Separated at Birth

A few weeks after she was born, I discovered that Audrey has a twin. Okay, so he's not really her twin, but one day at breastfeeding support group, I met Gavin and his mom Lauren. Gavin was born at Tucson Medical Center, like Audrey, on June 30th. Audrey was born at 1:09 pm, Gavin at about 2:30 pm. To add to the links, Lauren's birthday is Sept 22, the same date as my parents' wedding anniversary. It seems fated that we will be friends!

All or Nothing

It seems like Audrey is an "all or nothing" girl. Maybe this is just a characteristic of all babies, I don't know. But it seems that she picks one activity and spends almost all of her day doing it. Some days it's eating. Those are very frustrating and tiring days for me, since I still harbor hopes of doing something besides feeding the baby. It doesn't have to be much, just a walk to the mailbox or getting on email briefly. But on those "feeding frenzy" days, those things don't really happen. Some days she sleeps. Like yesterday. Though I should enjoy this "free" time, and I kind of do, I am also thinking in the back of my mind "Is it okay for her to sleep this long during the day? Maybe I should wake her to feed her? Is she going to wake up at midnight and think it's morning? [Answers: Yes, I didn't, and She didn't.] Some days she's just awake. All day, practically, despite the fact that infants are supposed to get something like 10-14 hours of sleep per day. And I think, "What can I do with her to give her fodder for her developing brain?" Is it bad to let her stare at Headboard until she gets bored? Is it bad that I lie down next to her on the floor when she's on her playmat, and I almost fall asleep as she stares incessantly at the monkey? (she seems to like looking at other primates - her chimp friend Gregory, the monkey on her playmat, and of course Paul and I). I tried to read to her but she doesn't seem that interested - more interesting are outings where she gets to see other babies (I think this kid is an extrovert, despite having two introvert parents), so we've been going to some mom-baby groups. And trying to get out of the house at least once a day, even if it's just for a short errand. That's about it for today...back to baby care on this "awake" day!

The Many States of Audrey

People always told me that as a parent, you can determine what your kids want (mainly) by their cries, even if those cries sound the same to an outsider. It doesn't seem to be 100% true, but I have noticed that Audrey has several "states" that don't really overlap. A sampling:

1. Happy Audrey: We get this one a lot, and we are glad of it. She has three or four different smiles/happy faces that she uses, mostly for Paul and I (and of course Headboard - see post #1) but increasingly, she will use them on strangers, especially baby-related strangers (other moms, women who are running various mom and baby groups). Today at mom-baby group she was smiling at the group leader for several minutes. She is also starting to branch out into noises - ah and awk and woo and a few cries that sound like a pterodactyl that I can't quite tell if they are happy or leading up to crying


2. Screaming Audrey: Don't like this one. It's not just crying, but full-out, turning purple, choking-on-her-own-cry screaming. Doesn't happen too often, and is usually fixable by nursing except for one night last week when it went on for 1.5 hours and was only cured by the resolution of her gastrointestinal problems


3. Crying Audrey: Ranges from the occasional cry when I am out of sight (hey mom, over here!) to a continual, mid-range cry that sounds like "lie, lie, lie." I try not to take this as a judgement on my parenting (example: Kay: "I'll be right there to feed you, Audrey, I just need to get a glass of water..." Audrey: Lie, lie, lie!)


4. Grumbly Audrey: Usually happens as she's waking up. Not crying per se, but little grumbling sounds that foreshadow crying if something is not changed. I actually like this state - I call her "grumbly baby" which has a nice ring to it ("Aw, grumbly baby...")


5. Silent Audrey: Sometimes means she is gearing up to cry, sometimes means she has her fist in her mouth and wants to eat, sometimes means she is resigned that whatever we are doing with her/showing her is kind of boring (if she even knows what boredom is) and sometimes is just a transition state - it could [hopefully] break into Happy Audrey as soon as she smiles at mommy or daddy

Holy War?

Yesterday Paul and I were sitting, as new parents are wont to do, admiring our beautiful, intelligent baby as she leaned up against dad's knees and made faces at us. Mostly smiles, but some other faces too.

