Choosing the Moments

It's no secret that, while I have loved each of my babies with my whole heart, I don't love having babies. It's not easy for anyone, but I especially find that the closer my babies get to a year old, the better mom I am and the more I can enjoy it.

I'm trying to experience this last baby a little bit differently. This evening I was up in his nursery, rocking him while he had a little pre-bedtime catnap in my arms. His hair was fluffy from his bath and his long legs stretching his 3-month sleeper to capacity. His little chubby fist clutched my sweatshirt strings and his mouth gently worked the pacifier.

In that moment, I was so grateful to have my baby. I hope these moments are what I remember (and then share as a grandmother, casting the whole relentlessly exhausting and frustrating job of motherhood in an inaccurately rosy light), rather than the difficulty of it all, and the times I feel like it's all too much.

(Like now, five minutes later when he's howling because he realized I put him in his swing and the two older kids are covered head to toe in spaghetti sauce and imperiously demanding drink refills. SIGH.)

This Week

My BFF's baby - a mere four months older than A (note the hands, awwww)

My sister, her youngest nephew and my nephew-to-be

A day in the park

"I know, mom! Let's fly a kite today!" Sometimes it's nice to say yes, even
when I would rather be napping

Proof I was there

Archer loved the see-saw

Less enthusiastic about the swing

Happy weekend all!

Favorites

I think I hit my low point this past weekend. I had a string of nights of really bad sleep, Archer had an epic fuss one evening (the kind of inconsolable screaming that took me right back to the Colic Days of Baby Brighton), Pacey started getting sick and I just didn't have the energy to enjoy my sister's visit the way I wanted to. Instead, I had a long, ugly cry about how overwhelming everything felt. Meanwhile she, my 28-week pregnant sister, cleaned my bathrooms, folded my laundry and played endless games of ponies (the torturous likes of which you really can't imagine) with my chatterbox of a daughter. Who is now deeply in love with her auntie and a bit disillusioned with mommy who is not terribly inclined towards playing ponies.

ANYWAY. It was nice to see her, lovely to see my kids reconnect with their TeeTee and I got clean bathrooms out of it :)

Today I have just the baby this morning (sitting on my lap, he says Hi) while the big kids are both in school. The house is almost eerily quiet. Without further ado - free time being rather severely limited - here are some favorite things right now.

Pacey, age 6 and 10 months

This kid is ridiculously adaptable. He has embraced his new school experience wholeheartedly. I love seeing him meander down the driveway to the bus each morning, excited to see what school has in store for him. He's already making huge strides (telling time, learning new sight words, etc) and I am very, very impressed with the ways this school is meeting his needs and communicating with me.

I love that he loves his independence. At 3:00 pm the bus drops him off at the end of our driveway (special transport FTW!) and he runs up the drive with a huge grin on his face. He drops his backpack in the entry, pulls his shoes off, immediately wants to know where Sister and Baby Archer are, and then announces he's hungry. It's all just so very normal and exactly what I pictured the elementary school experience to be like as a parent. Once again, I wish I could go back and tell the 2006/2007 me that things would be just fine with this kid of mine.

Not my favorite: the four frillion times he gets out of bed for various things before finally settling down for the night

Brighton, age 4 and 4 months

This girl is a lover. She snuggles the baby, she gets in my lap whenever it's free, gives her dad the hugest bear hugs and *hates* it if she misses hugging her big brother goodbye in the morning. Her imagination is unparalleled and I love hearing the stories she comes up with. She is very helpful and is starting to reliably complete the small household tasks I assign her.

She is very motivated to learn. I feel a little bad that I had to take her down to just two days of preschool a week, but it won't affect her. I did buy a selection of workbooks that she LOVES to work on and was tickled pink to have "homework" after her first day of school (just an About Me page to fill out). She's a smarty pants and I'm excited for her to start kindergarten next fall.

Not my favorite: The rather adolescent looks she shoots me sometimes and the way she says, "MOM, I KNOW" when I remind her of something she OBVIOUSLY already knows.

