What We've Learned About Annalise

Posted by Dave

In the last 4 days, we've been able to glean a bit of knowledge about our dear Annalise that we thought we'd share with you to get to know her better:

• She has active arms and hands. During feeding, it's like she's swimming an individual medley as she switches from her efficient freestyle stroke to her defensive "get away from my face" breaststroke (apropos name now that I think about it) to her over-the-top butterfly stroke. When she sleeps, she has these movements that make us think she's conducting a symphony in her sleep -- arms out in front of herself, swaying rhythmically and with much feeling. Her arms, by the way, are very strong -- this may be the case with all newborns, I just haven't had to arm-wrestle many over the years.
• She has a great mad face. She developed this one early, it's the between stage of crying and calm. She gets this look on her face like, "weeeell, I'm not pleased about this situation, but I'm not mad enough or I'm too tired to cry." I call it her stinky-face, although it doesn't have any correlation to what's going on in her diaper.
• She can crawl already! Well, sort of. When she cries, I like to give her some tummy time on my stomach and rub her back. She likes it, but it's amazing to watch her slowly army-crawl from my belly button all the way up to my neck and shoulders. The first time I did it, I swear she gave me a hickey on my neck and she would have then kept moving north all the way to the Canadian border had I let her. It's one of the cutest things she does.
• She likes to go on long drives. Late at night in the hospital when she cried, we would head out on the town in her wheeled bassinet. The mere movement around the (very small) hallways would usually calm her down immediately, and if we were lucky would let her fall asleep for a few minutes. She preferred turning left - is she the next Danica Patrick?
• She already has a (smaller) big sister. One of the things we were most excited for when we came home from the hospital was to see how Pixie would react -- she usually looooves little babies. We were not disappointed. Pixie is scared of Annalise when she cries, but politely sniffs and occasionally gives her small licks on her legs and toes when she's awake. She even does her play-bark in Annalise's direction sometimes because she wants to go play fetch with her. Last night as Annalise rested on the bed, Pixie curled up by her blanketed feet for a little shut-eye. It was very cute bonding time.

We can't wait to see what we learn in the next week!