6 weeks

hana is now 6 weeks+ and hana has been "sleep training us". she has more wakefulness during the day and i think she is working on dropping a feeding. but she is moving out of the phase where she just drops off to sleep like new newborns do. this is further complicated by her overall cuteness. you see, when you know she is tired and she really should be sleeping, she looks at you with those chocolate pools for eyes and you think, "your eyes are wide open. you can't be that tired..." for those of you experienced parents, you know that's just not the case. because she has not yet learned the skilled of putting herself to sleep, she needs us to do it when she's tired. more importantly, she needs us to recognize when she's tired early enough (the crying is a VERY late cue) and take the few minutes of undivided attention it takes to do it when she's relatively calm. i've been reading the "healthy sleep habits, happy child" book and it says that she won't be mature enough to learn how to put herself to sleep for another couple of months. so it's our duty as parents to defend against her laser-like cuteness assault (which she, of course, innocently launches - survival instinct - keeps them from being thrown out the window when they are screaming inconsolably when we've let them get too tired...) by nuturing and cuddling her to sleep when we know darn well that's what she's asking for. hana will teach her hard-headed parents yet... i hope.

oh, and one more thing... jon says that during tummy time on sunday (1/28) hana rolled over from belly to back! i have not seen this, but then again, most of the time that i am with her, i'm either feeding her or trying to put her to sleep. which seems like most of the time... jon's only home for one more month, which seems to be FLYING by, so i try to let him have as much play time and tummy time as possible. so he catches all this stuff. maybe he'll catch it camera...

karma doesn't miss a beat

well, no sooner did i boast of her six hour sleep, was i stricken with an actual breast infection, complete with fever of 102 which lasted for about 12 hours. additionally, and thankfully, hana has been doing marathon nursing which helps keep the breasts empty - the best treatment for the infection. also when she does that, she "tanks up" for the night so to speak, enabling her to sleep longer periods. she was on track to do that when a blissful sound sleep was disrupted by jon changing her diaper... she'd filled it good and jon didn't want her to sleep in it. i suppose that makes him the more benevolent parent because i would have let her sleep in it to avoid the blood curtling screaming that went on for the hour following that. and of course then at the end of that hour, she wanted to nurse again. she really didn't sleep all that well after that because she was up again at 3:30 and then again at 5:00 a.m. i wonder if we'd skipped the diaper change if she would have skipped the 1:00 a.m. and 3:30 a.m. feeding because she didn't nurse very long at either feeding, likely just for comfort. i'm willing to check it out to see...

i'm on antibiotics now and feeling good. we even went to the movies yesterday with hana and jenny and her babies (party of 5!) to see "the queen". very good. interesting going to the movies with 3 infants. it was kind of a quiet movie so you wonder how much everyone can hear... they really didn't cry, but you know all the grunting and sqeaking that babies do... fortunatley, it was a matinee and jon, jenny and i were the youngest adults in the the theater by about 40 years, it seemed. so as the credits rolled all of the more "experienced" members of the audience made a point to file past the babies and fawn over them and talk about how good they were. clearly, a very receptive, if not hard of hearing, demographic so we'll have to chose more movies that appeal to them...

Pushing Up and Play Time

Hana is five weeks old and as Brittany mentioned in her previous (long) posting, when Hana is in that quiet alert mode it is the perfect time to engage her in play.


She has been getting some tummy time, practicing pushing up and she is showing us more facial expressions, lots of smiling and cooing.
Hana at Five Weeks

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a week of firsts

we had a whole bunch of firsts this week. i think i already wrote about taking hana to the movies. but that's not where it ended...

this picture of nadia and hana was taken at jenny's (party of 5!) birthday celebration. when i dressed her in that outfit, it occured to me that i keep thinking that i should get pictures of hana in all the cute clothes that people gave us but i haven't really been doing it. and since she grows like the weeds in our garden (which are thriving particularly well this year, thank you very much), she won't be in these clothes much longer. sadly, there really are not cute pictures of this outfit per se. but this is a cute picture of hana with auntie nad. so there you have it.

of course in this process, i also learned that my child is not a candidate for "america's next top model" (even though i think she could be a contender - she's alreadly WAY deeper than a lot of those heifers on that show...). therefore her motivation to "get the shot", or do anything that's involved in that, such as posing, sitting still, not crying, delaying nursing, etc really isn't there. so the picture of her in the cute coral colored outfit (thank's theresa! it's a new fave of mine!) really shows what a hungy model looks like. i guess, that's not really that far from the real thing after all. i might send this one in to tyra.

