Playing Catch-up

Have a bunch of things to post so I'm going to post them all together.

• My buddy Stuart got into composing music a little over a year ago. Since them he has set up a sweet home studio. In the past few months he has composed an amazing song called Wonder of Flight. He played me the *almost* final version. It was near flawless. Being the perfectionist I am, and knowing the perfectionist he is, I knew trumpets weren't to his liking. He spent hours perfecting them. You can hear the final piece here. Definitely worth checking out.
• It's no secret that I'm a heavy sleeper. BC (before Clara) Kristin would have to kick me for about fifteen minutes before I'd be coherent. Alarm clocks don't wake me up. On the random morning when Kristin would let the alarm clock ring until I turned it off, she'd lay there so long that she'd just get frustrated. And kick me harder. Wasn't good for anyone involved. So when Clara arrived, Kristin quickly noticed that I would wake up if Clara was placed in my arms. Aha! A new way to wake me up! So now our morning routines is Kristin bringing Clara in to cuddle with me. It's so much fun to cuddle with the little one and take some time to see how close Kristin got to losing it overnight. Yesterday morning Clara came in to cuddle with me and Kristin snapped some pictures.
  
• Recently Clara has taken to pacifiers. Before now she would suck for a second or two then spit the pacifier out and take her crying to the next level. In the past two weeks she has made it known that pacifiers please her and that we should always have a ready supply. And the definition of ready supply is the Gerber Nuk pacifier. Not the type we got for free at the hospital or the first type we bought, but the Gerber Nuk pacifier. This is the only acceptable pacifier in her view. Another cute thing she has started doing is holding on to whatever is in front of her when we are feeding or pacifying her. Most times this is a rank, smell burp cloth, but the other night I was rocking with Clara in the chair trying to get her to fall asleep it was my hand. I was holding her pacifier in, as she kept pushing it out of her mouth then complaining, loudly, when it was gone. Her fingers started grabbing at my hand and wrist, trying to get something to hold on to. Her little nails tickled my skin.
• Another great post from RedKudu can be found here. She's teaching The Lord of the Flies to her students and employing some interesting techniques.
• Clara food update: As we have blogged about many times before, Clara had some difficulty digesting certain types of formula. If you remember we started her on powdered Similac. When that caused her problems, we switched to powdered Alimentum. When she wouldn't eat that, we switched to ready-made Alimentum. When that caused the same problem as the powdered Similac, we switched to powdered soy. When that constipated her, we went back to ready-made Alimentum. And low and behold she's fine. This really confused us. Why did the first ready-made Alimentum react with her system exactly like the powdered Similac did? When I bought the first batch of ready-made Alimentum, the labels on the containers were loose. I remember telling Kristin that the stuff smelled exactly like the powdered Similac (a welcome relief as powdered Alimentum smelled like DEATH). Independently, Kristin and I both wondered if someone at the store had switched the labels on the ready-made Alimentum and ready-made Similac bottles - Similac is $2 a bottle cheaper. I think they did. Now we check every bottle we buy to make sure the serial number on the bottle begins with "ALI."
• Last night was a tough night for Kristin and Clara. Between the hours of midnight and 7:30am Kristin got about 2 hours of sleep. At 7:30a I took Clara, called the choir director at church to tell her she needed to find a sub for me, sent Kristin to bed, and BlackBerry messaged a friend to tell him to ask another friend if he'd teach my Sunday School class. Kristin was able to get three hours of sleep Sunday morning. Didn't quite make up for the bad overnight, but was a bit of a start.
• Last Tuesday I was downtown at the Paper, and a coworker came up to me. "Oliver, I have to tell you that my boyfriend and I are totally addicted to the Warm Delights." She explained that they'd purchased two of the chocolate brownie, one of the lemon swirl, and one of the cinnamon crumb. They ooopsed and put the topping on the cinnamon crumb before they nuked it - it's supposed to go on after it bakes, unlike most of the other flavors - but otherwise loved the things. We agreed that the cake is the product's strong suit and that they need to tweak the toppings a little. Regardless, we have another convert! Yeah for Betty Crocker® Warm Delights™ Desserts!