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Close to Me

I just put Emma down for a nap and the house is sunny and quiet and peaceful. Will is at preschool, hopefully happily playing with his friends and over the trauma that makes up drop off these days. I have approximately 30 precious minutes to myself and you know what I'm going to do with them? Well, blog about my children of course.

It is a strange and startling fact about my life that I desperately wish for moments alone, yet when I have them, I find myself missing my kids. Not the noise or the crying or the constant requests to play trucks per se...but the physical closeness. Before I had children I was rightly terrified about the coming loss of freedom and just the chance to ever be alone. I knew that was going to be hard for me, and it is, every day.

But what I didn't expect is how much I cherish the the constant physical closeness that is inherent in parenting small children. One or both of them is always within an arms length away, if not actually somehow attached to my body.

We watch Curious George sitting together on the couch, "like a family" as Will says. Emma is propped up on a pillow on my right side, nestled close and nursing herself into sleep. Will is curled up under my left arm, leaning into my side and absently rubbing his sister's leg, engrossed in his favorite show.

We take walks together, Emma in the Baby Bjorn strapped to my chest and Will holding my hand. I have to stop every few houses and bend down so he can see "our baby" and kiss her; sloppy, open mouthed extravaganzas that leave half of her head covered in saliva. Luckily she seems to enjoy receiving this outpouring of love as much as he loves giving it. I just make sure to bring lots of Kleenex.

We read books together before nap time, all huddled up in Will's single bed. He sits next to me and Emma sits on me and we read until her happy shrieks and gurgles and attempts to grab the pages turn into the tired "eh, eh, ehs" that mean she is ready to sleep. I leave Will in his room, happily playing with his cars, so I can rock the baby to sleep.

Once she is swaddled and nukked and cradled in my arms, it is a short song and trip around the room before her eyes start rolling back in her head and she begins to pant quickly and smile her secret little smile which means she is on her way to dreamland. I return to Will's room and we read a few more stories in the rocking chair and then he turns to press his face to my shoulder and I rub his back. He doesn't fall asleep in my arms very much anymore, so I love it when he does. His breathing slows down and then he does that full body jerk, almost lunging out of my arms, and then he's asleep too.

I can't get enough of it, which is a constant surprise to me. I would rock them to sleep until they go to college, if they'd let me.  

September and October Reading

Hmmm....it's November 12th already? How did that happen? I had vague and completely insane thoughts about doing NaBloPoMo this year...until I realized it was already November 4th and I hadn't posted anything yet. So that's not happening. But I have been reading a lot, so here's a brief write up of that.

Dakota by Martha Grimes

I love Martha Grimes' Inspector Jury series (there are at least 20 books), but this is the first time I've picked up one of her stand alone books. Meh. One dimensional characters, unbelievable plot twists, evangelical moralizing about eating meat...with none of the sweet and funny touches her other books have. Skip it and wait for the next Richard Jury / Melrose Plant book.

Ravens by George Dawes Green

So good! One of those books that you can't put down because you really want to find out what happens next. I thought Green perfectly captured a place and time. The characters were believable and fully drawn and you cared about all of them, even the ones who were doing some pretty nasty stuff. A great little thriller.

Dream House by Valerie Laken

I feel like I read this a very long ago...and already wrote about it? Too lazy to determine if this is true. Anyway, I liked this book. A good study of relationships and family and how people freeze each other out. The main plot had enough tension and thrills to keep you turning the pages. Also fun to read about people doing major renovations on their home without you having to lift a finger.

Dead in Dallas and Club Dead by Charlaine Harris

Great trash. Funny, quick plots, lots of sex, hilariously detailed bad fashion choices.

Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby

I didn't like this as much as others by Hornby (I loved About a Boy, especially), but it was still a good read. As usual, Hornby perfectly captures the mindset of music obsessed fans, and there were enough hilarious one liners to make up for the fact that really not that much happens.

The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate by Jacqueline Kelly

Loved, loved, loved this book. Thanks to babelbabe for a great recommendation.

In Defense of Childhood: Protecting Kid's Inner Wildness by Chris Mercogliano

I reviewed this here.

