Sunday Best

We took Miriam to church for the first time. Before we relieved her of her Sunday dress we took a few more 1 month pictures. She smiled a little for the pictures but she smiled a lot more once we got her out of her very pretty dress. She's a girl after my own heart.

The Spock eyebrow again.
A smile, for her dad who is walking by. I'm jealous.

Reuben is alive and well too. He lives for the bike rides he goes on with his dad. He's also lately figured out how to count to ten. Everything in our house is being numbered, over and over again in a kind of repetitive Reuben inventory. I feel like I'm living with the Count from Sesame Street.

1 Month Miriam

One month has flown by. Miriam is a sweet tempered, fun baby. She is an incredible sleeper. She can sleep through anything, anywhere - fire engines, thunderstorms, dogs howling, the cat jumping on her, her brother yelling, her brother giving her love "pats" But she insists on being awake from 11 pm-2:30 am. She's my little owl.

So I've been catching up on my night time television. Everybody Hates Chris is a funny show. So is The Choir. I've been enjoying Star Trek reruns too.

Since her birth I have also read Parrot and Olivier in America by Steve Carey, The Lost Continent by Bill Bryson, Jack Maggs by Steve Carey, the three Hunger Game books and I am almost finished with The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman which I recommend. I think there may have been one or two more books but my memory is a little hazy. I'll probably finish The Spirit Catches You today so if you have a good book recommendation I would love to hear it.

Anyway, back to Miriam. She's got a lot of hair which I have no idea what to do with besides laugh at when it sticks up all over. She started out wonderfully small at 7.5 but is now a healthy 12 lbs. She's crazy tall too, over 23 inches. That puts her in the 97% for height and weight. And she has a big beautiful smile.

I'm not sure how well you can see it in this picture but she raises her eyebrow like Spock when you catch her interest which I love. Maybe she's got some Romulan in her.

Fascinating.

Night Life

Miriam is clinging to her nocturnal habits. Around the Meldau house that's provided her with a good social life.

Here she is during the day:


Here she is around 10-11 pm Saturday. Her aunt and uncle are just getting ready to go out to watch Scott Pilgrim vs. The World.


We almost went too but I wimped out. I think Miri was disappointed but as consolation she got to snuggle with her Grandpa.


And Aunt Amy was kind enough to give her some hair styling before leaving for the show.


Baby Mohawk

Communing

Reuben is a big fan of the creek that runs behind my folks' house. When he woke up I asked him what he wanted to do he responded with " rocks and water" which is his name for the creek. We walked to it and while Reuben waded around I spied this:


A praying mantis eating a damselfly. He made short work of his meal. It was pretty amazing to see. I also caught sight of a school of minnows frantically swimming around our feet. They were being hunted by a larger fish who didn't want to come any closer to us. The little fish were using us as a refuge but when they strayed too far I saw the big fish dart in and gobble them up. Meanwhile the surviving damselflies were swooping around gobbling up gnats and Mosquitos making the stream a pleasant place. I didn't get a single bug bite which is a big contrast from my backyard where the Mosquitos attack us unmolested. I pointed all this activity out to Reuben. It made me appreciate how wonderful a complete ecosystem with predators is! It also made me think about how Darwin described nature as being in a constant state of war. And I was struck that if someone was to truly commune with nature they would probably end up a pretty violent individual.

Mein Bruder

Early today my brother, Oma, and I were talking about the German's propensity for bluntness. Bluntness so blunt it hits you like a baseball bat in the head. Like when Robby went to model UN representing Germany and the actual German kids told him he wasn't doing a good job with their country because he didn't dress well enough.

Fast forward a few hours. I told Robby that Miriam with her cute button nose and large dark eyes reminded me of this cute baby ewok in Return of the Jedi.

Robby: Oh yeah? That's funny because when she makes that one face, that one with her tongue I think she kind of looks like Jabba the hut.

I think that's Robby channeling his German heritage.

Ha Ha History

To me there are very few things funnier than history. So I LOVE the comics Kate Beaton is making about our jerk president Andrew Jackson. Check her work out here!!

Teaching By Example

We've been trying to encourage Miriam to sleep at night. She's a little night owl. She'd prefer to be awake 1-3 am then sleep through the morning. Aaron said he'd help me try to get her schedule switched. This is what I found when I came to bed last night.