The baby with all the hair

Emily and I are pretty sure we could have loved a bald baby. But all along we both knew we really wanted a baby with hair. Lots of it. A big ol' baby fro.

Lizzie was born with a full head of hair. Though we've been warned that baby hair often falls out, hers has thus far remained firmly rooted to her scalp (I am fond enough of her hair that I might go so far as to use super-glue to convince her hair to stay put should it begin to fall out, but I doubt Emily would approve of such measures).

Inevitably, people who are seeing Lizzie for the first time comment on her hair. On Sunday at church as I was walking down the hall with Lizzie I heard one of the young women say to her friend, "Look, there's the baby with all the hair." You may be wondering where this is all going. Well, this preamble is leading up to me posting some pictures of fun ways a baby's hair can be styled when there is enough of it.

Lizzie's sleeping quarters (on occasion)

If you could create the womb outside of the womb, where would it be? Little did we know, it's the bathroom.

Lizzie, like many babies, seems to sleep better with white noise going on around her. In our apartment, the best source of white noise happens to be the bathroom fan. So, at times, we find that we get her to sleep faster and for a longer amount of time when we swaddle her tight, turn on the fan, turn out the lights, and leave her bassinet in the bathroom. Perhaps the tight wrap, darkness, and droning sounds remind her of living in mommy's belly.

The only issue we've encountered with this method of getting Lizzie to sleep is that in a one bathroom apartment, the primary use of the bathroom may have to be put on hold when there's a bassinet in the room. But that's a sacrifice we're usually willing to make for a sleeping baby. However, this obviously is not a long term solution.

Lizzie has started smiling

Lizzie has started smiling at us. She tends to stop smiling the second we try to take a picture. This is a habit Lizzie had even when in the womb. Often, Emily would call me over saying, "She's moving tons. Come feel!" And the second I got my hand on Emily's belly Lizzie would stop moving.

However, we have gotten one picture of a big toothless grin:

Joe's Birthday

Joe had a birthday a week and a half ago (we need to be better about updating this blog...), and Emily went the extra mile in preparing his birthday cake. Joe, as many of you may know, is studying comic books for his PhD. Emily, knowing her husband quite well, made a superhero themed birthday cake.

Inspired by the Food Network show "Ace of Cakes," Emily even carved the cake:


And carefully iced it:


And then Emily had a lovely finished product:


Joe and Lizzie were both suitably impressed with this birthday cake:

Brrr....its cold

This morning when I walked to school it was -11 (-20 with the wind chill (about a 20-25 minute walk, I was walking fast today, so we'll say 20)). Apparently, and I did not know this, that is cold enough to cancel public schools here in Michigan (not the university, K-12 schools). It wasn't snowing or anything, they just close down because it's so cold. Emily offered to give me a ride, but she'd only been able to get a few hours of sleep, and we didn't want to take Lizzie out to the car in that kind of cold.

When I got to my building I had ice formed on my eyelashes because of my breath hitting them. That made me feel tough. Like I could hack it in the arctic.

Lizze Photo Op

The Darowskis Replicate Themselves

As new parents, it's nice to know that some of our traits are being passed down to our little girl. At this point, we've only discovered a few physical traits. Time will tell what personality traits emerge that resemble her mom or dad.

One trait that was passed on from Joe was evident in the 20 week ultrasound. I looked at the picture of her foot and said, "Why is the gap between her big toe and the next one so freakishly large?"


Joe then said, "What's freakish about it? Look at my toes." And then I knew what had happened. You will understand as well as you see the pictures below.


Earlier, Joe made mention of Lizzie's hair and the many terms used to describe its fro-like nature. Lest we think only Joe is capable of passing on quirky physical traits, take a look at the following side by side shots of Lizzie and me. I put Lizzie in the same outfit that I was wearing when I was taken home from the hospital.


However, there is some evidence that Joe had a hand in giving Lizzie fluffy hair.

Joe has done most of the posting thus far so I thought I'd write a little something. Lucky for me, he loves taking pictures and thus can take on the role of 'scrapbooker' for the family. I mean scrapbooker in a manly, digital sort of way. He minored in media arts and paid his way through undergrad/masters working for a multimedia company doing video and photo editing. I have enjoyed the benefits of the skills he learned working there.

Anyway, Joe and I decided with Lizzie arriving late, we would stay here for Christmas and New Years instead of heading to Utah and Idaho to visit both of our families. It was a hard decision to make since all of our immediate family were gathered together and us staying behind meant that we would miss out on so much. The greatest blessing has been the ability to use our webcam to see and talk to both families on a daily basis. This makes us all the more grateful that our Macbook did not succomb to that white grape juice incident several months ago... we won't relive that scary moment here. Let's just say we're glad 'El Blanco,' as we have dubbed our Macbook, is still kicking.

Here are some pictures of Christmas with our little family.

We made swirly Christmas cookies the first holiday season we met, and try to make them each year now.
My family has had thin pancakes (crepes) and sausage for Christmas Eve dinner for generations, so we're trying to keep that tradition up as well.


Joe's family always left out cookies for Santa and a carrot for Rudolph. Lizzie may be only two weeks old, but why wait to start Christmas magic.


Lizzie had a Michigan State squirrel in her stocking.


Emily gets excited for Kitchenaid mixers, and Joseph gets excited for Hulk action figures.

What we've learned...

Neither Emily nor I had any idea what was in store for us as new parents. Sure we went to the class at the hospital, yes we have lots of siblings who've we've seen make this transition, and sure we even have "What to Expect..." and various other books that try to warn us that our baby will be unique and therefore the advice in the books may not apply to her. But it's really something you have to experience for yourself to understand it. Here are some of the interesting tidbits we've learned about ourselves as parents, Lizzie, and other people's interactions with us.

It is shocking how fast dealing with another person's fecal matter can become just another part of the routine of life. Shocking.

People are fascinated with Lizzie's hair and use many different words to describe it, several of them made-up. The main constant in people's descriptions seems to be the f-sound. To wit, people have described her hair as: fluffy, foofy, fro-y, fuzzy, froofy, fly-away, and floofy. I'm not sure what to make of the prepondernance of f-sounds (I'm pretty sure it's a bilabial fricative sound...) in words people use/invent to discuss baby hair, but I bet there's a linguistics paper out there discussing it.

Just because you learn to function on less sleep doesn't mean you don't miss it.

Though they're terribly one-sided, some interesting conversations take place when it's just you and your child in a room.

I don't care if it's just gas, it's still cute when she smiles at this age.

The likelihood of Lizzie immediately refilling a diaper right after I've changed her seems to increase in relationship with the number of tiny snaps/buttons that are on the outfit I just got her back into.

You can memorize which channels don't air infomercials at 1 AM pretty quickly.

Emily and I are no longer the reason our friends come to visit us.

Currently, one of the only techniques we've found that almost always stops Lizzie from crying is to hold her head in one hand, her butt in the other, and perform bicep curls. If this continues as she gains weight, our upper arms are going to be ripped.

Though breast feeding is supposed to be a natural process, there sure seem to be a lot of how-to guides and information to track which make it more complicated than sticking a bottle of pre-measured formula in a child's mouth.

When we're sleeping, Emily's sensitivity to Lizzie's cries is much higher than mine. But this was true of our alarm clocks before Lizzie, so it isn't surprising.