Smiles and Shakespeare

Guess what! Annie smiles! And not just because of gas!

Yesterday, Annie met her Aunt Clare Marie and saw her Aunt Dode again. Then she slept while her grandma and I got lunch at an interesting little cafe in Snyder called O3.

We also went to Shakespeare in Delaware Park in the evening, and brought salads and a DiPaulo's pizza. (DiPaulo's makes the world's best pizza. Really. We haven't found anything like it anywhere else). The Tempest was showing, but because we were too far back, we couldn't see anything. Plus, there wasn't a whole lot of action - it was mostly just dialog. So we cut out at intermission and went for a walk in the park instead. There was a wedding at the Delaware Park Casino, where Jim and I had our wedding reception. Very pretty. I can't believe our wedding was almost 10 years ago.

Today I'm hoping to do some family visiting. Then tomorrow, I'm off to Barker for a couple of days at the lake!

Reclaiming Baby Status

Now that Annie and I are out of the house, Solomon has reclaimed his rightful position as baby of the house:
In this photo, he is sleeping on the changing table, right where Annie's head usually is when we change her. It is the highest perch in the room, and I'm told that the cats often defend their territory by sitting in the highest place in their territory. So there you go.

I told Jim that he should try putting a diaper on Solomon, since anyone who leaves the changing table must have a diaper on. Jim said that he'd probably lose one of his arms if he tried to do that.

Nieces, aunts, grandmothers, friends and a grand old city

I'm in Buffalo til July 6. We drove in on Wednesday and it took 9 hours. Ack. The drive is usually 7 hours, but stopping for bottle feedings will tack on the time.

After some sleep (and feedings), we went to Alex's. Click on the link below to read more about that:

http://afuss.blogspot.com/2009/06/family-time.html

Today would've been my parents' 38th wedding anniversary. For lunch, Mom, Gretchen, Annie and I went to Merge, a new restaurant with a lot of vegetarian options. It had really great food (including an interesting kale salad that we're going to try to replicate tonight). It's located in downtown Buffalo on Delaware Avenue, somewhat near Spot Coffee. It's nice to see new businesses opening in downtown. After lunch, we went to the cemetery and then back home, where I took a short power nap. After several rather spectacular thunderstorms over the last 24 hours, the weather is sunny and hot. Hopefully it'll cool down enough so we can eat dinner on my mom's back porch, and then take a walk at Niawanda Park.

Annie and friends

I just can't resist posting this adorable photo of Annie with all her new buddies from my new moms' group at Isis:
Annie is the one who looks like she's in her underwear :) (this was the spare onesie in my diaper bag because she leaked formula around the collar of her outfit). She's to the left of the little girl in the yellow shirt and blue pants. Today was "graduation" day - the end of our 6 weeks. After I get back from Buffalo, I start a new group, called "Next Step," for kids who are 3-4 months. All the kids in this photo are the same age as Annie, plus or minus 2 weeks. The little boy to the left of Annie was born on the same day as she was!

Clothes sizing, or, why Jeannie needs to return to work

Annie is 10 weeks old today. I guess I should start referring to her age in months now? Otherwise, I'll start sounding like one of those moms that says that her 3-year-old child is 36 months old. :) So, Annie is also 2 months old.

I also tried on my pre-pregnancy jeans this morning and they fit!! (a little tight, but comfortable enough to wear). This is a very good sign, because my jeans were the first to go when I was pregnant. Of course, this happens just as I had given up on them, broke down and bought a new pair of jeans in a larger size. But that's OK.

And speaking of clothes and sizing, I figured out why it seems that babies don't fit into any of the clothes that their moms get as shower presents. I was at BRU last night and noticed the sizing chart for Carter's clothes. Size "NB" (newborn) is for 5 to 8 lbs. The next size is 3 months! Yeah, that's kind of a large jump, right? Except that the "3 months" size is for babies who weigh 8 to 12 pounds. This seems a little off, in my opinion. Annie is in the 25th percentile of 2 month old babies, and the smallest baby in my new moms' group, yet she weighs over 10 pounds. Several babies that I know (including my niece) were 8 pounds or larger when they were born. Annie will almost definitely be larger than 12 pounds by the time she turns 3 months. I think Carter's would be more accurate to say that these clothes are for "0-3 months" like other clothing manufacturers ... in fact, I think on some Carter's clothes that I got as hand-me-downs, the sizing is listed as 0-3.

