One of these bulges is not like the other...

Pregnancy takes some explanation.  Especially when you're two and are wondering which mound on your mama's mid-section houses what, and for what purpose.

My mom, Jude and I had stopped at a Red Burrito joint in Iowa on the way back from a visit to the town where I grew up.  Mom had gone to the bathroom and I was cleaning up the remnants of dinner and corralling Jude so that he wouldn't get tripped on by a crew of about 12 men who had arrived after what I'm guessing was a football game.

After feeling the usual twinge of guilt at tossing the packaging from a rare fast-food meal on the road, I bent down to talk to Jude, who was pointing at my stomach and trying to ask me something.

"Is your baby in here?" he asked, addressing the firm bulge of my belly with his short, pudgy finger.

"Yes, he is," I answered.  "He's your baby brother."

"My baby brudder?" he said.

"Yep," I replied, noting how irresistible he is when he replaces "th" with "d". 

His bright eyes moved further up my torso and he pointed again, this time at my chest area, his fingertip burrowing into my flesh.

"Is your baby in here?", he asked.  (I swear he had a twinkle in his eye.)

"Nooooo..." I replied, redirecting his curiosity from my chest back to my belly.  "He's in here, remember?"

"Oh," he said.  "Huh."

Having been in our own world together for a few moments, I looked up to see a 20-something guy with shaved black hair, sagging jeans, and a huge smirk on his face.  He wasn't making eye contact, but it was obvious he had overheard Jude's questions.  My mom had returned from the bathroom just in time to witness the tail end of Jude and my conversation, and the look on the guy's face.  We laughed all the way to the car.

Since then he asks me daily if I have a baby in each of my boobs.

"Is your baby in here?" (pokes one boob).  "No."

"Is your baby in here?" (pokes the other boob).  "No."

"Is your baby in here?" (pokes my stomach).  "Yes!"

I tried to help him make sense of mama's changing landscape by introducing him to the concept of nursing.  Babies are in tummies, whereas these other two things have a different purpose once the baby is born.  When the routine guessing game is over, he reminds himself of the facts by saying, "There's no baby in there.  There's milk in there for the baby to drink."

It's a good thing their brains are so malleable at this age, because otherwise these concepts would seem ridiculous.  In some ways, they're still strange to me.

The Long, Slow Wean

Jude decided to wean himself from breastfeeding yesterday.

It wasn't as sudden as that sounds, I guess. We cut down at nine months when I went back to work, and he started losing interest over a month ago. For the past week we'd just been going through the motions.

Yesterday I was finally able to admit to myself that he had more or less turned down both of my offers. My production is low now, and he doesn't have time for it. The toys on the floor are competing for his attention, and I'm not quite as colorful or fun to throw around the room as they are.

He is telling me it's time.

Meanwhile he's a real champ in the solid-food department. He stuffs his face and stores it in his cheeks for later. I'll see him chewing something an hour after dinner and fish it out in a panic, only to realize it's the same piece of corn he'd been gnawing on while we cleared the table. Naughty.

Last night I put both of my nursing brassieres into the wash for the last time. They have been loyal and dear under-garments over the past year, and throwing them into the laundry basket felt sad. Jono admitted he felt weird about it too, probably because it means Jude isn't so much of a baby any more.

My goal was 12 months though, and we made it. I feel good about it. Yay for us :)

Working Girl

It's official. As of September 1, I was back to being a working girl.

This is nothing new. I've been working since I was 13. But I've had a golden nine months "off" now (all stay-at-home and work-at-home moms are laughing with me now), and it's time I started getting paid.

The first couple of mornings were the hardest. I didn't know when it would hit me, but suddenly it did as I gave Jude to Jono and turned around to grab my bag of work stuff. Hot tears. When Jono saw my face, he got them too. As I went out the door I waved. Jude stared at me with his mouth in typical Cheerio mode. His chubby arm stayed by his side.

