LINDEN | ONE MONTH

o n e

 

We're really running behind here with all the Christmas festivities, but this little bird is already one month old.  Um. Please. How does time fly so fast?  Mentally, my brain still feels like we were just in the hospital meeting this little boy for the first time.  Even though it feels like he was just born, Linden has developed and grown so much over the first month.

 

And we have leg rolls.  My little chunk has leg rolls.

Proud mama right there, ya'll.

 

 

 

BABY LOVES

LOVES the paci.  Baby boy just flat out loves his paci.

Linden LOVES looking at the ceiling lights in our living room

LOVES his baby blanket that Nana made him

LOVES belly time!

LOVES seeing my face and hearing my voice.  Melts my heart every time he smiles when I talk to him.

LOVES to bury his head as deep as possible into my neck before dozing off

LOVES to smile! Lucky us, he started smiling the day he turned 3 weeks and hasn't stopped since. :)

LOVES to be carried in his Ergo

 

HATES laying flat on his back.

HATES when his feet slip out of his footies when he wears his sleep and plays.

 

As you can see the loves outweigh the hates which makes for one happy little baby.

 

 

 

EAT

Linden is a great eater.  I had a huge concern this time around since nursing never worked out with Conner, but this little bird has no problem.  It seemed like right from the start, he latched on perfectly and made everyone's life easy.  His first week was kind of off with eating.  He would go 7+ hours at night between feedings and about 4 hours during the day.  He was still putting on weight so even though it was long durations between feedings, it was still working.  Now we're on a schedule that looks more like 2-3 hours during the day and 4-5 hours during the night. 

 

My body remembered all the milk it made with Conner since I was pumping to finish within 6 months, so this little boy had plenty to eat from the get go.  When I met with the lactation consultants, my conversation was spent discussing how to decrease milk supply rather than increase it.  Good problem to have, but not fun dealing with it at the time.  My body figured it out over that first week that I was only feeding one kid the normal amount and got adjusted to it. 

 

 

SLEEP

I am not used to how much this little guy sleeps.  I only have Conner to compare him to and with Conner, he would only sleep in 45 minute increments during the day since we brought him home.  Linden on the other hand slept the majority of the day that whole first and second week.  Over the past couple of weeks he's been up for one to two hours before falling asleep again.

 

Linden loves to sleep on his belly.  I'm pretty sure he would be sleeping through the night already if I let him sleep on his belly.  Not happening.  I'm just saying.  I do let him sleep on his belly during his daytime naps so I can keep an eye on him.  Those usually end up being his best naps of the day.

 

 

PLAY

At this point, Linden's playtime consist of looking at his ceiling lights and out the window.  He and I also work on his eye contact while we talk about our day and how crazy his brother is and how cute he is.  Linden is so good with keeping eye contact and loves watching me talk to him. He's so cute.  He also does tummy time and get's to workout his neck and back muscles while looking at his toys and watching his crazy brother.

 

Linden is so strong.  He can hold his head up and steady for minutes.  If you lay him against your chest, he can push with his legs until he gets his head deep enough into your neck.  At 2 1/2 weeks old, he rolled from his tummy to his side on two separate occasions.  Just recently, I will lay him on a towel on the floor to run his bath water, and he goes from his back onto his side.  He's going to be rolling around the floor before we know it!

 

 

Linden boy, you are the perfect addition to our family.  You have already taken the enjoyment of parenting to a whole new level.  I'm amazed at all that you have accomplished in your first month of life and can't wait to see what the next four weeks will bring us.

 







CHRISTMAS 2015 | PART 2

The end of the year whirlwind known as Christmas is over for the year for us. Whew! but it was great!

 

Christmas Eve

Linden woke me up around 1:30am to eat on Christmas Eve, but as we were sitting there I could hear the wind through our woods blowing so strongly.  Strong enough to bring down trees my friends.  So when Linden finished up, I woke up Joe to get things around and move the boys into the basement for the night.  Not ideal, but I needed to know the boys would be safe.  In the meantime, Joe was called out to restore power and left around 2am.  At that point, I figured that would be the last we would see of him until after Christmas with all the outages area wide.

