Christmas pics for Aunt Molly and the Butlers

Dahlia is a happy girl on Christmas

Sadly, the "Arctic Blast" storm--as dubbed by Portland local TV news coverage--in late December prevented Aunt Molly from making it up to Portland from San Francisco for Dahlia's first Christmas.

Likewise, since Amy and I are now splitting the holidays between our families every other year, I wanted to make a quick post with a link to lots of pictures from the festivities for Aunt Molly (celebrating in Cupertino with the Zapala family) and the Butler family (celebrating in Louisville, Kentucky).

We drove down to Eugene from Portland on Christmas Eve without much hassle. Uncle Brennan arrived in PDX from SFO (after driving up from LA) that morning, and after all of the shenanigans feeding Dahlia, packing up her stuff, and getting the darn car out of the darn driveway, we managed to arrive at Uncle Bob and Aunt Mary Ellen McNutt's house in plenty of time to celebrate.

The McNutts have a tradition of beer and pizza on Christmas Eve, which (as far as I'm concerned) is a fantastic way to kick off the holiday. Aunt Mary Ellen's homemade pizza was delicious, and we continued to enjoy the leftovers before, during, and after Christmas.


Ryan enjoys the pizza


Natalie is gearing up for Santa

We woke up around 9 am on Christmas Day, fed Dahlia, packed her into her car seat and drove over to cousin Katie and Ryan Murphy's house for a fantastic brunch. Little cousins Molly, Natalie, and Ryan got a chance to show off their Santa gifts while we all gobbled up fresh fruit, veggie quiche, homemade blueberry muffins, bacon, and more egg souffle or quiche goodness. Yum. (Unfortunately, we forgot to take pics of the food ...)


I'm not sure that's how that toy goes ...


Uncle Bob opens his gift from the kids (a carrier for firewood)

Next, we hauled our butts back to Bob and Mary Ellen's for the full-on family gift exchange, where we were soon met by cousins Andy and Nicole from Portland, with even more cute little kids--Lily (4?) and Max (~1.5). We spent the day opening presents, searching for the pickle (found once again by Uncle Brennan), solving Christmas Day puzzles, eating appetizers, drinking wine and cocktails, settling into a fabulous Christmas dinner made by Mary Ellen (with help from many others), and then watching the kids go berserk with their toys and each other. A wonderful time was had by all.


Julie, Molly, and Ryan get psyched up to open presents


Both Molly and Lily score the entire set of Disney princess dolls


Max plays with little Ryan's deepsea diver


Natalie sits with Katie as she plays with the coolest gift of the day (aside from Brennan's collage)

Here are a sampling of pictures from our Christmas celebration, with links through to the full images on Flickr. To see a larger set of Christmas pictures, check out 40 or so in the full set.


Amy and I show off our Santa gifts


Ryan McNutt and Brennan open their Santa gifts


Brennan's awesome collage picture of the new Butler family


Four generations of Dusenberry/Taylor/Butler women


Andy and Ryan Murphy enjoy cocktail hour


Ryan reduces the sauce while Mary Ellen supervises


Brennan clears Emily's driveway as we prepare to drive to Amy's dad's house for the day after Christmas. We'll post more pictures from that celebration next ...

Smiles for miles

After three weeks of mostly communicating through crying, shrieking, rooting, farting, and crying some more, Dahlia has found a much more fun way to communicate with us: smiling!



We'd seen some gas-related "smiles" in the first few weeks, but these new smiles appear to be the real thing. She'll often respond (if she's happy) to a friendly face with a big smile of her own.

If she's really happy (and well fed), her whole face will bust out in a grin as wide as her pudgy little face. Those moments, however, have yet to be captured on camera. I'm sure Amy will get some good shots soon.

After all the hard work that Mom has gone through to feed little D properly, it's wonderful to receive some positive feedback. Thanks, Dahlia! Here's looking at years and years of your happy smiles.

Oh, and we've decided that Dahlia is almost certainly the most beautiful baby ever. Yeah, we're pretty sure about that.

Portland for the holidays...

It was quite an effort, but Amy and I (and Dahlia) managed to get our shit together and truck it up to Portland for Christmas. Now all we need to do is get all of our Christmas shopping done in the middle of a blizzard while trying to take care of a 3-week old baby.

Dahlia took her first ride in a taxi cab to SFO early Wednesday morning, and we arrived in PDX during a break in a week-long snow storm. Too bad we flew a Horizon puddle jumper and had to carry DD across the freezing tarmac in 30 mph winds, but everything turned out fine.

Poppa Joe and Grandma Gloria picked us up at the airport, and we stayed with them for a few days, warm and cozy with fantastic home-cooked meals to keep up our strength. Yesterday, we made the trip over to Beaverton and are with Nana Emily now, waiting for "Fun" Aunt Molly and "Kickass" Uncle Brennan to arrive on Monday.