One of us had said something about church, which prompted me to say "Yeah, before we know it she'll be up singing in the children's choir at church" (or, more aptly, standing in front of the church with a bunch of other little kids, two of whom are actually singing and the rest of whom are A) scanning the crowd for mom and dad, B) having found mom and dad, waving wildly, C) looking like they are about to cry, or D)all three).

Paul agreed that she might be in the children's choir, because we will probably raise her Presbyterian. After all, Paul reasons, it is the church that I (and sometimes we) go to on a regular basis. By "a regular basis" I mean once a month or more...Paul is still adjusting to this whole "not going to church weekly is not a sin" element of the Protestant faith.

Paul teases me that I have something against the Catholic church, since I am so avowedly Presbyterian. In my defense, I point out that half my family and most of my friends who profess any religious preference are Catholic, but this does not seem to sway his view that I am somehow anti-Catholic.

I had to laugh, though, because as we were talking about church, Paul said to Audrey "Yes, you'll probably be Presbyterian but you could be Catholic, what do you think about that?" Audrey replied with a face I can only describe as "dubious." Too bad I didn't get a picture.

Arizona Girl

So I am a product of the east coast, the mid-Atlantic states, to be exact. Yes, I was born in California but we moved back to Virginia when I was 3 months old, so I consider Fairfax, Virginia to be my "home town" when people ask. I moved to Tucson, Arizona in the summer of 2001, so I'm pretty used to it here, I like the Southwest and think that the "pros" of the Southwest (mountains, beautiful sunsets practically every day, cool desert animals and plants, beautiful weather in January, February, March, April, October and November) tend to outweigh the "cons" (can hit 110 in the shade in the summer).

Sometimes I think about our daughter growing up as an "Arizona girl" and how this is going to be different from my own childhood, particularly with regard to her relationship with the outdoors. In Virginia, the outdoors was pretty friendly. I mean, you had to watch out for some things like bees and other stinging insects, and it did get pretty hot and humid (and also cold, wet and.or snowy sometimes). But in Arizona, plants and animals are adapted for life in the desert, and this means they are not the friendliest of items. You can't go out in the side yard and play "Lost Girls" which, for my sister and I and our best friends Amy and Heather, entailed a lot of interaction with plants. We pulled moss and grass and sometimes leaves off bushes to be our "beds" and our "food" and whatever else we needed to "survive in the wilderness." I can't imagine doing this in Arizona. You can't really interact with a saguaro, or a prickly pear, or any other kind of cactus. Even trees like mesquite, which provide nice shade, often come with thorns.

We used to capture wayward turtles and keep them for a few days before returning them to Burke Lake. But out here, the nearest lake is about an hour away. And the kind of animals you run across commonly (mostly lizards and doves) tend to dart away and don't really lend themselves to being captured and observed for a day or two.

And then there's the sun...as a kid, I remember putting on sunscreen when we went to the beach. Maybe if we did some other "outdoors all day" activity. But out here, you have to learn early that you never leave home without your water, sunscreen and hat. I just bought Audrey her first floppy sun hat, designed to fit 0-3 months because the smallest sun hat anyone gave us was 6-18 months and we need one before then - although my mom did give her some infant sunglasses (see photo).

I'm sure Audrey will discover the outdoors and find some friendly bits even as she learns to avoid the plants and animals that have evolved sharp and/or poisonous desert defenses. And we'll just have to do a bit of traveling - up to Mt. Lemon, to Northern Arizona, and back East - so she can experience things like grass, deciduous trees and snow. I may be a transplant, but she will be a true Arizona girl.

Out and About With Audrey

On Friday, I went to campus to try to get an "enrollment verification letter" from the Registrar's office. Any time I try to do anything within the bureaucracy of the University of Arizona, it always takes me longer then I expect. In this case, this was my third trip to the registrar's office to get this letter, because on the previous trips, something in my record was wrong or incomplete.

