Getting to Know You

So this week we've been doing some (but not nearly enough) resting and recovering, playing lots of games with family, and starting to get to know the new member of our family. Mavis's sister Auntie K left yesterday evening, and my parents left this morning. We've got another week until the last visitor (Mavis's dad) leaves, and hopefully this week will have enough resting and recovering, along with the other stuff.

The wee girl (haven't come up with a great blog name for her yet--she doesn't look anything like an Ingeborg, and I'd really rather avoid just calling her Number Three) developed jaundice, so we didn't get lots of wonderful pictures of her this week. Besides making her yellow, the jaundice has also made her very very sleepy. We're hoping for less yellow and less sleepy this week. I did get a couple of detail shots, though.

Both boys were born with Mavis's feet--flat, zero arch, long and skinny and rather shovel-like. This baby's feet are lovely, with high arches and long, practically-prehensile toes. Her baby toe, in particular, is long and stretchy. I couldn't get her to stretch it all the way out, but this picture gives you some idea:



Then, at the beginning of the week, with her sleeping on my lap, I thought she had some lint caught behind her ear. Turns out she has a tuft of hair growing out of the top of each ear. The head hair may or may not fall out, but I'm pretty sure this will, so I was glad to capture it with the camera. This picture also shows one of the little ear holes (right in front of the top of her ear) she inherited from my mother. Her oldest brother has one on one side, and my niece has them. My sister says she has them, too.



To treat her jaundice, the doctor prescribed a phototherapy blanket. It's not really a blanket per se, but a flexible pad with UV light conveyed through fiber optics. It's very bright light, and even wrapped in a blanket some bleeds through. We called her Glow Baby or Glow Bug all week (phototherapy went M-F, and she had blood tests to check her bilirubin levels M-Sat and a final check on Monday--not fun).



Number Two loves to see pictures on the camera, but if there aren't any on there you have to take some first:





On Saturday, J of J&J threw a very nice brunch in honor of the bebe. Those in attendance included McOllie and TiF, who looked as if they color-coordinated their outfits that day.



Brunch also provided a chance for some girly-cousin bonding.





Saturday evening, Mavis's parents took us all to Meriwether's, where we had previously gone with family to celebrate each child's birth (well, for Number One it was a different restaurant, l'Auberge, in the same location). Number Two was his usual sweet adorable self, and an elderly woman came over towards the end of our meal to say she'd been observing him the whole time and thought he was beautiful and remarkably well-behaved. He also did not really like his chicken strips (though he did enjoy dipping his fries in the ketchup), preferring instead Mavis's pappardelle with duck ragú.





Sunday we had a big family dinner chez nous at mid-day. We ate Surf and Trough: Roast Pork Sirloin with either rhubarb-ginger chutney or Cuban mojo sauce (hooray for vinegar and things that never go bad!), roast Columbia River fall Chinook salmon (the other half of the fish my dad caught) with Fish Sauce, Orange and Green Mashed Potatoes, steamed broccoli, and crusty bread. For dessert we had apple crisp (made with apples from our tree, Winesaps) with vanilla ice cream.

At church, the bebe had her diva moment. For the actual blessing (on which Mavis did a lovely job), she wore her great-grandfather's blessing gown, now 100 years old and very fragile. In all likelihood, she will be the last child blessed in it. For transport to and from church (the gown being more than slightly incompatible with modern carseats), she wore the dress I was blessed in 40 years ago (pictured at bottom), a sweet little pale pink smocked eyelet number with matching panties. I wasn't blessed in Grandpa's gown because its existence was not discovered until my brother J was born the following year. Whereabouts of my little pink dress were of late unknown until my nieces and nephews left some toys out after the last family gathering at my parents' house, two weeks ago, when it was discovered among the doll dressups. Amazingly, the plastic lining of the panties is still flexible, and the elastic is still stretchy.