Archer, age 8 weeks

The smiles. Oh, the baby smiles. It never fails to amaze me what a drastic physiological response your body can have to a smile. He coos too, and will "talk" back and forth with me. I feel like he's my most responsive baby in that way so far. His little fist grasps the neck of my shirt now when he falls asleep in my arms. It's so sweet, as is the fact that he still sleeps best if I'm holding him (though terribly inconvenient at times).

Not my favorite: Formula poop/gas. Good lord. Also, the seeming disinterest in sleeping for longer stretches at night yet.

Chris, age Old

A little shout out to my husband who went on a trip to see a friend this past weekend. There were some...issues with said friend that sort of ruined the weekend for him. It's not my story to tell, but suffice it to say there is a credit card account with my name on it that bears a charge to a certain county jail for bail (not for my husband, I hasten to add). This friend screws up a lot, to be honest, but Chris has hung in there with him and tried to be there in various transitions in his life. I admire his loyalty (however I will be raising an eyebrow VERY LOUDLY if the suggestion of another trip comes up next year).

And now I have 20 minutes left before I'm due back for pick-up so I'm going to unload the dishwasher. Or maybe just snuggle my baby :)

Updates

Ah, well, best intentions, right?

I still haven't found the magic formula for having everyone's needs adequately met for ten minutes so I can come and splash some words on a page. Right now Pacey is at school, the baby is napping and Brighton is watching a highly educational show (ha) while she eats breakfast. I am cramming Grape Nuts in as quickly as I can and am determined to post a quick update...it's been a busy few weeks!

I turned 33. I took a two hour nap with Archer and we went out to dinner. The end. Awesome birthday. I feel mostly back to my old self although, you know, on a lot less sleep. My stint as a breastfeeder has come to an end (more on that in a minute) but not before I had mastitis. That sucked. A LOT. However, in the course of getting it diagnosed and treated on a Saturday I found what has to be the best Urgent Care in history. I was in and out with prescription in hand in 15 minutes. Every week I feel like I'm able to resume a bit more of my normal routine. It's a challenge not to feel defeated by the sheer amount of tasks necessary to just keep up with everything, but I am slowly learning to be okay with Good Enough.

Pacey has now lost a total of three teeth, started first grade and begun speech therapy at a new clinic with a new therapist who is the brunette, Midwestern version of Cameron Diaz (lucky kid). School is going very well so far. He is riding the bus (!) which is nice for many reasons but not least because his school starts at 8 and I was really dreading trying to get us all out the door to join the chaos that is morning drop off. Our elementary school has a huge open enrollment (kids from outside the school's catchment area) due to a Chinese immersion program as well as the bulk of the special education services, which means more parents have to drop off their kids than would be typical. Nice to avoid all that and Pacey loves riding the bus. He is totally stoked with the independence he gets and it's good for me to let go just a little more. He is part of a general education first grade classroom with para support and he spends a couple hours in the morning with his special education teacher in her classroom working on academics (she pre-teaches things they'll do in his general ed class as well as works on speech, OT skills and other areas he may need adjusted curriculum). We send a communication notebook back and forth and I hear from lots of different people about what he is doing during the day. It's a huge relief to have started the year and ironed out all the details. I don't recommend changing school districts during the summer if you can avoid it! :/

Brighton will start pre-K and gymnastics this week and I will start having a few hours with just Archer a couple days a week. I'm excited for her to have something all her own again. She is playing soccer on Saturday mornings through our parks and rec program and takes it very seriously (in a good way). They spent the first few weeks just learning skills and starting this weekend they will play short games. She continuously amazes Chris and I with her passion and energy and she is extremely engaging. Her imagination is incredible and she is a great social director for her and Pacey's play time. She misses her brother during the day and will often tell people we encounter how much she loves and misses him. Her vocabulary and language have really matured and I'm going to introduce her to Ramona Quimby and Mrs. Piggle Wiggle this fall.

