Friday, February 18, 2005


My girls... cuddled up in bed this morning... Aw.... At 5 weeks and she's already challenging mommy to staring contests... I wonder at what point she'll get 'The Question Game"?

What cute little feet!!!

Daddy took Teresa for her first swing!

Last weekend we went on a hike at a local park with GramMary, Grandpa Pete, Aunt Christina and Cousin Allison. We ended up taking an unexpectedly strenuous hike up into the hills while watching the local hang gliders.
Let's just ignore the pesto...

In other parts of Teresa's world I wonder if she's not heading off for another growth spurt - next spurt is nominally supposed to hit at 6 weeks so we're a little early, but we've been rather, erh, attached today. Dad just took the fussy child for a walk which generally quiets her right down, but this time no dice, still fussy when they returned home so even though she'd barely finished eating when they left, she's at it again.

I am finding though that if I can act QUICKLY, there are small accomplishment possible in the 5-30 minute windows of time I can steal. And, sometimes, like now, I can multitask - she's attached but I'm able to reach most keys on the keyboard to keep you entertained.

Our cloth diapering experiment continues well so we're seeking more supplies - we've found that we're not the only cloth diapering parents out there and competition on ebay for new and used supplies can be rather fierce. A brief note about those green poopies - they stain diapers less than regular breastfed newborn poop. Not that we're overly concerned about the color of our diapers... HELLO, they are DIAPERS, they're meant to be pooped on!

Hmm, I guess I didn't ignore the pesto too much in this post... Let's hope the weekend brings us more distractions!

Tuesday, February 15, 2005

Can you believe it? We STILL have pesto poopies!

Teresa can't believe it - she screams at us to take them away, but so far their source remains a mystery. Needless to say, Dad and Mom have NOT had pasta and pesto recently.

Last week we had the pediatrician and lactation consultant suggesting slightly divergent treatments; neither which ended up to be right. This week they seem to be in agreement - Teresa is very unlikely (though slightly possible) to be allergic to proteins in wheat or dairy that I'm eating. She didn't/doesn't have a garden-variety virus that would have shown signs of improvement by now. So where does that leave us?

Another round of poop sample testing to see if she's having a reaction to the antibiotics Mom was on during labor and an appointment to see a pediatric GI specialist. Hopefully one of those two will give us some answers. The good news is that when she's not trying to make a leaky pesto diaper, she's still content, happy, curious, and beautiful; we love those times. When she's creating a package it can break your heart.

She's eating well and still gaining weight (though a little slower than optimal amounts) which is good news - those two characteristics rule out a lot if YUCKY diseases that diarrhea might otherwise indicate. Whew. But the unknown cause is still frustrating.

In the meantime Mom has found a few other "new" moms to hook up with, maybe soon Mom and Dad will start making some South Bay friends. So far no rock climbing parents though!

Saturday, February 12, 2005


For her one month birthday, Teresa got a bath!

Wednesday, February 09, 2005


Gram Mary made daddy a birthday cake, and Teresa helped blow out the candles!

Tuesday, February 08, 2005

Pesto poopies indeed.

So that was early evening Monday. Later she was inconsolable and after an hour or more of crying (her, not us) I sent Dad and Teresa for a walk. This was 11:45PM... About 15-20 minutes later there's a loud insistant knock on the door. Yes, midnight. Steve is out and I'm trying (unsuccessfully) to sleep. So I get up wondering how Steve could have locked himself out since a key is neede to lock the door, or who else it could be. A peek out the office window and a friendly but commanding voice says, "It's the police."

Ah well right, the police. Yes, the police. The police?? what are they doing here at midnight while my hubby is out peacefully walking our daughter? So I open the door to 3 burly San Jose cops who ask if everything is OK. "Yes, why? What's going on?" (awful images are flashing through my head that Steve and Teresa were hit by a car or worse.)

"Ma'am we had a call from a neighbor concerned about the adults yelling here, have you and your husband been fighting?"

