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.”

[She is SOOOOOO peaceful when she sleeps. And SOOOOO cute.]

Development on Project: Genius Baby continues. Notably, she has begun sucking/gnawing on her fingers. Frantically, slobberingly. Loudly. Today I watched as she eyed her own waving fist in an attempt to bring it to her mouth. She makes little monkey noises and usually misses or hits her eye, nose, etc. but eventually she makes it to her mouth and fanatically drools all over her prize as she shoves it in. It’s hard to believe one has to actually LEARN how to do such things. Saliva production is also on a steady increase. Unfortunately, the ability to swallow said saliva won’t happen for another couple of months (evolution is quirky that way). I fervently hope that this doesn’t mean she is sprouting a tooth anytime soon, I mean, she was just BORN for crying out loud. I am probably not the first breastfeeding mother who has feared the advent of teeth.

[Happy in her bouncy seat!]

[Still happy! Playing with her friend, the dishtowel.]

[Help! Help! It’s all falling apart!]

Joshua has been working three days a week and I have been the stay-at-home-mom. This means that while we may be busy, we don’t get anything done (like, ahem, updating the website, cough). Ronin may be demanding but she is usually easy to please. If I’m lucky, she’ll let me put her in her bouncy seat where she can geek out at her toys for a while (20 minutes or so if I’m lucky). In this time, I can usually get myself dressed and some of the apartment debris cleared. She has pretty clear phases: nap, wake and be happy or wake and be cranky in which case she must be fed (NOW), and then she is usually happy for a while (bouncy seat territory) or happy but requiring attention (Must! Be! Held!) (And Bounced!!). Eventually though she begins to fall apart and I make it my personal mission to get her to nap again. Reboot the baby.

Evenings though, she is more cranky than not. Joshua comes home from work all, “RONIN! My BABY!” and she is all, “Eh eh eh eh eh.” Poor Joshua. I don’t know what it is about evenings but the books and The Internet even say that babies are crankier in the evenings. BLAH. We go to great lengths to please her and have discovered that she LOVES to watch us dance. This evening’s descent into madness includes the following: downloading the YouTube video of the Las Ketchup song so that we’d be sure to have the moves right.