18 Days... Parents are gone, Thanksgiving has passed...

It doesn't really seem like it, but it has already been 17 days since Rebecca was born! Sometimes it feels like a LOT longer (like in the middle of the night when she decides to wake up at 1 and 4 am!), but most times she just seems to be growing like a little weed, and way too fast for the time she's been around!

This is the look she was giving me when I finished getting her dressed for her first day at church at the tender age of five days old. She kept giving this look for the next five minutes or so, which really amused all of us. Then she promptly fell asleep!

Rebecca really likes her tongue. Particularly when she can see it going in and out of her mouth! She's looking at a mirror here, and often times when we put her down beside the mirror she will either "talk" to it, or she'll be sticking her tongue in and out. Though this picture doesn't show it, she usually has her eyes wide open when playing with her mirror friend.

We gave Rebecca her first bath when she was 10 days old. She looks a little leary in this picture, but she did decide she liked it after a few minutes. She's had a few baths since, and after the first few minutes usually decides they are okay things to have. She particularly likes it when she can put her ears under the water, which I failed to make the water deep enough for this evening, and she wasn't too impressed by that! She also likes to "float" in the water, which since her ears couldn't really go under water, she couldn't float very well either! I'll have to remember to put more water in that little tub next time.

Yep... she not only likes to play with her mirror friend, but she plays copy cat with us! She will, if we are patient, stick her tongue out back at us. :)

We took the opportunity to have a "photoshoot" the evening we gave her her first bath, and this is one of the resulting pictures. I'll have to keep working with the flood lights and see what I can come up with for pictures of her, but I think this one is kind of cute.

She was looking at Daddy in this picture. She looks a little unsure of herself... or maybe a little curious as to what in the world he is doing to her??

While we spent our first day alone together yesterday, we had a little fun with my camera, but it sure took work to get her to look toward me instead of the plugs in the wall beside me!

Yeah... when she finally looked my camera in the "eye" I got her tongue! And, she wasn't even really looking *at* the camera! Heh. Oh well, it's cute anyway, and I have a TON of other pictures in an attempt to get one of her looking at the camera, lol!

And, this is yesterday evening. :) It was quite a miracle she was asleep at this time, actually, because I took it around 6:30pm, and she tends to fuss from about 5 until 7:30 or 8, and then she'll crash. I'm not sure if she's just being fussy, or if since she wants to nurse that whole time, maybe she really is hungry... or the other possibility is that she just spends a couple of hours fighting sleep, because when she crashes, it is usually mid cry!

Well, we celebrated American Thanksgiving with Justin's family this past Sunday. His family all came over and Mum and I made pies and all the turkey dinner stuff. For the most part it was enjoyable. On Thursday, "real" Thanksgiving, we went over to our midwife's house for a "Turkey potluck" thing, which was fun. :-)

While we were out for our potluck, we did a weigh in of Rebecca. Okay... her birthweight was 6lbs 15oz. Discharge weight was 6lbs 6.something oz. At 6 days old she weighed in at 7lbs 5oz. This Thursday, at 16 days, she weighed in at exactly 7lbs 8 oz! She's putting on weight like crazy, and in my opinion also seems to be stretching out a lot! But, she is almost three weeks old and only just at the "average" newborn size... which would explain why fitted cloth diapers just fall right off her, any applix cover tabs nearly overlap in order to stay on her little waist, and why I'm currently only able to use old fashioned flat diapers... unless I wanted to purchase premie diapers, LOL! She's still swimming in anything that is 0-3 months sized, so I guess we'll get lots of use out of those things. :)

She's Here!

Rebecca Elise
November 11, 2008
1:06 A.M.
6 lbs 15 oz
18.8 inches

Baby Birds + Pregnancy = Entertainment at times!

There are five baby birds, four of which have now started flying, one of which is just being a wimp and poking its head out regularly, but not actually bothering to *fly* yet. Maybe today that will happen. Anyway, one of them is four weeks old as of yesterday, the other four are three weeks old as of this weekend. Twig (grey all over), the oldest one, is relatively tame, and considering I've had nearly a week of being able to hold him (I think it's a male, at least), that's not a big surprise. The only problem with him is that he likes to take off flying across the room. He's pretty easy to catch again though, so that's okay... I can deal with it.

