Getting Samantha to sleep tonight has been a Herculean battle, and I'm not at all certain it's over yet. She's been fussy and irritable most of the day, calm only when someone's been holding her. She's definitely teething -- chewing vigorously on almost anything she can get into her mouth -- but I don't know if this has anything to do with her irritability today or not.

After a long bout of crying she finally went to sleep around 9pm, but she's woken up twice since then crying at the top of her lungs both times. The first time I gave her some water and she had a dose of infant strength Tylenol, which some of our books suggested in case her gums are bothering her. After 20 or 30 minutes rocking her she finally fell asleep again. It didn't last long, though. She woke up again at around 11 and we had another 30 minutes of crying and rocking her before she went back to sleep against my chest. I've just put her down in the crib again and I'm hoping for the best, but not really expecting to get much sleep myself tonight.

Amy's so tired she completely slept through the second round of crying, despite the fact that the baby monitor is right next to her in our bedroom. I have a doctor's appointment first thing in the morning for a long-overdue physical. God only knows what kind of shape I'm going to appear to be in after a sleepless night with a crying baby. I'll bet that simply does wonders for one's blood pressure.

Well, she's quiescent for the moment at least and I can pause to regroup and gather my strength and my patience.

On another note, I just found out that some very dear friends are expecting twins. I'm overjoyed for them, but I also feel for them. After a night like tonight with Samantha, I just can't imagine trying to do this with two babies at once. It's all I can do to keep up with the one we have.

I forgot to mention that last night, her first night in the crib, Samantha managed to roll over at least twice. Each time I went to check on her she'd flipped from her back to her stomach, and one time she'd turned herself around 180 degrees to boot. I suppose that means she really is too big to keep sleeping in her cradle. Our little hellion is beginning to grow up!

Samantha is sleeping in her crib in the nursery for the very first time tonight. I put up one of the window shades earlier today so the light won't wake her up in the morning, and we moved the baby monitor in there as well. So far so good.

She woke up once crying, but then she ate a little and settled back down to sleep on my shoulder. I put her back in the crib after a few minutes, and she seems to be sleeping peacefully now.

I, of course, will probably lay awake all night listening for all the little noises she usually makes in her sleep, and stopping myself from going in to check on her every 10 minutes.

Last night we had friends come over to go out to dinner together, figuring that by eight in the evening Samantha is usually either asleep or at least calm enough that we can take her with us. Last night was, of course, the exception that proves the rule. We went to a local Thai restaurant in Arlington Heights and Samantha fell asleep in the car, which was a great start.

Just as the food began to arrive, however, she woke up and began fussing. Fussing escalated into a serious crying fit, so Amy and I ended up eating and talking with her friends in shifts -- one of us got to eat while the other took Samantha out and walked up and down Mass Ave with her in what was, for me at least, a vain attempt to calm her down. Amy took over after she'd had dinner and succeeded in eventually getting Samantha to a state of calm, but we still didn't press our luck. I finished dinner and we beat a hasty retreat back home, where Sam fell blissfully asleep. As it turns out, she had a very good reason for crying so hard at the restaurant, but I promised when I started out that this web log would include no talk of poop.

I haven't really spent a lot of time with Samantha today -- she went with Amy to an appointment this morning and I took Ella to the park while they were gone. When I got home Sam was sleeping so I went out to mow the lawn. Now it's 6 pm and I've hardly seen her all day, although when I did hold her and play with her this afternoon she tried her best to pull off my glasses and bite my nose. Succeeded a couple of times, in fact. You haven't lived until you've had a drooling five month old bite your nose. Truly one of the more disgusting experiences I've had, although endearing in its own way.

Amy's giving her a bath right now -- Samantha does seem to love being in the water.

I think she's definitely beginning the teething process. Today she's been chewing on or gumming everything in site, most especially fingers and knuckles (hers, mine, Amy's, yours, whomevers...). And of course my nose.

She also ate more watery rice cereal today. She seemed to like it -- she ate almost two tablespoons of it, and less than half ended up on her chin and her clothes. I guess Amy was right about her being ready for (semi-)solid food.

Samantha ate a whole tablespoon of cereal today, gobbled it right down. I feed it to her from an antique eggshell thin porcelain cup with a rubber spoon my neighbor loaned me. The cup is the perfect shape for the tiny amount of cereal. I think she would have eaten more if I had made it. I just don’t want to give her too much too soon.

We had a nice long nap together today on the couch in the living room. She’s been very clingy all day, fussing loudly whenever I put her down. The only way I could get her to nap was to hold her and sit still. I was reading a book, which took about a half hour to finish, and then I fell asleep. We slept for about three hours! I think all the blackouts yesterday and last night took their toll. The phones and the doorbell all rang every time the power went on or off. Luckily all the food in the fridge seemed fine.

She’s asleep in my arms now, a bit early. (7:30) I haven’t even got her in pj’s yet. I’ll just put her down to sleep and let her sleep in her clothes. One night won’t hurt her.

I so looked forward to seeing her grab things and play with her toes. I do enjoy seeing her revel in her surroundings and interact more. But boy, oh boy, has it gotten hard to change her diaper. She grabs my sleeve, my hand, the diaper, her toes. She doesn't always agree that it is time to let go of things, and she yells at me. We manage, of course, but she has gotten much more grabby and I can really see the difference. I had to move her food bowl away from her hand yesterday so she wouldn't throw it on the floor. She's my big girl now!

Samantha is in my arms. She just gulped down 3 ounces of formula, and now she has passed out asleep, completely limp. Her lips are bow shaped and still wet with milk, moving slightly to the rhythm of her phantom sucking. Her eyelids are moving slightly to whatever babies dream about. She is the most beautiful daughter any mother could wish for. I know she’ll wake soon. Eventually her lips will turn down into a most sad pout, and I will once again try to guess what will make this perfect creature happy, but at this moment, I have guessed correctly and I hold a blissful infant in my arms. I feel like a goddess.

Sam just ate her very first teaspoon of food. Whoopee! She is very good at opening her mouth and lunging for the spoon. She swallowed almost all of it today, rather than spitting it out. I think she’s got the hang of it! She also learned to keep her mouth shut when she doesn’t want any, which I suppose is also a great thing to know. I can’t tell when she is full, so she’ll have to tell me.

She’s on the floor gym now, grabbing at the toys hanging above her. She was grabbing at everything on the table earlier, especially her bottle. She didn’t want to eat from it unless she was holding it. Very strong personality, this one. She really is pretty easygoing, but I can see her getting very frustrated when her body isn’t ready to do the things she wants to. I’ve already seen her get pretty mad when she couldn’t sit up, or roll back over.

I thought I should put down my pet names for her. Little pumpkin, little bean, and sweetpea are the three most popular.

Feeding Samantha

I started Sam on rice cereal last week, mostly just to get her used to a spoon. She hated it the first time, but I think that was as much a function of her getting a cold as it was the novelty of it. I’ve tried a couple of times since then, but she clearly isn’t fond of this. She has already caught onto the ‘open mouth, insert spoon’ concept, which I think is pretty good. It is the ‘swallowing’ part that is giving her trouble. She just squirts out whatever I put in until I have a very gluey mass on the burp cloth. The cereal is very watered down so it is as much like formula as it could be and still have cereal in it. She still won’t eat it. Oh well, I am not expecting her to get nutrition from these moments. We are just introducing her to the spoon and textured food for now.

She is getting too big to bathe in the sink, at 4 ½ months. Her legs hit the end of the sink and her knees have to bend to accommodate her. I will have to try her in a tub soon. She likes her bath, kicking up lots of water with her feet. She doesn’t splash with her hands at all yet.

When she eats from a bottle, she holds my finger with one hand. The other hand has two fingers on the bottle, two fingers on her nose, and her thumb in her mouth with the bottle nipple. She is pretty good at getting her thumb in her mouth now, and has lost any real interest in pacifiers. I can’t remember the last time I gave her a pacifier.

One of the reasons I started this web log was so we'd have a place to write down the little things Samantha does, before we forget them in the hustle and bustle of everyday life, or before she outgrows them and they're replaced in our thoughts by more recent behavior. So it's time to write down a couple of these things before it's too late.

