Chookooloonks

Enter the Dragon

I don't mean to brag, but Alex is a perfect baby. She never complains, she's always in good humour, she's engaging and loving.

Until tonight.

This evening, Alex was bored. So she decided to introduce us to her latest trick: colic.

First, she started with a bit of fussing. Nothing too drastic, similar to her previous repertoire. We knew she wasn't hungry -- we'd just fed her. So we checked her nappy.

It was filthy. "How perceptive we are, " we thought. We changed her. She stopped whining.

Then she started to fuss again. Okay, she's fed, she's clean ... must need burping. So off we went.

As we were pounding her back with zealous vigour, she fell asleep. "Aha," we thought. "She was just tired. We're such amazingly intuitive parents."

Ten minutes later she woke up. And she started fussing.

Then she started crying.

Then she started WAILING.

For a solid hour, girlfriend went to town. We tried to burp her. Nothing. We checked her temperature. Nothing. We rocked her. Nothing. We looked up the baby books. Nothing.

Then the crying stopped. Then she yawned.

Then she started SCREAMING. Like we were beating her. I just hoped no cops were nearby.

Twenty minutes later, while Marcus held her hysterical, writhing body, I broke the landspeed record to the nearest Walgreens. I raced into the building, and fell into the pharmacist's arms:

"Gas drops," I gasped.

Sensing my obvious desperation, she reached behind her, grabbed the bottle, and thrust it into my hands. I flew out, leaving her to reach wildly for the money I'd thrown behind me as I ran out the door.

The drops did the trick. Within about a half hour after we gave them to her, she had calmed down.

The experience left her a bit shell-shocked, though:

I won't even show you the state Marcus & I were in.

Is this my good side?

Yesterday morning, Alex was in a particularly alert mood -- and since most of the pictures thus far have shown her sleeping, I thought I'd post some of her at her more engaging:

I probably need to come to the realisation that taking this many headshots of her may not be healthy. I'm afraid she might be starting to think her mother is actually a Nikon telephoto lens.

No baby, no cry

To clarify: I'm from Trinidad. I say this, because it never fails: someone finds out I'm from the Caribbean, and they immediately presume I'm Jamaican. With all due respect to Jamaica, this really bakes my potato. I mean, seriously, with literally hundreds of islands in the West Indies, why does everyone assume that I'm Jamaican? I don't SOUND Jamaican. Why not think I'm from Barbados? Cuba? Dominica? St. Kitts and Nevis, for heavens' sake??

That said, in the words of a famous Jamaican, "One Love." Admittedly, while each Caribbean island is very different in its individual culture, there is a certain kinship felt among those of us from "The Islands." So therefore, even though Alex's biological heritage is Mexican and Colombian, her adopted heritage includes English and Trinidadian -- and for this reason, I hope she grows up feeling a similar affinity with those from the various islands of the Caribbean, from England, as well as with those from Central and South America.

In any event, in order to cultivate this sense of delight in at least one half of her adopted culture, it was with some regionalistic pride that I dressed her in this today:

In case you were wondering, that expression on her face is her Rastafarian impersonation. If she could speak, she'd be saying "Irie" right now.

Buh-buh-bubbly bubbles...

My little girl is growing up. Since, this past week, Alex's umbilical cord stump fell off (finally -- nasty little thing, an umbilical cord stump), Alex officially graduated from sponge baths to real baths. Today was her first -- and to be honest, I was a little worried. I've been told that babies really hate the first bath, and I had visions of a wriggly, slippery little baby squirting out of my hands on to the hardwood floors, screaming and crying like we were killing her.

Turns out Alex is a water baby. She loved it. Which is good, since both her parents scuba dive, and her father surfs. Marcus is already pricing snorkles and masks.

Anyway, in our latest attempt to strip any dignity away from our poor child, here's a Quicktime video clip of her first bath. This is courtesy my iMovie software, Marcus' Canon ZR85 digitial camcorder, and "Bathtime" by Raffi. As always, give this a minute or so to download, longer if you have a slower connection.

Download file

If At First You Don't Succeed, Distract 'Em

My poor baby's acne:

And believe it or not, this is an improvement.

As usual, my unflappable husband has remained very calm throughout this Baby Acne Drama. While I've been pacing around hysterically, stopping only occassionally to smear hydrocortisone on Alex's face (per doctor's orders, after I nagged the poor woman to death), my husband has been sitting back in his oversized leather chair, eyeing me in his oh-so-very-English way: "I say, dahling. Perhaps you should remain calm. Stiff upper lip, and all that. Pip, pip. Smashing."

