A Look Back on the First 12 Weeks

My first baby is three months old on Sunday.  WHAT?!  I seriously don't know how that happened.  I'm fairly certain when The Girl is thirty she'll reveal a time machine she's finally finished and let me know that her first journey was to the first few months of her life. 

"You were really doing a super job, Mom, but you were so tired.  I decided to just fast forward so you and Dad could get some rest."

"Thanks, kiddo. I'm glad I raised you to be thoughtful and a genius."

These three months have been crazy, educational, enlightening, exhausting and beautiful.  It's rewarding to be the one person who, with a special swivel of the hips when sauntering a precise speed down the hallway, can make a frightened, tired, or angry little person quit yelling for a minute and take a breath.  On the other side of the coin, there is nothing more frustrating than the first time your tried-and-true method doesn't work.  In the middle of the night.  When the baby has gas.  Next is the moment you remember you ate broccoli with dinner, and the guilt of something so trivial pierces your heart like an ice pick.

I feel like we brought our teeny little baby home from the hospital last week, terrified we'd do an awful job.  It's as if her first doctor's appointment, where I was sure they'd tell me she wasn't growing enough or pooping enough, was a few days ago.  Like those first shots were yesterday.

Rumor has it time will pass this way for the rest of my life.  "The years have seemed short, but the days were long."  I love the long days-- the afternoons that stretch on forever.

Bathtime isn't as terrifying anymore because she seems a little hardier without that stupid flimsy baby neck.  Her baby acne (don't worry, honey, nobody you know will remember I said anything) and cradle cap are finally gone, and the diaper rash I thought was going to kill everyone in my house--yes, even Sheila-- has been a memory for weeks.  We get increasingly more comfortable with one another every day, and it's starting to seem she has less of an instinct and more of a desire to cuddle.  And she discovers a thousand new things every day. 

Last night, when Anthony came home from work, he found us in the nursery during a diaper change.  Without thinking, he put his ice-cold hand on The Girl's naked belly.  She gasped, looked at her tummy and a huge smile overtook her face, eyes wide with wonder. Daddy is full of silly tricks, Scout.

This morning, I was doing squats beside the bed while she was waking up.  She'd watch as I dipped below her line of sight, furrowing her brow and pursing her lips.   She greeted me with a wiggle and a grin every time I returned to view. Mama will always come back, Scuttlebug.

The Girl loves the ABC's and You Are My Sunshine, and falls asleep best to Dream a Little Dream of Me, a song my mother sang to me when I was a baby.  Her favorite animal in Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? is the green frog.  Her favorite toy is a crinkly, yellow giraffe a friend brought over as a gift.  I can't wait to see what her favorites are next week!

It's still scary to wake up alone in her bassinet, but much easier to fall asleep there now. She's clearly a morning person, starting each day with a long stretch and a squirmy dance.  She opens those little blue eyes and smiles to greet her sleepy Mama with the new day streaming in through the blinds beside our bed.

The sun only rises because my daughter welcomes it with such joy.

It's been lovely (there is really no other word) to watch a tenderness develop in my ARMY STRONG husband.  He is a caring father, even though he has unmatched skill when it comes to sleeping through a rough night.  You can see his pride and hope for our child in his eyes each time he sees her.  It melts me.

Our lives began when hers did. 

Acorn Squash Bread: An Experiment

Hello!

Those of you who are friends with me on Facebook know I got a Bountiful Basket this week.  This is a food co-op in many US states from which you order a weekly basket of produce (or, in the winter, bi-weekly).  For our first basket, Anthony and I chose the basic (non-organic) one, and added on an Asian Pack.  You can also order breads, large quantities of one fruit or vegetable (I think those options were carrots and strawberries this time around), and other "Packs," such as the Lunchbox Pack for fruit that goes with your kids' lunches, or the California Pack which looked like it was mostly carrots, cauliflower and broccoli.  The basic basket was $15, plus a $3 first-timer fee (so they could buy the basket) and we paid an extra $15 or so for the Asian Pack.

Click here to see if you can get a Bountiful Basket where you live!

We got lots of fruits and veggies I found familiar. In the basic basket there were two bunches of spinach, two heads of romaine, fresh cilantro and basil, sweet peppers, heirloom tomatoes, lots of apples, oranges and pears, a bunch of bananas and (dramatic reverb)...

An Acorn Squash.

 

Yeah, proper nouns for mystery veggies.

I liked the look of him immediately.  And then I realized I had no idea what Acorn Squash is for, and decided I would bake it.  How?  I didn't decide that until this morning, when The Girl was napping and I was googlin' about this gigantic thing on my counter.

I read that cinnamon went well with acorn squash, and an idea was born:
Pan bread.  Specifically, an adaptation of my Best Banana Bread, a recipe I shared here.

You guys, I think it worked out kind of amazingly well.
First, at the advice of about.com, I pierced the skin in a few places and microwaved the squash for 2 minutes to make it easier to cut in half.  I didn't attempt to halve it before I zapped it.  I took the recommendation as reason enough not to try.

Then, I sliced it in half, scooped out the seeds and fibers, and took a notch out of the back so it would stand up on its own and not weeble-wobble.  (Because it probably would have fallen down, and I only had one.)

For some reason, I was inspired to salt it before I put it in the oven.  I don't know why, but everything turned out okay, so maybe that was a good call.

I roasted the squash at 400F for 60 minutes.  This happened to be exactly how long The Girl stayed asleep.  As a result, the squash cooled completely before I peeled the skin off and mashed it up in a mixing bowl.

Now the fun begins!  You'll need:
6 tablespoons butter, melted*
1/2 acorn squash, roasted and mashed
2/3 cup brown sugar (I used light, but dark would have been better)
1/2 cup white sugar
1/4 tsp ground ginger
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1/2 tsp nutmeg (this increase is because we particularly enjoy nutmeg in my house)
1tbs cinnamon
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp vanilla
1.5 cup flour
* (or use some other kind of liquefied fat/oil, if you're making bread out of squash to be healthy and not out of necessity)

Here's where it starts to sound familiar. Preheat the oven to 350F. Mix the mashed squash, butter and sugar together (both kinds) until they're completely combined.

Then, add in all the spices, and mix them in.  Baking soda isn't a spice, but add it, too.  And the vanilla.
I should have just typed "everything else but the flour."  No regrets.

Finally, add the flour.
Mix everything completely together and then pour it all into a greased loaf pan.  For my weirdo 9.25x5.25 pan, 50 minutes was the perfect baking time at 350F.

And it's actually good!  Reminds me of Autumn and that just feels right when it's still thirty-five degrees outside.

