now I have my gas drops. They say to give them after meals or at bedtime; they claim to work in minutes. I am not to exceed 12 doses per day. We'll see. I very much hope that they work.

I'm pretty sure that people are going to tell me that it's my fault that Cara is gassy. People like to give advice to parents. Maybe it IS my fault. However, I am not eating anything that I didn't eat while I was pregnant, and I'm not eating the same exact things all the time, so I don't know what I can do about it. It's not like she's only gassy after I eat a certain thing; she's fairly consistent. If you want to tell me that it's my fault that the baby is gassy, please don't. I'm doing my best.

So, my accomplishments for the day are unloading the dishwasher, getting the gas drops, and going to the doctor. I also scheduled myself to tutor on Friday, at 1:00. I will have to take Cara with me and hope that it's a good time for her. Now I am going to go try to make Buster Keaton happy. She seems to have needs.

9:30

Steve brought home pizza, which turned out to be not very good, and he took Cara for the evening, because I was all tired out and stressed out and freaking out. I just want her to be happy, and I don't know that I do a very good job. So I ate an apple and took a bath and then ate a tomato and then some cookies and some tortilla chips. I like eating. I plan to eat more tomorrow, too. I'm looking forward to it.

Cara and Steve are up in the glider, and I hear her fussing. She is pretty good in the glider, generally. However, we are getting on to what I have decided is her fussy time of night. Actually, perhaps it always has been her fussy time. I remember Steve used to walk her around for a long time while I tried to sleep in the late evenings.

I have set up my bed on the couch and I will go take my pills and brush my teeth and take over for poor Steve, I think. I'll see if I can keep her quiet in the glider for a while tonight--I've started reading the New Yorker again while I'm up there, which I find heartening as it shows that my mental faculties are still in order.

I forgot to put in the news from my doctor visit: I get to taper off the prednisone, so perhaps my face will stop being huge in a few weeks. I wish it would be sooner than that, but I don't want to get my hopes up.

Now that I have the glider, I plan on training Cara to sleep in her crib. I can change her, feed her, put her to sleep, put her down there, and go off and actually sleep in my own bed like an adult. Like an adult without a baby. However, I don't think I will work on that tonight.

It's the end of Week Seven. Good night.

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