The first one is what I call "the lunge", and the whole reason for this entry is that I noticed earlier today that Samantha has been doing this less and less as she develops greater hand-eye coordination. I think I'm going to miss it, though -- it's just so damn cute. Over the past month or so Sam has had a tendency to grab one of my index fingers in her fist, stare intently at it for 5 or 10 seconds, and then quite suddenly and without warning she'll pull sharply on the finger at the same time as she lurches up into a sitting position, stuffing the finger into her mouth and chewing on it for a few seconds before letting go and lying back again. A brief respite, and she's at it again. Grab ... stare ... lunge!. I just can't help cracking up when she does this. I suppose she's working on target practice, in a way. I've noticed her doing the same thing with bottles lately when she's especially hungry.

Yesterday when she was fussy and uncomfortable and I was trying to get her back to sleep, I found myself singing the old song "Down in the Valley" to her, without even realizing it. What's weird about this is that my very first conscious memory is of my mother rocking me, on a porch I think, and singing that song. It's a tremendously vivid memory, and I'm pretty sure this memory is from the time we lived in New Jersey, which we left befor I was very old. Whatever was going on with me at that point, this episode must have made a very strong impresson for me to remember it 40 years later and unconsciously sing the same song to my daughter. (And yes, it still feels strange to say "my daughter".) I wonder what, if anything, Samantha will take with her from these early months.

On a less happy note, earlier today I found myself singing "Shalom Rav" to her without thinking about it. That's something I swore I'd never do -- that was Emily's song. When we found out that Amy was pregnant the first time and I first started getting excited about being a dad I imagined singing our baby to sleep with that song. Well, I sang her to sleep, but not in the way I'd imagined. That was the last song I ever sang to Emily as she lay dying in my arms just hours after she was born, and by the time it was over she was gone and they were taking her away from me.

I can hardly bear to think about that moment even now, and the part of the liturgy at Erev Shabbat services where we sing that song never fails to bring tears. I'm sure that as soon as I finish posting this I'm going to go have a good cry somewhere for the daughter we didn't get to watch grow up. "An Emily moment", as Amy and I call them -- we both have them from time to time, and probably always will.

I intended to lock that song away somewhere and never sing it to Samantha, but it crept out while I wasn't paying attention. That's what having a miserable cold and a 100 degree fever will do for you, I guess. But maybe it's for the best. Maybe it's better to sing to her and when she's old enough I'll be able to tell her about the older sister she never got to know and the song that linked them together even after Emily was gone. I miss her.

Ah, another detail I forgot to record. In the last couple of weeks Samantha has shown a remarkable increase in hand-awareness and coordination. She now plays with soft toys you hand to her, and spins the little roller on her crib mirror that makes it play music, and grabs at the toys on the tray of her swing. This is all new behavior for her, but I'm very glad to see it. I was starting to worry when she'd take that next step, but she's taking it in spades right now.

Thinking of cribs, I think we're going to try to move Samantha from the cradle in our bedroom to her crib in the nursery in a week or so, after she's over this cold. While it will be very hard having her in another room (I'll worry about her constantly and probably check on her five times a night for the first month), Amy thinks she'll sleep better if we don't wake her up when we come to bed ourselves or if we're tossing and turning at night.

She's probably right, but I'm still not looking forward to it. I've grown rather attached to little Peep :-)

Samantha has her first cold. It's really heart-rending to hear her little coughs and sneezes and her raspy voice when she tries to coo at you.

Amy and I are also wretchedly sick this week with the same cold, but have been taking turns sitting up at night holding Sam on our chests or shoulders in the big reclining chair so she can sleep upright. She seems much more comfortable and less congested when she's vertical than when she's horizontal. I think the infant Motrin she's getting (on her doctor's advice) is also helping. Of course, this means neither Amy nor I have slept much in the past couple of days, so we're both pretty much the walking dead. But that's also part of parenthood, isn't it?

Samantha actually seems to be doing the best of any of us -- she coughs and sneezes, but she hasn't cried much at all, her appetite is pretty good, and every once in a while she tries to smile at us. That's quite something if she's feeling half as bad as Amy and I are. How can you not love such a kid?

