The Fine Game of Nil

So, I was just looking back and couldn’t find some of this information on the previous entries. It might be there, but I couldn’t find it. So, for the record:

Dorothea Pearl Aurora Holman

June 25, 2009, 1:56am

7lbs 9.5 oz

19 1/2 inches

head circumfernce 33cm

brown hair/ blue/grey eyes

Many people have also asked about her name. Dorothea is a name that I  have always thought was beautiful and classic. I like the way the “thea” flows as opposed to Dorothy (which is too reminiscent of the Wizard of Oz). We also wanted her nickname to be Dor, after a character from one of my favorite books, Neverwhere by Neil Gaimen. (As an aside, my favorite book is Mood Indigo by Boris Vian, translated by John Sturrock).

Pearl is a reference to the Dead Milkmen song Punk Rock Girl :“punk rock girl, you look so wild, let’s have a child, we’ll name her Minnie Pearl, just you and me, punk rock girl”

Aurora is her second middle name, like Liam has two middle names. His second middle name is Auris, which is a family name on Alex’s side, and also Alex’s second middle name. Aurora, besides being just beautiful, seems like a feminized version of Auris. Additionally, another song reference, this time to a song by Josh Ritter, Kathleen: “all the other girls here are stars, you are the northern lights; they try to shine in through your curtain, you’re too close and too bright”. I love the imagery of that.

No pictures for this post, we are still taking some, but not nearly as prolifically as we did with Liam. I will post Dor’s birth story at some point. Alex did a good brief summary of it, but I could flesh it out some.

My parents came out to meet Miss Dor from July 11 to July 18. They stayed at the hotel down the street, the one that has a free breakfast in the morning, that we often walk over to eat with them. They were extremely excited to meet Miss Dor, and also excited to get to spend more time with Mr. Liam. They last saw Liam in February when we went to Seattle for a visit. It’s tough to get to know your grandparents when you only see them two or three times a year, but we do our best. He’s probably getting old enough now that he would recognize them if we did an internet/video phone call through skype sometime. With the time zone difference, finding the time would be the hardest part. I wish I could say that we will visit more often, but having two kids now, and the fact that starting July 28 we have to pay full fare for Liam’s plane tickets means we probably won’t be traveling as much as we did when he was little. (He flew on 15 flights before he was 1 year). Dor will miss out on that early traveling. It’s too bad Seattle is too far for a road trip. St. Louis is even pushing it for a road trip.

But anyways, we had a wonderful visit, even if it was too short, which is always is. Liam really really liked seeing his grandma and grandpa. It was really awesome to see my dad playing with Liam, either at home or the playground. We did two walks while my parents were here, which was fairly restrained for my mom. One in Plymouth, and one in downtown Boston. It’s always nice to have extra hands around to either hold the baby, or keep Liam occupied while I get housework done, make dinner, or feed Dor.

Grandma, Liam, and Dor

Tummy time in the Holman House

Grandpa helping Liam put on his shoes

Climbing the ladder at the playground (aka the “DAY-dow”)

Liam is still very interested in his sister

But is sometimes a grabby hands!

Anyone who knows my dad will understand why this is such an unusal picture

Dor at Plymouth Rock (which is really so disappointingly small, it should be called Plymouth Pebble)

Grandma and Grandpa at Plymouth Rock

Just hanging out in Davis Square

Friday night, we had a picnic dinner in Davis Square and listened to the bands play as part of Art Beat

Saying good night

This entry has very few pictures of Alex because he was at work the whole week.

There are also only a few pictures of Grandpa holding Dor

No entry would be complete without at least one picture of baby feet

And of course, the obligatory three generation photos

Bath time is a special time in the Holman house. Despite Liam’s trepidation around water in the form of pools and spray parks/fountains, he loves his bath time. Most recently, his routine has started to include adding bubble bath, because our friend Linda Allen sent him some bubble bath in the shape of a soccer ball and a baseball. For a ball obsessed boy, this was about the best present ever. Then when he saw it made bubbles in his bath, it became even cooler (because he is also bubble obsessed). (As an aside, Alex has taken to making his own bubble mix, with water, Dawn original soap, glyceral/glycerine?, and a secret ingredient that is apparently found in KY jelly. It works very well). Liam has many friends join him in his bath: three rubber duckies, and a fish shaped water-pourer. He’s still a little ambivalent about water being poured on his head to rinse out the shampoo, and we often have to pour water on the head of each ducky first. (Edit by Alex: I always remember room 101 out of the book 1984 and picture Liam yelling “Do it to Ducky!”.  Emily doesn’t remember that particular plot point and never understands why I’m giggling evilly at the ultimate betrayal of a rubber duck.)  He gets dried off in his bear towel, and loves to look at himself and Alex holding him in the mirror after he gets out of the bath. He points to the reflections and labels “dada”, “mama”, and “liam” (sounds like “eee-um”). Here are some pictures from Liam’s bath recently, and then pictures from Dor’s first tub/sink bath.