After reading this post over, I realize why I need to go back to work. I need to be worried about things besides the meaning of the 3 months size by Carter's. Well, maybe it's a good break. It's much easier to worry about baby clothes sizing than most of the things that go on at my job.

Father's Day Part 2

Well, we got back from Townsend, Mass., which is where the clock store was. It was fun, except we left our picnic back home on the kitchen floor. We realized this after we had parked in the state park in Townsend and were quite hungry. We looked at each other and said, "Who brought the lunch?" On the good side, we did manage to remember the baby and her diaper bag. Annie got her normal formula for lunch, and we ate a diner in Groton, Mass.

Annie gave her dad "The Little Engine That Could" for father's day. How did she know that he liked trains? Amazing. Later, we had story hour:

Annie seemed more interested in what was going on outside, but we still had fun.

Father's Day!

Happy father's day to all the dads out there!

And a smile to remember those dads that aren't here anymore.

I wanted to do a picnic at Houghton's Pond today, but it's raining (again). So we are probably going to go for a drive up to Leominster (near the NH border), where there is a shop that sells antique grandfather clocks. Some of the people that work at this shop appear on Antiques Roadshow on a regular basis. Jim loves looking at the old clocks and wants to build one someday. It's a beautiful drive and we'll do a car picnic if the weather doesn't clear up.

Pediatrician

Today, Annie had her 2-month visit to the pediatrician. Her official weight is 10 lbs., 4 oz. and she is now 23 1/2 inches long! (She has grown 3 inches over the last month). She has jumped from about the 5th percentile to the 25th percentile for 2-month-old babies, has grown over 5 inches since she was born, and has nearly doubled her birth weight. Not bad for a preemie!

In addition to the height and weight measurements, Annie had a huge round of immunizations: one shot that included diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis, as well as Hib and Polio; another shot with the pneumococcal conjugate vaccine, and a third shot with the second in the series of the Hepatitis B vaccines. She also had the rotavirus vaccination, which was an oral vaccination. All she needed was the kitchen sink, I guess. She did quite well - she screamed and got very red in the face for a couple of minutes, but then calmed down. Actually, the more difficult procedure was when they were trying to fill up a tiny vial with her blood - her fingers are so tiny that it's hard to get a lot of blood out of them. They had to stick her twice and keep squeezing her little thumb. She was not happy with that.

Anyway, she has been sleeping for a couple of hours now. I'm not sure if I should wake her for a bottle and another dose of Tylenol.

Over the next week, Annie will add 2 more states to her repertoire (Pennsylvania and Ohio) - we will be traveling to Buffalo on Wednesday, and then on to Cleveland next weekend to meet a large portion of my side of the family.

Ruminations and speculations

Today I had my follow-up appointment with my doctor. This is the typical office visit to make sure that I recovered properly from the birth. I realize that I still haven't blogged about the circumstances of Annie's birth, but I think all of you who read this blog know what happened. The summary is that when I was 35 weeks pregnant, I tripped and fell while at work and went to the hospital for monitoring. After about 24 hours of monitoring, I ended up with an emergency C-section. This happened because of 3 episodes in which I had a contraction and Annie's heart rate dropped significantly.

At the time, the doctors feared that I had damaged my placenta when I fell. (It was a slow fall, but I landed directly on my belly). A damaged placenta means that the baby is not getting enough oxygen; thus, it can be fatal to the baby. The only way to tell if there was a placenta abruption is if there is bleeding (which I didn't have), contractions (which I was having but wasn't feeling), and/or change in the baby's vital signs (which occurred when I had one of those contractions). They did an ultrasound and couldn't tell anything from that. When Annie was born, there was blood in the amniotic fluid, which could have been an indicator of an abruption. They decided to send my placenta to the pathologist to see if anything could be determined from that.

Now there may not have been a placenta abruption. But of course, that raises more questions than it answers. The nurses that were taking care of Annie in the nursery speculated that I had not damaged my placenta, but that something else was wrong and that by some stroke of luck (or divine intervention, which is what they thought), I happened to fall and come in for monitoring. Otherwise, no one would have figured out that anything was wrong until it was too late.

Today, I talked to my doctor and learned that the pathology report was inconclusive. Apparently, the only way that pathologists can conclusively determine if an abruption occurred is if they study the placenta directly after it is delivered. Usually, they don't get it until an hour after the birth, and by then it's harder to determine. Interestingly though, the pathologist noted that the placenta was abnormally small (in the 5th or 6th percentile) and that the blood supply to a small portion of the placenta appeared to have been insufficient or cut off. The doctor thought that these factors could have caused the problems that led to Annie's early delivery as well.

