A full night's sleep

This is a picture of Margaret taken at 7:23 AM. She has just awakened and is sucking her thumb.

This was the first we heard of her since putting her down at 10:45 PM the evening before.

Miracle of miracles, she slept through the entire night.

It was really funny, actually. My alarm clock went off this morning at 7:00 and the first words out of Sarah's mouth were, "is she dead?" before jumping out of bed and running to Margaret's side.

Thankfully, she was just asleep.



I was quickly called over to her cribside to marvel at this new, life changing phenomenon. After a suitable period of dumbstruck awe, I broke out the camera and started snapping photos. This was the reason I wasn't out the door until about 10 minutes after I usually leave.

We are both ecstatic by this new development but know that it is unlikely to be repeated tonight. Not only was Margaret's sleep patterns off this afternoon but we just had a new crib delivered today and wonder if Margaret will be able to adjust to it so quickly.



Regardless, we are happy to know that she can, in fact sleep through the night and will be hoping for the best, now, every time we put her down to sleep.

We'll keep you posted.

Margaret's conversation with Eli

Margaret is getting chattier and chattier. This is a conversation with her friend Eli from a few days ago:

Escape

Scenes from the past few days, including evidence of Margaret sucking her thumb (which I think is keeping her asleep longer at night - yes!), Margaret training for the luge (winter 2010?), and my favorite: Margaret and Freddie trying to escape when Lindsay was in the shower.

Back online... sort of

It's been a light week for posting, I know, but we finally have Internet set up at the new house now and so we're able to post an update from someplace that's not a Starbucks.

Unfortunately, there's a problem with the phone cabling within our walls and so we couldn't get the equipment set up in our actual office. The wireless router will have to live by the window in our living room unless we decide to rip the cable out of the wall and replace it. *sigh*

More unfortunately, our apartment is of concrete and brick construction so the signal at my desk is anemic at best. Sarah's computer, which is by the window, gets a full power signal, mine, a mere five feet away, has almost none.

Taken Monday while I was home sick

Other than that, however, the move has gone very smoothly. We're completely in our place now, all the boxes are gone and, for the most part, we've even found space for most of the crap we brought over.

We even put all the art up on the walls.

Our final task (aside from finding homes for the last of our errant things) is to get some curtains we like up. We will be replacing the blinds and the cheap, worn and ugly curtains that belong to our landlords with canvas Roman blinds - most with blackout liners.

We've had Lilian, our wonderful curtain expert lady in already and we should have some nice, neutral, sound absorbing, light blocking and all around warmer window treatments up soon.

On her play mat on Monday. She loves her mat.

Margaret has settled in nicely as well. She was a bit clingy to SAM for the first couple of days, but she's now back to her good old self, smiling, gurgling and acting as cute as ever.

Also from this past Monday. On the couch.

I'm not quite sure if any of you out in blog land can tell, but she seems to be changing day by day. On more than one occassion this week I've looked at her and said to SAM, "She's different today than she was yesterday."

Her newest thing is that she actually wants to have a conversation with you. No, she can't form words yet, but she will now vocalize in response to when you talk to her. She even knows to do it when you pause your own speech and will change volume and inflection in response to yours. VERY cool.

"Who me?" This one from Friday.

The new job is going well, also. Things have been very busy but I've been learning a lot. I'm starting to take on interesting tasks now and am feeling like I am actually making an impact and making other peoples' jobs easier.

Let's hope my boss notices.

Yes, that's Sarah's phone hanging with the toys.

Having to work half day aside, today was really fun and productive.

Sarah and I went out and bought a convection oven as our new apartment doesn't have an oven :(

After a brief stop at home to feed Margaret (and read her a book), Sarah and I went out for Hot Pot with our friends Bill and Molly and Lindsay and Graham along with Lindsay's father, Barry and his wife Dottie.

Communal cooking was followed by gelato at XTC.

Now, unfortunately, we're already into Sunday and I'm already dreading having to go back to work on Monday.

Funny thing about that - as much as I love my new job, the fact that I have to work Saturday makes me feel like I don't have enough time over the weekend and makes me not want to go to work on Monday.

A happy baby (happy to see mom, the photographer).

Oh well. At least I get a weekend. Plenty of people don't.

I count my blessings.

Reading Goodnight Moon tonight before we headed out.

This morning's expressions

A quick photo shoot from this morning to satisfy the regulars. She's been a bit off since the move, but we're hoping she'll start feeling more settled soon.

One of my most rewarding moments as a parent so far was seeing her recognize and smile at me when she came back from being at Joy's on the moving day. Since then, however, she seems to have saved most of the smiles for her father. She's all business with Mom and all smiles with Daddy. You can tell that Mommy was shooting this morning, as we're heavy on the contemplative looks.

New Apartment!

All of the boxes have been unpacked, but as you can see, the contents are now piled everywhere looking for homes. We thought you would like to see our work in progress, though. This may be our only post this week, as our internet will not be set up at the new house until Saturday.

