Oh what a lovely puppet you have there. Really, such an interesting puppet. 

Let me just take a closer look here, Mr. Puppet...

AAAAAAAAA! AAAAAAAA! She's eating my nose!!!!!! AAAAAAAA! 

Tuesdays with Baby

Claire Helen is 15 weeks today (15 weeks and 3 hours), so I thought I'd update. Tuesdays are as good a time as any, right? She is 105 days old, and if she lived in China, this means she would have gotten a party 5 days ago on her 100th day, but she does not so all she got was a run in the park. Mama likes to call this her "nature activity," because otherwise mama could feel a teensy bit guilty that baby just stares out into the world for an hour several times a week, but mama does need her exercise, and those of you who have given birth know that those hips don't just shrink themselves, am I right? I do run on a pretty trail, so she has lots of leaves to look at, not to mention her favorite toy, the dog.

Today we went to our first baby and mommy yoga class (how trendy/hippy dippy are we? We may as well just give up and move to LA.)(No, not really.), which I found wildly amusing. For the most part we just did variations on dolphin and downward dog, and cooed at our babies, but the best parts were the begining and end, when the instructor tried to convince the babies that we were having quiet meditation. Anyone who has been around a bunch of 4 month olds know the best way to induce a good shriek is to make the room silent (so they can be as loud as possible), which is exactly what the little boy next to us did.

You know, I actually think Claire Helen disapproved? She looked skeptically at him, and even paused the important work of finger chewing just to show him she was serious. Hee. My baby doesn't like attention seekers, either.

This weekend we took Claire Helen to her first swim class. We are surely going to get our Over Enthusiastic Parent badges taken away because we forgot to bring the camera. Rest assured that it was as cute as you imagine, and Claire Helen appeared to enjoy it, which in baby speak means she didn't cry.

We are gearing up to make the grandparent/wedding rounds in a couple weeks. For those of you without children, and for god's sake those of you who are pregnant, I suggest you start packing for the first trip now. I have no idea how we are going to get all Claire Helen's stuff from place to place, but I am sure that at 17 poounds, she will be the lightest thing we bring.

Mama insisted this picture be taken because mama really likes this outfit(the baby's dress and stripey tights. Not that that sweater isn't great and all), and doesn't care if that is shallow. 

Voting Fraud 

Boo. More photos. 

 

 

(Go Bears) 

Claire Helen's reaction to momma dancing hysterically with a stuffed animal on her head. 

She cannot decide whether to smile or chew her hands. Wait! Why decide? SHE CAN DO BOTH!!! 

(Go Bears) 

 

This is Nina the gorilla. She is the matriarch of the zoo gorillas, and Claire Helen thinks she is HILARIOUS. 

Rabbits! you have to trust me that Claire Helen was excited. 

OK, this is not actually related to the picture, but Claire Helen LOVES the dog. At least, she loves when the dog walks. Whenever she sees Betty going by, she bursts with laughter. This amuses me, of course, so today we spent a while calling Betty from her bed, and then sending her back to her bed, and then calling her back again. Claire Helen vigorously approved. 

Hee hee hee 

Buy me some peanuts and craaacker jacks, but don't eat the peanuts because they cause allergies.

Friday night Ichiro Suzuki broke the major league baseball season hits record. The record was previously held by George Sisler, who had 257 hits in 1920. His 81 year old daughter cam to watch Ichiro, and Ichiro was really gracious to her. I was there, too! Here he is breaking it:

 

It was a really neat moment to witness, even for a not super baseball fan such as myself- here is his team crowding around him:

 

And here is what I was doing while everyone was crowding around him:

 

For audio, just imagine a baby going "AAAAAiiiaaaaa! neeeeeAAAAAAAAAA!"



And here is us about 3.5 minutes later, outside the stadium:

 

You can't tell, but the whole top half of her head is a blotchy red, and her eyes are actually quite swollen. Claire Helen HATES baseball. She clearly agrees with critics who think the World Series is bought every year, generally by George Steinbrenner. She could not even be convinced to stay until the next inning with promises of garlic fries(yum) and Dippin' Dots. That is some major league hatred. Really I think she hates fireworks and loud loud loud crowds who are so excited about Ichiro breaking the record. I wanted a bullhorn whenever the crowd would erupt in cheers for Ichiro. "QUIET, PEOPLE! My baby is easily startled!" I have never seen her so pissed off. We were barely able to stay until he broke the record, and even that was probably pushing it if I am being honest with myself. The 2 month shots were a walk in the park compared to the horror that is crowd noise. Everytime the crowd would cheer, she would startle, look at me(just to make sure I knew WHY she was so mad, and that keeping her here was the WORST kind of BABY TORTURE WHAT KIND OF EVIL MOTHER ARE YOU, CRUELLA DEVILLE MOTHER PERSON?), and then hoooooooooowl. By the time we had had enough howling baby, the blotchy spots had spread to about her ears. Ironically, I wouldn't have felt bad about my howling screaming crying baby disrupting anyone's good time, because it was so loud. I was starting to feel bad about permanently scarring my baby, though.

Mat said "It's like she has impetigo!!" but he didn't know what impetigo was. It turns out that it is a bacterial infection that causes oozing blisters, so it was not like she had impetigo at all.

After we left I was jazzed to do SOMETHING, so we went to a baby friendly restaurant and futher dissected the presidential debate. We had a really great time, and Mat told me a story I had not heard- did you guys know Fox News made up some stuff about Kerry getting a manicure the day of? A liberal blogger called them on it, so they retracted it and said some people had been joking around on the feed, and they accidentally ran what the jokesters said as a story. Ha! I cannot overexaggerate how amused I am by this. I dislike Fox News much less now that I think of it more like a media critique source, like Slate or Salon, so I don't hold it to rigorous news standards. I really don't think it makes a serious effort to be objective. Which is fine- neither do I, really.

I can think of absolutely nothing in the way of segues here. I think I just have to go on, to the next completely unrelated topic. But still Claire Helen, because I am One of Those Moms who only talks about her children. At least she's cute.

Last week at my mom's group, a professional photographer came in to teach us all how to take pictures of our baby. He used my camera as the demo (score!), and here is a picture he took of Claire Helen:

 

What do we think? Does it look professional in some way? Am I only impressed because I am supposed to be?
I tried out some of the stuff he told us to do, and this was the general result:

 

Blurry. I was really excited about my camera when we got it- it's a Canon Rebel, and has all sort of exciting dials with different colored numbers on them. So far, this has proven to be genius at helping me find new ways to destroy a perfectly good picture. I am practicing, though (1054 pictures so far!). Law of Large Numbers, right? Or of Probability. There is a reason I was only a math minor, and it's not because I was too busy being a photographical prodigy.
I did take one I sort of like, but the light isn't so great. Why? It was 4 seconds later! I may even mean that literally.

 

Finally, here is Claire Helen's favorite thing to do. She will pause in the middle of a full on shriek to giggle if only you hold her like this: