Sunshine and flowers

We've been together for 16 years. It's always been just the two of us and this is a huge adjustment for us. I feel pretty good about how its going but there are occasional potholes in our road. We have both read sparingly from our baby books, Baby 411 and Your Baby's First Year respectively. We also both have some collected knowledge of how babies work from years of watching others. Really though we're just flying by the seats of our pants. "Do you think it would be better if we changed her first and then gave her the bottle?" Shit, I don't know. "What if she won't drink the formula later because we gave her solid food now?" Duhh, beats me. We both throw out ideas and whichever seems better at the time we go with. She's humoring us by acting sweet and cute like we're doing alright.

Hilary and I have traded days of feeling spent. Fortunately they have not overlapped too much so we've been able to grab enough naps to keep moving. Some days we struggle between "Gimme the baby, she's so cute!" and "Take her, she's your problem now". There's also some "She loves you more today" but the reasons for it are varied. Maybe it's because we're sad that we can't console her or burp her the right way that day or maybe it's because we'd prefer for the other to do it. You know, reverse psychology. The days blur one into the next here and Hilary's been getting a little bored. I'm still in slug mode- not caring about leaving the hotel as much. That's not a great equation for contentment. We're working on that. We went to Chico park today first thing in the morning.

Mariana has not been so into solid foods. The books say she should be eating at least 2 solid meals a day at this age but we're lucky if we can get her to eat one. It's been worrisome for us. We're both so afraid of screwing her up. She had a schedule that her foster Mother gave us and at first I thought we should try to keep as close to that as possible. Well Mariana has her own ideas and pitched that schedule right out the window. We've tried making our own carrots. Nope. We've tried mixing them with pear. Nope. We've tried mashed banana. Nope. She'll try it for a bite or two and then turn away in disgust. It can get pretty frustrating. Hilary had the idea yesterday for teething biscuits. I wasn't so sure. She won't even eat regular jarred food consistently yet. Always the girl of action over inaction, she suggested we try it. So Mariana sat down with a big ole' cigar of Tasteless Teething Stick and had a great time chewing it into mush and swallowing some. What it did was spark an interest in eating solids because we were then able to shovel in some jarred pears. Score one for Hilary.

Mariana has a tendency to get really excited at dinner. There are lots of people and action, kids running around and screaming and the wait staff hustling plates to and fro. She gets very chatty and screechy and all the limbs start twitching. Then she doesn't want to eat enough and has a hard time settling down to bed. Not the end of the world, it just takes a little longer. Hilary's idea last night was to keep her out of the dinner room and put her in the rocker thingy and sit just outside the dinner room. She never wants to sit still in the rocker for me so I only grudgingly agreed. We sat down to dinner and Mr. Negativo (me) was waiting for it not to work. Well, it did. Score two for Hilary. What I SHOULD have said at that point was "Nice job with the rocker idea babe". Probably feeling the bruised ego from my last wrong instinct about the teething biscuits I offered to following statement that I wish I could rewind and take back: "Well the rocker worked this time but really you don't know shit either". What a dick right? What I meant was that we're just making this up as we go. I've had my share of successes along the way but it felt like sheer luck. I assumed the same for her. Really I should believe in her maternal instincts and give credit where credit is due.

So just in case you thought we had all flowers and sunshine coming out of our butts I thought I'd share that embarrassing moment. We talked about it. She let me off the hook. Whew. Like my brother Carlo taught me: Happy wife (+ mama) Happy life.