Tummy Time

Babies these days sleep on their backs, so to build their arm, leg, chest, and neck muscles, they are supposed to spend at least thirty minutes of *supervised* play time on their stomachs each day. This bane of a baby's day is cheerfully referred to as "tummy time."

Being the conscientious parents that we are, Dale and I try to provide lots of opportunities for Adelaida to experience tummy time, even if it comes in thirty one-minute segments rather than the recommended two fifteen-minute segments. Adelaida doesn't much like tummy time, so the happy tummy-time baby often turns into the unhappy tummy-time baby pretty quickly.

We try to pick her up before she gets too upset so that she doesn't associate tummy time with crying. And we always^* watch her carefully so that she doesn't fall asleep, bury her nose and mouth in the blankets she's on, and suffocate during tummy time.

^*OK, I almost always watch her carefully during tummy time, but I sometimes just step across the hall from her bedroom to the laundry room or turn around to fold diapers or get a bottle of water from the next room. But I never leave her for very long!

About three weeks ago, we had one such incident where I laid her down on her tummy in the middle of her crib, ran across the hall to the laundry room to switch laundry from the washer to the dryer, heard her start to cry as I finished switching the laundry, ran back to her bedroom,....and found her on her back in the crib, next to the sides of the crib, crying.

She had rolled over.

I didn't know whether to pick her up and kiss her or cry myself or hug her and soothe her or laugh. So, I picked her up and laid her down on her tummy again to see if she'd roll over again while I was watching (she didn't), then called Dale to tell him how smart and strong his baby girl was.

Adelaida had a *lot* of tummy time over the next several days, and actually rolled over several more times immediately after that. If the tummy time itself didn't make her cry, rolling over would--she rolls over unintentionally and I'm sure it is quite frightening for her to suddenly find herself on her back when she was previously looking up at the world from her stomach. Tummy time now routinely involves her rolling over, and she is just getting to the point where it doesn't scare her.

She was having a particularly good tummy time last week and I had the camera handy, so took a few pictures of her on her tummy, holding her head up. She was looking up at me as I was taking the pictures and suddenly rolled over, directly into a mirror I had propped up in her crib for her to look at.


The mirror fell over onto her head, frightening her, but she quickly realized she was perfectly fine and stopped crying. I really wish I had grabbed the video camera instead of the still camera, but the sequence of pictures is almost as good!

Adelaida's First Playdate

Adelaida had her first playdate on Saturday, with a little girl named Shreya who is almost two months older than Adelaida. At two and four months old, the girls were really too young to realize that they were supposed to play with each other, but they did spend some time looking at each other.

In fact, the girls' playdate was as much a playdate for the adults as it was for Adelaida and Shreya. We enjoyed spending time with Shreya's parents, Tom and Varsha. We ate lunch together at our house, took a little hike in the forest by our neighborhood, then played a boardgame. It was so nice to talk to other adults, and especially to talk with other parents who were going through so much of the same excitements and challenges that we've been dealing with.

At one point, Varsha and I walked into the kitchen to find the dads holding the babies up on the counter, pretending to stand up, so they could look at each other. A definite Kodak moment!

Two Months Old

Today is Adelaida's two-month birthday. She celebrated it with some napping, some eating, some diaper changes, and a walk by the river.

Today was also a big day for me: Adelaida's first day-care experience. I left her at the UNM Drop-In Child Care (UNM provides as-needed childcare for students who need to leave their kids during a class or meeting with a professor) for one hour and five minutes, and spent at least forty minutes of that time dry-eyed. I wasn't planning on crying, but when I got in the car, looked in the rear-view mirror, and saw her empty carseat, the tears started flowing.

When I picked her up sixty-five minutes later (determinedly dry-eyed!), she was sleeping. She hadn't shed a single tear, and I'm not even entirely sure she knew I was gone.

In honor of Adelaida's two-month birthday today, I'm posting a series of pictures showing how she's grown:

At four days old, Adelaida looked more like a generic baby than a real person with her own personality.


This is the best picture I have of her at one month old. She looked particularly thick around the middle because her diapers were a bit large for her!


Here she is at two months old, with an expressive face and a body almost as long as her giant pink panther.


Thanks to Connor's parents for the serial pictures idea :)

Her Future's So Bright...

In preparation for a trip to White Sands National Monument in the not-too-distant future, I wanted to get Adelaida accustomed to wearing sunglasses. It is surprisingly difficult to find infant-sized sunglasses in the winter, even in New Mexico, but I finally found a pair at Target. The sunglasses don't have side pieces that go over the ear; instead, the frames are held onto the head with a foam band that goes around her head and velcros to adjust the size. I have the strap adjusted to the smallest possible head size, and the sunglasses still end up around her neck sometimes!

