Happy Two Month Birthday

Today is Claire's 2 month birthday and while we thought about inviting friends over and having a big to do, Sarah decided to celebrate by attending a mommy and me yoga class. Now I don't really know that much about Yoga but the way Sarah describes it to me, I picture a bunch of Mom's perched in pecarious positions trying to avoid falling on their babies lying on the mats below them. And while they are wobbling over their babies holding one leg high in the air and twisting their arms behind their backs they sing songs like "Row Row Row Your Boat". Then when the baby has had enough of Mom teetering over her and starts crying, Mom gets a timeout to feed or change the baby while the rest of the women continue to contort their bodies. Near the end of the class the "real" fun starts. Apparently this is where everyone gets into a big circle and dances while holding their babies in front of them. As if this wasn't enough excitement for the babies and the mom's the dance culminates in a roaring chorus of the Rainbow Connection. Sarah admits that it was cheesy but proclaimed that "when you are forced to be in a room with strangers doing something embarassing, you really feel like you bond with them" This bonding also appears to have rubbed off on Claire who had a few flirtacious moments with a dashing young 2 month old who goes by the name of Diego. When I later asked Claire about this chance encounter, she simply ignored me and continued to suck on her pacifier. I guess she's at the age where its not cool to share your love life with your father.
As part of the 1/6 of a year celebration, Claire also paid a visit to her favorite pediatrician's office where she our unsuspecting youngin was on the receiving end of 3 shots and an oral vaccination. Unfortunately dad was in the nation's capital saving the free world when this all went down, but mom described her response to the shots as many loud shrill screams. In addition to being inflicted with pain, she was also again forced to strip naked and be placed on a hard metal scale. While not as excruciating as the shots, I've never heard anyone tell me around the water cooler at work that they spend their weekend sitting sans clothes on a piece of metal. That's beside the point though... Claire again tipped the scales this time at a sizeable 12 lbs 3 ozs. That makes her officially heavier than both of our cats and puts her in the 90th percentile for her weight. She is also 90th percentile in height, standing tall at 1 foot 11.75 inches. Unfortunately her head is a mere 36th percentile, but she appears quite smart to me so I'm not worried.... Claire just woke up from a nap, got to go tend to the screaming baby.

Picture Page

The week in Summary: More Hiking, more cuteness...
Here are the pictures:

Hike till you can't hike no more

Its not yet clear if Claire likes hiking or not, but she certainly doesn't complain when we take her out. Yesterday we took her on her second hike, this time to Alum Rock park in San Jose. This is a really nice spot in the East San Jose hills. The park is made up off a nice big valley with a river running through it and is surrounded by mountains (which is actually redundant to say since I've already mentioned it was a valley). There are many miles of hiking trails, some of which cut through the valley and meander near the streams and some of which climb the steep hills on the outskirts of the park. From several points in the park there are nice views of San Jose and the South Bay. Santa Clara County park officials did not pay me to describe the park so you can rest assured this is an accurate assessment of the park. Anyway, we took Claire there yesterday and we hiked for about an hour and a half and attempted to show her the views of the surrounding cities. She may have briefly opened one eye and looked at a clover, but she pretty much slept the whole time we were in the park. She even slept through a somewhat smelly and uncomfortable visit to the public toilet. It should be noted that I discovered yesterday that even though the baby may not be able to use the toilet, if the person carrying the baby needs to use the restroom, you can't simply leave her outside to play with the dirt. Because of this Claire got to experience the dirt and grime of a park men's room for the very first time. I apologized to her for this experience and attempted to explain that the sorry state of the restroom should not be used to form a stereotype that all men are dirty pigs. I figure that if I can start breaking down these gender barriers before they're created in her mind she'll grow up to be a more tolerant individual. I'm actually quite proud of this seemingly inconsequential event as I feel like even though she won't remember this that I've done a service to humanity or at the very least to her husband of the future. That's right little Johnny or Mickey or whatever your name is, you can rest more comfortably in your diaper tonight knowing that little Claire will treat you with more respect and is less likely to curse the male race on the account of you forgetting to properly load the laundry machine. Now with that said, if you are reading this, that doesn't give you an excuse to be a lazy bum and not treat her like a princess. By the time she's old enough to marry you, there will be technology to allow me to watch your every move. And believe me, I'll be watching you like a hawk with extra special super duper glasses.

