growing pains

In the morning baby girl and I went over to hang out with the family that will be watching her when I return to work. We see Laura frequently when we're walking in our neighborhood, and every time we give her the positive (and truthful!) report on Ellie: "She really only fusses when she's hungry or tired," "You always know when she's pooping," "She puts herself to sleep if you leave her alone in her bouncer," "Loud noises don't bother her," etc. Ellie and I have fallen into a pretty calm schedule at home and she's done well with other adults when we visit family or I visit work so I really didn't have many concerns.

Ellie had a full belly and was wide-awake during her normal smiley time. Laura picked her up and she made her rare, but extremely heartbreaking pout-y face before she started wailing.

Ellie barely ever cries. We've only seen tears on her cheeks twice in all her two months. In only a few minutes she had wipe-able tears. Laura seems to be the sweetest woman in the world and was really worried that Ellie was already super attached to me and not ready to hang out with other people. I tried my best to convince her that I don't think that's true, told her the things Ellie likes (bouncing! windows! kissy faces!), and tried not to intervene. Laura took Ellie outside to walk around, look at trees, and learn about cement trucks while I hung out with her son and mom. Ellie calmed down about 15 minutes later. Shortly after that we found out the reason she was fussing was because she was working on a poop! After Laura changed her diaper, Ellie was more than happy to play with her hair and return her baby talk and smiles. I think that made us all feel better. I'll take her back next week for a short trial run while I go to a quick work meeting, and we'll probably try to spend some more time there in the next few weeks so that Ellie and Laura have more time to adjust to each other.

If we were good parents you would think that would be the only stress we'd put on the bambino for one day. Instead, it happened to be time for Ellie's 2 month check-up complete with multiple shots. I'm so thankful David is still the kind of dad that is willing to leave work to help out when he can, so he came home from work, got all dressed up in a hot dad outfit and we headed to the doctor. The appointment was great. The shots were not.

She hung out with David since I was already too anxious. I jokingly told him I was going to take her shopping after the shots instead of feeding her so that she would learn to buy stuff instead of eat when she is unhappy. David suggested we go for a walk instead. David started singing her songs about birds and trees as we waited for the nurse. I told him to be careful or she'd always associate birds and trees with bad things. He changed to singing about race cars, messy houses, and bad breath. She got three shots and screamed more than she ever has before. When she was done I snuggled her and we sang to her. It took about 10 minutes for her to calm down and fall fast asleep. That probably doesn't sound that bad if you haven't gone through it with your own kid, but since we've barely seen her upset to this point, it was torture for us!

I know there are lots of difficult things coming up in her life... more shots and dropping her off at daycare are only the beginning. She's a little more hungry and a bit more fussy, but we're all doing okay tonight; just getting in extra snuggles whenever we can.

P.S. Anyone know if you're allowed to take pics in the doctor's office???