Nothing to smile about

Well, the 6-week milestone has come and gone and we are still waiting for our first official "social smile." It's become kind of a game where Sameer and I are constantly asking each other "is that a real smile?" whenever she is sort of grinning, but then invariably shortly thereafter there will be...uh...confirmation that the cause of the smile was just gas. :-) I think there may have been a real smile this morning at 4:20am when she was just so glad that we were going to feed her, but it was kind of dark and we were really, really tired (yes, we were both up because after I got up Sonia cried so loudly while I changed her diaper that Sameer got up to investigate whatever baby torture was happening). She is such a ham for visitors that I have no doubt that she will break out a grin once the relatives descend over the holidays.

In one of the weekly emails I get that outline the baby's development ("Your child at 6 weeks..."), it mentioned with a tone of optimism, "about half of all babies at this age [6 weeks] can recognize their parents...." Their point was this was that it was great that your child might smile when they saw you. But, my takeaway was, "Are you kidding me?! There's a 50% chance she doesn't even recognize us?" The idea that we have been getting up every ~3 hours for 6 weeks and literally you could swap us out for other people and she wouldn't notice was pretty demoralizing. It does appear, though, that she is quite advanced in her ability to grab my hair (I read that she wouldn't master that for a couple of months, but she seems to have it down already).

The big news of the week is that Sameer went on his first overnight trip since we had the baby and Sonia and I survived being by ourselves for two whole days. (Go ahead, experienced parents, have a good laugh that this is a big deal in our house.) Sameer had gone out of town prior to this, but only on day trips to Irvine which are no big deal. Sonia spent exactly zero minutes in her crib during the day yesterday (instead electing to either fuss, eat constantly, or chill in her swing...and the latter only after she had sufficiently fussed enough to be fed until she couldn't possibly eat any more). It goes without saying that there were no stretches of sleep worth mentioning during the night. But, I was feeling pretty confident that it was all going well until Sameer called to tell me his flight home was 2+ hours late, which seemed to be a tragic event way out of proportion with reality. It was like I was counting the hours until his return ("well, the next dirty diaper your father will change...") and 2 more hours was unthinkable. But, at least Sameer got to hear her crying in the background ("Feed me! Feed me! I don't care that I'll just spit it all up...I must have more!") every time he called so I banked a fair number of sympathy points that I'll cash in later.

Stay tuned for photos of a smiling baby (hopefully soon)!

Fussy, fussy

The pediatrician had warned us that 6-weeks of age is the "peak of fussiness," and Sonia is certainly living up to that prediction, getting more "willful" by the day. For a good part of the day she remains her usual cute and playful self, but then something sets her off and she starts crying and nothing will solve it (diaper change, pacifier, food, swaddling...you name it). Sonia will be 6-weeks old as of next Tuesday, and Sameer and I have this as almost a deadline on our calendar for when the fussiness will start to decline and she will start smiling (also expected around 6 weeks). Please do not burst our bubble by reminding us that these are just approximate dates.

One might expect that smart parents would choose this time period to stay close to home and keep the baby as happy as possible, but like idiots we decided we would venture out to the city for dinner at Sudhir's like "normal people." Except normal people don't show up at your house an hour late (while the baby has admittedly made us perpetually late to everything, in this case traffic from the 49ers game was to blame) and then spend most of the evening hidden in the bedroom of your apartment trying to get their child to stop crying. Despite Sonia's meltdown Chez Sudhir, dinner was fantastic as always, and it turns out the cure for fussiness is to just put your child back in the moving car, so the drive home did the trick.

However, in our rush to leave, we managed to take home not only our cell phones but also Sudhir's (which looks exactly like our phones). So, we made another trip to the city the next day to return Sudhir's phone, which was of course not our plan for the day, but worked out well in that we finally got to introduce Molly to Sonia. I love in this picture that Molly is managing to smile as Sonia has yet another "where am I?...this isn't home!" meltdown. It was great to hang out with Krista and Molly and swap baby stories and advice, plus we got to see Reese again, which is a wonderful reminder that in just a few short months Sonia will be nice and big and smiley and calm. Or at least that's what we keep telling ourselves... :-)

All of the above would make it sound like we were losing our minds, which would probably be the case if it weren't for this miraculous thing that has entered our lives...the baby swing. (Actually, thank you Glotzbachs for this life saving gift.) No matter what the level of fussiness or what the cause, if you put Sonia in the swing within minutes she is calm and contently swinging back and forth and watching the fish move above her. It is seriously like a drug or something, and no doubt someone will tell me that we are putting her in some catatonic state every time we do it. Despite our guilt about swing abuse, it is seriously a miracle how well it works. We may never leave our home again.

