Two Months? For Real?

I just can't believe it's been two months since Jambuca was born. It feels like it's only been a couple of weeks. Maybe a month.

At the same time, though, it's as if he's been here forever. I can't quite imagine the world without him, any more than I can imagine the world without e-baby (Was there ever a world without e-baby? Must've been boring).

With 2 months comes reluctant independence as my parents went home on Tuesday, and I'll return to work on Monday. I feel more prepared to return to work this time. But I also feel like I could do this baby thing all the time if I had to. But, um, I think e-baby would have to keep going to daycare. Two-year-olds. Heh.

Jambuca is changing daily and right now is getting more interested in people. He smiles and laughs, and is ticklish under his chin. He coos to me in baby conversations, in addition to his usual grunts, squeaks, and moans. He is still the noisiest baby ever, but he doesn't cry very loudly. Now if he'd just sleep longer at night.

Peace & Fuzzy's New Baby Ireland!

Some pictures of the cutest 1-day-old in America are here.

Comfort Food

So, to pass the time waiting for a baby to be born, I have a discussion question. I was thinking about what makes 'comfort food.' So leave me a comment with your idea of the ultimate comfort food meal (regardless of whether you could actually eat it).

I'll start.

Fluffy pancakes
Breakfast sausage patties
cheapo Aunt Jemima syrup (better yet- the stuff in the tubs at McDonald's)
Grits
Strong coffee

Tag! Your turn.

Twitterpated

I finally gt around to signing up for a Twitter account, since sending updates from my phone in 160 characters or less is the most likely way that I'll ever post anything in the next few months. Besides, my 1-handed typing is better on my phone than the laptop, and I never have >1 hand free lately. So, look to the right in the sidebar for my tweets.

Think Warm, Healthy Mommy and Baby Thoughts

Some of you know Peace and Fuzzy, who are expecting their first baby soon. Well, it hasn't been an easy pregnancy (HUGE understatement) and now it looks like they're going to try and get the baby out some time this week-- about 3 weeks early. No matter how the baby comes out, it will come with higher-than-your-average risks, and I guess I should just admit here that I'm scared for my friends. If you pray, or if you meditate, or whatever, please send up a thought for Peace, and for Fuzzy, for their baby, and for her doctors to do everything they can to keep everyone healthy.

Eventually Things Will Slow Down

I can't believe it's been so long since my last post-- sorry about that-- but I haven't slowed down much at all. My mom is going home in just over a week, and then a few days later, I'll be back at work. If things seem hectic now, I dread what they'll be like then.

We've been having fun and getting lots of busywork done. I got the baby announcements printed up (finally) and I might even get them sent out before Jambuca's first birthday. E-baby has adjusted really well to sisterhood, although I am really, really tired of getting up at night to help her get her pants back on when she's gotten up to pee at 3am. Baby brother wants to eat at 10pm, 1am, 3:30am, and 5am every night. To compound the sleep troubles, she is uninterested in her afternoon naps since we switched to daylight savings time. When she's at home, I only get good sleep when she takes a nap and someone else takes Jambuca for a couple of hours. Losing that will be really, really tough to handle. I have been making up for that relaxed, refreshed feeling with girl scout cookies.

Next week my dad comes to town, and the next weekend is Jambuca's baptism. We're all really excited about dad gettting to finally meet the baby, and I'm sure my mom is more excited than any of us.

This is a really boring post because I'm pretty much running on caffeine and sugar, so I'm going to go bury my brain in another terribly scripted episode of Madeline. The lyrics for the songs in that series make me twitchy.

Jambuca's One-Month-Day

Yesterday was Jambuca's one-month birthday, and I didn't even turn on the computer the entire day, so I didn't get this post up until now. Happy monthday, baby boy!

In the last week he has entered positive numbers for his gestational age, and there must be something special about that because he has also just exploded in his growth and in his awareness of the outside world. Remember those pictures from the hospital? Skinny arms and legs, small round cheeks, tennis ball head, no butt at all. Now? HA! Let's just say that SNG has taken to calling him New York Superfudge Chunk. E-baby calls him Chubby-Love. I can't stop gumming his big fat cheeks and tickling his 2nd chin. Even his shoulders are chubby. It makes sense because for the first three weeks of his life, all he did was eat, sleep, poop, and pass wind. He's still passing a lot of wind. A LOT. It's like Ooooooooklahoma in his pants. He's still eating and sleeping a lot, too, but he's spending a lot more time awake and looking around. The most interesting thing to look at is the cabinet full of coffee cups. That's my boy.

Now, I wouldn't want you to think "Oh, no fair, she's getting so much sleep with a newborn!" No, sadly, I'm not getting nearly as much sleep as I did with e-baby. He sleeps a lot, and the entire time he's sleeping, he grunts, yells, groans, makes choking sounds (scares the heck out of me), gurgles on spitup (which also sounds like drowning, and scares the heck out of me), and squeaks. There is no sleep for anyone else when Jambuca sleeps. Oh, and he wants to eat every 2-3 hours. Just like when he was born. The longest he's ever gone for a stretch at night is a hair over 3 hours.

