March 2007

03/30/07

David taught Tommy all about dinosaur vs. caveman battles this morning.  They were both quite loud.  Charlie slept through all.  Then David and Tommy went off to gymnastics and the house was quiet.  That's when Charlie woke up.   Of course.

03/29/07

Tommy Tidbits and Charlie Chiplets...

• Tommy quote for the day:  "Your nose is a window for your head."
• Charlie is almost ready for the 3-6 month clothes.  Not quite, but some of the smaller 0-3 month things he wore at the beginning are getting too small.  I'd forgotten how fast babies grow in the first few months.  He's already in the 1-2 size diapers. He's too small for size 1, but I haven't bought any size 2 yet.  Isn't it strange that they sell an intermediate size?
• Tommy and I have dyed Easter eggs twice so far this week.  We did 12 on Monday and 12 today.  The boy can really devour hard boiled eggs.  He doesn't usually eat the yolks, so it's not quite as much food as it might seem.  But still!  That's a lot of eggs in four days.  I tell him we can't dye more until the ones we have are gone, so I guess that's even more incentive for him to eat them.  I'll have to buy more vinegar soon.
• Charlie's favorite thing to look at so far is out the window in his room.  It's been nice and sunny and clear lately, so I can see why he likes looking out.  He's still asleep way more than he's awake, and he doesn't need tons of stimulation to keep from getting bored during his alert phases.  Looking out the window seems to be enough.  His eyes are starting to track better so he will follow you with his eyes if you're close enough.  He's not smiling purposefully yet, but does smile and giggle while he's sleeping.  Tommy and I ask him every day if he's learned to smile yet.  We'll be pretty happy when he does.

Eh, that's it for today.  I got to sleep 3 hours last night, then was awake 3 hours, then slept 2 more hours, then was awake for the day.  Plus, David's been trying to work full days this week.  He's managed two out of four.  That's not too bad I guess.  My mom arrives tomorrow, so maybe I'll have more energy for writing and taking pictures this weekend. 

03/27/07

They both took a nap at the same time this afternoon.  I must have done something spectacular to deserve this.  Although, fittingly, you do not see a picture of me sleeping on this page.

03/26/07

Sleepy Daddy.  Sleepy Baby.

03/24/07

Tommy has a new favorite story.  It's one I made up for him a few days ago.  He has me tell it to him frequently throughout the day, and it's the last thing he wants before going to sleep at night.  For posterity, here's the short version of it.  I think he'll find it amusing to read when he's older, and it gives you a few insights into his little psyche.

Once upon a time there was a little boy named Tommy.  He lived with his Mommy and Daddy and baby brother Charlie.  One day Tommy was feeling lonely because Mommy was helping Charlie and Daddy was at work.  So Tommy asked Mommy to call the Friend-People on the phone.  Mommy picked up the phone and asked the people in charge of friends to send a friend over for Tommy.  A few minutes later the doorbell rang.  Ding Dong!  Tommy opened the door and saw...SPIDERMAN!

Tommy invited Spiderman into his house and showed him his room and all of his things.  Then Spiderman said they could play a game.  Tommy climbed up onto Spiderman's shoulders.  He thought Spiderman was just going to give him a shoulder ride like Daddy, but no!  Spiderman climbed up the wall!  Spiderman carried Tommy on his shoulders and crawled all over the walls and ceiling.  It was so much fun, and Mommy couldn't catch them or reach them.

After a while Spiderman said it was time to go out and asked Tommy where he wanted to go.  Tommy said, "The Zoo!"  So Tommy and Spiderman said goodbye to Mommy and headed out the door.  Tommy thought they were going to drive to the zoo, but no!  Spiderman shot web across the street, handed Tommy the end of the web rope and Tommy went swinging across the street!   Spiderman followed him and they went swinging across the city, over the streets and houses and buildings.  They went all the way to the zoo.

When they got to the zoo, the zookeeper came out to meet them.  He said, "Help! Help!  All the lizards have escaped from their cages.  Will you catch them for me?"  Tommy and Spiderman said they would help, so they went all over the zoo looking for lizards.  Every time they saw one they'd shoot it with their webs and wrap them up all nice and safe in spider webs.  Then they'd carry the lizards back to their cages.  It took a long time but they found all the lizards.

By that time, Tommy was getting hungry.  Spiderman asked him where he wanted to go for dinner and Tommy said "I-HOP!"  So they hopped on the Spider Motorcycle and zoomed to I-HOP.  They ate all of Tommy's favorite breakfast foods for dinner -- pancakes and sausages and hash browns and eggs and orange juice. 