By the time I sat down at my desk things were okay. How I felt about things this week changed by the hour.

When I got up those first couple of mornings to bacon and eggs on the table, I thought "Hmm. This is above and beyond." When I was making good progress on something at work I would think, "Hmm. I can see how some women can't do the stay-at-home thing." When I would get home and Jono would be making some exotic Indian dish for me, I would think, "Hmm. Not bad." When he cleaned up afterward, baked some blueberry muffins, made a batch of cookies, and packed me a mid-morning snack for the next day I thought, "Hmm. This is crazy. My husband is Susie Homemaker. And I LOVE it."

Then night would come, darkness would fall and I would start to get a little anxious. I worried Jude wouldn't reach for me any more. I worried my relationship with him will change; that I'd start feeling differently about him somehow, and that it wouldn't be as good. I worried about becoming the "secondary parent". I worried I'd lose confidence in parenting him because I don't see him all day.

This morning I woke up and it was low-drama Friday. I smooched Jude's cheek goodbye and left the house cool as a cucumber. After work I pulled into the driveway and he was in the front yard playing with my mom. I turned off the ignition as fast as I could, hopped out and peeked at him over the roof rack. He gave me the Cheerio mouth again and the bright little eyes starting to recognize and anticipate. We smiled big smiles at each other.

I scuttled around the back of the car, threw my bag and travel mug onto the sidewalk and ran for him -- he was doing the quick, excited breathing he does now when he sees me -- I scooped him up and it was like that moment in the movies when two people are embracing after running across a golden wheat field in slow motion. Except that one of us is a full-sized adult female and the other one is a short, chunky infant who can't walk.

Within seconds of our reunion, he started whining. To nurse of course. I am his personal milk-cow. But it's a sound I like to hear. Bubba still loves his mama.

So that's that. I'll be back to laughing hard when I watch The Office. As everyone knows, that show was made for people who work in one.

Six Months!

I love this pic I took of Jude and Jono yesterday. Jude is six months old today. Can you believe it? He's like, a real baby now.

Here's an update on his latest habits and activities.

First off, he has graduated from the 30-minute nap and is taking longer daytime snoozes now. Like, over an hour, and sometimes two. I'm getting so much done, it's obscene. I used to struggle weekly to log my 10 hours of paid labor, but now it's a real cinch. Thanks Jude. Mama loves you.

He also knows how to whine now. It's kind of a grating, sustained grunt/squeal, and he uses it to tell us he is not pleased with whatever we're doing. Like anything that involves touching him for a practical purpose, such as strapping him into the car seat, putting his hoodie on, etc.

He makes a range of noises, and when he discovers a new one he makes that same noise obsessively for days until the novelty wears off. He also responds to humor, but our funniness eventually gets old to him and we have to think of something else. Like last week he laughed his butt off every time I put my face close to his and sang "Strangers in the Night" in a sultry baritone voice.

Dooby-dooby dooooo (strangers in the night)... exchanging glances, lovers in the night...

It worked about five times and after that he was completely straight-faced and looked at me like, "Not funny anymore. Move on."

AND...he's eating solids. We made it to six months exclusively on breast milk! He gets two solid meals a day now: rice cereal in the morning and oat cereal at night, with nursing in between. In a week or two we'll start him on pureed veggies, and next month we'll introduce fruit. At his first feeding (well, really his second, but it had been a long time since that 4.5 month attempt) he learned pretty quickly what was on the spoon we were pointing at him, and he lifted his head and opened his mouth for each bit like a baby bird. Now that it's been a few days he's less passive about it and grabs for the spoon or his bib and sucks the spilled cereal off of it. He loves the stuff.

Jude has a bedtime routine now. It goes like this:

Oat cereal
Warm bath (soap occasionally)
Put on night-time diaper and PJs
Read books
Nurse
Sing/rock
Sleep

I was thinking that solids might help him sleep better at night, because most of the people I talked to about it said it had helped their babies. But the first few nights he was still waking three to five times on average, sometimes to eat, but just as often I think because he's trying to poo or what have you. Maybe he's a little cold sometimes in our drafty old house; I don't know. The past two nights he has only woken twice (to eat), so that's progress. The prospect of just one 2 am feeding makes me giddy. Someday...

