Have I told you how I feel about PA's "snow"?

It's really just ice parading as snow.
Definitely not the greatest snow for, well, doing anything in.
Or rather doing anything "on."

Though that didn't keep Sir O and Mr Renn from trying this morning. A few pictures and videos here.

growing and other things that sneak

The Captain was more than 2 lbs over his birth weight on Wednesday. He cannot be stopped. He will grow up and out, and that's all there is to it. *sigh*

Living on a fixed student-loan income (not adjusted for inflation, why would they want to do that?) during a recession is DANG FUN.

Applying for (and jumping through hoops to remain eligible for) every conceivable form of aid/scholarship/reduced rate very quickly wears out a person's self esteem. It also aggravates anxiety in those prone to it. Don't ask me how I know this.

Do you think if I clicked my heels hard enough I could make a bucket of quarters appear (laundry money)? It's really hard to try to "ration" laundry when all of your newborn's "holes" are functioning so well.

Sir O has been on a hunger strike since the Captain joined us. Today he skipped lunch altogether in favor of hanging out in his crib pretending to take a nap. Sneaky devil.

Sir O got very lucky this morning and his favorite people gave him a reprieve from his boredom. He loved being outside. Once inside, he wasted no time becoming insanely bored again.

I'm trying to find ways to celebrate upcoming birthdays and new babies of friends and family without actually spending any money. This is trickier than it sounds. I'm not trying to spend "less" money. I've been using those tricks for as long as I can remember. We're talking zero budget for celebrating. Leaves me feeling terribly out of character.

Sir O has decided he's done pretending to "nap" and is now hollering. (Or is he singing "jingle bells"?) I had better go save the Captain from him. To the rescue, again.

all by myself

Well, the fun is over.
All the grandmas are gone.
Sir O is stuck with just me again, and he finds my company lacking.
Despite his unwillingness to talk to them (or anybody really) on the phone, he misses them terribly. This is evidenced by the constant question "gama? where's gama?" for hours/days after their departure. (Accompanied by a thorough search of the apartment.)

And I have nobody to hold the Captain to help me keep him safe from Sir O, and nobody to attempt adult conversation with during the day. The dishes aren't magically doing themselves anymore either. Bummer.

I'm not quite sure how I'm going to manage. (I will, I just don't know how)

This living across the country from the family thing is the pits. But we're sure glad we got such lovely visits!

Circling

We're getting there.
We are almost in possession of our new normal.
I'd say in another week we'll be as "there" as we're going to get.
Because "normal", you know, is a fluid concept with small boys.

February is almost here.
I shudder.
Not my favorite PA month.

Poor Sir O is going to be redefining stir-crazy, I am certain.
And that, I'm sure, will be the basis of our new "normal."

follow me, if you can

The Captain is asleep (did I mention how well he sleeps? Oh yes, I did) and the rest of the crew is out and about today. I find myself with time to think, and find I've rather forgotten how to do it coherently.
Perhaps part of it is seasonal. It's easy to be lazy and reflective on a Summer afternoon, but in January the stir-craziness has started to hit and my brain becomes rather jumpy.
None of this is helped by hormones or my sleep-deprivation, I'm sure.

Sir O has begun to calm down from the manic high of having his world altered. For a while there I was genuinely worried that he'd become permanently naughty and that violent tantrums were the new norm. (Even more worried that they'd always been the norm and somehow I'd failed to notice it before). But he's growing more calm and rational each day and I'm feeling terribly tender toward him. I want so badly for him to know he is loved and to feel safe and secure. Tricky stuff, this parenting gig.

I seem to remember never wanting to lay Sir O down when he was a newborn, but now I find myself almost rushing to lay the Captain down as soon as he's drowsy. I feel like I have a million things to do to stay afloat. Although honestly I don't have a million things to do. Life is pretty simple, and I'm oddly uncomfortable in it. I'm too conditioned to a project/deadline oriented existence I suppose. Time to reinvent myself again, though it's hard to change things that are so much a part of you they're practically hard-wired in.

