phull of phlegm

bean has a cough.
a body racking, gut wrenching, very wet cough.
sometimes she does cute little fake coughs.
but usually they are very real and very loud and very sad.
she has stuff she needs to cough up
but she doesnt know how.
i find myself clearing my throat around her a lot
as if somehow she will get the point and try it too
or it will magically cause hers to clear.
it doesn't.

oh...and remember all my worries about her not gaining weight?
well
she gained 2 pounds in the last month.
that's huge.
she's huge.
i couldnt be happier.
rolls and rolls and rolls.
lots of folds that are impossible to clean.
random parts of her that smell a bit like cheese due to the lack of oxygen that reaches them.
i couldnt be happier.
she couldnt be happier...
she's fantastic
even when she's she's phlegmy.
i guess she's phlegmtastic.

look who's learnin'

big days are here
and i guess big nights..
since i have heard that whenever a baby learns something it disrupts their sleep pattern.
uh oh
well it's not as if she slept well before.

bean has found her feet.
i guess she always knew where they were
but this morning she actually wanted to touch them.
repeatedly.

after amazing us with her flexibility
she decided to up the ante by rolling over.
she has now perfected the stomach to back roll and is well on her way to pulling off the reverse.
she gets her legs way over to the side and and her back into the air
and with a little push she would be all the way over
but chris says that the little push is equal to cheating.
so i just push really really hard with my eyes.

yesterday i also noticed while she was on my lap that she has freakishly hard working abdominal muscles.
she isnt sitting up yet per se
but she is dangerously close.
she weebles and she wobbles.
she manages to catch herself 85% of the time.
it's that other 15% that we have to worry about.
i do not look forward to the bruising ahead.


on a side note
we have figured out that bean does not always photograph at her best.
she will look cute.
adorable even
and then you face the camera towards her
and press the button
the lights flash
and her expression completely changes
to something crazy with big wide open eyes and a gaping mouth.
it happens every time
gorgeous...aim camera...crazy
we are working on ways to trick her so that we dont have an album (and blog)
full of this
(i am having trouble adding the image...i will try again later!!)

the grabbing hands grab all they can

today it happened...
she grabbed stuff!
and not because her hand accidentally swiped something and her fingers accidentally attached to it
surprising her just as much as it did us.
no...
she looked at something,
reached out,
and made it her own.

what a proud moment.
who ever woulda thought that we would take such pleasure in watching another person open and close their hand.
we literally sat and watched her. we could have sat all day
with big goofy grins on our faces.
we watched her do it over and over again
confirming that it is fact a new skill and not a fluke.
and she grabbed numerous things.
a stuffed carrot, a stuffed dog,
lots and lots of mommy's hair.
she is remarkably strong.
painfully so.
schwarzenegger strong (mr universe ah-nuld and not the "governator").
and while she's learned grabbing it appears she has not learned the art of ungrabbing.

we'll have to work on that next.

she can now control a little bit more of her world
and thus a little bit more of ours.

the bean's greens

this is bean pre-bath
why is she taking a bath? you ask

well...
picture edvard munch's the scream.
that was my face
when i saw her diaper.
you know it is going to be bad when you can see the poop on the outside of the diaper.
it somehow comes out of the diaper and onto the front without touching her skin.

the color: green
the smell: putrescence

i gagged. a few times.
chris held her legs and i went in for the clean-up
and then he lost one of her legs
and it came down right into the center of the diaper.
in the concentrated poop zone.

and bean laughed and laughed.
poop is funny.

She is the music maker!

Bean and I go to music class once a week.
I was told it is never too early to introduce music to a child.
I am not musical.
My husband is not musical.
Maybe Bean can be musical?

She is the youngest one in her class.
While the others rock to the music and clap...
Bean eats her hand.
While the others shriek with joy and shake eggs...
Bean eats her hand.

The teacher is serious business.
She tries to teach the mommies about pitch and tone.
HA!
She has us sing rounds and make up our own beats.
HA!
We are supposed to make goofy giant faces to entertain our children and to help them visualize the music...
Bean eats her hand and ignores me.
We sing the welcome song.
Bean eats her hand.
I place Bean on the center of a gigantic drum.
Bean eats her hand.
We sing the goodbye song.
Bean eats her hand.

Last week Bean didn't eat her hand...
She slept through the entire class!

And on the ride home she cooooed and shrieked and talked up a storm.

big cheeks

it's pretty funny
no matter how bean looks to me in person she always comes out different on the back of the little camera
her eyes get all big
her cheeks puff out
she looks scared and shocked
and i am sure that the flash is permanently burning her retinas

i am not a photographer
my best friend...she is a photographer
i press a button and hope for the best
i have found that if i continually snap away then one of them might come out normal
or as normal as we get
that's the beauty of digital...you can snap away

new trick:
raspberries
usually involving a lot of actual spitting
but when you are 4 months old people find it adorable
even after you spit up all over their beautiful red jacket
that was accidentally under you on the floor
oooops

the lameness grows

ok...so i am still lame.
here's the problem
when you havent told anyone you started writing something you really dont feel obligated to add to it
the only person who truly knows how lame i am is me
and i've been fighting that battle for years

what have we been up to you ask?
sickness...that's what
a bad lingering cold
phlegm and more phlegm
we are yucky to listen to
wheeze
snortle
flbrblblrb

and lingering breast feeding issues
bean basically stayed the same size for 3 weeks...or gained and then lost...i'm not sure which
we had issues early on and it is depressing to go through this again
pumping
feeding
pumping
crying
feeding
we are employing lots of fun methods to increase my milk supply
keep your fingers crossed