I had no intention of introducing solid foods this early, but Daphne not only has great head control, and sits fairly well in her Bumbo, but she’s been showing a LOT of interest in our food. So, partly out of Jason’s prompting, by following her prompts, she got her first real attempt at playing with real food yesterday.

Months ago, before we were born, we decided to try baby led weaning when it came time to introduce solids. The basic idea is that introducing solids is not about feeding, but rather all about curiosity. And a baby can generally manage what she feeds herself if she is the one who feeds herself. So, no putting parent putting food in her mouth. No purees to be “sucked”. Give the baby a wedge of food that she can grab and explore on her own. Of course it’s not fair to start off by giving her something that her toothless mouth could never handle – like a raw carrot – but something like a ripe pear. Which is what Daphne’s first food was.

We had finished eating dinner, and she was showing interest throughout the whole thing. So I had Jason get her a spoon to play with. (In baby led weaning, you do use spoons, but for them to feed themselves, not for putting food in their mouths for them.) She grabbed the proper end of the spoon, and with surprising little difficulty, got the spoon into her mouth as a fun toy. So I hemmed and hawed, then grabbed a pear out of the fridge, cut a slice so it would make a nice wedge, peeled it, and held it in front of her. You can watch the rest:

My hat is off to all the working moms out there. I’ve always had a suspicion that, while I could make it work if I had to, it wasn’t really for me. This first weekend of the next stage of yoga teacher training has proven that too me.

I love teaching yoga – and I love doing teacher trainings, because we get to dive into the deep end of the pool. It’s a new way of becoming a student again. But it’s draining. Two to three hours of practice a day, with additional physical work when doing practice teaching or looking at bodies, is a lot! Particularly on this four-month post-partum, anemic, sleep deprived mom. We also don’t have a whole lot of breaks during which I can pump – two (if I push it) during a 8 hour day (including commute) just doesn’t cut it. While I’m fortunate enough to be able to pump extra during the days between training weekends, and am close to keeping up with her supply, I know that this is only going to work BECAUSE I have only one day a week where I’m gone for that long, and the other two days I’m gone are at times when she wouldn’t eat as much anyway.

I can’t really say that my mind is always separated from what I’m doing in my training – it’s not too hard to generally stay focused on task and not drift off to wondering how she’s doing, except for during Savasana, that is. But it certainly is a distraction. And, though I am happy to see her when I get home, I’m sore and tired, so I wish that she didn’t require so much physicality out of me.

This first teacher training weekend focused on standing poses and backbends. With my new body, it’s certainly a whole new practice, and backbends, which used to be a place of freedom and exploration, are now tentative, cautious things. The teacher for this weekend is the same one that taught my 200-hr training, and I feel like she has changed her teaching. It may be due to the fact that we have a very wide range of students in the class, but I like the approach, even if I find it challenging and somewhat different than I’m used to. (Though, I can already see, we are likely to have a difference of opinion when it comes to the prenatal section of the class, and I’m already thinking about how I want to approach those differences.)

On that vein, there is a final project that needs to be done for the class, and I’m thinking about making it related to prenatal yoga in some fashion. The final project has sparked a fire of creativity in me – well damped by the other demands on my time though it may be.

I’m happy for these four (or eleven, depending on the week) days between training weekends, even if one day each week will be in back to back yoga classes. It feels like a chance to slow back down (ironic, coming OUT OF a yoga weekend) and reconnect with Daphne.

This comes after a long weekend of changes. Sure, I realize that her patterns are going to change, seemingly constantly, for quite a while. But I hardly expect dramatic shifts over the course of a day, even if there is some random event that messes up her pattern.

The event in question this time was an attempted camping trip. Some hiking buddies invited me out to the North Cascades to a luxurious* base camp. (*Luxurious is relative here. We usually go backpacking. So having tent sites, a fire ring, potable water from a faucet, and flush toilets in a drive in site… That’s total luxury!) It was a two hour drive away, and would be the first camping trip for Neo and Daphne, with Jason staying home since he’s not much of a camping person. I deliberately overpacked, so that the Subaru hatch was filled up with tent and chair and clothing and food and diapers and virtually everything I thought I would need that I could bring. Even a bouncer. The one thing that I thought would be good to have, but I had no where to make use of it, was the exercise ball we bounce her to sleep on. And that was the one thing I really wish I had. Well, that and a big car camping tent.