I want my home to be calm and comfortable, but I want to be a visitor to my calm and comfortable home, not the permanent resident/calm-comfort-maker. Well, those are my intuitive desires anyway. My purposeful desire is to want to be the quietly busy calm-comfort-maker. I just flounder a lot.

Part of my struggle is never feeling I have arrived. This is naturally aggravated by the toddler-ness at home. The home never arrives at the state of perfect order. The dishes are never finished. (Have I told you how I feel about dishes? Oh yes, I have.) The toys don't stay neatly tucked away. Fingerprints appear on every shiny surface, and Sir O is nearly always wanting me to play with him. I have not got a great gift for playing with/like a boy. I do try. Most of the time I'm trying like crazy to figure out "what should I be doing right now?" and finding no obvious answer. No matter what I choose to do, I have some guilt for what I chose not to do. If I play trains, I feel bad about Mr Renn coming home to a dirty kitchen and no meal prepared. If I stay on top of the kitchen I feel badly about Sir O being bored out of his mind and feeling neglected. Now that we've thrown the Captain in the mix it's all the more complicated.

The Captain is a champion eater. I think he could eat all day long if I let him. At his 2 week checkup the Dr said his weight gain was astounding. He was almost a pound over his birth weight. This is a good thing, at least so far, but it means I spend a lot of time feeding him. I've been doing sudoku and knitting while I nurse, pretty mindless stuff, just enough to make me feel like I'm doing something besides being milked. But when all I have to show for myself at the end of the day is 24 new completed sudoku puzzles, an ornery toddler and a messy house, I sometimes forget that what I did do (feed the Captain) was important. Despite how critical it is, it doesn't feel like much of an important accomplishment while it is happening.

But I'll keep on keeping on. I'll keep trying to hammer into my emotive soul the things I know in my logical, thoughtful brain. I'll try to not be so hard on myself (how does one actually go about doing that anyway?)

Mostly I'll just remember that I'm terribly grateful to have been entrusted with all of this. And remember that I've been promised that when I'm on the Lord's errand I'm entitled to His help.

Think He's interested in helping with the dishes?

Naps and other illusiveness

Some people can nap, and some cannot.
I have a theory that a person's ability to nap is proportionate to their ability to cast their cares away for the duration of a nap.
In other words, I rarely manage to do it.

Too bad, I could really use the rest.

But the Captain is a first-rate napper. I wonder how I can help him retain this important life skill. But then, he is a boy, and that right there appears to give him a terrific head start. So unfair.

I'm hoping to bake some bread today. Doesn't that sound almost as nice as napping?

Want/Need/Love

About 3 months ago I started perusing the internet to see what the realm of double strollers looks like.
(Because despite being pitifully poor, I am picky)
I found a magnificent steal of a deal on Craigslist for a (like new) Bumbleride QueenB stroller, and almost bought it without consulting Mr Renn.
But I DID consult Mr Renn, and since he hates to spend money, he convinced me we should wait and see if we really need a double stroller before making such a big purchase.
So the fabulous steal of a deal passed before my eyes, never to return.
I still regret that one.
In that spirit I entered a giveaway for a Bumbleride double stroller today. I never enter giveaways, but at least now I'll never have to wonder if I might have won if only I'd entered....

Sometimes the line between want and need is so fuzzy.

groove making day

Working on creating a new "normal".

Tricky parts include convincing Sir O that the Captain is not a toy, should not be picked up, and does not appreciate poking.

Especially when he's sleeping. Argh.


Advice anyone?

You're in for a treat

The lovely Chell decided to spoil us rotten again.
Oh how I love being spoiled rotten!
I've been amazed at how many people have seen fit to spoil me (and the Captain) in so many ways. Some seriously lovely things have passed our way.
And here is some magic.... somehow she managed these lovelies in our bear-cave of an apartment. (A place where I had given up on the possibility of a decent photo, let alone anything like these)
Methinks it is time to get to work on the birth announcements/valentines....
And this one makes me giggle....

