Sean has been looking forward to being a dad for a long time. I don’t think I’ve mentioned this before, but he told me more than once over the years that if he had a daughter, he’d want to name her Maya. There was no particular reason, other than he liked the name. My point is that it’s been on his mind for a while. Given that, I wanted to try and make his first Father’s Day at least a little bit special.

Daddy and Maya

Sean wanted some Daddy and Maya pictures, so we went to Mayfield Park, which is known for its little colony of peacocks (and peahens, collectively known as peafowl). I purchased a couple of Daddy-centric creepers for Maya to wear during her photo shoot, though only one managed to ship in time.

Maya’s Father’s Day Outfit

While it was hot and we were past Maya’s nap time, I think the photos turned out nicely. The peacocks were fairly people-tolerant. (Maya was kind of peacock-indifferent.) The park was lush and green and not so crowded that we couldn’t avoid extras in our pictures.

Peacock!

The way to Sean’s heart has always been chocolate, so I also made a chocolate pudding pie [made-from-scratch dark chocolate pudding, freshly whipped cream, graham cracker crust]. I know it doesn’t look like much, but it tasted good. And of course, Maya was happy to have some of Daddy’s pie as well.

Chocolate Pudding Pie

It took a while for Sean to be a father, and now that the time is finally here, it’s not surprising that he loves it. I think there was little doubt that he and Maya were going to have a nice Father’s Day. The peacocks and chocolate pie were just a bonus.

There was maybe a two or three week period shortly after Maya was born that she didn’t like her bath. We’d get her naked, and she’d just wail from the moment we’d put her in the water till we were finished drying her off and dressing her. She has since gotten over it.

Maya fresh out of the bath

These days, Maya is all about her bath. She has spent many happy evenings giggling and splashing in her little plastic baby tub that sits on our kitchen sink. We recently decided she had overgrown her baby tub, so we moved her to the big bathtub. The transition hasn’t been quite as smooth as I expected it to be. In the big bathtub, Maya has a little too much room to roam. Her toys get away from her, and she tries to drown herself chasing after them. Instead we put a little inflatable tub inside the big bathtub. That one seems to frustrate her with its constraints (and she still tries to drown herself). I’m sure she’ll eventually adapt. Meanwhile, bath time has been … interesting.

Sean’s maternal grandma bought all her grandkids their first bathing suits. Sean’s mom Helen decided to carry on the tradition. Since before Maya was born, we’ve had two cute little swim suits just itching to be worn. Given that she was born in November, we’ve had to wait a bit to be able to break them in.

Maya at the splash pad

A couple weeks ago, we met friends at a local splash pad. We dressed Maya up in one of her swim suits, lathered her with sunscreen, and topped her with a hat. To say that she loved it is an understatement. With the splashing water and all the little kids running around her, she spent most of her time there squawking and kicking her legs with infant glee.

Maya in the pool with Daddy

This weekend, we took her to the pool for the first time, allowing her to model her other swim suit. We had gotten a little floaty thing for her to ride around in, and she liked it, but I think she may have preferred having one of us hold and float her around in the water. Again she splashed and played, and by the end, it was clear that her enjoyment of the pool was at war with her need for a nap. As hot as our summers are though, I’m guessing we’ll make visits to the pool a regular outing.

I know it’s weird, but Sean and I generally do not buy gifts for each other. Not for Christmas, birthdays, or anniversaries. Our celebrations often entail us wishing each other well and going out to eat somewhere special. We have made it through well more than a decade of marriage like this.

Mother’s Day 2013

As Mother’s Day approached, I started to feel that this holiday might be different. I couldn’t put my finger on it (still can’t really), but I knew I’d be disappointed if the day passed with a simple “Happy Mother’s Day” wish and a trip to a restaurant. After mulling it over for a few days, I decided it was important enough to mention.

There’s a chance that Sean would have figured it out on his own, but right or wrong, I didn’t leave it to chance. After 13 years of marriage, I decided it really works best if I just ask for what I want. What I wanted was some actual celebration of Mother’s Day.

Tired Maya

Sean did really well. We spent the morning hiking around Zilker Park and then took a bunch of Mommy and Maya photos at the Zilker Botanical Garden. Maya was so excited about the whole thing that she flatly refused to take a nap that morning. At the very end, she was so tired, she laid her head against me and went to sleep.

Stepping Stone!

I actually helped a bit to construct my present. Sean’s plan is to make a paving stone each year with Maya’s footprints. He gathered all the materials (and like any trip to Home Depot, there were several subsequent trips for extras) and mixed and poured the cement. I dangled Maya over the wet cement so he could direct her feet a little more easily. Sean followed up by decorating with beads and a 2013 penny and applying a sealant after it had dried a bit. I think the finished product turned out very nicely.