I guess we'll never know. I have felt horrible about the circumstances of Annie's birth, particularly when she was so little and had to sleep in an isolette at the hospital with all these tubes and sensors hooked up to her. It was not the way I wanted to give birth. But I guess it could've been a lot worse. Maybe somehow it was meant to be.

Still Miss Marvelous

Annie will always be Marvelous, even after she grows out of her famous Miss Marvelous onesie:
It still fits for now. :) Miss Marvelous had a marvelous diaper this morning!

Today I'm trying her out in a Baby Bjorn baby carrier that I got as a hand-me-down from a friend of a friend. It's actually quite nice. (For those of you not familiar with these things, it looks a little like a back pack that you wear on your front. There are straps for your arms, and then a pouch in the front, where the baby sits. Infants sit in it facing you. Later, around 3 months, once they're better about holding up their heads, you can face them out. It's a convenient way to carry around your baby and still have your hands free).

I have been using a sling, which used to work like magic in settling Annie down. But she no longer likes going in the sling because she can't look around in it. I believe there are other positions to use the sling for, but I haven't looked into that too much yet. The Baby Bjorn has Annie upright, instead of in more of a fetal position.

It looks like the Baby Bjorn might be a success. She was sort of fussing around in it for a while, but now she's asleep. I love the smell of baby ....

Today we're meeting Jim for lunch at Mary Chung's in Cambridge. We're getting to be experts at bringing Annie into restaurants. :)

10 Pounds

I'm happy to report that Annie had her weekly weigh-in and she now weighs 10 pounds, 6 ounces! Pretty cool. She is finally starting to outgrow the "Newborn" -sized clothes, and she fits well in the size 1 diapers. At this rate, we'll need to be buying the size 2 diapers in a couple of weeks! I look at the photos of her when she was born and realize how much she's grown. She has almost doubled her birth weight now.

We have our 2-month check-up at the pediatrician on Friday, when we'll find out her official weight (without the diaper and onesie). But it probably won't be that different. Annie gets her first set of shots on Friday too, poor baby. I believe she'll be getting 3 shots and one oral vaccination. The doctor said we could give her a dose of Children's Tylenol about an hour before the appointment, which will make her a little more comfortable. 4 vaccinations on one day seem like a lot, even for an adult. But I guess it's pretty standard. And on the positive side, it means she's a little more protected in case she comes in contact with someone who has not been vaccinated.

2 month birthday

Our nearly-10-pound Annika turned two months today! To celebrate, we went for a walk in the Public Garden in Boston. She mostly slept in the stroller:
And we saw these cool alliums (which are ornamental onions):
Then we came home and Annika had a bath. Now we are praying that she'll go to sleep.

Weekend highlights

Some highlights of the weekend:

1) We took Zeus to the vet yesterday because she has an eye infection. We had a new vet who apparently had drawn in her eyebrows with a brown magic marker. Very bizarre. This vet was Dr. Doom. She found about 5 other things "wrong" with Zeus, aside from the eye infection. For example, about 7 years ago, Zeus lost one of her front teeth. We have brought her into the vet many, many times since then, and the doctor has always said that it was not a problem. Dr. Doom freaked out, saying that Zeus must be in horrible pain because of it, and said that part of the tooth root was still there. She said that many of Zeus' teeth were infected and needed to come out. (I'm sure she could sell us special cat food for Zeus to eat after she lost her teeth). She thought she felt some unspecified hardness in Zeus' intestine, which she said could be irritable intestine syndrome (or something like that), and wanted to know if Zeus had any arthritis. Of course, there were "treatments" she could provide for each of Zeus' ailments. At a cost, of course. (Cha-ching!)

I felt like I was at the place we go for oil changes, where the "mechanics" give you a list of things that are wrong with your car, knowing full well that you know nothing about cars. For example, one mechanic said that our power steering fluid was red and that this was a bad thing. I read on-line later that power steering fluid is supposed to be red. I felt like this vet was doing the same thing. Trying to get me to freak out so that I would give her my wallet, without knowing what was actually going on.

$260 later, I had 3 medicines to give Zeus for her eye and I also purchased some flea medicine. (The flea medicine was about $40 more than I can get it on-line). We have to go back in a week for a recheck (probably so Dr. Doom can look for some other things that are wrong with our poor cat). I think Jim is going to go because he wants to see the vet's eyebrows. :) I think we need to find a new vet.

