Into the woods pics!!

Here are the pictures!!

Into the woods...

Long before Genevieve was born Patrick and I decided that we should spend the last two weeks of my maternity leave (and Patrick’s last two weeks of freedom before he is sacrificed to the study-nonstop-for-the-bar gods) up at my folks cabin on the Blue River. I am happy to say that we stuck to our guns and have been hanging out doing close to nothing up here in the woods since last Thursday. The place is super remote but even so as of a month ago we have internet… how crazy is that?

Little Evie, who for the first few days up here was better known as Fuss Bucket, is doing well. Last Tuesday I weighed her in at 9 pounds 8 ounces. Patrick is very concerned with weight percentiles and was pleased to research and discover that this puts her exactly at the 50th percentile for weight. Now for those of you who do not spend your days obsessing over a baby’s weight and height, these percentiles are not like the SATs, a 95th percentile versus a 25th does not mean your babe is extra good or extra bad… it is simply a range of acceptable. For example a 95th percentile baby only has 5% of kiddos that are heavier and a 25th has 75% that are heavier etc. But average (or heavier) n this case matters most to Evie’s daddy so both the food machine (aka me) and the babe are happy to comply.

I guess changes in altitude can wreak havoc on little bellies (or so grandma pediatrician informed us) because man was she an unhappy camper (or cabiner to be more exact) our first day or two here (thus the alias of Fuss Bucket). Fortunately for our sanity she has calmed down considerably and is back to her usual happy calm baby self.

The most eventful occurrence so far has nothing to do with babies, but with lost dogs and close encounters with bears… seeing how Evie and I just held down the fort during that whole adventure I will let you ask Patrick, who survived to tell the tale, fill you in on that one! Evie went on her second hike (what a lucky gal) on Monday. She is quite the hiker I tell ya, spent most of the hike awake and looking out the side of her little pack, nice and quiet and I imagine happy.

I am taking tons of pictures but have no easy way to post them here so y’all will have to wait until we return to the land of the hot and sweaty next week ☺

Nicole comes to town!

Last Wednesday Genevieve got to meet her Grandma Nicole for the first time!! Nicole came all the way out from Baltimore to see Genevieve and to see Patrick graduate from law school. We have had a wonderful past few days…. Mostly involving sitting around the house and playing with little Evie, who is very fond of her Grandma and has given her the number one place to sleep award ☺

We have been having a lot of fun recently because Evie is smiling more and more and is really starting to interact with the world around her. She loves to stare into the little mirror on top of her vibrating chair and actually started grasping at the toys on the sides. The chair turned out to be a fabulous investment… and to think that to get the adult version of one of these bad boys (i.e., massage chairs) we would pay a fortune and still not have the music and “toys” associated with it that she has. Ahh the privileged life of a baby!

Unfortunately for Nicole it has been pretty darn hot here. We tried to give her a reprieve from the heat and on Friday went up to Mt. Lemmon for Evie’s first official hike. I carried her so it was not a long excursion but an important milestone nonetheless. (Some people keep track of head lifting etc but being the hippies we are we are most concerned with important events like hikes and trips to the mountains )

Of course the highlight of the past week was Patrick’s hard earned graduation from law school. Being the cheesy lady I am I made a onesie for Evie that said “Proud Daughter of a J.D.” for her to wear to the graduation. I guess Patrick and I are well matched because he seemed to really appreciate the little get up I put her in. The ceremony was really nice and Genevieve was perfectly behaved (may those days last for as long as possible… I won’t say forever because not even I am that naïve). It will definitely take some adjustment for all of us to think of Patrick as an attorney instead of a law student…

Mall madness

Genevieve reached the one-month marker this Sunday… but was four weeks old last Friday, yet another confusing aspect of parenthood, four weeks does not equal one month. So when they say your child should be able to balance one toe (or some other equally important milestone) at three months do they mean 12 weeks or the 6th of July which is more like 13 or 14 weeks?

In any case the most exciting aspect of the whole month marker is that we can now safely take Evie out into the wide world. Her first foray into the urban forest was a much-needed bra run to the Tucson Mall, not the most thrilling of outdoor adventures but hey you have got to start somewhere. So I figured my best baby-outing bet would be to stuff her full of food and then make a b-line to the car to maximize the amount of time I had before she was hungry and fussy again. Ohh the folly of young motherhood….

