the cole family blarg

Easter Pizza

There will be no Easter this year! Family differences are ending the Easter dinner tradition on our family.
Perhaps we can carry on this wonderful tradition so our daughter will be the only child in her class who does not celebrate Easter…her and the Jehovah’s Witnesses…
She is sleeping right now, and will be awakened in a short while for a late night top up, and then will be put right back to bed! I’m really just nattering on right now because I have a free moment. Being online doing nothing is boring. I don’t know why I thought I missed doing this more! I’d rather be snuggling my baby girl than sitting here doing NOTHING!
zzzz
zzzz

Life as Parents

Right now we are jamming to the new Kaiser Chiefs tune “Ruby.” Carys loves loud music, and her daddy is very good at rocking her about to make her calm! Some day we will miss these moments, so we enjoy them while we can.

Carys had her 2-month checkup today and is doing great! She pooped right before her exam, and I forgot the diaper bag.
Okay, I have to feed her and get off to bed. The day comes to a close so quickly!

Bye!

8 weeks old!

Carys is now 8 weeks old, and will officially be two months old on Tuesday.
The time is going by pretty quickly, actually. She’s full of smiles, and moreso now that she’s gotten over the little growth spurt she was having. Yikes, I thought she’d be nursing night and day FOREVER!

’nuff said

Resisting Resentment

It’s easy to resent your spouse when you are a new mother — especially a breastfeeding new mother. I really am trying not to, but it’s particularly hard when you really feel like you’re the only one in the relationship whose life has actually changed. From a “I’d like to schlep my kids off on others” or “here honey, you give the bottle this time” standpoint, formula feeding would be fantastic. Go out for a few hours, and know that someone else could give baby that bottle. Breastfeeding on the other hand, while it is the absolute best for baby, and if you can breastfeed you SHOULD, is very restrictive — especially if baby doesn’t want to take a bottle of breast milk. (not naming names, CARYS)

Damen is sleeping soundly on this early early Saturday morning. He also stayed up late to do enjoyable things, whereas if I stay up late, I am only robbing myself of the sleep which is so necessary for me to function. I heard Carys before she even started crying and went in to do my motherly duty. At least she slept for 5 hours off the hop. I’m not saying “wah wah” because I wanted this baby so very dearly, but had always pictured it as more of a “family affair” — boy was I wrong! With Damen working full time, and not having to get up in the nights, I certainly feel some isolation. I have joined a couple of groups in the hopes of meeting new moms, something I am so desperate to do. Okay. I think the monkey has fallen asleep — I also have the fortune of a baby who will put herself to sleep, sans soother, or anything else. I’m going to go switch off her lamp, and cross my fingers that I will get another couple hours of shut-eye.

Hello!

Ok. Time for another post.
It’s finally slightly sunny out — it has been really dreary the past couple of days. Carys and I are at home, and I am sick with a yuck cold.

Carys slept 6 hours straight last night! Yippee!!! I actually woke up and was like “what the hell!?” A few minutes later she woke up…it is so awesome to get some good sleep nights. Actually, we have been getting some pretty good sleep nights for the past weeks. She usually sleeps anywhere from 4-6 hours at a time. She also puts herself to sleep at night and during night feedings most of the time. I lay her in the crib awake, and, like magic, she is asleep usually within 15 minutes. She has been sleeping in her own crib since the second day we brought her home, so I assume she is somewhat comfortable there. We couldn’t have her in the same room as us…all the noises she made kept us awake! We have many sweet moments though…morning nursing in bed with mommy, and often we drift off for a little nap together.

It’s hard to believe she will be 7 weeks old on Friday. I know, I know…the weeks turn into months, and the months into years. Right now, I could not imagine having anymore children! It’s such hard work! Not to say that I wouldn’t enjoy them…but having had Carys has opened my eyes! I love her, she’s easily one of the best things that has happened to me.

It’s 3:20, and Damen will be home soon. I sure wish he could be home more often to spend time with us…it gets a bit lonely sometimes, but I know this will change as Carys gets a bit older, and I start getting out with her a bit more for pleasant outings that she can also enjoy. Right now she just kind of sleeps through everything, and when she awakens (especially if she awakens in the dreaded car seat) she is usually miserable! Oh well, what can I expect…she is still a tiny little baby

Ok…she was having a nap, but now is AWAKE! Must go…

Colic? - Maybe not.