My friend Lori made me feel better when she told me that her babies didn't sleep very well at night until 8 or 9 months. She also wondered if mothers have some sort of hormone going through us during this time in our lives that keeps up functioning despite the lack of sleep. She pointed out that now that her kids are out of that stage, she's back to being a zombie if she gets anything less than 8 hours a night. She has a point. Most days I feel great and operate just fine despite everything. There are some days I may even fall in the category of "high-functioning". Whatever it is, it's a miracle.

Every kid is different and how you feel about the habits of yours on any given day is highly relative. I'm so used to Jude's waking patterns that it usually doesn't bother me much, but then you hear from some chick whose four-month-old is waking only once a night and you start to feel a little jealous. I was on a mom's Q & A website recently and some silly woman posted the following:

"My baby is four months old and is STILL waking up for a 2 am feeding every night. Help!!"

Yeah lady, we all feel bad for you. (Someone needs to slap her.) Honestly if Jude had been sleeping through the night already at that age I'd be worried he was getting enough to eat. The gazillion comments to this woman's post were quite amusing. Most of them were along the lines of "Are you kidding me? Get over it!" Hee hee.

I need to commend Jude for something that I think he is doing great with. A few weeks ago we decided to see if he could learn to go down for naps and bedtime on his own. (Normally I would nurse or rock him to sleep.) He fussed a bit the first few days, but now I can put him in his crib drowsy but wide awake and he doesn't make a peep. When I go back to check on him a few minutes later he is sound asleep. He'll also wake up in the morning and play by himself in his crib for 20 minutes or so, and I get to sleep a while longer. Wunderkind I tell you.

So that's the latest on Doobers, as Jono called him the other night (I think it's because we've been singing "Dooby Dooby Doo...").

Thriving

It's my first Mother's Day, and someone gave me the best compliment recently that made me feel like I'm doing my job.

Jono's Grandma Holtvluwer took one look at Jude last week and asked me what I was feeding him. I answered that he was still eating only breastmilk. She replied, "My goodness, he is thriving on that!" I probably flushed with pleasure when I heard her say it.

I know all mothers get milk, and most mothers feed it to their babies, but there was something about that comment that made me feel good, even if it doesn't make me unique. All those night-time feedings have been worth it.

Here's to moms everywhere. Pay us in cheeks!

Things Have Changed...

...everyone else is on vacation in warm places and you're excited that your husband offered to take the baby for most of a Saturday so you could organize the basement.

...nothing fills you with more glee than when your kiddo goes down for a morning nap so you can run around like a chicken with its head cut off "getting things done" for an average of 30 savory minutes.

...your hubs gets home from work and your heart literally jumps out of your chest with excitement that you'll get to hand the babe off to him when he walks in the door -- then falls somewhere below your knees when you realize he's decided to split wood for 30 minutes in the backyard instead of coming in.

...said hubs becomes unsettled when he notices wife and babe are plastered against the sliding glass door boring four holes into the back of his head as he splits said wood, and he feels a wee bit of pressure to make his way into the house sooner rather than later.

...you still can't believe how big your boobs are, and have to keep reminding yourself that they will eventually go away.

... you forget to wear a tank top under some of your favorite pre-baby shirts, and notice later that the buttons around your bust-line are about to pop open. The gaps between each one are so big pretty much everyone can see your son's lunch buffet area.

...what you consider quality "alone time" becomes the ten minutes you spend in the shower with the babe in an infant seat outside the shower curtain. Whom you must soothe every 30 seconds by keeping the curtain partially open so he can see what you're doing.

..."reading a book" becomes the 20 seconds in bed before you pass out like a drunken sailor.

