Maia Week #15 Battle Report

Maia is now 15 weeks old, having finally crossed the 13 pound line and once again entered a competitive quartile in the American Ninja Fattening competition. She has discovered her feet and excels at tummy time, consistently holding her head up for longer than an alcoholic hobo on his 12th Steel Reserve.

She still only naps for 30 minutes at a time during the day, but this is counterbalanced by 10 to 11 hour night stretches where she only wakes up once to feed (our longest record night went from midnight to 11:30 AM with a 45 minute feed in the middle). Since it can take up to 45 minutes to get her to nap, it's usually much easier and more efficient to just pop her into the front kangaroo pouch and dance to Funk Jazz until she passes out.

The hardest part at the moment is coming up with enough activities to keep her occupied for the long stretches between naps. Any given activity keeps her happy for up to 10 minutes but there are a limited number of activities to try, especially as it gets colder. This leads to cheat activities like "Look how different Boring Felt Owl looks when I rotate you 90 degrees underneath him!"

One constant that remains worthwhile is nature hiking in Claude Moore Park which is a 5 minute drive away and eats up an hour out of the day. Maia gains superhuman neck strength from looking up into all of the trees and can eventually enjoy the deer, cows, squirrels, and chipmunks. I travel at a slow enough pace that she can nap and listen to the nearby high school marching band play the same 4 bars of Danse Macabre for the 80th time. Sometimes Maia goes twice in a day, once with Rebecca in the morning and once with me when I come on duty after work. Part-time work is going great as well -- this week I wrote a 6 page article about data analytics and cloud architecture then turned off the computer and played "Eat the Toucan's Nose" with Maia.