For pictures, please scroll down! or check out her site: www.izabrand.com
Well, we tried to get these up sooner, but I guess having a new baby is going to extend all our personal goals and timing a little! Right now in the early morning light with the rain falling buckets from the sky, Kurt is blowing baby kisses on Iza’s belly, Mozart is playing in the background and we are enjoying a precious moment as a family after a VERY long night struggling with feeding. It is truly heaven for us to hear her little smooshy noises and squakes at all hours of the day and night. We have both wanted to be parents for so long, and we found each other and now found her!
She is really the most delightful baby; she rarely cries and even when she does it is extremely short lived. We take her everywhere already and she just rolls with the program. She is sweet and funny with her little faces. And she mostly looks like a little Buddha. Everyone asks us who she looks like or they try to find some resemblance. Right now, she looks like her – Iza Ruby – and a baby. She doesn’t have any of her actual features that she will shortly adapt and grow into, so it is fun to be able to evolve with her, get to know her as she gets to become apart of our little world. But I would say Kurt and I definitely enjoy people’s projections of what she looks like.
It has been a busy week of adjustment and change:
- Sunday am Iza was born and we had a chance to just stare at her for a few hours. Around 3pm Kurt went home to deal with drying the placenta so we could encapsulate it and to make us food since we realized how inadequate the food truly was. We were lucky that the hospital was amazing and the food was really the only bad part. He came back in the evening and by 10pm he was literally green from exhaustion. After a sleepless night of feeding and nurse intrusions, by mid-day on Monday we were packed and strolling home. It was great to leave the hospital with the silly 4 hour check ups (which truly left us more sleep deprived then having a small child to care for) and horrible food.
- Tuesday we stayed in most of the day as it was Iza’s first cluster feeding day and we were so tired we couldn’t breathe. But at some point I had to bust out and break free for a little walk and Kurt went to the gym to achieve some sort of balance and clear his head. It was by far the best day that Iza has had in terms of her general presence and awakeness, so we are starting to feel like there is some merit in the value of home.
- Wednesday was our first family outing for her Pediatrician appointment with Dr. Malik at Bambini Pediatrics in Poughkeepsie. This very progressive doctor was thrilled with her coloring, attitude and general demeanor and was pleased with how we handled the birth. So far so good! Then we made the mistake of going to Target to get a few small things, but when you are crazy tired, you just take forever to do anything. Nothing is quick! We ended up getting mostly home and then realizing that we left the one reason why we came to Target on the cart in the parking lot. Nice. So, we stopped in a local agricultural park fed her, changed her massively exploded diaper and rested as a family for a few minutes before heading back out to Target. The whole day took us from 9am – 4pm and we got home and were shattered and starving… just in time for another appointment at 7pm which took us about 30 minutes to drive to. I think I cried for 2 hours in the evening out of pure and utter exhaustion. I felt like a toddler who was so overtired you actually can’t make yourself sleep.
- Thursday we had a beautiful moment as a family at Beacon Natural Market and we had a chance to show her off. Then we came home and prepared for a visit from Grandma Jan and Grandpa Drew who were coming from Northampton, MA. When they came we went to dinner at the Beacon Falls Cafe downstairs below our house and then we headed straight up to the house and off to bed. Starting to get into more of a routine.
- Friday was a crazy busy day with Grammy & Grandpa here. Kurt and I left Iza with G &G around 10am (our first time leaving her!) and went to look at 2 potential houses to rent in Beacon (after 4 days with a munchkin we realized that there was NO WAY we could stay in our tricked out, beautifully sunny loft space and started looking. Main feature of interest? Washer and Dryer of course). Then as a family we went for a walk around town in what felt like 100 degree heat to all the shops so Iza could meet everyone. While it was probably extremely overstimulating for her, it was totally fun for everyone to meet her. She even got a bonnet as a present from Jacqueline’s shop. Then we went home for lunch and had a lactation appointment with our magical doula Sandy Trimarchi, so Grammy helped out and did the dishes. Sandy talked us through the eating process and how babies need to consume milk. She showed up some invaluable techniques and made it so we felt more comfortable with the general breast feeding process. Afterwards we took naps and G & G headed to the Dia: Beacon to relieve us and give us a break from the activity. When they came home we headed off to dinner in Cold Spring. It was all a bit too much and we have certainly learned our lesson!