I love the look on her face, it says “what are you doing, dad?”

So much can change in two months. No, Dor is not two months old yet (only 3 and 1/2 weeks today), but I have the perfect set of pictures to highlight the changes to our little family.

Here is a picture from Mother’s Day, May 12, 2009. This is taken on a bench outside our community garden, near Fresh Pond:

Here is a picture from July 12, 2009, taken on the same bench outiside our garden:

The plants behind us have grown larger, and so has our family. Our little family of three went to a little family of four. It has been somewhat challenging to adjust to it, but not too bad. I am finding that caring for a newborn the second time around is not nearly as stressful. I think it is because we’ve done it once before, and we aren’t worried about not feeding her enough or dropping/breaking her. Also, although our sleep is still interrupted, it feels easier to handle it because I know how time limited it really is. With Liam, I think there was this temporary panic that we would never sleep again and that our lives would always feel turned upside down. But we did eventually get sleep again, and our lives did settle into a wonderful routine. And Liam is so much fun now, with new words every day, as well as a better understanding of more complex concepts and actual sentences. (Even with the boundary testing of being a two year old!) He’ll be two years old on July 28 and yet it feels like the blink of an eye. I clearly remember the day he was born. I don’t as clearly remember his first three months, because it was a blur of sleep deprivation and learning on the fly. With Dor, I know we’ll get the hang of it eventually, so the blur doesn’t feel so hectic. Of course, maybe when she’s just about two years old, I’ll be writing a post about how her first few months were a blur as well. I think that’s just parenthood.

These are pictures from the days Anne was here. Apparently we need to upload more pictures off the other camera, though, because there are only a few pictures of Anne in this series.

First off, though, Naama and Greg (and their new daughter Lena), sent presents to Liam and Dor recently. Liam got a set of wooden letter blocks, and Dor got a beautiful dress and bloomer set (size 12 months, so will fit her for her birthday next year). Liam loves the blocks, but also loves the dress, and modeled it for us.

He also liked the pants; or should I say hat?

On Friday, July 3rd, we went downtown to show Anne and Bryan some of the sights. We went to the Boston Garden, where the Make Way for Duckling statue lives…

I love this picture. He’s leaning back, copying the face/position of the duckling.

We stopped for lunch at a restaurant downtown that has a roof deck.

While Anne was in town, my friend from high school, Laurie (and her husband Dave) came up to Boston to have lunch with us. It was really nice of them to make the trip, as they drove from Cape Cod to Boston just to have lunch, then turned around and headed down to New Jersey. They live in Chicago, so we don’t see them very often. In fact, they had never met Liam before, so it was at least 2 years since we saw them; probably closer to 3 years.

Another picture of Anne holding Dor

I still love the baby feet

This outfit brought to you by my sister Sara. Dor is a little lady…

but so is Liam.

And wow, that’s a lot of posts in two days. If you are just getting here to read, scroll down, there are five new posts in all.

It appears the best time for us to get updates onto the blog is on days that Liam and Alex are up at daycare/work and I home with Dor. That makes sense, as when they are both home, there is a lot going on, and not a lot of free time for sitting in front of the computer looking at pictures.

Here are some more pictures of Miss Dor and family.

She won’t be this small forever, and there is only a small window of time where she will cuddle up on our chests and fall asleep. I cherished that time with Liam, and I’m trying to do the same with Dor. There are few things in the world that feel more amazing than having a small human sleeping contentedly on you, trusting you completely to care for them and keep them safe.

Liam and Dor’s feet

Yes, she kind of looks like an alien in this picture.

July 1st arrived, and it continued to rain. We were all ready to get out of the house, and so we decided to make a break for it. It turned out to be a pretty fun walk

oh, and have we mentioned that Liam loves trucks, buses, fire trucks, ambulances, and cranes?