Claire's First Hike

California is in the middle of a very big drought. The water conservation board is talking about mandatory 20% water cutbacks this year and the Governator has declared the state of California officially in a drought. It is only fitting that all of this is going on during a period in which we received non-stop rain for a couple of weeks. I think we went from 4inches for the season to 10inches and 95% of normal. This doesn't really help much though as this is the 3rd consecutive year we've had below normal rainfall. We need to have something like 130% of normal rainfall this year to end the drought. The reason I bring this up is that Sarah and I have been itching to go out for a hike but the rain has dampened our plans for several weeks. This "cabin fever" as we Californians call it when the temperature barely reaches 60 and the skies cloud over for a few days caused us to go ahead and buy some tickets to visit Hawaii in a couple of months and in the meantime the rain has finally stopped and we've been able to take Claire out hiking. Nothing major just a two mile hike (we tried to make her walk it but she refused) in the Saratoga hills at a lovely place called Villa Montalvo. It was a wonderful time and Claire mainly slept as we carried her up the hills. At the top we met a nice couple who were expecting their own baby in about 4 months. We chatted about babies if you can believe that and then headed back down the mountain. At the bottom we meet a nice couple I'll kindly refer to as the Bizzaro Sivitz's. If you've watched Seinfeld you know what I mean. Anyway, they drove a Silver 2002 Mazda Protege 5 (ours is Black), had a baby boy (ours is a girl), carried her in a sling (we use a bjorn), and their little one was 9-weeks old (ours is almost 6 weeks, which is 9 upside down). After talking with the Bizzaro Sivitz's about an upcoming meeting of the Bay Area Baby Wearer's group we parted ways and of course headed in the opposite direction. We then had a picnic outside of Coffee shop in Saratoga and took Claire to a nice little bamboo patch at the Hakone gardens. After this full day Claire slept for 6 straight hours. A new record for us.

Into the 2nd Month

Well its been a long time since I've posted and for all of you itching to see more cute pictures of Claire I am sorry. In fact it has been so long since I've posted that Claire is talking now. She says things like "goo" and "kai". In addition she seems to be laughing in her sleep as well. Sarah and I like to speculate about what the contents of her dreams. We figure that as a 1 month old she could be dreaming about milk. In her dream she is likely sitting next to a pool of warm milk, wearing a onesie and drinking a warm glass of the white stuff with a little yellow umbrella. The other thing she tends to do in her sleep is grunt. Not sure why she does that, but believe me it sounds more like a 80 year old man than a baby. Anyway, last week we took her in for her 1 month checkup. This was very exciting because not only did Claire tip the scales at a whopping 10lbs 5oz but the doctor also told us we were some of the most mellow parents that he has seen. This seems to be happening a lot to us lately. Friends have commented that we look very comfortable around the baby and strangers have mistooken us for having another child already. The doctor thinks this is a good thing because he believes that mellow parents yield mellow babies. I can't quite place why we come off as so mellow. We definately don't have too many questions for the doctors, but it might also be that as such big time planners (remember this baby was planned 5 years in advance) we are well read on subjects ranging from the dudu (down-up-down-up) swaddle to the differences in a babies stool as she ages. I wonder what the non-mellow parents look like. Do they come in to the office with frazzled hair and shaky hands holding the baby upside down because they don't think the baby is getting enough blood in its head? ... wait strike that, I'm remembering back to the baby classes that and the parents fell into three distinct categories: Comedians, Happy-go-lucky, and just plain Idiots. The comedians, consisting of about 5% of the couples, would made jokes about all the different gizmos used to extract stuck babies from the mommies. I'm guessing most of these couples were outwardly laid back but inwardly scared to bits about having a baby. Another 5%, and the category into which we fell, were the happy-go-lucky parents who just sort of absorbed the material, made light conversation with the others and quietly left the class at the end. Of course, I do admit that while we were practing breathing techniques I couldn't stop laughing and I think at one point the teacher looked at me and wondered if I was actually a 5 year old girl. Anyway, the vast majority of the parents, about 90%, fell into the my IQ can't be higher than my age category. These parents just didn't seem to get simply concepts like passing items around for everyone to see. Remember when you were in Kindergarden and the teacher would bring in something special to show everyone.... If you were in the front row and the teacher handed you the gadget of the day, did you look at it and then simply set it on your desk? Of course not. Somehow you get two adults together, insert a baby into one of them and they forget the basic principles they learned in school. Another concept these parents seemed to lack was the ability to think their questions through before asking them. One parent was so fixated on the fact that newborns are supposed to get a screening test 12 hours after they are born that she actually asked the teacher if the 12 hour clock starts from the time the baby is born or from the time they cut the umbilical cord. For you non-parents out there, the time difference between these two events is somewhere in the neighborhood of 7 seconds.