If I could do it all again, I might use a teensy bit less nutmeg or more cinnamon.  There was too much of the former and not enough of the latter, but just barely.  If you used 1/4 tsp of nutmeg instead of going all meth-addict for it, you likely wouldn't have a problem.

Oh, and I buttered the enormous slice I ate because it's bread and that's what you do to bread.  You butter it.

The texture when it was warm was exactly what you'd expect from a pan bread, and that means I succeeded.

Enjoy eating a strangely shaped winter squash as a sweet morning bread!  It tastes even better to me because I improvised a baking recipe! 

Pro tip:  Both this recipe and my banana bread recipe (there will be a link over to the side for that post!) can be made into perfectly soft and wonderful muffins if you bake them for 27 minutes at the same temperature.

On Nursing

It seems there is growing support for breastfeeding in medicine as well as in society.  That's awesome! You won't get arrested for "exposing yourself" in public. Lovely.  You won't be asked to leave a business for wanting to feed your baby there. Great!

That doesn't make breastfeeding fun.

For me, there was a definite moment during my pregnancy when I really wanted to grab a legal pad and do the ol' Pros vs. Cons list.  And, as a first-timer, all I thought of were cons.

My daughter is almost eleven weeks old (where does the time go?!) and I am so glad I decided to breastfeed her.  All said, the biggest deciding factor was the World Health Organization's recommendation that all babies be breastfed for eighteen months.  The World Health Organization is a credible, trustworthy source of advice.  It is important to us that The Girl get the best possible start in life, and if breastfeeding her is the way to do so, we are on board!

But there are still cons, and I don't want to ignore them.
I want to address them.

Then I'll address the pros I could never have seen coming.

I am the only person who can feed my baby. 
Yes, we could give her expressed breastmilk in a bottle, but I would still have to express said breastmilk.  If The Girl is eating, I'm producing.  There are ways around this inconvenience, such as pumping a bottle of milk before bed so your partner can feed the baby in the middle of the night and you can get a little more sleep.  My child doesn't drink from a bottle.  She probably would if we'd introduced it earlier, but we didn't and that's our 'cross to bear.' (Note the quotations: we didn't introduce a bottle earlier because I wanted to feed my child at the breast.  But that's a Pro.  I will get to that!)

As a result of our decision not to feed The Girl from bottles, sometimes I feel kind of like a cow.  She clusterfeeds almost every day from 5pm to 8pm, eating every hour or so.  There are times when she is literally (no, not figuratively) on the breast for two, three hours at a stretch.  It can be hard to get things done when you're constantly nursing.

Also because she doesn't eat from a bottle, her sleep schedule is kind of my problem.  There is no sense in waking my husband when I feed the baby in the middle of the night, because she's going to go right back to sleep and he needs his rest as much as I do.  If The Girl is up at 3am, it's because she's hungry. And I am the only person who can fix that, so I fix it.  There was resentment (mostly caused by sleep deprivation) for a few weeks, early on, but some of those Pros are a lot easier to see once the baby starts sleeping for longer than two hours at a time.

Hey, pregnant person trying to decide whether to breastfeed your baby-to-be? You may have heard that breastfeeding hurts.  I'm here to tell you that is true.  No, it doesn't hurt for everyone. But holy hell did it hurt me.  For the first month or so, it was not uncommon to see my eyes fill with tears as I looked away when The Girl latched on, hoping she wouldn't see breastfeeding as a negative time for Mommy.  It definitely gets better.  Use the nipple cream everyone tells you to use.  They're right!  It helps! Just don't use straight-up lanolin, because it feels like rubbing half-dried rubber cement onto your sore, cracked nipples.  And that isn't so nice.

So, cons: you might feel like a cow, your kid might not like bottles and if she doesn't, the sleep schedule is your problem. And breastfeeding hurts for a while.

This might just be me, but the last con I want to mention is a really interesting kind of embarrassment.  You know that feeling when you're embarrassed of yourself? Not because someone saw what you were doing, or because someone called you out or anything.  Just.. you feel truly silly, and it sucks, even if nobody ever knows about it?  It's the same feeling when you leak onto your sheets if you start your period in the middle of night, because damn it, you're twenty-five years old how do you not know to be prepared for that?!  That's how I feel when my boobs leak.  And I produce enough milk to feed a preschool, so they leak a lot.  I'm here to say: that's dumb.  Stop forgetting to wear breastpads to bed, Tara.

Now, those are some serious cons, if you ask me.  Those, all alone, are solid and sound reasons not to breastfeed.  But, oh the Pros.  You guys.  The Pros.

YOU are the ONLY ONE who can feed your baby!  Don't worry, I'm not about to employ junior-high journalism and turn every con on its ear and wave the "Aha!" wand so it's a pro.  But this one?  Think about it.  You're her only mom.  Your body, which built her and nourished her for those 40 weeks is still nourishing her for as long as you nurse.  Whether you think this is silly or not, New Mom, you're going to feel like a freakin' wizard when your milk comes in.  (So many references to magic.  I cannot explain that. Moving on.)

You know in movies, when a new baby is just screaming at the top of his lungs for hours on end? You get a break from the noise if you pop your boob in that kid's mouth.  No, I'm not saying to equate food with comfort, I'm saying to equate Mama with comfort.  That's a message I love to send to my daughter.

No two ways about it: breastmilk is best for babies.  I'm sharing my immune system with The Girl until she develops one of her own, and she's exposed to all the same illnesses and allergens as I am.  Her father is a medic.  She is going to get sick, but I cannot tell you the viruses she would have caught this winter alone if she hadn't been getting antibodies from me.  (Actually, no one can. Not even scientists, but I sure bet she would have been sick by now, with everything my husband says is infecting those guys!) There's also the perfect amount of fat, of nutrition, of water in breastmilk for babies as they age.  Breast is just best.

My cloth-diapered, breastfed baby is the most portable baby in the world.  As far as diapers, I don't need a trashcan, but since she's nursed, I don't need a bottle, formula, running water, or somewhere to put her while I struggle to get her milk mixed at the right temperature or whatever.

Oh, yeah. There's also the way breastmilk is free, and anything you buy that relates to breastfeeding is tax-deductible.

And now we get to the touchy-feely ones:

In the days following my delivery, I felt useless.  My body had never been so spent, my mind had never been so overwhelmed, and I was just so tired.  I didn't sleep longer than an hour at a time for the first two days after I gave birth, and it was just horrible.  To make things worse, I had a lot of trouble walking for the first night of my daughter's life and everyone knows pacing helps babies sleep.  I couldn't help her sleep.  My hormones were so out of whack and flowing so intensely, if I attempted to sing my brand new perfect little baby to sleep, I would just start sobbing and the melody was lost and it was useless.  I felt utterly useless.