The other three fledglings are a little more difficult to deal with. They haven't been held as much, mainly because they only just emerged from the nest a couple of days ago, so they're still getting used to the idea that my hand actually is something safe to be sitting in. So, anyway, Pine and Spruce (both are grey with white wing tips) are pretty much okay with being held, so long as you keep an eye on them. They will fly to whatever cover they can discover if you don't pay pretty close attention though! Pine chose to land on our overhead fan yesterday morning... now that was fun getting him down from!

Birch (white wings with grey back) is another story, however, and the story of yesterday. I had got "him" out, because he was the only fledgling out of the nest at the time, and I like to at least try to get the birds out for five or so minutes each a few times a day. I figure if I have them out enough times they will eventually be tame enough for any one to get them, let alone for me to get them. Birch was happily sitting in my hand, until for some reason he decided to attempt his horrible landing and perching skills (he hasn't figured those out just yet!) and attempt to land on one of the lamps in the living room. That was fine, except that he didn't quite make the landing, and ended up down behind the lamp instead.

Okay, so I managed to get him out, and we were contentedly sitting on the couch together, and what does he do? Takes off flying again! But this time he couldn't be good enough to fly to somewhere easy to access! This time it was his intention to fly behind the couch! So, after he disappeared down the back of the couch, I pulled it out from the wall, and looked down on the floor expecting him to be there, and didn't see him. Then I realized, he was "perched" on one of the white flowers (part of the print of the couch) at the bottom of the couch. Now, keep in mind that I'm over 40 weeks pregnant now, and yet need to catch this baby bird before it hurts itself. Right... now how in the world am I supposed to bend over the couch and actually reach him? I don't know! While I may not look big, babies do not exactly allow you to bend at the waist regardless of your size at this point in the game! Hips yes, waist no. Anyway, thankfully he decided to hop off the couch, onto the floor behind, and scoot himself along until he ended up under the lamp at the end of the couch. But, would he be good enough to be within arm's reach?? NO! So, I had to pull everything out except the lamp in order to grab the poor bird who was now entirely flustered over being forced to get out from behind his newest hiding place!

I finally managed to catch him, and thought it might be best to put him back in his cage... and when I put him in, he wouldn't get off my finger. So, I had to stand there waiting for nearly five minutes while he decided to actually hop onto the stick in the cage. I don't think I saw him out of the nest for the next hour or so... but he seems to have recuperated just fine now, so I don't think he was *too* traumatized. :-)

My due date has come and gone...

...and there is still no baby. Maybe this weekend? Maybe next weekend? We'll see. Regardless, no, there is no baby here... yet. Actually, tonight probably would NOT be a good night to be having the baby, as we were just informed that there is going to be a party across the road this evening (to which we are welcome to come... food, drinks... ie, alcohol...). There wouldn't be any parking down at this end!

We're going to try importing my car today so we can *hopefully* get VA license plates on it also today! We'll see. If we can get all that done today we'll be doing well, seeing as it is going to be at least 1 before we even manage to get to a Homeland Security office at this point! I'm kind of tempted to get one of those lovely homeschooling license plates that they have here. I like the "Kids First" ones because of the hand prints, but I don't like the message behind the phrase, because while kids are important, they definitely don't necessarily "come first". *sigh* Oh, and while we're getting things for my car, we should probably be getting a "baby on board" sign, hehe. We still haven't got one of those!

The first of our five baby birds took flight yesterday. It flew 20 feet (yes, it was out of the cage). It's very cute, about 2 inches long from the tip of its beak to the tip of its tail. It's quite friendly thus far as well. We're going to try to keep it this tame, as right now it is very easy to catch, and it would be nice to have hand-tame baby birds around! The other babies should start taking flight next weekend.

Anyway, we're about to head off, Justin's had a man here taking a look at his old red truck. We're looking into the possibility of a trade, whether straight trade or trade with minimal expense to us involved. Even if they would knock $1,000 off the price of one of the cars we saw, we'd be able to *probably* swing it. The car *I* like is $1,400, so if we could pay $400 for the car it would be good, I think. :-)