When we're not watching Sonia in the swing, life is good. We continue to try to figure out how to make her a better eater, or alternatively find a competition for spitting up because I believe she may have world class skills in this area. She has figured out how to hit the toys on her playmat and make them move, which she never seems to get bored of. And every day her face is more and more expressive...this morning when Sameer left for Irvine, she gave him the most intense look of sadness and pouting (complete with small tears in her eyes and a protruding lower lip) that I think almost kept him from leaving. If she already has our number at this age, I can only imagine what's in store for us and she gets even bigger!

Happy 1-month birthday!

Today is a big milestone...Sonia's 1-month birthday! To mark the occasion, she had a check up with the pediatrician and had the first of many vaccination shots to come. Not a real fun way to celebrate. She weighed in at 8 lbs, 8.5 oz, which is 30% for her age (up from 14-15% when she was born, so we were very excited to see that). She is now 21 1/4" in length (up from 18 3/4"), so getting bigger all around.

During our trip to the pediatrician, we also got the chance to ask her about Sonia's latest ailment...the dreaded "baby acne." This first emerged about a week ago and now is covering her whole face, as well as the top of her chest and back. The pediatrician assured us this is totally normal (apparently due to maternal hormones still in her system), nevertheless is it somehow very upsetting when your previously adorable baby now resembles an unattractive teenage boy. At least it didn't turn out to be because we aren't keeping her clean enough, which I think both of us secretly feared the pediatrician would say. The baby acne has certainly confirmed that Sameer and I are completely vain because at least once per day one of us says to the other, "I'm just so sad about her face...." Apparently getting baby acne is quite common (30-40% of babies, although no one else's that I can recall), and resolves itself in 1-3 months. I guess that just means that we'll have to take a lot of softly-lit, artfully out-of-focus pictures for a while.

The pediatrician also noted that the small "mole" on Sonia's stomach is in fact a "third nipple" -- a trait she shares with her father. Apparently these tend to run in families, so this is the first readily identifiable trait that one of us has definitely passed on to Sonia. Of course, on Sameer his third nipple is a small mole-like thing that is pretty well concealed by his skin color and chest hair. The pediatrician told us on girls sometimes the nipple will actually change in size during puberty, and that as a result often parents elect to have them removed (like you need anything else strange happening to you when you're going through that).

Between the baby acne, the third nipple, and the spit-up breath, it's safe to say that Sonia's dating options in the near-term will certainly be limited. :-) Of course, that's why there's a saying "a face only a mother could love," because we're still absolutely enraptured with how adorable she is...

Since we last posted, we've gotten much, much more ambitious about leaving the house with Sonia, trying to get out at least once per day for some sort of outing. Her biggest trip yet was to Tracy last weekend to visit Dada and Bebe's house for the first time. She slept there and back, and spent most of her time while there either sleeping peacefully or sitting quietly why she was fed or on her playmat. Why she is only fussy at home remains a mystery, but no doubt this will be the first of many trips to Tracy. Besides Tracy, she has been out to lunch and dinner a number of times and has been to both Safeway and Costco...not exactly exciting expeditions, but we were pretty fired up to get out of the house like normal people. As long as the stroller keeps moving, she doesn't cry, so we don't linger long.

She is still struggling to figure out that nighttime is a good time to sleep, although she usually manages to have at least one 2.5-3 hr stretch. (Of course, the memory of this is offset by the 2-hr stretch where she cries for no reason and won't go to sleep despite being obviously exhausted....) The pediatrician said that ~6 weeks is the "peak of fussiness," so while it will continue to get worse for the next couple of weeks, there is light at the end of the tunnel!

Click here for more photos of the last couple of weeks...