Not In Kansas Anymore (NIKA)

Bad Daddy, Reason #37

I am a horrible Daddy. I fear that I have already ruined my daughter's life. Yes, that's right - I introduced her to television.

Saturday night, Elizabeth went to bed early, right after Dorothy had woken up from her early evening long nap. My job was to keep Dorothy awake until 11pm for her 'late night' feeding, so that she would sleep longer at night. We were playing on the activity gym in the living room, and she was mostly entertaining herself. I was getting bored and decided to turn on the TV to see if there was anything to watch. "Whose Line Is It Anyway?" (the improv comedy show) was on; it's one of the few shows I actually like.

Dorothy tried to turn and see what the noise was. I sat her up facing towards the television, and she was transfixed. I'll have some photos up in the Gallery later this week. But even when a commercial came on and I muted the TV and turned her away from it, she kept trying to turn around and look at the screen. If I kept her facing away for a little while, she'd eventually forget about it. But then when I'd unmute the volume, she'd immediately be transfixed. She was also probably trying to figure out why Daddy kept laughing so much.

After 45 minutes or more, she eventually became bored with the TV. But that may also be because she was getting extremely sleepy. She nodded off, sitting up in my arms, and I couldn't really keep her awake anymore. By that time it was almost 11pm, though, so I took her in for bedtime.

Hopefully being exposed to television a couple of times per month won't leave her obsessed with the magic talking picture box. Because I do not want to bring the TeleTubbies into our home. :-O

Solid Food, Try #2

We made our second attempt at feeding Dorothy solid food today. It went much better than last time. She was in a much better mood to start with. And she not only took the spoon with rice cereal in her mouth, but she also swallowed a bit of it! Maybe a whole 2ml, or 0.05 ounces! :-)

The surprising thing was that she'd see the spoon, and then she'd open her mouth, just like that. At least for the first half-dozen or so tries. I think she even opened her mouth before and after she'd had a taste of the rice cereal.

Now we just need to keep trying a bit on her every day for the next week. After that comes the baby paste fruits!

Raspberry delight

Dorothy learned to blow raspberries a few weeks ago. For a few days, she was obsessed with doing it all the time, then she seemed to sort of forget about it. But the other day, I was blowing raspberries at her to try to distract her when she was fussy, and I apparently reminded her of it, because she's been doing it to us more again.

This morning, she was sitting up with me in the living room, and the oscillating fan was on. For a few cycles, she looked very surprised each time the fan turned to blow on her, but didn't seem to know what was going on. Then she noticed where the air was coming from, and intently watched the fan go back and forth for a little while. Finally, she must have decided that it was trying to play with her. Each time the fan would turn to blow on her, she would blow raspberries back at it! Then she would giggle until it turned back to her again.

Photos and Parties

A new batch of photos is up.

Today we went to Ian's 100-day birthday party (apparently it's a Chinese tradition to celebrate a baby's 100-day birhtday). There were lots of little ones there. Dorothy had lots of fun playing with the babies and seeing lots (more than 20 at a time?) of adults!

Sunshine?!

I'm giving a presentation on the space elevator next weekend at Noreascon. Today I was working on my presentation, reading through the Space Elevator book to firm up details. Since I didn't need my computer, I decided to head outside.

Bostonians are going to burn in hell or something to pay for the great weather we've had in August. Normally it's hot and humid here in August, but lately we've been getting down into the 40s at night, and daytime highs are not even breaking 80 half the time. I love it!

To read and take notes, I headed out to the (covered) porch for an hour or so, until the sun moved enough to be shining directly on me. Normally I'm stuck inside at the computer, so I really enjoyed being out in the clear air. Ahhhh.

Dorothy Update

Dorothy's fine today. She had some big and weird-smelling poops early this morning, but for the most part she seems to be fully recovered from whatever was going wrong last night.

When I got her home from daycare this evening, I plopped her down on the living room floor. She sat up, all by herself, for 10 minutes straight without any assistance. There were a few times I thought she'd fall, but then she caught herself. She might have used the pillow behind her to keep from falling back, but if so, she didn't go far.

But now that she's sitting, I need to get a replacement for her bouncy chair because she's not supposed to use it when she can sit up....

Tricks of the Trade

There's a great article just posted about tricks of the trade in various professions. It's amusing, and enlightening.

The Joys of Vomit

After five hours of dealing with more than a half dozen vomitings by Dorothy, along with attendant unhappiness and noise, I can report that in my experience, there are no joys of (baby) vomit, except perhaps when it stops.

Today was mostly a good day. Dorothy and I had fun together this morning, and then in the afternoon we went to the Wrentham Village outlet mall with Scott, Susan, and Ian (Ian is a couple months younger than Dorothy; they can be seen together in a couple of the online photos). We had a relaxing couple of hours there. In the middle of our time there, Dorothy got hungry at her normal time. I'd brought along some dairy-free formula, in order to not have to worry about re-heating expressed breastmilk in the middle of an outdoor mall. She'd gotten some formula right after Elizabeth got out of the hospital, so I figured everything would be fine. Stupid me.