...you must now use the bathroom in the company of another tiny person who is lying on the bathroom rug staring at you.

...you use morning nap time to write a blog post instead of working and feel extremely guilty about it.

...your husband's asthmatic night-time breathing sounds exactly like the beginnings of a baby fussing in the next room and you can't stop yourself from tensing up every 3 seconds because of it.

... even though the bod isn't what is used to be, you figure you can still get away with wearing your two-piece swimsuit this summer. People will lend you a little grace when they see you on the beach with the baby you recently pushed out of it.

...your prayer life has gone significantly downhill as it now revolves around asking God to put your baby into an 8-hour stupor for the night.

...it seems whenever you sit down to nurse, the phone rings, the dog whines to be let out and someone knocks on the door, and you're completely paralyzed by the indecision of which need to address first.

...you are blinded by a huge wave of jealousy when another new mom "can't believe how long my baby's naps are".

...you can't believe this chubby, bald, two-foot tall creature is part of you and always will be, and the love you have for him is sometimes terrifying because of all the things that could happen to him.

...you don't know how it's possible that this is the most work, time, and love you've ever lavished on anything, you've never been more exhausted in your life, and yet there are moments where you feel deliriously happy about it.

... your shower looks like a sasquatch was in there last. There's a lot of post-partum hair coming out of your head, and you figure it's only a matter of time until you look like Demi Moore in G.I. Jane.

... an hour after the babe goes to bed for the night, you miss him already, and must go in to stare at his fat little sleeping face.

Flirting with Solids

Ha ha, look at his face! (click for larger view)

Daddy gives it a try...

What a train wreck :)

Jude is only 4.5 months old, but we decided to try a little brown rice cereal on him recently. They say you can start them anywhere from four to six months. I was hoping to wait until six, but he has been acting extra hungry lately and shows extreme interest in whatever I am eating. I have to be careful to hold my food or drink away from him or he'll try to swipe it. Plus he is still waking every three hours or so all night, and he's hungry. All signs he might be "ready". I asked my doctor about it and she gave the go-ahead, so we tried it.

We mixed a tiny amount of cereal with some breastmilk, stuck Jude in his little seat, turned on the video camera and had at it. Not much of it actually made it down his throat, and most of it formed a small lake around his neck in a bib fold. He made funny faces, was distracted by the camera, and eventually started fussing. But it was good practice. He needed a bath afterwards because some of it got in his neck rolls and the tiny mullet he's been growing since birth.

It's been a couple of days since then and I've noticed the little man has been having some trouble "eliminating" his rice-cereal. Since he's still so young I've decided to put it off a while longer until I can be sure it's just the normal constipation involved in transitioning to solid foods, and not that his digestive system is too immature for it. Maybe we will make it to six months after all.

Other than some uncomfortable moments when he couldn't get things moving in the poo area, he's been so happy and interactive lately. I love being around him, and I miss him more now after I put him down for the night. His new thing is to reach for my face when I'm holding him and plant his little palm on my chin, mouth, or anywhere else he can reach. He stares at me while he's doing it with a cute smirk on his face. I laid him on the rug for awhile a few days ago and put my face close to his. He reached up with both hands and put them, palms open, on my cheeks. Then he giggled because he liked my face so close. I was eating it up.

He's also really into making a "razzing" noise with the spit in the back of his throat, and he loves it when I make the same noise back. The other day we were razzing at each other back and forth in rhythm for a minute or two. It was the first time we both contributed equally to the conversation :)

So there's your Jude update for the week. I hope everyone's excited about Friday, because you are not going to believe the hat he'll be wearing.

Spring Cleaning

I know it isn't Spring in Michigan yet, and it won't be until about May 25. (Notice the dripping-with-melancholy grey tone to these photos. Blah). But yesterday it felt like we were spring cleaning our trees.