Party of One: The Loners' Manifesto  by Anneli Rufus

If you can get past the giant chip Rufus has on her shoulder about how loners are perceived in the media and in real life, this book is fascinating. I definitely identify as a loner and recognized myself in many of the passages. I guess the difference is that I have never been ostracized or made to feel inferior by anyone because of my loner tendencies. I am lucky that I am from a family of loners; we understand each other and give the necessary space. My husband is most definitely not a loner and so we've had to come to an agreement about to deal with that in a marriage. I compromise, he compromises; no one is happy. Sounds like a typical marriage, huh? My biggest issue is how to balance my need to be alone with my two children's need to never, ever be more than 6 inches away from me at any time. Another great recommendation from babelbabe.

Little Bee by Chris Cleave

DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES READ THIS BOOK. I am warning you now.

Not Safe for Work

Oh dear internet friends...if I could figure out how to take a picture with my cell phone and put it up on my blog we would all be laughing together right now...instead of me laughing by/at myself.

I am at work, pumping. I would not take a picture of the actual pumping that is happening, but maybe some sort of artful shot that captured the essence of my basically naked body sitting in my office chair without actually showing anything. I look like a cabaret dancer / prostitute. I'm wearing one of my new dresses, with black patterned tights and black knee high boots. Or, I WAS wearing that dress. Pumping is rather impossible in a dress, so I just took it off and am sitting here in my pumping bra, tights and boots. In my office. Awesome. With a door that doesn't lock. Hopefully the fact that it is closed, along with the extremely loud wheezing gasps coming from my pump will keep everyone out.

Thanks for sharing this special moment with me.

Survival

N. and I were watching Knocked Up this weekend and at one point he turned to me and dropped this gem.

"You look a lot like Katherine Heigl. Except she doesn't have such dark circles under her eyes."

Now in actuality, Katherine Heigl and I do not look very much alike. Granted we both have blond hair, brown eyes, weak chins and big boobs, but that's about it. So the comment was misguided, but appreciated. However, he was correct about one thing;  I do have some seriously dark circles right now. That's what happens when you are awoken numerous times each and every night for three months straight and you are old to begin with. I'm beginning to think that people who have children in their 20s are geniuses.

Emma is not the problem. She either sleeps completely through the night, from 10ish until 6ish (90% of the time) or she might wake up once around 2 a.m. to eat. She's a dream baby from a sleep standpoint. No, I am up all night due to my three year old.

We've basically tried everything possible to keep him in his bed for the last 3 months, to no avail. I've read a bunch of books, asked advice from everyone, and everything we've tried has FAILED. This has been quite difficult to deal with for obvious reasons (sleep deprivation sucks for one) and because we have gone through sleep training with him before a few times and it always worked. For the most part he's been a good sleeper, even as a newborn. So it was extremely frustrating that what worked in the past wasn't working now.

I just couldn't understand what was bothering him so much. Then a couple of weeks ago Will and I were eating lunch and he said,

"Remember when you were in the hospital, mom? I was lonely and I cried. When are you going back to the hospital? Can I stay with you at the hospital next time?"

I wish I could have seen my face during this discussion. The light bulb FINALLY went on and I realized what the root of the sleeping issue is. Obviously we knew having a baby would disrupt his life and I expected that there would be issues. But he seemed to have adjusted so well to having the baby around that his sleeping problems didn't really make sense. And there it is. His issue is not that Emma is here, his issue is that I wasn't here when she was born. God, writing this is making me cry. And also feel like an idiot for not getting this earlier.

N. and I spent three nights in the hospital when Emma was born, and my parents came to stay with Will. I knew that he was going to have a hard time with me being gone, but I thought having his beloved grandma over would be enough to help him. I haven't spent a night away from him that he would remember, so I was aware that it would be hard. Even so, I clearly underestimated how sensitive a kid he is. Not that I could have done anything different about staying in the hospital, but I could have handled the last three months differently.

So, once I realized that the reason he wakes up 10 times a night and desperately wants to sleep in our bed is because he's afraid that I won't be there when he wakes up (gulp), I decided to revise our sleep training practices a bit. We had put a gate up across his door, and I would just get up every time he woke up and put him back into his bed. This was ineffective and exhausting and he was clearly traumatized by the idea that he couldn't get out of his room. And did I mention it didn't work? I've done it every night for the last month with no improvement in his sleeping whatsoever. In fact, it was getting worse.

