Smiley!!

I guess I'm a bad mom because I didn't take a single picture of Louisa at her birthday party yesterday. Actually, it's just that I was having too much fun to remember to take out the camera. That is, until Bridget started grinning at me. (After she woke up-- she slept through pretty much the whole party.)

Sisters

Compare
Originally uploaded by carliches

I keep changing my mind about whether Bridget looks like Louisa or not. She's definitely bigger than Louisa was at the same age. (They aren't the same age in the pictures - Bridget is two weeks older than Louisa.) She's DEFINITELY a better sleeper than Louisa was at the same age. Oh, but we weren't talking about sleeping, were we?

Anyway, I like seeing this side-by-side comparison of my girls. They don't look exactly alike but they both have that pouty bottom lip and those delicious cheeks. And cute little noses. And toes I could nibble on all day long... I'll stop now. You can see for yourself.

Free Time

Well, clearly I'm not keeping up with the daily blogging. I'm not even keeping up with daily showering, if you must know. I'm ok with that, though. I shower more often than I blog.

I was thinking the other day about free time, because I made an offhand comment about free time recently that seemed like it might have struck a nerve with Bill. Here's the thing: now that I have two kids, I've had to completely restructure my concept of free time (similar to the way that giving birth completely re-calibrated my concept of pain). It used to be that free time was pretty much any time that I could use however I wished. In retrospect, I realize that I had a lot of it. Enough that sometimes I would just be bored and not be able to figure out what to do with myself.

Now, free time looks a lot different. At this point, if I'm not at work and I don't have a child actively attached to me or loudly demanding something from me, I consider that free time. There are certain situations that used to seem like total time-wasters and complete bores that now seem like built-in free time bonuses. Examples of these include sitting in waiting rooms at doctor's offices and waiting for the oil to be changed in the car. I mean, you can read a book in a waiting room!

Here's a list of things that I've either done with my free time since Bridget was born or plan to do soon:

• sleep


• shower


• brush my teeth


• do laundry


• pick up toys and put them away


• grocery shop


• blog


• plan Louisa's birthday party


• paint the kitchen (Stop laughing. I will so.)


• put all of the dishes and other kitchen items back in the kitchen

So, you see, the other when I said I was a lady of leisure, I meant that in a pretty broad sense. Like, I'm leisurely feeding and toting around this baby all day.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining. I'm totally enjoying this time, because this time I know that it will go by all too quickly. Also, yesterday I ate two pieces of chocolate cake, one because it was my birthday and one because I'm nursing and need extra calories. And when is that ever going to happen again? (Answer: never. I guess there's a chance I could still be nursing Bridget a little bit next year at this time-- Louisa was 13 months old when she stopped nursing. But even if that is the case, I won't be her primary source of nutrition, so my caloric need won't be as great.)

Hmm, all this talk of cake has me thinking... there is still cake the other room. And Bridget is sleeping. Which means I can use this free time to fill my chocolate need.

Overheard

Things I heard Louisa say today:

1. (After having a conversation on her "phone" which is really a calculator) I was just talkin' to my friend Grandma.


2. (After noticing that Bill was getting pretty far ahead of us on our walk) Hey, he's trying to sneak us!


3. Dada, your whiskers are too whiskery.


4. (Six thousand times throughout the day) Why???

Wow, Impressive, No?

How lame am I? Two days of posting and then I skipped a day! So much for NaBloPoMo. You'll be glad to hear that I'm doing a much better job at keeping up with the baby. Maybe if the blog cried every couple of hours I'd have a better chance of keeping up with it?

I had lunch with an old friend today and I was telling her that compared to life with full time work and taking care of a three-year-old, just staying home with a baby feels like a life of leisure. Of course we know who the real lady of leisure in this house is-- I mean, jeez, I have to change my own shirt when I get spit-up milk all over it.

Wow, speaking of the lady, I better run because Bridget is lying in my lap and I just heard (felt) the diaper alarm.

Kitchen Update

The kitchen is not finished. Originally, we thought that project would be finished before the baby arrived. What a joke!

