One Month Old

Well it has been a month of this parenthood thing. One of my friends told me it's a steep learning curve but way more fun than school. I'll agree with that. Andrew said yesterday, as Avery was sleeping on his chest, he was thinking about how he was so worried before she was born about having a kid and now it's just like she's here and you can't remember any other way of life. Meanwhile, it seems that Babies R Us has relocated to our apartment. Our chic city-centre apartment has become a sea of pink and pastels, burp cloths and blankets, car seats and bouncers and thanks to the generosity of others, the kid already has a wardrobe bigger than mine. Course she has to wait to wear most of it but she's pretty well kitted out for her first year of life.

Avery Kate is doing well. Still sleeping a lot but getting more alert every day. In her first few days of life she did this little squeaking noise before going into an all out wail. Now she has graduated onto grunting noises, she's very good at them. And she's very squirmy, if she's getting agitated her arms and legs start waving and kicking all over the place. She really likes her arms free, if we swaddle her she will always work them free. She's putting on the weight and starting to fill out her clothes so we are starting to use some 0-3 months sizes now, mixed in with her newborn sized stuff.

She had her first adventure at 2 and a half weeks of life. We had an appointment at the US embassy in Dublin to report a foreign birth and get her US citizenship and her US passport and so we headed up to Dublin and a bit more than halfway there our car broke down, and I mean completely broke down, horrible noises from the engine...so we called roadside assistance and waited for like 2 hours for them to come, so I had to feed her in the car and I think she was too hot because after I fed her and just before the roadside assistance guy showed up she puked up everything on herself and my leg and the car seat. It had to be everything, usually she just spits up a bit but this was like the entire contents of her stomach. It was lovely. So then of course she was hungry again. Anyway, the guy checked the car and was like yeah, I'm gonna have to tow you to nearest garage, which was like 8 km away. So then we pile into the tow truck and Andrew holds her car seat on his lap as we drive through the Irish countryside to the nearest village where the mechanic there tells us our engine's ruined and we need to replace it for 600 euro. The car's not even worth that much so we had to scrap it. Stewy came and got us and we stayed overnight in Dublin and came back with Jenna next day. So, no car and no official US citizenship yet, but an adventure nonetheless...

Here are some more photos:

Example of squirmy arms.