Settle in for some mama rambling

As badly as I would like this to be poignant, if I insist upon that point I will paralyze myself with the certainty of failure. So it is what it is.

I felt like a failure as a mother heading into this delivery. As much as I had managed to dwell upon the experience of being pregnant, I had never managed to give much meaningful thought to the person coming at the end of it. I knew he was coming of course, but I couldn't quite wrap my brain around a non-Sir O-entity coming from me, and besides Sir O himself had barely allowed me any meditative time in the past 6 months. Combine that with the whooshing sound that is the holiday season and my third trimester whizzing past and you arrive at the hospital at 7am terrified that you haven't bonded one iota with the being about to exit your innards.

And he didn't have a name yet. Of course every doctor and nurse and CNA and resident that passed through our room had to ask about that. We started to feel really sheepish about this no-name baby of ours.

8am: So, while I got all hospital-gowned and IV-ed, (and man, does getting an IV ALWAYS hurt like that? I am a weakling with a very low tolerance for pain, I know.) I had Mr Renn pull out the 6 generation family history chart I'd made, as well as his list of names.... (after making about 30 of them during Sir O's pregnancy I never even made one this time around...) plus a baby name book I'd panicked and bought at Target at the last second. We got to work discussing names in earnest (and playing card games) while they set my pitocin drip at the lowest level and mostly left me alone.


10am: Still no name. We seemed to have narrowed the field a bit though. My Doctor arrived to check on me, and disagreed with the Resident about the station of the baby's head. The Resident seems to think the baby had a long way to drop yet, and I'd been unhappy to hear that. But the pitocin was doing it's thing, there was no turning back. My doctor and the anesthesiologist had a c-section coming up, so the nurse told me to be more dramatic about my pain level so I could get my epidural before they headed into surgery. I laughed at being told to be more dramatic about pain (nobody is more dramatic about pain than I am)... and the nurse got very stern with me.

Sometime before noon I got the most perfect epidural known to man. I could feel pressure but not pain, I could still move all parts of my body. I could tell when I was contracting, but only just. I was happy.

Sometime after noon the Doctor stopped by to break my water. The nurse immediately frowned and said "the baby didn't like that." I assumed it had something to do with the baby's heart rate and I panicked a little bit inside. They turned the pitocin off for a while and I put on my bravest face, wishing somebody would tell me there was nothing to worry about (because there probably wasn't). I was put on oxygen, which is deafeningly loud and made it difficult to follow what was going on around me.

1pm Still no name, although we'd narrowed it to only 3 or 4 options. The nurse asked if I was feeling any pressure and I said no. About 5 minutes later I realized I feel an urge to push and we got nervous when nobody came to check on us for a while. Nervous nervous nervous.

For some reason I've been much more nervous about this pregnancy than the last. With Sir O I felt perfectly secure that everything would go well from beginning to end, and for whatever reason this time I've taken nothing for granted. I assume it has to do with being so far away from my family support system, but who knows?

Whenever my nurse did return to check on me, I was a fully crowned 10 cm. She commented that it was a good thing I had the epidural, or the baby would come "flying out of there". Everyone told me not to push until the Doctor could get there.

I FINALLY got the butterflies about meeting my baby.

Sometime between 1:15 and 1:30 my Doctor arrived and the pushing began in earnest. My nurse who'd been mostly sweetness became stern with me again and kept saying to "give me a good push this time." But she also told me not to puff out my cheeks or I'd break blood vessels in my face. I was thinking "Who cares about my face? Let's get the baby out safely!" To the best of my knowledge, no new blood vessels were broken...

