Not In Kansas Anymore (NIKA)

And a Time To Be Sick

Dorothy, Elizabeth and I all have colds this week. Apparently it must be a rule that it happens around week 29, because the same thing happened to Trixie and her parents when Trixie was the same age as Dorothy is now.

We're all coughing and have scratchy throats, as well as runny noses. I don't know how Dorothy's feeling mentally (she sure seems to be very happy and unconcerned about the cold), but I'm feeling all cotton-headed.

There are, however, a couple of positives to our having colds:

• My voice drops in pitch, meaning I can sing those bass lines in songs
  
• Dorothy sleeps longer. She's been going 7-8 hours from her bedtime feeding until a middle-of-the-night feeding, barely waking up throughout that time and going right back to sleep if we give her a pacifier.
  

Slaphappy

The other night, I tried to demonstrate to Dorothy how to crawl. When I get a chance, I'm going to upload some of the video I took of her reaction, which was extreme laughter. It was perhaps the biggest giggling I've ever seen her do.

Dorothy was overtired, and I thought she might just be punchy, because I didn't think simple crawling (even if it was exaggerated) could deserve that big of a reaction. Daddy Types also seems to think that getting them overtired is the best way to get your children to laugh uncontrollably.

SpaceShipOne: 1st of 2

I just watched the launch and return of SpaceShip One. It looks like things went relatively well, perhaps a bit of roll that they didn't want. But while watching the ascent, I noticed the "Virgin" logo on the rocket. Sounds like Sir Richard Branson has not only signed a deal to license the technology in order to build their own fleet of space tourist vehicles, but must have also added some sponsorship to the current work.

In any case, it's a very exciting day. Hopefully their second launch goes just as well, and we can start building a real space tourism industry.

Must...Not...Cough...

Elizabeth came down with a cold late last week (about the same time she banged her knee), then passed it on to Dorothy. Which was OK, because all the other kids at daycare have a cold too. But then they passed it on to me. Today I've been getting a bit of a scratchy throat and runny nose.

So this afternoon, when I was trying desperately to get Dorothy to go to sleep, I tried not making any noise when it looked like she'd closed her eyes while in the crib. But of course, my throat started to get scratchy. Itch... Itch... "Mustn't clear throat" I thought, trying to stay quiet.

Dorothy refused to sleep and promtply opened her eyes and cried, which freed me to let the dam burst and cough up a storm.

Push-ups and Pushovers

There's a new batch of photos online. Dorothy gets tortured by her Grandma Chris, and eats lots of solids, and in general acts cute, if you can believe it.

Standing Up

Dorothy has been able to stand with assistance for a very long time. And if you let her grab your fingers and held them above her and pulled a bit, she's even been able to pull herself to a standing position for a while - since before she was 4 months old, I think. Today she achieved the next milestone.

Dorothy's latest trick is to stand up almost entirely on her own. Earlier today I was on the bed with her sitting in front of me. Because our waterbed has a pillow top, it's very soft and pliable, so she can sink her feet into it. Because my weight was close to hers, she was tilted a bit forward towards me. I had my hands sort of lightly around her torso. She scrunched her feet almost under her, leaned forward a bit more, and then using only a little light pressure on my hands, she pushed herself to a standing position! It was very impressive to see.

Now if we could just convince her to get interested in crawling before she starts to walk...

Caesareans Must Be Easy

Today Elizabeth tripped at work and landed hard on her knee. She went to the doctor and got an X-ray. They said nothing was broken, but she was getting a very large bump and bruise on her knee, so they gave her a prescription for a heavy dose of Ibuprofen and told her to go home and rest the leg.

The crazy thing is that the dose of Ibuprofen they wrote for her today was 800mg/pill. After her Caesarean section where Dorothy was born, they gave Elizabeth a 600mg/pill Ibuprofen prescription.

Yes, that's right. Falling and hitting your knee qualifies for more pain medication than major abdominal surgery. Makes you wonder if all these women have been exaggerating the whole birth pain thing, huh?