so outside of the realization that i need to take more coutoure shots of my child, there were other firsts as well...

last week i returned to the ww (that's weight watchers for those not in the loop). i was able to lose 55 pounds and more or less keep it off for 3 years with the support of the ww so it was always my plan to return as shortly post-baby as i could manage. honestly, i barely made it. i didn't get much sleep the night before, it took me for-EVER to get out of the house (due to sleep deprivation), and i arrived 15 minutes late (for a 30 minute meeting). but i'm glad i went. it was like a homecoming. i have a lot of friends at my meeting and when i walked in, the leader, gasped, stopped the meeting, and exclaimed that i'd "brought her baby!" after some fawning over said little one, i was able to get down the rather ugly business of weighing in. actually, the trip to the scale wasn't horrible but i'm trying to prevent it from getting that way. fyi,losing weight with the ww involvs following a system of points. all food is a assigned a points value and to lose weight, you eat whatever you want - more or less - as long as you stay within your points allotment. of course, it's not that simple (i mean, if it were, everyone one would do it) because clearly, you won't be as successful if you choose to use your entire daily points allotment everyday on in-and-out burgers. but it's pretty reasonable what you can eat. anyway, as a nursing mother, i get A TON of extra points (they seem comparable to the points of a 400lb man!) so that you can both lose weight and keep up your milk production. it's AWESOME!!! i may nurse hana until she graduates from high school! but i digress... on a more serious note: i do want to make a shout out to all of the women out there who returned to weight watchers months and months, or even a year or two post baby, after still not having lost the baby weight. thank you for speaking up in the meetings and offering the cautionary tales. it really helped me set my goal to get in early so i don't end up carrying around extra weight any longer than i have to.

the next "first" was what i would call my triumphant return to "the mountain". yes, i attempted running (actually i hiked up and trotted down) on saturday morning, despite the fact that it was stifflingly cold. there was still frost on the ground everywhere and most of the mud i encountered was still frozen. a friend just bought a house at the base of mount diablo with trail access about 3/4 of a mile away. i don't have to tell you how convenient that is for me since i love running on the trails. it's concievable that someday, if i could ever swing it, i could "run" to the summit of mount diablo and back down again in about 5 hours. that's much faster than it used to take us before, and we don't have trudge through 5 miles of open space/ranch land full of ankle deep mud mixed with cow patties just to get to the base of the mountain, before we could even think of starting the climb up. (fyi: it's pretty slow going, a hard work out on the calves and quads and even the cows look at you like you're frakking crazy - because, let's face it, i am). be we are a looooooooooooong way from summitting mount diablo of foot again. i just went out for just over an hour. i estimated that i covered about 3 miles in that time, and while i felt good while i was out there (except for that the fact that - TMI alert - boobs full of milk are a LOT heavier than boobs without and i don't think there's a bra on the planet that could support a full tilt run down the mountain without suffering MAJOR structural integrity - both to me and the bra... this may be a job for two bras... but will i be able to breathe? hmmmm... i'll have to ponder that further... for now: FOCUS!) , i paid the price later. oh MAN! this was also the same day i became engorged because hana slept through a feeding (btw: for those of you who were worried, i am fine. no clogged ducts, no mastitis..). so just before the onset of the low grade fever from that, my hips and quads came to the realization that although they remember how running involves locomotion and such, they hadn't quite made the transition back from labor and delivery, which involves an unreasonable amount of spreading in the total opposite direction. so i was wicked sore for 4 days i waddled around like i did the day after i delivered hana. it wasn't pretty. but i'm glad it did it. it was fun. i'd do it again...