We made it to the mall fine but of course I parked on the absolute wrong side of the mall for the store I wanted to go to and had to hike it at least a mall mile to my goal. I am pretty anti clunky stroller these days (while she still light enough to carry I can afford to be) so I had her in the baby sling. For whatever reason this was a curiosity and well-meaning people kept stopping me to ask about her not realizing that my baby-so-cute-not-fussy-clock was ticking.

We made it to the store without incident but man did I have a heck of a time getting things down off of high racks and doing my darndest not to turn my baby into a defacto clothes hanger. So I get ¾ of the way though trying on clothes when the fussy alarm sounds and she starts to cry and I, who am in between trying on bras look down to see my boobs starting to leak (little did I realize I too had a timer) So I fumble my own bra back on and then proceed to feed her in the dressing room hoping that no well meaning worker comes to check on me because I am certainly not comfortable with the public feeding thing yet. Fortunately the babe was fed without incident and I purchased a few items and we headed to the car.

At the car I realized that in my rush to get a well-fed baby into the car I forgot to change her diaper as well. I decided to change it in the car before we left the mall… lets just say she was very productive and I count myself lucky to not have had a great yellow-green disaster to add to our first trip out…

Good news and great irony

An update on the general state of babydom.... Genevieve and I went down to the Birth Center yesterday because I thought it was my pregnancy class reunion (turns out it wasn't but that is another story, chalk it up to lack of sleep... gotta love it I now have an excuse for every dopey thing I do :) Well regardless I had a chance to weigh her (remember I am still concerned about the whole birth weight thing...) and she is a whopping 8 pounds 10 ounces!!! Hurrah that means I can finally lay to rest the whole "I must be starving my baby" thing!

We also finally got a breast pump, I ended up just buying one online for conveniece sake. Evie has been sleeping really well and I am ready to cautiously declare the whole reverse the night to day endeavor a success. In fact, last night she slept for 4.5 hours in one stretch! The great irony is that I had to use that hard found pump after about 3.5 hours of sleep because I was so full as to be in pain... nothing is ever simple is it?

Adventures in Rural Diapering

On Thursday of last week we decided to pack it in and head up to the woods… rumors of a 90+ degree weekend were certainly a consideration in the exodus. The drive up to the cabin emphasized the whole everything-takes-longer-when-you-have-kids mantra. The drive is usually about 5.5 hours but took us closer to 7 because we periodically had to stop to feed Genevieve. The upshot of this was most of the places we stopped were very pretty and at I think just about every stop Patrick ran into someone and started talking to them about something random and interesting.

My folks were up at the cabin with us which was great. Genevieve and I mostly took it easy, and we discovered just how great breastfeeding on a hammock in the cool sunny air can be for ones state of mind. Patrick spent most of his time either helping to clean up the cabin and prepare it for the fire season or noodling around on his guitar. Ahhh the life.

The big experiment of the trip was to see if we could stick to our cloth diapering guns while away from the “modern washing machine convenience”. To that end Patrick and Dad fixed the aged (and I mean really aged) washing machine in the upper shed so that we could give it a whirl… so to speak. The fix proved to be an exercise in creativity, the hose used to plug and drain the washer was so old that in trying to see how much “flex” it had left it just cracked in two. Having no extra circa 1950s hose at the cabin improvisation was a necessity. They dinked around with it for awhile and in the end Patrick used a whittled down champagne cork to stop up the washer and keep it from draining. The amazing thing is this actually worked!

So Mom and I set about washing the diapers which entailed cold soaking them in one of the rinse bins, washing them in the machine, sending them through the finger crunching wringer, rinsing them, sending them through the wringer, rinsing them, sending them through the wringer and then onto the line to dry. The wringer was the most interesting part of the whole endeavor, it took two of us to safely feed the diapers through it…. I have no idea how a solo washer would manage quite frankly.

So washed and ready we hung the diapers to dry on the clothes line inside the shed because it looked like it might just rain…. And rain it most certainly did. About 4 hours later I checked on the diapers (supply was getting low and I was getting a bit anxious) and they were still as sopping wet as the moment they were wrung. A plan B had to be enacted. So we started a fire in the fireplace and set up a baby diaper drying rack out of the holder for the fireplace accessories… all very high tech. This certainly did the job but it was a pretty labor intense operation… all that diaper monitoring and flipping like burgers. We did a few diapers this way with the hope that the next day would be sunny and bright and we could use solar power as our dryer.

