• adventures in babysitting,  Bug,  movies,  party party

    Rolly Rolly Merbaby

    Pop some popcorn, it’s time for another Baby Bug home movie (4.75 mb quicktime)! Groan, hiss… I know, I know…. Home movies suck. Especially ones with me starring as the high pitched annoying mouse voice. This one is long too. I just couldn’t figure out where to edit it and then I just got lazy and figured I’d put a big disclaimer on the front end saying you don’t have to click on it. It’s your choice and really I mostly made this movie for the grandparents who appreciate these things. Or at least they lead me to believe they do. My mom recently had her phone disconnected. Maybe she got tired of me calling every day with the latest update on baby drool.

    I was going to save this for Baby Bug’s three month movie (that’s my plan, make a movie every month) but I couldn’t wait. It’s just too big of news to wait. She’s rolling over! Sort of. With a little help from mom. Just a little push, it’s hardly cheating.

    She’s so amazing these days. Between the buh-bbb-buh-buh blowing spit bubbles and the pterodactyl shrieks that clearly say “Mom! Rescue me from Dad who doesn’t have a clue!!” I am just overwhelmed with how brilliant she is. My little genius! And cute to boot! What am I going to do with myself? I’m completely and one hundred percent smitten with this little girl.

    She was really good at the birthday party yesterday. Everyone LOVED her mermaid costume. I think I’m going to find someone to manufacture them for me and go into the mer-tail business… or something. I have so many ideas.

    I wish I could be a professional idea popper. It would say that on my business card. Brenda Ponnay, professional idea popper. Then all I would have to do is sit around and think up ideas and maybe sketch them on paper so people could get them better. No worrying about capital or business plans or hiring and firing folks… just pure day dreaming up new stuff every day. That would be my dream job. Next to being a mom of course. Maybe I could do both.

    Enough about me. Baby Bug was a perfect mer-angel-baby yesterday. Except the part where she starting screaming while I was videotaping the birthday girl and now I’m going to have to do some extreme editing or find a really good sound track to mask out the merbaby shrieks. Thankfully I was there as a guest first and a video-girl second so there isn’t as much pressure to create the perfect birthday dvd this time. In fact they said they’d be okay if I took four months to produce it since I have next to no free time to work any more.

    It was really strange but good to be at the birthday party as a mom instead of my usual job as babysitter/photographer/videographer/girl-friday. I don’t think I mentioned it but this party was for Thing One, the little girl I used to babysit all the time. All these years I’ve been wishing I had a little girl like Thing One and now I do. Watching Thing One run around with all her little friends made me so excited for Baby Bug when she gets big enough to run around and play too. They are all going to be pals! There is only five years difference in their ages. That’s not too much. Maybe Thing One will babysit Baby Bug someday…it could happen.

    Thing One loves Baby Bug. She’s so good with her. Even though she was surrounded by friends and relatives, and plenty of fun things to do (like a woman who was hired to make mermaids out of balloons), Thing One spent a lot of time at my side holding Baby Bug’s hand as it hung down limply from Baby Bug’s sleeping perch in the sling. Later I decided to let Thing One hold Baby Bug and it was the cutest thing. Thing One is so gentle. Even with her cast. (She recently fell off her bed and broke her elbow.) She kept asking me if we should get Baby Bug a pillow and if we could put Baby Bug to sleep in her bed. I don’t remember being that interested in babies when I was her age. I guess Baby Bug is like holding a living, breathing doll.

    Kinda like how she is for me.

  • Bug,  movies

    Two Months Movie


    Baby Bug turned two months old yesterday. So we made a movie (1mg quicktime).

    I know everybody always says this, but she is growing up so fast! She’s already turning into a big girl baby. I picked her up one night and I thought, Wow! She’s really solid! It’s like she gained five pounds in her sleep. Her cry is more grown up now too. She’s learning how to tell mommy exactly how she doesn’t want to be put down in her crib. She doesn’t cry much. Mostly just grunts and makes silent crying movements. Sometimes when I’ve neglected her for a minute, I come and find her with her lower lip quivering. Oh! It breaks my heart! How could I let the little baby girl get so sad!!!?? Bad Mom! Bad Mom! But when I pick her up, she forgives me with a big gummy grin.

    The breast feeding is going so much better. I think we have an understanding of each other now. I won’t force her to eat when she doesn’t want to eat and she won’t arch her back and spit at me. I think all this time I thought she was starving when actually she just wanted to suck on something and it really pissed her off when milk came out of the nipple and choked her. She really just wanted her pacifier. So in the pacifier goes. I keep worrying that I’ll miss her hunger cues with her sucking away on a plug all the time but I guess no baby ever starved to death from too much pacifier. If they did, then it would come with a warning label.

    As a new mom I guess I just thought: “I am mom. I have boob. Must feed baby.” So I tried to feed her and feed her and feed her. It turns out she really just wasn’t very hungry. She just likes to suck on things and those mouth movements weren’t always hunger cues. So confusing! I could and should keep a schedule and solve the madness but you know me, I’ve never been very good with numbers. I’m home all day with her anyway, I feed her whenever she wants to be fed. Schedule Schmedule.

    Sleeping! Here is where I am the luckiest mom ever and will probably be cursed with a collicky nightmare baby for a second child, if we ever have one. I think she’s been “sleeping through the night” since she’s been born. I read all about these poor sleep deprived parents and how they try everything under the sun to sooth their shrieking baby at four in the morning. I never experienced that. I wake up with her in two and three hour intervals but I don’t think she ever really wakes up completely herself. She can eat in her sleep. We are a picture of motherly romance. Her sucking and grunting away with eyes closed and me hunched over nodding like I’m an eighty-year old woman falling asleep in church. The other night… she only woke me up once to eat! Wowie Zowie! I practically have a toddler already!

    Speaking of advancement, she is learning new things. She’s sort of figured out that her fist works pretty well for sucking when the pacifier isn’t within reach. Sometimes I pull her thumb out of her vice-grip fist and show her how good it works too. It practically kills me with the cuteness. Her thumb! She’s sucking her thumb like a real baby! Hurry grab the camera! But then it falls out and she quivers her lip until I give her back her pacifier. I was kinda hoping to teach her to use both because I don’t want to be like some of you warned me, hunting and searching for the pacifier all night long. It would be smart if she learned to sooth herself now and then. Even better would be if she would just eat a big old milkshake from the boob and fall contented to sleep without even needing anything more. But I’m keeping my goals realistic.

    She does hold her head up pretty well. When I’m holding her upright in my arms, her head never wobbles or threatens to bob over and face plant onto my shoulder like it used to. If anything she’s always trying to look around so hard, I’m afraid she’s going to swan dive backwards onto the floor. She loves looking around. And if she can arch her back and look at things upside down, even better. She’s a goof ball already.

    I love my little goof ball.

    I know there’s more I wanted to include in this update… but you guessed it, the goof ball calls.