Still, it's no worse than I'd expected, and he's had no signs of colic thus far, so I count myself very lucky anyway. Plus I'm still getting a nap every afternoon, which does wonders for my outlook on life.

OK, OK, enough chatter. I know what you're really here for-- the pictures are here. :-)

edited to add: at Jambuca's Brazelton assessment today, he was 10lb 11.5 oz, and 22 in.

The Health Report

edited to add: Oh, well, I spoke too soon-- I got the stomach bug, too. More fun to go around! My house might be quarantined until the end of my maternity leave.

Well, all of the positive healthy thoughts must have helped because so far, Jambuca is in good health, and e-baby is completely recovered. I can't really say the same for everyone in our household, though. My mom caught e-baby's intestinal flu and I caught her cold. SNG hasn't caught anything yet, but I probably just jinxed him by saying so.

In other news, yesterday was Jambuca's due date, so he is now gestationally 1 day old! Woo! So here's an update.

He can roll onto one side on his own. He started doing this when he was only a few days old. Yes, he is a strong little guy, but more than that I think it shows just how badly he wants to be sleeping on his side.

He tracks people's voices in coversations with his head, and seems very intent on listening to everything. Which is really cute, because it look like he's paying all this attention to what everyone is saying. You half expect him to jump into the conversation.

His binocular vision is developing well-- he rarely goes cross-eyed anymore. Too bad, because the cross eyed thing is great entertainment.

He still sleeps almost all of the time, and he is still a very noisy sleeper. He squeaks, hums, and grunts almost constantly. When he is awake, he is quiet and observant.

He is a very different temperament than e-baby, in a lot of ways that make him a crazy-easy baby to care for. He is just more laid back overall. I could tell this difference when he was in my belly, too-- she was a kung-fu fighter, and he practiced t'ai chi. It's the same moves, but different speed and intensity. It will be in his best interest to keep that temperament for the long-term, if he wants a peaceful relationship with his big sister.

E-baby is, by the way, doing very well. She is still completely crazy about baby brother, and seems to have mostly forgiven us for being so lame about making her wash her hands all the time and hug him gently and so on. In fact, looking back, I think all her rage and pestilence was more the result of rocking a cold and a stomach flu simultaneously than the result of our new household member. Having experienced at least her cold first-hand, she felt pretty crappy before we even saw any symptoms. And that was peanuts compared to the stomach bug, a few days later.

But five days of having both kids at home with e-baby sick as a dog reminded me (once again) that I am not cut out to be a stay-at-home mom. Matrix algebra is a whole lot easier than parenthood.

Think Healthy Thoughts

E-baby was sent home from daycare today with a fever, feeling like rot. She went straight to sleep, and an hour later woke up screaming hysterically. I think it was when the fever broke, but then it went back up again. She's been taking Tylenol and Motrin alternately, but they don't seem to be helping much. She hasn't eaten lunch or any snacks all day, but she vomited this afternoon. She just feels rotten.

I hope she can get some sleep tonight, but I don't think it'll be a restful night for anyone. And like some kind of salt-and-pepper-haired superhero, my mom showed up just in time to help out. She arrived this afternoon. Yay!

So please send some healthy thoughts toward e-baby, and especially toward Jambuca, who is still gestationally minus-five-days-old, and doesn't really have the immune system for this kind of bug.

Ten-day Update

We've been a family of four for ten days now, and are still kind of getting used to things, but there have been no surprises. A few unpleasantries, but nothing unexpected.

After we got home from the hospital, e-baby was so excited to have her new babydoll toy here in the house.

He's tiny! He cries! He coos! He looks at you! He wees for real! He's PERFECT!

She is the greatest hazard to his personal safety in the whole house. Her intentions are so good, but her execution is something short of gentle. So whenever they're in the same room, one parent has to be watching closely (and physically interfering a lot). As a result, she LOVES baby Jambuca, and is pretty angry with us. She's peed on herself (How does one pee defiantly? Just watch e-baby) three times, she refuses to bathe, she refuses to eat but wants to throw her plate (and mine!) to the floor. It's not always like that, but evenings are pretty rough around here.

Still, none of it is unexpected. I expected her also to be angry with baby brother, and maybe that's coming next, or maybe not. Hopefully it will only be a few weeks before she comes down from her battle horse and decides to eat some dinner.

Our strategy has been Dr Spock all the way-- give her as much attention as is possible (while still meeting everyone's needs, of course), if someone comes over, focus a lot of attention on her, let her "help" with baby brother if she wants to, like baths and diaper changes. That all seems to work, but there's really no way to let her carry him around like she wants to, so she's perturbed a lot of the time. Dolls are simply not an acceptable substitute.