After dinner, Tommy was feeling very tired so Spiderman took him home.  He carried Tommy into his house and handed him to his Daddy.  Then he said good bye.  Tommy's Daddy gave Tommy a bath and brushed Tommy's teeth.  Then Tommy read lots of books and got into bed.  He hugged and kissed his Mommy and Daddy.  Then he went to sleep.  He had had a very good day with his friend Spiderman..  The end.   

03/22/07

  You know you've put off bathing the baby for too many days when he looks really different after a bath.  Look at that fuzzy mohawk!  Has his hair always been that color?

03/20/07

We did get out to the grocery store for cake mix and ice cream yesterday, and even stopped by the library on the way.  Charlie was perfectly content to look around until he fell asleep.  I was pretty tired by the time we got home though.  I'm still not really supposed to be lifting much, and Charlie + car seat + bag of library books =  A Slightly Sore Sally.  Tommy and I baked and decorated the cake while Charlie was napping.  This newborn thing is a lot easier when the baby sleeps somewhere other than my lap occasionally.  I'd say it was a pretty nice birthday evening for David even though it was very simple -- burritos, cake, ice cream, playtime with Tommy and Charlie.  The unsuccessful parts of the evening were the gigantic lake of red Kool-Aid I managed to spill on our white carpet and the swarm of ants that attacked our kitchen around 8 pm...but we won't dwell on those things.  Instead, here are some pictures of how we spent David's birthday evening.

Hopped up on birthday cake sugary goodness, Tommy decided to go footstool jumping sans clothing.  We had to switch our nice leather chair for the ugly but good-for-my-back rocker so that I can sit more comfortably with Charlie while Tommy plays.  Tommy wouldn't let us move the footstool out of the living room though.  Instead, he kept moving it farther and farther away from the rocker and diving across the room across the gap.  He never did fall.  David took a whole bunch of action pictures like this one.

Then David and Tommy and Charlie spent some quality time in Charlie's room, playing on the guest bed.  The conversation we had while I was taking pictures went a bit like this...

Mommy:  Stop playing around and lie still so I can take your picture.

Tommy:  What?  I can't hear you.

Daddy:  We can't hear you Mommy.  We have our fingers in our ears.

Charlie:  These people are crazy.

Then I decided I wanted to be in a picture, so I switched places with David.

This is what happens when you try to take just one more picture after the boys have decided that they're done.

03/19/07

Happy birthday David!  Tommy is insistent that we make a birthday cake for Daddy, so the goal for the day is to go to the store for cake mix and ice cream and to bake the cake.  We'll see if Charlie cooperates with our plans. 

Because I know you're just dying for more detailed discussion of Charlie's sleep (pfft! it's my site so I can write whatever I want!), I'll tell you that his night last night was half good and half bad.  On the positive side, he slept for a five hour stretch from 10 pm to 3 am.  Yay Charlie!  On the negative side he was awake and crying from 8 pm to 10 pm and either awake and just-not-sleeping or lightly asleep while being held but protesting vehemently if placed in his bed from 3 am to 7 am.  Oh well.  I'll take one five-hour stretch of good sleep over 6-7 seven hours of disrupted sleep in short increments.  David's birthday present from me was getting to hold his infant son from 5:30 to 6:30 am when I absolutely could not stay awake any longer.

By the way, the reason Tommy looks so miserable in his St. Patrick's Day hat is that he seems to be experiencing seasonal allergies.  This is the first spring he hasn't been protected by breast-feeding antibodies, so I guess it makes sense that it would be the first spring any allergies would manifest.  (He weaned himself last May.)  It's also a record-breaking allergy season in Albuquerque since we had lots of precipitation over the winter and it's warmed up to the upper 70s and lower 80s quite suddenly this past week.  EVERYONE in Albuquerque is talking about allergies these days.  I don't have any seasonal allergies, so I'm completely clueless about helping Tommy.  Fighting viruses and sinus infections?  I'm a pro at that.  Allergies?  Not so much.  Were going to take him to the doctor today to get some advice.  So far, he just seems to have a slightly drippy nose, extremely itchy eyes and that bruised, exhausted look on his face.  It's been going on for almost a week now though, so even though he's not complaining much it seems to really be wearing him down.

