Here goes

For a living, I am an English teacher. Thus, naturally, I enjoy revising and editing, and perfecting my writing. One challenge here is going to be NOT revising and editing this blog like mad. I will fix major errors but I'm gonna try to really just let the thoughts flow. So two goals: actually keep up with this whole blogging thing, and don't get all grammar- nazi. Even if I am the only one who ever reads this thing, it'll be fun to look back on entries and write some more, but the fun will be sullied if I'm constantly fixing it up, so to speak. Anyway, onto Mabel and this whole mothering thing. Mabel is very cute. Actually, J and I are not sure if she's cute to the outside world or just to us, which broaches another topic: do parents of ugly babies think their babies are cute? We could have a spawn of Shrek here and still think she's cute, right? Well, we do think she's dang cute. She's got this precious little apple face, and big blue eyes and dimples ( the English teacher in me wants to fix that unclear modifier, as you could be reading the sentence as if Mabel has blue dimples). She is quite lovely when she is calm. She has become more and more alert over the 23 days she's been here, and she looks around the room now with a sweet little curiosity. Mabel also loves to sit on that Boppy thing, which is for breastfeeding,I think, but we have made it her seat. It's cute to see her positioned in this little donut of a doo- dad. But Mabel has screaming lungs too, and omg, can she exercise them. Some people have told me she may be in a 3- week growth spurt, which would explain the insatiable hunger and fussiness. I don't really care what the reason is; I'd like her to kindly stop. I find myself talking to her quite rationally, as if she can understand such requests. "Mabel, I am trying to help you. Might you please stop that shrieking??" Yes, she shrieks. It's this very dramatic girlish shriek, like, ugh, I hate the world! She also has a counterpart to that terrible shriek, and that's her cute bird chirp noise. I think if she didn't do the chirp to counter the horrificness of the shriek, I'd have lost my marbles by now. There have been times over the last 36 hours when she is clean, warm, and full and he still shrieks to the high heavens. It reminds me of that Will Arnett show, "Up All Night," in which they have a newborn and on a particularly gruesome freak-out occasion, they tell the baby, "We are on your team!" At the hospital, the doctor was saying how interesting it is that other mammals pop out babies that are ready to walk and function alone, and humans pop out babies that are relatively underdeveloped and need so much more tlc (autocorrect wanted to make that talc-- what the f is talc? Talcum powder??). I wonder what it would be like to carry babies in utero for two years so they could emerge independent. Oh wait, I am the same person who bitched about how long 9 months was...