Fighting? Ha! fighting lack of sleep, yes. fighting poopy diapers, yes. fighting each other? no way, rocks of support. Besides, no energy left to raise voices!

"No sir, my baby has been crying the past 90 minutes but no fighting or yelling from us."

So they questioned me further, asked where my husband is (or maybe I volunteered that he was out walking, it is all a blur). They asked if anyone else was home and if they could walk through the house. I said no and yes. Yeah, I could have refused their request to walk into my home, but hell (<- you can tell I'm stressed, swearing like that), I wanted them to believe we're domestically peaceful and not think this a house of such disturbances. They seemed accepting of my explainations but asked for a description of Steve. That delivered, they left and wished us well with my baby.

Shortly thereafter Steve wondered up the street on his way home and was questioned by the cops who were waiting his return. I guess when his story jibed with mine, they were satisfied.

4 cops, 4 cars responding to a domestic disturbance call? Toto, we're not in Oakland any more.

So much for Steve's walk allowing me some precious sleep time. Instead Dad and Teresa returned, we all 3 fatigued. Teresa fed her midnight snack and we all tried to settle down to sleep.

The rest of the night was uneventful, but short and Tuesday continues with the pesto poopies so our dear daughter is still not happy... Mom's not happy either. Dad should be at work, trying to stay awake and get work done; hopefully happy.

Monday, February 07, 2005

Green Monster poopies!

She's not yet 4 weeks old and she's already sick :( And here, we'd just gotten used to 'dijon mustard' and now we're getting 'rotten pesto'. Plus she's obviously uncomfortable with the diarrhea. Sunday night we called the on-call nurse who reassured us that no, she was not in fact going to die (for some reason, our books couldn't agree on whether diarrhea in a newborn was life threatening, or just sub-optimal). For reference, green is not as bad as black or red or white. Hopefully she doesn't transition into 'salsa' or 'mayonaise'.

Anyway, today mom took her to the Doc, who admitted that although she didn't know what was causing it, she did agree on the not dying part... Daddy got to take a break in the middle of the day to run home and run a pesto sample off the to the hospital, and Teresa seems to have become somewhat accustomed to her new digestive processes. In the meantime, daddy is going to relax and play the mandolin a little... I'm really feeling my oats after attempting Underwater Hockey on Sunday. This gives you the idea:



Thursday, February 03, 2005

What? no posts since Sunday? has nothing of note happened this week?

Well, we had a busy first part of week - on Monday we noticed that the refrigerator was no longer a refrigerator and was instead a huge pantry... yes, it was no longer cooling, the whole reason a refrigerator lives! We called our "home warranty" folks and an enteraining repair man came out to replace one of the circuit boards in the fridge. Yes, our fridge has at least two circuit boards that I know of - what happened to the days of sawdust on an ice block??! Tuesday was consumed by refrigerator excitement.

On Wednesday, Teresa and Mom attended their first Mom and me group meeting at Good Sam. Teresa was the youngest in attendence - I guess the other REALLY new moms are still at home recovering? It was a non-event of a meeting since all the other moms with their huge months-old babies all already knew each other and have established circles. It does sound like many of them will soon "age" out of the group and there should soon be more "young'uns" attending so maybe Teresa and I will give the group another chance or two.

Today Teresa and I had a pretty good day - which inspired me to chance cooking for real! I noticed we had a wedge of fancy Spanish Manchego cheese in the fridge and decided to plan a meal around it. The first 200 recipes I found online were rejected becuase they called for potatoes. Who has potatoes just sitting around in their house waiting for use? not us!! I ended up finding a mushroom, green onion, and carrot cheese bake that sounded good so we're now waiting for the oven to heat up and for Dad to come home from work. This (hopefully delightful) treat will be supplemented by a sausage/veggie dish that is supposedly from the same region (Manchego, duh) of Spain. Maybe I should have told Dad what dinner was and he'd just toddle on home and forget about work. ah well.