My little sister Rachel had her first baby on April 16th, a healthy little girl named Lily. Naturally, we decided to go to Missouri shortly thereafter to see the new baby and introduce the rest of my family to Maya.

Maya and Lily

I won’t lie. We were a hair on the nervous side about taking a five month old on a flight. Maya is a really good-natured little girl, but trapping her in a pressurized metal tube several miles above the ground is a whole different deal.

Maya at the Austin airport

Generally she handled it all pretty well. We had two issues. The first was that airports are busy places full of all kinds of people and hubbub. Maya was way too excited about all the new things to see to bother with silly little (completely necessary) things like naps. This put a bit of an edge on her mood. And it didn’t get much better on the plane. She won’t take a pacifier, so we let her work on her bottle during takeoff and landing, so that really wasn’t an issue. However, every time she’d drift off to sleep, the intercom would blare and she’d be startled awake. She was nice about it and didn’t make much noise, but it was clear that the poor thing was exhausted.

The second issue caught me completely off guard. Apparently airport bathrooms are actually infant torture chambers, at least in Maya’s eyes. We had barely laid her down on the changing table before she turned beet red and screamed. She kept that up through an entire poop-laden diaper change.

On the way into Missouri, we had the good sense to duck into one of those family rest rooms so her screaming fit could be contained. On the way home from Missouri, because clearly there is no learning curve at all, I chose to use the changing table in the crowded women’s rest room instead. I walked in and laid Maya down on the first changing table I saw, which was right by the paper towels and trash can on the way out of the rest room. I barely had her (again shitty) diaper off before the screaming started. So there I was, trying to clean the crap off a squirmy angry baby under the watchful eye of a steady stream of disapproving foot traffic. We of course got through it, and once I was finished, I noticed that there was another changing table at the far end of the bathroom where we could have had our stinky crying jag in relative peace. Lesson learned.

Four generations of Schmidts

While illness and flood waters kept us from seeing everyone we’d have liked to see, we still had a really nice visit. We got to meet tiny little Lily. Maya got to see many of her great aunts and great uncles and of course she spent some time with her Great Grandma Schmidt. Even Rachel and Michael’s (and Lily’s!) dog Gus got in on the action. Maya seemed to really get a kick out of letting Gus nose around at her hand.

Maya and Gus

Maya is old enough that she was able to show off her personality and preferences a little bit. She doled out smiles and baby jabber liberally. She and Grandpa watched some TV together. She and Grammy did lots of talking. She showed off how much she likes to eat and how much she likes her bath. Unfortunately, she also demonstrated her complete dislike of anything that even hinted at her napping (I think she yelled at Grandpa every time he rocked the recliner while holding her). We’re still kind of new at this parenting thing, so we didn’t have our crap together enough to actually take all the pictures we should have taken. We’re missing any of Maya with either her Grammy or her Aunt Rachel and Uncle Michael. We’ll do better next time.

Maya and Cushman

We even managed to sneak in a quick lunch with our friend Cushman (who has an actual first name – Matt – but I can’t seem to stop calling him Cushman). On our way out of town on Monday, we met for lunch at Chris’s Pancake and Dining (which I definitely recommend) and caught up a bit. Maya and Cushman got along well. More and more I’m discovering that it’s lots of fun to introduce her to people. We’re really proud of our cute, good-natured girl!

On the flight home, Maya again was completely worn out. This time though, it was like she was on a mission to sleep. She fell asleep shortly after our flight took off from St Louis, slept through landing and takeoff at Dallas (we had a stopover, no plane change), and didn’t wake up to around the time we were landing in Austin.

Sean and I are kind of into food. While I was not working, I wrote a food blog. (I tried to keep it up after I started back to work, but it started to feel like a chore instead of fun, so I haven’t written there in a while.) We celebrate special occasions with visits to interesting restaurants. We have way too many cookbooks in the house. So it shouldn’t surprise anyone that when Maya’s pediatrician gave us the go-ahead to start feeding her solids, it was kind of a big deal.

MMMM, sweet potatoes

This is going to sound like one of those “she’s completely crazy” kind of things. In fact, I think Sean has said as much. So far, I’m preparing Maya’s food instead of buying pre-done jars. I wanted to do this for several reasons. First, I derive a great deal of satisfaction from cooking the food that I serve her. Also, the variety of food we can offer is really limited only by her palate and reasonable caution about the timing of introducing the more allergenic foods. Plus, the food just seems fresher and more appetizing. I look at jarred sweet potatoes vs the ones I’ve just roasted and pureed. The freshly made ones are vibrant orange. Her steamed peas are bright green.

