5 Weeks & The Un-Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving was kind of a bust this year. I didn't run the Thanksgiving Day race, which I've done for the past there years (I'm not allowed to run for another week - I can't wait! - and even if I was able to I wouldn't be up for 6 miles quite yet) and our immediate family didn't get together for lunch like we've always done. So Tim and I and the boys went for a nice long walk in the morning and then went to brunch at IHOP. It was a nice day, just not very Thanksgiving-y. We did go to my grandma's for dinner, which was nice, but it just wasn't the same.

Charlie is 5 weeks now. I'm still having a really hard time getting him to nap during the day unless I hold him (or unless we're out driving or walking in the stroller). Whenever I put him down he cries. It's really hard to get anything done around the house. He's sleeping really well at night, though. Most nights I don't have to get up with him until 4 or 5, which is great for how old he is. It definitely helps because sleeping during the day just isn't an option. When he gets up at 5, though, I usually don't get to go back to sleep because by the time I feed him and fall back asleep Will is awake. Also, if I have any chance of showering before noon I have to do it before they both get up so I usually just hop in the shower after I feed Charlie. So I've been going to bed at 9 or 9:30 so that I can still get 8 or so hours of sleep in, which means no real time for myself or time to spend with Tim at night. The whole thing's fairly exhausting, but I know from experience it does get much easier.

I had a girls' night out last weekend to go to dinner and to see Wicked. It was great to get out! Tim definitely had his hands full, but overall things went fairly well. I really miss my friends since I haven't been seeing them much since I haven't been running. And I've hardly seen them at all since Charlie was born. Hopefully life will get more back to normal soon. I'll be able to run again in about a week. I won't be up for running with them quite yet as I'm sure I'll be slow and doing short distances for awhile, but I'll be on track at least. I can't wait! It's going to be hard to get runs in I think, though, because of the weather. I'm hesitant to take Charlie out when it's too cold.

Tim's next babysitting gig is tomorrow while I host a shower for my sister. Hope it goes well because he's going to be having quite a few coming up :-) I'm due, believe me.

Here's a pic of Will on our walk the other day and one of Charlie at 4 weeks.

Baby Smiles are the Best

Will Counts En Francais

Halloween

Despite Charlie only being 10 days old, Halloween was a lot of fun. We carved Bert and Ernie pumpkins, which Will loved. He kept wanting to make them "spooky", which meant lighting them in the dark.

He was a sock monkey, a costume my mom found for him at Cracker Barrel, of all places. It was really cute.

He loved trick-or-treating, although he got pretty mad we wouldn't let him eat each piece of candy as he got it. We did go to a house with a lot of scary decorations and a candy bowl with a skeleton hand that came out and grabbed your hand when you try to get candy. That was a bit much for him and may have traumatized him for life. We've been talking about how the "hand came out" for days now. It was a good time, though, and, more importantly, the promise of Halloween candy if he eats all of his dinner every night has been pretty powerful.

Week Two

I took Charlie in for a weight check this week and at 11 days he was 7lbs9oz: 1 oz over his birth weight. Yippee! My super-duper breast milk has done it again! Just kidding. There's nothing particularly super-duper about my milk, I'm just always amazed at how something that I naturally produce can sustain a baby like that. It's just a really cool thing to watch them grow and develop and be so healthy and know that it's all your doing.

The first week or so with him was rough, but he has since morphed into a very good baby. He still wants to nurse a lot in the evenings, but he goes 1 1/2 - 2 hours between feedings during the day, and he doesn't take nearly as long to eat as Will did so I'm able to be out and about much earlier than I was with Will. Although people seem to think I'm crazy for doing so. I'm tired of sitting at home, though, and (more importantly) so is Will. He turns into a pretty big brat when he's bored. We'll both go insane if we don't get out and do stuff during the day. I took both of them to Skyline for lunch the other day. I had three people ask me how old the baby was. When I replied, "two weeks" they all (separately) told me I was 'brave'. I don't call it brave. I call it survival. Taking the baby out is cake anyway. He just sleeps in his car seat. It's the two year old that's a challenge. No one tells me I'm brave to take a two-year old out in public, but I find that much more panic-inducing, myself.

Charlie's also been sleeping pretty well at night. We definitely have some bad nights, but most of the time he only gets up twice, the first one being 4-5 hours after we go to sleep. I don't think I got that much sleep in a row until Will was 4 months. One night he actually only woke up once. It was heaven. I'm still getting up, though, and the sleep deprivation is finally starting to catch up with me. And sleeping during the day hasn't really been an option. On the off chance that both of their naps actually overlap, by the time I get settled down and doze off to sleep Charlie wakes up. Its like he has some weird sixth sense that allows him to know exactly the moment I've started to drift off and he starts to scream. I'm just not a good day sleeper anyway. It takes me a long time to actually fall asleep because I have to work so hard to fight off the urge to use the time that they're both asleep "productively". Anyway, tired Liz = cranky Liz so now me (and everyone else in the house) are having to battle my irritability. I don't remember this so much with Will. I guess I was floating on the cloud of new mother bliss still. My, how things are different the second time around...