I'd forgotten how much formual we'd given Dorothy a few weeks ago. Turns out Elizabeth had nursed a bit, then we'd given Dorothy about 3 ounces before bedtime. Today, combining the fact that babies on formula drink more total volume than babies on breastmilk and that Dorothy normally drinks 5 ounces of breastmilk at a time, I gave her 6 ounces of formula. I couldn't refrigerate the 8 ounce can, so I figured I might as well give her what I could, because the rest was going in the garbage.

A couple of hours later, shortly after I'd gotten back home, Dorothy had a very large spit-up. Not fun, but it wasn't out of the realm of an occasional spit-up from before. I cleaned her (and me) up, and she seemed to be feeling OK. After a bit I put her in the exersaucer so that I could run downstairs and throw in a load of clothes. When I got back up, she was fussing (not shrieking uncontrollably), and had obviously vomited again, this time onto the exersaucer.

This second incident required her clothes to be changed, so I tossed a paper towel onto the mess in the exersaucer and took her to the changing table. As I was changing her, vomit #3 came up. At this point I was getting concerned, because the total volume was getting to be pretty big, some large fraction of her previous (formula) feeding. I called the pediatrician's office after hours, and a nurse called right back. She suggested waiting ~20 minutes after her last vomit before trying to give her either Pedialyte (basically, baby Gatorade, which we didn't have in the house) or some expressed breastmilk, only a tiny bit at a time. Dorothy had vomit #4 while I was on the phone. The nurse mentioned that there was a stomach virus going around, but so far Dorohty didn't have any of the other symptoms.

At this point it's around 5:40pm. At about 6pm, #5 came up. (Each vomit was getting smaller in volume but thicker in consistency.) But Dorothy was falling asleep in my arms, then waking up to scream (or vomit), then falling back asleep. The 20-minute "safety net" passed around when Elizabeth got home, so she tried nursing. No dice - Dorothy wasn't at all interested. I ran out and bought some Pedialyte, and she still wasn't interested.

I was getting concerned that Dorothy might be getting dehydrated, as well as hungry (even if she was refusing food). We called the pediatrician again around 7pm, during which call vomit #6 came up (at least it was a whole hour since the previous one). BTW, Dorothy's temperature was normal - 97.6. After reviewing all the symptoms, the doctor suggested we try getting even a tiny bit of fluids into her, and she'd call back in an hour. Dorothy was so lethargic throughout, that we were getting pretty worried. Over the course of the hour, though, we were able to get about 10ml (just over one-third of one ounce) of Pedialyte into her. 10 minutes before the doctor called back, Dorothy 'woke up' and would even give us half a grin. Since she seemed to be starting to get back to normal, and we'd gotten some fluids in without them coming back, the doctor recommended keeping an eye on her, and if she didn't produce a wet diaper within a few hours, to call back.

Well, we get another ounce or so of Pedialyte and breast milk into Dorothy over the next hour, then we let her take a real nap. When she woke up, she latched right onto Elizabeth and nursed just like normal. Then she was a completely happy, placid baby. No more vomiting (so far). So we think she's all better.

My theory is that the problem was a combination of too much formula (esp. after not having had any for weeks), being out in the sun and being a bit warm, and getting really jostled around at the mall and in the car. We'll know by morning if it was that, or if she has a bug. Thankfully for now, though, she's got lots of nummies in her and she's sleeping peacefully!

Classic Fight Scene

The other night, Elizabeth and I watched Jackie Chan's "Shanghai Knights." Yes, there's a billion historical inconsistencies, but you generally don't watch Jackie Chan flicks for their factual accuracies or their deep plots. This one was no different, but it was certainly entertaining.

I have to say that one of the fight scenes stands out as a classic film event. During part of the (Fleet Street?) outdoor fight with the gang, there's a large segment wherein Jackie Chan is using an umbrella and seems to be re-enacting the dancing-in-the-rain segment from "Singin' in the Rain." They even play the theme music during part of the fight. It was hilarious, and very well done.

So-called Solid Food

Dorothy's pediatrician recommended starting her on solid foods at her last visit, in the middle of July. We weren't in such a rush, given the research we've seen that suggests waiting until closer to 6 months can help reduce chances of developing food allergies. But after buying her a high chair a week ago, and having had solid foods (rice cereal and a jar of sweet potatoes for babies) sitting on the counter since late July, we decided on Sunday that two weeks short of her six month birthday was close enough to try the food.

The Sunday evening attempt can be quickly summed up in two words: abject failure. I had a suspicion before we got started that it wasn't going to go well, because Dorothy was being fussy and seemed to need to pacifier. As soon as I'd take it out of her mouth, she'd start making noise and getting upset. Trying to stick a spoon with rice cereal on it certainly didn't improve her attitude. We'll wait a week and then try again. We've read online posts by some other parents talking about their kids not wanting solid food until 7 or even 9 months old, so we're not really worried yet. And we're not going to force solids on her any time soon.

The rice cereal instructions said that for baby's first feeding, the cereal should be diluted 1:4 with breastmilk, water, or formula. Later on, you just mix it up to whatever consistency you (actually, the baby) prefers. Now, even "thick" cereal is like oatmeal, and relatively liquid-y. But at 1:4 dilution, it's barely distinguishable from plain breastmilk. Besides getting the flavor of the cereal and the feel of the spoon in her mouth, I'm not sure that Dorothy would actually have gotten anything out of the cereal itself, even if she did keep any of it in her mouth...

Great Book Title

We think that "Adventures in Poop" would be a great book title for a new parents' book. We had our own little adventure Sunday afternoon.

We took Dorothy for a walk, to enjoy the beautiful weather and to drop off some mail in a mailbox. We wound up getting some ice cream at Ice Jack. Just as we were finishing up, Elizabeth noticed a strong aroma coming from Dorothy's direction. We checked, and could see lots of poop struggling to escape from the diaper. Rather than deal with a major poop with our little portable diaper bag's contents, we went on the forced march home, double-timing it to get there ASAP.

It turns out we shouldn't have given Dorothy a bath in the morning, because she got another cleaning (this time in the shower with her Mommy) after we got home. The poop was mostly contained by the diaper, but a teensy bit managed to make its way up her chest. Plus, she decided to pee while I was changing her, just to add to the excitement. With all the mess, it was easier to just wipe her down a bit then stick her in the shower.

I don't know how big of a seller "Adventures in Poop" would be with stories like that, though... (BTW, I'm writing this entry at 3am Monday morning because our Little Miss decided to wake up at 2am and wasn't interested in sleeping again, even well after a shot of Tylenol had taken effect.)

Maybe It's a Cold

I'm thinking that perhaps Dorothy's sleep habits are due to her having a cold. Her nose has been really runny for the last day or two, and she's been sounding really congested at night. Teething babies are supposedly more prone to colds, because of sticking more stuff in their mouths. I don't know that she's been putting much more than normal in her mouth (that is, it's hard to get "more" than "anything she can maneuver into her mouth"), but maybe the eruption of the tooth (by the way, it's her lower left front tooth) has opened the skin to allow the germs in.

Sleep Update

I was mistaken the other day when I said Dorothy had slep for seven hours Thursday night. In fact, it was just short of eight hours.

Friday night, she slept for just over five hours, until we woke her up just before midnight. She nursed, then went back to sleep for another seven plus hours!

In total, she slept about 11.6 hours Thursday night, and 12.1 hours Friday night. She also took quite a few long naps during the day today. She had some trouble falling asleep tonight; we'll see if the teething starts to interfere with sleep.

Movie Snippets

Occasionally I will put up a movie snippet (generally taken with my photo camera, so they're not long at all) in our movies directory. But I may also delete them at any time, to save space.

There's currently two movies there: One is from a long time ago, when Cobalt played "tag" with Dorothy. The second (which I converted to MPEG-4 format to save space, so you'll probably need Quicktime 6) is from a few days ago, with Dorothy sitting up between my legs.

Enjoy!

Faux Tow?

We went overboard again this week with the latest batch of photos. This baby is just being too darn cute...

Kickin' It Into Gear

After a placid and happy couple of months during which there wasn't much in the way of major developmental milestones to notice (she mostly just drooled more, and slowly got better at sitting up), Dorothy suddenly seems to be kicking things back into gear. Within the last 24 hours we've had a couple of cool things happen.

First, Dorothy was sitting up unassisted for a relatively long time. But the cool thing is that, while sitting, she looked down at a toy block, reached for it, grabbed it, picked it up, and then put it into her mouth. So she was effectively doing three things at once. That may not sound like much to you, Mr. I'm-An-Adult-With-A-Fully-Developed-Brain, but for a baby it seems pretty impressive. She now has enough spare brain power to be able to leave the "sit up" control function idling in the background while grabbing stuff and getting it to her mouth.

Second, Dorothy's got a tooth. Or maybe two teeth, it's hard to tell. But this morning, while rubbing my finger over her lower gum, I noticed something that felt sharp. It was hard getting her tongue out of the way long enough to see, but we think we saw a tiny white bump down there. And Krissy at daycare felt Dorothy's lower gum (with rubber gloves on, because they're very good about controlling germs) and agreed that it's a tooth.

