Hayley and Kate Minter

A new baby video is up - three minutes of Hayley chatting with us after a feeding and diaper change (when she tends to be at her most talkative). Enjoy!

Hayley’s batting .500 in our attempts to get her to sleep in her room. Sunday night and Monday night, she was fine, going to sleep around 11 and sleeping pretty well until morning. The past two nights have been the other end of the spectrum, though. She was up until around 1am Tuesday night, and slept fitfully that night. Last night, it was screaming until 2am, until Holly brought her back into our room to eat, at which time she finally went off to sleep. Attempting to think at work on four hours of sleep leads to some amusing results.

Poor baby has also developed a case of baby acne. The doctor says it’s nothing to worry about - just a symptom of the hormonal imbalance as she goes from getting the hormones of a pregnant woman in utero to her normal, post-natal levels. Hopefully after this breakout goes away, she won’t have to worry about them for another 13 years or so.

Quite a lot has happened since the last update, so let’s get right to it.

Hayley and Holly celebrated their special day on the 22nd - Holly turned 25 years old, and Hayley turned one month old! It’s hard to believe that our little girl has been here for a month already.

Hayley went in for her one-month checkup at the pediatrician today. Updated stats: She now weighs 9 pounds, 14 ounces, and is 21 3/4 inches long. That’s almost two pounds and four inches since she was born - I don’t think we have to worry about her getting enough to eat! She got her second Hepititis B shot, which she didn’t like. The doctor is also prescribing Vitamin D supplement drops, since apparently breastfed babies don’t get a lot of that.

We also decided to start the grand experiment last night of having Hayley sleep in her own room, instead of in the bed with us. It went surprisingly well - she fell asleep in her bassinet around 11pm, and we went into our room to try to sleep, while listening to the baby monitor. She fussed a couple of times between 11 and 3am, but by the time Holly got into the room, Hayley was already back to sleep. She fed around 3am, and she slept again until around 5:30am. We’ll see if this keeps up, but it’s nice to have the legroom back.

Being Holly and Hayley’s birthday/monthday, there were several people visiting this weekend. Holly’s college friend Erika came down from Long Island for the weekend, which was nice. The Grandparents Estes came down on Saturday for dinner (during which we lost power for a few hours), and the Grandparents Minter came down for lunch (during which we lost power for a few hours), and we listened to the Canes/Anaheim game on the radio (during which the Canes lost the power to score for a few hours).

Hayley continues to talk to us at various points during the day, normally right after she’s fed or changed. She’s so cute when she’s chatty.

Thanks to a weekend storm that coated Fuquay with about 1/4″ of ice, I got an extended weekend with baby, staying home on Monday. Of course, I had to do some work from home while I was there, but I got to help Holly out a bit, too.

Hayley continues to become more vocal, adding a variety of high-pitched noises to her vocabulary. She tends to have a couple of “chatty” spells a day.

Rough night last night, as Hayley went into full “cluster-feeding” mode again, nursing 2-3 times in an hour and a half and still wanting more. She finally went down for a few hours around 2am.

Big weekend coming up, as both Erika and the Grandparents Estes are coming down for Holly’s 25th birthday.

Hayley is the funniest thing when she wakes up. Especially after she’s been asleep for a while, it’ll take her a good 15-20 minutes to go from “Asleep” to “Eyes Open”.

She rolls, twitches, grunts, and in general makes some hilariously funny faces. It’s like she’s trying to wake up, but just doesn’t quite have the energy to do it. I guess it’s true what Jordy said: “Dur Dur D’Etre Bebe!”

Hayley was fussy last night around bedtime, so I stayed up with her until midnight, and then took her back upstairs for a feeding. By the time I’d changed her and taken her into the room, though, she was asleep. She stayed asleep until around 6:30 or 7 this morning, too. Aaahhh, blessed sleep.