in other firsts: playtime has begun! she now has 2 or 3 times of the day when she is in the mood to play. it's hard to get pictures of it because, well, we're busy playing with her but the smiles are sooooooooo cute they just melt your heart! and frankly, you haven't lived until you've seen jon play "where is thumbkin" with the baby. he does different voices for each finger and everything. it's good stuff. the picture below is not the greatest (jon doesn't usually let me take pictures for this reason... i coming to accept that i did not inherit my grandfather's penchant for photography) because hana's expression looks a little like she's in a freefall. but actually, she's smiling and cooing at poppa. i know, SO SWEET, right?! especially because she's not really falling... also, a friend of grandma manzy gave her a "taggie" she made based on something she found on the internet. now i've never heard of this taggie thing but jon informed me (in one of those "duh" voices) that tomkat has one for baby suri, and that he saw it people magazine, and ALL of the celebrities have 'em. well, since we are clearly right in line with hollywood this all makes perfect sense. i mean, we got pregnant when pregnancy was the new black. we had our baby and regularly push her around in the stroller out in public - because pregnancy is SO 5 minutes ago. parenthood is the new "it" thing... next, we were exploring the option adopting an african aids orphan and dressing him or her entirely in red baby gap clothing (because africa is "in" these days). but that's kind of expensive and we don't make brangelina money. so i like the taggie thing better. we're going with that. plus, hana really likes it too. she espeically likes when i take one of the ribbon thingies and tickle her lip with it... and has anyone noticed how much hana smiles like jon? she curls her lips when she smiles the way he does. i still think she looks like me (except the hands, feet, mouth, ears and chin) but she makes expressions like her poppa, even raising an eyebrow at me when she's dubious of something i'm proposing - like "let's take one more picture before i feed you..."

another first this week was my first post partum trip to the gym. although, admittedly, it was delayed a couple of days because i was stricken with a wicked stomach flu (24 hours of hell and high fever - but i'm better now...) i can't believe i remembered how to find the place since it's been 3 months since i've been. (i sure i wish i had the presence of mind to put my gym membership on "hold" (for a 1/4 of the cost) instead of paying full price... sigh). anyway, my trainer, chris, claims that he took it easy on my first trip back but only time will tell. it sure seemed like it was just as hard as the olden days. i whined A LOT. but i felt really REALLY good afterwards and had a burst of energy that lasted until 11p.m. exactly 15 minutes after hana crashed after her last feeding of the evening.

which leads me to my last first of the post. ("...last first"... you like that?) hana slept from 10:45 p.m. to 5:00 a.m. TADUM!!!!!!!!!!!!! my hearty little peanut slept for 6+ hours straight!!!! now, i am loathed to boast about that because all the books tell you that when this happens, you should keep your damn mouth shut(!!!) out of respect to all the people who are waking up every couple of hours with their babies. and karma can be surgically precise in exacting revenge for offenses such as this. but, i can't help it. this is great!!!! i recognize the consequences for my transgression could likely be that this sleep stint will be painfully flukey. or worse, she could contract some virus that causes her to project bodily substances from both ends in addition to not sleeping. but my karma account sound be even after this since i did have the stomach flu on monday (right?!)... well, i'll just brace myself for whatever and enjoy today's inzone touchdown dance...

the great pumpkin at 5 weeks

these are my favorite pictures of her in my favorite outfit of her's... sigh... so cute if i do say so myself!!!!

so in one of my recent posts, i noted that at the pediatrician's office, they measured the circumference of her head to be 39". well, that is clearly not the case. because if it were her head would be the size of a rather large pumpkin. i mean, she's a big girl, but she's not THAT big...

so obviously, what i meant to say was that her head is 39 cm in circumference. so percentiles wise, that would make her:

for length: (23.5 inches) above the 100%tile

for weight: (10 lbs 7 oz) in the 50 to 75%ile

for head circumference: (39 cm) in the 75%tile

she's 5 weeks old now and she is starting to coo and gurgle more. she is also awake more throughout the day. she has these growth spurts that prompt her to nurse hourly for an afternoon (phew!). she is also much better at sucking her fingers and she seems to prefer the fingers on her right hand. i wonder if that means that she will be left handed... i know it's too early to tell but i'm just thinking, if you are going to write or hold forks or do stuff, you wouldn't do it with your hand in your mouth right? but, now that i think of it, i think i sucked my left thumb and i'm left handed. also, she won't take a pacifier but she will take a bottle. that has been really handy because then jon can handle some of the middle of the night feedings when i need to sleep.

funny story: may be tmi for some...

