it's my "golden year" - so they say. i don't really know what that means except that my age and the day of the month are the same. maybe i will win the lottery or strike oil.
anyway, i woke up to little baby noises and peeked into sam's bassinet and he was waking up, all wrapped up in his sheet, cooing and being happy. we "talked" for a minute, and then justin came in from the living room. i'd heard him making noise in the kitchen. i picked up my literal bundle of joy and went to the kitchen with him to find a mixing bowl with eggs in it and a box of dark chocolate fudge cake mix. :)
justin finished the cake and sam and i chatted on the couch until it was time for him to eat.
that's pretty much my morning aside from folding laundry with justin and drinking coffee.
while we folded laundry i asked, "do you remember what i wanted for my birthday last year?" he said he didn't. i said, "it was the same thing i wanted for any present for anything."
"a baby," he replied, "yeah, i almost used that to get off the hook for getting you something." (har har. he didn't really - he got me a very pretty fossil watch that i just lovvve.)
i never dreamed i would be 27 before i'd get that gift (a baby, not a watch...), but God is sovereign and sam is only the person he is because we had to wait for him, and we sure do love the person he is. :)
onto another thing:
birthday deals.
i googled this a few days ago and got a few blogs with pretty great lists of things you can get on your birthday. some of the deals were not in our area, but you may want to do a search for those if you will be out of town on your birthday.
the best deal as far as dinner? sign up for the houlihan's email list and they will send you a coupon for a FREE entree up to $15 for your birthday. that beats out dessert and a song, let me tell you.
lonestar sent one for a free appetizer with purchase of an entree, and dairy queen sent one for a free blizzard with the purchase of a medium blizzard. old navy sent $15 off of $50. swag bucks gave me 50 swag bucks.
alrighty, off to other things...like eating cake.
Saturday, August 27, 2011
Friday, August 26, 2011
happy!
i accidentally took this very short video when i had the camera set on video instead of a photo setting.
he. is. fabulous.
<3
Monday, August 22, 2011
the last 6 weeks (almost)
our lives have changed quite a bit in the last six weeks. coming home from the hospital felt overwhelming at first, almost crushing. i remember justin and i looking at each other a little helplessly and wondering aloud why we didn't stay another night at the hospital where we would have at least had some backup with the nurses being there.
but, they let us go, and we went because neither of us were sleeping well there with beeping monitors, blood pressure checks, and those irritating leg things that keep you from getting blood clots continually inflating and deflating. we just wanted to go home.
and they actually let us take sam home with us. let me tell you that as a first time parent, being entrusted with a baby *does* seem like a small miracle. so there we were, just the two of us, trying to take care of a baby. initially it felt like we would never get used to it.
we got huggies diapers, which happen to have "wetness indicator" lines, and they constantly indicated wetness, which resulted in constant changing.
we religiously fed him every 2-3 hours, setting alarms to wake up in the night to feed him.
at first, recovering from the c-section, i was on medication that knocked me out, so i slept through any alarms or crying. poor justin - but he did his nightly single dad gig well until i was able to get off of the medicine. then he still had to wake me up (i still insist the evening before that he wake me if it is my turn and i'm not awake) because i was sleeping so well NOT being 39 weeks pregnant!
we swaddled. well, justin swaddled. he still swaddles much better than me. what is so hard about wrapping a baby up tight, i don't know, but i'm not as good at it.
we got peed on - probably daily. that commercial where the baby's pee comes out with the force and distance of water from a fire hose is pretty accurate. somehow he always needed to pee in the short window of time it takes to wipe and swap diapers. this is because, i think, he peed every 30 seconds. if he didn't pee during the change, his diaper was no more fastened and the wetness indicator changed colors.
the worst, though, was when the diaper was "mid-fasten" and his 30 seconds had elapsed. at some point, we gave up on the changing pad cover - wiping the plastic is easier than washing the cover - and we gave sam a lot of "baths."
