gawdamn when Alana finally gets going, she has some serious pipes, and the grit to use them. A chick who is a screamer is kinda sexy, except when its 3am and its your daughter. How such a determined thumping comes out of such a quiet little package I do not know. Its exactly as awful and excruciating as Jo’s squawking, except that Jo went off in bursts of 8 then STFU, Alana just screams and screams and screams and screams until you just want to stuff her right back into the hole she came out of. Its chinese water-torture, its the ticking of the Doomsday clock, its the drumming of the orcs in the Mines of Moria. If Genevieve inherits her strung intensity from me, Alana gets her patient endurance from Beckie – she must use up all her spare calories in her outbursts, cause she crashes like a marathoner when its finished.
The good thing is that Alana is predictable. She has very strong feelings about her pants – she wants them left on, but cleaned, magically. She cries worse when her pants are off than when they are dirty. She also has a dulled reaction time – when feeding her, this works against my being able to quiet her down, as milk must be nearly drowning her before she realizes she is getting what she wants. But when changing her, if I can distract her or pull the old switcharoo making her think the changing table is her bouncy chair, I might just get her bum wiped before she realizes its time to unleash the sonic assault. Then its back to
G is completely wound-up, seemingly all the time now. She has always been high-energy, which is something i love about her so dearly and makes me think we have a connection that we’ll share forever – the 2 of us bouncing off the walls into the wee hours for years to come. But lately its pissing me off, and I feel pretty bad about that. Its hard to stay calm when i get climbed on, grabbed, knees in my crotch, elbows in my stomach, and tinyHands clawing at everything within reach. I’ve actually had to yell at her a couple times, not angry, but cause she is a force of entropy threatening to break everything she is touching and grabbing and pounding and throwing. Health & Human Services should not get involved when I chastise my daughter to stop jabbing a screwdriver into my laptop.
Some of her frantics are surely due to her emotional adjustment, actually most of them are – it seems she screams and has tinyTantrums at the drop of a hat. Today she put her spoon into a little dish, which kept tipping over, and she had a hissy when she could not get the spoon to stay in the dish standing up. GZUS G!!!!! Then she jumped on Beckie and all I saw was her head burrowing into the couch while her feet kept churning like a running back pushing the pile. Its hard to keep her needs in perspective when she is a livewire never giving me a moment to rest, unless she is busy assaulting Beckie. In the space of a quarter mile walk to the Green Park yesterday, which she has taken dozens of times before, she wanted her stuffed dog, didn’t want her dog, wanted her tricycle, wanted me to pull her tricycle, wanted me to carry her tricycle, wanted to help carry her tricycle, wanted to ride her tricycle again and so on and so on and so on. This was in a good mood too, after I bribed her with some solo attention and a trip in the truck and a cab full of toys of her choosing.
She can’t be fooled either, unfortunately she has gotten too smart. She critically observes the amount of chocolate going into her chocolate mile, and thows a fit if its not enough, which comes fast on the heels of the fit she threw cause she had to have chocolate milk and not rootbeer. All this is the diet no-sugar kind too! Or when she is demanding I chase her around the house, she is full of criticism if my efforts at chasing are not sufficiently vigorous. Who is the one who supposed to be getting tired out here anyway!??!
Alana, on the other hand, could sleep through a stampede of elephants. This is her at her most restless, pinching a loaf all the while never opening her eyes or making anything more than the tiniestGrunt.
If I hadn’t been pointing the camera, you would have never known the baby had just accomplished a major goal for the afternoon. They don’t call it the Ugly Face for nothing.
I was alone with Alana for an extended period for the first time this afternoon. Its not that I’ve avoided it, it just hasn’t worked out and I’ve seen no point in forcing the situation. Beckie was worried that Alana had never taken a bottle. I couldn’t tell, she is just that easy, it took one and a half tries for her to unshackle herself from the tyranny of the boob. Longest I’ve seen her with her eyes open too.
Unlike with G, I’ve developed sense enough not to force a lot into her just to have it get tossed right back up all over me. Digestion is complicated business when you are only 18 days old.
Alana is a good baby. That means she is a quiet baby. She goes about her business and keeps to herself. What business? Well, that’s the point…there isn’t a lot to tell. Sleep, eat, crap, repeat, with the emphasis on step #1. I am guessing this child sleeps like 22 hours a day. Unfortunately, about 1.5 of her 2 waking hours appear to occur between the hours of 1am and 4 am, but I guess you can’t have everything. Hopefully she sorts this out before I go back to work.
What is interesting is the contrast to G. G didnt sleep, not really. She was constantly in a state of semi-awake grouchiness. Always hungry, or dirty, or bored, or something. She cried a lot, and ate a lot. She wanted to eat like every hour. I couldn’t get a damn thing done. I would try to steal away to the gym for an hour, carefully orchestrating a feeding right before I ran out the door, then I would speed to the gym and rush home only to find my mom, looking frazzled and exhausted, as she had just spent the last 60 minutes out of the 75 I was gone trying to rock, burp, change, and soothe a very angy baby. My mom would look at me and say “does this child ever sleep?” and I would shrug, unaware that babies acted any other way, sure that she had just forgotten how it is.
Fast forward to baby #2. She sleeps and sleeps and sleeps. She wakes to eat and dozes off before she is done. I leave for an hour or so and come back to find her maybe hungry, but happy, snuggled and warm in Granny’s arms, sucking on her pacifer (an item G refused to use, by the way).