She slept most of the trip there, but demanded we stop and nurse about 15 miles from the campsite. On a nice, cool, bright day, with ample turnouts in the country highway, there was no reason not to. Heck, we even got a river view (and whatever the aural equivalent of view is) to go with her meal. My friends did most of the work getting me unpacked and set up – and had a great time passing Daphne around to meet and play with her. But eventually we had dinner, and then she had dinner, and she was clearly getting overtired. So I tried putting her to sleep. Swaddling her went alright, but putting her in the bouncer was a bust – she just wanted to try sitting up. I tried bouncing her on my leg, but there was light in the tent, and she had no interest in sleeping. After about an hour, I called it quits. Perhaps it would have worked if I spent longer, but my gut feeling was that it would have been a LONG night of trying a lot of things cramped uncomfortably in the tent (or trying to get back into the backpacking tent with a sleeping baby, which is just precariously risky). I’ve learned to go with my gut over the past four months. So they helped me back into the car, and I got underway. Again, she demanded to nurse on the way home, but this time being pulled over on the side of an almost deserted country road in the pitch dark to nurse was FAR less fun.

Still, I’m glad we got out there and gave it a try. I know now that I want a humongous car camping tent and to bring an exercise ball along next time. But she greatly enjoyed it, as did my hiking buddies. Even Neo had fun, though it was all a bit new to him.

Daphne has discovered her hands. Well, is in the process of discovering them, anyway. And it’s one of those things that is adorably cute to watch, hilarious in the seriousness she gives it, and then makes you realize that maybe hands and the ability to control them really is a pretty amazing thing after all. Nothing like a baby experiencing things for the first time to remind you of what you take for granted.

In related firsts news, she also got to try her first non-booby-milk taste. She’s been watching us eat, and enjoying it, for the past few weeks. She’s made a few passing attempts to reach out towards the food, but nothing serious. In particular, she enjoys watching us eat noisy food, and was having a good time watching Jason eat a particularly crunchy and tasty new crop apple. So, when she reached towards it, Jason let her give it a try.

Daphne opted to show off her new trick today at her four month checkup: monkey sit. She so wants to interact with her environment. I’m fairly certain she will have some kind of mobility by six months – even if she is just repeatedly rolling in order to get somewhere.

For the past five weeks, I have been back at puppy training class with Neo. Class being during the day, however, Daphne gets strapped into a carrier on my front to offer confusing hand gestures to Neo, and away we go.

It’s been a little tough, because I have to move somewhat slower with her on me, and because it presents logistical challenges with where I can reach. Additionally, it’s harder to bend down – I can’t lean forward, so have been getting a lot if squatting workout.

Neo is doing pretty well, and having a “little sister” seems to be helping his maturity along so well that he was able to do a sit for exam in our last class. He still needs to work out exactly what his role is when it comes to guarding Daphne, but he is definitely making progress, and looks quite happy to be back in class.

Two and a half weeks since I last posted, and I hardly remember where we were then.  It’s amazing how life changes so imperceptibly slowly with a baby, until you look back only a few weeks, and things seem so different.

The weekend before last, Jason’s parents came up to visit.  I joked with him that, really, the purpose of the visit was for grandma to spend time with Daphne, and while I’m sure that she would have liked more time to spend with her, that’s what happened.  Jason and I took advantage of the help and had an actual date!  Not only do we not do the whole “date” thing all that much, we hadn’t gone out in over three months, given the whole baby thing.  Still, we’re predictable, and there was little question what we were going to do – sushi and a movie.  (Really, in the reverse order, which was perfect, because the theater wasn’t packed at all.)  We enjoyed Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, and then further enjoyed a larger quantity of sushi than I can remember eating.  Nom!

Daphne did well with the visit, not yet showing signs of separation anxiety, but I know it’s coming.  We were home so much that the grandparents didn’t really have to worry about trying to get her to sleep, but were able to enjoy her being awake.  I know Daphne loved the attention, and enjoyed getting to dance with grandpa, though it may be a few years before she’s really picking up the west coast swing steps.