Our new method basically goes against everything I've ever read about sleep training but it has vastly improved the situation, so I'm going with it for awhile. First, I've spent a lot of time reassuring him that I'm not going anywhere. Then, whoever puts him to bed (we alternate nights), reads stories and then lies in bed with him until he falls asleep. This doesn't take very long (maybe 10 minutes) and has done wonders to keep him in bed. When he wakes up at night I get up and rock him back to sleep (usually takes about a minute). Finally, if he wakes up near enough to the time we get up, we let him crawl into bed with us so we can all get that last half hour or hour of sleep.

I can not tell you how much better our lives are since we started this about two weeks ago. He now falls asleep quickly (we were putting him back in bed over and over for hours), and he is only waking up once at night, usually around 2 a.m. I rock him for a minute and he goes back to sleep until 5:30 or 6. He's even taking his regular two hour naps again (he has been very sporadically napping in the last few months). I am hopeful that the middle of the night wakings will stop soon too.

What is the moral of this story? Sleep deprivation makes for bad parenting? The best advice in the world won't work if it isn't right for your child? I don't know. I guess I've come to realize that parenting is all about survival. Sometimes you have to do whatever it takes to keep everyone happy and healthy and worry about the consequences later on. When you aren't sleeping, everything is awful. You can't work on things like potty training when you can't keep your eyes open and your three year old's behavior has regressed to that of an 18 month old because he is tired too.

In other news, I am back at work today! And I don't feel guilty at ALL. In fact, I pretty much skipped out of the door and was at work earlier than I maybe ever have been. I very much enjoyed my latte this morning, my lunch with coworkers, and time spent on the computer without anyone asking me if they could press the buttons while I was trying to type. N. brought the kids in before lunch so I could nurse Emma and that was great. I think I will enjoy this part-time living for the next year. I'm not sure how N. is faring at his first day alone with both of them for longer than an hour...guess I'll find out tonight!

Communication Breakdown

So potty training is not going well. To be honest, it's not going at all. Will was so resistant to it before the baby was born that I figured I might as well wait until after she was born, when I'd have more time due to my maternity leave. Hahahahahahahaha....more time. That's hilarious.

I did make a real effort a few weeks ago. We had a week of no diaper hours in the morning, where I stuffed him with juice and asked him if we wanted to use the potty 20 times every hour. The result? Wet pants, crying, and begging for diapers again. Number of successful pees on the potty? Zero. Then we all got sick and I gave up for awhile.

We've been reading a lot of books about using the potty and talking about it constantly. He also has plenty of opportunities to use it at daycare, where almost all of the kids are doing it. He keeps telling his teacher that he'll use the potty "tomorrow." Every time I try to get him to use it at home he says no, or that he doesn't have to use the potty, or basically ignores me.

Yesterday I had a brilliant thought. I realized that he was a little confused about the difference between pooping and as we say, "tooting." He often says that he has pooped when in fact there is just a lot of gas action. So, when he did poop I asked him if he wanted to see the poop and help me flush it down the potty. He agreed and was very excited. Until he saw it.

I held up the dirty diaper and he said, "Why is there dog poop in my diaper?"

I said, "That's not dog poop, that's Will's poop!"

At which point he burst into tears and since then has asked me every 10 minutes why the dog pooped in his diaper.

I am alternating between laughing about this and feeling like a complete failure as a parent. Seriously, dog poop? How can you potty train a kid who thinks a dog broke into the house and pooped in his diaper...as he was wearing it? Help!

Pump it up

My baby is turning three months old this week. I don't even know how this is possible already. Hand in hand with that milestone is the looming return-to-work dreadful day, next Tuesday. And, what follows that? That's right...pumping. I'm not sure what I'm dreading the most; returning to a stressful job where work has surely just been piling up on my desk while I've been gone, or starting to pump again.

I mostly enjoy nursing, but pumping ranks right up there as one of my least favorite activities ever. It's hard to figure out which aspect I hate the most. Is it sitting half naked in my office, with the door closed and the tell-tale whirring of the pump announcing itself to my office mates? Is it the uncomfortable 20 minutes three times a day where I live in fear that my nipples will actually be suctioned off? Is it cleaning the damn thing in the sink in the kitchen that not only my organization but many others in my building use? Is it carrying the ridiculous and heavy black pleather bag with my pump essentials around with me everywhere? Is it wanting to punch myself in the face for being super excited that my mom bought me some new work clothes and then realizing that my four new, somewhat hip, sweater dressers make pumping virtually impossible unless I want to be COMPLETELY naked in my office? Or is it the fact that despite pumping for 7 months with William I never, ever was able to pump more than 3 ounces at one time (and that was a good day.).

