Randoms

It's hard to blog these days ... Sally changes so fast that I keep starting posts and abandoning them because my observations no longer apply. Also, now that everyone but me is back at work my hands-are-free time is limited and at a premium. Mostly, I use that time for eating, posting photos on flickr and facebook, and, if I'm smart and really lucky, napping.

A couple things, though, that I don't want to forget.  In no order at all:

**When Sally was first learning how to nurse and would get very frustrated, all of a sudden she'd stop, form a perfect "o" with her little mouth, and fall fast asleep. She still makes that face when she's falling asleep sometimes.
**On a recent car ride down to Umma and Baba's, Walter woke up Sally with his very loud whining/moaning/fake toddler crying. Sally started to cry.  Walter stopped, looked at her, and very annoyed, said, "No no baby Sally. MY cryin'."
**On the same car ride, Walter very enthusiastically sang this lullaby to Sally: "Gave my love a chicken! No cryin'." Over and over and over again at super high volume. It was wonderful.
**Sally is giving real smiles now and crying real tears. She smiles at me when Sean gives her to me to nurse. We do a lot of nursing. At four weeks she was 9 lbs. 1 oz, which means she gained more than two pounds in two weeks.  Her cheeks are filling out beautifully.
**Also, her cheeks are covered with baby acne. Her whole face, including her ears, and her neck and the top of chest are covered as well. It looks like cradle cap might be starting a little bit, too. When we're out and about, people aren't sure what to say.  The correct thing to say is this: "What a beautiful baby!" Because it's true. Sally continues to look quite a lot like Walter and also entirely like her own unique self. She has dark blue bright eyes, fuzzy downy duckling hair, and have I mentioned the smile?

Beautiful baby, acne included.

**Sally's vocabulary of noises continues to amaze and amuse us. Walter and I like to imitate her. Once, she made a cat-like sound and Walter excitedly exclaimed "Meow!!" He was like, finally this baby has a trick! Attempts to get Sally to repeat this sound and make other animal sounds have so far failed.
**Sally's legs are very strong. When I put her down for tummy time she propels herself around the mat, basically crawling but without much help from her arms. She also plants her feet and walks around when I'm trying to get her down on her tummy. Her arms and neck are pretty strong and getting stronger every day, too.
**Sally cries sometimes in a way that makes me think she's gassy or colicky, but it's not long and persistent enough to be colic, I think. She's still relatively easy to soothe.  She seems to like me very much in particular, which is nice. The only way I can think of to describe it is this: freshman year in high school I was on the phone with my recently-ex boyfriend and he was describing how it felt to be in the same room as the girl he had a crush on. "I got goosebumps and the hair on the back of my neck stood on end, and I looked around to try to figure out what was causing it, and there she was. And I was like, 'Oh ... it's YOU!'" Putting aside how awkward and inappropriate it was for him to be telling his recent ex about his new crush (I forgive you, Andy. Mostly.) that phrase--oh, it's YOU--really struck me and has always stuck with me. And now, when I hold baby Sally, I'm suddenly relaxed and happy and content and I think, what could be causing this? Oh, it's YOU! And that seems to be what she's thinking about me, too.

There's a lot more I'd like to write, but I'm going to publish this while I can. For now, suffice to say that we've been having amazing adventures out in the wide world, our family health is improving but Walter is still quite goopy and antibiotic ear drops are involved, Sally spits up a lot, I'm pretty much all healed from the c-section, the house is a mess, I haven't had the courage to even look at the front yard, toddler meltdowns are rivaled only by toddler sweetness ... we are living life very fully indeed.