Category: Updates about Sylvia

June 24: Sylvia rolled a couple weeks ago, but it wasn’t until this past weekend that she really got the hang of it.  At one point on Andrew’s birthday, she rolled over about 10 times in a row.  She’s been sleeping in a “snuggle nest” infant bed that helps the great-big crib feel a little more cozy for a little tiny baby.  But last night, she was rolling around and got herself all cock-eyed.  So I took down the play-silk canopy I had hanging over the crib and took out the snuggle nest, and tonight she’s sleeping in the full crib just like a big (?) girl.
The little one has been rather unhappy the last couple days.  I think her teeths are bothering her.  She’s also been continuing to wake up every hour or two all night long.  It’s just not cool.  But she doesn’t believe me.  Or speak English.

May 31: Andrew and Sylvia were pretty cute together yesterday. Here’s a video of Andrew singing to Sylvia to make her laugh.

Lyrics to the song Andrew is singing (he’s being silly by saying the words with different starting letters):

A number 10 from Tennessee
Kissed a blueberry-beaked budgie
And after that he lay in bed
While ten blueberries grew on his head

(counts as the blueberries pop out all over the number 10)

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

The doctor said “I have a cure
Stay in bed for ten days more.”

(counts off the days on the calendar)

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

When that old ten felt well again
He jumped and counted one to ten

(The number ten flexes his muscles then jumps on his bed)

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

Now, number ten will always love
All creatures great and small
But he will never kiss another
Fruit-flavored animal

(as each number is counted off, weird fruit-shaped animals pop up)

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

10

May 28: Here’s a video I took of Sylvia. I was hoping she would smile or laugh or something, but instead she’s just looking at me. A short video of my little girl doing nothing in particular:)

May 27: Sylvia is so engaged and so aware…I just am amazingly in love with her!  The last week or so, I find myself making regular mental notes of things I want to post about her.  So here’s a stream-of-consciousness update about Sylvia.

• This little girl is strong.  She’s been holding her head up well since about four weeks.  She’s been standing strongly for at least a month.  Of course, she wobbles all over the place, but she has been able to support her own weight since early May.  I’ve had the exersaucer out for her to stand in, and she’s getting now where she can (at least somewhat) purposefully turn herself in a circle.  She’s able to move toys if her hand is on them, but she still has some steps to make before she’ll be able to have the muscle and brain coordination to grab an object that she wants.
• I’ve moved her up to the size three diapers.  I feel like that means that she’s a huge person now.  We’ve been using disposables although I have the cloth ones right under the changing table.  Maybe soon I’ll start integrating them in:)  We moved up to size three when she started having “blow-outs” from both legs and the back of her size twos.  Fun stuff.
• She wants nothing to do with her swing.  In fact, I should probably give it back to my friend.  She starts “singing” the moment I put her in it.
• On the other hand (and I almost feel like I should whisper this so as to not break the spell), she’s not so angry in her car seat any more.  After that long, horrible ride home from the Twin Cities a couple weeks back, our driving experiences have been nearly pleasant.  I’ve been bringing a soft blanket-y toy for her to hold, and we’ve done several across-town trips without any crying.  This is dramatic. This is stunning.  I would be so happy if she got over the carseat=torture idea.
• She rolled over twice…with assistance.  Late last week, I had her in the middle of the bed on her tummy and she rolled into the mattress valley where I sleep.  She’s getting squirmy-er and more interested in being mobile each day.
• She adores her brother…and her dad.  Andrew loves to hug and kiss and wildly embrace and “dance” with Sylvia.  She has a large tollerance for his physical demonstrations of love, and I can tell from how her face lights up that she things he’s just the bees knees.  We tell him to watch her face to see if she’s OK with what he’s doing, and that seems to work pretty well.  When he makes her cry, he gives her soft kisses and says, “I’m sorry, Sylvie ba-dilve!”
  When Bryan comes home, Sylvie’s face lights up, and both her dimples jump out.  She’s doing the open-mouth grin when she’s really happy.  And seeing her dad makes her really happy!
• She’s waking up a couple times in the night.  Usually I feed her around 10:30 before I go to bed.  Then she eats at 1 and 4.  The last few days, she’s been sleeping a bit later…maybe 7 instead of 6.  Then she’s usually awake for an hour before taking a two hour morning nap.  She’s been sleeping in her crib except when I’m too exhasuted in the night to nurse her in the rocking chair and bring her to bed instead.  While I’m still kind of tired some mornings, she’s pretty good about eating in about 15 minutes and then going straight back to bed.
• I use two white noise machines to help her sleep.  For naps and when I put her down at night, I usually nurse her and then lay her down awake.  I turn on Mom’s sleep sheep with the waves sound and then I turn on the noise machine that I bought just for her.  She often falls asleep without a peep.  It helps that she’s using a pacificer.
• She’s wearing a wide range of sizes of baby clothes.  She still fits in most of the 0-3 month, although they are a little snug.  3-6 month fit her well, and she can wear quite a few 6-12 month items.  This is the heyday for adorable little baby girl clothes!  I’ve just started putting her in pajamas at night.  Before this, she just wore her clothes because it seemed silly to change her again.
• Sylvie doesn’t spit up.  She’s probablly urp-ed about 10 times ever.  Sometimes she gets kind of drooly, but that’s mostly when she tries to fit her fist in her mouth.
• Sylvie cries most when she feels she has been offended.  Like if I bump her on something or I don’t repsond to her cries fast enough or I ignore her when she asks to be removed from the @#$% car seat.  When she is offended, she cries really gustily.  It can be a little breath-taking
• If we’re walking and she’s in the front carrier, she’s almost always happy.
• She’s happily passed around to loads of different people.  As long as she’s not too tired or hungry, she’s an amazingly social and radient little person.