Since Adelaida loves her carseat and always falls asleep in the car, I thought I'd introduce her to the sunglasses on a trip into Albuquerque. She wasn't too excited about having the sunglasses put on her, but once they were on she didn't seem to mind them and they were still on thirty minutes later when we arrived in town. Here's a picture of her wearing the sunglasses in her carseat. Note the puppy dogs by her ears--they are soft, fuzzy cloths that protect her neck from the carseat straps; she likes to chew on the puppy dog ear to her right.

Carlsbad Caverns

For about the past five years, Dale and I have been talking about taking weekend trips to explore New Mexico. There is so much to see in this state--White Sands National Monument, Taos, Mesa Verde and the Four Corners area, Carlsbad Caverns, Bandelier National Monument, the Guadalupe Mountains, and so much more--and we wanted to take advantage of the opportunities to see the area. However, in the 5 1/2 years that we've lived in New Mexico, we've really only taken one such trip, to Taos several years ago.

Our second weekend trip was two weeks ago, when we ventured down to the southeastern portion of the state. We stayed in a small town called Artesia, half-way between Roswell and Carlsbad, and visited both larger towns. The highlight of the trip was Carlsbad Caverns, a huge network of caverns with impressive, intricate stalactite and stalagmite formations.

Adelaida accompanied us and seemed to enjoy the coolness of the caverns--perfect for a little nap! We tried to point out some of the more interesting formations to her, but at six weeks old, she wasn't very interested. It was, however, an excellent opportunity for her to wear an outfit with a pointy elfin-hood!

In addition to the caverns, we spent some time walking around the Bitter Lake National Wildlife Refuge near Roswell. This is basically a huge salt marsh in a valley near the Pecos River. It was very windy, the trails weren't very well marked, and we didn't see much wildlife, but the walk was worthwhile for the great crystalline salt formations we saw.

Our next few trips are going to be out-of-state: Colorado in late February, Salt Lake City in March, and Indiana in April. After that, we hope to resume the weekend excursions and see more of our great state!

Eight full hours of sleep!

Wow, this has been an absolutely wonderful week. For five of the past six nights, Adelaida has slept soundly through the night. She's slept long enough for us to put her to bed, get ready for bed ourselves, fall asleep, and wake up the next morning (either by Dale's alarm clock or just because we were no longer tired). She's been sleeping for at least eight hours each night, and slept for eleven hours last night, although she was wide awake and looking around her room when I went to get her this morning.


My sleeping-through-the-night theory is that Adelaida is suddenly sleeping through the night because she has learned to suck her thumb. Now, when she wakes up in the middle of the night, she can suck on her thumb to soothe herself and never starts crying. Adelaida spent last weekend learning how to connect her mouth with her hands and every activity we tried to get her interested in (tummy time, laying on her turtle mat and batting at her toys, sitting in her bouncy chair) quickly turned into practicing sucking her thumb. She got pretty good at it last weekend and has continued to improve over the past week, although her hand still misses her mouth pretty frequently and sometimes it takes a few minutes for her to get started. She generally sucks her left thumb, although she's not too picky and if her right thumb ends up in her mouth first, she sucks it instead.

I was hesitant to rejoice when she slept through the night the first time, but now it seems to have become the norm and Dale and I are once again getting plenty of sleep!

Welcome to our blog!

Well, Dale and I are finally (tentatively) moving further into the digital age and have decided to create a blog. The purpose of this blog is two-fold: to keep you (the eager reader) updated on all the happenings in our lives and to give me an outlet for relating all the new and ever-so-exciting things that are happening to us.

For those who aren't familiar with us, here's a quick look at our family:

Dale

aka "Daddy" "the Dale human"
Dale grew up in Colorado and loves hiking, building rockets, and playing elementary-school games (kickball, dodgeball). He's shown here hiking near Arthur's Pass on the South Island of New Zealand.

Marie

aka "Momma"
Marie grew up in Indiana, but absolutely loves living in Albuquerque. She is (still) working on her PhD in chemistry at UNM and hopes to be finished sometime in the next decade!

Murphy

aka "Murphster" "boy" "puppy"
Murphy is one of our two canine family members. He's a bit more high-strung than Maggie and believes it is his job to supervise everyone else in the family. He loves to chase his ball.

Maggie

aka "Mag-pie" "girl" "puppy"
Maggie is Murphy's sister and better half. She's a more laid-back dog and loves to have her belly rubbed and to go for hikes. She will chase the occasional ball, but often gets distracted by a good gopher hole that needs investigation.

Adelaida

aka "baby girl" "kiddo" "sweetie" "pumpkin" ...
Adelaida Rose Parkes is the newest member of the family, coming into the world at 5:04am on Saturday, December 20, 2008. She is now almost eight weeks old and has been an absolute joy!

That's our little family. We hope you enjoy reading about all of our musings and happenings!