The sudden appearance of teeth (well, nubs at the moment) may explain her odd sleep behavior last night. When I picked Dorothy up from daycare, she'd just started napping. With only 20 minutes asleep before I took her home, I tried getting her to nap around 6:30pm. She'd sort of fall asleep, then she'd cry out, and half wake up. I'd soothe her, and she'd be instantly back asleep. I went out to fix myself some dinner, and she'd keep occasionally crying, but by the time I got in to see her, she was already quiet and back asleep again. This went on for more than 15 minutes before she was finally asleep and quiet for good. Perhaps it was the teeth that were irritating her.

But then she slept, and slept. I'd expected her to wake up within an hour. We decided not to wake her for a feeding. She wound up staying asleep until nearly 10:30pm, which means she was asleep for 4 hours and had gone almost 6 hours since her last feeding. Elizabeth nursed her, and Dorothy went right back to sleep. Then she slept for 7 hours - a new record!

I'm not sure we can expect this new, longer sleep cycle to be the new norm just yet, since it may be tied into a growth spurt (of teeth instead of overall) or something. But it sure was nice...

Report Card

The other day, Dorothy got her first report card. I know there's been a big push for accountability in schools recently, but this is ridiculous! :-)

Actually, she got a progress report. Apparently the kids at her daycare center get them every 3 months. The teachers report on what skills children usually develop around the baby's current age, and how she's doing on those various skills. So Dorothy (who was just over 5 months at the time) got a report on 3-6 Month skills. Overall, Dorothy is doing well. There were three levels of marking: "M" for "Mastered", "I" for "In Process" and "N" for "Not Even Close" (well, OK, maybe "N" stood for something a bit more tactful-sounding).

Dorothy only got 2 "N"s out of roughly 30 skills, one in "pulling herself into a crawling position" (she's still not at all off her tummy), and the other in "laughs at certain sounds" (although I think I've seen a bit of the latter at home). She got a few "I"s, one each in rolling tummy-to-back and back-to-tummy, plus ones in vocalizing consonants, "consistently directs a smile at familiar people," and "fusses when familiar people leave" (although we're not upset that she hasn't mastered that one yet).

Her "M"s were in all the other skills, including ones like "plays with fingers," "kicks actively" (my ribs are testament to that one), "recognizes a face," "coos," "opens mouth at sight of bottle," and "smiles broadly and often."

Babies of course all develop at different rates, and the "I"s and "N"s aren't cause for concern yet. We'll be giving her more tummy time and trying alternative ways to get her interested in rolling over.

Miller Time for Baby

We have a vaguely defined, if short, bedtime ritual for Dorothy. We change her diaper and put her into pajamas, then if she's not already too tired, we read "Goodnight, Gorilla." Then we turn out the lights and she nurses. Once she's done, Elizabeth burps her and then wraps her up in a sheet to keep Dorothy from startling herself awake. During the early parts of the ritual, there's often raspberry-blowing on the tummy, and general silliness.

The other night, we discovered a new euphemism for nursing which we think could be useful for those parents who nurse their children well past one year of age. After changing her diaper, Elizabeth asked Dorothy, "Do you know what comes after pajamas?" To which one of us (I forget who, actually) replied "Miller Time!"

So you mothers out there who need a phrase for your nursing youngsters to exclaim in the middle of the grocery store that's not as graphic as having your child scream "I want boobie!!!!" you can now use our well-tested substitute: encourage them to scream "I want Miller Time!!!!"

Belch = Good

As practically everyone knows, babies need to be burped after being fed, to help them get the gas out of their stomach. If they're not burped, they're much more likely to spit up (which is just a euphemism for "vomit"), since they don't have perfect control over the stomach sphincter muscle.

Sometimes Dorothy can eructate in a manner reminiscent of a uniformed mariner (you could also call it "belching like a sailor"). But at other times, it's a real fight to get any burps out of her. Sometimes when I'm burping her, I'll wind up producing a little burp myself, which I always point out as an example of what I want her to do. In fact, even at random times when we're not burping her, if Elizabeth or I produce our own eructations, we proudly exclaim to Dorothy that she's supposed to do the same thing.

So now a socially indelicate noise has been turned into a shining example of encouraged and expected behavior. Ahh, parenthood.

The World Is Too Interesting

Dorothy just can not take in too much of the world at once. She's been very goofy lately when nursing. She'll latch on for about five seconds, then break off and turn her head 180 degrees to look around at the room. Then she'll notice she's not getting milk anymore, so she'll latch back on for another five seconds. Repeat ad infinitum.

When she's overtired and I'm trying to get her to sleep, she fights it. She looks around the room, taking everything in. I try to hold her face against my chest so that there's nothing to see, but she squirms and fights and turns to look around the room.

The world is just too interesting to look at for sleeping and eating!

Random Pictures

The latest week's worth of pictures of Dorothy are now up, including some more shots of her pile of clothes.

You'd Think We Would've Learned...

