Three Months

Dear Silvie–

Three months marks the end of the “fourth trimester” according to some people.  Already you are less baby and more little girl full of curiosity and toothless grins. You are 14 pounds of squirmy these days.  You move constantly and your movements are starting to be much more purposeful in nature.  You can stick both of your hands in your mouth, sometimes simultaneously.  But you haven’t quite figured out how to to stick your thumb out and suck on it so you suck on your first two fingers.

The other week I found a play mat for you at the second hand store and scored a whole bag of toys to hang from it at a garage sale for a buck.  You like laying underneath the giant smiley sun and batting at your toys hanging down from it.  You also like to stand up and you can stay standing for quite awhile supporting your own body weight and using your papa’s hands for balance.

You’ve been home with your papa the last three weeks while I’ve been back at work.  It’s been fun to watch him work on figuring out this fatherhood thing.  I love how both of your faces light up when you grin at each other.  One more week of school for me and then I get to be at home with you for the summer.  I’m looking forward to it because I’ll get to spend more time with you AND I’ll get a little more sleep.

You are getting a little better at sleeping yourself.  We’re working on developing a bedtime routine.  Every night around 8 o’clock we give you a bath, feed you and sing you the “Jesus Loves Silvie” song.  Every night I tell you that “Mama loves Silvie and Papa loves Silvie and Grandma loves Silvie and Grandpa loves Silvie and Abraham loves Silvie and even Keegan Loves Silvie.  You are loved and chosen.”  I swaddle you up and stick you in your co-sleeper and leave the room.  Sometimes you’re out before your head even hits the mattress.  Other times you suck vigorously on your pacifier and listen to a few songs on your lullaby c.d. before you quit fighting sleep.

Just recently you’ve started sleeping from 9 p.m. to 3 a.m. without interruption.  Thank you, baby!  Then you nurse and need your diaper changed, and then you make it another stint until about 5 or 6 o’clock.  At that  time you mistakenly believe the night is over and it is now time to play.  I feed you and change you and pop you back in bed beside your papa where you coo and grin and kick while I get ready for work.  Sometimes I think he convinces you to go back to sleep for a little while longer and sometimes you convince him to get up to play with you.  That’s how you know he loves you, because he wouldn’t get out of bed for just anyone.

You are loved and chosen, Silvie.  You are loved and chosen.

Your mama

How to Amuse Yourself with an Infant, Vol. 4

IMG_1973

Originally uploaded by ndmiller

Pirate Baby

Sunday in the Rose City

It’s 11:30 a.m. on a Sunday morning.  The Sprout is sleeping in her swing.  Mr. I-Don’t-Take-Naps is crashed on the sofa and the dogs are sleeping under the coffee table.  It’s warm here.  Maybe even hot.  The 3rd load of laundry for the day is running in the washer downstairs.  The sound of the washing machine, the rhythmic cranking of the swing, and the birds singing outside have lulled all of us into a summer Sunday stupor.

Sundays are my favorite days.  A day of family and rest.  And we need rest around here.  The last two weeks have seen yet another change in our lives as I needed to go back to work for the last month of school.  Nate and I agreed that following my twelve weeks of maternity leave he would take four weeks of leave from his job so he could stay home with Silvie.  So we’ve switched rolls for a while.  He’s a full-time dad and I’m bringing home the bacon.  It’s working out pretty well although Silvie seems to be the only one getting adequate amounts of sleep.  I really need a nap in the middle of the day to compensate for being awakened every three hours at night.  And this is far too busy of a time in the school year for me to sneak one in at work (Oh, trust me, it’s been done before!).  Sometimes I get to the end of the day and realize I didn’t even use the restroom.  Yikes!

So we’re all a little sleep deprived around here.  Last night compounded the fatigue, when we were all three rudely awakened at 4:30 a.m.  Silvie was in the middle of our bed nursing (or maybe not, since I think we’d both fallen back asleep) when all of a sudden her digestive system went into complete revolt.  Her little cloth diaper could not absorb the deluge of diarrhea fast enough and we were instantly laying in a pool of baby poop.  Nate roused himself from sleep and lurched toward the wall to turn the light on so we could see what was going on.  I sat up and grabbed Silvie out of her puddle.  Apparently this was not the right move as the other end of her digestive system decided to eject all the milk she’d drank in the night.  We were quite a sight–mama, baby, and bed soaked with half-digested milk and yellow baby poop.   Ugh.

Silvie and I went and took a bath right away.  Nate stripped the bed, put on clean sheets, and started the laundry.  By 5:00 the exhausted mama and papa were collapsing back in the bed, and Silvie was laughing and happy and acting as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.  But let me tell you, this was WAY more than her ordinary puking and pooping.  We have no idea what caused this “system shut-down”.  Was is the warm weather?   Or just another day in the body of a rapidly-developing human?

Whatever it was, it didn’t keep her from being hungry again two hours later and she had no problems keeping all of her early breakfast down.  After that feeding, Nate took her and let me get a few more hours of uninterrupted sleep.  I’m pretty sure they went to the bakery because when I got up there was a fresh chocolate croissant waiting for me.

And so, this Sunday we are taking a day of much-needed rest.  Maybe we’ll make it to the noon service at church.  Maybe we won’t.  We’ll lay in the cool shade of our house and listen to the birds chirp and the neighbor’s annoying weed trimmer and Silvie’s swing and we’ll be grateful for another week of being alive here in the Rose City.