Well, it's obviously all of those things, and many more. So why do I do it? I guess nursing is rewarding enough to keep it up. Maybe. I remember with Will I took it one day at a time. I kept telling myself that I could stop whenever I wanted to and just let my milk slowly dry up. Of course that didn't happen. I pumped and nursed until he was 10 months old and started to bite me. We came to a mutual decision that we were finished with nursing and neither of us ever looked back.

I've been trying to figure out what exactly is so rewarding about nursing. I know breast milk is better for the baby, blah, blah blah. I do not in any way feel that formula is bad though, and plan to supplement Emma with it, as I did with Will. I do love the calorie burning aspect of nursing, that's for sure. It is nice to just pull out a boob and not have to bother with measuring things, and warming up things and cleaning bottles. I love that I can comfort her so easily. And it doesn't cost anything. Basically it boils down to me being lazy and cheap.

Somehow I guess that is enough, because I keep doing it even though there are so very many reasons I can think of against nursing. Here's a brief list:

1. I have been glued to her side for the last 3 months. I have literally not spent more than an hour and a half away from her since she's been born (besides sleeping at night). While I do enjoy her company, it might be nice to see a movie once in awhile.

2. I have suffered, and I do mean suffered, from four clogged ducts and a blister on my nipple. I do not want to go into detail about how awful the blister was, but suffice to say that it was at times nearly unbearable.

3. Nursing takes up a huge portion of my day, and makes it hard to spend time with Will. Emma nurses every two hours during the day, like clockwork. I mean that literally--I can tell the time by her. If she last nursed at 8 a.m., she will be ready to go at exactly 10 a.m. She nurses for about 20 minutes and then with the burping, changing of the diaper, rocking to sleep, etc...there is not much time to do something with Will, or say unload the dishwasher, before she needs to eat again.

4. I worry every day that she is not getting enough milk. Why? Because like Will was, she is a very slow gainer. Borderline failure-to-thrive in the medical lingo. Having been through this once before, the worry is not consuming my life, but I still think about it. However, Will is now a giant, so I keep that in mind. I apparently just have children who are born at the top end of the charts, but then gain so slowly for the first three or four months that they end up on the bottom of the charts. She is still gaining height inches and her head is growing at a normal pace, so I think she is fine. But she is skinny. If she were formula fed I doubt I would have the same worries. She might gain weight the same way, but at least we'd know how much she was eating.

However, all of these problems mean nothing because until yesterday Emma absolutely refused to take a bottle. I didn't really think this problem existed until I had a baby who decided bottles are the enemy. Will took one from birth, and we never had the dreaded "nipple confusion." He was happy to get food in any form. Emma screamed, then refused to clamp her tiny lips around the nipple, then basically fell asleep. Every time we tried. We tried various nipples, formulas, breast milk, bottles, positions, etc. No luck. I was strating to feel quite concerned for N.'s sake, because when I go back to work 20 hours a week he will be home with her, and as far as I know he is unable to lactate. Then, miracle of miracles, she drank three ounces of formula yesterday at one sitting. What a huge relief.

I thought I was going somewhere with this, but my sleep deprived mind has pretty much just shut down. To sum up; nursing is painful but cheap, pumping sucks, and babies who won't take a bottle are just plain mean. No one has ever blogged about that before, huh? I'll try to be more original next time. I'm doing all that I can to avoid writing AGAIN about how my son basically hasn't slept since Emma was born...sigh.

Here she is at almost three months. My sweet little constant companion. I'm going to miss her so much next week.

Getting Schooled

I've been reading the perfect storm of blogs, books and articles in newspapers and magazines depicting SAHMing and home schooling in a very appealing way to me. This is a topic that I've never really thought about before. I grew up in a small town with 3 elementary schools, one middle school and one high school. Everyone went to public school except for a few kids who went to the small Lutheran and Catholic elementary schools and then they all ended up at the public high school. I don't think I had ever heard of home schooling, with the one exception of my friend who spent our second grade year sailing around the Caribbean with his parents. They theoretically taught him on the boat, making home schooling sound pretty awesome.  