And so that Dor doesn’t feel left out, here is a close up of her in the sling

As expected, after a few days home, it was time to give Dor her first bath. She got a bath at the hospital, but given that it was 4am at the time, and Alex was still on the emotional high of just having watched his daughter be delivered, he forgot to take any pictures of that bath. I was busy recovering in our room on the maternity ward, waiting for them to find me some food. Because although it was 4am, I was mighty hungry. The nurse brought me some cereal and milk, and then was able to find a turkey sandwich. It wasn’t anything amazing, but at that moment, it was the best thing ever. The thing about the delivery is that you are on a huge emotional/adrenaline/hormone rush and it takes several hours to come down from it… But I digress. I was talking about Dor’s first sponge bath at home. This bath was done at night, after Liam was in bed. It was also still pretty cold out that day, so it was a pretty quick bath.

Nice picture of her stump (which has fallen off at the time I am writing this)

These next two pictures are really precious. And also show that she is already demonstrating some pretty good neck control. I think she already has Alex wrapped around her finger.

Wow, time flies around here. I can’t believe Dor is two weeks old already, and we only have two posts up. Sorry for the delay. We are actually taking pictures, we don’t want her to be deprived as a second child. But finding the time to post any of those pictures is proving a little more challenging this time around. With Liam, he slept a lot, so there was a lot of down time during the days. Dor sleeps just as much, but now we have an almost 2-year-old to keep up with while she sleeps. I think Alex mentioned previously that the month of June has been pretty much a bust in terms of weather. I think it rained 23 out of 30 days. This lead to a very stir-crazy, house-bound boy. I can’t blame him, I was feeling similarly.

We finally got a few nice days of weather, and the 4th of July weekend was really nice. My little sister, Anne, came from Seattle for a visit, and her boyfriend, Bryan, flew up from NYC for the weekend. I’ll talk more about that in a different post, though.

Right now, here are some early on pictures. Dor is between 3-6 days old in these pictures.

Liam is really into his little sister, who he calls “baby”. He wakes up in the morning, and the first thing he does is run into our room (where Dor sleeps), and look into our crib, calling out “baby!”. If she isn’t in the crib, he looks around for her. He also wants to hug and kiss her, or pet her gently on her head. He asks to hold her, and we sometimes oblige. He does tend to get a little over-excited though, and then tries to rough house with her, rolling over on her or pushing into her. But for the most part he is very good with her.

This is an attempt at a kiss, not trying to eat her nose.

Look, she really does have eyes. They are a steely grey color, with not much hint of blue in them.It will be interesting to see what color they turn out. My understanding is that they don’t usually get lighter, so I don’t think they will go blue. But neither Alex nor I have brown eyes, so I don’t think they can go brown. Liam’s are a really awesome blue/grey/green.

It’s hard to believe that Liam was once this small. Everyone says that they grow up so fast, but it’s really true. Liam was actually about half a pound smaller than Dor was at birth. Yet I have a hard time remembering Liam ever being this small. I know he was. And I see the pictures that prove it. But still, it seems so unbelievable!

Sunday was my work’s summer picnic.  Back when it was time to RSVP for it, we were back and forth on the fence about whether we’d be able to make it with a newborn.  But, we figured that Emily would probably go a week or two early, and we’d have no problems bringing a 2 week old in a baby sling.  Of course it turned out that Teacup was born just 3 days before the picnic.  But, on Saturday we found ourselves feeling a little bit house-bound and approaching stir-crazy, so we headed out Sunday morning to the picnic.

For most of the month of June, the weather here has been cool and rainy, and Sunday was no exception.  Out on the coast on the North Shore there was a heavy mist falling and gusty winds blowing in off the ocean.  During lunch, Dor spent her time in her carseat bundled under a blanket.  Afterwards she migrated to snuggling into mom’s chest in a baby sling.  Dor got lots of compliments on being a very cute baby and quite outgoing to visit a picnic at 4 days old.

Liam also had an excellent time, and due to the weather was the more photogenic of the two.

We’ve never had issues getting food into Liam or getting him to try new things.  The menu at the picnic was a New England lobster boil, but they also provided a kid’s menu with burgers and hot dogs.  Liam ended up eating: clam chowder, bbq chicken, potato salad, half an ear of corn… and his first lobster.

After lunch, we walked down to the beach.  It was too cold and blustery to go into the water, so we just walked around, dug in the sand, and played with sticks.

Emily and Dor also came walking on the beach, with Dor bundled up against mom and borrowing my hat to keep off the wind.