Hayley’s three weeks old today. That means she’s about 1/17th into her first year. Time flies.
Hayley had her first “real” bath tonight. While her cord was still attached, we gave her some little sponge baths, but tonight was the first time we broke out the baby-bath-with-a-hammock-attached, filled it with water, and gave her an honest-to-goodness scrubbing. She was good during her bath. We could tell she was cold, as her little bottom lip was quivering, but she didn’t complain. The poor child has no butt, though. Don’t know what stray gene caused that one. Maybe she’ll grow one before too long.

The grandparents Estes visited on Sunday while I was in Greensboro for work. Grandpa Estes helped out by burning the wire grass off of our garden, so we now have a nice scorch mark in the back yard. Hopefully we’ll have the time, energy, and luck to make a better go of the garden this year than we did last year.

Hayley’s also been spending time in her baby bjorn carrier, and seems to like it. She’s still a little bit small for it, but I think it’s alright. Plus, it frees up Holly’s hands, which I’m sure she appreciates.

I’m back at work full-time now, and Holly’s recovered from her bout of mastitis, so she’s getting into the swing of caring for the baby by herself.

I need to get busy and write back to the 50-odd people who emailed us when the baby was born. This new blog software seems to be working well, but nobody’s left any comments yet for me to make sure that works. 0:-)

We hit another milestone yesterday when Hayley’s cord stump fell off. So she’s now officially parted from her former uterine habitat. And, as a bonus, she’s got a cute new belly button.

Holly came down with a sudden bout of mastits yesterday afternoon, too, which caused us to take a quick trip to the OB/GYN for examination. They said “Yup - it’s mastitis. Take these antibiotics.” Holly’s fever, which had spiked as high as 102.5, was down to around 99 last night and is gone today, thanks to the medication.

We had some fun during Hayley’s alert time today. I had her up in the computer room with me, to give mom’s arms a break, and she was just talking up a storm. Ok, maybe not talking, but she was making a lot of noise, so much that when I brought her back downstairs, Holly even commented on the conversation.

The Grandparents Estes are due to come down tomorrow, bringing Great Grandma Nana to see the baby for the first time.

Thanks to the magic of iMovie, I’ve got the first baby video online. Marvel, if you will, at over three minutes of a baby yawning. Can there be anything more exciting?
Another rough night last night - I relieved Holly on baby duty from 12:30am - 2:00am, keeping Hayley occupied so Mom could get some sleep. After 2, Hayley fed and went to sleep until sun-up. She’s been napping a lot of the evening, so we’ll see how she does tonight.

She was fun this afternoon while she was awake and alert, though. Kicking and moving, and making more progress on finding her thumb. I’m going to miss being able to stay home with her, but she’s in good hands with Holly.

In a change that’s primarily only of interest to me, I changed the software that runs the BabyBlog to the Movable Type system. I moved all of the entries over, and will go back later to get the comments, if I can.

Last night was another one where the pendulum swung to “bad,” as far as sleeping goes. Hayley was screaming her head off until 1am, she wanted to nurse constantly, and was generally just a grumpus. I think she may have been tired again, having not napped since midday.

She’s been good today, though, as we went back to the OB/GYN for Holly’s two-week checkup. They said everything was fine with the C-section healing, and that Holly can start slowly getting back to normal as far as her physical activites go.

Hayley’s gone from “Hunger Strike” mode yesterday to full-on piranha mode today. She’s feeding every hour or two, whether she needs it or not. Poor Holly’s probably feeling like a cow by now.

Hayley took another trip today - she went with us on a trip to Wal-Mart and the grocery store. She was good - she made it until the grocery checkout before she started getting fussy. Not bad for her second trip out “into the world.” We go out again tomorrow to the OB/GYN for Holly’s two-week checkup. That’s right - Hayley will be two weeks old tomorrow.

We had a nice visit tonight from the Ames family that lives down the road. They brought Hayley a book and an outfit.

I go back to work on Friday. As with all things, paternity leave must come to an end. The good thing is that I have enough vacation saved up to take a few days off during the year.