But, every 1-3 hours, I was the only person who could soothe that baby.  If we'd been formula feeding, I wouldn't have connected with my baby until my husband went back to work almost six weeks after her birth, because she wouldn't have needed anything Anthony couldn't give her.  Call me selfish.  Call me ridiculous.  But the truth is that I only bonded with the little girl who now has my whole heart because I could solve a problem for her that no one else could solve.

There were a few weeks of The Girl's life between my mom leaving and my mother-in-law coming that almost broke me in half.  I felt lost, terrified, consumed and alone.  No one could have fixed me, or changed how I was experiencing my first few weeks of motherhood, and I was so angry.  I felt like I was missing it.  It was so frustrating to want to love being a mom, to want to remember my first few weeks with my first baby as a beautiful time full of love and hope and excitement.  I worried my memories would be of hearing her scream, of watching her face turn red, of yelling at my husband who I knew, even then, was only trying to help.

But every few hours, I saved the day.  And that's what I remember.  Because of nursing my baby at 5am, I remember watching the sun rise on her pink little face.  From feeding her at 2am, in the dead of night, I remember how warm she was against my chest in the middle of December, and how she snuggled into me and not into the blanket I wrapped around us.  Instead of my memory being full of nights I was roused by screaming and sent her father for a bottle, my heart is full of times I made my child feel better when she didn't understand the world and all the empty, lonely space around her.

When they could be of darkness, of screaming, of hopelessness, my memories are of the sun rising and setting with a happy, milk-drunk baby in my arms.

I have nursing to thank for avoiding an intense and life-shattering depression, one I could feel nipping at my heels every single day and every single night, until I lifted my daughter from her bed and helped her in the way only her mommy could.  Making my daughter feel better made me feel better.

Once we got used to nursing and figured out the kinks (The Girl still hates the football hold, and wouldn't nurse in any position other than cross-cradle for about six weeks), it was just such a special time for us.  There are facial expressions her father never saw because they were only ever used in response to the first few glugs of mama's milk.  He never saw the grinchy little smile while she panted, catching her breath for round two.  He never saw her eyes open, her tears stop, and her face unscrew when she smelled my skin so close.  And he never will.  Those things are just for me and my baby.

These eleven weeks have gone by so fast.  I'm blown away by their quickness.  If you think pregnancy is quick, you're going to be shocked by how soon your baby smiles and starts cooing, and grabbing toys and kicking things you hold within the reach of those chubby little legs. 

But my baby won't outgrow needing to eat.  It's kind of scary, watching her develop and move past little things like waking up a million times a night just because she has so much space in the world so suddenly.  When The Girl started actually using toys, my mind's eye saw her using other things: cups for water or juice, tables to pull up on, shoes for walking.  And it hurt my heart.  It feels too fast.  At the same time, I'm so excited to have a toddler in nine months that are sure to fly by.  I'm excited to hear her say Mama, and I'm excited to watch her learn. And I'm really glad that I'll be nursing her through most of it, and that we will have these quiet moments where she's still my teeny little baby... even if she kind of isn't.

I'll close with this photo, and a poem I wrote when The Girl was about five weeks old.

From deep sleep, she calls for me:
the only one who can fulfill her need.
I smooth her fuzzy, dark hair
and bring her heart to mine,
returning her tired gaze
and sharing a sleepy smile.
In these midnight moments,
we are one again.

My Mom's Homemade Mac and Cheese

It is so good, y'all.  I add chicken and a few other goodies so that I don't have to cook anything else to justify eating only mac and cheese for a meal, but without the amazing cheese sauce recipe there would be no desire to fill up on 'just a side item.'

Make sure to read to the end, as this is kind of a "Choose Your Own Adventure" sort of recipe.

I'm going to jump right in-- my mom's mac and cheese doesn't need much of an introduction.

For the macaroni:
a box o' sauce-bearing pasta
you know... water

Boil some water. Pour in the pasta. When the pasta is ALMOST how well-cooked you want it, when you think it needs two more minutes to be perfect, take it off the heat and strain it!  You're going to bake the whole shebang later, and you don't need your pasta to be overdone and weird-textured. That's not good for anyone.

Once you've strained your pasta, leave it in a bowl until your sauce is done. To prevent filmy, gummy weirdness, you can put some plastic wrap over it and press it onto the pasta.  I learned that trick from pudding!

(It seems I am very concerned about pasta being 'weird.' You're welcome, as now you don't have to worry. I got you.)

For the chicken:
2-3 cups shredded, boiled chicken
4 sundried tomatoes (the kind kept in a jar with oil)
parmesan cheese
2 tablespoons olive oil (or bacon grease, but I know not everyone keeps a mason jar full of bacon grease on her kitchen windowsill. What I don't know is why not.)

If your chicken isn't cooked, take care of that.  The macaroni isn't going to bake long enough to cook meat!

Now, put your olive oil (or bacon grease, which I encourage you to save in a mason jar on your kitchen windowsill) in a skillet with well-shredded chicken.  You could also chop the chicken, if you'd prefer bigger chunks of meat in your bites.  Dice the sundried tomates, and throw them in the skillet.  Sprinkle as much parmesan cheese as you fancy onto the top.  Move everything around so it heats evenly.  Once it's warmed through, remove it from the skillet and set it aside.  I usually take the plastic wrap off my pasta, throw the chicken into that bowl, and put the plastic wrap back on.  I do this because I am not a huge fan of generating a thousand dirty dishes.

For the best cheese sauce I have ever tasted:

*a pound of grated cheese
1/4 cup butter
1/4 cup flour
2 and 1/2 cups milk
1 egg, scrambled
2 heaping teaspoons mustard powder
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
1/4 teaspoon seasoned salt (there is a cajun one, and one that rhymes with Mowry's)
1/4 teaspoon table salt
1 tablespoon black pepper

*the photos in this post are from a time when I used 1/4 lb of monterrey jack, 1/4 cup parmesan, and 1/2 pound of medium cheddar.  You should always use at least half cheddar, because tradition dictates that you must.

Pro Tip:  get all of your stuff out and measured before you get to work on the sauce. It's a quick process, and if you stop to measure stuff you might as well start over. 

Do you know what a roux (pronounced roo) is?  You should.  It's the easiest, best thickener for liquids there ever was.  I used some in a curry the other day because I was frustrated with how thin it was.  SOLVED THE PROBLEM.  I really wasn't even sure it would.  My husband and I argue about whether roux is meant to be made with butter or oil, and I'm right.  It's butter.  Anyhow...

