A Running Tally of Metaphysical Phenomena

We’re sitting on the couch watching Muppets from Space, and it is a truly fantastic movie and everything, but so far, it has yet to penalize me for any lack of attention, so I thought I’d share some of the latest pictures of Greta since it’s been, like, half her life since the last pictures. My parents were here for just about a week and left Wednesday. While they were here, there was, as you would expect, a whole lot of picture taking. My dad’s particularly great at photography, so we have some good stuff here for you today, folks. And some that we took with our little old camera. (Of course, click to biggify.)

First of all, the weeklies. Every Saturday, I take new picture to see how the little thing is developing from week to week. Can you tell which week brought the biggest changes so far? Leave a comment; I’m interested to see if you see things the same way I do.

And the rest:

This is my favorite picture so far, I think. She’s so literary.
“I can’t believe D’Artagnan just said that! He’s so cheeky!”

She looks just a little bit melancholy here, like she’s growing to better understand the economic climate and the challenges facing humanity right now, but fortunately Nana (my mom) is very very comforting.

Best, cutest baby ever.

From The Guardian:

It is a dream that has been shared by lovers across the centuries – the chance to elope to exotic lands. But few would have been as bold and spontaneous as six-year-old Mika and his five-year-old sweetheart Anna-Bell who, after mulling over their options in secret, packed their suitcases on New Year’s Eve and set off from the German city of Hanover to tie the knot under the heat of the African sun.

The children left their homes at dawn while their unwitting parents were apparently sleeping, and took along Mika’s seven-year-old sister, Anna-Lena, as a witness to the wedding.

Donning sunglasses, swimming armbands and dragging a pink blow-up lilo and suitcases on wheels packed with summer clothes, cuddly toys and a few provisions, they walked a kilometre up the road, boarded a tram to Hanover train station and got as far as the express train that would take them to the airport before a suspicious station guard alerted police.

“What struck us was that the little ones were completely on their own and that they had lots of swimming gear with them,” said Holger Jureczko, a police spokesman. He described Mika and Anna-Bell as “sweethearts” who had “decided to get married in Africa where it is warm, taking with them as a witness Mika’s sister”.

Anna-Bell told the German television station RTL: “We wanted to get married and so we just thought: ‘Let’s go there.’ ”

Mika said: “We wanted to take the train to the airport, then we wanted to get on a plane and when we arrived we wanted to unpack the summer things and then we wanted to go for a bit of a stroll in the sun.”

Mika and Anna-Lena’s mother, who was not identified, said she had known nothing of her children’s plan. “I’m still in a state of shock. I thought ‘I’m playing a part in a bad movie.’ When we realised the kids were missing we went looking for them.” But only when the police called did they realise what had happened.

Asked why they failed to let their parents know, the children said they thought they would not be gone for long.

Mika told police he instigated the plan having been inspired by a winter holiday with his family in Italy. “Based on this the children began to make plans for the future,” Jureczko said.

To allay their disappointment at being caught, Hanover police gave them a tour of the police headquarters. Jureczko said: “They’ll have the chance to put their plan into action at a later date”.

It wasn’t from four feet away, but things are a bit more level now. Kirsten just got pooped on. You could say that a diaper leak isn’t that big a deal, but when you get mom’s pants, two sheets, a duvet cover, and a mattress pad all at once and you still get most of it actually inside the diaper… Well, let’s just say there’s a proud papa bear over here.

I’m still up 2 to 1 after Sunday’s trip to Red Robin, but A) we’ll lose count at some point, B) this is not nearly as intense as it will be, and C) pretty soon she’s going to grow into these newborn diapers. Greta, that is.

I’ve been warned so many times that if I don’t keep up with all of the little changes with my little baby a minute at a time, I’ll miss them all and forget about them. But you know what? There’s a lot of time and attention involved with raising a newborn, so yeah, it’s been a little while. Sorry!

First of all, Greta finally has a normal person tummy! On New Year’s Eve (a week ago), her cord stub was hanging by a thread when I changed her. I cleaned the whole area with one of the alcohol swabs I pilfered from the hospital, and the next day, Kirsten was holding her and said “hey, her stomach feels smooth now…” And hey, what do you know, sitting inside the top part of her diaper was the inch of plastic looking dried out cord! So now she’s officially a human. It didn’t stink or anything the way people had said it would, and now the weird little extra skin outie thing on her stomach is looking more and more like a standard belly button every day. It’s healed up enough that we don’t have to fold the diapers down any more, and that’s great because now the top of each one comes up to her third or fourth rib. She’s growing all the time, sure, but she’s still a lot tinier than these diapers can accomodate.

And speaking of diapers! Holy cow, does she go through a lot! That’s a good thing, though. Filling up diapers is how she gets rid of those pesky bilirubins that caused us so much trouble before. The last check she had, over a week ago, the bilirubin level was down to 10.3, and now that her excretory system is all ramped up and moving, we’re completely out of the woods. She has a normal palor now, and she’s a healthy little girl. In fact, she’s plumped up just right. At our visit today, she was up to 9 pounds, 2 ounces, and that, according to Dr. Heng is “excellent weight gain.” That means that despite her weird eating sounds and tendency to fall asleep during every meal, she is eating enough and doing the right things with it.

The latest thing we’ve noticed is that her eyes are starting to lighten. They were just solid dark circles in yellowy fields before, and now the whites are whiter, the pupils are discernible, and her little irises are dark, dark grey-blue. We notice this, see, because she’s actually opening her eyes a lot more at time when ours are also open. The day-night reversal thing is beginning to get straightened out, which means longer stretches of sleep at night (she’s done three and a half hours the last few nights) and a little more time to be awake and looking at things during the day, which is too precious and cute for words.

Since Greta’s cheeks are so chubby, she sometimes looks—I can’t lie—a little grumpy, sort of like Roz from Monsters, Inc., when she is wearing her default nonexpression. But that’s not always the case, and she is a very expressive little tyke! Kirsten took some great pictures the other night. I’ll leave with a few of these and one of Greta and I taking a snooze on the bed. Note that she’s quite capably rolling onto her side already and that she sleeps with her fist up by her face exactly the way her dad does.

EDIT:
One more, this time with her eyes open. This is her official passport/driver’s license photo.

You really haven’t lived until you’ve been pooped on by your daughter from like four feet away. At least I hadn’t.

She summoned me with a smelly diaper, disoriented me by holding her pee until just after the diaper was off (I haven’t gotten entirely proficient at dealing with that move yet), and then capitalized on my confusion by actually drawing her legs up, aiming, and decorating my entire left leg.

The silver lining is that I still had my jeans on, and I was about to start a load of darks.

More to come (“New Year, New Navel,” etc.), but I just hadn’t gotten to it yet, and this was breaking news.