I can't believe it's been two months or more since I've written in Samantha's web log. So much has happened in that time that I should have been recording, but in the bustle of work and daily life the days just slip by before we notice them.

Well, to put it briefly, we're living with a whole different Samantha these days. She's such a strong presence now when she gazes intently at your face with those blue/gray eyes that she got from her mother. She has such a distinctive personality; I never realized that a four month old could be such a complete little person. Although she's not so little anymore either. She's up to 12 lbs 4 ounces, and a full 24 inches in length. No wonder she feels heavier when we carry her around!

It's hilarious to watch her when she yawns and stretches and gives her little sighs -- they're so cute you can't help laughing out loud. At those times she looks just like a tiny little version of adult behavior. I need to go out and get a digital video camera that can also shoot mpeg movies so I can post some of her more precious moments on her Web site for family and friends.

You can find one of my favorite pictures of Samantha here, but don't let the calm and serene expression fool you. She can still be quite the hellion when she gets her dander up.

She's still an infant and she still has bad days when she cries for hours, especially when she's over tired and doesn't want to go to sleep. But she's also capable of much longer periods of calm, hours at a time. She smiles easily during these times, and she smiles and giggles when she sees me or Amy first thing in the morning, or when I come home from work at night.

I think it's no accident that babies start to smile when they're about 3 months old. I think that's when parents are just about at the ends of their ropes and ready to throw in the towel. Then your baby gives you that big toothless grin first thing in the morning, as if to say that you're just the best thing she's ever seen in the whole wide world, and you can't help but forgive her all the sleepless nights and screaming fits.

You can still see her behavior change on an almost daily basis. In the past 2 weeks she'd decided that she's no longer interested in pacifiers or in sucking on my finger; instead she spent a couple of weeks stuffing several of her own fingers into her mouth and chewing on them.

Just in the past day or two she's learned to get her thumb into her mouth reliably. Up until now it was a comical series of trials and errors, with her thumb ending up anywhere from on her chin to in her eye. She's also decided that she likes her bouncy chair and her swing, both of which sent her into crying fits just a few weeks ago. Now she'll sit in them and smile quietly, or coo to herself while she bounces or rocks.

She's really become quite vocal in the last month -- coos and giggles and various vowel sounds and other phonemes. Sometimes we sit and just make noises back and forth at each other, which seems to delight her. They say this helps teach babies that their actions can affect the behavior of other people. Whether or not that's true, it sure it fun to have a "conversation" with her as she smiles and waves her arms at you.

She has also decided that it's time to stand up. She can't sit up unaided yet, and she's only managed to roll over a few times (big milestone there, and she did it for the first time on Amy's birthday!), but she wants to stand. The surest way to stop her from crying is to set her on her own two feet, let her support almost all of her weight, and just make sure she doesn't fall over. I think that once she learns to crawl we're all in a lot of trouble!

The other thing Samantha loves is flying. She loves to be picked up under the arms and around the rib cage and held horizontally overhead. It's a guaranteed way to make her laugh and smile, especially if you turn her upside down once in a while. Of course you have to be careful to make sure she doesn't drool in your mouth while you're holding her overhead and looking up at her, but hey, that's all part of being a dad, isn't it?

Thinking of drooling, she's been doing a lot more of that lately. I wonder (and her pediatrician also wonders) if she's already teething. I'm not ready for her to have teeth yet!

Today Sam did much better. She slept until 9am, and when I went over to look in her crib, she gave me a big grin and reached up her arms for me to pick her up. Good thing I had already made her breakfast before I went over to see her. She got fussy again this afternoon, so Matt and I did take her to the doctor. She has nothing obviously wrong, but the motrin the doctor suggested did help her a lot. She went to sleep at 8 pm and has only woken up a couple of times since then. Even the wake ups are easier. I just cuddled her for a little while and she went right back to sleep.

I love those big grins of hers. They are such an invitation for fun. I wonder if Ella taught her those?

I was sick today with a head cold, and thank goodness Matt was home with me. I was falling asleep on my feet, literally, and would not have been able to do much with Sam today.