So that’s a little picture into Sylvia at 15 weeks.

May 16: When I drove up to the house at 7:45 last night, I expected to hear wailing as I walked in the house.  Instead, there was a happy dad and boy and a sleeping girl.  Bryan said that Sylvie took the bottle I left…guzzled it’s small contents and really wanted more.  But other than a little unhappiness, she rested in the Baby Bjorn and then went to sleep.
And I had a lovely time getting my hair done.  Having not been away from Sylvie for more than about 20 minutes has been just fine, but it felt so luxuriant and free to sit in a salon with my hair all foiled, reading a magazine and overhearing salon chatter.
Then after we put the kids to bed, Bryan and I sat and chatted for an hour or so.  And unfortunately rare occurrence these days.
Andrew has just curled up next to me and said, “Hi Mommy Fox, I’m your yiddle cub all curled up in our cozy den together.”  So cute!  “Will you play with me, Mommy Fox?”  I’m off to tickle my cub!

May 15: I sat down to write that there was finally a still over the house.  The echos of crying are flowing out the windows.  But then I hear a familiar,”Wah, waaaah, hic hic hic hic whaaaa whaaaa…”
Sylvia has been crying since about 10 am.  It’s now 2:21pm.  That’s a long time.  And she’s pretty inconsolable.  Doesn’t matter if I hold her or bounce her or stand near white noise.  She won’t nurse.  She arches her back and wails.  So around 1pm I gave her Tylanol.  And about 20 minutes later she fell asleep.  For 10 minutes at which point Andrew was yelling and woke her up.
I just gave her a massage, and she stopped crying while I was rubbing her.  Then I covered her up and left, but she’s crying again.  So I’ll try continuous massage to see if that keeps her happy.  It would make me happy.
I have an appointment to get my hair cut and highlighted in two hours and thirty-seven minutes.  It’ll be my first time away from the little girl.  Keep Bryan in your thoughts.  Something tells me that it won’t be an easy time.
OK, off to rescue her from herself.  Poor sweet pea.  I hope she’s not getting sick.

May 11: Today was Sylvia’s three-month birthday.  Happy Birthday sweet girl!  It’s hard to believe how strong and capable she is getting.  In fact, tonight at dinner, she reached for a toy and pulled it off the table.  In the last week, she’s been working hard to get her hands and her brain to work in sync.  She’s getting better and better at moving her hands toward an object of interest…but it’s still pretty rudimentary.  What an amazing thing to watch her little body develop!  Once she figures out how to control her hands, watch out world!
She’s also seeming like she’s getting the hang of this life thing a lot more.  She can anticipate things: for example, walking into her room sometimes results in her crying because she thinks we might be trying to lay her down in her crib (she’s probably right).  Also, saying something soothing while walking into the room where she is crying in her crib can quiet her because she’s getting where she can anticipate that she may get picked up soon.
She doesn’t mind being dressed and undressed nearly as much as she did a couple months ago.  And she’s now strong enough to stand in her little saucer for quite some time.  What an amazing baby!  She’s been hard at work, learning how to operate in this big world.

The other night, she slept for six hours.  A miracle.  She normally wakes up after about three hours, and Bryan apparently went in at that point and soothed her and she slept for another three hours.  That means I slept for six hours straight.  Oh heaven.

She’s laughing more and more, and her dimples are so cute I constantly want to eat them.  She hates her car seat as if it is a torture device, and she also thinks strollers are evil.  Being held is just the way to go:)  Thank heavens for slings and carriers!

She loves looking up at mobiles, and she loves kicking at chimes.  When you blow on her face, she smiles.  Every time I change her diaper, I kiss both her knees and her tummy and tell her they are kisses from her grandma.  She blows lots of drooly bubbles from her sweet tiny lips.  And she still gets the hiccups pretty regularly.  She doesn’t seem to mind them.

Her face lights up when her big brother walks up to her, and she’s already a pretty tough cookie to be able to withstand his loving ministrations.  What an amazing three-month-old!  I want to slow her down and speed her up all at the same time.  I feel very, very lucky to be her mama.