Okay, he doesn't actually talk like that. To be honest, every time I passed him he muttered something more like: "Bloody woman."

Anyway, to watch him, you would think that Alex's face didn't bother him in the least. At least, that's what I thought.

Until this morning.

This morning, I had to go into work fairly early, leaving Marcus to get Alex ready for her day. When I returned from work to relieve the nanny, I found Alex dressed in this:

Yes, that's right: bright purple cardigan with cherry red sash, over a lime green onesie, and white socks.

The only possible explanation for this ensemble is that Marcus intended to draw the viewer's eyes downward from her face and instead toward this bizarre get-up, thus distracting the viewer from her blemishes. Rather clever, I think.

I'm surprised he didn't top the outfit off with the pink three-toed shoes ...

Baby Clearasil? Anything?

Alex is 14 days old today. In honour of this special day, her face exploded.

As any good mother would do when her child's face explodes, I called the pediatrician. I told her about Alex's exploding face.

"Oh, that's perfectly normal," she said.

I hate it when doctors act calm, especially in light of an obvious catastrophe.

"It's baby acne," she continued. "It's caused by excess hormones in the newborn transferred from the birthmother prior to and during delivery. She's fine."

That's easy for her to say. Her daughter's face hasn't erupted with angry-looking little pustules, caused by someone else's hormones coursing through her little body. She calls it "normal baby acne." To me, it's verging on demonic possession.

But, as you know by now, I'm a professional. I calmly and reasonably say to the doctor, in a controlled voice: "Well, doctor, despite your obvious confidence, this 'baby acne' is eating my daughter's face. How can we cure this?"

"Well," she said, in her soft, sweet-natured way, "the best way to handle this is time. It'll go away on its own. It's totally normal."

Great. As anyone who knows me will tell you, I'm not a particularly patient person. I'm troubled by the fact that in this day and age when we can build space stations and clone sheep, we can't figure out how to eradicate the plague which has taken hold of my little girl with anything stronger than "time." I'm living in the country that brought the world the space shuttle, the transistor and the supercomputer, and the best this woman can give me is TIME??

Luckily, Alex does not share my relentless insistence on immediacy. The truth is, the little bumps don't seem bother her in the least. Her temperature's normal, she's not in pain, and actually doesn't seem to notice anything out of the ordinary. As a matter of fact, as I type, she's looking at me with a sort of "what are you ON about?" expression on her face.

An expression strikingly similar to her father's.

Happiness is...

...lying on daddy's chest.

Top Ten Surprising Things About Having a Newborn

10. That I have a newborn at all. Three years ago, I was Single Career Girl livin' la vida loca in London. Back then, if you'd told me that in 2004 I'd be living in Houston again, married to an amazing man, and that we'd be homeowners, with a child no less, I would have told you to put the crack pipe down. What a difference 1000 days make.

9. How aware she is. I always imagined a newborn as this sort of amorphous blob with a floppy head, just waiting to get to 6 months old so that she could finally have a personality. I think I was wrong. I swear this kid is already a little sponge, taking everything in, and processing everything. She already has a personality. And I kinda dig the little person she is.

8. How aware I am. All the how-to-baby-books are great for figuring out whether what's happening PHYSICALLY with your baby is normal, but it's pretty amazing how intuitive this motherhood thing is. And because she has a little personality, I find myself relying on my intuition a lot.

And since she hasn't packed up and left yet, I'm figuring so far, so good.

7. How into it Marcus is. Don't get me wrong: Marcus is one of those people who is gifted with children. Kids are just drawn to him, and they ... don't ...really...understand ...why. This gift is part of the reason that I was so willing to leave Single-Career-Girl behind. But Marcus is INTO this fatherhood thing. He's sterilizing bottles. He's changing dirty diapers. He's SINGING, for heaven's sake. And the funniest part: if I wake Marcus up from a sound sleep, invariably the first thing he does is cry out, in a panicked voice: "Where is she?!?"

He's so cute.

6. How naturally this is all happening. I admit it: I feared the Floppy Head. I was one of those people who would politely turn down holding someone's child, because I knew I would break it. But something happens when a nurse shoves a minutes-old-baby in your arms. No, not the instinctive motherly emotions and hormones washing over you, magically transforming you into the Virgin Mary. It's the sudden "oh-damn-I-guess-I-gotta-do-this-huh-well-here-goes" emotions. And so you just DO.

