What Happened to April?

Seriously. What happened to that month? I swear that just yesterday I was getting all committed to writing here on a regular basis and then this morning I woke up and realized I didn't even write once in April. Lame. Totally. Lame. So now I again will make a deal with myself (boring to deal with the devil, what is that thing going to threaten me with? Working full time while waking multiple times a night to a fussy baby? Throwing cereal in my face? What?! Yeah, hes got nothing on Luci) that I am going to be diligent. Shit, if I can get online and play a little scrabulous with my friend Ronika every night I can certainly get my lazy ass on here and write about it! Right!? Okay --

Barracuda updates:

My fabulous daughter can now - sit up by herself, eat solid foods (watered down rice cereal and oatmeal...really not that solid), sleep through the night (when she chooses to), grab her feet and put them in her mouth (something I haven't been able to do since high school), and blow raspberries. For those of you new to the baby jargon, she sticks her funny little tounge out and goes "thhhbbbbtttttt". It is cute. Except when she just ate.

Here she is on her first adventure in the swimming pool! She is getting so grown up! 7 months old and counting...still no teeth, but when all you eat is goop and breastmilk they are a little overrated.

Cheers to hoping this isn't the only entry on here this month.....

Bedtime success!!

So Lucia slept in her crib for the first time last night!!! She has been sleeping in a cradle in our room since she was born -- well, since she was like three weeks old. For the first three weeks she slept on me. Great for her, terrifying for me. Hence the move to the cradle.

Anyway, I decided that there was going to come a time soon that I would have to bite the bullet and get her into her own bedroom and out of ours. I am not sure why but last night seemed to be the night to do it, but it was. Prior to bedtime routine time (which really just consists of eating liking a pig, getting a new diaper and then being wrapped in a blanket ... her, not me) I switched all the blankets out from her cradle to the crib so she would have something familiar.

Around 8:30pm after gobbling down 6 ounces and burping in my ear we were ready. Luci was rubbing her eyes which is her new number one cue that it is time for bed. You have a pretty small window to get her down successfully before she is "overtired" and then fights like hell not to go to bed, even though she needs to go to bed. Right -- eye rubbing -- we walked upstairs, wrapped her in her nightime blankie, paci in mouth, and down in the crib. I turned on the monitor, kissed her goodnight and left the room.

And stood outside the door for the next 10 minutes listening to her settle in. Then it was quiet.

Fighting the urge to go back in and check on her I went downstairs and settled in for a little late night Law & Order marathon. Right about verdict time I hear a squeal which is immediately followed by crying that if translated would mean, "It is so dark! Where am I?! Why aren't you here with me? Get your ass in here noooooooowwwwwww!!!!!!!!" After a little soothing and the paci being located and back in mouth she corked off again no problem.

At 10pm I went to bed. I brushed my teeth with the bathroom light on, set my alarm while listening to music, and fell into the lightest sleep of my life. She woke up a couple times, needed to eat, get her paci back in her mouth, and of course, make sure someone would come when called. All in all, it was a success. And man did it feel good, all be it strange, to be able to move around in my room without having a heart attack if the floor squeaked when I had to get up and go pee at 2am.

Elephant babies

So last night we watched a Mutual of Omaha Wild Kingdom on the Animal Planet about desert elephants who live in Namibia in the Namib desert. Being a new mama myself it was pretty impressive to watch what these elephant mamas do to care for their babies. Most impressive is that a baby elephant has to drink up to 4 GALLONS of milk a day until they can properly digest grass, bark and all the other tasty treats the desert provides.

FOUR GALLONS!!!! And to think that I am tired of trying to produce 16-18 ounces a day. Kind of puts it in perspective.

Elephants are so cool. And matriarchal, which makes them even cooler.

One: the number of posts I have this month so far.

Two: the number of times I have thought about posting this month.

Three: my goal number of posts for April.

And finally, Four: the number of carrott sticks I told myself I have to eat before I can indulge in something sweet.

Cheers to trying to lose the baby weight....

Let the Howling begin!

So this picture is from when she was a lot smaller, but the face looks the same when she is pissed and my camera is broken so no new photos for a while. (Lucky for Luci since she is basically the most photographed child ever.)

The newest developments in Barracudaville are what we have decided to call "the Howls". When she is happy, hungry, angry, uncomfortable (ie: pooping) or anything else she howls. Really hoooooowwwwwllllllls. Sometimes it is a little deeper in the thoat and actually sounds like it hurts, and other times it is this high pitched, tounge wagging howl. Either way they are hilarious. At least hilarious to us because I am sure she is trying to tell me something and just gets frustrated when I start laughing and make no forward motion to doing whatever it is she is demanding.

The teething continues to challenge all but the Grandparents! Perhaps it is their years of experience, or as Marc suggested, they are sneaking her candy....maybe a Granny-cam is in order to sort this one out. (Just kidding Mom.)

Well, the Barracuda is summoning me with kicks, grunts and what appears to be a determination to slide all the way down off her perch....and here come the howls.

PS I got to go out again on Wednesday night for a happy hour with some friends....but that is another story.

Morphine

Did you know that someone somewhere told someone else, who told another person who knows my friend who told me, that if adults had to grow teeth in like babies do we would need morphine?

Seriously. How much must that hurt!? Thank god Luci isn't going to remember this lovely moment in her life. Oddly enough she seems only to teethe when she is home alone with me and Tommy. Yesterday she was howling mad and then my Mom and Dad came over and she was not only pleasant, but actually put on a giggling show, tossing her little head back, mouth open, squealing and laughing. They left and so did my laughing baby. Apparantly today we had the same phenomena (I know that is wrong) when she was perfectly content all day while being babysat by Gram and Gramp Wilson and then Dad comes home and Waaaaaaaaait a minute! Tears and some serious grumping.

I guess we'll see how it is going when I get home...I'll let you know if there is a tooth or sleep by morning...or if we are all needing a shot of morphine.

14lbs of Chubbarific fun

Shit! It has been almost a month to the day since i have been on here to write anything. Not that there are people reading this, except for perhaps my brilliant sister Amanda (who I would totally put a link to her site here but am technically retarded and can't even though she explained it to me), so no one is really noticing that I haven't been writing. The idea was to have a great little spot to remember all the lovely things done by the Barracuda as well as work on my writing. Bad Mama, Bad Writer Mama. So lets try this again...

Luci is now a delightful 4 and a half months old. I can't believe it. She does little baby crunches to try and sit up and looks like she is about to get herself right out of her carseat at times. She is continuing to teethe and drool all over the place and now has added the best squeal to her noise repetoire. (sp?) Sometimes she squeals when she is playing with you and other times just sits there doing it over and over again in this crazy display of happiness that makes you squeal right along with her. You can't help it. Seriously, try and resist. Come on over, I dare you. Oh and did I mention that she is 14lbs now...thats right folks, double her birth weight by 4 months old. What an overachiever.

She is still the champion at hair pulling in our house and is now working on her mastery of "the pinch". When she does this she uses all 5 of her fingers and because she can only grab a small amount of skin at a time it hurts real bad. I mean real bad. The other day she actually drew blood on my neck. Such a sweetie though because she was squealing the whole time and I of course just couldn't say no. (Lets see how far that gets me when it is time to start the discipline part of this parenting thing....)

The picture that I have on this entry was taken by above mentioned brilliant sister at the Rose City Dog Show. (We are a big family of dog lovers...big.) Anyway, that is the Barracuda's serious face. That is how she looks when she is thinking about "the pinch" and also how she looks at times when pooping. Both serious business.