A Visiting Weekend

May 28th Continued

After the great night of sleep, we still had a day to get through. Betsey's class with lab on a random day of each week, had chosen Friday for this week. I headed to work and left Betsey to fend for herself.

Things went pretty well, as I understand it. Grace was left with Grandma M. all day. In Grandma M's words from Facebook:

Then Grace came to Portland for Marg and Grace's Excellent Adventure. It was my intention to take a ton of pictures of our time together, but I was having too much fun with her. From Friday at 2:00 PM until 1:00 PM on Saturday we did have an excellent adventure.

When Betsey's lab was finished, she went back to her childhood home, and had a nice stay with her folks in Portland.

When I was done with work, I went back to Corvallis and got a start on the housework I'd been neglecting.

May 29th

Saturday morning I woke up late in an empty house. It was nice to sleep for so long, but I missed my girls a bit in the morning. After rousing myself from bed and getting ready for the day, I concentrated on cleaning the living room and kitchen. We were expecting great company.

Leah, who you may remember as our doula, and Betsey and I had just clicked from our very first meeting. I think I said something really dorky like, "I think I'd like to be your friend." So shortly after Grace was born, Leah found a great way to solidify the friendship. She offered for her and her wife, Rachel, to bring us a homemade dinner. It was with great enthusiasm, not just for prepared meals, that we accepted. On the first agreed upon date, of course, our friends decided to have a baby, and Leah had to cancel to go do her doula thing, but with tenacity, Leah texted me until a new date was settled on.

Leah and Rachel arrived shortly after six bearing an amazing full size Pyrex (not the little square ones) vegetarian lasagna, fresh salad, and pomegranate juice. It was probably our only well rounded meal since Betsey's mom had made us dinner. The salad was terrific, and the lasagna was amazing, and Leah purposely made more than the four of us could eat so we'd have tons of leftovers.

After dinner, we settled into a great game of Pandemic, which they had never played before, but seemed to enjoy quite a bit. We lost, of course, but that's kind of how playing a four player version of that game goes, especially when the Medic card isn't dealt.

At the end of the evening, we said our adieus. I think it was really the first night we felt like adults with a social life since Grace was born. That was perhaps an even greater gift than the dinner. We're looking forward to seeing them again soon.



May 30th

Sunday was a rough day for little Grace.

We went to the library to get some baby sign language books. Instead of carrying the car seat around the library (it is pretty unwieldy), I took Grace out and put her in the Moby (strapped to me). We had a fine time in the library. An added bonus of the Moby is that strangers don't feel as empowered to reach in and touch her, because they'd be in my personal space. I had one woman who came up and took a gander, but she remained a respectful distance and didn't try to touch. I signed up for a Corvallis library card (finally), and we checked out our books and DVD (The happiest baby on the block), and headed to the car.

At the car, I was determined to put Grace back in the car seat on my own. I really wanted to empathize with what Betsey has to go through. Here's a tip, though, don't lean over with a baby in a Moby unless you're damn sure she is secure. I looked down as I was leaning into the car to grab the car seat, and thought, I need to grab her. As I began to correct my positioning, Grace rolled right on out and started falling through the air towards the foot well of the back seat. It was about the longest second and a half of my life, before I managed to catch her by her body and scoop her up to my chest. She let off enough of a single scream to make me feel like the worst dad in the world, and then promptly went back to sleep while simultaneously farting a few times. I was so scared I hurt my baby. I took solace in knowing she hadn't actually struck anything before I caught her, but that scream rang in my head. We watched her pretty closely for odd behavior, and when we got home, we checked for bruising. She was fine.

Later that night, we decided to try another bath. We'd had some advice to just put her in the bath with either one of us and it would be less traumatic for her, so we were willing to give it a try. Betsey and Grace got in the water and everyone was all smiles. Unfortunately, we both, after seeing all those water baby videos, weren't overly concerned about water getting on her face. She corrected our lack of fear pretty quickly as she inhaled a couple drops of water in her left nostril. She didn't aspirate it or anything, but definitely coughed and sputtered for a little while because of it. I took her out of the tub and calmed and dried her, and then we tried again, with more caution, and things went really well. She really liked the warmth and the weightlessness seemed to help ease her gas pains. As if to put an exclamation point on the end of the bath....

Oh wait, you should know that there's talk about baby poop below. If you don't want to read about baby poop, you should skip to the next line of asterisks.

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As if to put an exclamation point on the end of the bath, she pooped in Betsey's vicinity. We had a little tub for just such an occasion, and it was quickly scooped out before it touched anyone. It was actually pretty surprising to see how well it stayed together. I had kind of expected her poo to be like a liquid and to quickly diffuse everywhere, but it didn't. It just stayed together like a little yellow salamander, and it was easily removed.
*****

So Sunday was a rough day for Grace. An all air tumble and a snort of water made it a day she'll be glad she has no memories of.



May 31st

Monday was Memorial Day. Let's all take a minute to remember our fallen soldiers who did their best so we can live our best.

Besides remembering our fallen, we almost didn't do anything on Memorial day, but as the evening progressed, we remembered that some people use this solemn holiday to get people to buy things. Since our microwave is on the fritz, and it would be really nice to have a flat screen television, we decided to go introduce Grace to the Corvallis Video Poker Heroes, if there happened to be any great deals at the same time, maybe we'd take advantage of them. Specifically, we have a nice relationship with our Sears Home Store Co-owner Brian. We actually just stop by there whenever we're nearby to see him and his wife and the rest of the crew. When we bought the house, we needed a washer, dryer, and dishwasher, and Brian helped us save a lot of money. On our last visit, we had promised to show off the girl when she arrived.

Brian was quite taken with Grace, commenting on how beautiful she was. I showed off her toes and told him about dropping Grace. He provided a nice story about accidentally rolling his kid down a flight of stairs to help me feel better. It worked.

We returned home without any new appliances, but feeling better for having seen our friends.




May 24th & 25th Addendum

Betsey reminded me that the evening of the 24th well into the afternoon of the 25th was Grace's longest screaming fit to date. I slept and worked through the entire thing, so it's no wonder I didn't recall.