kiya

Today has been the sort of day where ...

... okay, I put the trashbag in the pantry-closet and shut the door last night so the cats would stop shredding it to get at the innards.

Today has been the sort of day where I, exhausted, look into the kitchen and see the pantry-closet door open and gaping holes in the trashbag.

And where putting down KJ to try to deal with this produces instant deafening screaming.

You know? That kind of day.

Also, she's learned how to roll over from her back to her front so long as she has an edge to drop her leg down over. Imagine how much fun this makes the diaper table!


Speaking of which, Our Lady of Perpetual Dampness requires me to go say a hail pants for my sins.

Well, it's been a busy few months here at Happy Baby Industries. As you know, we went public on 1 August, so we've been quite occupied for the season.

We are pleased to report record-setting levels of growth! In fact, our happy baby product has roughly doubled in mass and achieved over a 15% markup on length after introduction. Raw materials consumption has been slowly ramping up, and we have adjusted our waste disposal and cleaning protocols to adjust to byproducts as required. We endeavour always to put forward a clean, dry product.

Among the developments on the Happy Baby [tm] this quarter have been: laughter, grasping, and conversational babble. Integration with previous small mammals has been mostly smooth, and there have been no overt conflicts. Advanced systems integration (such as, for example, card counting) has yet to be implemented, however.

Thank you for being with us this quarter. Look forward to more startling developments in our second quarter report!

artan_eter: You want something. Are you hungry?
whispercricket: She wants your soul, artan_eter.
artan_eter: I think she's a bit early to start on solid food.

According to keshwyn's bathroom scale (standard 'weigh adult+baby, weigh adult, subtract') KJ is up over thirteen pounds now. She got a comparison to V at game night (due dates on the pregnancies 2 days apart, V born two months preemie) and is, indeed, huge.

She also appears to try waving back to people who wave at her. This is awfully cool.

In other news, I am sick and miserable.

Definitely thoroughly enchanted, not only as a Decanter of Endless Pee but also a Baby of Holding (cursed).

(I'm ready for this round of cluster feeding to end. Any time now.)

I'm not overly sure what to write about, honestly. We're still here; KJ's still here. She's been a bit fountainy the last day or so, so maybe a little reflux. No distress, so probably not a stomach bug, just small targetting messes, generally when whispercricket picks her up.

My father's up visiting.

I am ... complicated, emotionally, right now, with the full force of all of this. She is a wonderful force, a glorious joy, and completely draining; I barely feel entirely real right now. Which is ... messy, with the depressive tendencies. I'm maybe approaching recovered from the birth; maybe maybe. Bleeding has slowed again. (It did this once before, I did garden work, and promptly started bleeding again. Phooey to that.)

She is holding up her head fairly consistently now when sitting up, though her gross movements are still not entirely under her control. She has not yet successfully pried her ear off, but not for lack of trying.

Also, baby icon exists. See?

We are slowly adapting to the presence of our small primate. We have levelled her up to the point that we could take "sleep in cradle" as an ability, which is remarkably useful (without "sleep in cradle" one defaults to "sleep on parent", and even with four parents to pick from that's a bit effortful with a small creature that sleeps 17-20 hours a day).

She has more or less regained her birthweight at this point (8 lbs. 14.7 oz at birth, 8lbs. 3 oz (in diaper) at first pediatrician appointment, 9lbs. (in diaper) today); I credit some of this to Monday's horrible rounds of cluster feeding. (Cluster feeding: instead of baby eats, sleeps for 3 hours, and then demands changing and more food, baby eats, demands changing, dozes for ten minutes, repeat.) The pediatrician appears thrilled with her progress and condition. (He's also a slightly surreal figure, as he looks a lot like one of teinedreugan's friends and talks a lot like the micro-machine man.) She's sweet-tempered, not terribly fussy, has only bitten me twice. :} She has developed enough grip strength to actually hold onto fingers, and enough coordination that she can usually get some of her fist to her mouth when she wants to suck on something (which makes her much more likely to self-soothe).

artan_eter and whispercricket are staying in our spare room at the moment and sharing parenting duties. This is going fairly well, though I think the time away from TI and the sort of crowdedness of the situation is wearing at them a bit. It is amazing having the support, and I was commenting last night that I can see why post-partum depression is so common in households with fewer people; my exhaustion (from recovery and 24/7 on-call for feeding) is mimicking depression at times, and if I had to shoulder much more I'm pretty sure it'd go from 'mimicking' to 'actually being' right quick.

My father sent up a photo of infant-me with my Grandy Jay, the grandmother KJ's named after. Resemblance quite striking. (It's also nice to have a photo of Grandy Jay, given namesake status.) I was more of a frogface than KJ is, though. (Possibly also with an overbite, KJ's jaw is more even.)

My status: very tired. Nursing is both physically and emotionally kind of draining. My pelvis is slowly reintegrating, with occasional horrifyingly painful consequences for my bad hip. One of my tears appears to have healed up and lost its stitches, but the one that's about two inches long (Ow?) is being a bit slower and much sore-er. I'm doing well enough to take most of the night shift duties on KJ (which mostly involve feeding her) on good nights, which is letting everyone else sleep more. I am tired of bleeding, but stuck with it for a bit.

teinedreugan's parents will be arriving for the first round of grandparental visitation this evening -- in the next hour or two to be precise. So we'll see how that goes.