Six Weeks

I've often referenced this as Wyatt's baby book, but he actually has a paper one that gets filled in at random intervals. But Natalie, sweetie, this really is your baby book since we don't even own an old-school one for you. So, without further ado, Natalie at six weeks.

1. She's smiling at us when we smile at her. She does it most frequently for Jeff, but hasn't left out me or Wyatt. Wrapping daddy around her little finger already?

2. She is too big for anything newborn-sized. Too long, too wide, feet too long for footed things, etc. From bottom to shoulders, she's the length of my forearm. I like having these "permanent" reminders of my kid's size (my mental measurement of Wyatt is from the day he was born when Jeff announced that his calves were the size of almonds).

3. She's starting to coo at us. That might be my favorite new thing because I just know it's the start of a lot more conversation in this house.

4. She fakes us out most nights. She'll be sound asleep at 8:30 or 9, we put her in bed and as soon as we turn back our covers a little later, she stirs. And she stays awake until close to midnight. Jeff has been covering that shift since I'm usually up with her between 4 and 5. Apparently her attempts to sleep through the night weren't as fun for her as they were for me.

5. She's starting to develop some sort of refluxy, coughy thing that scares us a bit so now she gets held upright for a solid 20-30 minutes after every feeding. Maybe she's faking so she'll get more cuddle time?

6. She's developing rolls. Under her chin, on her thighs, on her little forearms. While that is normal for many babies, I wouldn't have ever described Wyatt as a rolly child so it's new and fascinating to us.

7. She LOVES her baths. I don't think she's ever cried in the tub and usually just tosses a leg over the side of the sling so her toes are dangling in the water.

8. She's rockin' some sweet baby acne and goopy eyes. A sight to behold, I tell you.

9. Her eyes get more blue every day.

10. Her hair is staying brown and isn't showing signs of lightening up.

11. We're now averaging only two outfits per day due to diaper explosions. It's an improvement!

12. She gets lots of hugs, kisses and "pets" from Wyatt and tolerates them quite nicely.

13. Natalie is tolerant of the sling, which has proven helpful on more than one occasion. However, she has been in the baby bjorn once and was not particularly loving it. Again, opposite of my first-born.

14. Natalie will rarely sleep through our dinner. It's as though she knows she's missing a family activity and demands to be included. So we do, because she's a member of our family and deserves to be included.

15. That said, we still lack in the photo department until I make myself take a picture or two. I swear, we'll have a real photo session one of these days. Probably about the time that she can talk and demand it for herself.

This is the best I could do trying to capture a smile. Trust me, this doesn't do it justice.

Full Disclosure:

Natalie doesn't want to be too good, so she decided that she wouldn't go to sleep last night until 12:30. That's a tad late for me. She also, for maybe one of the first times, had indiscernable issues that were keeping her awake. After much jostling, jiggling, swaying, bouncing and thumping, I finally got some burps out of her and was able to nurse her to sleep. Poor kiddo was miserable until then. She managed to sleep well once she was down, so that was nice.

Unfortunately her big brother needed to talk to me around 3:30, so I'm not exactly ready to run a race this morning. Somehow he is. I predict a long nap in our future...fingers crossed!

Life with kids. It is a grand adventure, isn't it?

Things that Currently Make Me Happy

1. Seriously chocolate cake with seriously chocolate buttercream icing. Lots of icing.

2. A very verbose 2-year old who says sweet things ("I want to cuddle with you, Mommy") and told Grandma that she could not take Millie with her today because he would miss her. And the impromptu kisses get me every time.

3. My baby - she's five weeks old today - has started sleeping through the night. Even if this is an anomaly and she goes back to waking in the wee hours, I don't care. She's done it. I had very low expectations on this subject since Wyatt didn't sleep through until he was seven months old. Five weeks v. seven months = big happy difference.

4. The weather is finally beautiful and is supposed to stay that way. Spring has finally (really) arrived.

5. The yahoos (and I use that term because it's the only kid-friendly thing I can call them) who put in our patio last December have finally returned to seal it. Trust me when I tell you this was worthy of celebration.

6. Our friends in Scotland sent a baby gift for Natalie, a very thoughtful big brother gift and a movie of our trip to China four years ago. All are huge hits - baby in a kilt? I can't wait. Wyatt coloring Loch Ness monster pictures? Another occasion to look at our globe. Reliving the most interesting trip of my life while I happen to be reading a book about travels through China? Awesome. Thanks, guys!

Stop, Thief!

I'm currently trying to figure out who stole the last month. Natalie's already a month old and I really can't figure out how that happened. Things we know about her at one month:

1. The girl can eat. And eat and eat and eat.

2. Consequently, the girl can poop and poop and poop. She is especially adept at pooping through outfits (average: 3 per day) as it shoots clear up her back.

3. Oxyclean is really good stuff.

4. She likes her swing. Wyatt hated the swing; we got a new, fancy one since everyone said the papasan swings are like crack for babies. That might just mean she's a crack addict because it totally works.

5. She's a great sleeper. Since about our third night home, she's only gotten up once a night. It used to be that she'd stay awake for a good two hours during the night, which was rough, but the last couple of nights she's whittled that down to an hour. Hopefully the new pattern holds.

6. She actually likes a pacifier. Wyatt hated them. Turns out they're pretty different kids already.

7. She's just starting to find her voice but does her little grunts more often.

8. She doesn't like her carseat for the first few blocks of every ride, but then caves and sleeps like a champ.

9. Newborn-sized stuff is now too small. Sad, but true. Now she's getting into the plethora of cute 0-3 mo. stuff.

10. She has more clothes than I do.

11. Her eyes are getting more blue but her hair is staying fairly dark. I think she'll be more brunette than her brother.