P.S. More entries and pictures coming soon.  Hopefully.

Indulge us…

We’re nuts about bikes and don’t think that seven bicycles are enough. Especially now that we have Silvie. We’re going to need a way to haul her and a sack of groceries or the family haul of library books. Enter these fabulous cargo bikes! We’d love to have one and Madsen is giving away two of these bikes in July. All we have to do is put the button on our blog and then have people click on it. So click on it, ‘k? Thanks.

Calendar Girl, 2 Months Old

Silvie, 2 Months

Two Months Old

Dear Silvie,

It’s hard to believe that 9 weeks have already passed since you were born.  It’s gone so quickly and I still think of you as a newborn until I look at the pictures from those first few weeks and I see that you have grown so much already.

You still have your papa’s coppery-colored hair although you lost the front half of it and it is growing back a soft fuzz.  Your eyebrows are very pale but your dark eyelashes frame your eyes beautifully.  Your eyes still haven’t announced their final color but they are too muddy to be called blue anymore.  Lately several friends have said that you are starting to look like me with the shape of your face, nose, expressions, etc. (sorry, little one).  So you are currently looking like a good mix of both of us, not like the “calico kitten” that we’d joked about before you were born (half red head, half dark).

In the past month you have unfurled yourself and filled out your skin.  The other day, you weighed in at 11 pounds 13 ounces…3 pounds more than your birth weight.  Although you’ve filled out some, you are still long and slender except for your “milk belly” (beer belly for babies).  You have very long fingers and they dance through the air as you wave your hands and kick your legs.

You have daily floor time and you can now hold your head up really well when you’re laying on your tummy.  About half a dozen times in the past week you’ve rolled over.  Usually, this startles you and makes you cry, but I’m sure purposeful rolling about is not far into your future.

The most fun baby feature the last week or so has been your increased engagement with people.  I took you to school to meet my colleagues, and you were totally alert and charming for hours on end.  You were delighted to have so many people making fools of themselves over you.  You especially liked C., a 16-year-old guy who used to be a student of mine.  He was ga-ga over you and you were completely charmed by this lanky, pimply teen.  Of course, it could be that you liked his bright yellow hat as well.

You are engaging in entire cooing, oohing and ahhing conversations with me.  You fully expect reciprocity.  You are also grinning at yourself in the mirror and talking to yourself.  You don’t like any toys yet, EXCEPT for your “peeps”–the black and white smiley faces on foamcore that you smile at and talk to during floor time.

This is my last week of maternity leave.  I have liked being home with you more than I thought I would.  But I like my job and I’m ready to get back to it for the last four weeks of the school year.  I probably wouldn’t be going back so easily if I knew I had to leave you in daycare.  Fortunately, your papa is taking leave from his job so he can stay home with you for a couple of weeks, and your Grandma Mary is coming to hang out with you too.  I know that I’ve felt these last nine weeks have let me develop a strong bond with you, and I’m glad your Papa will get some alone time with you too.  I’m anticipating that you will be a real daddy’s girl.  And I’m ok with that because your Papa is my favorite person in the world and I’m happy to share him with you.

Love,

Your Mama

An Explanation

Really, we can’t explain the photo below but here are the known details. This bus + Vanagon was sighted down the street at the Reed College campus. Last weekend was Renn Fayre, the end-of-term weekend long party so all sorts of shenanigans were going on. We particularly liked the oak front door.

As they say:  Keep Portland Weird!

speechless.

Originally uploaded by ndmiller

Saturation

In the last week it’s like Someone took the “color” nob for the world and cranked it up to ELEVEN.

Physocarpos "Diablo"--Ninebark

Tulips and Hyacinths

"Grandma's Mint Tea" --actually Apple Mint?

Spirea--Goldflame?

On Sunday Mornings….

Yes, I know it’s Thursday.  We’re just a little behind with posting these days.

There’s a little story that goes along with these pictures.  When we were expecting a baby, I made a long list of names that I loved (Ava, Sela, Raina,  Elise, Serena, Ruby, Emmaline, Sophia, etc.).   I think naming is important (nod to Madeline L’Engle), and I had certain criteria that any name had to meet.  So I’d make my list, and then ,of course, Nathan wouldn’t really like any of them.  So I’d start another list and keep wearing him down with my favorites.  Finally, we got down to three names that met my criteria and that we both could tolerate: Lucia/Lucy, Eleanor/Ellie, and Sylvia/Sylvie (we went with the more Latin spelling later).  Ellie Miller just had too many L’s in it so we eliminated that one.  That left us with Lucia and Sylvia, and we were stuck there for a long time.  Neither of us had a strong preference for either name.

One day, with the birth looming over us, I made up some sentences for what I thought each name would say about the little girl’s character.  My sentences were:  “On Saturdays, Lucy comes home from her soccer game and climbs up in her tree house to read Anne of Green Gables” and “On Sunday mornings, Sylvie goes with Papa to the bakery to have chocolate croissants.”   We have a tradition of going out for coffee before or after  church (or in lieu of–shh!! don’t tell!) on Sunday mornings.  Little t American Baker on Division is Nate’s current favorite stop for Stumptown coffee and fabulous chocolate croissants (or pan chocolat, I believe, the French would call them).

While I could see myself as the mama of a Lucy- or a Silvie-girl, the chocolate croissant sentence seemed to seal the deal for Nate.  And therefore, Silvie must go to the bakery to have chocolate croissants with Papa on Sunday mornings.