Auletta's first Thanksgiving

We visited Justin's family in Ithaca for Thanksgiving, which is always an event. I first met his family at Thanksgiving five years ago, and Justin likes to repeat the story of how he went to take one of his brothers somewhere right after we arrived, and when he got back he found me curled up in the bedroom, all fetus-like, in terror. I've gotten used to the chaos since then. Auletta will grow up accustomed to chaos. She spent the entire weekend being passed around among her aunt, uncles, and grandparents like whatever the opposite of a hot potato is.

Harry's an uncle at the age of eight:



This is my new favorite picture of me and Auletta. Of course that is not hard when in all the pictures of us together I'm either 1. exhausted or 2. exhausted from labor and surgery. This is about five minutes before Justin spilled wine on her hat and blamed it on the baby.



Bonus: Our friend Erik drew this map from scratch, like, without looking at another map, because he is awesome.

Randomata

After a trip up the food chain all the way up to Flippery Fish, I'm back to Multicellular Microorganism status. I'm not sure why I evolved and then devolved, but that was kind of fun.

Poop update: We got what we were waiting for yesterday evening. Auletta fussed but stayed fairly sanguine through the poop (which we didn't even notice at first, somehow), a rapid stripdown and wiping while being held upside down, and an emergency bath. "What does it take to get this kid to cry?" Justin asked. She eventually broke down, but we all survived and now we can look forward to another 1-6 days of pooplessness.

Whenever I've taken Auletta out for a walk, I keep thinking I should bring my camera to catch the light on the leaves. Then when I remember my camera there's not much sunlight. And now there are not many leaves. But still a few:



Auletta sports one of her many hats, this one lovingly knit by Anne and perfect for windy fall days:

I want this!

Oh my gosh, there is Very Hungry Caterpillar bedding.



So yes, I skipped decorating the nursery and went straight to planning her big-kid bedroom. I hope I can still get this in two years.

Getting out of the house

I had someone home with me for almost the entire first month of Auletta's life, so when I ventured out of the house I either had someone at home to watch her or help transporting the massive volume of stuff that accompanies a baby whenever it goes anywhere. My sister and I took her shopping when she was a week old, and we went shopping again two weeks after that with Justin's mother and aunt.

Now that I'm home alone with Auletta, I'm figuring out how to get her out of the house on my own. My goal is to go on two walks every day, weather permitting; we usually drive out to a little sort of park with a 9/10-mile loop trail in the morning (I'll sometimes do the Starbucks drive-thru beforehand), and then go for a walk in the neighborhood in the afternoon. On Tuesday I took Auletta as far as a mall about 20 miles away (we don't have a major mall really nearby), and today I went to a new moms group that meets at Panera the next town over. Fortunately Auletta's really good about riding in the carseat--she'll cry for a minute or two and then fall asleep by the time I pull out of the driveway. It pops right into the stroller so I never have to wake her up. It's actually a really nice way to get her to nap. We've been gone as long as three hours without her having to eat or get a diaper change.

(Gross baby TMI warning: around two weeks she started pooping at most once a day. This is apparently normal and fine in breastfed babies, although it happened pretty early with her. It's convenient as far as ordinary diaper changes go, but of course when the deluge finally arrives it's an event. Her last poop was Friday, so I am on notice and rather nervous about going anywhere at all, but if I scheduled my life around her poop I'd never get out.)

Since we just moved and I don't really know anyone here, I feel like this leaving-the-house thing is really crucial for my sanity, so I'm glad I've gotten into the habit early. I am hoping to start doing some kind of postnatal exercise/yoga/baby activity/etc. thing after the holidays, in order to meet people and of course embark on the great American tradition of reliving one's childhood vicariously through one's own offspring.

Smile!

Auletta is just starting to do real smiles (not like weird grimacy poopy/gassy smiles, although those are cute too). A couple of mornings ago she smiled at me when she first woke up and I got her out of the co-sleeper, which was the best thing ever. This is one of the first smiles I got on camera.

One month old!

Okay, her one-month birthday was three days ago, so I'm behind on posting, but I did take this (and many other pictures--see the SmugMug link on the sidebar!) the day of.

Auletta represents

As you can imagine with our academic family, Auletta already has a lot of collegiate apparel. No pressure or anything. (One of my earliest memories was when my dad told me, "Your mother and I will be very disappointed if you don't go to the University of Washington." I'm not sure he was kidding. This poor kid's going to need to get more degrees than her parents have combined to make everyone happy.)



Obligatory fashion credit goes to her Great-Auntie Ann for the Tar Heels gear and her Schwab grandparents for the stylish Parisian bodysuit.

When Auletta complains that her name is too weird...

We can tell her some of the names we (ahem, we minus me) proposed:

• Aspirin


• Cotton (with our last name!)


• And, while we're on the Mathers, Increase

I will distract you from the fact that the foregoing was not really a substantive blog post, especially after nearly a week's delinquency, by posting a cute picture:



I love how her sleeper says "baby," just in case you didn't know what its contents were.

Boo!

Auletta's first Halloween! Her Aunt Katie gave her the sleeper.