2) Apparently New Kids on the Block are still touring and are doing a show in Buffalo in the next couple of days. What? They were bad 20 years ago - how do they get to do a reunion tour too? And why are people so excited about this? I think that maybe people want to relive their junior high school days. I guess these are the same people that actually enjoyed junior high school.

3) We went to our friend's house for a little BBQ last night, to celebrate Flag Day and our friend's new job. We grilled pizza - yeah, out on the grill. It was really good. First you grill one side of the dough, then you put the toppings on that side and grill the other side.

4) Annika was up from 2:30 to about 5:30 this morning. And Jim only got her to sleep at 5:30 with the help of a pacifier. (Not a good habit to get into, but we were desperate). We feel like we're going to die.

5) While I was at the vet, Jim painted the wall that we had fixed after the sewage pipe cracked. He also put some finishing touches on the window that he replaced 2 weekends ago. It feels good to get some of those loose ends finished in the house.

6) Today it's raining but may clear up later. I think we're going to try to rest today. Annika is sleeping great right now!

Annie and her peeps

Annie says: "I've got people."

New moms' outing

Yesterday, I got together with some other women from my new moms' group. We met for lunch at a restaurant called Sel de la Terre. According to their website, they're a French restaurant. Who knew. :) I thought "Sel de la Terre" was Italian. That shows how much I know. At least I got the part about it being a Latin-based language. I had a goat cheese salad that was really tasty. They had really delicious french fries too. I guess the French know how to make their fries, right? :) (ha!)

It was remarkable how baby-friendly and customer-oriented in general the restaurant was. When we called to make a reservation, they asked us if anyone had a food allergy so they could be ready for us. I've never had a restaurant ask that. Kind of amazing. Once we got there, they had set aside a table in kind of an isolated part of the restaurant so that we would have plenty of room for the babies, strollers, and other gear, and so we wouldn't be disruptive to anyone. In their restroom, they had the nicest changing table I've seen in a public place. The manager even came over a couple of times to check on us. I was very impressed.

After lunch, we walked around The Natick Collection. What, you might ask, is The Natick Collection? It's a mall. But, because it's so upscale, they decided to call it a Collection instead. It certainly is a nice mall. It's very new. The stores are upscale (Louis Vuitton, Neiman Marcus, Lacoste, and some stores I had never heard of but looked very expensive). They had interesting decorations in the seatings areas in the middle of the walkway. They looked like birch trees, except that only the trunks were there. The tops of the trees were all cut off in different angles.

This mall had the best public restrooms I've ever seen. They had separate changing rooms for babies. Yes, more than one. You walk in, lock the door, and there's a whole counter where you can change your baby. Then, when you're done changing the diaper, they had this room with couches to sit, rest, feed the baby, read the newspaper, whatever you want. It's a living room inside the restroom.

You know your life has changed when you're excited about the restrooms. Or when you meet up with a group of new friends and hang out in the restroom for a large portion of your time together, feeding, changing, burping, and soothing your babies.

Annie did really well. I tried out the ready-made bottles of formula, which rock. They are about 100 times easier than making up formula in a bottle from the powder, refrigerating it, carrying it in your diaper bag hoping it doesn't spill, and then trying to figure out how to warm it up to room temperature while your baby is hungry and fussing. Of course, you pay for that convenience, but I really think it's worth the money for outings. It's going to rock when we drive into Buffalo next. No more running the bottle under lukewarm water or the hand drier at the rest stop!

Later that night, after we had gotten home and had dinner, Annie had a bath. Here's a photo of her with Jim after her bath:
This may be my favorite photo of her so far. There she is, bundled up, very calmly looking at Jim, who looks exhausted but happy. :)

Progress

For the last 4 weeks, I've been attending a new moms' class at a local maternity/kids store called Isis Maternity. The class meets once a week for 6 weeks and is a way to get connected to other moms with babies around the same age as Annie. During the class meeting, a moderator talks about various relevant topics about new babies and there's a lot of encouragement for the moms to meet outside of class.

It has been a wonderful thing for me. First, it provides structure to my Tuesdays. I need structure. It also gives me a little push to get out and meet people, which I'm not always very good at. It also provides pretty useful information about babies and even better, makes you see that just about everything your baby is doing is totally normal! And lastly, Isis has a scale. So I can weigh Annie every week and see how she's doing.

