monday miscellany

1) Henry is 3 weeks old today. I have a feeling that time will fly by with him. In the last week he has become more social and alert. I also got some smiles the other day that seemed like real, intentional social smiles! It seems early for that, but he is a very social guy already and I think they were real smiles. Two to three weeks is when babies typically start having fussy periods at the end of the day, and unfortunately Henry's fussing has begun. It really isn't too bad, but there are times when he's inconsolable in the late evening unless he's either nursing or riding in the car. So, you can guess which two activities we'll be doing a lot of... What really makes it tricky is that Henry's fussy time is when we're also trying to have a normal dinner and evening routine with Celia, and it's hard to do that with a screaming baby nearby! It's also the time of day when Chris and I are already exhausted, which makes the crying harder to handle. Luckily (so far), once he is settled down and sleeping soundly Henry is still doing pretty well through the night. He still will usually have one longer stretch of sleep followed by two shorter stretches. We've kind of given up on having him in the crib for now because he seems to spit up a lot more when lying flat in the crib, and that disturbs his sleep. For now he spends most of his sleeping time in the swing, which lets him be upright a little. Hopefully this period of fussy nights won't last too long. We just have to remind ourselves that this too shall pass.

2) Wegman's recently opened a store near us. I think it's the first Wegman's in New England. Anyway, I didn't immediately fall for all the hype because it is, after all, just a grocery store. But Chris and I went to check it out the other day and we were impressed. Their natural foods section is so good that I could do all my shopping there and wouldn't have to make extra trips to Whole Foods for special vegan stuff.

3) On the way to drop Celia at daycare today I asked if she had to poop because I knew she did. She kind of skirted around the subject and then told me she doesn't poop at daycare. I told her it was okay, and that she should if she had to, and then she told me she doesn't want daycare to smell her poop! Oh my gosh, it was the cutest thing for her to say but the poor kid! I don't know how she would have gotten self conscious about that, but I can't blame her. I only like to poo at home too :D.

4) The past two mornings, our thermometer has read ten degrees. We're going to love the wood stove this winter.

5)  Since there's never a dull moment around here lately, this morning I took Pita to the doctor because she has a rash on her scalp that I was afraid was ringworm or some other bacterial thing. Luckily it isn't anything horrible and I just have to pick up some prescription cream to put on it. Celia was so good at the doctor's office. She walked in all by herself, took her shoes off and stood on the scale to get weighed by herself (and she's still a little peanut!), and just got a little nervous when the doctor came in.

6) We tried taking family pictures last weekend. We never did get a great one because Celia stopped cooperating pretty quickly, but there were a couple that were okay. I'm also trying not be vain about them because I still have at least fifteen pounds to lose from the pregnancy, and I'm not crazy about how I look in the pictures...

Henry's facial expressions are so funny here. My little gremlin :D