Sam is holding her bottle more now. She puts her hands to her face and sticks her left hand in her eye, yes, right in her eye, as she sucks down the food. It is a very dramatic pose, with both hands on her cheeks. I give her an extra kiss for those. And the sigh, oh yes, the sigh. We just crack up when we hear it. It is so outré. As though she can already speak, has tried to get us to do things her way, and oh well, I give up with these silly parent things. They just don’t get it.

The day starts out so well, with a hug and a smile from Sam, but then it deteriorates pretty quickly after noon. It never gets so bad that I can say, “yes, she is not feeling well, I need to take her to the doctor,” but by the time Matt gets home, I need his help. At this point when she cries, it feels like I have no skin and she is scraping the marrow from my bones with each scream. There are those wonderful tender moments, and then there are times like these. I think the rotten times are important too. Surviving them. Sometimes it feels like Samantha has spent most of her life so far yelling in one fashion or another. The doctor said she is supposed to start calming down more now, but it wasn’t like that today.

I did try feeding her solid food for the first time, a little rice cereal, figuring she was upset because she was hungry. She tried a spoonful but wasn’t thrilled. I’ll try it again in a couple of days, give her another taste and see how it goes. Matt doesn’t like the idea of Sam eating solid food, but I think she really is ready. Besides, she is getting old enough that food in addition to formula is an important part of getting enough nutrients. Or it will be by the time I can accustom her to the concept of textured food. It could take months.

We spend much of our time watching the British DIY shows: Ground Force and Changing Rooms. I think Sam is going to recognize their names before she says dada or mama. I already know the theme songs by heart. They are a fun group of people on the shows, there is no violence to upset Sam, and it keeps me occupied while Sam takes forever to eat.

Sam likes to hold her bottle and does a pretty good job of it.

It is midnight and Matt is still up with Sam. He won’t put her down, and she is still shifting and twitching and crying. She’s been quiet for about 45 minutes, but she just started crying again just now. Poor Matt. But I am not going to fight with him about it. It is clear to me that I need to be away from her for a bit. Ella is keeping me company on the bed, the thunderstorm seems to have passed, and it is quiet again for now. Off to sleep.

She grabbed her toes just now! It's a milestone. And she did it with the biggest grin, like she knew she was doing something great. She woke up this morning at 6am and played quietly in her crib until 7am. That's a big gift. I gave her a big kiss for it when I picked her up.

Everyone in the family asks me to kiss or hug Samantha for them when I talk to them on the phone, so I created a game with Sam. She loves to stand, so I stand her up on my lap and lift her up to me and kiss her, then I tell her who gave her the kiss. I run out of relatives before I stop wanting to kiss her, so I go into kisses from our neighbors. Well, being the precocious little minx that she is, she has now turned the tables on me. As I bring her towards my face, she opens her mouth wide, turns her face towards me and gives me a big wet kiss anywhere she can reach. And then she giggles very loudly in sheer delight. After doing this a few times, I start crying, which makes her eyes get big and she stops to stare at me. I tell her I am crying cause she is so damn cute and I love her so very much, and she seems okay after that.

Sam does get very upset when one of us is upset, even Ella. Ella barks at her hated adversary, the vacuum cleaner, and Sam cries in sympathy. Ella does sound terrified, although being the brave dog that she is, she chooses to stay and voice her disdain for her opponent. Loudly. Once I force Ella to cede the field to the vacuum cleaner, Sam calms down.

She is sitting up now with some help, and is very determined to sit up as often as possible. She gets mad when her muscles are too tired to pull her up. No slowing down for any reason! I can see her thinking. She rolled over twice yesterday from her back to her tummy, but she didn't roll over at all today. I really have to watch her. I turn away for a second and she is off wiggling to the other side of the rug. No crawling yet, but she is a thoroughbred of a wiggler!

Got a good baby patois going, this little one. There is a particular sigh that is hilarious, a very dramatic long sigh from high to low that sounds just like a long suffering lady waiting patiently for her servants to get with it. However, the general coos, barks, and loud farts, make it very clear that she is no demure lady. We get a sing song response going together that is a blast to carry along. It never lasts for very long, but I really feel like we have said something by the time we are finished. I ask her what stories the fairies have been telling - what is the important news, and we are off. I have no idea what the fairies are saying, but someday she'll be able to carry out her duty to the other realm and speak English.