Mangia, Mangia!

Clio looks exactly like this kewpie doll sometimes when she's breastfeeding. She gets this impish little proto-smile on her face. Then her eyelids sag, and she looks like a happy baby stoner. Then, she's sound asleep. When she pulls away from the breast (falls off it, more like it), she pouts adorably, her lower lip thrust out, her eyebrows raised, and her chin covered with milk.

We have a whole series of "Wake up the baby" rituals we practice on her mid-feeding to try to get her to perk up: blowing on her face, tugging on her ears, squeezing her feet and hands, and, our favorite, holding her upright and bouncing her while we sing "Bouncing Baby," an original composition to the tune of "Frere Jacques." It doesn't always work, but it's fun to watch her facial expressions while we torture her with it.

She's a terrible eater, really, but she's just so damned cute.

Elsa does much better -- it's no wonder she's half a pound heavier. She chugs like a frat boy at first, voracious and alert, then downshifts into a steady, businesslike sucking. Sometimes she forgets to open her mouth wide before latching on, and makes a little kissy-wissy face instead, but eventually she remembers to open up like a baby bird, and all goes smoothly.

She is, however, a noisy little thing during and afterward, with frequent hiccups and burps and hiccurps and burpups. She's also prone to spitting up. Last night, after I'd fed her and was getting Clio started, she was sitting in her bouncy chair and started clicking/pulsating, much like our cat does before she barfs. (And rather like the Fire Swamp, before the flames shoot up out of nowhere.) She spit up a little bit, then a little bit more, with more force. And then she did this big, huge, projectile barf, like a tiny Linda Blair -- a thick column of milk, just spouting out of her mouth.

I yelled for A. to come do something, quick. I don't know what; I guess I was afraid her head was about to start spinning around. It was quite disturbing, though Elsa herself didn't seem in the least bit bothered. A. changed her sleeper, which was soaked, and then she promptly went to sleep. I'm amazed she wasn't crying to be fed minutes later. The volume of milk she expelled was extraordinary. Maybe we've been giving her a complex by calling her "piglet" since her last pediatrician visit. Oh dear. Our one-month-old has an eating disorder. See? This is why I was afraid of having girls.