On a walk

I converted everything to black and white because the colors this time of year are bleak anyway.











One splash of color:

Gaze

This picture is a little odd, but it might be the best example of Auletta's eye color right now. She was born with blue eyes, but they seem to be turning brown, from the inside out. This is what I would expect according to a nifty online eye color predictor, which gives our spawn a 50% chance of having brown eyes. So it looks like she'll be a brown-eyed girl like her mom--and probably vertically and visually challenged, too. SHA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA-LA TI DA!



But her eyes are very clear in that picture. Usually her eye color is sultry.

Milestones!

Auletta has had an exciting fourth month so far. For one thing, she started laughing regularly--she'd laughed for the first time around the end of December but does it a lot more often now, and EVERYTHING is funny to her. It's pretty cool. She has also just in the last week or so started reaching for and grabbing things with increasing deliberation--usually they're things that are within the range of her flailing arms anyway, but she stopped clenching her hands into fists and then discovered that if they're not clenched they grab onto things, and then discovered that they can grab things she sees.



And TODAY she rolled over from her tummy to her back twice! I think it helps that I've started putting her arms under her chest when she does tummy time, so she is beginning to learn that her arms can do things. Of course the third time I put her on her tummy to see if she'd roll over again she just grunted indignantly.

Oh, and she's drooling like crazy. She's never spit up a lot, so it took me a while to figure out why people kept giving us bibs.

Auletta cops a 'tude

This is what she thinks of your incessant picture-taking:



Auletta goes organic. The onesie says "Does this diaper make my butt look big?", and Justin doesn't like it because he thinks it'll give Auletta a bad body image.

The last of Christmas cheer

Auletta with Justin's cousin Catherine. Like I've said, big head.



This is what the whole family looks like:



After all the celebrating, Auletta gets a bath:

Even more Christmas cheer

Auletta with her grandpa and her great-great-aunt (!)



With Gompa, her grandpa, and her great-uncles and great-aunt:



Almost all the female Schwabs! Which looks like a lot until you see the whole family.

Three months old!

We interrupt our festival of Christmas pictures to notify you that Auletta is three months old. I'm on time with pictures, for once.











The last picture was taken on a quilt we just got today from my Aunt Anne.

More Christmas cheer

All partied out before the party even starts:



Obligatory family photo. Auletta really couldn't be bothered--she was more interested in her fist, which is pretty standard these days.



Napping with Grandpa:

Christmas morning

Right after the kids woke us up to do stockings:



Justin and Auletta contemplate the wonder of Christmas, or something:





The haul:



Auletta with her great-grandfather (note the new Tar Heels jersey over her Christmas outfit)



After presents and Christmas dinner, it's time for a nap with Uncle Quintin:



And Grandma:

Christmas Eve

We had lunch at Gomma and Gompa's retirement place--in our own banquet room, so as not to aggrieve aging people who don't want someone else's 12 grandchildren running around. (There are 16 total but four arrived after Christmas.) Roughly speaking, there was a grownup table, a little kid table, and a big kid table. We sat at the big kid table with, let's say, the other grandkids who are old enough to use Facebook.

I am not sure what is happening here:



Zack and Auletta:



The little kids, unsupervised, were playing with knives.



Everybody loves Auletta!

Gomma and Auletta

So, pictures. This is the first meeting between Gomma and Auletta:



Four generations:



On a side note: I've had an external flash for my camera for a while but have usually been too lazy to use it. (And it draws attention. Now that most digital cameras are so tiny, when you have a digital SLR, everyone's like, "Oooh, that's a serious camera!" and then if you have a larger zoom lens, everyone's more awed, and then if you have a flash everyone thinks you're paparazzi even if you have no idea what you're doing.) I finally used it to take most of the indoor pictures over Christmas, and I'm so glad I did because it makes a huge difference. I like to use natural light, partly out of laziness and partly because it's nicer, but I'm very pleased with the results I got using the flash. In most of the pictures I took, I bounced it off the ceiling to light everything evenly and avoid shadows, which are one thing I hate about using on-camera flashes.

Catching up

Now that things are back to normal after the holidays, I should really be posting again. At the very least, I have lots of pictures.

