Living with Lauren: One Month

Lauren, 7 days old. Photo by Bethany Miller.

Our peanut was born a little over a month ago, on September 29, 2012. These past four weeks have passed in a blur, between sleepless nights, nearly constant feedings, and lots of wonderful visitors. I’ve been amazed at the feeling of completeness Lauren has brought to our lives. It just feels right, the three of us.

Weight: 7 lbs, 8 oz.

Lauren started out life at 7 lbs, 11 oz, and dropped a pound in the first week. She’s been working on gaining it all back, although she’s not quite there even yet. At first the slow weight gain was thought to be because her tongue was tied. At two and a half weeks, Lauren visited the ENT who zapped the frenulum with a laser to loosen her tongue. Feedings got a little quicker and Dan and I were certain she was gaining weight, but after a visit to the doctor yesterday, she is still 3 ounces away from her birth weight. After some questions and observations, the doc prescribed some Zantac for Lauren, as she seems to be suffering from excess acid coming up into her esophagus (baby acid reflux). We just started this yesterday, and hopefully this helps Lauren gain weight and reduces her afternoon and evening fussiness. I also have a whole list of techniques to (hopefully) keep her happier by keeping her upright more.

Routine:

Mornings with Lauren are beautiful. She is happy to let me do a few chores, participate in tummy time, and read her a few books. We spend most of the morning in her room, just hanging out, although if I want to get anything done, it needs to happen in those few hours of happy time. I think I’m going to be using my slow cooker a lot in these next few months! That way dinner is made while Lauren happily watches from her bouncy seat.

Afternoons and evenings are a bit more challenging. She seems to only be happy while nursing and doesn’t really like to sleep. Again, hopefully these things abate as I figure out how to keep her upright longer (baby carrier) and as the medicine kicks in. Even so, I love watching her throughout the day. She makes some of the funniest faces after nursing or as she wakes up.

Bath time is not a hit yet, and we haven’t really settled into a night time routine.

Sleeping:

Lauren has given us some good nights (4 hour stretches of blissful sleep!) and rough nights (I never want to see the clock every hour of the night). We are kind of on a college student schedule. Sleep by 11/midnight/1 a.m., up by 9 or 10. The only way she can sleep in her bassinet is if she is firmly swaddled, so we are very glad that she has some swaddle sacks.

Milestones:

Lauren managed to flip herself from her tummy to her back last week. I think it was a fluke of how her arms were positioned under her. She didn’t seem bothered by rolling over, but she has yet to repeat this trick. Also, we’ve gotten a few smiles. Whether they are from gas or emotion is hotly debated, but they are smiles, nevertheless.

Favorites:

Lauren loves sleeping in her Ergo baby carrier as she is toted around and has tolerated several walks in her stroller. Playing with toys is not happening at this stage, but she is learning to follow the rattle with her eyes. So I guess her favorite toy right now is a black and white rattle. My favorite items are the ones that help her sleep: swaddle sack, baby carrier, and whatever else is working at the moment.

4 weeks old.

We love our beautiful daughter and we are so glad she's here!

CSA: Week 2

Week 2 for the CSA rolled around, and I have to admit, I was dreading it a little bit. The problem was that we still hadn't eaten some of our CSA veggies and yet other store-bought veggies were hanging out in our refrigerator too. It was one of those goofy weeks when we ended up not eating as many meals as I had planned -- out to dinner, leftovers, and a meal not on our original menu. Added to that, this week the entire box was ours because of M & M's generosity, although we still shared some of the bounty. So there were no tears because the box wasn't overflowing. In fact, I was a little relieved.

Our haul on Wednesday included:
1 bag of "chard"
1 small bag of broccoli
1 bag of kale
1 bag of garlic scapes
1 bunch of green onions
1 qt. and 1 pt. of fresh strawberries

The strawberries were beautiful, ripe the entire way through, perfectly red and juicy. As I had spent an hour in the blazing heat on Monday with Bethany picking about 10 pounds of strawberries (and had spent the previous evening making them in to jam and strawberry cotulis), I knew that I couldn't hoard these berries. We made a date to share them with Mike, Mary and their boys over some strawberry shortcake with freshly whipped cream. Can we say delicious?

As for the garlic scapes, I decided to make them into another pesto, similar to what I did with the garlic greens. I've decided I like basil pesto more, but since I needed to use these, it worked! It's a pretty strong flavor, but it jazzed up our pasta.

The green onions went into our Pasta and Italian Sausage Veggie Extravaganza. That was solution to the way-too-many vegetables conundrum, and oh my goodness -- it was fantastic! Pasta from the cupboard, asparagus languishing in the fridge, red peppers purchased for a dish we couldn't make (see next paragraph!), green onions, leftover garlic greens pesto, and some bulk italian sausage, all topped with some Parmesan cheese made a fantastic dinner. (We ate the broccoli as we prepped for this meal, after a short 13 mile bike ride.)

And the chard, a whole bag of which we still had from the previous week? Well, last week it was called chard, but it looked a lot more like lettuce and much less like the pictures of chard that were posted online. And in this week's newsletter? It was dubbed lettuce. We were much more willing to eat that, and most of it was consumed in our chicken salads on Saturday evening.

The kale is wilting in our fridge for a few more minutes, but I'm going to give it a whirl in a variation of this recipe. Dan searched for "best kale recipe ever" when he learned that we had gotten this in our share, and I think that mixing the kale with beans (but skipping the mushrooms, of course) will make it a bit more palatable for the two of us.

The last thing in our share was a bunch of flowers. Dan was probably right when he called them weeds, but they have been brightening up our apartment all week.

Hope your adventures in summer eating are as delicious as ours have been!

We killed them ALL!

Blogging Rule #1- Come up with a good title.
Blogging Rule #2- Contents must be accurate.
Blogging Rule #3- Contents must include humor.

We try to follow all three of these rules but sometimes we fail. We shall begin.

Once upon a time, in a land far far away, there was a couple who lived in a small little white house on an old farm. At odd times of the day, small little creatures with wings would hatch, and fly around and around. This couple did not really enjoy the small little creatures with wings flying around their kitchen at odd times during the day, so they did something about it. Que awesome fight sequence music. At the odd times during the day, the couple would silently sneak up on the little creatures and study their flying patterns. They would calculate their flight plans using complex algorithms laid out on the dining room table with the help of two, yes two, TI-89's. Weapons would then be gathered and ceremonially cleansed. Then, they would wait.






And wait.





And wait. Until all was still and the moment was right. And then...

they would strike!















































And then, until suddenly, there were no more.
















Dead Fly Total for today- 20!

Sore shoulders from swinging the towel so much-1

Towel we have to clean because
Sir Knight Dan is amazing- 1

Pictures with amazing detail- 1
(see below)
I double dog dare you to click on this picture to make it bigger.
Tonight we had a showdown and the humans won. Hilary says she had a showdown today at lunch with these nasty creatures with a broom, at which she also destroyed. The broom is fine in case you were concerned.

Stay tuned for more awesome adventures.

Next adventure planned...

a short mountain bike adventure with the wifey. She gets to borrow one of my co-workers full suspension Schwinn. Hopefully it does not rain tomorrow.