I was feeling pretty proud of myself because I got myself and Audrey out the door at 8:30 am and we parked and got to the Registrar's at 8:45...only to discover that the office was closed until 10 am for a staff meeting. I thought about going home at that point, and making my fourth trip back the next week, possibly when Paul or Pat was watching Audrey. But then I thought about the "Rookie Mom's Handbook," a little gem of a book given to me by my friend Skylar. Somewhere in the book, I had read (and I'm paraphrasing) - go out with your baby, because that's what people do, and moms are just people with children.

So I thought, what would I do if it were just me, no Audrey? Well, I would get a chai tea latte and go over to my department for an hour or so, and try to get a little work done. So I did. I got my chai tea latte, answered questions from curious onlookers about Audrey, and walked over to the Anthro department. I didn't end up getting work done, I nursed Audrey in our office instead, but it worked. I went back to the Registrar's after 10 am, and got my letter, and we went home.

A couple of really cute primates

Okay, so this picture is actually a few weeks old (an eternity in Audrey-time) but it is so cute that I wanted to post it. To celebrate her birth, my friend and college roommate Andrea, who's a vet at the Oakland Zoo, sent Audrey a stuffed chimpanzee.

Although I'm not a primatologist, it is part of what I do (biological anthropology) and I have actually taught a class in primatology, so I'm pretty stringent (some might say annoying) about pointing out the difference between a monkey and an ape. So Audrey's "new friend" is definitely an ape, not a monkey. And in the photo, she's making her big smile, what I call the "chimpanzee play face" because chimps make this face - opening their mouth wide - to show that they want to play with you!

So Audrey and friend - who I've named Gregory - relate, one ape to another.

Baby's-eye view

This morning Audrey was lying on our bed after being fed, staring at the window behind our headboard. At least I think it was the window. Given her fascination with Headboard (see previous post) it could be that she was communing with "Big Headboard." Who knows. Anyway, I got down at her level on the bed and tried to take a picture of what she could see. When I did that, I found myself looking at a very striking set of shadows created by the iron work outside our window - with the morning light coming from the east, the iron bars made three heart shapes against the illuminated green curtains. That piece of window looks a lot more interesting from a baby's-eye view, and if she hadn't been so enraptured by it, I would have missed it.

Audrey the Furniture Whisperer

So I'm sitting here in the nursery with my fussy baby. Or, she was fussy until I put her on the changing table. Don't get me wrong, she really dislikes getting her diaper changed. But lying on the table...she loves it. We have a "Rail Rider" which for the uninitiated is a plastic tray with a waterproof pad in it that fits over the crib rails. So the Rail Rider puts the baby almost level with the object of her affection - the end of the crib, colloquially known in our house as "Headboard."

Audrey LOVES to "talk" to Headboard. Despite the fact that she is a mere 5 1/2 weeks old, she communicates with Headboard in every way she is able: she smiles, makes sounds, waves her arms, and kicks her legs, sometimes all at once, to convey to Headboard some mysterious content. We have tried to duplicate her view to see what she might be so excited about, but to no avail. Paul thought it might be the contrast between the crib slats (dark, then light from the window behind). But she seems just as excited about Headboard after dark, when that "contrast" explanation wouldn't hold. Plus she seems to be looking at the solid part of the headboard, not the slatted part, for all we can tell.

Headboard can keep Audrey occupied for 10 minutes - an eternity in baby time. He (or she, I suppose) can make her forget that before we came into the nursery, she was demanding to be fed (even though she just finished eating for 30+ minutes). One of Paul's theories about Headboard is that her guardian angel hangs out there, and that's who she's communicating with when we lie her on the changing table. I kind of like that explanation, and have taken to sometimes putting words in her mouth when she starts communing with Headboard. Like, "Oh, Headboard, it's been a rough morning - I wanted to eat all the time and mommy tired to only feed me every hour instead of every five minutes. And then I filled up my diaper and had to get my diaper AND my onesie changed! I think only you understand where I'm coming from, Headboard."

Sounds from Audrey - the last one sounded like "Whoo!" I think Headboard is expanding her "vocabulary" - and definitely strengthening her legs, since kicking her legs is a big part of talking to Headboard. She may be tiring of Headboard's company, since she's been "talking" the whole time I've been typing this. But who knows. Whether it's contrast/light patterns or her guardian angel, Headboard is special to Audrey, so viva Headboard!