Baby Love

John has installed wireless internet access in our home, and now I can lie in bed and feed Violet and blog -- all at the same time! I don't even have to feel guilty about surfing the "interweb thingy" for hours at a time, since I wouldn't be doing anything else anyway. I mean, besides lactating. Violet is a freakishly quiet child who has cried only once, at birth. Weird, but I'm cool with it. (Maybe she'll be a Fremen warrior when she grows up. Damn you, House Harkonnen!) Zoë is upset about the whole thing and has actually been crying more. Oh, well. There's no other way to obtain siblings.

Overall, the operation wasn't as creepy as I thought it might be, thanks to my foresight in requesting extra sedatives, and hasn't been as painful afterwards as I'd feared. So, newborn babies, they sure do eat a lot. And they're so funny and confused. She just looks around quietly, learning everything with those funny, slate-blue newborn eyes, a look that comes from a thousand miles away. Violet will get her first bath today. Anyway, we're back-ish, and thanks so much for all the kind wishes...

Comments

[nadezhda]

Glad to hear you're all home and well.

Sibling rivalry is pretty predictable, and it's amusing if you aren't in the midst of it, and sometimes even then...

If it gets bad for Zoe you might try the rather crude, but reportedly effective, technique my mother used with me after my brother was born. Apparently I loathed the dreadful creature on sight. After several weeks of unreconciable distress on my part, my mother handed me a stack of blank paper and gobs of wonderful crayons. And I was instructed to draw pictures of the baby, and the do with them what I wanted. So I used my artistic talents (feeble even then) to depict him in his awfulness -- gross color schemes, misshapen form, etc. (Maybe my total lack of talent was suited the occasion.) And then I proceeded to shred the first one into little pieces. But my mother didn't think I'd done adequate justice to him, so the next one got stomped on until it had pulled and torn and was totally obliterated, not just destroyed. Apparently things settled down afterward with only the normal sibling tensions which, since I was the elder, usually ran in my favor.

Whatever you choose to do, just make sure you enjoy!

[Doug Muir]

John and Belle Have a Blog Again! Welcome back!

Best wishes to mother and little one. And if all other signs are nominal -- and it sounds like they are -- then don't fret too much about the kid being quiet. There are worse things than quiet.

Doug M. -- father of David the Really Colicky Baby

[Fontana Labs]

I was really quiet as an infant--probably you should worry.

I thought that would be funny when I typed it, then I realized you might not know that I don't have some weird problem that's linked in some way to being a quiet infant. No, I was ok till I went to graduate school. Good work with the kid. Be well.