It’s actually much easier than it sounds, at least so far. Most of the time, the instructions are: steam (or roast) food, then puree. Sometimes, as in the case of bananas, it’s simply: puree. For most of the food, I make a big batch and freeze the extra in what amounts to a glorified ice cube tray so I can dole it out as needed.

I won’t lie. It would be easier to stock up on the jarred stuff. It doesn’t have to be refrigerated, and the variety is good. Also there’s no equipment requirement for jarred food. I have a pretty hoss blender, a steamer, and a nice food processor. Meal prep wouldn’t be quite so easy without those.

We did buy a box of iron-fortified oat cereal for her, and that’s what she started on. We’ve been introducing a new food every three or four days since then (so that if there’s an allergic reaction, we’ll know what most likely caused it). Here’s what she’s had so far: apple sauce, sweet potatoes, peas, bananas, avocados, and most recently zucchini. Her favorites are apple sauce and sweet potatoes. She hated the bananas at first – I think she was just put off by the texture – but she warmed up to them over a few days. The avocados were similar except I don’t think she warmed up as much. (The bananas and avocados are mashed up to order, by the way.)

Everything we read said not to expect too much when we first started feeding her, but Maya took to it right away. She had been watching us very closely while we ate anyway, so I think she was just ready. Now she actively looks forward to dinner time when Sean and I both sit down with her to feed her and talk to her. She’ll fuss until we put her in the high chair and then she calms down and waits for her food. When we start to scoop up a spoonful, her mouth pops right open, ready to taste. It is so much fun to watch her try new things. Sweet potatoes – yum. Bananas – yuck. Avocados – double yuck.

You’ll notice in at least one of the pictures that her high chair sits on the floor and we sit on the floor with her to feed her. Here’s the deal: we still have the DINK-only dining room table with a lovely granite top surrounded by very nice upholstered chairs. Nothing about that set-up invites a not-quite-five-month-old to do her worst with banana mush and pureed peas. Instead, we have a good sturdy dining room table on order. Once it arrives, the plan is that we’ll all sit and eat together like civilized(-ish) people. In the mean time, Maya eats on the floor and Mommy and Daddy wolf down their food after Maya goes to sleep.

We’ve lived in Texas now for roughly 14 years, but we’re still considered outsiders. Maya, on the other hand, has only been in Texas about four and a half months, but as a native, she’s definitely in the club. As proud parents of a native Texan, we had to find a good patch of bluebonnets – the state flower – to take her photo in.

Maya in the bluebonnets – 4 1/2 months old

We bought her a dress for Easter with the specific intent of her wearing it for her bluebonnet pictures. We never actually managed to put it on her for the holiday. That weekend wound up being too rainy for outdoor photography. Plus we were going to our friend Sharon’s house for Easter lunch, and we wanted her to wear something more comfortable than a fussy dress.

Given that, all our bluebonnet and Easter pictures actually occurred this past Saturday. The day was cool and a bit overcast, but the ground had dried enough to sit on without getting muddy. Maya hasn’t quite made her peace with being outdoors yet, so we couldn’t really coax any smiles out of her. She did seem to enjoy sitting on the ground and wiggling her toes in the dirt and weeds.

Maya’s tired of pictures – 4 1/2 months old

Grammy and Grandpa Schmidt and Lolli and Pop Woods sent goodies for Maya’s first Easter. We tried taking some photos with her presents, but again, she wasn’t in a smiling mood. Good thing she’s cute anyway.

Maya got all dressed in green for St Pat’s day and probably got pinched anyway (it’s the cheeks).

Maya’s First St Pats – 4 months old

Last night, we took Maya to a game night that friends of our host on a monthly basis. We tried this out a couple months ago, and essentially she either cried or slept the entire time. What a difference two months makes (go figure). She was downright charming this time, looking around, smiling, letting people hold her. We’ll have to get her out of the house more. We don’t want her to be an antisocial hermit like her parents.

The important thing about this game night though is that we made the Smitten Kitchen Irish Car Bomb cupcakes. This was a special request from Sean, and he doesn’t make too many, so I spent a couple of my precious hours making cupcakes for him. The cake part of these cupcakes is Chocolate Stout Cake made with Guinness. They’re filled with irish whiskey-laced ganache and topped with Baileys buttercream frosting. I don’t care too much about the ganache or the frosting, but that cake, oh my gawd. It was so moist, and the chocolate had a pleasant bitter edge from the beer. I’m already thinking about baking a cake, and we haven’t even worked our way through all the cupcakes yet.

Maya on the changing pad – 4 months old

Completely unrelated to St Pat’s … I know this is odd, but one of Maya’s favorite places to be is on her changing pad which is currently located on a bathroom counter where she can look in the mirror. She spends a lot of time grinning at and talking to the baby in the mirror. Add to that the joy of being footloose and pants-free, and you have a very happy baby.