on friday, hana was in one of her now weekly cluster feedings (nursing every hour). but she didn't really have much in the way of output, if you know what i mean. (that's ok by me really becuase we went to the movies for the first time with her and that meant we didn't have to endure smelly diapers for the whole movie- we saw dreamgirls - it was great). but saturday morning, i went running for the first time since hana was born. (it felt great! but i am pretty sore today...). jon stayed home with hana and apparently, after fussing for a little bit, she filled a diaper. and then another diaper. and another... and so on. and so on. jon described her as "mount vissucvious" (sp?) and declared the day "elimination day". unfortunately, she exhausted herself crapping and fell asleep for the next 5 hours. after she'd been 6hours without a meal, i woke her up and fed her. unfortunately, this missed feeding led to some engorgement which lead to me waking up at 2:30 a.m. with a fever. i felt pretty crappy but the baby was asleep. so i pumped and jon fed her at about 3:30 a.m. when she woke up. i feel better now but that really sucked last night...

first nap in the crib

today i put hana down for the first nap in the crib. i went to a sleep class while i was pregnant and one of the pieces of advice given was at 4 weeks, to begin trying to put the baby down for one nap a day in the crib while the baby is sleepy but awake. this way she will both get used to sleeping in the crib and get used to falling asleep on her own.

so i tried this but she actually fell asleep before i got her in the crib (she was nursing first and i have been playing the white noise cd - the womb sounds, which lead into the hair dryer... works everytime). but she did wake up 20 minutes later and fuss for about 5 minutes. but then fell back asleep again! i hope that this is the beginning of a trend instead of a fluke for today only.

1 month check up

hana had her one month check up with the pediatrician today. he said she's doing "beautifully". she was 10lbs 7 ozs and 23.5 inches long. her head circumference was 39". so for those of you who are into percentiles, i checked it at the babycenter.com web site. she is above the 100th percentile for length and head circumference. for weight, she is somewhere between the 50th and 75th percentile. personally, i think that range is kinda big but whatever... she's long and skinny just like her poppa.

in fact, the dr. said she's doing so well that we no longer have to wake her up to eat! he went on to say that if she slept 5-6 hours in a stretch, just let her sleep!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!YAHOOOO!!!!!!!!!

woooow. the though of that much sleep sends me into blissful reverie. i remember when sleep came in 5-6 hour stretches. seems so long ago. like i should fade into those wavy flashbacks like you see on tv. now, if she would actually sleep that long...

party of five!!!!

so if you have been faithfully reading this blog, you will notice several references to the "party of 5!". toupdate those who have not poured over every word, my friend jenny and i were pregnant at the same time (her due date was 7 weeks after mine but we delivered 18 days apart). i was carrying one baby and she was carrying twins. jenny and i (and a few others) run together on the trails on weekends. and by "run together", i mean that we all roughly start and/or finish around the same time and go to brunch afterwards. i am the slow poke of the group and jenny, glenda, and nadia run ultramarathons (runs that are longer than the marathon distance of 26.2 miles) so they run many more miles than i run on any particular given day. i must say is great to have company for longer than the beginning and end of each run when we generally stay together for warm up and gossip. prior to this, the only other time we hung together was when nadia was 9 months pregnant - that was the only way that we could keep up with her (!) - and when one of us is having a bad run. but then, the talk is less cheery and generally involves more expletives, to which the girls lovingly reply "suck it up buttercup!".

once we were pregnant, jen and i hung together on the trails. we called ourselves "party of 5" and i often announced our presence on the trail as such (to the forest creatures, insects, and who ever else is listening) at the beginning of our little jaunts. jenny and i ran, and then eventually walked together, until i was 38 weeks pregnant. she had to stop so the babies would hang in utero as long as possible. i called myself stopping as a show of solidarity. but honestly, i was only to happy to skip the walk and just meet for brunch.

well, jenny had her babies on 1/3/07. jack riley (4lb 14 oz, 19") is in the blue cap and charlotte (4lbs 10ozs, 18") is in the pink cap. they are both super duper DUPER cute!!!! it's funny to see all three babies together because hana was twice the size of them put together! jack and charlotte both look a lot like jenny. but charlotte really REALLY looks just like jenny and makes a lot of the same expressions. i'm so glad jack, charlie and hana get to grow up together!