i put baths in quotations because you're not supposed to submerge a baby's healing belly button (or boy parts, for that matter), so we did the warm washcloth bath. he hated it and cried through most of it until he got wrapped up in the hooded towel.
he started out a smiley baby, and no, he didn't have gas. he would grin in his sleep when you rubbed his hair, and sometimes he would even giggle and smile - i said he was dreaming of his momma.
if you have never had a newborn, i must say that all of this seems to take over your life - from cooing at your most-gorgeous-baby-you've-ever-seen to feeding to changing, and then you wake up at 11 am after taking a nap you didn't mean to take...it is definitely a blur.
and then somehow, there's a routine. the baby is more predictable, and you know his cries (and grunts and whimpers and coos) and what they mean, and the wetness indicator says his diaper is actually STILL dry!
we are actually on our second box of non-huggies (which work just as well). he gets changed when he needs it and there's no wetness indicator glaring at us. he doesn't do the 30 second pee anymore either, so we get peed on a whole lot less. however, if you have a little boy, do remember to "point it down" during re-diapering, or you might get a wet surprise right out of the top of the diaper. (i also decided it was time to bump up to a size 1 - tear, tear, he's getting bigger - because he was able to pee out the side of his diaper. i swear it was like there was no diaper at all.)
we no longer set an alarm to feed him. they told us to do this at the hospital, and maybe initially a baby who has lost weight needs it to get back to birth weight, but after a few weeks i think it's the dumbest thing a sleep-deprived parent could do. he wakes us up when he wants to eat and it's usually more like five hours instead of three, which is glorious. he eats while staring at either us or the light, whichever he finds most interesting at the time, and he usually still keeps those hands by his face.
we stopped swaddling because he wanted to sleep in his swing for a brief period of time, but we went back to swaddling. if you have an infant who will tolerate it, don't stop swaddling. he didn't sleep as well without his arms being trapped where he couldn't smack himself in the face or knock his pacifier out. when he's wrapped up he looks like a little worm or something in a cocoon, and it makes me giggle every time.
he now lovvvvvvvvves baths. i love giving him baths because he is just so stinking content and he just looks around quietly with his big beautiful eyes...sigh. don't even get me started on that soft brown hair. anyway, he loves baths now that they are actual baths and he can stay warm and happy.
and do yourself a favor - get hooded towels. you don't really need them to effectively dry a baby, no, but they are so cute that i feel like i might die of the cuteness, and that cuteness is a fun experience for every parent.
and baby lotion. oh baby lotion. the smell of a clean baby is something close to heaven.
also close to heaven - getting a smile in response to just being MOM. be still, my heart. he coos and "talks" to us about whatever is on his baby mind. i just love it.
i also love watching justin be a daddy. at first, it was so busy, we felt like we didn't even have a marriage, so to speak. but every day it got a little more normal, and then better than what had been "normal" for our lives - the new normal of being husband and wife AND dad and mom.
oh, and calvin is getting along just fine. he likes sam, but we aren't sure he knows he is a person or if he thinks sam is either an animal or a toy. he does not like for us to sit sam on him, and he will run away if we try. (yes, i pester my dog.)
so we are a happy little family. we are so thankful that God has blessed us with sam.
but, they let us go, and we went because neither of us were sleeping well there with beeping monitors, blood pressure checks, and those irritating leg things that keep you from getting blood clots continually inflating and deflating. we just wanted to go home.
and they actually let us take sam home with us. let me tell you that as a first time parent, being entrusted with a baby *does* seem like a small miracle. so there we were, just the two of us, trying to take care of a baby. initially it felt like we would never get used to it.
we got huggies diapers, which happen to have "wetness indicator" lines, and they constantly indicated wetness, which resulted in constant changing.
we religiously fed him every 2-3 hours, setting alarms to wake up in the night to feed him.
at first, recovering from the c-section, i was on medication that knocked me out, so i slept through any alarms or crying. poor justin - but he did his nightly single dad gig well until i was able to get off of the medicine. then he still had to wake me up (i still insist the evening before that he wake me if it is my turn and i'm not awake) because i was sleeping so well NOT being 39 weeks pregnant!