KIDDING!! I'm kidding! Please don't hurt me!

Baby Conspiracy

One of the other girls in Dorothy's daycare class, Sarah, is about a month younger than Dorothy. This morning they were both sitting on the floor at daycare, facing each other and having fun. Then Dorothy leaned down and started pulling Sarah's sock off! It's bad enough that we parents have a hard time getting our babies to keep their own socks on - now the babies are conspiring to help each other get their socks off!

New Car Seat

Uh-oh - we haven't posted to the blog since the weekend! Life and work seem to take so much time, that blogging gets forgotten.

Here's one piece of news: Dorothy has a new carseat! She was getting pretty scrunched in the old one, plus she was approaching the height limits, so we got a convertible (i.e., it can start as rear-facing then switch to forward-facing) carseat for her. It's nicely padded, as you can see in this image from the manufacturer:

We should have pictures of her in it posted in the next batch of photos.

Proof That She Likes Solids

The latest batch of photos has proof that Dorothy likes eating solids. She looks like a little baby bird, trying to get more peas. Plus she gets to play with grandparents, and more!

The Good & Bad of Baby Clothes

The Bad Thing about baby clothes is that they're used so little. Dorothy barely gets a chance to wear the same outfit three times before it seems she's outgrown it.

The Good Thing about baby clothes is that they're used so little. Once Dorothy has pooped on an outfit or gotten pureed peas on a bib, it's sometimes not quite the same after going through the wash. But even if an item gets a bit of a stain, she won't be wearing it too many more times.

The Greatest Sound in the World

Many times over the last few weeks, I've had the opportunity to hear the most wonderful sound in the world. I haven't yet had the presence of mind to go get the voice recorder in order to capture it, but I hope to do so soon.

This most wonderful sound could brighten the day of anyone, even the grumpiest sourpuss. It is the sound of Dorothy laughing. When we're playing, and I (for example) rub the top of my head on her tummy, she gets this ultra-excited giggle that, to a totally objective observer, might not seem like much. But you can feel the pure joy she's experiencing, just by hearing her laugh.

If only I could bottle that sound and sell it, we wouldn't have to worry about paying for her college. The only concerns would be what to do with all the addicts, who can't survive without their next hit of Dorothy Laughs...

I Want It!!! Zero-Gravity Ride

According to a story on space.com, the Zero Gravity corporation has been given FAA approval to perform zero-g flights for the general public. For about $3,000, you can take a series of parabolic flights to simulate Martian (1/3), Lunar (1/6) and then zero (0/1) gravity.

I want. A LOT! :-)

I know what is going on my birthday list and Xmas list. For the next 5 years...

The onset of mobility

Dorothy cannot crawl, or even "creep" (also known as "commando crawling") yet. But she's discovering a way to move herself around, albeit very slowly. If she sits up and bounces up and down, she can gradually scootch her butt forward across the floor. She probably takes 5-10 minutes to progress a foot, but hey, it's still progress. So far, this newfound mobility just means that she can move away from the pillow sitting behind her, so that when she loses her balance and topples over, she bonks her head. :-( But hopefully there are better things soon to come!

6-month check-up

Dorothy had her six-month check-up today. The doctor seemed to think Dorothy is doing just fine. She's been taking some of the developmental milestones a bit out of order (e.g., sitting up unassisted before rolling over), but it's not a problem. She reiterated the need for consistency in bedtime and putting Dorothy to bed before she's asleep to help us get her to stay asleep through the night.

In the "Department of Vital Statistics" Dorothy's weight was 17lbs 15.3oz, and her height was 26 inches, both of which are pretty good.

Today's exam was another one where Dorothy got four shots, which of course did not make her happy. But she recovered well, and we went shopping at Costco afterwards.

She now gets a three months' break (instead of two) until her next exam & shots. What a merry Christmas gift that will be....

Update: Oh, and her head circumference was 44cm, I believe. I forgot to add that in earlier.
Correction (9/15): Head circumference was 44.5cm.