Make a peanut butter roux with your butter and flour over medium heat.  (Melt the butter completely, sprinkle in the flour and whisk continuously until it is the color of peanut butter.  Recipes will usually tell you what color the roux needs to be.  If it just called for 'light roux,' I would go for the color of a latte. If it calls for dark, I go for milk chocolate.)

Once your roux is finished, add in the milk, whisking while you pour it in so that it doesn't scald.  After you're confident you've totally mixed your roux and milk together, you can stir just frequently instead of constantly.  I have found that, although sauce recipes tell you to stir constantly at this stage, that makes your sauce take seventy-four years to thicken and, well, ain't nobody got time for that.

So, frequently it is! In about five minutes (still on medium heat), you should notice significant thickening.  At this point, add in your mustard powder and garlic powder.  When they're fully incorporated, temper the egg and then pour that into the saucepan. Stir it in pretty fast, just in case it threatens to cook separately. Avoid egg chunks in your sauce. (Just in case: to temper, take a little bit of the hot milk and mix it with the egg, stirring as the milk makes contact with the egg.  You're raising the temperature of the egg so it isn't shocked when it is added to a hot saucepan.)

Now, add cheese a small handful at a time. As you add each handful, whisk until the cheese melts before you add more.

Lookit those spirit fingers!

Once all your cheese is added and melted, throw in your seasoned salt, table salt, and pepper.

Finished!

 

Now. Here's the "Choose Your Own Adventure" part of this recipe.  There are three ways to finish up:

1) Pour cheese sauce over everything now, call it a day. My only suggestion here is that you cook your pasta until it's really done, because it won't finish in the oven if you don't ever put it in the oven.

2) Pour pasta and chicken into a 9x13 dish, cover with sauce. Stir sauce around so every noodle is cheesy, and top with about 1/2 cup of shredded cheddar.  You can save cheese meant for the sauce for this or add more.  Suggestion: save some energy (yours and the stove's), and just add that chicken in cold. The oven will do the work. No oil or grease, though! Bake at 350F for 20-25 minutes, until the cheese on top looks how you want it to.  This is what I did.

If you don't cook a few slices of bacon and crumble them on top of either of these versions, I don't understand what you're doing with your life.



and the third option:
3) Don't add chicken at all and use it as a side dish.  

 

Serve, enjoy, and think of my beautiful mother.

 

If you don't know my mother, think of yours. And then call her. I'm learning that this mothering stuff is pretty serious business, and you should call and thank yours for doing it. 

BumGenius 4.0 Review

The Girl is taking a long nap today (she went down an hour and a half later than usual, after putting up a ridiculous fight), so while the blondies are baking, I'm going to finally write this review!

I love the BumGenius 4.0 by CottonBabies.  I love my BGs so much that I use them first every time, and I get visibly annoyed when I don't have another one in the clean diaper bin at changing time. 

In my twoish months of exclusively cloth diapering, day and night, 24/7, the BGs are most consistent, easiest to use, and freaking adorable.

 

The color names are super cute: Ribbit, Noodle, Butternut, etc.My stash includes every solid color that existed when I ordered except white and Noodle. (In fact, since I stocked up they've released two new colors, Countess and Hummingbird, and I'm so upset I don't have them.) There is also a Genius series, where designers come up with patterns.  I don't have any of those, but oh how I covet them.

 

These diapers are One-Size pocket diapers, meant to fit your little one from 7lbs to 35lbs.  The first photo below (of a diaper in Sassy, a really fun reddish-orange) is snapped to the smallest size, and the next photo is the largest.  This adjustable rise feature is fantastic, and our 95th percentile beauty is on the second set of snaps now that she's almost 15lbs.

 

The inside is a pretty stain-resistant microfiber:

and the pocket is large enough to avoid touching poo when you pull a spent insert out.  It also has a wide flap to cover the opening, so baby doesn't have a weird inconsistent feeling on her booty.  And if you didn't care at least a little about how diapers felt on your kiddo's butt, you probably wouldn't have gone cloth.

The inserts are insanely absorbent. The newborn insert was perfect and didn't leak (barring user error, I'll get into that later) until The Girl was about nine weeks old, and she's a pretty heavy wetter.  We switched to the baby insert when we changed the rise of the diapers, because we needed more length to fill the pocket!

At the baby insert's longest, it would fit in the pocket when the diaper is at its largest. At the baby insert's shortest, it's perfect for the first and second set of rise-snaps.

This is shows the newborn insert at top, and the baby insert on bottom, at its longest.

 

and, below, at its shortest:

For now, this insert is exactly what we need.  We aren't using doublers, we aren't having leaks, and we change The Girl every 3 hours max while she's in pocket diapers.

 

 

The problems I've had with other brands of pocket diapers: leaks, too-tight elastic, weird distance between snaps (which prevents a good fit, and in turn causes leaks). 

 

The problems I've had with BumGenius 4.0 pocket diapers: they didn't notify me when they were going to release a beautiful emerald green and call it Hummingbird.

 

I will admit, they've leaked on occasion, but 95% of those leaks occurred when Anthony put the diaper on the baby, and I think he's scared to make them too tight and cut off circulation and have The Girl's legs fall off. Which is fine, but pee gets out, so...

 

It's an issue.

 

The BG's snaps are close enough together to make sizing easy and predictable (we are currently at three snaps in on one side, four snaps in on the other) but far enough apart that one more snap-distance makes a significant difference in the tightness of the legholes.  

 

Further, the elastic in the BumGenius 4.0s just seems higher-quality, to me. Or maybe it's the stitching? Or maybe it's both, because the channel the elastic lives in is padded enough that I don't think The Girl is uncomfortable (other brands, Alva, for example, seem to feel sharp or something) and the elastic doesn't move within the channel (I'm looking at you, Kawaii.)

 

Most importantly, each and every BG4.0 in my dorky cloth-diaper-Mommy collection is exactly the same, just differently colored.  I say most importantly because I seriously just almost apologized in case someone from Kawaii Diapers or Alva happens to read this review and be all, "the ones you got were just not our best work!"

 

But with BGs, the stitching is consistent.  The absorbency is consistent,  The snaps are consistent.  And it's all consistently great.  I just haven't seen that with the other pocket diapers I have.

 

Now, I'm going to wash a load of fluff, because I'm pretty sure the last BG is on The Girl's tush.

