Month: April 2013

Tess was not at 100% this week. It might have been the effects of a lingering cold or the beginnings of a new one. It might have been that we were in Albuquerque for a long time and she missed her routine, her house, and her daddy. Or it might be that she is now beginning the teething thing. She certainly is chomping on things, hard and with vigor, including her pacifier which used to be for sucking. She’s drooling loads and loads, and loads. And she’s cranky much more than normal. Whatever the case, she’s gotten herself on a few crying jags that have lasted far longer than our cheerful Tessa ever has before.

But she did enjoy much of our activities in Albuquerque. Like the aquarium and an extended family picnic. And of course all the grandparent attention. She was also quite a champ in the car. 3 and a half hours could have gone really wrong with a 3-month-old. She slept the entire trip down, and we only had to stop an hour from home for her to eat on the return trip. Pretty darned good, little girl!

We went to the aquarium in Albuquerque a couple days ago. Although Maggie was a little more interested in shooing me through the maze of exhibits (as though the point of the visit was to navigate the dusky hallways) than to gawp at the bright and huge and bizarre fishies, she had a great time. We got to watch a man feed dead fish to a tank of rays and puffers; pet a sting ray once I held Maggie’s hand and touched it with her; jump up and off an oversized starfish; climb up a pier and look for dry land. Her favorite things were predictably all the activities that were exactly that: active. Then Nana and Baba met us for lunch at the restaurant where we watched sharks and giant sea turtles swim around and burrow under rocks.

She looks soooo grown up standing up there doesn’t she?

Okay, so, waking up at 3:30 has become a habit for this little one. And then she’ll go back to sleep with some bouncing and rocking. But it’s not deep, sleeping sleep. It’s squirmy, needy, dozy sleep that doesn’t make good rest for her or me. So when she “wakes up” at 5 to eat, she then wants to nap for a couple hours to make up for those fitful hours. That’s all well and good for her, but then the day has begun for me and I don’t get those couple of hours back. The end result is, we’ve gone back to feeding in the middle of the night. This may not be ideal, but the hope is we’ll get her at least sleeping for most of the time when people should be sleeping, awake during the daytime, and napping kind of the same time of day as Maggie. We’ll see how this experiment goes. I’m also starting to put her arms inside her pajamas (a little baby straight jacket) because she’s getting out of her swaddling and that may be contributing to the wakefulness. Bill points out that I’m changing two variables at once which makes for unreliable results in an experiment. I may not be a good scientist, but I won’t be the walking dead so I don’t care so much about the scientific method right now.

And by the way, Tessa’s eyes are definitely blue. Hair color we’re still unclear about. But Bill says her eyes are identical to mine. One mystery solved.