Sunday, January 22, 2006

Loren Update (from Cheryl)





I've had a lot of fun watching Loren developing noticeably day by day this week. She is now very smiley and chatty, especially after she's just eaten. She is even smiling on demand for pictures. She's getting very picky about how she is carried; she only wants to face forward (no more over the shoulder -- she even wants to fall asleep facing forward), and is content to watch the world that way for long stretches. I took her to Central Park in the stroller on Friday, and it was warm enough that I didn't need to bundle her to the eyeballs or use the sunshade, so she could see out. She stayed awake all the way to the park watching the cars on 66th St (a record -- until now the stroller put her to sleep within seconds).

Her head control has gotten much more sure in the last few days, and all of a sudden she can sit supported without drooping her head, and she can stand while supported under the armpits. The hands are slowly coming on line too. When we got to my parents' house yesterday, she reached for the flower embroidered on my mom's sweater. That was the first time I've seen her reach for something.

We've been hitting the East Side new mommies' circuit: we're regulars at the breastfeeding support group at NYU hospital, and we've tried the new parents' discussion at the 92nd St. Y and the Upper East Side new mothers' luncheon on 64th St. Since most of my friends in NYC are from the UN and don't live in our neighborhood, it's been great for me to meet women who live near us and have babies Loren's age. There are some challenges to keeping a baby in the city that suburbanites don't have to contend with -- for example, stores are small and carry a limited selection of supplies. You can go to 5 drugstores and not find the kind of diapers you're looking for. It's nice to have a network of people who happen to know "Oh, they have those at Food Emporium on 68th." I don't know that I'd want to do the stay-at-home mom thing indefinitely, but I'm enjoying it for a few months! I'm trying to get some annual leave approved to extend my maternity leave by a few more weeks, until the beginning of April.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

It took me until paragraph 3 to realize that Cheryl wrote this, not Curt. I was thinking "why is Curt going to the breastfeeding support group?" Is this related to Dad's trip to Taiwan?

I'm out of it this morning.

Curt Sawyer said...

It took you 3 paragraphs? Most people recognize the more intelligent posts were clearly written by Cheryl and not me.