A picture is worth...

It seems to be particularly difficult to sit down and write on my blog, so I thought I'd send you a bunch of pictures to make up for it. :)  Emily is now a month old and getting bigger and fatter by the day.  This last week she gained nearly 300gr!  We are still working on losing the nipple shields for nursing; they're a huge pain...but otherwise breastfeeding is wonderful.  

I am incredibly grateful to have so much live-in help from my parents so that I can be 100% attentive to my very hungry caterpillar. ;)  There's no way I would be quite so relaxed just sitting around all day if it weren't for them.  They walk the dog, light the fire, cook lunch, to the shopping, clean...  Emily A. and I are very lucky girls to be so pampered.  As it is, I sit happily in my armchair all day in awe of this small, beautiful being that is my daughter.  I am so happy nursing her...I can't imagine wanting anyone else to feed her! (My sister-in-law is quite exasperated by her breast dependance because she can't wait to whisk her away from me!)

Emily Alejandra with her abuela. 

Mom´n Me selfie! :)

Someday Bela will be very sorry we ever put this idea in Emily's head!  She's such a patient dog...too bad Angelines wasn't just a bit quicker with the camera. ;)

Emily A. and I have been able to get out on a few walks recently.  This was one of the beautiful sunsets we caught with Mama and Bela.

My sleeping beauty. :)  She's getting the hang of siestas pretty well...I guess it runs in her Spanish blood. ;)

...Grandpa is bored because I don't let him hold Emily enough...once again, poor, patient Bela!

Snuggle Bug on the couch one month old. 

What blog post would be complete without a food picture?  Here's the DELICIOUS turkey pot pie we made with the leftover turkey from our Thanksgiving day feast. YUMMY!

Happy Thanksgiving

Yes, a slightly late Thanksgiving post... but in my defense, we are celebrating the holiday tomorrow.  We always celebrate the weekend following T-day since Thursday obviously isn't a holiday here.

 Right now I'm set up in the kitchen with a pile of pillows on my lap topped by a nuring baby reading off the recipies for pies, brining turkey, stuffing, etc.  So much to be thankful for this year!  I suppose the number one thing on my list is the little being placidly nursing as I type this; number two would be the fact that I can still celebrate Thanksgiving even with a newborn because my mom is cooking up a storm and I am only helping intermitently between baby feedings.

Emily will be a month old this Tuesday and I can hardly believe it!  She is changing by the day and getting so much stronger and fatter.  I am astounded by how she holds her head and seems already to be trying to get her knees up under her to crawl if I put her on her tummy. And it seems almost magical to me that I am her only food source...and she is visibly gaining weight and happy as a clam. :)

I am thankful that my parents can be here for so long and not only because they're an enormous help,

...sorry, my baby finally fell asleep long enough for me to get some cooking done with my mom.  I had to leave that mid-sentence!  I promise to finish some time soon, but in the meantime I want to post this so you all have something to read. ;)

To wrap up, I will say I am thankful that I can leave my mom reading in the kitchen keeping an eye on the apple pies in the oven while I can go straight to bed and hopefully sleep a bit before hungry Emily wakes me up!

Happy, happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

One Week Old

It is hard to believe that just one week ago my baby girl was only hours old.  I can already tell this is going to go by far too fast.

Welcome Emily Alejandra!

...one week ago today...

At the moment, my little angel is sleeping peacefully and has been for the past three hours...  My breasts say it's time for her to wake up, but I am rue to wake a sleeping baby.  We wore her out today with a visit to the pediatrician for her and a visit for me to the midwife to look at my stiches.  All is well, my girl's gained back 100 gr. although the pediatrician warns that that is the minimum.  She wants to see us next week again.  My milk only came in on Saturday, so I am sure that she will gain much more weight this week.  In anycase I know that breastfed babies are a little slower to gain than bottle-fed babes.  