We spent Christmas in Chapel Hill, as we both have every year since 2003, when we were engaged (and Justin has almost every year of his life). The drive down was great. It's a 10-hour drive according to Mapquest; we did it in 11 hours, including two stops to eat/nurse Auletta and traffic most of the way from DC to Fredericksburg. We left early in the morning, and Auletta slept all the way from New Haven to somewhere around Stafford, Virginia, which is north of Fredericksburg. She is awesome in the car. As you can guess, we drove like bats out of hell whenever we had the chance.

Gomma is still hanging in there. She got to meet Auletta and is still well enough to appreciate seeing her first great-grandchild--she said several times how cute she is, and it's not easy for her to get sentences out, period (it is clear she's still capable of forming thoughts, but it takes a lot of effort to express them). And of course the rest of the extended family got to meet Auletta too. Once again, I didn't get to hold her very much because everyone else was bogarting the baby. She is in a wonderful cuddly stage where she's getting more substantial but is still easy to hold and snuggly, so I can't blame them.

On the way back we stopped in Charlottesville for a night, which was long enough for me to see my friend Heidi and her family, Laura, and all the people at Incarnation I haven't seen since May. I love the drive north on 29 when, just past Lynchburg, you get your first glimpse of the Blue Ridge, and then right as we crossed the Albemarle County line, the sun broke through the trees, angels started singing, etc. Even in the bleak midwinter, it's beautiful. I miss Virginia dreadfully, but that's another post in itself. Oh, we stopped at a great barbecue place in North Carolina on the way to Charlottesville--barbecue, sweet tea, hush puppies, the works. I think whatever weight I gained over the holidays happened there. Yum.

The drive the following day from Charlottesville to New Haven took almost as long as the drive from New Haven to Chapel Hill, because of rain and traffic--Auletta was good, but she was eating at least every three hours day and night for the next few days (she's starting to go five or six hours on average at night), so that was trying, but at least we were home. On the drive back I got the call from my family that my grandmother had passed away. It wasn't really a surprise--I went out to Seattle in June on short notice because we thought then her health was declining rapidly, but she started doing better and was all right until she had a stroke on Christmas Eve--but I feel badly that she never got to meet her first great-granddaughter. We had a tough choice this Christmas, with two grandmothers who were probably not going to make it another year, and we've been so occupied with Gomma's cancer that it never really occurred to me my own grandmother would die first, simply of being old. The memorial service will be in March, when we visit Seattle for Justin's Christmas break. I will work on a tribute to her here--she was a quiet but amazing woman, and probably the best role model I'll ever have.

Since we got back we've been hanging out at home. Justin's exams are this month, so he is (supposed to be) studying for them, and we've been following the early primaries, which is more interesting than actually voting in them. (We're not registered in Connecticut yet and primaries aren't open here--one reason Lamont defeated Lieberman in the 2006 primary--which as independents we both find annoying, so we might not vote. But this year the nominees might not be a forgone conclusion by Super Tuesday, so our vote would, like, count and stuff. I am kind of excited that as of this week, it seems possible the nominees on each side will be the ones I would have chosen and will give us a positive choice instead of a decision between a giant douche and a turd sandwich.)

I'll try to post pictures every day this week. All the kids are doing it.

Two months old!

I didn't get a lot of pictures on her actual two-month birthday because I was a little busy forcing her to get poked in the thigh. Actually, her vaccinations went really well--she cried while she was getting them and settled down quickly afterwards, and aside from being a little more sleepy than usual the rest of the week (which I don't mind) she doesn't seem to be affected by them.

The many faces of Auletta:







Of course, most of the time I was trying to photograph her, she looked like this:



My stepsister Robyn made the beautiful quilt Auletta's on. I love purple baby things.

This might not be appropriate information to reveal here, but since I know most of my regular readers are women anyway (Ben and Eric, avert your eyes)--guess what event that occurred approximately (and I mean very approximately, for me) once a month until last Christmas started happening again? Even though I'm breastfeeding? So, yeah, we're going to have to deal with that if we don't want Auletta to have a Sibling With Flat Hat in 2008.

Auletta's new skill

She can put her fist in her mouth. This gives her something to suck on, so I don't always have to pop the paci back in her mouth when it falls out.



She also smiles a lot now, not just at me but at everyone, and is starting to say things that sound like "goo" and "ga." She still cannot lift her head when she's on her tummy (she hates being on her tummy), which is a very basic thing babies are supposed to be able to do by the end of their second month, according to the baby books. Oh well.

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.