Blue Steel

If you haven't seen "Zoolander," just disregard this title. If you have, then you'll know what I mean when I say that Maia is beginning to develop her repertoire of ridiculously cute facial expressions with which to disarm all of her grown-up family and friends. Just in the last couple of days, she developed the look that we're calling "Blue Steel": it's a fake cough combined with a blink and a squeal that is just so excruciatingly adorable. She's knocked her Tia Jo off her feet with that one! :)

Tia Jo has been visiting since Friday, and Auntie Kathleen was here as well for the last couple of days. Nana and Papa Hecker were also here to babysit while Brian, Jo and I went to see "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix," which is the first movie that Brian and I have seen in over six months. It seems that Maia's really gotten a kick out of having other people in the house whom she can stun with her cuteness. She's started to vocalize almost constantly while she's awake, and we were hearing some consonant sounds today that were quite cool (the g- and the b- sounds). She's also starting to show some mastery of a pincer grasp, which is when you hold something between just your thumb and index finger. Finally, she's very skillfully and steadily sitting up on her own, which has changed the nature of our playtime sessions.

And in other Maia news, she's now frequently sleeping between nine and ten hours straight at night. Wow. Last night, for example, she went to bed at around 8:30, and she didn't wake up until 6:12 AM. We know that this is somewhat unusual for a breastfed baby, and we also know very well that it's most likely to disappear soon when she begins teething in earnest. She nurses a lot during the day--every three hours at the longest, often at my suggestion rather than hers. I want to make sure that my milk supply doesn't dwindle, and I also want to be certain that she gets all of those wonderful calories during the day that she's now not getting throughout the night. In the midst of those every-three-hours daytime nursing sessions, she also had a bowl of avocado, which she's really enjoying, it seems. She wasn't too thrilled with the sweet potato, so our plan is to bring that one out again in a couple of weeks and try again. The good thing is that the addition of solid foods in the mid-afternoon hasn't seemed to diminish her milk consumption at all, which is just what I was hoping for. It's still really important to me that the overwhelming majority of her nutrition and calories come from milk.

You might be surprised to learn, though, that I'm not totally overjoyed at this new development in her sleep patterns. I miss our middle-of-the-night nursings, and I'm not bummed or irritated when she does make her little hungry noises at 3 AM instead of 6 AM. This period of babyhood is quite remarkable, and I'm trying to grab hold of and cherish every moment. As I've mentioned before, Maia was a really cool baby when she was a few weeks old, or a couple of months . . . but this six-month stage is just a blast! One thing that I know for sure, of course, is that our sleep schedule will change drastically again soon. It always does. So ask me then how I feel about nine straight hours of sleep. I'll probably sing a different tune! :)

I'm going to sign-off now to get back to work on my job stuff; my training is going well, and these last couple weeks of class observations have been very interesting and challenging (we're in the midst of the classes on pain medications, labor induction/augmentation, and cesareans). I hope that everyone is doing well!