Corinne

A friend at work got this sleep sack for Corinne. The whole office got a kick out of it (in case you were unaware, pharmacists are great big nerds).  

Sometimes when Corinne is sleeping just before she wakes up she smiles a little before she even opens her eyes. Every once in awhile she gives a quick smile while she is awake but earlier this evening she smiled more than ever. After we finished dinner Cynde picked up the baby and was talking to her when she gave this big smile. We both laughed and then she smiled again and again, probably 10 times in all. These were big showing off her toothless gums smiles. When Cynde passed the baby to me the smiles quickly disappeared. We did get a couple more smiles out of her but only when she craned her neck around to look at Cynde. That’s alright with me though. I think Cynde deserves the smiles more than me for all the hard work she has been doing to take care of the baby. I wish I could have gotten a picture to post here but I didn’t want to miss out on the fun while I ran to get the camera.     

I think I explained in an earlier post that Corinne’s first bath was pretty frantic and she was screaming from start to finish. Since then she has stayed pretty calm while we bathe her and she might even like it a little. That’s not to say that we are busting out rubber duckies and having play time in the bath but at least she doesn’t scream while we get her all cleaned up. I checked with Corinne to make sure it was OK to post this picture on the world wide web and she didn’t voice any complaints. I have a feeling she might change her mind in the future though.

Today Corinne had another check up at the doctor’s office. At last weeks check up her weight was 7lbs. 5oz., just 1 ounce more than when she was born. Today she was 7lbs. 15oz. so she gained 10 ounces in the last week. They expect that she would gain about an ounce a day so over the last week she not only met her goal she actually caught up a bit. We were both pretty relieved to see that she gained some weight. Next, up potty training!! (maybe not quite)

I’ll be honest. This photo wasn’t taken on Valentines Day. It’s not that she didn’t wear this outfit on V-Day as it was intended. But before I was able to take any pictures she had a little “accident “. I know a lot of space on this blog has been dedicated to pee and poo so I won’t go into detail. I realized while I was writing a note in Cynde’s V-day card that this our 15^th Valentines Day together. It’s kind of crazy to think that if we decided  to have a baby the first year we were together that now we would have a teenager in high school instead of a baby. I’m pretty happy that it turned out the way it did.

Today is Corinne’s one month old birthday.  I’ll give a little recap since it has been a week since my last post. After her cord fell off Corinne got her first bath. There isn’t any pictures or video of this event since it was so hectic and there was lots of screaming. Since then she had one bath where she didn’t cry and she actually seemed to enjoy it for a minute or two. We noticed this week that she is losing some of her hair and also has a little bit of cradle cap and quite a bit of baby acne. I did some reading on the hair loss and the baby acne and it turns out that both of these are related to hormone levels and commonly start between 3 and 4 weeks old. I know all that probably doesn’t sound all that appealing but she is still the cutest baby in the world. We have had to go to the doctor’s office weekly since she hasn’t had the expected weight gain. We took it upon ourselves to supplement the breast feeding with some formula again the last few days to see if that helps her gain some weight but I am guessing the doctor might not agree with this decision. She needs to be burped more with the formula and sometimes I am convinced that she fakes a burp so that I will start feeding her again. Her sleep cycle has changed a little and one night this past week she actually slept for almost 6 hours which sounds like a good thing except we are supposed to feed her every 2 hours around the clock. Usually there would be no need to set an alarm clock or anything since she pretty much serves as an alarm, a really loud screaming alarm. It seems like she has been awake a lot more the last few days and less fussy when she is awake which is nice. There is still something new each day but it’s going by so fast. This is a picture of Corinne chillin out on her comforter.

Those first few days after Corinne was born whenever she got fussy (which actually wasn’t all that often) I would just pick her up and sing a little song. I would just make up a little tune off the top of my head, usually based on the situation at hand. Some examples of these early hits are “Daddy’s Gonna Change Your Diaper” and “Oh (Oh) Snap (Snap) Baby Took a Crap”. I had new material every single day for a while but lately I’ve had writers block. In the absence of any new material sometimes late at night I hum Christmas carols and yesterday I started humming the chicken dance song. The chicken dance worked better than anything else I have tried so I’ve been using that a lot. I even sorta dance along now too. Some people have advised that you should just do whatever works during these first few weeks but I doubt that’s what they had in mind.

Our baby makes a variety of sounds. I think most of them are pretty run of the mill baby sounds but every so often she makes some rather distinct animal noises. She oinks, chirps, meows, whimpers like a puppy, makes whatever you call the shrieking noises that dolphins make, she makes little mousie noises, and she makes baby dinosaur sounds or at least the sounds that movies and cartoons would have us believe baby dinosaurs make. Maybe she will be some kind of mouse whisperer or a dolphin trainer when she grows up. She won’t even need that high pitched whistle they use. It actually kind of looks like Corinne is whistling in this picture but that is one sound she hasn’t learned to make yet.