They say personalities are formed in the womb. I have heard other parents comment on how different their kids personalities are, much like a litter of kittens who all have different traits…is this an evolutionary strategy? One kitten is loving, one is mean, one is standoffish…does this maximize mom’s chances of seeing her genes passed on?
Alana’s crying sounds like an alarm clock. Its uncanny. Perfect length and cadence. I’d have thought this was some sort of adaptation, except electric alarm clocks haven’t been around long enough. A more realistic adaptation would be for crying to sound like the pounding of Roman cavalry or woolly mammoths. And G’s crying sounded a lot more like the wailing of a siren; it was far more mellifluous . I’m surprised the dog never started howling.
Maybe I am misremembering, but Alana seems much more determined once the crying begins. It could be her Armstrong-like cadence, or maybe the waterboarding effect of it on my psyche. There is very little I can do for her right now, other than change diapers, and when not tuned into her eating and crapping schedule I’m loath to fling her around and depant her without a confirmed reason – she loves and bonds with Beckie, let her be the heavy says I. Plus I’m kinda afraid I’m going to yank off one of her legs like a buffalo wing. mmmm….tender baby meat. Anyone seen Hannibal Lecter?
Genevieve is screaming for attention. When Beckie and I start talking, when I appear in the house, when we try to go to sleep – she’s spinning off the walls and wants to be constantly engaged, except once she’s settled into a nice TV show…go figure? I want to stop feeding her sugar and soda to try to force some calm onto her. Its kinda nice when she instantly wants to play when I get home, but its kinda like getting bum-rushed. At night jumping on the bed is just too much too late, especially if we’ve already gotten Alana chilled out. This makes me feel really bad cause G needs her fair share of doting, earlier she was singing the “Little Einsteins” theme song and was absolutely overcome with joy when Beckie and I started singing along with her.
We need some psycho-analysis. Anyone seen Hannibal Lecter?
It was critical to G’s self-esteem that we celebrate her birthday, albeit a day late. Bette picked out some great gifts including an electric tooth brush and 3-wheeled scooter. Cake and ice cream were the closest Beckie and I were gonna get to Valentine’s Day, but after 15 years of marriage and some of the shit i saw during the delivery, it was a pretty good date all things considered. Alana got a party to celebrate her very own day of birthing.
a long, but remarkably smooth day began with Beckie waiting on inducement appointments starting at 7am, until 4 when they finally had a room.
She got processed and ensconsed in a suite larger than my college dorm room,and I left about 7 to hit a branch of our gym conveniently located across the street from the hospital. About 11pm they gave her the epidural, and pumped full of numbness and hormones and a general easiness over having done this before, out shot Alana at 3:18, February 13, 2009. She really did shoot out – blood and ickiness spraying the staff. I too benefited from having done this before, opting for the family-friendly seating by Beckie’s head, and politely telling the pushy nurse who kept wanting to involve me “Thank you, but I’d rather stay out of your way.” Doctor Stevens was very cool, very calming and sympathetic to both genders and funny and authoritative all at once, right up until she said “the painkillers are incredible, these stitches are going right near the clitoris.” To which I replied “eeeeeew! doctor, we were doing so well up til now.” When she asked me if I wanted to cut the cord, I replied (and this is absolutely 100% dead-on truth) “I don’t ask you to program a website…” That last vignette bought me at least 2 days of coasting at work.
Does this belong to a doctor forced to show up at 3am?
So here I am with 2 tinyHumans born exactly 3 years apart; May 13 must be my lucky day for booty calls. At least I will not have to change my pin at work.
Alana immediately seemed more chill than G; easier to deliver, easier to calm, easier to start eating. In sharp contrast to my first few weeks with G, i was feeling so not-revulsed by Alana that i picked her up to burp her while Beckie was in the bathroom, and she let one rip that Beckie heard through the door. I forgot about the towel on the shoulder, or the sludge in a newborn’s stomach. Too bad, I liked this shirt.
I’m still disgusted, but not so creeped out by the Alana. I feel much more connected to her already, though its more dutiful than hormonal, or maybe due to knowing her potential. I thought I might be totally bored with everything she did having been through it already. But I was very ignorant and scared and hands-off for G’s first few weeks, and didn’t start writing about her til she was 1. The things I forgot and the things I never knew are popping up like mushrooms. G rocked through phases one after another so fast, I’ve emptied my mental baby-buffer as fast as its been filled. Alana seems so very very very small. Later that afternoon I took G outside to a little playground and threw her around, Alana I am worried about propping up her tiny head or twisting her tiny limbs.
When G and Bette showed up around 4, i immediately noticed myself for the first time not totally focusing on G, but splitting my focus between them. Weird. G was very excited to meet her sister, and be gentle around her, but G moves at warp speeds, and involves so much engagement, and Alana is so fragile. I think dealing with two children in two vastly different stages may make my head explode.
We bought G a stuffed monkey and a swing that plays music, and its her little baby to take care of. We’re trying to get her involved in taking care of Alana, and give her projects when we are busy with the baby.
Already we’ve seen samples of G not liking having to share attention, or having her style curtailed. Her attitude is actually very good, but she’s 3…we can only expect so much. I’m trying to focus on one upside: 2 birthday parties for the price of one bouncy castle.
