Language is powerful. Nothing reinforces that more than having children. Suddenly you’re watching what you say around them or how you say it. Aware that they’re taking in everything, and learning from you. Words can also dictate behavior. E learned a new word recently, and it’s completely changing how we spend our weekends.
The word? Outside.
I saw it stopped at the cross street ahead, and started hoping. As it slowly pulled out, I got excited and sped up just a tiny bit. Pretty soon we were side by side on the road, me purposely matching their speed, and it hit me. Wow we do weird things for our kids. Still, I called out to E and told him to look out his window, and got exactly the reaction I was looking for. “Bus! Bus! BUS BUSBUSBUS!” Yes, I was in the passing lane, speed matching the slow transit bus on the drive home from daycare so my son could see his latest obsession.
A lot of little things happen around here, and it’s hard to keep up. And since my brain is so fragmented anyway, here’s a brain dump of a post. Random things we’ve done or things that are floating around in my head. Enjoy!
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Baby G has this thing he does, where every time we go to lie him down after we’ve been holding him, he gets this terrified look on his face and his arms flail up like he’s afraid we’re going to drop him. He totally does not trust us. Every single time. He is not someone who can hide his expression, and his expression says “Holy cow I’m falling and they’re not going to catch me!”
Time for an update on our kitty! Thank you to everyone who reached out or listened to me vent about this whole process. It was horrible while we were going through it, but looking back it was so worth it.
It was three long weeks of 2 treatment and isolation and life just not being normal. First she went away for treatment, which was weird because she’s never been boarded before, so I’m not used to being home without her. I thought this was going to be the worst part, but luckily I have two little humans to keep me distracted. E only asked for her a few times, and we were able to distract him pretty quickly.
Then she came home, and we were told to keep her in isolation for two weeks, and definitely keep her away from any children since she was still slightly radioactive. This is when it got bad. She could tell we were on the other side of the door, and so she cried and screamed and scratched at the door for the first 24 hours she was home. Between her and the baby, no one got any sleep that night. It was horrible and ripped my heart apart.
Hello! It’s me, a fully functioning adult, and I’m here to talk about things besides the tiny humans that I live with. I know, crazy right?
I went back to work this week. It’s a little weird because it’s 6 weeks earlier than last time, and I keep expecting myself to be at the same spot that I was when I went back to work after E. But it’s only been 10 weeks since I gave birth, and it was my second pregnancy and labor was harder on my body this time, so I’m not quite the same. I am feeling great, but not 100% “normal” and I’m still searching for clothes that fit. Maybe I’ll never get exactly back to where I was, but I need to keep reminding myself that it hasn’t been THAT long.
Is 21 months a thing? I did 3 months updates for the rest of this year, so I guess I’ll continue it here, but don’t expect a 27 month update… maybe I’ll do every 6 months after the 2 year mark?
Nick Names: Bubba, Sweetness
Height: 33 inches (Estimated)
Weight: 25 pounds (Estimated)
Teeth: 11? (It’s getting harder to check!)
Words: 30+ (list below)
Favorite Things: turkeys, elephants, trucks, baby shark/row row/wheels on the bus, art projects of any kind, the color orange, his iron pills, baby brother, being tickled
Nick Names: Goober, Snortle-pig, Lovey
Height: 23.5 inches (76th percentile)
Weight: 13 lbs, 15 oz (87th percentile)
Head: 16.25 inches (97th percentile)
Special Outings: First time with all 4 of us in the car (to get oil changed haha), Burlington Mall, First snow angel, Mama’s dr appointment, PetSmart
Visitors: Grandma & Grandpa, Raina & Zaida, Nicole, Stephen & Alice
Loves: Sleeping, pacifiers, big brother, staring into the light
Hates: The cold, being hungry, tummy time
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.
May 18, 2008. The first time we met. She was small, and scared, and her siblings picked on her, so she was hiding behind a piece of furniture. Rebecca looked at me like I was crazy as I tried to move the dresser to get to her. Was I sure I didn’t want to play with one of the kittens running around the room, basically throwing themselves at me? I was sure.
She came home May 22, along with her brother Aiden, just days before my birthday. She was just as timid, just as scared of me then. I had to tip the carrier to get her to come out, since she wasn’t accepting my food bribes. I had to earn her trust and her love, which I did slowly over the coming days, months, years.
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!