The Best Banana Bread

 

I bake a pretty a phenomenal banana bread which, lucky for you, also happens to be foolproof.  My favorite thing about it: 100% of the mixing work can be done with a fork and a single bowl. Also, it is a fantastic way to use the second half of a bunch of bananas, when they've passed the sweet-spot where they're edible.

 

The sweet-spot exists in such a small window that I always have half a bunch of bananas left after they are just too mushy for me to eat.  Unfortunately for Anthony, he prefers bananas mushy.  And yet, if I mention my banana bread, he doesn't try to sneak and eat them before I can mush them and bake them into breakfast.  So, what does that tell you?

 

Here we go!

 

You'll need the following:

3 overripe bananas

1/3 cup melted butter

1 cup sugar

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon vanilla

1/4 teaspoon salt

1.5 cup flour

 

Oh, hey. Preheat your oven to 350F.

 

Now, smash up some bananas with a fork in a medium-sized bowl.

OHMYGOODNESS SHE REMEMBERED TO TAKE PHOTOS.

 

When you find black bits, either put them in your batter and find dark spots in your bread because it won't hurt anyone, or

give them to the pup, because fancy designer dog treats have banana in them, and this way it's fresh!  (You may think this photo is adorable, but once I'd given her a piece of old banana I officially had a kitchen buddy. And she would.not.stop asking for pieces of old banana. Lesson learned. Put her outside after giving her scraps.)

Add your melted butter and sugar, and stir it all together.  Then, sprinkle your baking soda and salt on top, as well as your vanilla.  My teaspoon was dirty, so I was using a half teaspoon. At first I was really upset when this happened:

but then I remembered the Christmas gift my sister-in-law and her family sent us! Not only do we have an enormous bottle of vanilla extract, it is homemade and therefore superior.

Once you've avoided the disaster of running out of an ingredient halfway into a recipe, go ahead and stir the salt, baking soda and vanilla extract in until you can't make them out as individual ingredients anymore.  Add your flour, and stir just until combined.  All said, it'll look like this:

Then pour it into a greased loaf pan.  Mine is inexplicably 9.25 x 5.25, which puzzles me, considering I've only ever seen recipes call for 9x5.  Whatever.  Bake in whatever size you have until you can stab it and it doesn't bleed.  For my weirdo pan, that's 50 minutes.

When the bread is finished, it'll be golden brown.  Since you greased the pan, you should just be able to turn it over onto a cooling rack and produce a perfectly baked loaf of foolproof banana bread.

I have these flexible cutting boards my mother-in-law gave us, and they double as crumb-catchers beneath cooling racks.

 

 

You could add half a cup of chocolate chips or walnuts (or a quarter cup of each!), if you're into that sort of thing.

Leave it on the cooling rack until it's cool (duh), but the crust is generally sturdy enough to withstand immediate slicing.  Serve as is, or with butter or peanut butter. Nothing is better than fresh banana bread, and this version is Best.

You guys got the pun on my last name, right?  Whew.

PS. If you are a perfectionist, don't cry if this happens.  Because it might, and all you have to do is eat the piece stuck in the pan and you're all set and no one will ever find out about it. RELAX.

 

 

 Finally, make sure to take at least three days to eat it. You know the moist (sorry), spongy texture of store-bought awful muffins? It'll get like that! Plus, you just need to control yourself and not eat an entire loaf of bread in three hours. I'm not going to reveal how I know that can happen.

(I can't fix those weird alignment issues, but you're not here for the beautiful webdesign of my stock layout.)
 

Why We Chose Cloth Diapers, and an Intro to the Madness

When we decided to cloth diaper The Girl, I did a ridiculous amount of research.  Mostly, it was a way to manifest the freakout of being somewhat-unexpectedly pregnant (we know what causes it, but weren't making an effort one way or another, hence somewhat-unexpected), but I had other reasons for wanting to use cloth diapers, which I will go into shortly.  The only reason I hesitated was because Anthony told me I would be the only one doing diaper laundry.  I agreed, but he has totally done that chore a time or two, and let me tell you: it will happen again.

First of all, a very, very basic intro to cloth diapers, or at least the terms I will use here.
Prefold: what the uninitiated think of when someone says 'cloth diaper.' This is just a quilted square of absorbent cotton, which requires pins or a "snappi" and a waterproof element to be worn outside the prefold itself. (These were actually the second iteration of cloth diapers. The OG cloth diapers are called 'flats' are are huge squares of birdseye cotton, which you then fold down smaller before you put them on your baby.  Prefolds are pre-folded flats.  The more you know!)
Snappi: think fancy sports-wrap claw fastener, but made of plastic and shaped like the letter T. And supposedly safer. Or click here and don't think about it at all.
Fitted: essentially, a fitted is a prefold that is cut into diaper-shape and has snaps or hook-and-loop closure. Fitteds require a waterproof element, like prefolds.
Cover: the waterproof element to be worn outside a prefold or fitted.  These are either made of PUL (polyurethane laminate) or wool.
Pocket Diaper: one step closer to one-piece.  This has PUL on the outside, and microfiber, fleece or another wicking material on the inside, where it comes in contact with your baby. The space between these two layers is the eponymous 'pocket' and you stuff it with an insert. (With no insert, a pocket diaper is non-absorbent and the microfiber will force the moisture out the leg-holes. Ick.)
Insert: the absorbent part of a pocket diaper, which you 'stuff' into the pocket in the back.
Doubler: a thinner insert that increases the absorbency of the diaper, generally added for heavy wetters or nighttime use. I cannot imagine a baby who pees so little that a doubler would be enough absorbency on its own.
All-in-One: or AIO. This is a diaper built just like a disposable, but made of fabric and you wash it.  You don't have to cover it or stuff it. (I'm not a fan, because they take about seventeen years to dry on the line and I don't want to ruin the PUL and elastic in the dryer.)
Wet Bag: this is a waterproof bag for keeping dirty diapers in your diaper bag, or, if you're like us, in the bedroom so you don't have to go to the nursery in the middle of the night.  It keeps wetness contained, which I've found is a wonderful trait.
Pail Liner: a wet bag for your diaper-specific trash can.


Now! Why do we cloth diaper? Funny you should ask.
Partially, we do it to save money.
I'm not going to say cloth diapers are cheap. Buying a "stash" and the supplies you need (I think the only things I didn't mention are a diaper sprayer and cloth-diaper-specific detergent, both of which are unnecessary) to diaper an infant is an investment, and there was certainly some sticker shock for me when I saw the price of one pocket diaper. We were able to get everything we needed without spending a horrendous amount of money because I was okay with getting some of the cheaper diaper brands (knowing full well they would only really last through one baby) and getting some diapers "pre-loved."  The cloth diapering community tends to use terms like 'pre-loved' because the idea of buying a used diaper just isn't appealing to anyone.
It is also worth noting that keeping one little one in disposables until she learns to use the toilet costs something like $2,500. We could have spent less than a quarter of that and bought an entire stash new, and we can use it all again (if The Girl ever gets a sibling).