Archer has progressed from a squalling bundle of flailing newborn limbs into a nicely rounded, sometimes smiley 7-week-old. After the initial first few weeks of smooth sailing with feeding, his tongue-tie (which Brighton also had, much more severely) started to interfere and I had to take him for a frenulectomy (fancy way of saying a doctor takes a pair of scissors and clips the frenulum underneath the tongue to release it). It's not a fun thing to have to do but I'd been through it before and his was much less dramatic (go figure). Following that, however, he developed identical symptoms to Brighton when she was diagnosed with milk protein intolerance. Think waking up screaming every 45 minutes, gas that would raise your eyebrows coming out of a grown man and arching/fussing during feedings. I took him into the pediatrician and she recommended a trial on hypoallergenic formula - the other option would have been to eliminate all dairy from my diet and continue breastfeeding. Considering I don't eat meat, that would have basically made me vegan and, well, I just wasn't that committed to nursing. Long story short, he improved dramatically on the formula, I am weaning off the pump and that is that. It was really nice to experience a normal, drama-free nursing stint and I'm happy he got six weeks of breastmilk but I'm comfortable with formula feeding too and, you know, it's nice to have a baby that doesn't scream 24-7. He smiles and is starting to use his hands purposefully. He is still happiest upright and has amazing head and neck control. Sleep is improving again and he's waking an average of twice a night which isn't too bad. Day time sleep is all over the place but it's going to be a challenge to get him on a nap schedule anyway, with all the other obligations we have.

We have lots of great things planned for the fall and I'm excited for the change in seasons. My sister will be here for a long weekend to meet Archer and Chris is taking a trip to visit a friend in New York. Life is starting to feel manageable again, which is a relief, although I definitely see what people mean about adding a third kid and how much it complicates things! Ok, I'm off to feed said third baby and give him a bath. His new formula smells...not good. :)

Taking a break from swimming at our friend's
country club 

She's almost caught up to him in height

Notable because he actually consented to be
laid down on a blanket without screaming

Birthday dinner

I love when babies sleep with their arms over
their heads like this. He doesn't get the
opportunity to be out of a swaddle very often.

First day of school (note little sister's face in
the background ;)

Bus!

Baby: now with 100% more smiles

And a performance for your viewing pleasure:

Four Plus One Does Not Just Equal Five

So...apparently people want to see/hear about how things are going. Sitting down at the computer is ridiculously difficult right now and, frankly, has to be sort of low on the priority list. But! I am here now, I estimate I have about 10 minutes before Archer realizes he is sleeping in his crib and not my arms and vocalizes his discontent about that! So, some quick updates.

Archer
We are, all four of us, pretty smitten with our new little guy. There are a hundred different things I didn't remember about having a newborn in the house and it's been a steep re-learning curve in some respects. He's so different from my other babies in many ways. He is the first to come out of the womb knowing exactly what to do from a breastfeeding standpoint so for now, he is nursing exclusively (I confess I feel sort of proud of this even though I didn't do much but follow his lead). He is the first to be soothed in any real way by a pacifier (mixed blessing there). His little cheeks are covered in baby acne right now, which we haven't experienced firsthand before. And there is the small matter of the sheer size of him at birth (a pound and four ounces heavier than B was).

In other ways it's all very familiar. He's been strong from Day 1 like my other two, working on lifting his head up from his second week of life. He's up several times in the night, although this doesn't feel (so far) like the long, dark, dread-filled nights I remember from B's babyhood. I'm sleeping in the nursery (we have a bed in there, something I find very convenient) and it's been a pretty smooth wake-feed-back-to-sleep cycle and feels mostly manageable. It helped that he gave me a couple of nights of sleeping 4-5 hours at a stretch to put a little money in the sleep bank.

Me
I'm doing pretty good. Part of the reason I waited so long to come and write here was that I wanted to get through the first few weeks of crazy rollercoaster hormones before spilling weirdo stuff all over the place. Post-partum hormones are truly insane. I feel leveled off now, and it is amazing how differently I am experiencing A's infancy without the added stress of anxiety/depression. The best thing that has come of sharing that struggle has been the number of people gently checking in on me this time around. I've been able to discuss PPD with friends who had similar experiences and it's a real bonding point. My husband has been very vigilant and questioned me closely during those early crying jags that occur for no reason whatsoever.