As luck would have it the next day we had about 4 hours of morning sunshine (not potent enough to dry a single diaper) and then 6 hours of rain. So back to the fireplace those darn diapers went. In the end they were all nice and toasty dry and we can call ourselves hardcore… or maybe just cheap…..

The Plaster Disaster

Everyone talks about how as new parents we should treasure every moment because she will grow up so fast. We have taken this advice to heart and I bought a baby book to record “firsts,” “hopes and dreams” etc. We also received a baby’s first handprint kit as a shower gift and thought we would celebrate her two-week birthday by making a charming little handprint as a keepsake and a way to preserve this special time when her hands are so darn small and irresistibly cute.

On Sunday afternoon I decided the time to preserve the hand had come so I dutifully followed the instructions to make the plaster mash for her little hand. As the instructions told me to do I waited until she was asleep and when Patrick was around to assist in the imprint process. I poured the white sludge into the mold and set the timer for two minutes so it would be of just the right consistency to capture our little girl’s little hand. The alarm went off and I called Patrick to the kitchen…oh this is going to be so precious I thought, and just look at her sleeping like an angel.

I spread out her hand and place it in the plaster, hold for 5 seconds just as I am told and… crap she pulls in her thumb just as I pull out her hand. Undaunted, we wash her hand, smooth the goo and try again… this time she makes a fist and its ruined, so we try again, and again. By the fourth try she is awake, none to happy with us, and most of her arm, in addition to her hand, is coated in plaster. At this point we decided that the hand was just not going to work so in an effort to preserve anything for posterity we thought we would try a foot. Of course by this time at least 5 minutes have passed and the plaster is starting to harden. Undaunted we decided to try the foot anyway. Well this approach failed miserably too and resulted only in Genevieve screaming and plaster coated foot and leg (this of course is not to mention the plaster on Patrick and I and our kitchen.) Of course right as this happens our pregnant friend Annie comes by with dinner for us, screaming baby as her welcome to our house... maybe pregnant people shouldn't spend too much time with newborns (and certainly not bawling ones), it might make them uneasy about their decision :)

So in the end all of our well-intentioned efforts at posterity preservation of her appendages ended only in her second ever bath (which of course made the poor thing even more upset…. What torturous parents she has)

The birth weight dillema

When they say having a child changes your life they are not kidding around. I used to be the sort of person who was very happy (thank you very much) to be the party pooper who went to bed at 9 pm every night. Eight solid hours (at least) a night was of upmost importance to me. Now I am thrilled to get three hours at a time and actually feeling pretty good with my new brief interval sleeping arrangement. (Although the typos in my blog are a testament to my true mental prowess)

During Evie’s first week Mom and Patrick took turns soothing her at night so I could get a little (more) sleep. On Tuesday however it became clear that really it had to be just me who cared for her at night because (duh) when she wakes up it is because she is hungry and the only one who can take care of that “problem” is me...

On Tuesday we gave Genevieve her first bath, poor thing bawled the entire time… I don’t think she is a fan of the whole bath thing (a true sign she is the progeny of hippies), but darn if she didn’t look cute in her baby bathrobe. On Wednesday we went in for her 1st pediatrician appointment. It was also the first time I went out alone with her. It is pretty funny, here I am a well educated clever enough woman who is worried that she does not have the mental wherewithal to but a baby in a car seat properly without help or some sort of external guidance. I am happy to report that all went well with both the car seat and the pediatrician. When she was weighed she came in at 7 pounds 4 ounces, which worried us (especially me) because all the “sage” advice I have read indicated that she should be back up to her birth weight by two weeks.

So for the next two days I stressed out about if I was providing her enough food to thrive and grow. There is a fair amount of pressure as the sole provder of sustinance for the babe; On Friday the nurse on call from the Birth Center gave us a call to check in and when I told her I was concerned about her weight she very nicely offered to have us come down on Sat. to have her weighed. So yesterday I took Evie down there (after a nice long 2 hour nap I might add… so we were both feeling pretty good about life ☺) and she weighed in at 7 pounds 5 ounces, not quite back to birth weight but gaining and that was all her mom needed to know to make her feel better.

