[We actually bought her a pacifier and she did not care for it. This is how we keep the car peace ’round our parts.]

We took our first trip for Ronin this past weekend. Also our first trip in our NEW 1984 Volvo! Woo! Both took the drive to Eugene surprisingly well. The car performed flawlessly and Ronin slept the majority of the trip or was amused by me making faces and shaking her bucky-ball. The only ones who suffered were Joshua and I when we and 56,720,572 other vehicles were stopped on the freeway in between exits for over an hour waiting for the authorities to clear an accident; they eventually just closed the freeway and rerouted traffic over surface streets to the next exit. ARGH. We barely survived and by the time all the cars got back to the freeway after the detour, everyone who had not spontaneously combusted out of frustration was all bulgey-eyed with anticipation as they gunned their engines to 100mph, flying away into the void. We enjoyed about ten minutes of this before pulling off to get some food because suddenly Joshua was starving to death. I fretted the entire time thinking that all those cars—the ones who were lined up halfway to Washington waiting on the accident—were coming and they would take up all the precious road space before we could get to it. By the time we got back on the road, I was all in knots and when we came to a screeching halt not 20 miles down the road, I blamed it all on Joshua but it turned out to actually be the fault of the factory outlet malls in Woodburn.

It was a bad day for traffic. I don’t know if it is just our rotten luck or if it is always so nasty. The last time we drove to Eugene was in November and we also got stuck in traffic en route to Eugene.

[Since I get up a million times per night, Joshua gets up with Ronin when she’s ready to rock at 7am. I try to go back to sleep. She usually crashes right back out though after an hour…]

Ronin has been making a ton of cute baby sounds these past three days. Ahhhs, ohhhhs, goooos, etc. She just sits there and babbles. She LOVES to go on walks and I (and my sanity… and my ass) can’t really be more thankful for this. She shrieks with delight as we go along, it is really adorable. Eventually she ‘eh eh eh’s and then about a minute later, she is asleep. There is still no real pattern to her nap schedule except that she takes short naps in the day and long naps at night. She still gets up three+ times per night, which is okay with me I suppose (especially when it is only three times and not, say, five; after three times, getting out of a warm bed is suddenly 1000 times more horrendous) but I keep hearing how every single other baby on the planet by this age sleeps at least 35 hours per night and then brings you coffee in the morning. I know not what to say. I’m hoping that, um, my baby’s genius brilliance is too much to let lie for more than three hours at a go.

Speaking of genius brilliance, Ronin can now grasp things. With mild difficulty, but still. The baby brains, they do astound. We brought back a miniature pair of maracas from Eugene and she’ll grab the handle and try to shove the thing in her mouth. She is less coordinated with tools and tends to rub it all over her face before making it into her mouth so we stuck the pacifier on the pointy end so she wouldn’t put out an eye in her zeal. Let’s just say this kid would not pass the touch-your-nose-with-your-index-finger part of a sobriety test. Well, she wouldn’t pass the walk in a straight line part either.

[The above two photos Jeff took when visiting a couple of weeks ago.]

Ronin loves to bounce on the big red ball but the constant movement makes for blurry pictures. That doesn’t stop Grandpa Jeff though.

My dad has been ridiculously excited about Ronin, but hasn’t been able to come up until now. He brought cigars… Apparently he’s been giving them out to everyone he meets (“IT’S A GIRL!!”) and arrived with the last half dozen or so. We’ll have to try one.

Carlos sent us some pictures of his big truck adventure to Texas and Grandpa Jeff got so excited he decided to skip his flight and drive back. We sent him off in Tyrone and he’s now somewhere in Utah (I hope it makes it). It sounds like a good time. He already got stuck in the snow once while trying to 4 wheel it to the north rim of the Grand Canyon. Also, those Utah cops weren’t sympathetic when he tried to explain that the transmission works a lot better at 80 than 65. But it’s true, Tyrone won’t drive 65.

We went out for pho before he left. We’ve been braving restaurants for lunch only. She does okay most of the time, and it helps if there is a place to stand near the table.

Firstly, a few things.

* She sucks in her sleep. It is ridiculously adorable.
* She has outgrown her first batch of baby socks. Her feet still seem so tiny and yet the first time I put these socks on her, she was swimming in them.
* She has started to make baby babble sounds and her voice is so soft and cute. Before, her non-fuss sounds were very limited. It is like she has just discovered her voice.
* She makes a fantastic amount of noise when she sleeps. Sighs, squeaks, whimpers, snuffles, wails, inhuman creaky sounds, and loud breathing. She always has though; this is nothing new really.
* Her new hair is much lighter. It might just turn out all blond.
* Her eyes have gone from dark gray to medium-dark blue. So far. Mine are blue and Joshua’s are hazel.

[I will cut you.]

Nextly, some things that are probably excruciatingly tedious for non-family types.

The past couple of nights Ronin’s sleep routine (haha: “routine,” see how I delude myself) has somehow gone completely to shit. We have generally been able to put her down sometime between 7:30 and 9pm, usually twice or maybe four times before it took (I’m not saying this is perfect, but it positively glows pink with success when I think about these past few nights). She would sleep in blocks of three [blissful] hours, then two hours, and then one or one and a half hours thereafter. Generally, she is easy to put back to sleep after waking—I’d say one time per night needed extra rocking and attention. I’d get up three, sometimes four times per night and that was doable; I wasn’t complaining. On a few rare occasions, I’ve had to get up five times. Then I complained. Well, these past nights, she slept for 1.5 hours as the longest stretch and then it was one-hour or 45-minute stretches thereafter. I got up five times the first night until she was UP at 6:30 and then the next night I got up SIX bleeding times before making Joshua deal with her at 6:30. What gives kid?! I look like crap with bags under my eyes. If this keeps up all my hair is going to turn gray before I am 35.

[Eye-bags carefully edited out for my own vanity’s sake.]

[The next day.] A miracle occurred yesterday and the third night, she went down at 8:06 (had to put her down twice but no big whoop). AND SLEPT FOR FIVE AND A HALF STRAIGHT HOURS!!! I could hardly believe it when I looked at the clock as I got up to feed her: 1:40am. She went right back down and slept again for nearly three hours. Then again until 6:50 when she was UP. I have no idea what we did differently. Maybe she was just tired from the previous two nights. We’ll see what happens. We just got her down at 9:15 (took three tries).

This brings me to the horrifying and fascinating thought that her nearly three-hour stretch is just about the longest I’ve slept at one time since she was born. I would say I got two solid hours plus maybe fifteen minutes of sleep. Other than that, it’s been usually an hour and a half max (unfortunately it always takes me a few minutes to go back to sleep after I get her back to bed, drink a glass of water, rock the cradle, bang my head against the wall, etc.). It’s really rather amazing when you think about it because really I feel mostly fine. All those years I wasted getting eight hours of sleep…

By the way, Ronin would like to announce her brilliant idea for a book, it’s called, “Things that are alternatively screamingly hilarious and cryingly tragic at 4:37 in the morning while lying on the changing pad.”