Someone should get a cupcake, and that someone's probably me.

You guys! My babeling is a month old. A MONTH. So old.

And I know that they grow and that's kind of the idea but check it:

fresh, contemplative baby

wise old fat bald baby

And remember these elephant legs?

Plumplings!

And she looks at your face way less like it is A Thing In A World of Things, and way more like, HEY FACE! I REMEMBER YOU, FACE!

I like her, is what.

I win. For now.

We discovered inadvertently over the weekend that Eleanor loves laying on her back on a hard surface. Like the coffee table, or the kitchen counter. She LOVES it, I'm not kidding. She fusses? Toss her on the floor.

Anywoot, this preference may not last long but for NOW it's a fun trick. And we recently came into some Eleanor-directed funds, so today I bought her an activity gym off of the craigslist.

By the time we got home from picking it up, she was hungry and her diaper was full, but NEW TOY. I put her on it just to see. She kept trying to pitch a fit, but then she'd be distracted by a flashing light or a dangly monkey or something.

Why I oughta - oooh, a giraffe!

This is how she ends up with the whole bed to herself.

Ok so I don't let Eleanor sleep in our bed? And I don't judge you if you're co-sleepy because your baby is less likely to catch the SIDS than mine. I just, I like my bed. When Joel comes back after an extended departure, I'm always like UGH MY SIDE OF THE BED IS SO SMALL. So to put another person in there, especially one that wriggles?

Only, sometimes I let Eleanor sleep in our bed. When she feeds at 5:30 and then at 6:30 is like MOAR FEED and I can't stand the thought of getting out of bed AGAIN, I just drag her in with me and feed her there. Then she goes back to sleep and I remember why I don't let her sleep in the bed with us because THE WRIGGLING.

Sleep aides.

Sometimes, when she is already pretty pissed about things in general, I give her a bath. It angries up the blood, and then she CAN'T STAY AWAKE she's so mad. The other day she was so furious she went to sleep before I could even dress her.

Most days I take her for a walk because WHAT ELSE DO YOU DO WITH AN INFANT? She's hit a growth spurt, so she spends her time sleeping, eating, and fussing. I much prefer her sleeping, and the fresh air and sunshine is too much for her tiny brain to process so she knocks out immediately.

I can't wait till summer. We will lay on the lawn and take naps.

Big'un.

She is eight and a half pounds! Well done, darling.

She has, as predicted, outgrown her ducky-feet jimjams. Not fatwise, but longwise. First item of clothing: retired!

To be shortly followed by that fleecy sleep-sack that she can't quite straighten her legs in.

Sort of for Eleanor? But mostly sort of for me.

Eleanor had a baby shower yesterday, and showers before the baby comes are excellent because then when the baby comes, you have spit-up blankets. But showers AFTER the baby comes are also excellent, because then you are way more excited about receiving eight more spit-up blankets. Now I will only have to do laundry every THREE days.

Everything has been sorted, with the Clothes She Is Likely To Fit Into In the Next Three Months (As Per The Semi-Arbitrary Sizing [See Below]) are in her drawers, and one box is full of Clothes She Is Likely To Fit Into In the Next Year (As Per Etc), with another box for Later On.

Re: sizing. Ok, so I get that babies come in all sizes, and that mine is Sized Surprisingly Petite, but this snowsuit is for 0-3 months. (3-week-old baby included for scale.)

Right? Huge. IS SHE GOING TO GET THAT MUCH BIGGER in the next two months? Time will tell (I mean, maybe? She eats like a baby wolverine.) And then there's other stuff that's probably appropriately sized, but I can't bring myself to believe that she'll ever be that long. Por ejemplo:

So long. Those are some long jimjams. My child, she will never be that long.

Ok and then also, let us play a game called Look At My Baby's Shoes, O.M.G.

RIGHT? And that's not even, I mean, she has like four pairs of slippers as well. Now, when she's crying, I'm all, But Eleanor, how can you be upset? You have SO MANY SHOES. None of which she can wear now because she has eensy feet. BUT!

Shoe-socks. Problem solved.

So that she looks even more like a banker.

She is still, obviously, the world's most beautiful baby etc etc etc, but she's developed a weepy stink-eye (it is probably a clogged tear duct and I am hot-compressing the shit out of it) and a receding hairline.