4 weeks old

hana is now 4 weeks old. i'm not sure where the time went. at her last pediatrician appointment, she was 9lbs 9oz (on 1/3). they say they gain about an oz a day (give or take - breastfed babies are leaner...) so that would make her about 10.5 pounds now. today we measured her (as accurately as one can do that at home) and she appears to be 23" long now. she's still a big girl, but she's not a chubby baby... more long and skinny like her father.

i currently have a cold and hana has been a little gurggley in the chest but from what i have read in the books, that's about normal. she still sleeps pretty well and nurses often. in the past couple of days, i have noticed that she's very alert in the early afternoon. it's not so easy to just nurse her and put her down for a nap. she's calm and she wants to look around and stuff. that's been a lot of fun, especially now that i have let go of the idea that i'm going to get to take a nap at that time. she makes pretty good eye contact now when she wants to and she makes noises now that are not fussing or crying - guess they call that cooing n' such. although she is a good sleeper, she resists going to sleep when she's tired. i think she thinks she's going to miss something. but sadly, all she would miss is me sleeping right next to her. maybe that sort of thing entertains her... babies are such simple creatures. but once you can get her to settle down, she falls asleep pretty quickly and stays that way until it's time to eat again - or if she's got a really big fart or something.

we have also started doing "tummy time". now that babies are put to sleep on their backs, they don't get as much opportunity to strengthen their neck muscles like babies of yester year who were put to sleep on their stomachs. so now we have to do some tummy time to strengthen her neck muscles. she has already been holding her head up for short periods of time. and in her first session of tummy time, she did well. she didn't fuss at all, just did her little baby push ups for about 5-10 minutes. and bailey, our cat, came to "help out". it's sort of neat to see her push herself up and get stronger. boy do they grow fast!

hana, demystified

many have asked about hana's name, specifically the origin and how it's pronounced... well, allow me to break it down...

hana, not to be confused with hannah, is prounced hah-na (i guess) like as if the first syllable was a laugh. it is not pronounced like hannah. we picked the name after the town in maui where we spent several magical, fabulous, glorious days on our honeymoon. we learned after she was born that hana also is the japanese word for flower. which i suppose all fits... beautiful town, beautiful baby (well at least i think so!).

hana's middle name - muzette - is a family name. my great grandmother was named muzette. she was my grandfather's mother. she was a spunky lady who was raised in a bar and was a teacher for many years. when she retired from teaching, she became a social worker since that profession had also long interested her. although i never met her(she died before i was born) my grandfather used to tell me that i reminded him of her. also, the diamonds in my wedding ring are from a ring that belonged to grandma muzette. so grandma muzette's legacy lives on.

grandpa jim and grandma manzy

grandpa jim and grandma manzy (that's my dad and stepmom marianne) have been visiting us the past few days. it's been good to have family back in town to visit and they have been a big help. they were here for jon's birthday (which was yesterday - HAPPY BIRTHDAY POPPA!!!) and they helped us celebrate at one of our favorite restaurants - la pinata. today we were fortunate to be able to go see our friend jenny's babies (party of 5!) who were born on 1/3. charlotte was 4lbs 10oz and JackRiley was 4lbs 14 oz so compared to hana, who 9lbs 9oz at her 2 week check up, they are tiny little guys. but super cute!!!! got some great pictures that i don't know how to get out of the camera (jon's realm) so i'll post them another time...

hana has gone through many changes in the past week or so. she has started her social smiling and is much more alert. since grampa jim has been here, she has spent a lot of time sleeping on his chest. she seems to get longer every day is does not fit any new born clothes. in the picture below, she's wearing a green christmas sleeper that the definatly could not have worn on christmas day because it was much too big. and now it fits her perfectly. she' s wearing only 3-6 months stuff now but i don't think she will spend too much time in that size either. she has also begun to spit up in earnest. i'm not sure what i was expecting but i don't think i really thought through just how much spitting up she would do. it's not outside the normal realm... at least i don't think so. but now with each outfit, instead of just trying to find socks that match, i look for coordinating bibs. but you know what they say... "spit happens".

baby new year

this new year was pretty low key. we did leave the house and go to nadia, paul and cole's house to ring in the new year. hana slept the whole time. i fell asleep around 11:00 p.m. and they woke me up at11:59 to ring in the new year. jon, who stayed awake the whole time had a great time. he even got to have beer. for all of us, it was the first social call we'd really made since the baby came home so it was nice to go visiting. unfortunately, we didn't take any pictures at that gathering. but i did snap these pictures earlier in the day. i especially love her little bunny slippers that she was wearing- a hand me down from- a friend at work (thanks karen!!!). her feet just fit these them so they will probably only be around for about a week or so. i put them on her every chance i get!