When we first brought G home, E kept pulling the blanket off of him. At first we thought it was an attention thing, but we realized it was more that he needed to see the baby. The whole baby. He needed to see that it really was a tiny person we’d brought home, and not just a crying head.
And it’s continued. He loves to point out his own eyes/nose/mouth, and then point to the same body part on the baby. He’s learning that the baby is a person.
It’s fascinating watching a tiny human learn how to talk. Some words will randomly appear with no sign of where they came from. Others are fought for. Practiced over and over.
Apple? Randomly popped up one day and never left. Dad? We’ve been working on that for MONTHS. He’s finally getting there, but there are still some days that Tom gets called Mama or nothing at all. But the days where he gets out a “da!” is worth it.
Today it finally happened. After hearing about it all the time but never experiencing it, someone paid for my Starbucks order in the drive through! It's like winning the random acts of kindness lottery. You feel special and chosen, and it instantly cheered me up. And boy did I need cheering up. It was the whole reason I was in that drive through line. And in case you're wondering, yes I did pay it forward (backward?) and paid for the person behind me. You better believe I was passing on that insta-good mood karma.
I belong to a mom group on facebook. It’s a bunch of girls that I’ve never met, and it’s completely random how I found them, but in the past two years, they’ve become my go to for mom advice, venting and random kid stuff. They’ve been talking a lot about pictures lately. About making our husband take pictures more often, because most of the time we’re the one’s taking the pictures and then we’re never in them. And then we talk about not deleting those pictures even though we don’t like how we look in them. Because our kids won’t care, and all they’ll want is pictures of their mom.
I’ve been dreading it since G was born. I knew there would be a time when they needed me at the same time, and I couldn’t be there for both of them. I’ve been lucky so far, just skirting by, getting one calmed minutes before the next one started crying.
My luck ran out this week. The night started off great, though. There weren’t any tears on the drive home from daycare, G slept in his car seat while I fed E his dinner. It was almost too easy. But then G got hungry earlier than I was expecting. A few days earlier when I had sat down to feed the baby, E was free to run around the house while I was trapped, and it ended with him happily eating food out of the trash. So I decided to try and avoid that this time, and hearded E upstairs. We have a baby gate across the hall that blocks off both of the kid’s bedrooms, which allows him freedom to run around but stay safe and not get into too much trouble.
Did you know that on January 15th, 1986 it was -25 degrees in Newport Center? I do, because it’s in my baby book. You may think that’s an odd thing to record in a baby book, but as a new mom I soon realized that sometimes there’s not much going on to write in the baby book! And weather becomes a big deal. Too hot, too cold, too rainy, too anything.. all become great reasons to not go anywhere and spend the day on the couch with the baby.
So if you look in E or G’s baby books, you’ll find random comments on the weather. Especially last week (because you run out of ways to say, we stayed home and did nothing). G’s baby book entries look like this:
As of 1/23/2019
Nick Names: Goober, Snortle-pig, Salamander, Lovey
Height: 22 inches (77th percentile)
Weight: 11 lbs, 5 oz (83rd percentile)
Head: 15 inches (83rd percentile)
Special Outings: First Movie (Vice), Hiking at Breakheart, Random Shopping Trips
Visitors: Grandma & Grandpa, Raina & Zaida, Aunt Joanie & Brookie, Nicole & Alice
Loves: Sleeping, pacifiers, big brother, staring into the light
Hates: The cold, burping, diaper changes
It’s officially winter here. This past weekend we pretty much hibernated at home while we got some snow, then some ice, and then some rain, and then everything froze and it’s currently below zero here. Ugh. Once upon a time, I did say that I wanted a winter baby. And for a lot of reasons, I’m happy that worked out. It’s actually dark out when I go to bed, which makes a 6pm bedtime way easier. On the flip side, it’s also dark in the mornings and pretty hard to stay awake and get moving. I no longer feel guilty about not leaving the house on days I just want to cuddle on the couch all day, but on the days I do want to go somewhere, I’m left trying to bundle up a tiny baby who hates being cold, and I’m also freezing as I try to deal with car seats and loading junk into the car.
I’ve officially fallen into the maternity leave vortex. All day yesterday I was SURE it was Wednesday. Because the day before it was definitely Tuesday. Except it wasn’t, and yesterday was Thursday. I almost showed up to the police department to get the car seats checked, but luckily I was too tired yesterday because they only check car seats on Wednesdays.
I have this weird thing now, where I’ll want to post a cute picture of either E or G, and then I think, wait… is it weird to post a picture of only one of them? Do I need to post two pictures? Do I need to have a running tally where I make sure I’m talking about each kid the same amount?
Same thing with blog posts.. I had things I wanted to say about E and how he’s doing lately, but then I think I should do the same thing about G! I can tell I’m going to be struggling with this for a while…
I absolutely do not have the solution yet, so instead I’m going to do a double update!
Right before G was born, I looked at the nurse and said, “Remember, I’m a bleeder!” I was laughing, but we’d talked about it seriously before, and she started getting the necessary medicine ready, but I bled faster. Just like last time, the moment I delivered, I started to hemorrhage. One bad thing about being more alert than last time, is that I was also much more aware of how much I was bleeding and how concerned everyone was. Even with all the medication they gave me, it still took a while to get everything under control, and I ended up losing about twice as much blood as a C section, double what I lost when I delivered E.
After I got my first dose of medicine, Tom and I settled in to wait. We ordered dinner, and watched Game night and Jumanji in our room. Around 4:30 I mentioned to Tom that my head was a little itchy, and that was weird. A little while later, it was REALLY itchy and I couldn’t stop itching. I must have been freaking him out a bit, because he said he was going to go find our nurse. By the time they returned, not only was I going crazy with an itchy scalp, but my hands had turned bright red and my palms were also super itchy.
Knowing that I was already allergic to one type of antibiotic, the nurse got worried and immediately stopped the vancomycin and called the doctor. Within a few minutes, my itchiness had gone away, and my hands were no longer red. After some brainstorming between the doctor and pharmacist, it was decided that I was having a transfusion reaction, and not a reaction to the actual antibiotic. Because my itching stopped so quickly, and the antibiotic was still in my system, it was decided I could safely finish my dose, just at a slower pace. Luckily after the dose was slowed, no more itching! And in better news, as long as I delivered by 5am the next morning, I wouldn’t need another dose of antibiotics.
I’m having a hard time putting into words G’s birth story, partly because I’m still not sure how I feel about it. It seems like it went by almost too quickly? Is that possible in labor? After 9 months of building up to it, it was over so fast, and looking back, I feel like I could have done it so much better! It’s almost like I want a second chance to see if I could have… I’m not even sure. Enjoyed it more? Savored each contraction? It’s really an odd feeling.
It’s been interesting putting this room together. It almost didn’t happen, and then it did, but while we were working on it, we were constantly thinking ahead. Because we know at some point “soon” it won’t be a second nursery, but will be E’s big kid room.
The eventual plan, when E is ready to be out of a crib, will be for the new baby to move into E’s crib, and E to move into this room with a toddler bed. It sounds complicated, but trust me there’s logic there. So it’s interesting that as I’m putting it together, I’m thinking more about it as a toddler’s play room than a baby’s room. We already have a perfectly good baby room next door.
Tom and I have always been certain that we didn’t want an only child, but unless you start with multiples, you always start a family with an only. It hasn’t been long, but for the past year and a half, E has been our only. And while we know that with his personality he’ll love having a built in playmate, there are a lot of changes coming from him.
So when it got to the point where we were pretty sure we were facing E’s last weekend as an only child, we felt like we should do something?