...I am beginning to hear her stir so I think I'll jump at the chance to empty my engorged breasts.  There is no lack of food here, let me tell you.  Little Em just isn't taking full advantage of my full boobies!

more soon...

thanks Leah! One week today :)

Welcome to the World

Well, all of you have seen by precious daughter by now I am sure.  With the way communication and social networks go these days I feel like everyone saw her before even I did!  On the one hand that was a wonderful thing because we were being bombarded by congratulatory Whatsapp messages and phone calls... and I still haven't dared to log on to facebook (my dad posted a picture or two).  But at the same time it couldn't help feeling just a little invasive in such an intimate, beautiful moment.  

Anyway, I really have been wanting to share this with all of you and write it down for myself, but of course that's hard to do with a baby on your breast! At the moment, it seems that my little, milk-guzzling, wiggle worm is down for the count so I can finally get on here and share some of all this myself.  

***

...So I started writing that this morning over my dad's homemade pancakes (yummmmm) and since then we've had to bathe and nurse little Em.  I think I'll opt for a longer email some other time.  And leave you with a little picture documentation for now.  Now that my milk's come in it seems Emily A. is more and more satisfied after each feeding and therefore sleeps a bit longer each time.  

In any case, I cannot complain--she's the world's sweetest baby and really doesn't cry at all.  It's just that she's so small she gets tired at the breast and spends a very long time there, sucking, resting, sucking, sleeping, sucking, resting...etc.  So of course that means I can do very little other than read or chat with the seemingly endless stream of visitors who come by to see my little bundle.

Today we're going to venture out with her.  During pregnancy I couldn't eat jamón, and today there is a jamón expo. in a nearby town...I'm taking full advantage of my non-pregnant state and we're off on the town with my little one to ingulge in the best cured pig this side of the Atlantic! ;)

Hours old and I'm a happy, happy mommy.

Could she be any cuter?

Sunbathing with mamá to keep bilirubin at bay...

She got dressed up to leave the hospital.

Five days old and still wondering exactly what's happened to her. ;)

Hither and Thither

I haven't told you, faithful blog readers, that Angelines and I have bought a minivan to make our metamorphose into motherhood that much more complete. ;)  The whole shopping process is worthy of several posts, but I'll spare you the details.  In short we were driving all over kingdom come visiting dealerships and searching all over the internet for the best deals and all under a deadline because we had already "sold" our previous car.  In the sale contract we agreed to turn over the car by Oct. 20th so we necessarily had to find a new car by then.  The poor guy who bought our little "Cherry" (as my mom fondly dubbed our little, red Peugeot) actually took it home with an additional 2000 km on it thanks to all our frantic searching!

Obviously we've bought a used vehicle.  New cars just aren't worth the expense in my opinon, although Angelines was a very wary about a second-hand purchase.  We ended up getting it from a used car dealership in Málaga and I think we got a pretty good deal.  It's a 2010, metalic beige Citröen C4 Grand Picasso with five seats and the option of seven (the two in the back fold up out of what is usually the trunk space).  Most of the time, obviously we won't be needing more than five seats, but this Christmas with my sisters here there will be seven of us total and we'll all be able to go wherever we like!  Plus it was always a bit of a show picking up visitors from the airport in our little car because getting their luggage and all squared away was a little too much like playing tetris.  Now we have room to spare,

Angelines was, of course, quite sad to see her sporty, red car go.  She bought it brand new eight years ago and even had it special ordered just the way she wanted it.  Another friend of mine, who's just had a baby and also had to sell her previous car for a more family-friendly one, described it as "selling my youth".  When I relayed that quote to A, she agreed whole heartedly.  Still, even she is pleased with our new car.  The only thing is that the minute we drove it away from the dealership the service light came on with some warning about the diesel partiticle filter...(?!)  Luckily the dealership guarantees their cars for a year so we are not paying to have this looked at/fixed, but the downside is of course the fact that their mechanic is obviously in Málaga.  More driving.

Today is my due date--40 weeks.  And so we have been going to Málaga for the past two weeks for check ups anyway and have been able to also work in these visits to the mechanic for the car.  Having grown up in towns that were never nearer than an hour's drive from the nearest shopping mall, I am quite used to making a list of chores to do "in town", and taking any excuse to get them all done in one trip; Angelines, on the other hand, is someone who likes doing one thing at a time.  For her, taking advantage of a trip to Málaga for the doctor in order to see the mechanic and get some shopping done is a bit of an overload.  Needless to say she's been more stressed than usual recently.

