At home with Joshua

We're wrapping up a third week since our youngest son joined our family, and I find myself reflecting each day on how wonderful this time with him has been already.  The "big kids" are totally in love with him and very affectionate with their little brother (which is sometimes dangerous and requires much vigilance on my part, but the intentions are sweet!), and David and I are enjoying our littlest one immensely.

Enjoying quiet moments with newborn Joshua while the "big kids" are at preschool one morning this week.

Joshua has been a complete joy.  He's the smiliest (spell check tells me that's not a word and suggests "slimiest," which is definitely not what I mean!)... He's the smiley-est baby I've known.  We enjoyed his sleepy newborn smiles from just a few days old... the post-feed, full-tummy smile just as he's drifting off to sleep.  But by two weeks old he began smiling awake, looking right in our eyes.  Even Dr. Pate got a smile at his two-week check-up, and this morning I bent down to talk with him while he was in the swing and got right in his face with a "hi there, Joshua!" and was rewarded with a full fledged open mouth totally-tickled smile when I bent down to say "hi" before picking him up from his swing.

 Brand new belly button :)

 Joshua's little newborn temperament  is pretty calm.  He enjoys being held, cradled with his head in the crook of your arm and, when sleepy, with his tummy up against yours, and he doesn't require a lot of jiggling, "shh'ing" and effort to calm down.  While he'd prefer to be held every minute, he's willing to take some of his naps during the day in his bouncer, on the couch, on a blanket or in his swing, which he's grown to really love.  Joshua's been a great feeder and is careful not to miss a meal during the night, so I still see quite a bit of him in the wee hours of the morning.  He's sometimes sleepy enough that he'll stay asleep when placed in his bouncer for a few hours after feeding, but he inevitably ends up also spending a few hours sleeping in the crook of my  arm in our bed.  For some reason, the most unacceptable of sleep options is the little bassinet that is set up literally RIGHT beside my bed.  It's only about 9 inches from where he ends up sleeping in my bed, but there's something about that bassinet that's caused him to refuse to sleep there for more than about 40 consecutive minutes.  Every night we try, though!

Naptime with Daddy

Friday completed my first week as a mommy of three, on my own.  Oddly, the adjustment so far hasn't felt as difficult as adjusting to my first newborn, or from one kid to two.  I seem to enjoy the newborn period more with each kid and find myself wanting to stay in these sweet weeks for longer than I know that they'll last.  Meals for our family provided by our church and meals for myself prepared by my mom and my thoughtful sister-in-law have made the evenings much easier, and I think that the two older kids having one another as playmates helps with the adjustment to having a new baby in the house.  There are definitely  challenges, though!  Despite doing more than one load of laundry a day, it's rare that there isn't an article of clothing with someone's pee on it waiting for the next load.  And there are now approximately zero minutes between 6:30am and 8:30pm when I'm not caring for one kid or another.  The afternoon hours in which I could sometimes manage to get Abby down for a nap while Jonathan played quietly in his room for a while have melted away, both because Abby's naps have become quite inconsistent in the past few weeks (by far the most difficult part of this season, for her and for me!) and because even if she is down, there are two others who'd like my attention.  However, being home full-time and with Jonathan in preschool a few mornings, I'm still getting to spend some good one-on-one time with each kid, which has been really nice.

This Thursday presented a challenge, as David had church commitments after work, leaving me for my first fourteen-hour one-on-three parenting gig.  The day went smoothly, despite Abby staying awake through her naptime, until her utter exhaustion became apparent around 5pm.  At that point we made a rapid transition to bathtime / dinnertime / bedtime routine, getting the big kids down around 7:30pm, to get some rest for Mommy as well as for them!  Once Joshua was fed and down, it took another two hours of house work to  recover the house from our busy day, and I was literally slumping into the couch when David returned at 10. Whew!  The weather has been gorgeous and sunny most of this week, a nice change from the cold, rainy week following Joshua's birth, so we headed out to the zoo after swim class on Friday.  Getting kids fed, dressed, and packed up for morning swim class was no small feat and felt a bit like an emergency evacuation procedure, but we made it out the door and enjoyed a beautiful day at the zoo with friends from the kids' preschool classes.  Then Abby and Joshua napped soundly through the afternoon while Jonathan and I worked on Legos and crafts.

Enjoying a visit from Grandma

For my friends and family that pray, the thing I'd ask you keep in your prayers at this time is my headaches.  While not as severe as before, I've had a headache nearly every other day since Joshua was born, despite maintaining quite a strict diet.  It seems the postpartum hormone changes in addition to the continually interrupted sleep are a bit too much for my body, and I have an appointment with a new neurologist this week in hopes that adding a preventative medication may help me avoid the severe cycle of chronic migraine that developed in the year following Abigail's birth.


Mini updates on the bigger kids:  



Jonathan has been busy creating projects for himself most days.  One morning week before last he came to me with 5 pages of drawings and told me, "These are the instructions for my dinosaur train.  I need cardboard and toothpicks."  We spent the next two days constructing a dinosaur train out of boxes and milk cartons, and Papa assisted with putting wheels and dinosaur details on each car. 

As I write this, Abby is walking around the living room with Tiger in her arms and snuggled in close to her chest, softing whispering "shhh, shhhh, shhh..."  She's become quite the Mommy these days and likes to be closely involved in caring for her baby brother, too.  She loves holding him and singing to him and is eager to assist with diaper changes and his every other need, both real and imagined.  She's also really enjoying a preschool music class the kids started this winter.  It's been fun to see both Jonathan and Abby really embrace music.  They're singing around the house all the time and Abby especially enjoys singing and dancing in the little class.  In fact, she enjoys school and the class set-up in general, often playing "teacher" or "music class" here at home.