Signe is now 8 weeks old and gets cuter and cuter by the second. The photo above is her in her sweet pea Halloween costume. I think she looks like the inch worm from those old Money Tree commercials, but she’s adorable nonetheless.

I’m sure every parent feels this way, but I’m pretty sure we have the greatest kid in the world. At night, she’ll sleep a six- or seven-hour span, wake up to eat a bit, then sleep another three or four hours. She wakes up smiling and makes it really difficult for GTB to leave for work because she’s so sweet. She spends her day sitting in the bouncy chair laughing as she watches me dance or sing to her, sleeping in the sling (which I’m just now getting the hang of), and fussing just a little when I make her do tummy time.

I still haven’t perfected the skill of showering or getting much done while she’s awake, which means I’m at the mercy of her still irregular nap schedule. If she decides not to take a good nap until 11:00, I don’t get a shower before then either. Unless I want to take one while I listen to her scream, which I have done once or twice in desperate times.

The one complaint I have (other than her enormous carbon footprint due to the number of diapers she goes through each day) is that Signe is a nightmare in the car. She’s fine as long as she has a pacifier in, but she spits it out about every 45 seconds and then she starts wailing and is inconsolable until I can reach back and put the pacifier back in. If I’m in the car by myself, I can’t do that when I’m speeding down the freeway. So she just has to keep on crying. I sometimes hope that she’ll cry herself to sleep but so far, that has yet to happen. On one particularly painful trip, she screamed all the way from our house to my office in Lake Oswego, a 25 minute drive. Another time, she cried so hard, when I finally got her home and out of her carseat, she had sweated through her onesie.

Other than that though, she’s a dream. I have to go back to work on December 1 and I have no idea how I’ll survive it. I’m praying they let me work from home at least two days a week, but that’s still three whole days I’ll be away from her. The thought makes me weep.

Once, when I was a very little girl, I don’t even remember why, I pretended to be asleep when my dad came in to say goodnight. As I concentrated extremely hard on keeping my eyes closed and not giggling, I felt him very gently kneel down, lean over my bed, and place the tiniest and quietest kiss on my cheek. Then he tiptoed out of my room and I went to sleep feeling very loved.

In all the years since, I’ve wondered why he risked waking me just so he could get one last smooch in.

Then this morning, I finally understood it. Signe was still sleeping when GTB was getting ready to go to work. I was trying to get a few more minutes of sleep myself, and as I was drifting in that place between lucidity and dreaming, I pictured GTB going into Sig’s room to place a small kiss on her before leaving for the day, even if it meant running the risk of waking her up. I’m not sure that he go kiss her, but I would totally understand it if he did. And I wouldn’t have been upset if he had woken her up.

If you’ve never met me in person, you probably don’t know that I have a little speech impediment. It’s just at tiny little lisp, but it makes me crazy. The letter “s” is hard for me, but not as difficult as the sound you make when you pronounce “ch.” I dread saying the word “church” out loud.

If you can imagine what Drew Barrymore looks and sounds like, you’ve pretty much got an idea of my lisp. It’s not always noticeable, but becomes particularly pronounced when I’m drunk or extremely tired.

Last week, Signe and I went to the grocery store. It was her first trip; she was very excited about it. Anyway, while we were waiting in line at the deli counter, a woman approached us and asked “What do you have in here?” as she peered into Signe’s carseat.

I said, “This is my baby girl.”

“What’s her name?” she inquired.

“Signe,” I replied.

“Thigne?” she repeated.

“No, no. Sssigne. S-I-G-N-E.”

She gave me a weird look and walked away. I guess the new-parent sleep deprivation has amped up the lisp.

I know this is quickly becoming a photo blog, and I’m sorry for that. I swear it’s not a permanent change. I’ll give y’all an update on other goings on soon. For now, marvel at the cuteness…

Signe is now over a month old and I’m starting to understand what people mean when they say things like, “They grow up so fast!” I nursed her at about 1:15 last night and again at 5:30 this morning and I swear she had grown in between feedings. She looks different almost every day. Her head is bigger, she’s longer, and her hair gets thicker and longer. Oh, and every day, she looks a little more like GTB.