I could tell there was a problem at some point. It didn't take nearly this long to push Sir O out. My Dr didn't want to cut, he says it's bad for business. (Can't blame him, PA is a sue-happy state) But I heard snippets through the oxygen about the cord being pinched, and I heard the Dr. say, "we've got to get this baby out". Holy panicked mama. I started feeling waves of guilt for not pushing hard enough (like I could have pushed harder somehow? don't ask a woman in labor to be rational) and channeled my whole soul into somehow pushing hard enough to get it done quickly. My doctor performed some special maneuver that I WISH Mr Renn had seen fit to NOT share with me afterwards; I all but HEARD myself tearing, and then, despite the oxygen, hyperventilated a bit. My Doctor was trying to get my attention to tell me to stop pushing and to look down. And there was a new human being (luckily entirely intact) looking all gray and pink in his newness and entirely flesh of my flesh. My soul claimed him immediately. I shook for a thousand reasons.

2pm I held this nameless baby for the first time and all I could say was "oh" over and over again. That seems to be my word for moments like this. So much for eloquence. He was squinting at the world and being gentle but firm about how cold he found it to be here. He was whisked away by the nurses, who immediately notice his skin tag (right ear) and commented about how when you see those you have to double check the baby to make sure he has all his "holes". I panicked again. Mr Renn confessed to me that he has skin tags in his armpits, and I wondered why I'd never known or noticed that.

We worried collectively for at least another hour while we waited for our baby to unchill under the warming light. As worried as I felt, I was relieved to feel so worried. It meant I was attached! I'm a good mother! I haven't thought about Sir O all day! That reminded me.... I had Mr Renn call and check on Sir O and all was well. Mr Renn had sent out texts and cameraphone pictures, but now it was time to call our parents.

Only we didn't want to call them until the baby had a name.

So once we were finally holding him again (sweetest relief, all was well). We drilled and we wrote names out and stared at them, and in the end I was the one that consented, because Mr Renn should feel he has some say in naming his children, and with Sir O he was the one who consented. Luckily, as we christened the Captain by calling my mom and announcing his name, I was completely at peace with it.

And the best part is that Sir O can already say his name with no trouble. How is that for a bonus?

I have consigned myself to the reality that I will likely never deliver a baby without an episiotomy. Thus recovery will always be ugly and longish. BUT WORTH IT.

And the Captain is an easy peasy baby. He barely fusses, sleeps for long stretches, and figured out how to latch on in about 10 minutes. All of his "holes" are intact and fully operative. He can sleep through Sir O throwing a royal tantrum, and tolerates being batted around the face and having his hats consistently stolen by the same Sir O. Pretty much perfect.

I did have one baby bluesy panic attack when I realized I would not have the luxury of holding this baby and leisurely thinking exclusively of him for more than 12 seconds at a time. Sir O is a handful, and that just has to be ok. Somehow I've got to configure some kind of balance between the two little boys who both want all of me.

But I love them both, and that's the sweetest thing.

the hazy parts

Lots of adjusting going on. Most of it is being fairly pleasant. I'm very slowly beginning to feel intact enough to think about things like laundry and clutter and what our next meal will be.

Sir O is throwing some violent tantrums; luckily none of them aimed at the Captain. I think he needs some attention. I'm trying awfully hard to give it to him. Tricky stuff.

The Captain is s.l.o.w.l.y learning about day and night. It's a tricky concept, and easy to get switched around it seems. But no screaming fits or unpleasantries - he has a tremendously calm demeanor. I couldn't be more grateful.

Figuring it out folks.

I have a goal to document Captain Graham's birth story, and this is currently the only venue I have to do it. It should be forthcoming. I've said it "out loud" now so I'm more likely to get it done, which is good for me. But it's certainly not required reading, so feel free to skim if/when it surfaces.

The mammaries are calling.

Ciao.

the first days

Things are good around here. I had somehow forgotten how painful being a new mom is. I remembered it was painful, but forgot how much. The stitched up parts, the contracting uterus, the milk coming in..... yowza. Luckily I seem to be the only one suffering around these parts and everyone else is grand.
Well, I'm grand too, just a painful version of it.