I definitely find it a daily challenge to accept that I can't do it all during this time period, that the house is going to be messier than usual and that the big kids just have to be ok with a slower pace of summer. I am so used to daily adventures and spending a large portion of our time out of the house; it's taken some getting used to spending so much time at home. I am trying to do just a little extra every day to beat back the chaos, but I am also taking time to nap with my baby while he's still so small and snuggly and spend a little time each day just staring and marveling at him.

Big Brother Pacey
This kid has taken a new baby in stride, just like we thought he would. Both kids adored having their grandparents here and they did just fine without me here. The first week I was home was a little rough...the kids were overtired and there were some pretty astonishing meltdowns from both. But we moved through it and Pacey is just so amazingly tender and loving towards Archer. He runs to try to help comfort him whenever he is crying and croons to him, "Come here baby, it's ok, it's ok." Although sometimes he just addresses me: "What's wrong with your baby?" He notices and points out what he perceives to be big brothers wherever we go now; it validates my hunch that he would feel much more like a BIG brother to Archer than he does to Brighton.

Big Sister Brighton
Oh, my former baby-for-four-years. She definitely had to do some adjusting to having had her position usurped. She is still quite attached to me and the realization that the baby was going to take up a LOT of time and attention on an ongoing basis hit her hard. She had some pretty spectacular tantrums in the first couple of weeks but it has evened out and she tells me every day how much she loves our baby. She is incredibly helpful and loves to hold Archer. She calls him "Cutie Cuters Baby."

Daddy v3.0
Chris has really stepped up to help out with the big kids and make sure he bonds with this baby sooner than he did the last one (it helps that Archer doesn't scream bloody murder for 20 of every 24 hours). We are working out division of labor much better than we have done in the past and in general our lives feel like they have been less disrupted. I know people joke about how the youngest child always gets the laziest, least attentive parents but I think it's the opposite for Archer. We have hit our stride as parents and are much calmer with him and each other.

****

Ok, it's now five days later and I'm finally getting back to this post. I'm going to have to create some sort of shorthand if I'm ever going to get back to posting regularly. I'm going to throw some photos on here and just get it up. I am taking primarily phone pictures right now so these are older ones from my camera...I have to locate a cord to download from my phone and that...isn't likely to happen right now! More updated pics to come (maybe not from this week though....poor baby has a bad case of baby acne and his hairline is receding).

The most pregnant I'll ever be again

Fresh out of the oven

Meeting his big brother and sister

The only time he consented to lay in his plastic box

Loved the bonding time we had in the hospital

Going Home outfit

With my BFF's son, K, exactly four months older than A

With my mom and her dad, the kids' great-grandfather who came to visit

Nana and the three Harris beasts

And Now, Five

I have a huge amount I want to write about Archer's birth...all the ways it was better/easier than my previous two (spoiler: almost every single way) and the ways in which it's been a little harder. How I'm feeeeeling (generally good) and thoughts I have about, well, everything.

But for now, just some photos in the form of a virtual birth announcement. We had these taken at the hospital...I was skeptical to say the least but I love them wholeheartedly and I'm so glad we did it.

I'm home now, adjusting to a new reality (though not really because my parents are here helping) and navigating these first few days of getting to know a new person and reconciling the fact that the world keeps turning and life goes on despite the hugeness of the change that occurred within our family.

Welcome, my new son, we are SO glad you are here.

Archer Birth Announcement

Toothless

We were expecting Pacey to lose another tooth since his dental xrays showed both adult front teeth ready to pop through. Sure enough, he's had another wiggler for the last week or so. He handled this one better, although I think he still doesn't particularly enjoy it.

Anyway, this morning I was getting some clothes out for him and he ran into his room.

"Wook Mom, it came out!" He announced it so proudly and showed me the tooth, which he then insisted on brushing (?) Then, "Tooth fairy Mom! Six dollars!"

I'm not sure what I'm more proud of: the fact that he handled the whole thing so much better this time (and clearly *gets* the whole concept); the fact that he announced verbally, in a clear and complete sentence that he'd lost it; or the fact that he recalled the tooth fairy left him five dollars last time and decided to jump right in there and negotiate a raise.

If you think there is any way he's NOT getting six dollars, then you completely overestimate my ability to be sensible.

(I haven't been able to get a good picture of him sans two front teeth, but I'll keep trying. He's darn cute...)