Mirror, mirror on the floor

Owen loves having "tummy time" with his girlfriends at our weekly class for new moms & babies.



He seems to be especially fond of the redhead!

What was that saying about apples and trees again?

I thought it would be fun to compare photos of Owen with some of his mom and dad as babies. When I originally planned this post, I thought I'd ask you to weigh in with who you think he looks like - whose eyes, whose mouth, that sort of thing. But now that I've actually seen the photos, I'm not sure there's much point in that... I can't tell my baby from my husband! (The top row is me, the bottom row is Mike.) Many thanks to Nana, Granny and Grandpa for scanning and sending the photos.

Ode to a binky*

by Owen

eh...
Eh. EH. EH!
WAAAAHHHH!
mmmm...
slurp.

*for the Brits: "binky" is American for "dummy"

My new foot (and hand) fetish

As several of you who have met Owen have mentioned, there's something really amazing about babies' miniature hands and feet. I sometimes find myself staring at them for minutes on end. (Doing something for minutes in baby-time is like hours in adult-time.) Yesterday after he scratched himself in the face :-( I clipped Owen's nails for the very first time, and the clippings were so tiny it is hard to believe how much damage he is able to inflict with those perfect little fingers. Is it too weird to keep the clippings for posterity? I don't want to be a crazy mom, but they're soooo tiny. Photos just don't capture it!

Owen go bragh

A one month old Owen wishes you a very
Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Hurrah!

I've been slow to post lately as it's our first week alone, just the two of us, and it turns out this motherhood thing is a heck of a lot harder without Dad or Nana around. We haven't had time for a photo shoot yet this week, so I'm posting some oldies but goodies in celebration of the sitemeter hitting 100 visits.

Pride and Prejudice

It's amazing how ridiculously filled with pride I am at every little thing Owen does. Especially when you consider that, to be honest, he doesn't do much. When he was born, the toughest thing he had to do was pee and poop. He was fabulous at it from the start (and it's more difficult than it sounds, trust me). He peed all over the first pediatrician that came to see him in the hospital, which made us super-proud, since we didn't particularly like her. Now that he's 3 weeks old he is faced with more mature challenges, like gas. And I am so proud of every burp. How can this sustain itself? If I'm this proud when he burps, how can I possibly cope with his first day of school, or his college graduation, or his - gasp - wedding?

Since I realize that what brings you here are the photos, for today's installment we feature Owen's crowning achievement to date. Yesterday while playing in his activity gym, he managed to roll over from his tummy to his back. OK, so he was propped up on a pillow to start with, but still... What skill! What coordination! Unfortunately I did not have my camera at the time so today we staged this life-like, docu-drama style re-enactment for your benefit. Enjoy!

At least we're not doing (very many) experiments on him, right?

We're crawling out of the haze of the first two weeks. Mike goes back to work this week (to the lab, I mean - he's been working plenty hard here at home taking care of Owen and of me during my recovery). We're catching up on laundry and straightening the apartment. But as we exit the haze a clearer picture of our future reality is emerging - and I fear for our child. Today I picked up a piece of paper from the dining room table that, like many of the pieces of paper lying around these days, said 8:20 poop, 8:30 right breast, 8:45 poop... When I flipped it over it turned out to be the back of a journal article titled "Bulk heating of transparent materials using a high-repetition-rate femtosecond laser". I'm not sure which side is more troubling. Another reason to worry - today's photo is of Owen "playing" with his favorite toy, a bell-containing stuffed dog named Pavlov.

Where did he get that hair?

A full head of dark hair was not exactly what we expected to see. But before you ask about the mailman's hairdo, you should know about a recent study done by researchers at Johns Hopkins. They set out to test an old wives' tale that if mom has bad heartburn during pregnancy, the baby will have a lot of hair at birth. Surprisingly, they found that it was true - there was a significant correlation between severity of heartburn during pregnancy and the amount of hair on the baby. The connection? Perhaps hormonal levels in the mom, that both relax the esophageal sphincter and promote fetal hair growth. All I know is that for us, it was true!

Five thousand words...