5. How cute poopy diapers are. Sometimes. When she's not choosing to christen me as well as her diaper. And I haven't completely lost my mind: I hear solid-food-poopy-diapers are positively frightening. So I'm enjoying the not-too-odorous formula ones while I can.

As much as one can enjoy a poopy diaper.

Never mind. Scratch number 5.

4. That one day I'm going to have to GROUND this child. Or that we'll fight over what she's wearing. Or that I'll disapprove of her choice in music (although, Marcus and I have pretty all-encompassing taste in music. Except for country music. This child better not bring home any country music).

Look at that face. How is it possible that this child will one day make me angry?

3. That literally DAILY I see changes in her. Her face gets a little more little-girl like. Or that she seems to have gotten bigger, all of a sudden. We've only had her for 8 days, and already I want her to SLOW DOWN!

2. The reactions of everybody. I mean, I expected people to be happy for us. But people are THRILLED. People I haven't seen or heard from in years are showing up in our lives again. Coworkers are buying us presents. And not inexpensive ones, either. It's really lovely, but so unnecessary. That said, we appreciate everything so much. Thank you all.

and the number one Surprising Thing About Having a Newborn:

1. How much I love the little stinker.

And so it begins

It finally happened last night: my parents returned from their holiday to meet Alex for the first time. I had been dreading this night, because I knew this would be the night Alex Turned My Parents to The Dark Side.

Unfortunately, Alex had an advantage: my mother, who is coming down with a cold, was uncomfortable holding Alex lest she come down with the same. My father, however, was hale and hearty -- therefore, Alex was able to divide and conquer. And so the corruption began.

First, you must know that my father's name is Kermitt. Because of his unusual name (and as you might well imagine), my father has the largest collection of frogs known to mankind. He has frog ties. Frog tie clips. Frog Christmas ornaments that croak "Jingle Bells." You name anything froggy, Dad's got it.

So, for her first visit with her grandfather, Alex chose this outfit for his homecoming:

It worked.

Dad wouldn't put her down. We had to beg him to come eat dinner. Like a man in a trance, he followed us to the table, his eyes starting to turn into mad pinwheels as he succumbed to do her every bidding. It was painful to watch: this strong man, usually able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, became a quivering heap. By the end of the evening, Mom had to literally carry him out to the car, as he rocked quietly, muttering like Rain Man: "Gotta-do-what-Alex-says. Love-Alex. Gotta-do-what-Alex-says. Love-Alex."

And Alex? Well, when we returned from helping Mom, we found her like this:

That smile again.

And the scary thing? I knew she was planning her next conquest:

Her Grandmother.

"Vengeance is mine," sayeth the mommy

Marcus & Alex:

I know, I know -- Alex is NOT happy in this picture. I feel horrible about it. Let me explain:

Today was Alex's first trip to the pediatrician. No worries, she's in excellent health, and has already grown 1-1/2 inches since she was born. The problem started when the doctor told us the State of Texas requires certain tests be performed to ensure she doesn't have any exotic diseases, like sickle cell, etc. What they did NOT tell us is that they had to put a slit in her heel and bleed her like a stuck pig, while I held her.

Needless to say, Alex protested most vociferously during this barbaric little procedure.

Afterwards, as evidenced by this picture, Alex was just stunned. Every time she looked at me, it was like she was saying, "What the hell was that? You let them DO that to me? You're the mommy! I can't believe you!"

I felt awful. I tried to explain to her that it was all for her own good, that there wasn't anything I could have done, that the nurse looked like she could take me. She wouldn't have any of it.

Little did I know that her silence was actually due to her planning the Mother of All Christenings. After we got home, she started to fuss, like she needed a diaper change. Dutifully (and still wracked with guilt), I took her upstairs to change her. I was a bit surprised to find that her diaper wasn't particularly wet, but decided to put a clean one on her anyway.

JUST as her diaper came off, girlfriend went ALL OVER EVERYTHING. She sprayed 4 inches into the air. Poop was everywhere. I sighed. I suppose I deserved it. So I cleaned everything up.

Do you know that before I could get her clean clothes on her, the little stinker managed to kick off her own clean diaper and then pee and poop all over everything AGAIN? And of course, that ever-wicked smile.

But, hey, I'm the MOMMY. I will not be outdone. So to punish her, after I cleaned her up, and made sure she was comfortable, I made her wear THESE:

She wasn't happy.

I hate that my beautiful baby girl had to endure pain -- especially pain that I was at least somewhat involved in. It kills me. But I guess, in the end...

... ya gotta show 'em early who's boss.