I still love her a lot, I just make fun of her more.

The family resemblance is strong in this one.

She comes by it honestly.

Because we think we're the ones with the power.

I know they're just farts right now but when this baby activates her social smiles?

We will all be putty.  PUTTY.  And don't think she won't be using her talents for deviousness and plots.

practices plotty-fingers

This is the same one, I'm sure of it.

Her feet are the weirdest.  I mean, they're weird because they're still scaly and the toes look too long, like freaky accidental monkey feet, but they're mostly weird because they were the one body part I could identify when she was On The Inside.  I'd be poking her and be like, This is maybe a shoulder?  And this is the bum?  Or a Braxton-Hicks contraction.  But THIS.  This is a foot.

That and the hiccups, which she gets ALL THE TIME.  And maybe it's because I had a c-section and didn't push her out myself, and maybe it's because I was SUPER-HIGH during that c-section and don't remember much of it, but it took a while for her to feel like she was mine and not just some baby I'd been given to look after for a minute.  But she'll be nursing and then she'll kick me in the gut with her too-long-toed scaly foot, and then careen off into a round of hiccups like a tiny drunk, and I'm all, Ah yes.  I remember you.

It GROWS!

Awww, remember when she was this tiny?

(She still is.  That picture is from this morning.)

Our neighbors had their baby a week before we had ours, and over the many hurdles of navigating two newborns we managed to bring the post-fetuses together the other day.

You could say they hit it off.

Felix looks huge next to Eleanor.  I mean, he's almost twice her age and weighs probably a pound and a half more.  And so I look at him and think, she is going to be that big in a week.  She is going to be huge, and I'm not going to notice until I try to put her in her pink jimjams with the ducky feet and she doesn't fit.

We never thought she'd be so tiny.  We were convinced she'd be an enormous Krueger-baby, especially since I fed her all those second-suppers and third-desserts on the cruise.  But lo, we had to return to the store for the newborn diapers, because the infant diaps were ridiculous large on her.  And lo, the only things that fit her are a handful of tiny sleepers from my sister's mother-in-law, and one that I borrowed from Robyn.  And lo!  She hath already gained a full pound from her hospital discharge weight!  We'll fill in all that extra skin yet.

We went out!

Nobody died!  Or got overdue fines.

I am winning at life.

Feeding another human is my superpower.

So, breastfeeding.  It's weird, right?  No, I'm doing it right now and I'm telling you that it's weird.  Your argument is invalid.

And after the obligatory difficulties and frustrations and minor meltdowns, El feeds alright.  She spits up like a bandit, which I guess is pretty par.  But every time she does, I am simultaneously like, Gross, that was inside me, and DUDE, I MADE THAT FOR YOU AND YOU ARE WASTING IT.

Also, all her best faces are feeding faces, and they are difficult to capture without also exposing you to Unnecessary Boob.  Like the Pirate Eye, above.  It's always the top eye, and she'll watch me suspiciously, as though she thinks I'm going to whip the boob away just as she's getting going.  Or the Feeding Frenzy:

This is her starving face.  This is the face that says, I HAVE OVER-NAPPED AND MUST DINE.  It is my favorite face.

Also hilarious are The Crocodile (it involves air-chomping) and The Wild Boar (like The Crocodile, but with snorts).

Well-preserved

Joel and I got iPhones just in time.  This is going to be the most well-documented baby on the planet, and when her siblings later ask why there aren't as many photos of them total as there are of day-old El, we'll say Because mama and daddy didn't get new phones three days before you were born.  But here, have a hologram of yourself (I am apparently having my next baby in 2114).

And I couldn't be more pleased, because the thing is growing already.  YOU FEED IT AND IT GROWS.  Science!  We had a doctor's appointment yesterday and she's already gained back an ounce from her hospital weight.  An ounce.  What a precocious fatty.

I mean, maybe she'll be petite forever, but she is more likely to develop elegant neck rolls for me to wipe the milk out of (she drinks like a frat boy, but she also holds her drink like a frat boy, which is to say, in her lap), and as much as I'm looking forward to filling out the wrinkles in her elephant legs (fat babies are the cutest babies), I know I'm going to want to remember her skinny-chicken-wing stage.

All of which is to say, many diaper-clad photos.

I have been sliced and diced.