Then again, Sir O busted his chin open on the bathtub last night, and in lieu of a trip to the ER for stitches, we located some steri-strips and patched him up at home. There was some stress, mostly performed by myself. So I guess Sir O has had a wee bit of suffering himself. (Although judging by behavior, not too much).

Sir O shows off his "banade"

And I'm most happy to report that Sir O is proving to be a most excellent big brother. He's very attentive, sweet, and almost always very gentle. Such a relief. This morning we found him bringing baby toys to the Captain in the bouncy seat, and pushing all the buttons for him so he could listen to the sounds they make.

I'm genuinely beginning to feel that once the painful phase is over I may be able to handle it all. Not perfectly, but I think I can keep these kids alive, possibly even keep them happy a good portion of the time. That's a happy thought.

landings

I suppose I am "reporting in" at this point.
I feel obligated to provide profound insight into parenthood and procreation, but I'm having a hard time thinking beyond the realm of prune juice and ice packs.
I've had profound thoughts, just not time to compound them into coherent verbage.

I will say that having one's spouse at one's disposal at all times makes a world of difference when recovering from labor. I wish I had appreciated it the first time, since I will never have that luxury again. And I bet Sir O wasn't fully appreciating all the Mr Renn he was hogging from me either.

So how about the sleepy face of Capt. Graham? That's what you're really here for anyway, isn't it? Can't say I blame you.

The Stork came

Mr Renn here: As you might have guessed from previous posts Em is in the hospital at this very moment, exhausted, sore, and very happy. Baby Graham Arthur was born at about 2 o'clock p.m. after a mere 6 hours of labor, and 5 days early. Both mom and baby are doing well. Sir O was well taken care of by our wonderful neighbors and had the chance to come by and say hello to his new brother. I had a wonderful time talking analgesia, with the anesthesiologist (and was so proud of myself for knowing all of the drugs they were administering), and talking vicryl sutures as the doctor stitched my wife up. I am sure Em will be posting when she returns. Thanks for all your love and prayers.

Just a few minutes old

Our first family picture

A thrilled big brother

More photos here

up didilly date

Membranes have been stripped
Yeah, that was fun.
We're expected at the hospital for a pit drip at 7am tomorrow.
7am, yeah that will be fun too.

Who knew having a baby could be so much fun?

Hopefully a genuinely fun post will be forthcoming.
Hope hope hope hope hope.

As it happens

Sometimes Sir O will do something ingenious in front of people.
Then Mr Renn will say something along the lines of "oh that's going to make the blog for sure."
But you see, he has no intentions of actually blogging it.
So I guess it's up to me to keep him from being a liar, isn't it?
Such was the case today when Thomas learned to play the piano.

39 Weeks; the last days

Just a matter of hours at this point.
My brain is finally starting to kick in to gear, and I'm realizing all the things I don't have time to do. Luckily there's nothing VITAL, but still I wish my brain had been able to function earlier.
Nothing to say to that but a big "OH WELL."
Wish me luck.

party hardy

Because we are party animals...
of the homebody-ish type
and today is special.

aack!

3 non-newborn days left ahead of me.
I am so nervous I think I'm making myself ill.
Please oh please oh please oh please, let Sir O not find this too traumatic.
Can I deal with voluminous toddler tantrums on no sleep? Well sure, but not WELL.

Everybody goes through these nerves with their second child, right?

Will my kids like each other?
Will I be able to keep them both alive?
Will Sir O feel abandoned and replaced and be emotionally scarred? (Okay, I know that's melodramatic, but it has crossed my mind frequently.)
Will Sir O act out and be so naughty that I'll find myself consumed with his behavior; neglecting the baby?

Sir O has already thwarted all our attempts to praise his "big boy"-ness by insisting that "O is a baby." And the baby's not even here yet. So just how much trouble are we in? Hence the part where I'm so nervous that I'm making myself ill.

I kind of wish I could just get it over with and start dealing with it.

Except not really.

3 days is plenty soon.

AAAck.