- Saturday morning we woke up and walked to the bank, the post office, Rite Aid and the Beacon Market and then headed straight home. A very quick 30 minute adventure. We decided to talk to our landlord about the lease and he came over with his two girls to see the baby. Dave was very understanding about the situation and willing to work with us, so Kurt went and put in a deposit on the house we liked best (wildly ugly on the outside, but totally new and decked out on the inside – 3 bedrooms, 2 baths, massive backyard and veggie garden). Dave thought he could get someone in to look at our loft that day that had already expressed interest, so Kurt and started a cleaning frenzy then somehow worked its way into a blow out argument. We spent an hour talking through it and realized how lucky we were that we had made it through the entire week with only 1 battle on extremely little sleep, a total life change and being totally and completely off our routine. All was worked out in expert form. In the afternoon we decided to do something for us and we went to the Main Street galleries with Iza to show her off and see the new shows that were up. It was fun! Everyone was so amazed by her sweet demeanor and quietness. We then went to the Dia: Beacon and took her to soak in the raw talent of our favorite artists. She was hungry and Iza and I went outside to the bird call garden to have a minute. My first experience breastfeeding in public and with the 90+ degree heat, we certainly did not enjoy the moment. But, we got through and my shirt only had a minor explosion of milk on one side. Not too bad! We had a little tea and cookies in the cafe and then went home afterward, but not before we ‘illegally’ took pictures of Iza with our two favorite artists work. Already the talent is soaking in!
- Sunday Granddad & Mimi came from Lancaster, PA around 12 and we hung out and played with Iza. We went briefly to the Beacon Farmers Market (about 30 minutes total, realizing that we had been overdoing it with her in the heat) and ended up at Homespun for lunch. It was nice, simple and uncomplicated. We came home, fed Iza and then just chilled out and had a glass of wine and relaxed with her. It was really nice and simple. By 4, we were absolutely wiped out and Granddad & Mimi saw it in our eyes. They headed home and we laid down and didn’t wake up until 5:30. It was a glorious moment for us as a family and other than Iza seemingly uninterested in eating, it was a great couple of hours. Around 8:30 we decided to go to the Roundhouse and have a drink to celebrate Iza’s week with us and we sat at the bar and enjoyed a lovely glass of wine and drink. We met some very cool new locals and snacked on some of the best olives EVER! Everyone was shocked at how little Iza was and happy to see that you actually didn’t need to stop your life because of baby – we reminded them that these two weeks she is essentially still in the womb and at some point she will wake up and release the CRACKIN’ and it will be impossible to go out so we are taking advantage now. We came home and tried to all go to sleep and feed Iza, but the little lady was not having it. We couldn’t seem to get her to eat all night or wake up! She just wasn’t interested. There is this little soft spot on her head and Sandy showed it to me as an indicator of whether or not she is getting enough to eat. It will be indented if she is hungry and flat if she is full. Crazy, huh? Well, it was very indented and her started my decline of stress and anxiety as to why she was not eating. Basically I was in full on meltdown mode – and it took us until 5:30am of coaxing her and working together to get her to eat. She did eventually do about 20 minutes total and we are going to aim again in a few minutes.
And that brings us to the present. It was quite a week, full of surprises and new experiences. It is hard to believe that a little more than a week ago we didn’t have Iza in our life and now we honestly CAN’T imagine life without her. She is a part of us and completes our family portrait. She is simply amazing, but with little girls everyone seems to go straight to hearts, stars, sparkles and the term Princess. Even I am guilty of it at times. Princess is not a term of endearment we want to use and when Iza’s Great Grammy called her that, my throwback was “No Grammy, she is a strong and will someday be an independent woman.” Grammy said, “That’s quite a mouthful. What about Wonder Girl?” So, here you have it… our Wonder Girl.
