Category Archives: Pictures

month eight

03.01.10

Dear Brooklynn,

Today, I am almost positive that you are eight months old. In case you aren’t quite familiar with February quite yet, it’s over in a scant four weeks which adds up to 28 days. You were born on June 29th, so I’m not quite sure how that works out for keeping track of age. Luckily, by the time you’re out of diapers, people don’t care so much about months as they do years, so this will be a short-lived problem.

Looking back, I realize that it has been over a month since you’ve been out of the hospital. Life didn’t get back to normal quite that fast – we had oxygen tanks and a large noisy machine that made pure oxygen an at-home pulse-oximeter. We had infant canulas and baby-sized LED O2 monitors. And then you finally got over the hump and quit it all. Back to normal, or whatever passes for normal these days.

Normal these days involves much standing, standing on laps, on the floor, next to futons and the bath tub, pretty much anywhere you can get your feet under you. You’re not fully stable and need something or someone to hold onto. Humans (mostly your mom and me) do a pretty good job at keeping you upright, but it’s hard to take pictures and hold you at the same time, so we resort to propping you against various items. The couch is a little high, the exersaucer a little wobbly, and the tub is a little cold, but crib rails and futons are just right.

Seeing as how you are standing and might actually be headed toward walking and running sometime in the next year or so, perhaps it’s time to consider, oh, rolling over? We can count on one hand the number of times you have officially rolled over from your back to your stomach completely by yourself on one hand. And the number of times you have successfully followed that with a roll from stomach to back didn’t take you right back where you started? Well, it’s a whole number that’s less than one.

(I’ll wait until you know enough math to figure that one out. Hint: it isn’t negative.)

I like to joke that in a half year, you will be able to run around but only if someone actually sets you on your feet and if you fall down on your back you will be immobile like and overturned turtle. It would be funnier if sometimes I didn’t worry it was going to be true.

Honestly, we do have hope for you future mobility. A week ago, after one of those rare back-to-front rollovers, you managed to push yourself backwards all the way across the living room in a no-leg reverse crawl sort of motion. You stopped when your legs got wedged under the TV stand and you looked pretty concerned at what was happening the entire time, but that was the farthest you have moved on your own up to this point.

While we may have concerns about your lack of self-powered movement (and at the same time, we admit it is still nice to have a house that doesn’t require baby proofing), we don’t worry about your vocal development. You babble, squawk, screech, smack and scream with stunning regularity. We don’t have a clue as to what you are telling us, but the communication is definitely coming along. The latest addition to your repertoire has been blowing raspberries and buzzing your lips together. It’s very attractive and I’m sure you’ll get good use out of that life skill if you become a tuba player or something like that.

Our house is slowly falling toward controlled chaos with the toys that we go through every day keeping you entertained. There are times when a colored plastic ring will keep you entertained for an hour and others that flashing lights and music can’t hold your interest for more than a few seconds. I’m beginning to suspect that the more a toy costs and the more batteries it uses, the shorter it will actually entertain a baby. Currently, some of the best toys you have are plastic tupperware bowls and an empty two-liter pop bottle. Every time we hand that bottle to you, you squeal with delight and look at it as if to say “This huge thing is just for me? Awesome!”

In short, you are a noisy, opinionated, demanding two foot four inch, 21 pound ball of personality. And we wouldn’t change a thing about you. (Although, if you wanted to sleep the entire night in your own bed with any consistency, we won’t complain.)

Love,
Dad

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keeping clean

02.23.10

You may think that having something like this in the house is a product of being parents and buying fun things for the baby, but you would be mistaken.

We ran out of hand soap in our guest bathroom and moved the bottle that was next to my sink in the bathroom, leaving me soapless. Last weekend, while standing in next to the shelves of soap in Target, Rhiannon asked me what kind I wanted.

Now, there are way too many options, but I knew that I didn’t want anything with fish or flowers or anything. Something simple, modern, and understated would do nicely.

And then I saw the SpongeBob bottle. Decision making process over.

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can you tell what’s different?

02.18.10

Something is different about Brooklynn in this picture.

If you said she doesn’t have a canula on, award yourself 50 bonus points. The doctor gave the go ahead to take her off completely yesterday. She’s only been on oxygen when she sleeps for the last couple weeks, but is was easier to leave the canula on the whole time.

Now, looking at her, it really looks like something is missing, like when you see a person who wears glasses all the time on the first day they get contacts. It just isn’t right.

