Sympathy vomit

Sophie has spat up approximately 37 times tonight, and I remain convinced that this is out of sympathy for us having had a double dose of Kraft Dinner for supper. I know, you're all saying, anyone stupid enough to attempt to ingest that much KD doesn't deserve sympathy of any sort, most especially baby vomit. And of course you're right. Smug readers, always think they're so smart...

Tummy time

So for those of you who aren't in the know, "tummy time" is what the baby is supposed to do sometimes, to promote digestion and muscle enhancement and proper grammer and who knows what else. Basically, it consists of putting the baby, in this case, Sophie, on her tummy and putting her hands up by her ears. The theory is that the baby will kind of thrash about, and end up pushing herself forward (if you brace her feet), thereby kind of learning to crawl, or at least to get some good, solid thrashing exercise in.

At least, that's the theory with a regular baby. With Sophie, the theory has a little asterix by it, like so. The theory*. The * stands for "completely refuses to use her arms at all". So, even though she has the leg pushing down pat, her arms tend to be flat at her sides the whole time. Instead of a little rectangle of support (two legs, two hands), she has a triangle (two legs, face smushed into the ground). So while her legs are back there, pushing away like good little legs, her face is taking the brunt of the frontal support, and is dragging across the carpet/bed/pavement completely face down. And for whatever reason, this seems to hurt her somewhat, so her pushes are accompanied by shrieks and snorts of anguish. No matter how many times we put her hands by her head, she hasn't grasped the concept yet.

It was pretty funny, the last time she made one of these screaming treks across the bed, when we lifted her up, there was a little slug trail of drool, wiggled across the bed, evidence that a Sophie had just passed that way. We'll have to post a picture.

Baby's first (unintentional) words

Sophie is getting fairly vocal, and at times, will just make loud, random noises to emphasize the fact that she's a baby, or that she's not getting enough attention, or that she has figured out how to bark out various sounds. Usually, it's just a big "waah!" kind of yell, but sometimes, she'll accidentally say what sounds kind of like real words. It's vastly entertaining.

So far, the words she has (sort of) said include (in order):
* whoa
* yoghurt
* whoa
* whoa
* oh
* no
* moolah

I was particularly impressed with "yoghurt". "moolah" wasn't bad, either.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled blog...

Some of you may have noticed that our blog hasn't been updated quite as frequently as you'd expect from a couple of techie first-time-parents. We apologize for the delay (we were a bit overwhelmed with life after Sophie arrived), and assure you that blog posts will now resume, and will hopefully be coming fast and furious from now on.

Sophie's remarkable progress

Wow - being new parents, we had no idea of the kind of progress babies were capable of making in the first four days! Here are a few of the things that Sophie has surprised us with!

* She smiled and laughed at an funny, obscure literary reference that Holly made.

* She learned to snap her fingers - amazing manual dexterity!

* She crawled on day 2, and shortly thereafter, started toddling around on her own two feet. We expect wind sprints within the week.

* Thankfully, she is now potty-trained. I don't know how many more diapers I could have handled - we almost reached double-digits!

* She turned down her first scamming telemarketer (with the phrase "I wasn't born yesterday, you know"), and was polite, but firm.

* She memorized the words to Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven". Her delivery still needs work, though.

* Oh, and early this morning (before the telemarketer call and the the poetry), she said her first words... "What day is it today, again?"

Happy birthday, Sophia!

The big day has arrived - Sophia Emily Broadland (Sophie for short) was born precisely on her due date, March 28, 2007 at 6:52pm. She was 9 lbs, 1 oz, and has a fair bit of dark hair. Holly did a great job with the delivery, and we were well supported by one of our midwives, our two midwives-in-training, our doula, and Sophie's grandma, Star. (And, of course, by everyone who has been wishing us well!) We'll write more later, but for now, I can't think what else I should mention. Holly and Sophie are both doing fine, and here's a (fuzzy) picture of the newest Broadland!

39 weeks, 4 days

As I'm getting daily calls to see if I've had the baby yet, I thought I'd offer some proof that I'm still pregnant! This photo was taken on Sunday, March 25th, three days before my due date. Not much to report, other than the fact that the torrential rain stopped yesterday and enabled me to waddle to the library with Dean. He was very kind and tried not to laugh in my face about how slow I was going. What a guy!