In the interest of full disclosure, I believe about $300-worth of our stash was given as baby gifts from our friends or parents (a dozen prefolds, a wool cover, a pair of wool longies, ten BumGenius 4.0 diapers, some covers for prefolds, two pail liners and a hanging wet bag for travel). At my last calculation, we had paid $275 out of our own pockets (a dozen prefolds, a dozen pocket diapers, a few covers, a few fitteds, and a diaper pail). Altogether, it would have been nearly $600. That's still saving quite a bit of money compared to disposables, and our stash is big enough that I could get away with two days between washes, even though I was at least five times a week because, well, ew.

The environment was another reason I wanted to use cloth diapers.
Some people claim it's a wash, as far as emissions and carbon footprints are concerned, to do cloth diapers or disposables.  I don't doubt that the electricity I use running my washing machine and dryer five or six extra times a week isn't fantastic for the planet.  When the temperature in Middle Tennessee isn't below freezing on my laundry days, I will absolutely dry my inserts outside! That'll make me half the energy-waster I am now! And I will be doing laundry half as often by spring, when prefolds aren't so bulky on The Girl, so my CDCF (cloth diaper carbon footprint, an acronym I just coined) will be HALF what it is now in a few months. But, sure, even then I will use a lot more water than someone who throws diapers away...
But, the other option would be to fill two or three garbage bags every week with things that'll spend longer than The Girl's entire life in a landfill.  Oh, and I would have spent two and a half grand on trash. I am unable to abide such nonsense, because I am one heck of a cheapskate.

There are also a few side-benefits of cloth diapering that can't really be proven, but make sense to me in theory.  Children who wear cloth diapers tend to have fewer diaper rashes (by a LOT, but I can't find the study I read so don't quote me), and diaper rash sounds intensely awful.  It is also said that a baby is more aware when a diaper is soiled when the diaper doesn't have super-absorbency or something else built in, as many disposable brands do.  When a baby is aware of pee or poo in her diaper, she learns to use a toilet faster (or so I have read), and that sounds like a great thing to me. There are also some chemicals in disposable diapers that kind of freak me out and I don't know that I like the idea of spending almost a year crafting flawless baby skin only to smush wet plastic covered in chemicals onto it.  Butthat'sjustme.

Finally, come on, fluffy baby bottoms are cute as all get-out.

Now, as if anyone is paying attention to my nattering on, I am just going to tell you, I really planned on reviewing my favorite pocket diaper today.  And I know I said I would.  But, y'all?  That is just not happening. This ended up being a heckuva lot longer than expected, so I'm just going to stop here and review that sucker later in the week.

So stay tuned for my forthcoming review!  I'm going to wake the baby now, because my boobs hurt and also, I want to hug her.

Balsamic Chicken Salad

I really will get better at taking more photos of food as I make it, promise.

On Sunday, I decided it was time to restock my freezer with chicken stock.  This, for me, requires some foresight, like chopping veggies, making plans for the chicken when the stock is done, and leaving the stove on for like five hours. This time, I make three pints of stock with one whole, young chicken, and that meant I had the meat from a four-pound chicken to use.

I set about two cups of chicken aside for Homemade Macaroni and Cheese (I'm such a tease!) and used the rest-- about three cups-- for balsamic chicken salad.

My last job was at a wonderful bakery and restaurant in Little Rock called Boulevard Bread Company.  They have an incredible sandwich with a balsamic chicken salad that I could not possibly replicate, even I made it my life's work.  It is amazing and wonderful. 

...My recipe is also quite good, if I do say so myself.

3 cups boiled chicken, roughly chopped to the size you want in your bites
1/2 large red onion, diced
3 stalks of celery, diced
small bunch fresh Italian parsley, chopped
salt and pepper to taste (I use about two tablespoons of pepper and one of salt)
1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese
1/2 cup olive oil (use something good-- it's a flavor you'll notice)
1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
1 tablespoon red wine vinegar (optional!)

Seriously, here is the recipe:
Mix all of that together, but add the oil and vinegar last, and the chicken just before those.
And refrigerate!  It'll keep for about a week, but probably won't last that long unless you live alone and don't eat it for every meal. Which will require restraint.

 

Pro-tip: if you feel like it's too dry after a few days, drizzling a little olive oil over the top doesn't dilute the flavor too much and refreshes the texture.

I guess I cook more than I realized! Baby stuff will happen, I just don't know what people even want to read about my baby... I will post a product review next, probably of BumGenius 4.0 cloth diapers/clothbabies.com

Our Growing Library: I am Amelia Earhart, by Brad Meltzer (illustrated by Chris Eliopoulos)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Last week while doing my weekly shopping, I was thinking about how tired I am growing of reading the same books about brightly-colored fish and about rabbits comparing their love for one another.  Those books absolutely have their places, and are wonderful, but I read to my daughter at least a dozen times a day, and when there are only eight books... not so much fun for Mama.

 

Lo and behold, I saw Brad Meltzer's I am Amelia Earhart from his "Ordinary People Change the World" series (the only other book in this series so far is on Abraham Lincoln, if I'm not mistaken). Immediately, I liked the idea: a woman who ignored society's arbitrary expectations and did what made her happy.  A woman whose story changed history for the better, and showed the world what women are capable of when they aren't afraid to upset the norm. 

 

The story begins with a cute anecdote about the childhood antics which taught Amelia her love of 'flying,' and goes on to describe her first time in an airplane and how she learned to fly for herself. There are also child-friendly descriptions of the records she broke ("Then I broke an altitude record, which is just a fancy-schmancy way of saying I went higher than anyone else").

 

The first time I read the conclusion, with its encouraging lesson never to give up on your dream just because someone else says you can't achieve it, I actually wept with gratitude.   I felt so grateful a book had been written for young girls, like my daughter, who are still born into a world where they're seen as less valuable than men, even if they achieve the exact same feats and overcome identical adversity.  I am so glad there is a book for my little girl about a historical figure who "knew no bounds," and lived her dream. Look out below for too many links, because I want to be sure proper credit is given to the author and the illustrator.

 

We love this new addition to our ever-growing library, and the illustrations are so charming. 

 

What books in your At-Home Children's Library are your favorites?
Those of you with older children, what book are you happiest to hear your child request at storytime?

