Is It the End of September Already?

So tonight is the night that was supposed to be our last night as parents-to-be. Way, way, way back in January or February, we were given 1 October as Celeste's due date, instead it will be just a few days shy of the one-month anniversary of her birth.

Based on some of the childcare books, we can expect to see some changes in Celeste's habits once she's reached her "full term" point, but I'm not sure which changes are due to her being a 40 weeks gestation vs. those due to her being one month old. One thing is certain, she is getting bigger and heavier and cuter every day. (Official weigh-in is on Monday, so we'll find out exactly how much bigger and heavier she is then; the pediatrician refuses to measure cuteness.)

For the past week, Celeste has been sleeping relatively well, but there are some crying jags in the middle of the night and early morning, most of which seem to be soothed by being held. Evelin's a little worried that my habit of letting her sleep on my chest or in my arms when I get home from work (not to mention the grandmothers doing similar amounts of holding during the day) is contributing to this, but we'll see ...

Otherwise, her eating is going well; we stopped trying to bottlefeed after each nursing session. Instead, for the past week-and-a-half or so, we've been giving her one big (4 fluid ounce) bottle as the last feeding of the night (sometime between 10:00 p.m. and midnight, or so). Sometimes she is a very hungry baby bird and eats it all, other times she only wants about half.

This gives me a chance to feed her, and it fulfills the doctor's wish to have her get a couple of ounces of jaundice-fighting formula. Maybe on Monday, the doctor will say Celeste can go back to being exclusively breastfed, which will eliminate a little bit of daddytime (unless we use expressed breastmilk for a feeding or two), but it would let us let go of any formula-related guilt.

Other Stuff

Scary Blimps: I've always thought airships were cool, but the test security blimp they had floating over D.C. yesterday (totally white, no Goodyear logo) was more ominous than anything. I first spied it during my morning commute and it was hovering over the White House or something, but on my commute home in the evening, it looked like it was zipping along faster than I've ever seen an airship move. It really gave me the creeps.

ColaTurka: On Tuesday, I ran out at lunch to the Palestinian grocery near my office to pick up a big tin of olive oil. They usually have a good selection from Turkey, Tunisia, Greece, Lebanon, and elsewhere through out the region, but this time the only big tins were from Spain. I guess I'm a bit of snob, because I decided to see what the Greek grocery down the street had. I ended up with a 3-liter tin from Crete, which hopefully prove tasty.

As I was looking around the store to see if there was anything else I needed, I noticed some bottles of ColaTurka in the cooler. A while back, I saw the ColaTurka commercials Chevy Chase did, so I let curiosity get to me. It wasn't bad; it tasted kind of like RC, but a little less carbonated, but I didn't find myself with a bushy mustache or speaking Turkish ...

The Washington Grays: Okay, so baseball is coming back to D.C. I hope the stadium deal doesn't end up costing the taxpayers too much and that it helps revitalize that area of Southeast/Southwest, but one thing is certain — Mayor Anthony Williams is right: as long as D.C. doesn't have voting representation in Congress, the team should not be called the Senators. The Grays, in honor of the Negro leagues Homestead Grays who called D.C. home for a while is a perfect name ... even if it isn't a surefire marketing magnet. (See Michael Wilbon's column for more ...)

The Beloved BoSox: Boston has the Wild Card and unless something crazy happens over the next week, we'll be in the Bronx for Game 1 of the division series. So long as Pedro can stop psyching himself out, we should be able to close things out early and to get ready for whoever comes out tops in the West ... Tessie! You are the only, only, only!