03/17/07

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

03/15/07

It seems we have a baby who's starting to live life on a bit of a schedule.  Who knew babies could do that!?  Actually, I knew they could in theory, we just haven't experienced it before now.  Charlie has two very alert and awake periods each day, first thing in the morning from about 7:30-10:00 AM and in the evening from about 4:00-6:30 PM.  He almost always takes a nice long nap in the pac-n-play (bassinet/playpen) in the living room from around 12:00-3:00.  He's ready to settle down to sleep for the night while Tommy's having his bath around 7 pm.  He consistently sleeps 3.5 hour stretches at night before waking up, but then might take 30 minutes or 1 hour or even 2 hours to go back to sleep depending on gas bubbles in his tummy or poopy diapers which must be changed even though doing so wakes him up.  He does have fussy, crying times, but they don't last forever and always seem to have a reason (over-tired, needs to burp, etc.).  He's very rarely inconsolable and doesn't seem to have colic...so far...knock on wood.  We're still figuring out what he wants during the transition hours, say from the end of his happy alert period in the morning until he's ready to just give up and take his nap.  He also is very much an on-demand sort of nurser who tends to cluster feed in short spurts during particular stretches of time.  Plus, there are times during the day when he really just wants to alternately nurse and doze in my lap, and will cry if we try to move him.  Now that's a pattern that's familiar!  For the most part, however, this is a very different newborn baby experience for us.

First bath!

03/13/07

Tommy's newest game is called Tommy-Ben.  It's from an absolutely not age-appropriate cartoon called Ben 10.  (I blame David for letting him watch it.)  When Tommy is pretending to be Tommy-Ben he wears a watch that he uses to turn himself into a variety of monsters.  The Tommy-Ben monsters scare away imaginary bad guys.

03/12/07

David's working 1/2 days this week.  I used my David-at-home hours this morning to sleep in after Charlie kept me awake for more of the night than I would have liked.  So far since David's departure, I've managed to get lunch for Tommy and me, help Tommy use the bathroom, put Charlie down for a nap (a nap that's not on my lap!) and change the TV channels multiple times for Tommy.  Aren't I just the model of maternal efficiency?

By the way, don't you find it hilarious when babies pass out in a milk-induced coma, with messy  mouths and ruddy, exhausted faces?  I do.  Being a baby is very hard work.

03/10/07

  David and Tommy got presents from my parents yesterday.  They LOVE them, and Tommy wanted me to take a picture of him in his new orange shirt.

03/09/07

Happy 60th birthday Mom!

They're already entertaining each other.

03/08/07

Tommy Tidbits and Charlie Chiplets...

• Tommy has officially entered the "WHY?" phase of being three years old.  Only for him, the question is more often "What?" than "Why?"  I know it's a cliché sort of phase, but it's quite amusing and amazing to be in the middle of it.  Every single thing we say gets a "What?" or a "Why?" from him.  We try to answer, but eventually we end up laughing too hard to talk or giving up and saying "Because" every time.  Tommy finds it hilarious when that happens.  I suspect he might even think it's a game and a challenge to get us to that point since he usually has a huge grin on his face.
• Charlie has gotten into a pattern of sleeping really well for 3-4 hours at the start of the night, then staying awake for 1.5-2 hours, then sleeping for another 3-4 hours.  It's way better than it could be, but I get pretty tired during that awake time.  He doesn't cry too much.  He's just awake.  He sleeps a lot during the day, so it may be that we need to stimulate him a bit more during the day.  I won't wake a sleeping baby though, so for now I'll just enjoy the naps and try to keep things calm and dark and quiet during the night.
• One of Tommy's favorite things to do to entertain the baby is to play air guitar on his own leg.  He hikes his leg up into the air, pretend strums it with his hand and makes a hard-rock nyow-nyow sound.  I think it's a Sponge Bob thing.  David is very proud.
• Charlie has finally gotten the hang of nursing without outside assistance.  Finally.  He's been gaining about an ounce a day, so I'm not worried that he hasn't been getting enough calories, but it was annoying to have to use the breast pump and nipple shields every time to get him to latch.  He had his two-week doctor visit today and is almost up to his birth weight.  He started out at 9 lbs 3 oz, got down to 7 lbs 15 oz when he was having the most trouble nursing, and is now at 8 lbs 15 oz.  Whew!  Since he still sleeps those nice 3-4 hour stretches during the day and at night, he's doing a lot of cluster feeding on and off during all of his waking hours.  I think Tommy's getting a bit tired of seeing me constantly sitting with Charlie in the nursing chair. 

03/06/07

We had both kids asleep by 7:15 last night and got to watch a couple of hours of TV together in peace and quiet.  Nice.  Then I got to go out by myself this morning to pick up some bagels and the Peter Pan DVD for Tommy.  Really nice.  So maybe we CAN manage to do this two kid thing.

Best.  Picture.  Ever.

Ok.  Maybe this one is the best.

If you compare this to the pictures of Tommy back in Feb 2004, you'll see just how much smaller Charlie is.  It's crazy having a baby who actually wears Newborn sized diapers and 0-3 month sized clothes.

03/05/07

03/02/07

Things are getting better.  We just have a lazy, sleepy baby on our hands over here.  Somehow, a preference for sleeping over eating was never a problem with Tommy.

Baby Charlie needs his toys.  I will give them to him!  There you go.

See the archives for earlier entries.