Anyway, I always assumed that my kids would go to our neighborhood public school, as it's only a block away, when I thought of it at all. Then N. brought up the idea of Will going to a new Spanish immersion elementary school in our city. N. is Hispanic and speaks both English and Spanish fluently. He loves the idea of Will connecting with that part of his heritage, and I do too. There are some fairly significant negatives associated with enrolling him in that school though, which I won't go into now, so that decision is one we have to think about. But it got me thinking about the idea of alternatives to public school.

Then I started to read In Defense of Childhood: Protecting Kids' Inner Wildnessby Chris Mercogliano. Oh my...a whole new world opened up to me. If you are familiar with the history and theory of public education this book probably won't be as eye opening to you as it was to me. The premise is that kids today have very different childhoods than we did growing up, and certainly far different than our parents and grandparents did. Different in that today they are basically never allowed to be alone, independent, or really ever free. Every minute of their day is supervised by an adult, and their play time is so safe and scripted and supervised that is can hardly be called play. He blames this on two main things; the culture that has produced the over the top "helicopter" parenting that has exploded in the last two decades, and the public school system.

Mercogliano teaches at an alternative school in Albany, so he's not against formalized schooling per se, but he has many problems with traditional public schools. He spends a lot of time detailing the history of public schools, particularly in America, which was a fascinating history lesson to me. He shows plenty of persuasive evidence that explains how the whole concept of public schools, outdoor playgrounds and even group activities like boy scouts, etc., were formed as a way to civilize and control children; to mold them into model citizens by getting rid of individualism and emphasizing the importance of the greater good. Not to get all Ayn Rand on you here, but I found that chilling and it rang true to me.

I started to think about my experience in the public school system, including the public university I attended for undergrad and grad school. On the one hand, my parents had no money when I was growing up, so if the public school system (particularly the university) didn't exist and wasn't affordable, I can't imagine what my education would have been like. On the other hand, probably my strongest memories of school are negative.

I was very shy, a loner, and had a hard time with the social aspects of school. I was also a smart kid, a great reader, yet I had very little encouragement from teachers to pursue that. In fact I can think of many examples right off the top of my head where I was discouraged from reading. In second grade my teacher would give me extra work to do when I finished the work in class instead of letting me read my own books. I distinctly remember that we were doing these SRA (I don't remember what that stood for) assignments, which were basically reading comprehension exercises. You read a short story, answered questions and then moved on the next level. I would finish what was assigned to me far before the others in the class, and then get out my book to quietly read for pleasure while everyone else finished. The teacher hated this and refused to let me do it. Isn't that crazy? My mom had to intervene to the principal to let me have sanctioned reading time at my desk.

In high school one of my English teachers accused me of plagiarizing in a book review because he didn't believe that I, or any other junior in high school, could have read the book, which was One Hundred Years of Solitudeby Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I didn't grow up in Communist Russia, people, this was a very middle class small town near the university town in the midwest, in the late 80s and early 90s.

The picture Mercogliano paints of how children are encouraged to learn at his school is enticing. It made me wonder what my life would be like now if I had attended a school like that. I would have been the perfect candidate for that type of self directed learning. I was passionate about reading and art as a child (and was an art major in college), but I was encouraged by my teachers and even my well meaning parents to consider them to be "hobbies" or pastimes. I remember being bored out of my mind in class in high school, desperately wishing to be home where I could read a book or work on a painting. I skipped my high school prom (despite being asked by more than one boy, thank you very much) because I wanted to stay home and finish working on a painting that I was going to enter in a local art show.

Reading this book has made me start to think about how I want Will and now Emma to be educated. Maybe public school isn't the only choice. I don't live in a community where private schools are very common and the boarding school concept is completely foreign here. But home schooling is becoming popular. This book has made me seriously consider, could I do that?

I discussed the idea with N. and he reminded me that pretty much all that I know about science and math has been gleaned from repeated viewings of Curious George (magnetism is MY favorite invisible force too, Man With the Yellow Hat!). I am not joking about this, unfortunately. This remarkable gap in my knowledge has only been reinforced by reading Tiffany Ard's amazing efforts at homeschooling on her blog, Electric Boogaloo. I very much wish that I could attend the Ard School of Arts and Sciences too...or at least send my kids to it.