Sitting at the Restaurant

I forgot to post this picture last week. Friday September 3rd, after picking up Dorothy from daycare and Elizabeth from the train, we decided to go to Conrad's restaurant for dinner. We let Dorothy sit in the 'big kids' high chair, even though it was way bigger than her. I only had my cellphone camera with me, and it was dark in there, but you can probably make out what she looked like:

Yes, she looked cute. But she got tired after 10 minutes or so. In fact, she got cranky before we finished our meals, so we had to leave early. But we still enjoyed the evening.

Pushing More Pixels

We have some more photos up. This batch includes Dorothy's new office chair, Rhodium getting a bath, and Dorothy being cute (becuase we all know how rare that is).

Married Minds Think Alike

Elizabeth and I did not intend to create identical posts about Dorothy eating green beans. But our minds, separated by untold distance (well, OK, it's probably 10 or 15 miles), must have been connected by that psychic marital network, because we both posted about the same event at practically the same time. Or maybe it's just the laws of probability doing their thing. In any case, you get a lot more detail when we independently post about the same event.

This is so much nicer

Dorothy got her second "solid" food last night - pureed green beans. We thought it was going to be a disaster, since she started crying as soon as I strapped her into the high chair, while Tom was heating her food. Since she was so unhappy, we decided to feed her sitting in my lap, instead of in the chair (I was wearing my grungy clothes anyway).

She didn't want to let the spoon in her mouth for the first bite or two, but then she really seemed to get the hang of it. She started opening her mouth as the spoon came near, and actually gobbling down the veggies without spitting much out at all. She did get a moderate amount on her and my hands at one point when she grabbed the spoon, but then she licked it pretty much all off my hands and then hers (and she didn't get any on my clothes, and not too much on her bib, either). We only fed her 1/3 of a jar, but she ate it all, and probably would have taken more if we'd offered it.

We don't know whether green beans taste better than carrots, or she feels safer in my lap and more willing to try new things, or whether she's just a week older and more mature (doesn't sound like much, but a week is 4% of her life!). Or maybe she was just in a better mood. We'll try again tonight, and maybe change one or two of the variables, just to see how she responds.

Success at Noreascon

My talk at Noreascon on the space elevator went very well. The room had seating for perhaps 50 people. The seats were filled, and people were sitting in the aisles, lining the walls, and crowding around the doorway. I only had 55 minutes for the talk, but I got lots of great questions. People are really excited about the possibility of building a space elevator because they realize the importance of developing a human presence off the planet Earth, and the space elevator is the most promising way to do it.

After the talk, I spent a couple of hours out in the hall talking with some of the people who'd been at the presentation. This meant I had to miss seeing Terry Pratchett's talk, but it was certainly worth it. I'm glad I got to spend the time with everyone.

And yes, as far as I can tell, I was the only person wearing a suit at the entire convention.

Open Again for Business

After giving Dorothy carrots for 3 days last week, we took a hiatus from solids again, since she wasn't very interested in them. Last night, we decided to try again, this time with green beans. I don't know if it was the different flavor, or the fact that a week had passed, or simply having Elizabeth hold Dorothy in her lap rather than putting her in the high chair, but we had success! The first few spoonfuls met with a closed mouth and lack of interest, but Dorothy didn't spit any of it out (which isn't to say that it was completely mess free, however). She eventually started opening her mouth when she saw me bringing in the next spoon-load of green beans. We were so excited (and relieved!) to have her be a willing participant in the solid-food experience, rather than having to cram them into her mouth. Who knows if things will go on this way? We'll find out tonight!

Uh oh....

I overheard this comment in an elevator on Friday: "If you think a wife is expensive, just wait until you have a daughter."

Sleep is for the weak

My mother estimates that my brother slept about half as much as I did when we were children. I still have trouble if I don't get 8-9 hours a night. Unfortunately, I think Dorothy takes after Jeff, not me.