She’s still just a little peanut though. I went to the mall with my mom yesterday and while I was feeding Sig in the Macy’s bathroom, one woman oohed and aahed over her and then said, “Oh, I miss those days! Is she about a week old?” Of course, this was a woman who was almost six feet tall. Her babies were probably bigger at birth than Signe is now.

Sig has started smiling too. She gave several loving and amused looks at grandma yesterday. And she was all smiles when I went to get her this morning. It’s so cute! I’ll try to catch a photo of her newfound talent and post it here. But I have to admit, I’ve been terrible with the camera lately. It might be because it’s hard to put her down long enough to actually snap a picture. So for now, you’ll have to be satisfied with the one above that Greg’s mom took with her iPhone.

More soon…

Just thought y’all would find this amusing…

Last week, I took Signe to my office to meet my co-workers. Remember the obnoxious colleague who kept making inappropriate comments about how enormous my baby would be? Yeah, she made several comments about how she’d never seen such a tiny little baby. “She’s so tiny! It’s been a LONG time since I’ve seen such a small baby.”

So apparently, all that girth was just me being fat. Bitch.

I’m sorry for the lack of posts over the past couple of weeks. I’ve been kinda busy, what with the constant feedings (breastfeeding is much harder than I thought it would be), crying jags (stupid hormones), and hours-long stretches where we just stare at her and marvel at how cute she is. But I did want to post an update on how things are going.

First of all, I’m overwhelmed, in just about every way possible. I’m overwhelmed by the sheer wonder of her, by the lack of sleep, by the feelings of responsibility I suddenly feel. But mostly, I’m overwhelmed at the beautiful but excrutiating sense that I’ve just signed myself up for a lifetime of constant worry, fear, anxiety, and knowledge that I’ve never been in love like this before.

Don’t get me wrong, I love GTB as much as I love Signe, but it’s different. The primary difference is that it took some time to love GTB this much. I didn’t fall as completely, instantly in love with him as I have with her. It’s actually a little painful, and it makes me weep on a daily basis.

It’s easy to be in love when your baby is a really good baby. Signe rarely cries, and mostly just wants to eat and sleep. She does have stretches where she’s awake for a few hours at a time, and we’re not totally sure what to do with her then. But she’s good natured and patient with us as we figure it out.

She’s also a phenomenal pooper. I guess it’s really normal, but I’ve never heard a baby poop with the force and decibel level this kid does. There is never a wonder over whether her diaper is dirty. Her explosively audible BMs announce their presence with authority. I was expecting to be elbow deep in poop, but who knew something so cute could be so vulgar?

Despite her love of sleep, GTB and I are both a little sleep deprived. She’ll sleep for 3-4 hours at a time, but it often takes two hours to nurse her and then get her back to sleep. By the time I’ve peed and fallen asleep again, she’s been sleeping for an hour and I’m only another hour or two away from her next feeding. This is not new information to anyone who’s lived with a newborn before, I’m sure. And my 20-minute power napping ability does nothing to combat the constant sleepiness. It takes a good two hour nap each afternoon to feel human again.

What else? Niles is taking it all in stride. He does seem to notice she’s here and that he’s not getting as much attention, but so far he hasn’t pooped on my pillow or anything. He gets a little pissy if I’m late with his morning feeding, which I often am.

That’s about all the update I have the energy for right now. I’ll post more, along with pictures, at a later date.

And please forgive any typos or run on sentences.

This past weekend, my body and my baby decided that the unofficial end of summer should also mark the end of my pregnancy. So, appropriately enough, I went into labor on Labor Day. On September 2, Signe Rose arrived.

I won’t go into the whole birth story; it’s pretty graphic. Suffice it to say there were over four hours of pushing and a vacuum extractor involved. The end result though was a healthy and beautiful little girl named Signe Rose. And despite some co-workers’ insistence that she’d be enormous, Signe weighed 7 pounds 10 ounces, measured 19 inches long, and is practically perfect in every way.

We’re in deep smit, but we’re also exhausted. I’ll post more details later.