Play Date

Margaret had her first real play date today with Freddy. First, they charmed Grandpa Barry and Grandma Dottie, Freddy's grandparents. Then, after eating, they had a good kick together on Margaret's play mat. Although Freddy has Margaret beat in the fist chewing department, you can see from the video that Margaret may have an edge on him in social conversation.


Margaret had a long conversation with Grandpa Barry


And a bit of a snuggle with Grandma Dottie


Then she and Freddy competed for the attention of the hanging toys


video evidence

The Expressions of Margaret

Interested

"Let me think about that one"

"You're crazy, Daddy!"

"Pbhpbhpbh"

Happy

"I see..."

Getting tired

"Yawn!"

Creative Solutions

While I've been at work playing with toys, it seems that Margaret's life has become more and more toy filled as well.

We've had plenty of nice, plush toys for Margaret but have had them put away because we're not supposed to let her sleep with them for fear of SIDS and she's not yet able to play with them actively on her own.

Readers of the blog will know that we'd discovered that she quite liked looking at the hanging crib and play mat toys, but we didn't have many of them (basically, we only had two) so we were resigned to simply waiting for Margaret to grow old enough before she would be able to take advantage of all her cool stuffed toys.

Of course, Sarah, genius that she is, struck on a brilliant solution.

Voila.

All photos today by SAM

Using some ribbon, she's turned many of Margaret's smaller toys into hanging crib toys.

As I've told SAM time and time again, my absolute favorite part of Sarah, the part I find the most desireable and most drool worthy, is the part right between her ears.

I am not exaggerating when I say that when I came home and saw this setup that I fell even more passionately in love with SAM than I had been in the moment before I saw it



As it turns out, oddly enough, Margaret's favorite item in this new jury rigged play area is the green, foam ball, an item which we almost threw out because it was a cheapie sample that I got at Toy Fair in NY last year. But I guess it's bright and green and has a repeating geodesic soccer ball pattern on it so it probably holds her attention.



Besides making more life more fun for her, Margaret has been making life more interesting and rewarding for us as well.

She's smiling more frequently and more easily than ever before and that puts us over the moon. Especially if coupled with some cute cooing or murmuring.



Life with Margaret has been an absolute gas and having her has been the most rewarding thing I've ever done. Stunning.

The only bit I don't like? Having to leave SAM and Margaret every morning, kissing them goodbye and knowing that I'm missing most of their waking hours. It's hard.

But then again, I love my job so far, too.

So in all, I think life is good.

Photos by SAM

I came home from work (where I was in China) today to discover a camera full of photos! Turns out SAM has deployed those photo skills she's been hiding and snapped quite a few of the little M!

Margaret has been growing out of her clothes (we just changed diaper sizes from "NB" to "S") and so SAM did a fashion show today where she put Margaret in many of her new 3 month items. A few choice photos below.

Incidentally, we didn't report it at the time, but Margaret got weighed on Tuesday and came in at 4.87 kilograms / 10.8 pounds and 56.5 centimeters / 22.24 inches.








It's great to have photos of Margaret without having to take them. However, the photographer part of me is looking over my shoulder at the new gunslinger in town!

Also, SAM says Margaret is looking more and more boyish, but I think she looks just like herself!

Quick Update

Just a quick update since we have a photo from today.

Photo today by SAM

Margaret just LOVES her toys. Here you see her in her crib with her friend Eli the Elephant hanging above her and these great baby art cards from a company called Wee Gallery. Here we have the farm set.

Eli is bright and has multiple textures while the art cards are high contrast with great looking images for Margaret to practice her visual acuity with.

In the mornings, SAM says she just sets Margaret up like this and she can jump into the shower, get dressed, blow dry her hair and Margaret stays entertained, gurgling and smiling the whole time.

Gotta' love products that can keep a baby happy.

Hey Team,

I know that some of you are anxious for new photos but there simply haven't been many, lately as the in-house photographer (me) has been busy at work.

Last Friday morn before work

I have to admit that I don't have too much to report on Margaret except to say that she's learning new sounds, is ever more awake and seems to be losing her hair. It's starting to get a little bit patchy and we see strands of it in her hat and crib. Oh well. It was good while it lasted.

Sunday after feeding - look at that neck strength!

On Sunday, we picked up lots of loaner baby stuff from our friend Asel who has been incredibly generous. One of the best items is the tub that she lent us. Margaret obviously thought so too and decided to christen it on its first usage by pooping in it at the end of her bath on Sunday night.

I suppose there's a first time for everything.

I had to hold a screaming Margaret over the tub, dripping poopy bath water while Sarah refilled the sink with warm water so I could give Margaret another bath. I have to admit, it was nice to be in charge of the bath because it was Sarah who was in charge of cleaning out the poopy tub. I suppose I had the poopy, squirmy, inconsolable baby. Probably a fair trade.

Aaah, fun stuff.

'Till next time.