I was joking with Rhiannon that we’ve upgraded Brooklynn models to the one with better lungs and she asked if this version comes with a fixed sleep function. I’m not going to hold my breath about that one, although maybe if the problem persists, we can get a recall of some sort to address it.

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make yourself at home

02.09.10

Brooklynn is really comfortable hanging out around the house without clothes on.

In fact, I’m pretty sure it’s her favorite part of the day, just ahead of eating semi-solid food. Unfortunately, we can’t let her do this all the time since she still requires a diaper to prevent unfortunate incidents.

And yes, about a minute after these photos, she peed on the rug. At least it wasn’t all over me like the last time. Anyone want to use our guest room?

(Yes, we did wash the rug.)

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month seven

02.01.10

Dear Brooklynn,

You are now officially seven months old. Yes, your parents, who have at times struggled to keep house plants alive, have managed to care for you for more than half of a year. Honestly, I’m kind of shocked as well.

Some months I outline what I want to write to you because everything just flowed together and I need to brainstorm what I want to remember. We talk to other parents of small babies a few months younger than you and a comment of theirs will jar our own memories. We think, “Oh, remember when Brooklynn did that? I must have completely blocked it out of my memory until just now.”

This is not one of those months. No, this past month will always be remembered as the one that you spent eight days in the hospital.

I’m sure by the time you read this and actually understand how long eight days is, it will be more of a “Oh, a little over a week, ok…” reaction. I want to give you some reference to what eight days means to you right now.

At the time you checked in to the hospital, you were 206 days old. When you left, you were 214 days old. Yep, do the math: 206 + 8 = 214. When we left, that made up a little over 3.7% of your life.

That sounds small, right? 3.7%. Insignificant. Consider that when we left the hospital, I was 10,243 days old. that 3.7% of my life is about a year. And as hard as you may find it to believe some day, there was a time in your life when your dad wasn’t old and completely uncool. 3.7% of a life is no small amount.

You spent two days at the hospital when you were born. Brand spanking new and hot off the presses. I think 10 days in the hospital should be enough for anyone for at least a few years, so let’s try to stay home as much as possible from now on, ok?

This was the worst year for RSV in several years. The day we came home from the hospital, the local news was outside the doors we just left reporting on how serious the whole situation was.

We were never really worried about your long-term well being. Even as we sat for three hours in the emergency room, we were confident you were going to be ok. We just didn’t know that it would take quite so long to leave again.

You came home with four more stuffed animals than you left with, and after figuring out what this will cost us in medical bills, I want you to know that those had better be the four best stuffed animals ever created.

Now, I’ve made it seem that 8 days is the equivalent of forever in your life. Actually, it still left 3 weeks of healthy time. I’m sorry; I failed to mention the double ear infection you developed during the beginning of the month.

Well, I think you probably had about 4.5 hours of being completely healthy and awake somewhere in there. We just expect to you have one heck of an immune system when you get older, ok?

Believe it or not, there were actually events in your life that did not revolve around illness.

Around Christmas, you started to sit up on your own but still seemed prone to spontaneous toppling if you stopped actually thinking about sitting up.

Now, sitting up is what you do. You sit up on the floor, on the couch, on our laps, in your crib. Why lay down when you could sit up and reach for things with your hands.

The bath tub still has you a little stumped because objects just seem to float away as you try to grab them. Don’t worry about it, thought; you’ve only gone face first into the water one time trying to reach forward too far, and we got you out quick enough you almost didn’t cry about it.

With all that sitting, it was only natural that you started to sit with us at the table while we eat our meals. Your mother and I finally got with it and ordered a high chair for you.

And if you have a high chair for a baby, that must mean it is time to eat some food. You’ve really taken to it, although the more excited you get about eating, the worse you are. We mostly just worry about you lunging forward and impaling yourself on the spoon while trying to get to the FOOD! Give me FOOD! You will tolerate plain rice cereal and veggies, but fruit is your favorite. The first time we gave you peaches, you took a bite, stopped to taste, smiled, and did your best to stick your hand into the bowl because, hey, hurry up already, that stuff is good.

With all the sitting and hospital staying, you seem to have forgotten how to roll over (not that you have ever rolled from your back to your front anyway). According to the milestone charts you might be passing things back and forth between your hands (um, you did this over a month ago) and rolling all over (nope, not yet). I guess you are just bound and determined to do everything at your own pace, which is fine by us.