Ok so the c-section.  I always joked that I'd totally end up having one, because Krueger babies are LARGE babies (Joel was 10 lbs 2 and his little sister was ALMOST 12 LBS) and they have large heads and I am regular-sized, particularly about the hips.  But Dr Ross kept telling me I was having a nice, medium-sized baby and now we see her with her skinny chicken wings and teeny round head and I think, I could have pushed that out.

And I'd been in prodromal labor for a week by the time we went into the hospital on Saturday morning, and even though I was having surrious contractions I wasn't dilated at all, so they sent us home to go have a shower and watch more Parks & Rec.  When we came back hours later and I was all EGADS MY WOMB IT RENDS ITSELF I was still only dilated maybe a centimeter.  What I'm saying is, things were progressing slowly.

Anywert, when my water finally broke there was meconium (i.e. baby poops) in the fluid, which means that something has happened to give her the Stressed Poos in there.  It's not usually a big deal, but she also had a heart deceleration, which put everyone on the alert.

When she had another heart deceleration and I was only dilated 3 cm, probably still 10 hours or so from delivering, they decided to go in and fetch her out before her heart rate plummeted and stayed down.  One prefers an orderly, leisurely c-section to a c-section in which people are shouting things like 'stat.'

I  was super-high for all of this because they had given me some sleeping pills when they'd sent me home and I am a notoriously slow metabolizer of drugs (I was Incredibly Sentient for my entire wisdom-tooth-extraction but have completely misplaced the hour that followed).  I am also really wonky when it comes to being prodded and sliced, pain entirely aside, but the pills made me flippant and probably inappropriately blithe.

They also make my memories of that whole day a little hazy, but I remember being distinctly relieved when they announced a baby girl.  Every store clerk and aqua-fit senior since I started to show has told me that I was carrying a boy, and sketchy Russian ultrasound techs that you find on the internet can be wrong.  Joel went to cut the cord and then brought her back to me, swaddled and weirdly alert, so that I could kiss her face.  Most of my skin-parts were behind the blue curtain being manhandled, so he held her cheek to my cheek until they took me away.

Then the pills kicked in and I slept and awoke in recovery, and this is the worst part about the c-section, worse than the stitches and the inability to roll over in bed or lift my baby out of the bassinet, because I missed the introductions.  I missed everyone meeting Eleanor and my parents seeing their first grandbaby and this may be the hormones speaking (my hormones are loud and clamouring) but if I keep thinking about this I'll cry.  I cried in recovery because everyone was out in the waiting room and my baby was in the nursery and they wouldn't let me leave until I could move my legs and feel the ice packs.

So I lied.  I lied about feeling the ice packs, and I moved one leg voluntarily and the other out of sheer perversity, because it was still completely numb, and then they let me go.  I had a 3-person room, because who can afford private rooms these days, but I had it to myself so there was plenty of room for all the freshly-minted grandparents and aunties and uncles to visit.

And then they brought me my baby and I held her and kissed her skinny chicken neck.  It is her kissablest part, out of many kissable parts.

'Bout time.

So, if we're not facebook friends and you don't follow Joel's one-track Instagram feed, you might not be aware, but we figured that since we didn't have any really thrilling New Year's Eve plans that we'd go ahead and have this baby.

Eleanor Constance Loretta, 6 lbs 9 oz

I'd blog the whole thing chronologically, but you guys know how little the parents of newborns sleep (or you've read enough STFU Parents to know and also I'm putting all of you an alert to warn me when I become That Parent.  Cool?) so I'm a little scattered.

So let's just go with what I remember right now, which is that she was super-accommodating and came on New Year's Eve, so that I could go to All The Holiday Things without having to bring her and my huge, weird boobs (I have huge, weird boobs now) and my c-section incision and my inability to walk around gracefully.

She was pulled out squalling at 4:12 pm, so that everyone could come check her out and coo over her and still make their evening plans, but no one (not even me) had to get up at, like, 2 am to go into contractions or catch her or anything.

Coming on New Year's Eve also meant that Joel still had two days off school and could hang out with us in the hospital all day Sunday and then bring us home on Monday (ps: I would like to go on record saying that Joel has been amazing, and that you should all be so lucky).

Well done, El.  Please be this compliant when you are 15 and I want you to get your ass to school on time.