We have a bunch of nice old ones in our neighborhood, but two of ours were too far past their prime and had to be taken down. Jude took some great naps with all the white noise from the chain saws, and our yard now looks like Paul Bunyan was back there having a hey-day. (Use the husky in the far left of the photo for scale.) So that was our entertainment for the day. Sad, I know. I can't wait until it warms up and we can actually go places.


Mona was a little alarmed by the tree carnage. I think she put a crick in her neck looking at the guys hanging from the branches.

On a sidenote, as I sat in a living room chair nursing at around 12:30, I realized I had forgotten to pull down the shades. So there I sat as the strapping young tree removal guys walked back and forth by the window with giant chunks of tree. *Blush*
We also sold our car yesterday. Not because we don't need one, but because we were tired of paying for repairs on our "made in Mexico" Volkswagen Jetta. (Das Auto my arse.) So we're in the market for another dependable wagon that will get us to Chicago, the Upper Peninsula, and maybe the East Coast at the furthest. Any suggestions? We're kind of thinking a Subaru.

Cluster Feeding!

As of last night I am a HUGE fan of cluster feeding before bed. It's a tip I got from someone at church and I'm hoping it keeps working. Last night I fed Jude three times in the three hours leading up to bed time, rather than the usual once-every-three-hours routine. Jono put him down to sleep after the last feeding, and not only did he not wake up once in the first hour, but he slept for six hours straight after that. Ha ha!!! Please God, let it continue. (I'm not using His name in vain there. I've been praying about this for weeks.)

Sure, he wouldn't really go to sleep again after that unless I took him in bed with me, but I'll take my small victories where I can. I slept for four hours straight last night. Woot!

I'll Sleep When I'm Dead

So...as you may have guessed from the title of this post, Jude moved into a crib in his own room recently. We took the plunge two weeks ago. It's been the hardest thing I've done since he was born.

Until we moved him, Jude had fantastic sleeping habits for his age. As a newborn we had him sleep in our room in his carseat. We'd gotten the tip from friends, who said it had worked well for their newborn, and we could tell he liked being propped up slightly and surrounded by the wooly lining. (Since then we've learned of some risks with letting newborns sleep for long periods in their carseats, so we don't recommend it.) From his first week on he routinely slept six hours straight in that thing and I only had to get up once a night to feed him.

I knew I had to transition him, and soon. You can't have a five-year old putting his footy pajamas on and squeezing himself into an infant carseat before getting up for kindergarten the next morning. Our carseat friends had told us it took them only one sleepless night to transition their son. That sounded easy enough. I thought, "I can swing that."

Like I knew what I was talking about.

Two weeks later, I'll just say our son is a bit more stubborn than this other saintly child. (No halo around Jude's little head - although the hair sticking up on top is better than a halo in my opinion. But that's beside the point.) We can't believe how little sleep he can run on. We keep reading that at this age babies tend to sleep 15 hours a day. Jude? Try eight. On a good day. Parenting books are no help in this department. They gleefully report things like: "Babies sleep all day and all night and only wake up to eat or have their diaper changed!!" Ha ha. That's great.

During the first week he went down pretty easily and would usually sleep for a two-hour block, during which I would go to bed. This sounds quaint so far. But within the first 30 minutes of my head hitting the pillow I could expect to be up again. This was followed by four or five hours of waking every 15 - 30 minutes. All...night....long. By 6:00 am I would finally cave and bring him into bed with us. He would sleep like a brick then.

On the fifth night or so of this we tried letting him "cry it out" on advice I'd heard from parents who'd reached the end of their rope, but I could only last five minutes. It was pathetic hearing a little baby get more and more upset, and I couldn't handle it. When Jono went to get him finally his crib sheets were wet. From his tears :(

So we tried everything else we could think of. Making his room nice and warm with an oil heater. White noise from the humidifier. Soft music playing. A crib mobile. Complete darkness. Feeding every three hours through the night. Hovering over him in his crib rather than picking him up to soothe him so he wouldn't be so dependent on us for sleep. Nothing was working.