During our shopping trip today, we also bought some clothes for Dorothy, who is starting to out-grow her 3-6 months clothes. Of course, we didn't actually look to see how much 6-9 months clothes we already had -- we didn't remember having much. We were wrong.

In addition to items from her baby showers (Chicago, and Elizabeth's work), we forgot that my parents and aunt had gone on a shopping spree back in June, plus we'd picked up one or two 6-9 months items on our last clothes shopping trip.

Here's Dorothy in front of all of her 6-9 months clothes, right before they all get washed for the first time:

Yes, that pile is taller than she is, and 2-3 times as wide.

We appreciate all the gifts of clothes we've received from so many people. But if anyone is thinking of buying Dorothy more clothes any time soon, please don't get anything smaller than 12 months - she won't need it!

And you would think we would have learned our lesson, after going through essentially the same experience when it was time for her to switch to 3-6 months clothes. Alas, you would be wrong. Can we still blame lapses like this on new parent brain?

Cynical Parents

Today was a sales tax-free day in Massachusetts, which was an excuse to go do some baby shopping we needed to do. So we, along with every single other person in the state, went out shopping. Parking lots were packed - almost as bad as a few days before Xmas! We went to Babies R Us to get a high chair, look at toddler car seats, and maybe pick up some stimulating toys.

While wandering the toy section, Elizabeth and I decided that we may be too cynical to be allowed to raise children. One of the toys we saw was a "bee" with "wings" and a "tail" that made noises when you twisted them. I picked it up, and exclaimed "Oh look! Baby's introduction to animal cruelty!"

Next we saw a Bob the Builder doll, to which Elizabeth applied the title "Baby's First Plumber's Crack!"

Finally, we saw a series of toys by Brainy Baby which were individually called "Left Brain" or "Right Brain" toys. The "Left Brain" ones had things like the alphabet and numbers. But what really made us (the left-brained engineers, mind you) laugh was the "Right Brain" toy we saw. We pushed its button, and it said "How will I feel today?" in a sappy voice. It went on to ask "Will I feel happy?! Will I feel sad?!" et cetera, et cetera. We don't believe it included "Will I feel irritated?!" which is certainly what any parent would feel after listening to the damn thing for 10 seconds.

Postscript by Elizabeth: The piece of the whole Left Brain/Right Brain thing that really stood out for me was the marketing genius. Tom, who had just been mercilessly mocking the Right Brain toys, then looked at the box of the (Left Brain) toy that we had picked out, saw that it had a recommended "companion" Right Brain toy, and immediately started searching the shelves for it!

Post-postscript by Tom: True, but I just wanted to see what sort of toy they thought was the proper "complement" to a rolling toy with buttons. I wasn't planning on buying it. Really! Honest!

Post-post-postscript by Elizabeth: Yes, dear.

Slippery When Wet

Before heading out for the day this morning, we decided to give Dorothy a shower with me. She's done it with Elizabeth a couple of times (with me on the outside helping to soap Dorothy), and while Elizabeth had claimed that Dorothy was slippery when she had soap on her, taking her into the shower was easier and quicker than getting out the bath stuff. So I decided it was my turn.

Chest hair helps to "grab" other skin, so when I was first holding Dorothy, I had no trouble at all hanging on to her, even with water on us. We shampooed her hair, and still no problem. But then Elizabeth soaped her on both sides, and put some soap on my chest so that I'd be clean when holding her, and to help soap up Dorothy some more. SOAP made a huge difference to her coefficient of friction. Which is to say, as soon as I rubbed her against my chest and then tried to change holds, I practically dropped her. :-O The funny thing is, she slipped down to my leg (I had one raised), and got soap from my chest on one entire half of her face. She looked really funny.

I got her into a secure hold, then we rinsed her off and finished her cleaning, then I finished my shower while Elizabeth dried her. We'll probably shower her again at times in the future, but now I know how careful I need to be!

Daddy Wins!

For most of the nights this week, Dorothy has been waking up around 2:30am and wanting to be awake for a while. Elizabeth has been getting up to deal with her. Thursday night, she tried waking me up without success, and then got mad at me. It wasn't really my conscious fault, but I was still in trouble. She'd asked me if it was my turn to get Dorothy, since she'd done it the previous two nights. In my still-asleep-and-dead-to-the-world voice I answered "yes." Then she asked if I'd gone to bed late, to which I also answered a more definite "yes." But I didn't actually get up, because I was still technically asleep. Without any prodding from her and/or direct commands, my unconscious wasn't going to get me out of bed. So, silly wife that she is, Elizabeth went and got Dorothy, and put me in the dog house.