Dorothy started off pretty well on the sleep front. By ten weeks or so, she was reliably getting one five-hour stretch in every night, which is pretty long for a baby that age. (In fact, an uninterrupted five-hour stretch is the medical definition of "sleeping through the night" for a baby). But she pretty much hasn't stretched it out any longer than that, even now. She's had one or two nights where she slept for six or more hours, but it's usually five or less. The problem is, since she's been going to bed around 8:00 or so, and we are often up two or three hours later than that, we don't really get to enjoy the long stretch of sleep.

We started trying to change that using a technique that had been recommended to us by a couple of people. We'd wake her up around 11:00 to feed, and then not feed her until 5:00 AM. The theory is that after a few nights of adjustment, babies will get used to having their long stretch around midnight to five, so the adults can get some quality sleep then.

Dorothy adapted pretty quickly to going six hours without eating. She complained a bit, but certainly wasn't inconsolable. However, she didn't want to make the next step of actually sleeping during all that time. Since I need to go to work in the mornings and Tom at least has the option of taking a nap, he does most of the nighttime parenting, except for feedings (I've learned how to feed her lying down, so I can at least doze or sometimes even go all the way to sleep). We (he) stuck it out for a couple of weeks, but she just didn't want to sleep at night any more - she wanted to play, and if there was no one to play with her, she wanted to scream. What's worse, her regular bedtime became kind of unpredictable, and I started sleeping less because it didn't seem worth it to go to bed at 10, just to get up at 11 to feed the baby, so I would just stay up until 11.

We've more or less abandoned the not-letting-her-eat-until-5, and she's slowly readjusting. The last night or two, I've gotten up to feed her twice, but she's otherwise slept pretty well. But last week, she woke up every night sometime between 2:30 and 3:30 demanding play. She wasn't fussy; she just wanted to make loud happy noises. I slept on the couch a couple of nights, since I wake up to her sounds very easily when we're in the same room. Poor Tom was so exhausted I don't know how he made it through the days.

It doesn't help that she doesn't take the two or three long naps that babies her age are supposed to take during the day, either. Instead, she's been sleeping in 30-minute catnaps every couple of hours. It used to be that you could set your watch by her - at 31 minutes, her eyes would fly open and she'd be totally awake. In the last few days, now that she can roll over reliably, we've started putting her down to sleep on her side or her tummy, and she sometimes sleeps a little longer that way. But she rarely naps for as much as an hour at a time, even then.

The one way that she will sometimes sleep for longer is if she sleeps with me. In fact, she'll often sleep for two hours or more if I lie down with her. But I don't sleep well when I'm holding her. Since we're in a waterbed, I feel nervous about her not being able to lift her head enough to breathe if she rolls onto her tummy. So I hold her with her head pillowed on my shoulder. This is comfortable for the first hour or so, but then I start dying to roll over. By the time she wakes up, I have stiff aching muscles from staying in the same position for so long, and I don't feel a bit rested.

So we still don't really have a solution for sleep yet. In our tracking of her sleep patterns, we estimate that Dorothy sleeps a total of about 11-12 hours out of 24, which is somewhat less than average for a baby of her age, but not totally out of the ballpark. But we just don't know how to get her to sleep in a way that lets us get enough sleep, too.

Bath Day!

We had an exciting morning today. Every creature who was not able to physically soap and wash themselves had it done to them! It had been quite some time since the cats' last bath - nearly 6 weeks. Normally we try to give them a bath every 2-3 weeks, to keep them in the habit. The noises they make when we're taking them to the sink are so pathetic. Rhodium in particular is like a slippery snake in her attempts to escape. But I'm a pretty good cat wrangler/wrestler, and she has never escaped. Doesn't stop her from trying.

Dorothy usually falls asleep so early in the evening on weekdays, that we haven't been giving her a mid-week bath, even though we'd like to. Which means she was scheduled for one this weekend. She had an explosive poop (after nothing yesterday) while we were having breakfast, so we accelerated her bathing schedule, putting her on the "immediate" list. I do have to say that, although she does kick and squirm in the bath, she's much easier to bathe than the cats.