It might sound sort of sad to think that weighing Annie is a highlight of my week. But it really is. If she's gaining weight, it means she's thriving and that we're doing OK in the feeding department. It also means that it's OK for us to let her sleep longer, and that she will sleep longer, since her belly can hold more food.

For the last three weeks, we've had this pattern:
May 26: 8 lbs, 11 ounces. (This was the most exciting weighing event - she weighed more than a pound since her last pediatrician visit, less than 2 weeks before!)
June 2: 9 lbs, 2 ounces
And, drum roll, yesterday: 9 lbs, 12 ounces!!

Now, granted, she's always wearing her diaper and a onesie when she's weighed. So subtract a couple of ounces. It still means she's doing great.

And, as an added reward, we got 6 hours of this for two nights straight:
(That's the frog prince on the left, keeping Annie company as she sleeps). Not bad, eh?

So there is good progress. I'm finding maternity leave a lot more manageable (still have to work at it everyday) and Annie is healthy.

Annika at (almost) 8 weeks

Annika will be 8 weeks old tomorrow. Here's what she looks like now - a lot bigger! (and cuter everyday).
You'll see that she actually fits in the "newborn"-sized clothes now. :)

Rocket Man

On Saturday, going up to Burlington, we listened to a "This American Life" podcast in the car. "This American Life" is a National Public Radio show that is usually brilliant. It is hosted by Ira Glass, and it tells true stories of people, events, phenomena and other things in America that seem to be commonplace at first glance, but that are actually interesting and odd and unexpected when looked at in more depth. The show is on every week for an hour, and each week the show has a particular theme, to which all the individual stories are connected in some way. We like to listen to the podcast while on the road, because that way we get to listen to the whole show at once, instead of getting bits and pieces of it as we try to find different NPR stations in the cities that we drive through. (A podcast is an electronic file that you can download to your computer, iPod or other MP3 player and listen to at your leisure instead of when the show is actually on the radio).

As a side note, the radio show ended up forming a TV show that aired on Showtime. We rented the first season and it was quite good. I believe their second season is also out on DVD now.

So anyway, I just wanted to share the show we listened to on Saturday. It was based on the concept of classified ads, and was brilliant, as usual. Click here for an explanation of the show. For one segment of the show, they formed a band strictly from the classified ads. They called up various musicians that had posted an ad in the classifieds and got them all together for one day to record one song, Elton John's "Rocket Man." None of these musicians had ever met before. Click here for the result - it's actually quite cool.

Post script: Jim would like to add a link to William Shatner's Rocket Man, just for comparison. What a hoot! Here it is on You Tube: Click Here.

A big weekend

We had quite an eventful weekend! I can't believe it's already almost over!

On Saturday morning, our niece Madeleine was born. She is only about a half pound lighter than Annie is now. In the photos, she looks about as big as Annie. She is in good health and I believe both mom and baby will be discharged tomorrow. I'm excited to meet her in a couple of weeks! I hope that she and Annie will be good friends for their whole lives. They're only 7 weeks apart.

Then we left for Burlington, Vermont to attend a birthday party for our friend Dave. Annie did very well in the car. We had to feed her once while we were on the road. The party was nice. Then, Annie only woke up once in the night, for the usual 2am feeding. On most recent nights, we've been able to do feedings at 10pm, 2am and 6am and that means we only have to get up once in the middle of the night. Pretty nice.

We got back home around 5pm this afternoon. Jim's out cutting the grass and then we're going to have dinner. We're both pretty exhausted.

Missing: My Head

Today is a good indicator of what happens to your head when you don't get enough sleep.

Last night was actually a good night on the sleep front. Jim was on duty, which meant I didn't have to get up in the night. Annie slept from 8pm to about 10. Jim fed her about half a bottle at 10:15 and she promptly fell back asleep. She only woke up once during the night, at 2:45, for a bottle. Her next feeding was after Jim went to work, around 7:10am. So we only woke up once with her during the night. This has been happening more and more, which is very good.

But today, I don't know what has happened to me. I am so tired and my mind feels cloudy. Maybe all the lack of sleep is catching up with me.

My plan was to meet up with a friend in late morning. I was going to leave the house at 10 to miss the morning rush hour. Of course, this was right when Annie was due to eat, but I figured that she would be OK if we were a little late, and she'd sleep in the car anyway. I got her in the car and left the driveway at 10:05. Things were good. I got on the highway, and then it occurred to me that I had forgotten Annie's diaper bag. With her bottles, diapers, and everything else. And I was already late on her feeding. Ugh.