May 2, 3:45 am: Sylvia is spending her first night in her crib tonight.  It’s (I believe) the first time since she was born that I’ve gotten out of bed at night.  That’s one of my favorite bits about having her sleep right next to me.  I barely have to come-to at night to feed her.  But the last week or so, my right hand has been numb every morning, so I figured that my body had had enough of sleeping funny (my arm off to the side over her head) and she should try out her new room.
I’ve gotten out of bed a couple times to nurse, and she went right back to sleep this last time.  But I didn’t.  For the first time since she was born, I tossed and turned and couldn’t sleep.  And my hand is still numb even without her in bed!   So I decided to get up to hang out on the computer for a bit and listen to the thunder storm before heading back to bed.  Bon Soir!

April 27: Heather just did a nice post on her website (lernerclan.net) about Evie’s birth story.  Reading it spurred me to write down Sylvie’s birth story.  I’ve been meaning to write it down for a couple months, and I better do it soon or I’ll forget some of the fun details!  I’m writing this for Sylvia to have in the future, but in the meantime, if you like this sort of thing, here’s our story.

Sylvia’s due date was calculated as February 8.  Andrew was born five days before his due day, so I was all ready for the little one to be born for about a week before.  It was a snowy, snowy week.  In fact, a couple days before I went into labor, we had a truly tremendous snowstorm.  Glad we weren’t trying to get to the hospital through that!  By February 10, the roads were snow free (but our street was covered in a very thick layer of ice).  Since we couldn’t get outside and since I was at a bit of a loss as to what to do with my humungous self, Bryan and I decided to go walk around Target and West Towne Mall to see if that would get my systems in labor mode.  While LuAnn watched Andrew, Bryan and I enjoyed one last pre-baby outing together.  We went to Target where I was delighted to find a couple final sets of the birth announcements that I’d been looking for for weeks.  Then we headed over to the mall and walked up and down.  At one point, I stopped by The Children’s Place and picked up a pair of teeny white fleece pants.  There were displays of Valentine’s Day clothes, but I didn’t bother looking at them since I figured I could still be pregnant when Valentines Day came around.
When we got home around 4pm, I sat down to address baby announcements and make some thank you cards.  It was about that time that I started having contractions.  Bryan joked that my body had just been waiting for me to have everything in order before kicking in labor.  Once all baby announcements were acquired, it was go time:)

I sat on the sofa and exerted some creative energy while I started experiencing contractions that pretty quickly became regular and about 5 minutes apart.  LuAnn made pasta fagioli for supper.  I really enjoyed it but ate rather sparingly, figuring that if labor progressed that night I might not want to have a full tummy of food!  During early contractions, I closed my eyes and took a deep breath.  They lasted about 20 seconds.  From 5-6 pm, contractions got stronger where I couldn’t listen to others talk during contractions.  Between contractions, however, I felt perfectly fine.  Andrew came over to talk to me after dinner, and it was pretty weird to try talking to a two-year-old while in labor!

After dinner, Bryan and I headed back to our bedroom while LuAnn put Andrew down to bed.  I was interested in hypnobirthing, so Bryan helped to make a calm, quiet environment for laboring.  We put on some soft classical music, turned off most of the lights, and propped me up on pillows.  Andrew came in to say goodnight.  Contractions were increasingly intense and were coming every 3-5 minutes.  After a while, we moved over to the tub where I labored for a while.  It was in the tub where I had some contractions that I thought I could have named as they do with hurricaines.

April 26: Sylvia spends a lot of the time she’s in her car seat…screaming.  I feel like I need a different word for that because screaming is such a violent, negative word and she does it so much that I want to re-name it something more positive.  So today as I again drove across town accompanied by her gasping, gurgling on saliva, full-throtle screaming, I decided that I will refer to such behavior as “singing.”  And as long as she was singing, I might as well sing too.
Usually I spend the first 5-10 minutes of a drive trying to soothe her by singing, shushing, stroking her face, trying to get her to take the pacifier, and then I give up and sit in resigned silence for the remainder of the drive.  But this time I put on a new kids CD I got at the library called Ralph’s World and sang Happy Lemonade about 10 times in a row.

The lyrics are as follows:

So Sylvia and I “sang” a duet on our drive across town: me belting out “happy lemons for happy days, happy people with smiling faces..” and Sylvia “singing” wahhhh wwaaaahhhhh…gasp, gasp…silent scream…very audible scream…gurgle-cough from saliva that collected in the back of the throat during the last extended scream.  cough cough cough.  ANGRY cry from the coughing.  wahhhh waaahhhhh  waaaaaahhhhhhh. And meanwhile I’m at “la la la la la la la la…”

I may be scarring the poor girl by singing about happiness being a glass of lemondae while she’s in the throws of deepest carseat misery, but at least I’ll be heading toward a nice Willy Wanka-esque insanity:)

PS.  Joe did a nice post about Syliva’s carseat crying back in March.