we swaddled. well, justin swaddled. he still swaddles much better than me. what is so hard about wrapping a baby up tight, i don't know, but i'm not as good at it.
we got peed on - probably daily. that commercial where the baby's pee comes out with the force and distance of water from a fire hose is pretty accurate. somehow he always needed to pee in the short window of time it takes to wipe and swap diapers. this is because, i think, he peed every 30 seconds. if he didn't pee during the change, his diaper was no more fastened and the wetness indicator changed colors.
the worst, though, was when the diaper was "mid-fasten" and his 30 seconds had elapsed. at some point, we gave up on the changing pad cover - wiping the plastic is easier than washing the cover - and we gave sam a lot of "baths."
i put baths in quotations because you're not supposed to submerge a baby's healing belly button (or boy parts, for that matter), so we did the warm washcloth bath. he hated it and cried through most of it until he got wrapped up in the hooded towel.
he started out a smiley baby, and no, he didn't have gas. he would grin in his sleep when you rubbed his hair, and sometimes he would even giggle and smile - i said he was dreaming of his momma.
if you have never had a newborn, i must say that all of this seems to take over your life - from cooing at your most-gorgeous-baby-you've-ever-seen to feeding to changing, and then you wake up at 11 am after taking a nap you didn't mean to take...it is definitely a blur.
and then somehow, there's a routine. the baby is more predictable, and you know his cries (and grunts and whimpers and coos) and what they mean, and the wetness indicator says his diaper is actually STILL dry!
we are actually on our second box of non-huggies (which work just as well). he gets changed when he needs it and there's no wetness indicator glaring at us. he doesn't do the 30 second pee anymore either, so we get peed on a whole lot less. however, if you have a little boy, do remember to "point it down" during re-diapering, or you might get a wet surprise right out of the top of the diaper. (i also decided it was time to bump up to a size 1 - tear, tear, he's getting bigger - because he was able to pee out the side of his diaper. i swear it was like there was no diaper at all.)
we no longer set an alarm to feed him. they told us to do this at the hospital, and maybe initially a baby who has lost weight needs it to get back to birth weight, but after a few weeks i think it's the dumbest thing a sleep-deprived parent could do. he wakes us up when he wants to eat and it's usually more like five hours instead of three, which is glorious. he eats while staring at either us or the light, whichever he finds most interesting at the time, and he usually still keeps those hands by his face.
we stopped swaddling because he wanted to sleep in his swing for a brief period of time, but we went back to swaddling. if you have an infant who will tolerate it, don't stop swaddling. he didn't sleep as well without his arms being trapped where he couldn't smack himself in the face or knock his pacifier out. when he's wrapped up he looks like a little worm or something in a cocoon, and it makes me giggle every time.
he now lovvvvvvvvves baths. i love giving him baths because he is just so stinking content and he just looks around quietly with his big beautiful eyes...sigh. don't even get me started on that soft brown hair. anyway, he loves baths now that they are actual baths and he can stay warm and happy.
and do yourself a favor - get hooded towels. you don't really need them to effectively dry a baby, no, but they are so cute that i feel like i might die of the cuteness, and that cuteness is a fun experience for every parent.
and baby lotion. oh baby lotion. the smell of a clean baby is something close to heaven.
also close to heaven - getting a smile in response to just being MOM. be still, my heart. he coos and "talks" to us about whatever is on his baby mind. i just love it.
i also love watching justin be a daddy. at first, it was so busy, we felt like we didn't even have a marriage, so to speak. but every day it got a little more normal, and then better than what had been "normal" for our lives - the new normal of being husband and wife AND dad and mom.
oh, and calvin is getting along just fine. he likes sam, but we aren't sure he knows he is a person or if he thinks sam is either an animal or a toy. he does not like for us to sit sam on him, and he will run away if we try. (yes, i pester my dog.)
so we are a happy little family. we are so thankful that God has blessed us with sam.
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