Let Me Tell You About My Clara

Clara and I have a morning ritual.
I get her out of her bassinet and put her
in the Boppy on our bed. I kiss her face
over and over and we tell each other
about our night. And I try to convince
her to go back to sleep for just
a few more hours...This is her response

Clara hates wearing clothes. She prefers to wear just her gloves, diaper optional. Heart babies often sweat more because their little hearts are working extra hard. Combine that with her Papa Wallace's genes and this girl and I will be having a lot of discussions about exactly how much of her body needs to be covered.

 

She's really good at bingo. Twice, TWICE, she won bingo in the CICU. She only lived there from the time she was 2 hours to about 1 week old. And the first time she won was her first morning there. She won this hair clip.

BINGO!

 

Clara will probably learn to walk and crawl and sit up within 'normal' baby time frames, but there is a good chance she will not talk as early as other babies. This could be a huge relief to Dad, since he'll be home all day with this precocious little one.

Clara smiles a lot in her sleep. Sometimes we are sure she is pretending to be asleep and laughing at what we are saying. We are pretty funny, I can see that being the case.

She loves to eat, when she's not too busy or too tired or too moody. She has put on 1 pound 11 ounces in her first 6 weeks of life. That's like 25% of her birth weight. Legends are told of the day she passed her swallow study. ("And then, after NO PRACTICE, she drank over 25ccs in just MINUTES. And she didn't even aspirate a bit, despite some arching of the back!" In feeding tube circles, these are proud moments. Probably in all parenting circles, too. But this is the only circle I know.)

When you use these snot suckers on Clara, she rarely gets upset. She likes to have her nose cleaned out and is happy to let me do it since she has no access to her fingers.

Clara is a BYU fan. When I sing the Cougar fight song to her while doing cheers with her arms, she is so happy. Never have we experienced this joy during the University of Utah fight song (because I don't know it and have never sung it to her.)

Her Dad and Aunt Kim had it right-Clara is trying hard to be a thumb sucker. That's the first thing in her mouth when she's hungry. But we always have her hands covered to avoid unplanned tube removals, so every time I change her gloves, the right one, especially where the thumb sits, is dirty and wet and kind of smelly, like formula.

My Clara hates to be swaddled, but she will let me snuggle her in so close no matter how warm she is. When I kiss her cheeks and neck and chin over and over, she usually gets a look on her face akin to putting up with me and secretly enjoying it. This post is full of examples, including a gratuitous shot of her cheeks for Aunt Sherrie's friend Lacey.

She can sleep through our very noisy dishwasher, Gir barking, me laughing (even when she is in my arms and I am laughing so hard and loud that her little brain must be rattling from the shaking), the song "I'm Sexy and I Know It", and all sounds made by any medical equipment on the planet.

Clara is ticklish-under her arms, on her sides, her feet. I can't wait until she can laugh because I know all of her spots now.