Catching Up On Events

The last couple of weeks have been horribly busy and tiring, and I haven't been able to post blog updates nearly as often or in as much detail as I would prefer. I'm throwing a bunch of items into this update, and then hopefully get back onto a reasonable schedule from here on out.

Last week was pretty difficult for us, because Dorothy was often waking up at 3am, all ready to play for a couple of hours. Unfortunately, Mommy and Daddy weren't in the same mood. I think I just convinced Elizabeth to write an entry about the whole sleep thing, though, so I'm going to skip those details for now. Look for details from Elizabeth tomorrow.

Monday, September 6th was Dorothy's six-month birthday! She's been around for six whole months. Time has flown by and dragged by, all at the same time. It's amazing to think of how big she is, compared to when she was born. At birth, she was just under 8 pounds. Now, she's probably 18 pounds (we'll find out next Tuesday at her six-month check-up), so she's easily doubled her birth weight, and then some.

What else has she been doing? She can now sit up for extended periods of time, at least 10 or 15 minutes before some random wobble will go a bit too far and she'll topple over. She strongly prefers sitting up, most of the time, to laying down. If you lay her down, she'll often fuss until you sit her back up. And she likes standing even more. She's been able to pull herself up to a standing position for over a month now, probably more, if she can grab your fingers. Recently she's learned where your fingers need to be for standing (versus for sitting), and if you're not letting her stand up, she'll push your fingers away to where they should be for helping her stand.

Dorothy can get stuff to, and often in, her mouth (more on that below). Drooling has also become a major pastime. The little goofball will smile and flirt with everyone who gives her half a smile. And literally the first thing just about anyone comments on when they meet her for the first time is her big, beautiful blue eyes. She's also been expanding her repertoire of sounds, most recently to include the Death Rattle (an inhalation noise that sounds as if you're gasping for air). And of course she's been teething. The two bottom teeth that appeared a while back have slowly been working their way up. To be fair, for the most part Dorothy hasn't seemed too upset by the whole thing. But occasionally, she'll get extremely fussy, practically inconsolable. Then we need to break out the Tylenol or Orajel. The first real big fussing time took us a couple of hours to realize it was probably teething. The episode was frustrating because she would calm down and appear to fall asleep in my arms if I held her a certain way, but if I moved towards the crib to lie her down, or even shifted her position much, she'd erupt into screams. Luckily, that situation hasn't occurred often.

On the topic of grabbing things is the matter of object translation. Once she could grasp objects, Dorothy was able to take them and bring them to her mouth, if they were directly in her hand. She couldn't quite understand that if objects have any great length to them, instead of bringing her fist to her mouth, she'd have to bring her fist nearby her mouth, offset (translated, in geometry-speak) by the length of the object, in order to get the interesting end of the object into her mouth. She now seems to have the translation concept mostly figured out, but rotation is the part that still needs to get worked on. She doesn't yet seem to understand the orientation of objects and how to fit them into her mouth properly. I was watching her try to get a figure-eight shaped teether into her mouth sideways, instead of end on. Her mouth is pretty big, but it wasn't quite big enough to fit the teether in. And she'll pick up cardboard baby books or similar objects, and bring the wide, flat part to her open mouth, and try to fit it in, but it never does...

Carrots

Dorothy has now had her first "real" food - that is, a pureed version of something that an adult would eat (unlike the rice cereal, which is appealing only to silverfish - it tastes like library paste).

She's had carrots at dinnertime for two nights now. We probably managed to get a teaspoon or two of it into her each night, which is actually pretty good for a first baby food. That's in addition to the couple of teaspoons that decorated her face, hands, and bib each time.