So I got off the highway and figured out how to turn around. In Boston, just because you get off the highway doesn't always mean that there's an entrance to get on the highway going in the opposite direction. In fact, most exits don't work that way on Route 93, which is the main highway going into Boston from Quincy. But luckily, I knew how to get home from the exit and my mind apparently was clear enough to get me there.

I stopped for gas first, then pulled into the driveway. Because I forgot to turn off the car while the clutch was still in, I stalled the car in the driveway as soon as I took my foot off the clutch. I got Annie out of the car, walked up the back stairs, and saw that the back door was wide open. I had left the house through the front door and forgot to close the back door! The diaper bag was waiting in the kitchen. I seriously considered canceling my outing because I really felt like I wasn't functioning at a level where I should be driving a car. I figured that next I'd lock myself out of the house or lock Annie in the car with it running. Something crazy like that.

But none of that happened and it was all fine in the end. I fed Annie before getting back on the road. (I checked to make sure I had my keys about 100 times). We were at my friend's house by noon. We stayed a couple of hours, had lunch and then came back home.

I'm really tired. I wonder if I'll get a nap in today.

Graduation

Fifteen years ago today, I graduated from high school. (Jim's graduation happened 15 years ago tomorrow).

Unfortunately, I missed my high school reunion because of all the stuff going on with Annie's birth. Jim's reunion is next weekend, I think, but he doesn't have any interest in going. Actually, I would be very interested in going to his reunion, since I had a good number of friends who went to his high school. But c'est la vie. The trip to Buffalo is pretty long to be doing it more than once a month.

It's kind of amazing to think about how different life was then. That summer, I was living with my parents in Buffalo, working as a bank teller, and looking forward to college in Washington in the fall. I had never set foot in the state of Massachusetts. My sister was living in another state, Jim was dating someone else, and I hadn't even met most of the people who are my closest friends now. By contrast, I haven't talked to the people who were my closest friends then (my next-door neighbors, who I grew up with) in many years.

In the grand scheme of things, 15 years really isn't that long of a time. Well, maybe it is. It's half a lifetime ago. But I suppose that when I'm 90, 15 years won't seem that long. Are the 15 years that include your late teens and your 20's more formative and transforming than any other period in one's life? I would think not, given the amount of change that happens between one's birth and age 15. Perhaps they are merely indicative of how much one's life changes over time. But then what will my life look like 15 years from today?

Car

We bought a car! We picked it up this morning. Here are the pictures:




Pretty cool stuff!

Busy

What a day. It started at 10pm last night. Annie decided that she wanted to be held and would cry if we put her down. She was awake until 2am. Poor Jim was on duty last night and he got very little sleep. I was trying to figure out why she was like this. One guess is that my mom and I took her for a long walk in the stroller yesterday morning and she slept most of the rest of the day. So she was all rested for the night. But honestly, there really is no rhyme or reason as to why Annie stays awake one night and sleeps another night.

In the morning, we bought a car. No kidding. It's a black Mazda 6, manual transmission, power locks and windows. Jim is picking it up tomorrow morning. (He will blog separately about his very bad experience with Boch Honda, one of the dealerships he dealt with before we settled on the Mazda). He had been thinking about getting a new car for a while because our Corolla is getting old. It has 112,000 miles, and more egregious to Jim was its lack of power locks. A lack of power locks is challenging when you're traveling with a baby and all her gear. We had driven several Mazda 6 cars as rentals while on vacation, and last weekend, Jim test drove one (along with a Ford Fusion and an attempt at a Honda Accord). It looks like a beautiful car.

In the afternoon, I went out to lunch with my new moms' group, followed by the weekly meeting at Isis. Annie has been fussy most of the day, but she was actually pretty good through lunch and through the meeting. I fed and changed her right at the beginning of the meeting, and she slept all the way until we got home.

Tonight we had leftovers from Punjab Cafe. I'm going to go to bed soon because I'm on duty tonight and I'm worried that we might have a continuation of last night. We are going to try having Annie sleep in her own room and see if that works. I'm pretty nervous about it.

Tomorrow we have the gas company coming in the morning to replace our gas meter. In the afternoon, I might meet up with people from my new moms' group to go for a walk at Wellesley College, which is somewhat nearby. Hopefully the weather will cooperate!