Fussy

Today Madeline has been very fussy. She's hardly slept all afternoon, instead remaining semi-permanently latched to her feeding-parent except for brief excursions to the changing table with her diaper-parent. She must still be growing even now; she feels heavier, and her newborn clothing is definitely more snug than it was just a couple days ago.

As Madeline grows, she's also getting fiestier (as we see particularly well on fussy days like this, as she flops her head and flails her limbs). Today we tried to encourage her physical development by giving her some tummy time. Here's the setup:

Baby is splayed on the lovely quilt friend of the family Chris made for us (stacked on top of the lovely quilt friend/former-roommate/mutual-bridal-partier Anna made for us -- another post, though, will have to stand as testament to its loveliness).

So, we flip her from back to belly and encourage her to lift her head and move her limbs as if crawling. It's hard to capture the rise-and-flop nature of tummy time; here's the clearest picture we got:

Those little fast-twitch muscles do a great job getting her head up, but any sort of sustained posture is impossible at this point: hence the flop. So: after her head wouldn't stay up and her flailing limbs would fail to propel her forward, Madeline would fuss, we'd flip her back, and the process would begin anew. Until, of course, tummy time gave way to a lengthy feeding.

Nicknames

Before Sprout was Madeline, she had a number of loving nicknames given to her by various people.

Sprout/Sproutling/Sproutlet

Alejandra

Winter Greene

Mildred

Helga

Parasite

Snooki

Little Girl

Soylent Greene

Baby Allen/Baby Greene

She's gotten a few since birth too:

Froglet

Squirmy

Funny Face

Grumpus (she shares this one with Petey)

CloverSprout

As for more traditional nicknames, we do call her Maddie sometimes--although we haven't decided for sure on the spelling.

Please comment if you have any to add to the list or want to claim the name you coined!

Yet another baby picture for good measure.

Busy day

This morning Madeline had another pediatric appointment. We had been hoping only for a return to birth weight -- a gain of 4 ounces -- but Madeline's many feedings have been producing more than just dirty diapers and an ounce of gain here and there: she weighed in at a whopping 8 pounds 7 ounces -- a gain of 15 ounces since last week! If my mathematical abilities remain at all intact, this suggests that her mass has increased by 12.5% in one week. She also measured an inch over her last length measurement, coming in at 21.

Whenever almost anything happens (and car trips definitely count), Madeline gets pretty tired. This afternoon, she conked out on dad for a while.

She woke up and seemed ready for more adventures.

So we tried another walk, this time with Madeline dressed in her outrageous flower costume rather than the polar bear.

But she would have none of it. We couldn't make it around the block without multiple howling meltdowns. Two trips to the outside world turn out to be too much for her, for now. So now, after a feeding, she's sleeping on me again.

Adventure #2!

Today we went on adventure number two: a walk all the way over to Hope Street.

Here's a scene from before the adventure. Nory has been much more welcoming of Madeline than Petey has been. Perhaps she's happy that she's no longer the smallest mammal in the house.

As you might have deduced from the indoor sunlight in the above picture, it's been quite a lovely day in Providence. We decided to take advantage of the loveliness. After lengthy preparations, we managed to get ourselves dressed for outdoors and Madeline strapped into the wrap. She had been fussing, but the wrap seemed to calm her down.

And so we headed outside. Madeline was sporting her new clover cap, courtesy of the Greene grandparents.

Spirits were high!

We saw lots of birds. But we're bad at figuring out what's what. Help us out: are they sparrows?

Summer checked out the community garden on our block. Not much was happening there even though it's March already, somehow. We're on the waiting list for a plot.

The days may be getting longer, but the sun was still pretty low by the time we were on the home stretch.

With the front door in sight, Madeline showed no signs of stirring.

So we took a stroll through the yard. The snow has finally receded enough for us to check out our latent container gardens. After seeing the containers full of ice, Summer imitated Madeline's kissy face. Not pictured: shockingly, the collards seem still to be alive.

Now, again, we're nice and toasty inside. The adventure was a success!