Wow, it’s been nearly two months since we’ve last posted. A lot has happened in that time.

Maya in stripes – 3 1/2 months old

I started back to work on February 11th. I feel very fortunate that I was able to take twelve weeks off with Maya. I think the time was good for both of us, and I was able to learn a few things. The first of these is that taking care of a baby, while intensely rewarding, is hard. For instance, I learned that my decision-making ability plummets with diminished sleep. I also discovered that I have a hard time processing things rationally when she’s crying. Sean will be talking to me, and the words are in no way sticking in my head because my baby is crying and my brain has short-circuited to fix it-fix it-fix it. I also re-learned that I do like having my engineering job – that taking care of Maya full-time is not the path for me.

Instead, since I work from home and Sean often works from home as well, we’ve hired a nanny. A nice lady named Anna comes to the house every weekday to watch Maya. It’s great because Anna obviously adores children, and she shows up rested and ready to play and work with Maya on things like tummy time, napping, and sitting up in her Bumbo chair. If I need to during the day, I can have a five or ten minute visit with the baby to get my fix and then get back to work. So far, it seems to be working out well.

Maya’s learned a few new tricks, naturally. She is very consistently rolling from her tummy to her back (though to her intense frustration, she hasn’t figured out how to go from her back to her tummy yet). She’s been talking her own little baby language complete with great big squeaks and gasps for a while now. Her smiles are now given freely and often. And just this week, she’s finally discovered that she has hands and is batting at and grabbing things a bit.

One of her best new tricks has been sleeping in her crib in her own room.

For the first few months, we had her sleeping in a pack-and-play at the foot of our bed. It was nice for us to be able to monitor her, and it made dealing with night-time feedings easier.

The transition started around mid- to late February when she decided she was all done being swaddled, a development that resulted in several nights of really bad sleep for all of us as her free arms and legs startled her awake over and over again. She eventually figured out how to calm herself down and would sleep a little more consistently, but every little grunt and thump she made would wake me up.

Anna had been working to get her sleeping in her crib during daytime naps. On March 1st, we put her in her crib for bedtime, and she tolerated it pretty well. She’s been sleeping in her own room ever since. More often than not, she still wakes up a few times a night, but we’re making forward progress. She hasn’t had more than a few night feedings since early February. We’ve had a couple nights here and there where she slept all night. And we have had a few nights where waiting five or ten minutes resulted in her putting herself back to sleep. She’s figuring things out, and while I think we have a ways to go, she’s doing really well.

It turns out that while I’m pretty ambivalent about buying clothes for myself, I really enjoy buying things for Maya. Sean has been the primary baby-stuff buyer so far, but I’m starting to participate more. We got her a very cute little Valentine’s day outfit, and we did have it on her on the actual holiday. These pictures were all taken on March 3rd though.

There’s also a cute knit outfit that she’s essentially grown out of now that we wanted to get pictures of. A word to prospective parents or those buying gifts for them – avoid outfits with a ton of buttons for little babies. They don’t really have the patience for having seven tiny buttons buttoned at every diaper change.

Tomorrow Maya is two months old. The past two months have been very fast-slow. Day in and day out, we feel every minute of every hour it seems. Then suddenly two months have passed.

Maya in blue jeans, 7 weeks old

I was on the phone with the insurance company today trying to work through various hospital claims, and I referred to Maya as my daughter. My. Daughter. While we’ve been doing the job for two months, I don’t think Sean or I are entirely used to our new identity as parents yet.

Maya is doing very well. At her two month check up, she was deemed to be “caught up” size-wise from her early arrival, and she took her vaccinations like a champ – a very unhappy, vocal champ, mind you.

A short while ago, we decided to try out blue jeans on the baby for the first time. The tiny blue jeans are cute in and of themselves. Maya in the tiny blue jeans is almost too much to bear. For the record, the top she’s wearing was part of her coming home from the hospital outfit. It took her a little while to grow into it, and now she’s nearly grown out of it!

We had a very quiet Christmas, just Maya, Sean, and me. It was a little sad not being around our families for the holidays, but the relative stillness was nice (and probably necessary).

Here are a few snapshots from that day. As you can see, Maya slept through most of it. She received some really fun gifts. Among them were Good Night Moon as read by her Grammy and Grandpa Schmidt and a Raggedy Ann doll from Lolli and Pop Woods. The giant turtle that Lolli crocheted for Maya has so far seen more action from the cats – Velvet in particular enjoys napping on it. I’m sure Maya will grow into it quickly though.

Sean has been practicing posing Maya for various Christmas-centric photos. Below are some of our favorites. Happy Holidays, everyone!

Maya on Christmas Eve, 5 weeks old