12. She's changing every day (as newborns tend to do) and we all love her to pieces.

He Loves Her

My Husband, My Hero

Jeff took all kid responsibility last night. He put Natalie to bed, which meant I had my head resting on a pillow as he was still rocking her; he got up at midnight to comfort Wyatt after a bad dream; he took Natalie's 4:45 am feed, which for some reason kills me because she doesn't go back to sleep until 6. And in the midst of all that, he apparently made me a sandwich for my field trip today. I just got eight hours of fairly uninterrupted sleep! Now I'm prepping more bottles for him because he's staying home with both kids all morning so I can get a tanker ride and watch Raptors refuel. He really is my hero!

It All Comes Down to This

FYI: I started this post three days ago, if that tells you anything. However, the story keeps building and also? You shouldn't read this if you don't want to hear about poop.

All my reinforcements have left and now I am living what shall henceforth be known as "my life." You see, I am the proud owner of two fairly young souls who need much feeding, cleaning, molding, shaping, guidance and discipline. That bit of responsibility was easier to shoulder when someone else was helping to get dinner on the table, keep my floors vacuumed and my toddler entertained.



By all accounts, Natalie is an easy baby. I can't complain and maybe she has earned this status because Wyatt was so not easy, but whatever; she's proving to be a gem of an infant. Wyatt is still very two and approaching three, which I've been told is more challenging than two by many folks (and folks, I believe you).

We've had an interesting week around here. In addition to figuring out how to leave the house with two kids (which I've done successfully multiple times. Yay!), both kids have had serious poop issues. Wyatt's started over the weekend when he wouldn't go, despite having had success on the potty Friday night and being highly praised for that. Somehow we went from yay! ten marshmallows and three quarters from Grandpa! to "no, Mommy, I don't have any poop in me." In fact, Sunday morning I asked, "Wyatt, how's that poop coming?" (he'd opted for a diaper to complete the task) and he replied, "It's going well, Mommy, thanks for asking." Liar. By Sunday night Jeff was on the phone with a flight doc and I was off to Target with a completely miserable two-year old (who pitched such a fit about not getting to go that I took him, and then he spent our time at Target telling me he just wanted to go home) to purchase milk of magnesia. We dosed him before bed, finally got him to sleep at about 10:00 - entirely not his normal bedtime - only to have him wake up at midnight, completely inconsolable. For the first time in our lives, Wyatt slept with us for the night.

Monday morning rolled around and nothing had happened. So I called the nurse hotline at the peds clinic, was told they have 48 hours to reply to calls but that they triage them in order of importance and then wondered where a constipated toddler falls on the spectrum. So Jeff called the flight doc again, reported our zero success rate and was told we should re-dose the medicine and also suggested an enema. Yeah, that is entirely unappealing when your kid is a crying, blubbering mess and you also have a cluster-feeding three-week old to take care of. I informed Jeff that if that was the plan, he'd need to come home to help. We decided I'd give him the medicine again and that if nothing had happened by noon, Jeff would bring the big guns and we'd see what happened. Meanwhile, the nurse called back (apparently constipation is either pretty serious or it was a slow day for triage) and confirmed that we should re-dose, but that she wanted to talk to a doctor and would call me back.

Natalie didn't want to be left out of all the action, so she had a complete blowout all over her and me. Good thing I was still in my pajamas at 9:30 in the morning. And even better that our pest control guy showed up right then. So I had Natalie upstairs changing her entire outfit when Wyatt announced he was pooping. Hallelujah! I got Natalie cleaned and dressed and the phone rang; the nurse was calling to tell me that Wyatt's case sounded severe enough that the doctor wanted to see him. I happily reported that he'd had success in the fifteen minutes since we'd last talked. She was surprised and told me we should continue 'diet modifications' for a few more days. Got it. I felt like I'd run a race by the time we'd finished that episode.

Fast forward to Monday night: Jeff was putting Natalie to bed, I was brushing my teeth in our room. I heard him say something along the lines of, "oh man!" and I assumed he was commenting on something he'd seen on tv. Nope. He was standing over the changing table and our tiny (but growing oh-so-fast) baby girl looking awestruck. I started to walk in there and he said, "you're stepping in it." Huh? I looked down and realized there was poop on the floor and all over the end of the changing table, not to mention Natalie and Jeff. I returned with Clorox wipes and was giving Jeff a bit of a hard time for his overreacting. He simply said, "did you see the door?" Well, no. I sure didn't see the spray pattern all over the back of her door. Holy cow. Jeff looked at me and informed me it had been a "rooster tail of shit." Lovely.

But like a bad infomercial, there's still more. Tuesday evening Wyatt looked panicky all of a sudden and told us he needed to poop. Jeff raced upstairs to with him to the little potty and discovered that the milk of magnesia was still working, and perhaps too well. Our little guy had completely crapped his pants. He again called me for reinforcement and luckily Natalie was soundly sleeping in her swing so it all worked out okay. Surely that would be the end of the bathroom issues, right? Nope. Yesterday Wyatt did it again, only he did it while Natalie was eating so I had a screaming baby (laying on a blanket outside the bathroom, in case you're wondering) and a toddler who thought he was pretty funny, what with all that poop in his pants.

So that's how it's going, now that we're alone with no extra hands. In case you were curious.