Friday night she announced that I was on duty all night. Even for feedings, I was to bring Dorothy to and from the crib, so Elizabeth wouldn't have to get out of bed. I felt bad for her being sleep deprived lately, so I agreed. But Dorothy must have decided she loved her Daddy a whole lot, because she only got up once all night long, around 3am! (Well, technically, twice 20 minutes apart, but it was almost the same thing.) And it had been long enough since her last feeding that she ate again, and then slept until 7:30am! So Daddy fulfilled his duty without being tormented all night long! I win!!

Of course, this probably means my karma is unbalanced, and I'll get hit hard some other way...

Pictures by Keith

My brother Keith was out to visit at the end of July, and whadayaknow, he snapped some pictures while he was out here. He finally managed to get off his lazy butt (just kidding, Keith) and post them online. Enjoy!

Sleep Details

We've been tracking Dorothy's eating and sleeping patterns for the last few weeks, sort of like the Trixie Tracker (thanks to Ben MacNeill of The Trixie Update for the inspiration). We think that it's about time she started sleeping a bit more at night, so we wanted to see if we could learn anything from her sleep patterns.

The chart below show her eating and sleeping for over two weeks (note that there are major gaps up through 7/27, and around 7/31). The horizontal axis is time of day, and the vertical axis is the date. The horizontal red bars are when she was asleep (I haven't mucked around with things enough to get them to wrap around to the next day, which is why they extend past midnight on one day, but nothing appears in the 12-2am time for most days). The vertical bars indicate when she ate, and their height is proportional to how much she ate (generally 2-5 ounces per feeding). Blue is for bottle-fed (expressed breast milk) times, and black is for breastfed times (and the amounts are less certain).

She's been averaging almost 30 ounces of breast milk and around 12 hours of sleep per day. One of the sleep books we have suggests that babies her age average 14-15 hours of sleep per day, but she seems to be happy with 12. We'd like it if she got more, but we can't force it on her.

We're still trying different tactics to get Dorothy to sleep longer. Although she will usually wake up about 5 or so hours after her first night-time sleep, she's not necessarily hungry. We've been able to get her to go back to sleep and go for a total of 7+ hours between feedings. But we did learn to NOT wake her up between 10pm and midnight in order to feed her more under the theory that such a tactic would get her to sleep through the night. She would instead wake up around 2:30am and be very awake for at least an hour. :-( Hopefully we'll get to a better sleep schedule by the time she's six months old...

Girly Scream

After getting home from daycare today, I discovered that Dorothy had a new sound in her chatterbox repertoire. Unfortunately, it's a high-pitched scream-type of sound. :-( So now it's begun: those long years of listening to those only-dogs-can-hear-the-full-thing high-pitched screams that little girls do whenever they get startled. Those screams are one of the few things about little girls that drive me crazy. Who knows? Maybe my sanity won't even survive to be tested by Dorothy's teen years...

Site Renamed

We finally got around to renaming the blog. We'd solicited names back at the beginning of July, then promptly forgot to actually change the name. But as you can see, we're now officially "Not In Kansas Anymore" (aka "NIKA").

The name has multiple references, including:

• The change that parenthood has wrought on our lives
  
• The Wizard of Oz connection with Dorothy's name
  
• The "far-away places" part of space travel

Ooh! A Bandsaw!

Yesterday I picked Dorothy up early from daycare and went to MIT to meet with my cousin, his wife and their son, who's applying to MIT this fall. They'd gone on the tour, and we chatted about MIT.

Afterwards, I went to the Rocket Team meeting, which I hadn't been to since before Dorothy was born. Everyone at the meeting of course thought she was cute. Elizabeth came by to get a ride home. When Dorothy fussed one time, Elizabeth picked her up and walked her around the room. Apparently there were more ways for Dorothy to kill herself in the rocket team office than she'd ever seen before. :-) Elizabeth showed Dorothy the bandsaw, and the drill press, and all the cool tools and rocket parts. Is there any doubt that she's going to be exposed to this kind of stuff a lot throughout her childhood?

Rolling Over

Dorothy rolled over twice today, all by herself! I had her up in my office, on the activity gym. I was laying down on the floor so she could see me, and I just figured we'd get her some tummy time (I had no expectation of roll-overs). She was looking around, and then it was like she just decided to roll over. She didn't even stretch her head way up and around like last time. She just leaned her head over a bit, and pushed with her foot, and voila! She was on her back.

I congratulated her, and then I put her back on her tummy. And again, within a couple of minutes, she rolled over onto her back, but this time she did it in the opposite direction (i.e., she rolled counter-clockwise the first time, and clockwise the second time).

Of course, a few hours later, down on the activity gym in the living room, she was either unable on uninterested in rolling over again. I helped her roll over that time. But she's definitely starting to get the hang of things.

Baby Breath

The breath of babies (or at least babies over a couple of months old) is another one of those things they never tell you about before you have kids.