 

 

Brad Meltzer on Facebook

Brad Meltzer's Website

Chris Eliopoulos's Website (the illustrator)

Buy I Am Amelia Earhart on Amazon!

Strawberry Granola Muffins

It is a HUGE deal if I make breakfast. My husband remembers the date on which the cooking occurred for months to come, and reminds me of this ability I clearly have and never exercise.

It is pretty important to me that we have fresh food with as few preservatives as possible as often as we can (though clearly not as important as letting someone else cook breakfast).

In light of these facts, I decided to bake and freeze muffins.  I found a recipe for basic muffins and jazzed them up with leftover strawberries from this weekend's (successful) jam experiment and some Oats and Honey granola.

Basic Muffins:

1 stick unsalted butter

1 cup sugar

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 large eggs

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1/2 cup whole milk

2 cups all purpose flour

1 and 1/2 teaspoon baking powder

(this is for 12 regular sized mufffins.  It'll still fit in a normal sized mixing bowl if you double it for 24 muffins, like I can't resist doing.)

 

Mix all the dry ingredients in a medium sized bowl, and cream together the butter, sugar and salt.  To the creamed stuff, add eggs, vanilla and milk. Add dry ingredients!  You could bake them now and they'd be delicious, I'm sure, if not plain and mega-boring.

 

I thinly sliced and then quartered about half a dozen pretty large strawberries and tossed them into the batter with about 1 1/2 cups of granola (which is one package of Nature Valley Oat and Honey granola bars crushed to smithereens).  Then I just folded to combine, and baked the muffins for 25 minutes, but start with 20 because my muffin cups were entirely too full.  You just need a toothpick to come out of them clean to consider them done.

 

Oh, way up there at the beginning, I wish I had told you to preheat your oven to 3 50degrees fahrenheit.  Sorry about that.  I hope you're following Standardized Testing Rules and reading the entire passage before you begin! Something from high school you're using in real life! You're welcome.

 

I had nine muffin tin liners.  This recipe makes a dozen muffins.  So, three of my muffins were in oiled cups instead of lined ones. And there are still a dozen perfectly viable muffins, FYI.

 

Now, I don't remember where I read/heard/learned how to freeze muffins in a way that is amazing and perfect every time, but it may have been from a customer at the bakery where I worked (but did not bake).

 

Let your muffins cool all the way and then put them in the freezer JUST AS THEY ARE, IN THE MUFFIN TIN, for two hours.  Once they're frozen solid, you can just put them all in a quart sized zip-top bag (Thanks, Alton Brown, for keeping me from figuring out how to do a copyright symbol!).  If you think they'll last long enough for considerations to be taken, avoid freezer burn by putting that bag into another bag! You don't need to individually wrap them unless you're going to be sending them to work with someone, maybe in a gym bag.  Which I am, so I wrap them in plastic wrap. 

If a microwave is available when you enjoy one, you can zap a frozen muffin for 15 seconds, or a thawed one (if you have the forsight to put one in the fridge the night before) for 5 seconds.

 

I have only tried this with granola and strawberries, but next time I might use orange zest and apple chunks. Or vanilla yogurt and oats. Or granola and bananas. Or blueberries and honey. OR COFFEE AND CINNAMON STREUSEL.  The possibilities are endless! 

 

(Next time I will probably have the foresight to take photos while I'm baking.  The upcoming lentil soup recipe has LOTS of process pictures!)

The Birth Story

On the evening of December 7, 2013, I was having ziti at home in Clarksville, Tennessee, with my husband, Anthony, and my mother.  My mom had been visiting for a few days already due to threatened inclement weather in Little Rock, where she lives and where I grew up.  In fact, inclement weather was all but promised on this night, the night before my scheduled induction of labor.

Given the cold, the snow and the freezing rain, I was grateful for the date on the calendar: DECEMBER 8, so my mom was able to be at the birth of her first granddaughter.  Though the weather here didn't occur as forecasted, I'm pretty sure CNN used the words "ice rink" to describe Little Rock.

Around 7:00pm, I got a call from my hospital.  Since the weather was looking pretty bad (seriously, the roads were absolutely perfect the next day), did I want to come in NOW TONIGHT and get things started.  "Well, uh, I mean, yeah. Can I finish my dinner?"  The nurse chuckled and said that would be fine, so I did. Anthony and I spent the next hour or so finishing up little things. I took my final pregnant photo for Instagram, changed into more comfortable clothes and brushed my teeth. Anthony packed up electronics (that we barely used, I really liked the peace of the silent room in the nighttime) and moved the carseat to the center of the backseat.

The drive to the hospital was surreal.  My husband and I knew we would never be in the car as childless adults ever again.  We were leaving that hospital with our baby.  For a few minutes, I panicked about the horrible mistake we were making. We had only been married a year and a half! We needed more time to get to know each other! HE IS GOING TO THROW THIS BABY I HAVE BEEN WORKING SO HARD TO BUILD FOR HIM RIGHT UP INTO THE AIR AND SHE WILL HIT THE CEILING AND DIE SO WHAT IS THE POINT OF HAVING CONTRACTIONS AND PAIN AND PUSHING HER OUT?!

Then I remembered how small her pink, fuzzy socks were in the white wicker basket on the coral farmhouse-style table beside her crib, and how I'd known it belonged in her nursery the moment I laid eyes on it at an antique shop in West Monroe. I exhaled, I looked at the love of my life sitting next to me, and a few nervously excited tears fell.  We were already parents, and this was going to be awesome.

--
When we arrived at the hospital, I excitedly tried to explain to the nurse how my induction was actually scheduled for the following morning, but I had recieved a phone call--- and she tiredly cut me off, holding up her hand and saying something to the effect of, 'you see this computer, right?' Emotional as ever at 41 weeks and 2 days pregnant, I handed the admission paperwork to Anthony and walked back to the waiting room, having decided not to deal with Rude McSnarkyface, RN.  Around 8:30, another nurse found us in the waiting room and asked us to follow her.  She was neither rude nor snarky, and I welcomed the change.

The Labor and Delivery room was massive.  I was given a quick tour (bathroom, shower, the place we will clean your baby, your monitoring machines, your bed) and told to change into a hospital gown.  I emerged from the bathroom holding my gown around my convex form and asked Anthony to tie the straps for me.

Some time passed, and we talked about anything but why we were in an enormous hospital room waiting for who-knows-what to happen who-knows-when.  He asked if I knew how to help him bind-off the final stitches on the hat he was knitting for the baby. I begged him to either fix or shut off the flickering television.  At around ten, my nurse returned, and attached the fetal monitoring system to my belly.  "Are you the one who wanted to finish her dinner?"  she asked, with a smirk. "I don't blame you, it might be a while before you get to eat again."