I called my mom. I was hesitant and afraid, but she juiced me up. It was just what I needed to do what had to be done. I HAD TO LET HIM CRY.

I was thinking he was too young to "cry it out', and some claim an infant can't self-soothe, but I was a desperate zombie by this point and was willing to try it. He needed to learn to go back to sleep without me hovering over him every 15 minutes. Mom said, "It's the best thing for both of you. No one is sleeping, and it isn't good for you or for Jude." Jono said, "Em, we need to do a little 'detachment parenting'."

So I tried it. This sounds terrible (I can't believe I did it), but I let him cry for over an hour two different times throughout the night. I made sure that he'd recently been fed when I did this so that he wasn't crying from hunger. I actually managed to sleep through most of it, which shows how bone-tired I was. He eventually went to sleep on his own after the second crying jag, which was the point. Man, he is stubborn.

When I went to him in the morning I was terrified he would resent me for doing this. Had I messed up my best efforts so far at healthy attachment? Did his stress levels rise so high from crying so long that he now had emotional damage? (I read something about that in an attachment parenting magazine!) Were some of those AP people out to lunch on some of these things, or was I?

As I snuck up on him in his crib, I saw that he was awake and playing by himself. He was sucking on his fists, staring at his mobile, and making adorable sounds. After watching for awhile I picked him up. Jono came in and offered to change his diaper (read: good marriage choice). I watched him getting his bum wiped on his changing table, as I often do, because he is so happy and cute when getting his diaper changed. I caught his eye once and silently begged forgiveness. He gave me a big smile. No hard feelings Mom.

Since that night he's gotten into a pattern of waking and feeding every two to three hours, and I still bring him into bed with us for his last night-time feeding around 6am. This is still a lot of waking for an 11-week-old, but it's so much better than it was last week. Now we can try some other, less traumatic tactics for getting him to sleep for longer periods as he gets older. I have no real expectations for him to "sleep through the night" right now. I suppose he'll get there when he's ready.

Even though it was effective, I still feel guilty about the night I let him cry. The next day his voice was scratchy, and it still hasn't come back all the way. This makes me feel worse. Yesterday he opened his mouth to coo at me, and he thought he was making a sound, but he wasn't :( Today I noticed the coo was back. It's one of the best sounds in the world.

Tough love starts early I guess. Here's to second guessing myself for the rest of my life.

Sorry about the novel. I haven't actually been writing much, so maybe it's okay that I just posted a mini manifesto on a baby's sleeping habits. Out of necessity, I'm a little obsessed right now.

Score One for Mom

In a previous post I talked about having a dry spell with getting smiles from Jude. That stage was short-lived. My little boy gave me four smiles in a row one day last week. Two were from behind his pacifier. I could tell he was smiling because of his eyes, and when I pulled out the paci, there it was. It doesn't get much cuter than a baby smiling coyly from behind a pacifier. Since then he's given me at least one every day, usually when I'm about to change his diaper. Taking care of him was rewarding before. Now I'm just plain overpaid.

I also overcame my apprehension and learned how to use a breast pump last week. Three whole hard-earned ounces!!! Not my favorite thing to do (I feel like a heifer), but worth it when I need a bit of freedom. I was fighting the idea for awhile because it seemed incredibly...unnatural, first of all, but also because I didn't want to mess up the supply-and-demand of my milk supply when it was still getting itself established.

My next big hurdle as a new mother: cloth diapering. Before Jude was born I often said I didn't even want to know how convenient disposable diapers were. But after consulting with a few other parents who use cloth, we were advised to use disposable for the first month or two because of the petite nature of newborns and the frequency with which they "squirt" (which is what we call it around here. Not pooping - squirting. Because that's what it sounds like.) Anyway, it's been nice while it lasted, but we're moving on as soon as our shipment of diapers comes in. We'll let you know how it goes.

So. We're Parents.

