duck feet!

So much happened today! We went out to lunch with a mother we met last week - Stephanie, and her 3-month old, Zac. We went to Park Chow by Golden Gate Park, had a lovely lunch and then walked in the park. It was cold, so we didn't go too long, but the sun was out and we visited the duck pond and a place where squirrels hang out and wait for you to give them peanuts. Zac is a huge baby, and he has really blue eyes and really long eyelashes. He smiles and laughs a lot - I can't wait until Charli starts laughing.

Charli did 2 brand new things today:
1) She saw herself in the mirror. A few days ago she first started seeing me in the mirror, but she never looked at herself. Today, she looked at herself for a long time!
2) She seemed to recognize the bottle as food. I took one to the restaurant because I thought she would get hungry, and I offered it to her before we left. She mouthed it a little bit, but didn't really latch on, so I sat it on the table (very close to her). A couple of minutes later, she started sucking on her hands and staring at the bottle, so I offered it to her again, and she drank it. How exciting!

We also have a fun game we like to play, called something like "Can I give you a kiss right here?" In this game I say "Can I give you a kiss right here?" and I point to her forehead, and she says "Yes, mommy, I think that would help my neurological development and long term feelings of security", which in baby speak condenses down to "kkkk, uh!" So I give her a big kiss there. Then I point somewhere else, like her cheek, and say "how about here? Can I give you a kiss here too?", and she says "Yes, that would make me feel like a valued member of the family", which condenses down to "nnngoo" or something sort of like that (the phonetics don't translate well into our limited alphabet. Baby speak is a very dense language). And so on. I very much enjoy this game.

And lastly, in case you didn't notice, we tried on a new cute pair of socks. They stick on her feet pretty well! She actually had some other firsts, too, but Brian says they're too gross to put in the blog.

p.s. I posted some new pictures of Charli on the website.

very best baby (and husband)

Two nights ago, Charli slept for 7 1/2 hrs. Brian and I wasted it, of course, by staying up until 2 and thus only getting 3 hrs of uninterrupted sleep, but it was still pretty impressive. I thought it was a fluke, but... she did it again last night! Once again, I blew it by staying up until 2, but then Brian got up at 5, changed Charli's diaper, fixed her a bottle, burped her and put her back to sleep, so I got 6 hrs of pretty straight sleep anyway!

2 month checkup

Thursday, January 24, Charli had her 2 month checkup, which involved getting 4 shots. It was actually not as traumatic as last month, when she only got one shot... well, until we got home. The shots knocked her out for a few hours, we interviewed a nanny, and then I (foolishly) woke her up and it was all over. She made her special super high pitched super loud noise. A lot. She also got all pale and freaked me out and we called the paranoid parents hotline - they told us she was fine, just in pain, and get some baby tylenol. That stuff works wonders. She was knocked out again (a common side effect of all the vaccinations), but when she would half wake up, she didn't scream and wake herself fully up. Phew!

To remind me of how great she is normally, I had to keep looking at the picture from BEFORE the shots...

p.s. She's 10 lbs 5 oz, and 22 inches long! That's 50th percentile for both height and weight, so I guess she's completely average. Of course, they don't have a "cuteness" chart. If they did, she'd be 99th percentile for sure!

Another auntie! And a cousin!

Kelly and Kate are out for the long weekend. Kate's going to babysit for us on Sunday, and we are *gasp* going out for dinner WITHOUT THE BABY.

yay! more grandparents!

Brian's parents are out for the weekend! hooray, now i'm not lonely!

*sniff* so lonely...

Well, Sam left this morning at 4:30am, so today is officially my first day at home alone with the baby (at 6 1/2 weeks old). It's so lonely and quiet... *sniff* So I am eagerly looking forward to more family the coming weekends, who should feel welcome to stay for weeks, if anyone should find it difficult to part with the baby. :)

On the other hand, she smiled at me a LOT this morning, and she is being super adorable and good. Whew!

Tummy time!

Seems like Charli likes laying on her stomach these days, and it sure looks like she wants to crawl around!

-B