8 Weeks

When it's nine and a half weeks I'm totally posting just so that can be the title.

She is 13 pounds and I don't know how long. Big!

They say by the end of the second month you can tell a baby's personality. If that is true, then Claire Helen is a quiet, sensitive kid, and a little shy. I would beam with the pride of ownership, except I hear that M was also that way, so I'll share my ownership. Co-owners of her personality.

When we go to playgroup, the other babies her age like to sit facing forward, to get in on the action. Claire Helen does too, but not at first. At first she clings to me, with one fist grabbing the neck of my shirt and the other holding my sleeve. She peeks out over my shoulder and occasionally wriggles into my neck. Once she is satisfied that the baby eating monsters have temporarily left the premesis, she will sit on my lap and coo genially at the neighbor baby.

There are still only 3 triggers to make her cry. If you can avoid them, she is the most perfect placid baby ever there was. These are hunger(a baby tragedy of the WORST kind), being too hot, and having been awake for more than two hours. This last one is tricky, because you think she's fine, I mean, she's even smiling through Bounce the Baby to the Tune of Rawhide, but oh, you're wrong. Any second now she's going to start with the NeeeAAAAAAA and the AAAANNNNNNNNGGGGG and the Actual Pouty Lip, and you have MISSED THE MAGIC WINDOW and THERE WILL BE NO SLEEPING. And she's going to get more and more pissed off and have more and more grievances to list. Who has time for sleep with all these problems?

We made that last mistake this very evening. M was downstairs trying ot make amends to the baby gods. He must have sacrificed a goat or a pacifier or something because it sounds quiet, now.