 

 

The boys and I went on with our Christmas Eve plans without our favorite man and headed over to Aunt Shannon's for Christmas with the family.  Once again, like every holiday meal, we all ate too much, consumed too many desserts, and enjoyed watching the kids open gifts.  All while missing Joe and Uncle Ken since he was out restoring power too.

 

 

Highlight of the day was Conner getting a train set complete with a table from Aunt Shannon. The kid didn't care about anything else but that train set and table.  The other highlight of the day was hearing that Joe and the other crews were going to work straight through until everyone had their power back so that he could be home with us on Christmas day.

 

 

 

Christmas Day

We love that Joe was home for Christmas.  You don't realize how important it is to you to have the family complete until something like this comes up. 

 

 

Joe and I are having so much fun with gifts now that Conner is old enough to open them on his own and get excited.  After every single present, Conner immediately handed the gift to Joe demanding that he take out that toy so he can start playing with it.

 

 

Joe made my year with the gift he surprised me with.  Every year for the past 7+ years I've been asking for a Kitchen Aid mixer.  This year I didn't bother.  This year I got a Kitchen Aid Mixer.  I love my husband.

 

 

Uncle Ken was still working power outages so we decided to have lunch with Aunt Shan and Alex.  They picked up some pizzas and joined us at our house for some family time.  Just so happened that Joe's dad also stopped by at that time and everyone stayed a while.  It's almost as if Joe was able to have a Christmas meal with his family since he missed the Christmas Eve dinner.

 

The rest of the day was spent napping and chatting with my family on Face Time watching them open their gifts and hang out.  Good thing we have Face Time to feel like we can be there with the fam even though we're miles apart.

 

Day After Christmas

The day after Christmas was our last day of Christmas celebrations.  Nana and Papa drove up to spend Christmas with us and for Papa to meet Linden for the first time.

 

 

Conner got his first bike which he is so excited about.  He can't push the pedals yet but he'll ask 10 times a day for you to push him around the house on it.  We'll be ready to go when summertime hits.

 

 

My parents are the best.  I had asked for a flash for my camera, but had zero expectations of getting one.  Guess who got a flash?? Oh, yes, this lucky girl right here.  Learning my flash and getting pictures just right will be my focus now for the next six months.

 

Papa and Nana stayed the rest of the weekend which allowed Joe and I a chance to go on our first date night since before Linden was born.  It was great.  Linden did great. Conner had fun while we were gone.  I pulled out my phone during dinner to keep on the table in case my parents needed to call us for anything.  Joe immediately told me to put it away.  Let me tell you, that was a little hard to do, but I'm glad I put my phone away and just enjoyed our time together without our two favorite little boys.

 

 

Christmas 2015 was great.  We're still trying to decide what traditions we want to establish for our family each year.  I know it will change a little from year to year as we find our groove as a growing family, but we certainly enjoyed this year together as a family of four.

 

I hope everyone had a lovely Christmas!

 

 

CHRISTMAS 2015 | PART 1

Happy Christmas week to everyone!

 

Joe and I kicked off our Christmas celebrations this past weekend with our annual Christmas lunch at his grandparents. 

Conner has reached the age where it's fun to take him to family events because for the most part he's past his shyness stage and ready to interact and play with his cousins.  He even gets excited to go see his great papa and nana.  The whole ride there, all we hear is Conner in the back seat singing "papa and nana. papa and nana..".

Love that kid.

 

We ate enough food to fill our bellies for the next two days, and I ate enough desserts to last the rest of the year.  But, I'll still eat more Christmas cookies, because hey, tis the season. Right?

So after stuffing ourselves with roast beef, ham, deviled eggs, brussel sprouts (Joe's grandma makes the best) and everything else imaginable, we moved on to watch the kids open gifts.