To preface: newborns supposedly have this "new baby smell" that's the greatest thing in the world. While Dorothy did smell nice at times, to be honest I never noticed any super-amazing great smell. On the "bad smell" side there is, of course, also the smell of the pee and the poop, but it should be obvious to anyone that you'll be getting those smells with a tiny person who hasn't yet learned to control her evacuation system. But within the last couple of months, I have noticed another smell: her breath. And while Dorothy is the most lovable baby in the world, her breath ain't pretty.

It makes a certain amount of sense, I guess. After all, you don't brush babies' teeth before they have teeth, and you don't give them Listerine to gargle because they might not spit it out. So there's nothing beyond their saliva's own natural defenses to kill bacteria etc. in the mouth. And to aggravate what would, for adults, naturally lead to bad breath (i.e., never washing out their mouths), babies are also well known for vomiting or at least "spitting up" milk, often after it's been half-digested. And guess what digestion does to milk? Curdles it, would be my bet.

So, to sum up: A baby's mouth regularly sees curdled milk going by, and clinging to the walls. And it's never cleaned out with Listerine or toothpaste. So I shouldn't be surprised that at times I notice Dorothy's breath smells bad, qutie like stale milk. I can just hope that things improve somehow before we add the smorgasbord of other smells that will come with solid food.

Rolling Over

I think it was more of an accident than not, but today Dorothy rolled over from tummy to back without any help for the first time. I had her on her tummy on the activity gym up in my office. She tried turning her head to look up at something above and behind her. By doing so, her head weight went far enough to one side that it started pulling her over. (Using the head weight is how babies are able to turn over.) She stopped herself a couple of times, but then fwoom! she was on her back. I clapped and encouraged her, to which she laughed, then I flipped her over to do it again. But this time she wasn't quite looking as far around, so I pushed her head a bit farther and helped her roll over a couple of times. I don't know if she learned anything, but she's definitely got strong neck and back muscles.

A Real Race!

Yeehaw. It looks like there will definitely be a true race to see who wins the Ansari X-Prize. The daVinci Project just announced that their first flight (of two required within a two-week period) will be October 2nd, two days after SpaceShip One's first flight.

Your Weekly Photo Fix

I've just uploaded a new installment of Dorothy pictures for your weekly photo fix. Yes, I'm talking to you, Dorothy-addicts (aka "grandparents")! Don't deny you've got an addiction.

Web Server Stats

I was checking on the state of our web hosting account for contracheck.com. Apparently, someone's been uploading a bunch of photos or something, because we're using more than 300MB out of the 500MB we're allowed for this account. :-) Over the last few months, we've averaged about 60 visits per day, with total bandwidth usage being in the range of 400-600MB transferred per month.

[GI Joe ad voice]And now you know![/voice]

Dorothy Voice Recordings

We've occasionally recorded Dorothy making her new noises with a portable voice recorder. I've converted a few snippets to MP3. Here they are, for your amusement and listening pleasure:

• July 23rd, part 1
  
• July 23rd, part 2
  
• July 23rd, part 3
  
• August 3rd
  
• August 4th
  

Email Out the Wazoo

As of today, I have roughly 186 megabytes of email archived. That's just the text -- it is not counting attachments, etc. Some of this email goes back to 1995 (I had email before then, but wasn't saving it). A few years ago, Nick Papadakis pointed out that hard drives are growing so fast that there's no point in deleting emails, or perhaps even web pages -- you'll always have tons more space to save everything you ever receive in email, so why waste time deleting stuff? If only the computer could do a decent job of indexing things, you'd be set.

I do delete some emails, beyond just the spam. But unless it's completely useless, or a duplicate email, I usually save it. A couple of years ago, I think I had about 50MB of email. Since I started throwing out less and less (and being on more mailing lists), that's now grown to 185MB. I have an extensive set of folders to categorize the emails, although I'd prefer to have them all in a database, so that I could have multiple keywords to index emails by.

Many people clear out their inbox as much as they can. I try, but my inbox currently has over 1,200 messages in it. Many of these are years old, and I simply haven't filed them. But I gauge my "upkeep status" by looking at how old the message at the top of the screen is. For example, in my inbox, there's roughly 40 messages visible before I have to scroll up. If the oldest one (i.e., at the top of the visible area) is at least 3 months old, then I feel like I'm doing pretty well. Sometimes the oldest message is less than a week old, which means I'm letting too much crap accumulate, and need to deal with it.

At the moment, I can see back to mid-June in my inbox. That's not horrible, but not great. My outbox, on the other hand, is looking great -- I can see back to the beginning of April - 4 months old! The oldest message at the very beginning of my inbox, though, is from 1998. Maybe I should post a weekly report on how far back I can see, as a sort of embarrassment method for motivating me to clean out my email more frequently. I'm sure no one else really cares how much email I haven't filed. :-) But if it's posted online, then maybe you'll all bug me about it....