There must be a bumper baby crop & they all want a breast pump

Evie's second week started up in Phoenix with her grandparents. On Monday we decided that it was cruel and unusual to continue to subject my poor parents to our new sleepless reality (and I had an appointment at the Birth Center to check in on my blood pressure) so in a great imitation of the Joads we piled everyone back in the car and headed home to Tucson. And thus began the afternoon of futility....

We were running short on time so we had to go straight to the BC with all of our stuff (including Kita) still in the car. By this time poor Evie had not eaten for two hours and was starting to protest. So here we are in a parking lot (the first of probably many times I will do this) and I am trying to be as inconspicous as possible with my bare boob. I am sure I could have gone inside the BC to feed her but I am not quite ready for that degree of exposure yet. As P atrick so delicately put it I have not bared my breasts in public since college so I am a little out of practice :) My appointment went well my blood pressure is OK with the meds I have been on.... Anyway we decided for efficency sake we would run two simple (ha!0 errands on the way home, Patrick had reserved a book for class at Barnes and Noble and I wanted to buy my breast pump because my aunt Betty had generously given us the money to buy it and so I didn't need to procrastnate on the expenditure any more.

Well nothing is ever simple and sometimes on a Monday things are down right terrible. The bookstore had taken the book off reserve because it had been more than 3 days and somehow the book had subsequently dissapeared from the bookstore... but all of this took close to an hour to discover. All the while I am holding down the ark that is our overfilled car, hey at least it wasn't hot out.

We then go accross the street to a Target... ahh here is where things will turn around, I'll just run in and pick up this bad boy. Nope errr wrong the pump I wanted was the only one sold out.... in my short stint in the Target I did see, however, at least two women with newborn-esque babies in their carts. I fought the urge to check and see if indeed they had beaten me out by seconds to my pump.... but really what would I have done? I am in no shape for a smack down and I knew that there was another (and surely better) Target just down the road. Ah optimism it has always plagued me. Of course the second Target was also sold out, there were however another two (or was it ten, it must have been at least ten) women with babies in that Target! At this point I just laughed my way to the car at the ridculousness of it all and decided that there must be a bumper crop of late March/early April babies all of which have mom's who are desperate to hook themselves up to a human milker machine.

This story does have a happy ending. After a very frustrating afternoon where Evie was so hungry I could not get in a nap and an evening that looked like it would turn into another all nighter for the babe and I, she decided to sleep a record four hours from midnight to 4 am. What more proof does one need that there is some sort of benevolent force in the world looking out for tired moms and hungry babes world over :)

First Week!

Welcome to our baby Genevieve blog! We thought we would put this together as a way to share news and (of course) pictures of our little girl, Genevieve Marie Lacroix.

The first week with her has been great! Consistent sleep is of course a distant memory, unless of course you count the day when she does a great job of sleeping like an angel, go figure. My mom stayed with us during the first week down in Tucson and was an absolute god send. She cooked the most amazing food for us and kept the house and laundry clean for us. It was so nice to be able to focus just on trying to get to know Genevieve and working on the whole breastfeeding gig.

Last Monday we decided to get out of the house and drove up to Mt. Lemmon. We piled a bag full of warm clothes for the baby and a great picnic but forgot to bring any warm clothes for ourselves so our picnic ended up as a quick eat and run back to the car because it was so very cold! Regardless the drive (and getting out of the house) was wonderful.

Mid last week Patrick and Kelly's Mom went out to pick up some supplies at Target (it seems like just about every day there is a need for some other little thing :) Kelly stayed at home with the baby, figuring a trip to Target needed no supervision.... Oh how wrong was she! Patrick and Mary came home with all sorts of great useful stuff and.... Evie's first all pink, very frilly, little girlie outfit! Ahh I guess the anti-pink movement was not to last.

On Thursday we went up to Phoenix to spend the weekend with my parents (and to gain access to cable which makes the long nights of fussy Evie so much more tolerable!). We have found that our little girl is certainly the night owl (she must take after her dad) which has caused us to learn all sorts of new things that only the insomniacs of this world know.... who knew that there were so many different drugs for sexual enhancement out there?