Ok. Now that I’ve figured out Carys better, and read more and stuff, I think we’ve decided that Carys probably is not colicky. She is generally pleasant during the day, smiling and cooing, and eating and eating and eating (which has led me to a probable slight case of mastitis…) and gets a bit gassy at night (and not every night, and for no particular length of time) then she settles down between 9-10 and sleeps for anywhere between 4-6 hours.

I think what has been the hardest for me is giving up my previous life and its conveniences and giving 100% to this baby. It’s not that I don’t want to do it, it’s just that I had to learn how. Now that she’s 6 weeks old, I think I’m finally getting the hang of it, and am able to cope a lot better, and am actually enjoying my time with her. She’s changing every day and becoming a little individual more and more. I just love her to pieces!

Things Carys likes:

Mommy’s and Daddy’s voices.
Belle and Sebastian.
Laying on her back looking around at everything.
Not being coddled or fussed with too much.
Nursing laying down.
Learning to take a soother (if necessary).
This babytrekker carrier that I currently have her sleeping in (thanks Auntie K).

Things Carys dislikes:

The goddamn car seat. She hates it with a vengeance, and has since the very first time she was put in it in the hospital. She does settle down in it if you talk to her, or rock it slightly though, which is fine, and she will sleep in it to allow me to get some errands run.

Things I am waiting for:

SUMMER! Oh, how sick I am of this dreary drear.

Colic Anyone?

Well, Carys is colicky. One of my worst pre-baby nightmares has come true.
She’s pretty much miserable most of the day, but manages to sleep okay at night (thank God.)

It is making things tougher on me to manage the stress of the baby, but I hope to look back on this time and laugh (or cry). By three months, colic should pass, but that’s still two months away!

Sigh. It’s hard to watch your baby writhe in pain.

Free Moment

I can’t believe Carys will be one month old tomorrow! The time is going by fast, but sometimes I feel like it’s going by slow.
Damen is back at work full time now — I was really dreading this time, but so far it’s going okay. With this c-section incision, I have to wait about 6 weeks before I can lift Carys’ car seat, so my activities are limited — that and it’s friggin’ cold outside, which sucks.

It’s taken me a while to get used to being a mom, but every day feels better and better. My little sweetheart has started to smile, which is totally awesome.

Okay, I have a few other things to do, so bye for now!

I have been looking around at alternatives for Ammanda’s macmini. The poor machine is being tasked with heavy video encoding tasks and it simply cannot keep up. Even though I upgraded the machine to 512MB from the factory 256MB (wow, I know), the 1.4GHz G4 processor and 5400rpm laptop-style harddrive add up to pitiful performance.

Shopping around for Macintosh computers is a real annoyance. Apple has 3 different classes of machines:

• the minis which are inexpensive, but not particularly impressive performance-wise and extremely limited for upgradability (you can upgrade the RAM, and that is even a nightmare);
• the iMac computers which have all of the hardware built into the screen - acceptable performance, fairly expensive for what you are getting, and still very limited upgradability.
• the mac pros which sport very powerful Xeon processors (we are talking about 2 x dual core processors here!), have a case that has some potential for upgrading (although you are still limited to Apple supported hardware) are quite expensive - >$2500 CDN!

All this has made me very annoyed, as in the PC world, it is quite possible to get some very good deals if you know what to buy.

After doing some further reading, I came across the OSX86Project. A few hardcore hackers have bypassed the need for EFI (the standard firmware for Apple x86 machines) and have made it possible to boot OS X with standard PC hardware (i.e. with a BIOS).

I had an old Prescott 3.0GHz machine and AGP GeForce 6800 lying around, and decided to give this a try. After downloading numberous bad ISOs and failed bootups, I managed to get the OS installed on this machine. You need to choose your hardware very carefully in order for this to work. For instance, you should have a processor that has SSE3 capabilities, one of about 10 different network cards, one of about 5 different AC’97 compliant soundcards (all onboard strangely enough, and no support for Sound Blaster anything!). I can’t run the OS on my primary machine, as it does not have an Intel chipset, which is necessary as things like IDE controllers get really dicey.

In the end, this experiment has resulted in an excellent Mac-like computer. The machine is ugly as hell (pictured to the right), but it has all of the functions of a fairly decent Mac - included Core Image, Quartz Extreme, and all the other polish that makes the OS so very elegant.

Unfortunately all of this is completely illegal, and so I will have to delete everything. It was only an experiment after all.