Experimenting With Baby

Yesterday Elizabeth found an interesting article on PubMed about getting babies to sleep longer at night. I should preface the following by pointing out that, while Dorothy is sleeping pretty well for a baby who is 2 or even 4 months old, she hasn't progressed much in the last couple of months. She normally goes to bed around 8pm plus or minus a half hour (ignoring weird days when we're out late), and then sleeps for roughly 4.5 hours, waking up sometime around 1am (again +/- half hour). She'll then sleep until maybe 4am, and then usually again until 6am. (Note that I'm simplifying things a bit, rather than bore you with all the variability in her sleep patterns.) We would, of course, prefer her to sleep for a longer stretch to start with, and then for a single longer stretch through the rest of the night.

So the article Elizabeth found discussed a method for getting young babies (4-8 weeks old) to sleep longer at night (basically, trying to get them up to 5 hours of sleep once per night). The method is simple enough that we figure it should probably work for older babies too.

There are two parts to the method. First, wake up the baby and feed her between 10pm and midnight. Then, when the baby wakes up in the middle of the night (presumably asking for food), you should try to distract her for a while, so as to stretch out the period until she actually eats. So rather than feed at, say, 1am, she would instead wake up at 3am, and you should try to keep her from crying (much) for as long as possible, perhaps 4am. By stretching things out this way, the baby should eventually sleep for longer stretches at a time.

All of which explains why I'm up and posting at 3:30 in the morning. :-) After eating around 10:30pm, Dorothy woke up just after 2:30am. We did the dance and rock thing in the living room for 25+ minutes, during which she was pretty calm. Then I decided to see if she'd stay calm in her bouncy chair up in my office. We've been here for at least 20 minutes; we'll see how long we can last! I just hope we don't teach Dorothy to regularly stay awake for an hour or longer in the middle of the night. :-O

Raspberries

Lately Dorothy has been blowing bubbles sometimes when she drools. But today she learned to blow raspberries. I don't want to encourage the behavior (much), but it's so funny to have her calmly looking at you, and then have her suddenly exclaim "pbbbllthth!" as if she thought poorly of your clothes. :-) Of course, it doesn't help that we blow raspberries on her tummy a lot...

Our Little Comedienne

Dorothy decided to be funny this morning. On the way to daycare, Elizabeth thought she heard a "sploort" sound from Dorothy. So once I got to daycare, I went to change her diaper. There was some poop, but it wasn't too bad. I'd cleaned her up and was just getting ready to put on diaper when she decided to pee.

OK, that's happened before. It's annoying, especially at daycare where they have doctor's-office rolls of paper on the changing pad, instead of a thicker, more absorbent cloth cover. But with some help from one of the daycare teachers, I got the paper out from under Dorothy, some fresh paper installed, and then went and cleaned up Dorothy again. I asked her if she thought she was being cute, by peeing while being changed.

Just as the daycare lady, Laura, was helping change the paper, though, Dorothy peed again. This time she managed to get Laura! Now Dorothy was really trying to be funny. :-P So Laura cleaned up her arms, and we got more fresh paper put down, then tried cleaning up Dorothy. At which point she peed for a third time!

By this point enough had soaked around on the paper each time so that her shirt was pretty wet. So we took that off and gave her an emergency bath in the sink! We put some soap and water in there, dipped Dorothy in, wiped her down, and borrowed a towel from the toddler room across the hall to try her off. Finally, she was clean, dry, and not peeing. I hurriedly slapped a diaper on her, and dressed her in one of the spare "emergency" onesies that we leave at daycare for just such emergencies.

So our Little Miss D was trying to be funny this morning. At least, that's what you'd think given the smiles and giggles she was making. :-)

Sitting Up

Dorothy's been doing better and better at sitting up recently. This morning, I found out why you need to strap kids into bouncy chairs:

Yes, that's Dorothy managing to get herself up into a sitting position and leaning way forward in the seat. If it wasn't for the seatbelt she would have toppled forward right out of the chair. She was certainly having fun leaning forward past the toy bar above her head!

Then later in the afternoon, she stayed sitting up, on the floor, completely unassisted, for at least 10-15 seconds before listing to the side. It may not sound like much, but until today, her record was only 1-3 seconds.

Her First Word?

Dorothy's been talking and babbling quite a bit lately. She now regularly will go on for an hour straight when she wakes up in the morning. Unfortunately, she wakes up by 6am, which means one of us has to get up and take her to a different room so that the other can sleep a bit longer.

But if "word" means "something she says repeatedly" rather than just random sounds, then I'm pretty sure Dorothy's first word is:

"Aaaoaauaaghaaaieeyaaaaaaaieeeeeeeeeaahhh"

(Said in a very high-pitched voice.) I'm going to try to put an MP3 of her sounds up soon. I've been crazy busy lately, and haven't even been able to post as many Dorothy stories as I'd like. But maybe I'll get some more up today during her naps {knock on wood}.