The midwife came in to do a digital check, and told me she'd be surprised if I had the baby before the following night.  I balked, but kept quiet because I wanted to get things going and prove her wrong.  She started my IV of pitocin and offered me Ambien, so I could get some sleep before the curtain rose. Surely reading the trepidation on my face, she assured me Ambien was safe. I swallowed the pill and waited for something to happen.  In the meantime, my sweet husband alternated between rubbing my hair, massaging my feet, and rambling about anything off-subject he could think of because he knew it would keep me calmer.

I don't know when I drifted off, but I do know it was 2:40am when I woke up in a puddle.  I was mortified, assuming my bladder had finally gone on strike and I'd wet a very public bed. I woke my husband so he could help me unhook from things. I took off my socks (yeah, that much fluid), asked Anthony to buzz for the nurse and waddled to the bathroom. Looking down, I noticed a pinkish color and a little bit of a yellow gunk floating in it. Only then did I realize my water had broken. "Not brown," I thought to myself, "what a relief."

When the nurse arrived, she asked about the color of fluid while she changed my sheets and handed me a clean gown. I explained, and she said the yellow may have been meconium staining, but it wasn't enough to worry about if it was yellow.  A midwife joined us and checked my progress. I was 4cm and fully effaced. "Now we step up the pitocin and wait!"

Wait we did until about 8am. Let me tell you, contractions are rumored to be pretty lame when they happen naturally.  When they happen with the help of pitocin? Holy crackers.  It truly felt as if my body was ripping in half to better facilitate turning inside out.  I knew from the movie Juno that my baby had fingernails, and I was sure they were digging into the walls of my poor, distended uterus, trying to stay in for the rest of the 42 weeks nature suggested she might have.  The anesthesiologist came a few times to offer an epidural, and I remember thinking of him as a siren, trying to steer me away from my pain-medicine-free birth plan, at the weakest moments.

I refused epidural medication until my midwife informed me there was a bubble of the amniotic sac left, still filled with fluid, blocking the opening the baby's head needed.  She suggested the bubble be popped with a hook, and informed me that my contractions would likely become much more intense after that had happened.  Having breathed through contractions with the unrelenting help of my wonderful husband, who coached me perfectly, matching my hees and hoos and haas, I decided I was going to need an epidural if my contractions were going to get stronger than they had been.

At this point, Anthony called my mom, who had spent the night at our house so someone would have slept.  She told me later that he said, "You need to come now." Without saying hello, or giving her an update or anything.  Just "you need to come now." I think he explained things after his initial panic wore off, but I really enjoyed hearing about this phone call a few days after the ordeal had ended. I only made fun of him for a few minutes, promise.  My mom arrived quickly, but the transition from her not being there to being there is blurry.  I was kind of pretending she was sitting on the couch in front of the window the entire time.

The anesthesiologist came back and told me he wanted to make me as comfortable as I wanted to be. A massive contraction, the hardest one yet, rocked my entire torso the moment I sat up to have the needle put in my back. I clutched Anthony's arms and buried my face in his chest, doing my breathing exercises as much as I could without moving, and focusing on the pain instead of trying to distract myself. Once in, the epidural medication started to do its work.  The timing of that contraction told me I'd made the right decision.

I needed three doses of the drugs to get to the point the anesthesiologist described, where I could feel contractions and not register them as painful.  I was numb, and it was glorious.

The midwife came in to pop the bubble in the sac, and told me it would be any time now. Anthony changed from his pajama pants to his jeans, as if he wanted to look somewhat put together when the baby arrived.

Having been about 6cm dilated when the anesthesiologist came into the room at about 9am, I expected it would be a few more hours until it was time to push.  I relaxed, I tried to sleep a little, and we all waited.

At eleven, the midwife came back to check me again, and said she could see my baby's head and that it was time to push.  My epidural was turned off and feeling quickly returned to my legs.  Anthony grabbed one thigh and my mom grabbed the other, and I pushed through three contractions. A total of nine pushes and twenty minutes.  In fact, I pushed so effectively (what a strange thing to brag about) that I was told to stop and wait for the OB to come catch my daughter. Queen's "Break Free" was playing from my labor playlist when my daughter was finally born. (Admittedly, I'd been having Anthony skip songs that were making me cry and I have blocked out which songs they were.  I can only just now listen to the song from the end of Knocked Up, and the baby is more than eight weeks old.)

At 11:49am on Sunday, December 8, 2013, I had my first baby.  She was immediately placed on my chest and I marveled at her little body through terrified, joyful tears.  Her one-minute APGAR was good, and her five-minute was even better. She weighed 7lbs12oz and was 22 inches long, and had quite a bit of dark hair. One of the first things anyone said after she was born was, "She certainly doesn't look overdue!" I remember thinking how silly it was to comment at all.  She was HERE! Give her to me!

After a few minutes of marveling at this teeny person we made together, Anthony walked over the the warming station and watched as the pediatric nurse snapped her tiny little hospital bracelet on and slipped the "baby lojack" onto her ankle (the hospital doors lock if it's taken off or leaves the ward. Probably overkill, but I was grateful for the security.) He brought her back to me and assured me she had ten fingers and ten toes.  I loved that he'd actually counted.

From Day One, my daughter has loved hearing me and her daddy sing.  She practices laughing in her sleep, and it's the nerdiest, wheezy "huh-huh-huh" laugh there ever was. The horror that overcame her during diaper changes subsided around week five, and now it's just a really awful way to wake up.

I'm still deciding whether to use her name here, since I can't ask her permission.  She is such a good baby.  The first few weeks were pretty rough, but I have, mercifully, forgotten most of the details and am left with only the satisfaction that we made it.  My little family is the most incredible thing I have ever been part of, and I am certain having a baby wasn't the mistake I worried it was for those few minutes on the way to the hospital.  Anthony has agreed not to toss her into the air until she can hold her head up completely on her own. We shall see whether he gets to do it before she's eight years old.

This blog will primarily be written While She's Asleep.  I plan to do reviews of baby products I like, tell stories about life with my beautiful, silly little girl and the man I love who is suddenly the father of my child.  I'll talk about cloth diapering and breastfeeding, and other parts of new mom life.   I'll probably include some recipes and post occasionally about the raised-bed vegetable garden we plan to plant this spring. 

But for right now, it's all baby, all the time.

Now I have to go.  She's starting to stir and I really want to hold her and kiss her chubby little cheeks.