Wayne and Rebecca Madsen

Paela took a bottle. When Rebecca went back to work on Monday, she had no problems figuring out where food was coming from. And, as a side effect, she has now become an avid pacifier user.

The rest of the week we tried to adjust to our new roles in taking care of Paela since Rebecca is back to work. Overall it was a highly stressful week, but not overwhelming or overbearing. There has been a little bit of restructuring at Rebecca's job, but after this coming week we will have that sorted out and how it will affect our time arrangements in caring for the little girl.

I tried to find new ways of spending my time with Paela, since at this juncture of time she only gives me roughly a 20 minute interval of hands-free time to work on things. With Rebecca, she's much more content playing on her own. We hope that changes.  read more »

So we left off last week with a cliffhanger: the airlines had lost our last box and kept telling us to "call back in four hours" to find out more. Every time we called, however, it was the same thing: call back in four hours, please. Well we decided on Monday to drive down to the airport ourselves and not bother with calling and talking to people who were just looking at a computer screen. Good news for us, because they had our box waiting for us when we got there! Rest assured we finally got our box back from the airlines! Plus we dropped off the damaged suitcase...we'll have to remember to follow up on that, but they should be either fixing or replacing it. It pays to follow up with customer service, right?  read more »

It always starts with a double flight, at least for us. Who knows? Maybe someday we will get lucky enough to have a sibling tip us off to a cheap direct flight before we buy tickets, but until then we take double flights. While our flight out of San Jose wasn't originally scheduled terribly early, over the course of six weeks prior it was bumped earlier and earlier. We arrived at 6 am to find a long line for the airline as well as security.  read more »

Yet another semester bites the dust for Wayne. He finished up finals and final projects this past week, including a 10-page paper for Thursday and a journal article Monday. He was a little worried he wouldn't finish because he didn't start on things as far in advance as usual, but I knew he'd get it done and get done he did.  read more »

Ah, it's Christmas time again.

While the first half of the week was warm, the second half was really cold and it was time to get out warm jackets and stop running around in sandals. I still ran around last night until my toes needed some defrosting.

Wednesday we went to our local Creche exhibit in Palo Alto. This was their 20th anniversary exhibit, so since I grew up in Ann Arbor I spent the day comparing the two exhibtions. While the Palo Alto exhibit was a few years younger and a lot smaller, there was no hesitation in declaring how much more posh and elitist their exhibit was. Instead of a simple card explaining where the nativity scene originated from, it was a full declaration of how it was acquired on the collector's "fourth trip to Switzerland from a master carver," etc. Quite humorous, really.  read more »

Time flies and I'm not entirely sure how it can possibly be December already. We still have lots of Christmas shopping to do (well, some of us do). But Paela is napping better (most days) and sleeping pretty well (even if it is in her baby papasan instead of her crib). She wakes up in twenty minutes in her crib, but sleeps for hours in the papasan (or on us). Coincidence? I think not.  read more »

At six weeks, Paela is a textbook baby and has stopped sleeping and has increased fussing [being more alert has its benefits too -- more smiles for us to show off her cuteness and play time]. We have resorted to sleeping with the baby, until she falls into deep sleep during her scheduled evening long sleeps. Then we can stick her in a papasan and let her sleep for 6 hours to recoop for the day.

For example, yesterday, she slept fitfully all day long, getting at best 20 minute naps [plus an hour and a half in the moby] and then she crashed at night and slept for 7 hours straight. But, this is the end of the dark tunnel, we move towards the light now.  read more »

I feel like the world revolves around sleep. I'm either trying to get Paela to sleep, or trying to sleep myself, or she's actually sleeping and I'm waking up trying to guess how much longer I'll get to sleep. And I used to be such a good sleeper, even sleeping through my alarm clock.... I just hope I haven't forgotten how to sleep through the night by the time Paela is able to!  read more »

Early Monday, Rebecca took Paela into the pediatrician to make sure Paela was able to breathe and what we should do to prevent bronchitis or pneumonia from setting in. Both of us have decided that we're not as comfortable with our pediatrician's flippant and giddy attitude because we associate it with a less-professional demeanor. Other people might appreciate a doctor who isn't always down to business, but we're a bit bothered by it.  read more »

The good news of the week is that Paela met her birth weight at her two-week check-up on Monday. The pediatrician then gave us conflicting instructions: we no longer have to wake her to eat, but don't let her go more than 3-4 hours between feeding times. I don't think our pediatrician listened well when we told her how very long Paela can sleep. At any rate, we're letting Paela sleep more now, but waking her sometimes still (surely five hours between feedings is too much even at night?).  read more »