5 months old!

Where oh WHERE has the time gone?! I look at little babies, at babies of friends, and Narda and I keep saying to ourselves that Malka was NEVER that small! Malka is just a BIG girl - she's not terribly fat, in that "needs to be in her own issue of the Enquirer" kind of fat, she's just BIG - long, big bones, "solid." She's 21 pounds, and 25 and 1/2 inches long.

She still has her rotavirus, but the dookie situation is MUCH better - instead of toxic sludge that looks and smells like radioactive waste, it's looking more like human waste product - well, the baby version, anyway - let's just leave it at "creamed corn." And I'll let you come to your own visual.

One of our nick names for her is "sock-dini." She can remove her socks faster than you can say "where's your other sock, baby girl?" Which is usually followed by a "where were we last?" walk around the apartment, where we usually find a lone sock on the floor, all lonesome and wondering where its friend went.

She's still not rolling over, but she is threatening to! She starts to get the hang of it, then gets frustrated with her right arm - she's not quite sure where it's supposed to go. Actually, I get that same frustration when I try to sleep - I'd rather just remove the said arm, it would make sleeping on my side much more comfy.

She has discovered more of her vocal cords, sadly sometimes in this grunting thing she does - it's terribly amusing to her, not so much to the rest of New York City, but since she's so amused, it's cute. She can laugh at the silliest things - like her Eemaoht dancing. if she's cranky, or threatening to lose it, or bored, all we have to do is break out into a silly dance, and she's SO amused!

Her grin MELTS ME. It's a big open smile, and I get the biggest ones in the morning when I go into her room and look down on her in the crib, and when I come home from work. It's a grin that is just reserved for me, and I'll give her ANYTHING she wants, as long as I get to see that grin every day.

Did I mention the teething? The doctor we saw on Sunday (one of five in the practice, but not her usual Pediatrician) said her upper gums were "bulging" and with her constant drooling and sticking ANYTHING in her mouth - esp. my knuckles, well, we're just waiting for the first one to pop...

She is really good at being social, and she LOVES being out amongst folks. She has two main babysitters, and she loves them both. They are very different - one is old world, and doesn't speak much English, but is SOOOO amazing with her, and the other is a young grad student who also happens to be an actor. Malka gets on famously with both of them. (thank goodness)! We are in the middle of every NYC parent's dilema - daycare. We don't need her to be IN daycare until August, but NYC being what it is, we apparantly should have gotten onto waiting lists when we first started TRYING to have a baby, back in 2003. We think the daycare closest to our home, which is brand spanking new, will have a spot for Malka, as long as we start paying in June. A friend of Narda's did the math for us, and we'd STILL save money by paying for 2 unused months of daycare there as opposed to the more expensive ones on the Upper East side. Go figure.

She also has mild eczema - mostly in random splotches - a few here and there - as long as we keep her "slathered in Aquaphor," she's fine. We have 1% Hydrocortizone cream to use if it gets bad, but for now, it's managable.

She is using more and more of the toys in her exersaucer, although she has yet to figure out how to turn around on her own in the thing. She stands REALLY well with support, and can sit up all on her own for almost a minute at a time. She loves doing ab work, as any time she's laying down, she basically does crunches - I guess she's "past" the whole being flat on her back thing and wants more interaction with the world. Our constant reading to her is paying off - she looks at the books as we read them, and tries to help turn the pages.

This is my 3rd day back at work, and it's mixed. There's a LOT of clean-up to do from when the temp was here - the most diplomatic response I heard was: "For her age and experience, she did the best she could." (insert snicker here) So I'm doing things now like calling the registrar's office and asking for extensions to turn in the FINAL grade rosters which were due Friday, but the temp simply "couldn't get around to doing it" (or so the post it note she left me stated... granted, she HAD it for OVER a month). So lots of little "messes" like that. But it's great to be using other quadrants of my brain, besides the one that sings the same songs over and over again. I do, however, miss Malka, and so I therefore have to figure out how to leave the office earlier, in order to have more time at home with her before I put her to bed at 7:30.

Speaking of sleep, she's doing GREAT in her own room! She'll sleep from about 7:30 to 1:30, when Narda gives her a bottle, and then is back out in about 1/2 an hour, and then she's up again around 4:30 for another bottle, and is back down in about 1/2 an hour until I'm up with her at 6, and then I get 2 hours or so and she's down for a small morning nap at 8ish. And I leave for work between 8 and 8:15.

On Mother's Day, Narda and I kept saying "Happy Mother's Day" to one another, almost with a "pinch me" tone. We STILL will say things like: "Hey baby," "yeah?" "did you know we have a baby?" "no shit!?" "wow."

Yeah, wow.