 

 

Conner loved his gift from the great grandparents.  He got a little tool kit with a toy drill, hammer and screws and bolts.  Certainly his new favorite toy.  And he got a new toothbrush that he carried around in his mouth for the remaining afternoon.  Kid loves brushing his teeth.

 

 

It's so fitting that he loves his toothbrush since Aunt Shannon and Uncle Ken pointed out that if you put an elf hat on him, he looks like Herbie from the Rudolph and the Island of Misfits.  Sorry, kiddo, they have a point there.

 

 

Linden did his thing by chillin' and napping on Aunt Shan for pretty much the whole time.  Boy does a great job at relaxing during family jams.

 



EARNING MY STRIPES

This is the first week I have been flying solo with the boys.  It has been a week of highs and lows and wins and fails.  A week of frustration, tears, exhaustion and laughing just to keep my sanity in the moments after I just want to pull my hair out.

 

 

The transition to a family of two kids sunk in with Conner this week, and he's been taking it hard and taking it out hard on others.

I thought surely that he would not be okay with me holding another child, but that's not the case at all with that little boy.  Surprisingly, he gets very upset if Joe even touches the baby which just goes to show the possessive bond he has with his daddy.  It obvious to me by the hundreds of times I hear "won daddy home" every day.  starting at 8am.

 

 

Conner does love his baby brother, but he doesn't understand that his highly energetic body needs to calm down around Linden, and that results in him getting frustrated and taking it out on little brother. 

It continues downhill from there when I explain to him that he needs to love on the baby boy in a gentle way and he retaliates by punching me or Linden.  And that's my breaking point on patience.

 

Surrounded by crazy.

 

 

But there moments when he does approach his brother in the most gentle way to hold his hand and kiss his head.  Those are the moments that I wish my camera could forever be implanted into my hand so I can capture these times at any second.

 

happy baby.

 

 

Brotherly bonding

 

And then there are the moments of exhaustion.  I admit, I feel way more rested this time around than when Conner was a newborn since I don't have to pump milk.  I've learned when you have a baby that will nurse, life is way easier and you get a ton more sleep.

But, at the end of the day, it's still sleep deprivation.

It's always the moments that you are so tired during the night that changing a boy's diaper never goes well. As I was changing Linden's dipe, it wasn't a second after I finished wiping that little bum down that he just let a second wave loose all over the clean diaper.  Joe went to fetch me another one while I tried hard to not get the poop everywhere.  And the little boy sprung a leak.

Perfect.

So I covered it up with the new diaper Joe brought me until I thought he was finished.

He wasn't finished.

He waited until I lifted the diaper back off before letting the pee flow again.

Well played, Linden.

By the way, I was changing him on our bed.

I cried. Then I laughed because, really, how else can you stay sane?

 

 

 

There were little victories that I celebrated this week.

I took the boys grocery shopping by myself for the first time.  It can be intimidating taking a newborn grocery shopping because you never know when they're going to decide to start screaming until their face turns purple because they apparently decided to add an extra feeding session while you are trying to get through the check out lane.  And you're behind the slowest person on earth.

 

 

That was my trip last week. This trip didn't go like that.  There were no tears.  Linden slept.  Conner snatched and ate an apple when I wasn't looking.  (I can't see him over the car seat so I was surprised when I checked on him only to find him munching away.) 

But there were no tears.  No screams.  No throwing.  No angry yells.

Our first outing by ourselves was perfect.

 

Somebody's eyes are getting more blue every week. We'll see if they stay that way.

 

That smile though

 

I also have the boys on the same afternoon nap schedule. Best thing ever and I hope it stays that way.

And because these brothers take naps at the same time, I have been able to lace up my running shoes and start getting back in the groove of running.

It feels good.

They're only one mile runs, but it does a number on lifting my mood and energy level to get me through the rest of the day.

Plus there's a little mom pooch and a couple love handles that have decided to make their home around my waist.

baby dreams

Where has the time gone? Please stop growing up.

'Gun show' is this way, ladies

Do you see the leg rolls?? We have leg rolls :)

 

And these are the moments I want to stay frozen in forever