Nap Time

Its hard to believe that William has only been with us for 9 days. I feel like we've gotten used to him being around so quickly. Maybe part of that is we've had him home longer. But, I think most of it is that we didn't have to learn how to care for a newborn again. True, when the nurses first put him on me, I felt like I had no idea how to handle him, but within the first day, I was again comfortable moving a newborn around again. So many things we do with him start to feel familiar, from nursing to dancing with him to the Beatles to the smell of his poops. He's only 9 days old, but we both feel like he's already changed. Not only have a few medical things cleared up (his umbilical stump fell off yesterday, his circumcision looks a healthy light pink, he is no longer yellow), but he also latches on nursing so much better and has longer periods of awake time for us to interact with him.

Right now, Mike is still working on getting my car's inspection taken care of. He'll be gone for a minimum of two hours while the windshield is replaced. Luckily for me, that time is falling right at Natalie's nap time. William is still also asleep from our trip out to the library this morning. (I constantly feel like I should be waking him up because he's been sleeping too long, but even now, he's only been asleep about two hours. More than 3 hours is long for a newborn nap. The early days seemed difficult with Natalie, but at the same time, I must have had a lot of free time if she slept this much). There are a lot of things I could or should be using this time for. There is no telling when William will wake up. I like to try to have him wake on his own when we can since there are lots of times during the day we wake him to change him, go somewhere, or move him from one place to another. Natalie most likely won't be up for another hour and half. With some luck, William will wake up before her giving me time to change and nurse him before she gets up and wants to play. Thus far, juggling the two of them hasn't been too hard since he's mostly sleeping. Even when I've been nursing him, she's mostly just played in the living room. I've still been able to interact with her pretty well. The one good thing about all the headache with my car's inspection is that its meant Mike has had to go out several times leaving me alone with both of them. Its good practice we would probably otherwise avoid. It looks like the tricky times will be when they both need something at the same time, such as both wanting to eat at the same time or both needing to be gotten up from sleeping at the same time. We've tried out the ring sling, and its felt pretty comfortable for a hour or so. (It was riding up my neck a little probably because the rings weren't far enough on my shoulder, but I couldn't figure out why that happened). We haven't used it explicitly for nursing yet though. Once I have that down, it will make a lot of the problems I predict easier.

Things on the outlook are a good kind of busy. Our new baby sitter is coming for the first time tomorrow. Thursday is baby story time, and Friday very early is William's next check up. Next weekend Natalie's been invited a birthday party, and the weekend after that my family is coming up for Natalie's informal family party. Then in October, we have check ups for both kids, William's hearing screening, and a BBQ for our farm share, and let's not forget Halloween. Also this fall, we are still considering a trip to the zoo and want to go apple picking. If we really wanted to, there are also two events at my old teaching high school (Homecoming and Craft Fair) that we could try to attend. Hopefully all this activity will make getting through the weeks (and especially the nights) easier.

So, I guess I should go use what little time I might have left for something productive. I have thank you notes to write so that I can stuff them in with our birth announcements. That's the big project I should be finishing. Thank you notes are technically so easy to write, but I always put off doing them. I think its partly because I hand write them and that can be time consuming. I also want to truly say something nice in each one, and I feel bad when they become formulaic, even thought he recipients aren't comparing their notes or anything. Its also hard when the notes are for people you don't really know. For example, we have two for Mike's co-workers and one for my sister's mother-in-law. These are people I've only met a couple times for varying amounts of time. I want to be polite, but not sound fake. Anyway, enough sitting here writing about the thank you notes instead of actually writing the thank you notes.

One quick note, I'm pretty surprised how many things I've been able to get done this past week with Mike home. Usually I make a to do list and only a few things get crossed off, but I've done a lot of things off my list, and many other things that never made it on the list (like working on William's baby book and even some updating of Natalie's book).