I still can't believe he's ours :)

I've moved on from barefoot and pregnant to wearing thick winter socks with a kid. Here's a new blog about what's going on with us in general. Well... mostly what's going on with our Little Man.

Jude will be three weeks old on Thursday. He is a tiny boy and can be carried around on one arm while I do things with my other arm. His head is soft and fuzzy and he is extremely kissable. He has long fingers, a long torso and long toes. We think he has my eyes and Jono's mouth and chin. We're not sure whose nose that is. Probably just his own.

When he was born he was 6 lbs. 10 oz. He lost the 10 oz. already in the hospital and we had to give him formula for a couple of days before my milk came in. He also had jaundice, so they sent us home with a "billy blanket". Not as comfy as it sounds. We basically had to strap a set of blue lights to his back and keep them on him for 24 hours. He looked like a little robot baby. We were happy when his levels went down a day or two later and we could get rid of it.

They say it takes two to three days for your milk to come in, but mine didn't show up until the fifth day. I called my mom on the fourth day and asked if there had ever been a woman whose milk never came. She laughed and said no. I wasn't convinced until it came while I was sitting in a coffee shop next door to the barbershop where Jono was getting his haircut. I suddenly felt like I was carrying around a couple of bowling balls.

The next day we made a quick stop at a maternity store to buy a couple of nursing bras. I had gone from one problem (no milk) to another problem (too much milk). I was dripping and spraying all over the changing rooms, and when I walked out my shoe was actually wet. I thought I was going to have to purchase every bra in the store: a "you leak on it, you buy it" sort of situation. I had to purchase a D-cup, which is absolutely unprecedented. I didn't have any boobs to speak of until I was 20 and it took me about eight years to go from an A to a B. Now I'd gone from B to D in one day. All this without surgery ;)

Less about boobs, more about Jude. From the day he was born he had bright little eyes, and he was already lifting his head for a few moments at one day old. He opens his eyes as wide as he can whenever he is awake, which puts about 25 wrinkles in his little forehead. He studies people's faces and likes to stare at lights. He makes quick, small movements with his arms and legs while looking around. He reminds me of a nervous chipmunk with eyes darting and tail twitching while he observes the world.

Also, I've been naming the faces he makes. There's Little Bird Lips, which is his pre-nursing face. He gets really excited about eating and just before he latches on he puckers his lips way out like the beak of a baby bird. There's also Pirate Face, which is the angry face he makes when he tries to latch on and can't right away. It reminds me of a pirate because he scrunches up one eye and opens the other one wide, like he's saying "Arrrrrr".

The thing we most enjoy so far is when he flares his nostrils and breathes rapidly through his nose when he's about to get mad and/or cry. We don't like what's coming after the rapid breathing, but it's really funny watching a baby get huffy about something. When he has a boogie in his nose the rapid breathing turns into snorting. During his first week he was congested and we called him Piglet because he snorted constantly.

Things Jude loves:

• being swaddled or held tightly


• his pacifier


• nursing


• pooping

Things Jude does not love:

• getting baths (screams the whole time)


• being naked (in general)


• getting his diaper changed (cold wipes)


• the period of time between 6pm and 10pm (fussy)

It's strange to be home all day. Jono was home with us the first two weeks, but last Wednesday he went back to work. Now that I'm home alone, I get hardly anything done besides feeding and changing the Little Man. It's kind of like a vacation, but with no sleep and a little creature attached to me at all times. I like it so far.

I've surprised myself with an unexpected surge in my ability to have patience. I'm not a patient person and I get frustrated when things don't "work" right away. But with Jude it's different. He is so little and cute that I'm never annoyed with him. He doesn't cry unless he has a valid reason (hungry, dirty diaper, wants to be held, etc.). This will probably change as he gets older, but for now I'm enjoying this newfound virtue I thought I would never have.

Right now he is sitting next to me in his bouncy seat and continuously spitting out his pacifier and crying. I'll write again when I get a moment.