Happy 1 Month Birthday, Sugar Cookie!
Our Sugar Cookie is 4 weeks old today. To celebrate, we took her to Wal-Mart last night to have her picture taken at the schloky "portrait studio" there where you can get gobs of pictures for $8 as long as you sit through them telling you about all the packages you can buy in addition to your "ad package". We did not cave in.Proping a tiny baby up for getting her picure taken is a chaotic riot. First, Michael had to sit off to the side with his hand up under the rug-thingy and hold her upright. Then, she started crying. I gave her part of a bottle, then re-propped her up. She again started to cry, and then pooped. I took her to the bathroom to change her, and it was nasty (the bathroom, not her). Thank God I had packed some of those disposable changing pads in the diaper bag, because my baby was not going to touch an inch of that nasty fold-down changing table they had in the women's bathroom.
We managed to get a couple of cute poses out of the whole ordeal, and all in all I'm glad we went. Even though she isn't ours, we want to capture these milestones in case one day it becomes official.
The pictures will be back in 3 weeks - just in time for me to make the appointment for her 2-month picture-taking appointment.
I know it's cliche, but she gets cuter every day. She hasn't lost any hair - it's even getting thicker and darker brown. Her face and cheeks are filling out, and her little arms and legs are looking chubbier. She makes happy faces all the time - even though I know it's just a "feel good" reflex at this point, it still feels great. She makes delightful happy sounds when she is feasting on a bottle. She snores happy little snores when she is deep asleep. She loves to sleep on top of us as we lay in bed watching TV.
So far Sugar Cookie has had 4 baths. Her first bath was a sponge bath in her tub, and she was okay with the whole thing, but looked worried. Her second and third baths were a bit traumatic and she cried and cried. Her fourth bath was ultimately a big success. I think she was particularly happy because she had just expelled both a tremendously stinky poop which she then followed up with a hosing of spit-up which covered my shirt and soaked through my bra. I stripped down to my skivies and then stripped her down and gave her an impromptu bath on the spot because the baby-stink was pretty foul by that point and she was covered with poop and spit residue. I filled her tub with warm water and laid her in the little hammock insert. She then put one chubby leg on either side of the tub hammock and relaxed out spread-eagle in the bath. I soaped her up with lavender baby wash and she stuck her tiny fist in the bubbles and then into her mouth. Despite making a face, she kept on sucking her soapy fist. She was wide-eyed the entire time, and kicked her feet in the water. Even as I washed her hair, she relaxed and enjoyed the bath. It was only after I extracted her from the tub that she hollered. As soon as she was warm again and wrapped in a fluffy towel she calmed down. On the changing table, I gave her a "spa treatment" with warm baby oil on her legs, arms, and tummy. I powdered her bum and then diapered and dressed her in a fuzzy footed sleeper. I then took her downstairs to daddy Michael who enjoyed holding and kissing his sweet smelling Sugar Cookie. That one moment was worth at least a couple sleepless nights.
Speaking of sleep - OH MA GAWD am I exhausted. Cookie sleeps a couple of hours at a time, and likes to change up when she will have her fussy times. Sometimes, Michael takes her downstairs and sits with her on the sofa while he watches TV so that I can get some sleep. Other times, it's me who is up with her at midnight and 3 am when she decides she's ravenous and then poops and is wide awake and wants to interact with you. Now, I love our interaction time, but at 3 am I am not the vision of perkiness like Cookie often is. I swear, she wakes up ready to go. I think she secretly knows how funny this all is, and relishes that fact. I'd feel worse about our poor lost sex life if it weren't for the fact that if given the choice, I'd choose sleep most of the time now. Sleep is highly under-rated.
Sugar Cookie had her first pediatric appointment a week ago. I was going to just let Michael take her while I stayed at work, but a feeling came over me that said this: "If one day you end up adopting her, you're gonna kick yourself in the ass if you don't go to her first pediatric visit." I did not want to choose this sucky job over Sugar Cookie, so I took TDL from work and went. I have no regrets. I had to strip her down so they could weigh and measure her, and she didn't even cry. She had been discharged from the hospital at 7 lbs. 1 oz. She now weighed 8 lbs. 4 oz. I was so proud of us. I think there is nothing that prayer, love, and yummy bottles can't cure.
We have heard absolutely nothing about Sugar Cookie's future. We figure that if the biological parents had any contact, we would be notified immediately because there would have to be a meeting and visitation set up. To date there have been no phone calls. Our social worker visited our new house on Jan. 9th and said that if there was no contact in 90 days that abandonment charges would be filed. While that all sounds fast, I'm told by others not to expect things to roll along that quickly no matter how "simple" it all seems.
I've come to the conclusion that in this case I just have to treat her like my daughter. If that ever changes, I'll have to rely on God to pull me through it. I don't know how we would ever give her up. She feels very much ours. Both of our lives have changed so much, and our schedules revolve around her needs. She's an incredible blessing and an incredible amount of work. But I think I can speak for my husband as well when I say we are in love with her and hope she will one day become ours forever. Until then, we will keep trying to enjoy every day and live it deliberately.
posted by No Longer In Crisis @ 1/17/2006 01:28:00 PM
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