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...