So, maybe home schooling won't work for our family, I don't know. But the idea of alternatives to public school is something that I plan to think about seriously for the next few years. Does anyone have any thoughts on this, or experience with alternative schooling? I'm really interested in other opinions.

Genius

This was the conversation I had with Will while driving to my parent's house last week.

Will: "Hey mom, caterpillars turn into butterflies!"

Me: "That's right, honey."

Will: "And tadpoles turn into frogs!"

Me: "Very good! We saw that on Curious George, didn't we?"

Kristin's inner thoughts: "Man, my kid is a genius. Seriously, it's amazing how he processes information and remembers it and really understands things. It's not like he's just repeating what he heard, I think he gets the concept! We better start saving for college."

Silence for a good 20 seconds.

Will: "And then monkeys turn into lions!"

Me: "Hmmmmm....."

August 2009, or Life Trumps Books

The month of August was an insane blur. In no particular order of importance, we did the following:

• brought home a new baby
• attended the sweetest and most wonderful wedding ever, with the baby but sans the boy, in a different city (and she was only 2.5 weeks old--very well traveled kid already)
• spent a day in my parent's city for the annual Lion's Chicken and Corn Roast, which was great until our "good" car, the car we trust to take on the highway, broke down.
• Went on vacation for a long weekend with my parents and sister and brother-in-law. This vacation involved freezing cold weather, indoor water parks, clogged milk ducts necessitating trips to small town emergency clinics in wet swimsuits, and neither child sleeping at all, yet I will fondly remember it as the BEST VACATION EVER due to the fact that other adults were around all day to hold my baby and play with my son so I could do things like shower and drink a glass of wine and go canoeing with my dad. We very much hesitated in planning this trip because you know, the baby was 3 weeks old, but thank God we went ahead with it.

Despite all of the fun times, I had pretty good chunks of time to read due to nursing constantly. I read one really great book, one fun read, one depressing as hell book and one that was too boring so technically I only read half. Details, details. I also decided to not read The Girl Who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson (2nd in the series) because I knew it was going to be too intense and disturbing for me. There is something about reading books about sexual torture, violence and murder while breastfeeding a darling, innocent baby that is wrong. Maybe in a few months, because I do want to know Lisbeth's back story.

Sing Them Home by Stephanie Kallos

This was a recommendation from babelbabe. I haven't read a book like this in a long time...a thick, engrossing, complete world. I have to say that it took me a long time to get into it. I read it every time I nursed and I probably would have returned it to the library if it hadn't been the only book I had at home, and if I hadn't been held captive by the baby 8 times a day. The first maybe 200 pages were hit or miss for me. I liked it, I didn't like it. It was interesting, it bored me. But then I got hooked. I think the problem for me was that I feel the author was stretching herself a little too much with the "magic realism" portions of the book. They just weren't that magical, and didn't ring true to me. And I usually love that style of writing, but I found myself skimming those parts. I felt she was much stronger when writing the more realistic characters in the novel, particularly telling Larken and Gaelen's stories. I could have done without any of the Bonnie chapters. The character annoyed me to no end. Anyway, I ended up loving the book and I'm so glad that I stuck with it.

Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris

The first book in the Sookie Stackhouse (True Blood is based on this) series. I've read another series by Harris, the Lily Bard books, and I liked this much better. Harris is definitely not a great writer, but she is certainly entertaining and the plots are fast paced and pretty funny. I'll read more in the series.

Company of Liars by Sharon Maitland

Oh my Lord was this a depressing read. I'm not sure why I thought it would be anything but that, after all it is a book that takes place during the Black Plague, but wow...it's sad all of the way through and then ends on an even more macabre note. I liked it though (I know!). I find that time period fascinating and the author does an excellent job bringing it to life.

A Conspiracy of Paper by David Liss

I really liked another book by this author, The Coffee Trader, but this one kind of bored me. I guess I just wasn't in the mood. Another period novel, this time London in 1719. It's about the stock market and politics and murder and corruption and being Jewish in an amazingly anti-Semitic culture. All interesting topics, right? I just couldn't get into it. The plotting and pacing seemed off to me--too slow.

99% Perfect

 Hi there! Remember me? I can't believe how fast the last six weeks have flown by. I also can't believe that I just wrote that, much less meant it, but it's true.

