Perhaps the best part of having a kid is getting all of the amazing hand-made gifts that will be treasured and passed on for years to come. My brilliant Aunt made Penny this elephant paci clip which I pulled out for the first time today.

So far, Penny has been hooked on “Soothie” pacifiers which don’t have a clip on the end. I’ve been wanting to switch her over to regular pacifiers for a while now, but it wasn’t until I dropped her final Soothie on the floor in her nursery and was unable to find it that I pulled out this amazing elephant paci clip with a delicious bpa-free pacifier on the end of it. I was doubtful that she’d make the switch easily, but as soon as I stuck it in her mouth she was sold. As for me, I’m sold on clipping it to her outfit and never losing the pacifier again!

From Daily Daguerreotype

Doesn’t that elephant just make you swoon!? WHY DO I LOVE SAFARI ANIMALS SO MUCH?!?!? Thanks, Auntie Lynne!

My thoughts are jumbled, so this post is going to be bullet points.

• Today Penelope is six weeks old, which pretty much blows my mind. She saw both sets of her grandparents this past weekend who hadn’t seen her since birth, and they all remarked that she was chubbing up a bit. It’s hard to see it when you’re with her all day, but my arms certainly can tell that she’s gaining weight. She’s got a pediatrician appointment on Friday, so I’ll find out how much she weighs now.
• Just when you feel like you’re starting to get into the groove of things – her schedule and feeding patterns were becoming more predictable – your parenting gets totally thrown because they hit another growth spurt. Right now we’re in the throes of it as she is eating all the time – sometimes once an hour. It’s wearing her out, though, so she’s sleeping a lot and being cute while doing so.
• This past weekend Penny took her first flights – from Nashville to DC to NH, then NH to Newark to Nashville. I loved that DC was the first place outside of Tennessee that she visited, since I have a special love for it after living there one summer in college. Our flight attendant on the first leg of the journey gave us a signed certificate from the pilot and co-pilot with her name and seat number on it. Matt especially found that adorable.
• Yesterday we took our first trip to the grocery store alone – just the girls. She cried the whole time, but her tiny newborn squeal was barely noticeable in such a large building.
• Six weeks is also a huge step in healing from my C-section, and I’m so happy to finally be here. I definitely feel almost back to normal, I’d say about 90%. Frankly, I’m thrilled that I’m finally at this point so I can start exercising regularly to lose the baby weight. I have some extra weight that I want to lose on top of the baby weight as I put on some pounds from some serious emotional eating after my miscarriage. I have a goal to lose it all before our family cruise in February, with my reward being a hot mom bathing suit and… um… ALL THAT CRUISE FOOD.
• She looks absolutely gorgeous in baby blue.
• We’re starting to make habits, and her personality is starting to shine through. She is a major snuggler. She wants to be held and snuggled all the time and sleeps best when she’s snuggled in bed with me. We get that time every day during her afternoon nap and first thing in the morning while Matt’s getting ready for work.
• She fights going to sleep at night, so we’re starting to just act like nothing big is about to happen, then we let her fall asleep in whatever room we’re in and transfer her to her crib. I think we are programming a terrible habit, but The Behaviorist is not concerned and thinks we’ll be able to break her of the snuggle-to-sleep when she’s old enough to cry it out.
• Yes, we’ll probably do the cry-it-out thing. I’ve already determined that Penny is definitely the type of kid that gets worn out by crying instead of escalating. I think when she’s about 3 months we’ll start sleep training her. Which is crazy since we’re halfway there!
• She has been introduced to Ben Harper, David Gray, Led Zeppelin, The Eagles, Tom Waits, Journey, Elton John, Billy Joel, and John Scofield. The only one she hates is Billy Joel, although it’s hard to determine whether she really hates him or just hates it when I sing his songs.
• She is smiling and cooing now, and it’s more than I can handle.
• She looks a lot like her daddy.

From Daily Daguerreotype

I can’t believe there are two people in the world I love this much.

Among her many new nicknames, Tiny Turtle is used most often. In the evenings she morphs into Fussicatious J. Bumbix, which my father used to use on my sisters and I when we were dreadful. Often she is referred to as Snuggle Bear which also happens to be a nickname for Berlin. This causes great confusion, and I sense that one day they will duke it out, inevitably ending up with one opponent’s ear bitten off.

Tiny Turtle from priscilla on Vimeo.

These kinds of posts stink. And they’ve happened too frequently for my liking. But the worst part is that this is the last time I’ll write a post like this, since my last grandparent passed away.

On Penny’s birthday, my mom’s mom heard the news of Penny’s arrival, and then died two hours later. Today is her funeral in Connecticut. And my midwife says no air travel until four weeks after delivery, so that means I won’t be there to remember her and celebrate her life.

Of all the people in the world whose life I would want to celebrate, hers is at the top of the list. Since I can’t be there in person, I will remember Grammie here, surrounded by her furniture, china, trinkets, and little white sweater that she knit for my daughter.

My grandmother was the definition of a strong and capable woman. Any resilience in life that I have in me came directly from her. My mad canasta skills also are attributed to her. She loved to travel, and saw most of the globe bringing home wonderful stories of her adventures. She was an outstanding New England cook who baked incredible pies and put on the best Thanksgiving dinner you’ll ever eat. She was thrifty and smart and a little bit snarky too. She was awesome.

But as I was telling my sisters the other day, perhaps the thing I loved best about Grammie was how much she loved Matt. When I brought him home, she and my grandfather adored him. They loved talking about the challenges of Matt’s job with him, the places in Europe he had visited, and his home state of New Jersey. Grammie respected him and thought I had done well for myself, which was the biggest compliment I could ever get. Watching her love on Matt made me melt inside, and I loved sharing him with her. I’ll never forget playing cards with her and Grampa – they taught Matt their game of canasta, and to this day he plays just as cutthroat as they did. Matt used to trash talk Grammie at the card table, and she threw it right back at him. He loved her probably as much as I did. He definitely loved her pies.