At the same time that they were here, Daphne was hitting the second half of her growth spurt.  So far, she has a distinct growth spurt pattern – the first signs are that she starts mauling my nipples badly again.  It rather worried me at first, making me fearful of a nursing regression that would head us back on the path of more pumping when it’s become obvious that my boobs do not respond to the pump nearly as well as to her. But we rode it out, and after five or six days of the pain, she was back to her usual, tolerable, feeding.  I happened to have scheduled a visit to Lauren, the craniosacral therapist, that fell during this growth spurt, and she noted something that I am suspicious of causing her feeding regressions – she doesn’t grow symmetrically.  (That is, specifically in her case, the right and left sides of her head weren’t caught up to each other at the same size yet.)  It makes sense that we wouldn’t grow exactly the same on both sides even if we end up about the same.  But I think it means for her that she goes through a period of essentially relearning how to use her new size and shape during a growth spurt.  If you’ve ever tried walking again after having a cast on a foot for six weeks, you can understand how we sometimes have to relearn something we already “know” how to do.

The growth spurt has certainly ushered in the “four month wakeful period”, where she is far more interested in what’s going on in the world than eating or sleeping.  This has had the net effect of making nursing a pain in the butt.  (Figuratively, anyway.  Literally, it’s a pain in the boob.)  She’s too interested in looking around at anything bright and shiny, or noisy, or new, or not new, or that just exists.  So, the boob gets pulled around and she does a little less actual eating.  She makes up for this by not going “to bed” until 11pm or so, and then waking up every three to four hours to eat a real meal.  I understand this is totally normal, and given that she’s making at night for what she’s not eating during the day, I have no interest in trying to “sleep train” her to sleep through the night, but I look forward to her at least getting back to giving me something closer to five hours of sleep at a time, and to maybe going to bed sometime between 9pm and 10pm.  (I have a theory, that Jason is probably a little leery to test out, that she will go to sleep for the night better if BOTH of us are in bed.  Oh, he might have to come to bed before midnight now! :P)

Monday, Daphne had her first babysitter.  Tracy is going to watch Daphne approximately once a week to help me get to the yoga classes I need to take for my next teacher training session.  This Monday was a dry run, with me not yet going to a yoga class, and being around the first half of the time, and not very far away doing a bit of shopping the second half.  Fortunately, Daphne ate just before Tracy arrived, so that was convenient.  As Tracy and I talked about Daphne’s routines and I showed her around (the cloth diapers are always a tough one), Daphne got to know Tracy and generally charm her way into Tracy’s good graces.

As, expected, about an  hour after she ate, Daphne was showing signs for a nap, so I showed Tracy how we put Daphne down, but noted that if she comes up with something that works better for the two of them, that’s totally fine!  So she gave it a go, and I was surprised when she came out of the bedroom relatively quickly (10, 15 minutes?), and not so surprised when Daphne started crying 15 minutes later.  Fortunately, this gave the prompting to talk about whether or not we’re doing “cry it out” (which we’re not), and whether to go in to her.  (I take a minute or two to gauge her cry.  10% of the time, it’s a single vocalization or two before going back to sleep, and I try not to disturb her for those.  The rest of the time, it’s that she wants someone with her, and I am happy to do so.  (I’m not knocking cry it out – if it works for you, great.  I’m opting to parent a different way, and, while it is fairly demanding on my time, it is generally working for us.)

I did my best “back-off mommy” attempts, and let Tracy handle it.  She ended up getting her up, which sometimes happens despite the best efforts, so it wasn’t surprising when I got home from the errands I was running that, three hours after first waking up, she was overtired and now just getting hungry.  It was the first time in quite a while that I had heard a really intense cry from Daphne, and I think she had gotten so overtired and hungry that she didn’t know what to do with herself.  Fortunately, that’s exactly what boobs are for.

In general news, she is having a great time playing with a few toys she has around.  She particularly enjoys Mr. Wuffles, the toy links that Jen got her, and her O’ball.  But her hands are a pretty fun toy too.  She is learning more about her feet, and can touch them when she sits and leans over.  She often tilts over in that position too, but I have no idea what that’s teaching her, other than gravity.  She’s started doing what I think of as babbling.  She has no consonants yet, but will string together, for at least a full minute, whatever sounds she can make, complete with varied intonation, just like she’s trying to tell you a story.  It is quite cute.  She has also decided that, though she can’t do it on her own yet, sitting is so last month, so whenever you try to pull her to a sitting position, she plants her heels and tries to stand up instead.  She can hold virtually all of her weight on her legs, though she does a whole lot of booty shaking in the process.