If someone would have told me how crazy / fun / exhausting / wonderful this newborn stage with Emma would be I would never have believed them. I distinctly remember the first six weeks of Will's life as incredibly difficult / annoying / boring / hard / and pretty much sucking in general. I used to tell people with great frequency and passion that he was going to be an only child. Poor N. got a phone call from me every afternoon around 3 p.m. where I was either in tears and inconsolable or threatening to leave the baby out on the curb if he didn't come home NOW. In retrospect I realize that I had more than a passing acquaintance with the "baby blues." I came out of that fog around 6 to 8 weeks after his birth, and finally started to enjoy him and being a mom.

So based on that experience I was dreading the immediate post partum period with Emma. Part of the reason I wanted to attempt a VBAC was because I was convinced that some of the depression and anger and anxiety I experienced after Will was born was due to the unexpected c-section and subsequent long hospital stay and recovery. I also wasn't sure how in the world I was going to care for an almost three year old and a newborn with a large gash in my abdomen.

I had a successful vaginal birth with Emma (I will get around to writing about this at some point) and I think it made a huge difference. I have basically just felt happy since she was born. This despite the fact that there have been some incredibly difficult moments. I have been in far more pain, and for much longer, as a result of the VBAC than I was with the c-section. The less said about the first two weeks home the better, but through it all, I secretly felt full of joy. Even when Will was behaving fairly abominably, and our ability to deal with him was at an all point, exhausted beyond reason low, I still had little moments where I would just stop and shiver because I was so happy. Weird, huh?

Emma is just the sweetest little thing in the world. I can't believe how much easier it is the second time around. Don't get me wrong--ffiguring out how to handle two children at once, particularly when one of them is attached to your boob 24/7 and the other REALLY wants you to play trucks or race around the backyard or get him some juice or read 40 million books to him at all times is not easy. It is in fact, very, very difficult. But we are all starting to adjust and figure it out. I keep thinking that this could be much worse, and that we are so lucky. We could have a colicky baby. Or a baby who never lets you put her down. Instead, we have a funny little baby who SLEEPS THROUGH THE NIGHT. I'll give you a moment to process that.

I actually didn't even know that was possible with a 6 week old breastfed baby. The first time she did it I called my friend the lactation consultant the next morning in a panic. She assured me that it does happen, and as long as she is eating 8 times or more during the day and still gaining weight it's fine. She's slept from 9 or 10 every night until about 5 every morning. And then I nurse her and she goes back to sleep until 8 or 8:30! It's crazy. I would be in heaven if Will could also manage to sleep through the night. Of all the ways he had to regress...but we are dealing with it. We finally resorted to putting the gate up across his door this week and I think he has gotten the message. He is going to bed much better than right after she was born (usually asleep by 8 pm) and waking up once or twice in the night to sleep in our bed. Not the worst situation in the world, and we put up with it for the last month, but now that the baby is sleeping through the night I am very anxious to have everyone sleeping through the night. In particular, me.

Anyway, I can't get enough of my darling daughter. She is beginning to be alert and interested in things and I love to see her personality develop. She's a bit of a mystery to me. Will was one of those babies with a very distinct personality from birth. He held his head up and looked around an hour after he was born and never stopped being curious. He hated to be held towards your chest because he was clearly missing out on exciting times. My father in law used to call him a meercat, and that's an apt description. He would hold himself ramrod straight and look around from a super young age. Not a cuddly baby at all. In contrast, Emma loves to curl up in my arms and just stare into my eyes. She does look a little suspicious, but I'll take it.

She loves to hear her brother's (extremely loud at all times) voice and doesn't flinch at all when he comes running towards her 1,000 times a day to plant big, sloppy kisses all over her face. He was the first person she smiled at. She is still quite cautious with her smiles; they are reserved for truly joyous occasions only, like when she sees me after waking up from a nap, or the best thing of all, when she is on her changing table with her pants off. I'm not sure what this means for her future, but we've discovered almost nothing makes her happier, and we are happy to oblige. She's at that stage where she thinks we are ok, but if we could just leave her on the couch, flat on her back, so she can stare at the ceiling fan for awhile, she'd really appreciate it. No problem, sweetie.

I'll leave you with my two babies. More posting in the near future, I promise. I have been reading a ton of good books and need to share.