I’m so saddened that none of my children will get a chance to meet this wonderful woman. I’m also saddened that just like that all of my grandparents are gone. The last year and a half has taken three of them, and I’ve become accustomed to this process.

But my very resilient grandmother would not let anything stop her from overcoming the challenge at hand, and neither will I. Tonight we’ll play a game of cards (and I’ll kick Matt’s butt!), and we’ll tell Penny the stories that Grammie told me about her African safari. And one day we’ll take Penny on a similar African safari and the stories will come alive. Grammie would like that.

Oh my gosh, Internet. Who are you, and what have you done with my pants that used to fit?

My baby will be two weeks old tomorrow, and let me tell you, the time freaking flies. I’ve been wanting to blog, you know, with pictures and all, but somewhere between the millions of guests (seriously, I had no idea we had this many friends!) and the endless pediatrician appointments (Baby Girl is up to 8 lbs 7 oz already!) I completely forgot about the fact that I have a blog. I also didn’t care that our wifi wasn’t working for about a week.

But now that the visitors have all gone, and I actually have time to sit down and stare at my baby and learn each and every one of her facial expressions, I am torn between my desire to write about it and tell the world how stinkin cute she is, and my desire to just sit there some more… staring at her face and kissing her toes.

I can only sum up the past two weeks by saying that the first week was me in survival mode. Surviving from a long labor and abdominal surgery, and trying to share my girl with all the people who came to see her and not be one of THOSE moms. The second week was me crashing down from the week before, which I survived purely on adrenaline. So I slept, and I snuggled her, and we went to appointments, and came home and napped because we were so exhausted.

But now… this part right now… this is what I was living for during the past nine months of pregnancy. I have a load of darks in the washing machine. The dishwasher is going and my kitchen is clean. I just changed the sheets on our bed since Penny peed on them this morning. And now I’m sitting at the dining room table checking my email for what feels like the first time in weeks, and staring at my daughter who is sitting in her bouncy seat on the dining room table. (I was totally one of those people who saw children placed precariously on things like counters and dining room tables in all manner of infant seats and thought, “OMG THEY ARE GOING TO DIE!” And now I am one of those people who does it because I have tried bending over, and the pain from my incision makes me scream, “OMG I AM GOING TO DIE!”)

I can’t begin to tell you how in love with her I am, and it all would just sound so cliche if I tried. I’m kinda waiting for the Baby Blues or the dreaded post-partum hormones to kick in and make me hate everything, including The Rolling Stones. But it hasn’t happened yet. In fact, each day I wake up and I like her more than I did the day before. I know her more than the day before. And I would chop off an even more important body part of mine for her than I would have the day before. The crying jags that I’ve had seem to be about two things. The first being my frustration at how slow recovering from a C-section can be – my desire to be up and about and taking my girl to the zoo is just that strong. And the second is when I realize yet again how blessed I am that I’m going to be a Stay At Home Mom. I just weep in Matt’s arms and thank him incessantly for making it possible for me to spend each and every day just hanging out with Penny. My life is great, internet. It really truly is.

So that’s what Penny’s first two weeks have been for me. As for her, she is growing like a weed. She loves to eat, and does it well. She takes a bottle and a pacifier and her mother’s cowlike teet all equally well. She sleeps wonderfully – last night gave us a 5 hour chunk before quietly whimpering for a diaper change and… maybe a snack, please? She even took her first Hep B shot like a champ this morning which leads me to believe she has her father’s medical disposition.

But right now? Right now it’s time for me to feed her again, so we’re going to head to her room to sit in the rocker for a half an hour of uninterrupted time, just me and my girl. And I think this time I’ll sing some Michael Jackson to her.

I’m a week overdue with Penny today, and actually couldn’t be happier. She passed a non-stress test with flying colors this morning allowing us twenty minutes of listening to her darling heartbeat on the monitor and watching it rise and fall correctly as she flipped and flopped. Apparently I was also experiencing Braxton-Hicks contractions every 12 minutes, but could NOT have told you that. I think I’d have to have a million babies before I could truly recognize a BH contraction.

The midwife sent me home with the edict to spend the weekend doing nothing but the thing that got me into this mess to begin with. Matt had an evil glint in his eye. Boy is embracing midwifery more and more each visit.

41 weeks is no more uncomfortable than 40 weeks or 39, or 38. Would I love to be holding my baby girl this very moment? Absolutely. But I continue to be tickled pink that I have a team of care providers who are really in my court – ones who feel induction at this stage is unnecessary unless Penny was not responding well to the tests. I have until Monday before I go in for more tests, and should we pass those I’ll have until 42 weeks before they will plan induction.

A lot of people have asked me why I don’t just go ahead and get induced anyway. Aren’t I uncomfortable? Wouldn’t I rather just get the inconvenient waiting over with? I so appreciate that they understand how non fun it is being this pregnant for this long, but I truly believe that my babe will come when God wants her to come. Getting her out for my own comfort seems a bit… selfish, no? I want her arrival into the world to be the God-ordained, natural process that it is supposed to be.

Plus if I do this laboring according to my brilliant plan, I can come out the other end without once being touched with a needle.

So a big thank you to all of our dear friends and family who are inundating us with love, support and encouragement. As Tom Petty so correctly put it, “the waiting is the hardest part.” But I am having so much fun spending these last few weeks with Matt, and am really happy that my care providers are giving me the (very normal and healthy for a first-time mom) extra time for Penelope to make her way into the world.

Scuse me… I just got a rascally wink. Duty calls.