And of course, the imminent birth of our dear Emily Alejandra adds another level of uncertainty to the stress.  Every day that goes by is one more closer to her arrival and one fewer that we have to get these things taken care of.  As of now we're going in for an appointment on Monday with my gynecologist and will be leaving our car with the mechanic for a few days (!).  The dealership has arranged to loan us a car in the meantime since we absolutely cannot be without a vehicle.

So you see, I could just as easily have titled this post "Helter Skelter"...These past two weeks have been madness.

...At the Last Minute

It seems that procrastination is a hereditary trait.  The bad habbit of putting things off until the last minute is something I have been fighting against for the better part of my life, and it seems that my little Emily is doomed to follow in her mother's footsteps.

After waking up at six in the morning on Wednesday, to be out the door and at the hospital by eight, and after waiting for a good half hour in the gynecology ER before they called me in, little Emily Alejandra, contortionist extraordinaire, had put herself into place.  No version necessary!  The doctor turned on the ultrasound machiene, gelled up my belly and then, with the wand just above my pubic bone declared, "There's her head!"  What a relief! :)

Once the version was cancelled they took me off to monitor litte Em's heart for a good twenty minutes and check for any contractions--all was well and 0 contractions.  Next week we have an appointment for the same.  From here until 40 weeks (two weeks away) we'll be going in for the monitoring...unless, of course, I go into labor before then. ;)

Anyway, this is all great news.  I was really not looking forward to the version procedure.  I am very happy that Emily and I haven't had to be sedated for her to get her little head in gear, so to speak.  As a procrastinator myself, I like to say, "better late than never, little one!"

"Grandma" Shower

Last Monday, my Aunt organized a "Grandma" shower, thusly named because my mother would be attending in my (and Emily's) stead.  I have never been to a baby shower, and unfortunately the skype connection was horrible when I made my virtual appearance at what was really my own shower; but all the same it was wonderful to see so many people I love all in one place.  At least I could hear how much fun they were having even if the image was too pixelated to make out facial features. :)

When I first heard of the Grandma shower, I was thrilled for my mom because I know she's been feeling the 5,792 miles that separate us more than ever in the last nine months.  Celebrating my baby (her first grandchild) with family and friends would make her feel a little closer to me.  I was happy to think of her basking in the attention of all the atendees, glowing with enthusiasm for the little being that is about to make her a grandma.

However, when I discovered that the "grandma" shower was a baby shower in disguise, I must admit I was a little less excited. Let me explain: I despise situations that put people in a position where they're excpected to spend money.  At baby showers, you're supposed to bring gifts.  I thought a grandma shower would just be some fun and games, food and maybe some cute grandmotherly things for my mom...  But a baby shower is different.

It's not that I don't enjoy getting gifts, and Lord knows that babies entail a lot of "things" (trust me, I've been going crazy arguing with my in-laws about just what's necessary and what we can do without); but I don't like to think of people having to buy me something because they were invited to a party.

It's kind of like sending out H.S. graduation announcements--they're a subtle (or not so subtle) way of asking for money/gifts.  Once you have the announcement, you can't feign ignorance if you just don't feel like buying a gift/sending money.  I felt the same way about baby showers: once you're invited, you have to find a gift!

I enjoy getting gifts from people when I know that they come from the heart, that they weren't subtly coerced into the purchase.  But when I dutifully skyped into "my" baby shower on Monday, I completely changed my opinion.  Even through the bad connection, I could feel the love emannating from across the ocean via my computer screen and I wished I could have been there in person.

In Spain, babies are celebrated differently.  There are no baby showers, no ceremony to celebrate the unborn child.  I suppose that here, baptisms assume that role: celebrating and welcoming the new baby. Gifts are generally reserved for after the birth. But having this brief, virtual connection with my traditions, seeing so many of my people gathered together to honor my little Emily Alejandra, anticipating her arrival into this world, helped me remember just how BIG this really is.  And, of course, that it deserves due celebration.

We felt very loved and I'm so thankful for all of the friends and family who attended. :)