Presenting: The cutest baby ever...

...and don't you deny it. Well, OK, you can of course deny it, and it was probably an exaggeration to call her the cutest baby ever. I mean, she's got, like, no neck.

Linden's 2 month birthday

We celebrated Rowan's 2-month birthday with chocolate cake, so we decided to do the same for Linden. Rowan girds himself for the ensuing onslaught; Linden looks at a chair.

Mama gets in the action, holding Rowan back from attacking the cake head-on; Linden looks at the wall.
Rowan gets that greedy look in his eye. He likes the cake, but he doesn't like the strawberries ON the cake. These things must be separate--strawberries here, cake here; chicken here, parsley here. There is no admixture of things in Rowan's culinary world, as each retains its pure essence as a self-contained entity, the thing for its own sake and nothing more.

Waiting for his slice...

Rowan and Linden look on as the cake is divided and parsed out to the respective persons at the table. Rowan wants the BIG piece. Linden is just happy to be here.

Linden, almost 2 months

Linden is growing up, wearing Rowan's old clothes (like the panda outfit above), and enjoying fine literature with the family. The Frog and Toad books are actually quite charming, with simple but thoughtful stories. Rowan loves them.

Linden in her first real dress, seen here with Bel. She's chubbing up nicely--Linden, I mean.

Linden struggles with tummy time with Mama, but she does very well. Her head and neck control is pretty remarkable, and she has very little trouble holding her head up in this position.

Winnie's Pregnant Pics (v.2)

Winnie insisted I put these up so you can all see how huge she was, and in order to fully fathom the damage little Linden caused poor Mom. Still, she's all smiles.

The family, complete with Winnie's outie, which Rowan insisted was actually the baby. Soon after Linden was born, Winnie would ask Rowan to point to Linden...he pointed to Winnie's herniated belly button--poor Winnie.

Linden pooping

Here's Linden pooping into a potty on her 18th day of life. To this day, she prefers the potty to the diaper when it comes to poop, though every once in a while...

Scene two of "Linden Poops." Looks like she's just about finished.

Linden with Winnie's family

Here's Linden (looking freaked, but really she's just looking at something outside the window) with Gung-Gung and Por-Por, who both look almost exactly the same as when they held Rowan almost three years ago. Por-Por is recovering from an illness here and resurfaced from a two-day self-inflicted exile to participate in these photos. Gung-Gung had already undergone his cancer treatment by this time, which turned out to be a great success!

Above, Sup-Yi Gu-Por (Auntie 12), with Linden and her crazy hair. Sup-Yi spent many a long hour with Rowan, who absolutely adores her. It's because of Sup-Yi that he knows so much cantonese and can speak it so fluently.

Finally there's Bel, who is the baby master, and when I'm not changing Linden's diapers, she is, and much more besides. Bel has insisted that Linden was smiling at her after about a week, but we all knew well is was just gas (I've gotten many a gas smirk from Linden, which is often followed by a dribble of milk coming from her mouth).

In the Family

A little background: Winnie went through about 21 hours of labor at home and outside at the park (on occasion, she would use me as a human table to lean on during contractions while I bent over "looking for pennies"). We got to the hospital around 10pm and, after about 3 hours of heavy contractions and excruciating pushing, Linden was born.

Winnie received a couple of nasty tears and significant blood loss (there was a large pool of it under her bed), which led to her nearly passing out from extremely low blood pressure, followed by a lovely catheter (which scared the bejeezus out of her, more than the blood loss). After a day in the hospital with some close monitoring, the family was released, and Winnie was fed on a diet of rest and filet mignon for a good week or two. Above, you are seeing her after her recovery on a lovely spring day. It's also Linden's first time outside.

A precious moment--Rowan helps Linden with her cap. The hammerhead is in the background...

Linden at Home

Linden is only a few days old here, very little but animated. Of course, she can barely see, and her face is still a bit puffy, but she still has her hair.

Linden's first (or second, I don't remember) bath, clean, refreshed, pink and fuzzy. She seems to like her baths and rarely complains about them. For that matter, she's a pretty good sleeper and wakes up only to feed briefly, followed by about 10 to 20 minutes of burping which is often never fully resolved until morning. She poops in her own little toilet most of the time and even pees in the sink about 50% of the time--she does not like wet diapers and squirms when she's about to pee.

Linden and Rowan

To ease Linden's entrance into the world and ingratiate herself with her older brother, we gave Rowan a giant hammerhead shark under the pretense that his little sister bought it for him. He did indeed say "thank you" to Linden and has not parted with the shark since. He also maintained a grudging respect for the little one, despite her incessant crying, never once questioning how an infant whose only abilities are eating, pooping, screaming and sleeping ever managed to buy such a fantastic shark online.

Linden and Rowan together with Mama (and the hammerhead). Linden is home by this point and is a few weeks old. You can also see how much older Rowan is--my apologies to all of you for not blogging for 6 months (at least). By the way, see how Linden's hair sticks up in back?

Linden on top! Rowan finds it all very drole, and Linden looks like she's freaking out--her eyes have gotten wider and her hair more shocking. I'm not entirely sure, but I think Rowan is eating peanut butter--that can't be right.

Introducing...Linden Hoi-Ying Travers

Here she is about 9 hours old. 8 pounds, 3 ounces, 19.5 inches long, normal-sized head (for a baby), Winnie's eyes, my chin, 10 fingers, 10 toes...and meconium, lots of meconium. At some point I'll try to explain her Chinese name, but for now we have two trees in the family.