Dahlia hadn't been gaining as much weight as she should, so we were a little concerned about leaving home for two weeks so early, but we found a nice clinic in Portland that let us weigh her on Friday, and she seems to have gained six ounces in three days, which is a big jump (newborns are supposed to gain 0.5-1 ounce a day). We're relieved, but are going to check her again next Friday to make sure she's still gaining. She was up past her birth weight at 9 lbs. 10 oz. yesterday, and we're hoping she'll be past 10 lbs. next week.

We didn't bring a laptop with us, so I'm freestyling, and don't have any pictures to upload right now, but I've been writing a bit in longhand and will post more snippets and pictures soon. Stay tuned to learn how Burning Man prepared me for taking care of a newborn. (I'm sure you're on the edge of your seat ...)

Uncles' weekend

Dahlia had what I'll euphemistically call a "minimal sleep day" yesterday, so I wasn't able to post an update about Uncles' weekend. Both Uncle Chris and Uncle Brennan made long trips--from Connecticut and San Diego, respectively--to meet their new niece, and we all had a good time hanging out at home, walking to the park, making Tofurkey dinner, and playing with little D.

Uncle Brennan and Uncle Chris got to spend lots of time with Dahlia and were big helps around the apartment--washing dishes, researching scoville ratings for various peppers, and most importantly, getting Indian food and beer. Thanks for all of the help.

Dahlia also got to meet some of her other uncles this weekend, as Uncle Joe, Uncle Leeor, and Aunt Alison all stopped by with goodies.

Unfortunately, Uncle Chris' camera battery died without a charger, and I'm having some technical difficulties with my camera, so I don't have all of the pictures of everyone online yet, but here's a few of Dahlia's fun aunts and crazy uncles.


Aunt Molly and Uncle Brennan


Aunt Becky and 5-week-old Lucas visited on Dahlia's eighth day


Aunt Lisa and Aunt Meredith brought us a full dinner with vegetable pot pie and ice cream on Dolly's fifth day

Monkey Toes

Someone named Meredith mentioned in passing "When does the blog start?" and apparently that was all the impetus I needed. Little D has already taught us so much in only 10 days, and it even seems like she's learning new tricks herself.

I haven't seen a whole lot of newborn babies in my life, but her toes look incredibly long.



She can get a pretty good grip on your finger with them. More to come ...

The poop on newborn poop...

... is that no one--nurses, pediatricians, moms, grandmas--can give you much good info about your own newborn's poop, aside from the general case, that is, that baby's first poops will be black and tarry (meconium), and gradually change color from black to brown to green or yellow, with mustardy seeds (milk curds).


Mustardy? More like dastardly.

Dahlia started off her pooping life with a bang, delivering her first meconium blowout shortly after delivery, then another about 12-13 hours later, and another 12 hours after that. It was about like Robin Williams supposedly described it--a cross between black tar and velcro.

Then she didn't poop again ... for two and a half days. That might seem like a long time, especially when the hospital breastfeeding diary literature says to expect 2-3 stools everyday. However, Dr. Karp (The Happiest Baby) says that the longest period between bowel movements he's seen in a healthy baby was 21 days, so I wasn't freaking out too much. Until the first poo came at night on Day 4.

We'd seen a very small amount of yellow poop with the seedy bits earlier in the day, so we'd been expecting some normal poops any time. What we didn't expect was a black blowout. I say it was about a cupful, but Amy thinks I exaggerate. (I am not exaggerating.) Unlike the meconium, it was runny. I wasn't freaking out, but I was a little concerned, especially after I read that black bowel movements were usually caused by iron deficiency (not troubling) ... or internal bleeding. Yikes.

So we waited for the next poop. And waited. And waited. I also forgot to mention that she had been farting quite a bit the past 2 days. She let loose with a major explosion around 7:30 on Day 5. When I asked my mom, "That sounds like a poop, right?" she answered, "I've never heard anything like that in my life."

We waited a few seconds to see if she was done, and I carried her over to the changing table. We'd already learned that the cold air stimulates the pee, so we thankfully were using the diaper as a shield when she let loose with explosion #2. It was black and slimy again. Aw. And just when I was throwing away the disposable diaper and wipes we used to clean her, she let loose with #3. Whoa.

Little D let loose with another large explosion that was a little browner the next night around the same time, and we worried less about the color and figured we might be in for a one-blowout-a-day baby (not a bad thing, imo). Nevertheless, she started pooping more frequently the next day (brown and yellow), and hasn't let up since.


Green is good.

She must have needed a little extra time to learn how to poo (i.e. tighten the stomach and relax the bottom), or else she was such a big baby that she had a boatload of meconium that needed to clear. I'm sure that's what was making the black color, even up to a week after birth.

The moral of the story? I suppose that every newborn's poop experiences are different and nobody can tell how it's gonna go. I couldn't find much of anything on Google or elsewhere online about meconium or black poop on Day 6 or after, which is one of the reasons I wanted to write our experience down.

If your newborn is still pooping black after 6-7 days, I can't say don't worry, but I can say that our little girl took a long time to clean out her intestines, and everything is absolutely poopy now.