J-Baby’s Neighborhood

Well, with some very helpful advice from our pediatrician, and a multi-fronted, concerted effort by Getalife and myself, it looks like we've been able to take a significant edge off the colic. Here's what we've done so far:

so. Wow. This is Colic. It's one of those things you hope is just an urban myth. Then it moves in with your new baby, and wow, is it real. Our little lady currently has two modes: asleep and pissed. When she's asleep, all is well. When she is awake, she's crying almost all of the time. I'm trying to time her feedings to be at least 2.5-3 hours apart, so that I'm only feeding her when she's actually hungry, and not when she just needs to be pacified. When I overfeed her, predictably, it comes back up on my shoulder. The only time she sleeps for extended periods is when she is strapped to me in the most excellent sling my brother gave me (un porte-bebe de Maman Kangourou), at which time she can log three of four hours of sleep. Otherwise, she pretty much refuses to sleep in any sustained way. I saw the pediatrician earlier this week for a scheduled check-up, and she gave me some very helpful advice, which I had not heard anywhere else. Unlike all the books and devices that promise to help you get rid of colic (not that I've been reading, I've digressed to a pre-literate stage) she basically said that colic happens, and the best we can do is try to get her awake, and getting all her colicky needs to cry and scream met while I don't mind being awake, and then hopefully she will sleep during the night (not through the night, just during the night). We had had a few bad nights where she was up crying and inconsolable from 3am onward. One night I finally just strapped her into the sling and slept sitting up on the couch. She did sleep for three hours then, but the doctor and I agree this was both unsustainable and dangerous. We came up with a plan to shift this awake time to the day time, with the use of gentle means of keeping her awake, such as giving her a bath. The most difficult part of any plan, of course, is carrying it through, and I find myself letting her sleep just for the peace and quiet. I'm going to let her sleep another half an hour, and then wake her for a feed, and then give her a bath if she doesn't stay awake, and then let her do her crying and screaming while I indulge in some mindless TV. 

Well, just because I haven't posted any knitting projects, doesn't mean I haven't been knitting. Here are a few projects I've completed lately (as in the last few months)

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How I woke up this morning:

ReRe told me yesterday that if the baby doesn't know how to dance, then we'll have to dance and just pick her up and show her how. I asked him if that was how he had learned how to dance, and he said, no, he just knows how to dance. Duh. 

Hey, remember back in June when I said I couldn't stop listening to K'naan's new CD, Troubadour? Well, you are going to hear a whole lot more of one of the singles I mentioned, Waving Flag, because it is going to be remixed as the anthem for the 2010 World Cup of Soccer! Ya for K'naan!!!! It sounds like they are going to be re-writing the words, to make it more "uplifting", since the lyrics are pretty bleak, but either way, it is such an awesome song. I am so excited to hear it all over the World Cup next summer. Well, except as the theme song for Coca Cola ads, but I'll overlook that. 

More proof I need to curtail my son's exposure to pop music: he asked yesterday if he could listen to the "Bubble-Raunchy" song. He meant "Paparazzi". He also told me that Madonna is like a really old Lady Gaga. 

Wow, I never knew what people were talking about, until now. I am now in my 35th week of pregnancy, and woke up with the urge to wash, fold, sort, and put away/give away every piece of clothing in the house. Given my cold/flu, and the inability to walk up and down stairs more than a couple times without a break, I managed to get all the bed linens changed, the bed rails taken off my son's bed, and finally remove the change pad from his dresser. His room is finally a little boy room. He practiced rolling off the bed, just to demonstrate 1) the prematurity of my actions, and 2) his need to make sleeping in our bed between us a permanent solution to nocturnal gravity. 

The other day I showed ReRe a picture in a magazine of a couple kids roasting hotdogs over a fire. He looked concerned, and said they shouldn't be camping without their parents. 

Now, there are few consumer items in the world that I will plug, since I feel like we could all get along with a little less, but there is one purchase I made recently that I wanted to share. I was invited to a Pampered Chef party at my friends' place, with plans to only replace my cheese grater. I had ReRe with me, and he was getting a little bored, so the woman who was doing the demonstration invited him to help her cut up strawberries for the recipe she was making. I looked at her like she was crazy, giving a knife to a 3-year-old, until she pulled out a knife called My Safe Cutter, which is duller than a butter knife (literally, no cutting edge) but serrated in a way that cuts through many fruits, breads, and other softer foods that kids could cut themselves. ReRe cut up a whole slew of strawberries with it, which impressed me, and got me thinking about when his sous-chef training could start. The other thing is that it is only $5, well made and guaranteed, so if it breaks, Pampered Chef will replace it. ReRe knows exactly where it is kept in the kitchen, and uses his to cut his pancakes, bananas, toast, and whatever else he feels like trying.