She doesn't absolutely hate the carrots, but she doesn't like them much, either. It takes progressively more and more antics from Mommy and Daddy to make her open her mouth for another bite. She discovered pretty early on that we couldn't stuff a spoon in her mouth if she pursed her lips, but she couldn't help smiling a big open smile if we made enough faces and silly noises. Eventually she had to refuse to look at us to avoid having to grin and let us poke another spoonful into her mouth.

We stopped feeding her before she got really upset, since we don't want her to associate food with stress and unhappiness. I think it will take a little while before she really likes the solid food, but she's not too unhappy so far. Of course, we haven't seen a carroty diaper yet, which might dim Mommy's and Daddy's enthusiam for the whole project. ;-)

War Photography

The latest batch of photos is now up. Go and see the horrors of war. Or at least the horrors of feeding baby food carrots to Dorothy, among other things...

Me vs. My Favorite Author?!?

I probably forgot to mention it here, but tomorrow morning I'll be giving a talk about the space elevator at Noreascon Four, the 62nd World Science Fiction Convention. If you're going to be there, come see me at 10am in the Hynes Convention Center!

I was just browsing the final schedule, and noticed, to my horror, that I'll be speaking at the same time as Terry Pratchett, who is perhaps my favorite author. Luckily, though, his 10am talk is aimed at kids, and in fact people aren't allowed in without a child in tow. So at least I'll have a change at getting the childless adults at my talk...

August 31st, A Day of Events

It seems like Dorothy did a whole bunch of stuff yesterday. Rolling over, feeding herself, sleeping on her tummy, and staying up all night - it was quite a day!

In the morning, I gave her some tummy time and tried to get her to learn to roll over. She'd done it twice in five minutes a couple of weeks ago, and then not at all (at least not without major assistance) since then. Yesterday morning changed all that. She rolled from her tummy to her back (with her left side going up and over) at least 8 or 10 times, half of which were without any assistance at all (the other times I put my hand by her foot so she could push off more easily)! She showed her new "trick" to her Mommy last night and to the ladies at day care this morning.

In the evening, when I was giving her a bottle, she tried grabbing the bottle. I placed her hands around the bottle, and she was able to hold it up all by herself (previously, when trying to hold the bottle, she'd push it sideways out of her mouth). She in fact held it for practically the entire feeding (5 ounces). It was only the very end where I had to help hold it, to ensure she got every last drop.

Since she'd been so successful rolling over earlier in the day, and could in fact support her front weight on her hands (i.e., not her elbows - her arms were straight), I decided to try getting her to nap on her tummy. My mom had given her two naps in one day on her tummy back at the end of July (and I just realized that I never wrote that event up). She slept for 1.5 and 2 hours each time that day, which was very impressive, given that Dorothy normally sleeps for 30 minutes per nap. Unfortunately, that night she woke up at 3am and didn't want to sleep. We weren't sure if it was the long naps or other stuff going on at that time that caused her to be so awake at 3am. Anyway, I decided to try again. The first time I got her to sleep on her side, and she went for 50 minutes. Pretty good. For the next nap, I got her onto her tummy, and she slept for one hour and 20 minutes! Great!

Not so fast. I don't know if it's connected or not, but Dorothy proceeded to wake up just before 3:30am. I'd been working late, and didn't get to bed until almost 2am, plus I was 'on duty.' Dorothy wasn't upset at all. She was just very awake, and wanting to play. Giving her a pacifier didn't help her to stay quiet (we don't care in theory if she's awake, as long as she lets us sleep; unfortunately, a babbling baby is hard to sleep through). So I eventually got up (4:30?) and took her upstairs. She proceeded to enjoy sitting up and playing until 5:45am, the little twit. ;-)

The average amount of sleep she's been getting has been averaging around 12 hours per day, plus or minus an hour. One of the baby sleep books we have suggests that babies her age average 14-15 hours of sleep per day, with 2-3 daytime naps of 1-2 hours. So she's not at all "average." But she's been relatively consistent, and seems happy, so we're not stressing too much about her not getting enough sleep (the only stress we have is from the ways her "under"-sleeping causes us to suffer from lack of sleep).