Jambuca's been to the doctor twice this week. Monday he has regained to his birth weight plus a little, and between Monday and Friday he gained 8 ounces. He now weighs 7lb, 9.5 ounces. Not exactly a chubster, but he has chubby baby cheeks at last and doesn't look skinny anymore. That last month in utero is really all about putting on layers of fat, which is what he missed out on in coming early. But the kid can EAT. He's making the most of life on land.

The Best Article of Baby Clothes, Ever

Of all the baby clothes we have for Jambuca, hands-down my favorite is the man-dress. It's the most practical thing ever.

Man-dress

It's like a sleepy-sack, but completely open at the bottom. When he's tiny, his legs can stay curled up inside like a frog. As he gets bigger, he can stretch out long. Midnight diapering is easy because there are no snaps or zippers to confuse a bleary-eyed parent. It should fit for a long time, too!

We have three man-dresses, and I think I may have to dress him in them until Kindergarten.

Not only are they practical-- they're cute. I just don't know whether the manufacturer intended for them to be called man-dresses. But if anyone can make such a thing look macho, Jambuca can.

A-baby's Grand Welcome Party

First things first, I have birthday pictures of the little dude here.

So, a-baby (a.k.a.Jambuca, not sure which one will stick on the blog) was technically due in another 2 weeks, 5 days. But hey, at 7lb, 1oz and 20.5 inches, my extrapolating skills tell me that I wouldn't have wanted to wait 3 more weeks. He was heading toward outsizing hs big sister, and we just. can't. have. that. So thanks, kiddo!

It all started out just like e-baby's, with a 2am wake-up of little teeny baby contractions that then lasted a long, long time. Around 5pm, when they were still teeny, easy, whatever kind of contractions, WHOOSH! my water broke (in SNG's office, sitting on state-owned property. Ask before you sit in any of his chairs, eh?). My doctor said to get to the hospital stat, but then my contractions didn't get a whole lot harder. I was kind of stalled at 4cm. For those outside this lingo, you start at zero cm. At 10cm, you get to push out a baby. On average, people usually dilate about a cm an hour. Four cm gets boring after awhile, and you don't want to sit around like that all night, so around 10pm my doctor said that I'd be getting pitocin (glossary moment 2-- it's a drug that kick-starts contractions). By the time the IV bag arrived, my own natural contractions had gotten pretty miserable, and I figured if was getting a drug-induced increase in pain, then I'd give the epidural another go. Last time, the epidural wasn't so hot. It kind of, well, wore off. Four hours before e-baby was born. Yuck. But everyone else says they are so nice.

The anesthesiologist was less friendly and more talented this time. Fine with me- I wasn't going to be staying for breakfast, as they say. About an hour of pitocin and still not much had changed. I was at 5cm. The nurse decided it was time to try lying on my right side. She left to eat some lunch or something. Within five minutes, the baby told me in no uncertain terms that he was on his way out, whether I was ready or not.

Five minutes, and I was at 10cm, and kiddo's head was starting to show from across the room. It took another 5 minutes for the doctor to arrive and put on her catcher's mitt. That was, unquestionably, the hardest 5 minutes of the year. Just try stopping a baby from coming out when he's determined-- ha!

One contraction consisting of 5 big breaths and kapow, BABY!

The only downside to having him come out so quickly is that the muck didn't get squeezed out of his lungs, and we've been working to get it out ever since. We are still in the hospital, sentenced to one more day of observation since he got daddy's blood type and is at high risk of jaundice. But in all he's a champ. He knew exactly how to eat from the first glimpse of the Milk Truck, and so far he's very tolerant of his big sister's EXUBERANT hugs. She's helping to squeeze the muck out, I think.

So that's the gory details. I'll post more (less gory) stories later.

Austin Truxillo Romaine

Weekend!

You know how sometimes the stars align, and you get everything on the "To Do" list done on the first day of the weekend? And other times the stars align and you don't get any of it done by the end of Sunday? This weekend has been the former kind. I started with a list that I was sure would take us more than 2 days to get done, but what do you know? We were done by bedtime yesterday! And now I can deal with those 4 freckly brown bananas by making banana bread. That wasn't even on the list! Ha! Take that, stars!

Before kids, we'd do everything on the list and still have time for a bike ride Saturday and Sunday mornings, and have time for a hike on Saturday afternoon, and a nice dinner out on Sunday night. And I'd cook up a dozen or 2 jars of jam, just for fun. In those days, our list would include such ambitious items as "build a new deck" and "plant a few flats of flowers" and things that we just don't even put on lists anymore.

Still, it feels so good to get everything on our measly list accomplished early. It helps that e-baby has been willing to go to bed before 9:30 the last two nights. And, just like that, I jinxed us to have all-nighters this week.