We demoed the old kitchen the last weekend in February. So, for three full months now we've lived with the fridge and the table crammed into what is basically a glorified butler's pantry, eating off mostly paper plates and cooking mostly in the microwave. We've eaten a lot of takeout. We've also eaten out quite a bit, especially early on because poor Louisa was totally freaked out by the whole chaotic mess in the beginning.

It hasn't actually been as bad as I thought it would be. At this point, though, we are ready to have it done. Not just because we want the kitchen back, but also because we're both tired of having people coming and going every day, and having a giant pile of debris in the back yard. (Louisa never gets tired of having people come and go. Every worker or delivery man that comes in is her new best friend and she chats with all of them. These days she tells them all about her baby sister. She also asks lots of questions-- it's a good thing she's cute!)

At this point, we're pretty close to the end, but it's these finishing details that seem like they are going to take forever. The cabinets, counters, and appliances are all in and functional. But we haven't moved our stuff back in to the kitchen yet and we haven't used any of the appliances yet. Mostly because rather than moving back in and beginning to use the kitchen bit by bit, we were both hoping that we would reach a point (soon) where the contractors would say "it's done" and then we could move in and have a sort of grand opening dinner. We have started using the sink, because it's too much of a pain to not have a sink. But last night, as I was washing vegetables to grill, I was struck by this odd feeling that the kitchen is so nice, so new and shiny and fancy, that it doesn't even feel like mine. I can't even really believe that that is MY kitchen, in MY house, that I'll get to use every day and live in and raise my kids in and it's the only kitchen they'll remember... it just blows my mind. It's definitely going to be the nicest room in the house, and I'm already looking around at other rooms and thinking about what I can do to spiff them up so they aren't so shabby in comparison. (Of course, the biggest issue at this point is that there is kitchen crap EVERYWHERE... stacked in every corner of the living room, stacked in the office, stacked in the spare room. Between all of that stuff and all of Louisa's stuff (which, that's a whole different post for another day but MY GOD does that girl have a lot of stuff. More toys than I can imagine, probably because we never get rid of anything, and also more clothes than I have. It's ridiculous. She has way more clothes than she can really even wear, especially because she has a few favorite dresses that she always wears if they are clean. Anyway, another day, another day...)

Right now I'm about to attempt to declutter the living room. Or, I should say, finish decluttering the living room, because Bill started the other day and he really did the bulk of it. Now it's just a matter of sorting through the remaining piles and straightening up the kitchen items in the corner. Which would be a totally easy job if I didn't have a baby sleeping on me. I meant to do it hours ago but Bridget was all cuddly and sleepy and the next thing I knew we were both napping. Only one of us drooled so much that she required an outfit change when we got up though.

Bridget Eva

So my due date, a Thursday, came and went with no activity. Louisa was born on her due date, so I'd not experienced the "overdue" feeling. Let's just say I'm not a fan.

By Saturday night, Bill theorized that maybe the baby was waiting until we'd settled on a name. We had a short list of contenders for names, but none of them stood out as the one. When Louisa was born, we didn't know if we were having a boy or a girl, but several days before my due date we decided on the name Louisa Jane for a girl. We never did decide on a boy name. Anyway, that Saturday night we spent some time thinking about names and looking through books. By the time we went to bed, we'd struck upon the name Bridget Eva, and it felt right.

Sure enough, I woke up periodically throughout the night with mild but regular contractions. They continued all night and into the morning. By late morning, we decided that it was time to send Louisa to Grandma and Grandpa's house because it seemed clear that the baby was on her way.

When Louisa was born, the first thing that happened to alert me to the fact that I was going into labor was that my water broke, rather dramatically, as I was standing on the sidewalk walking home from brunch. When that happened, we knew that we'd have a baby within about a day. This time, though, we didn't have that kind of specific time frame, because my water didn't break until much later. So we spent the afternoon just kind of waiting around for things to progress. We walked, we watched a movie, I napped, I showered, eventually we went to the Outback for dinner. By the time we got to dinner, my contractions were about 7 or 8 minutes apart and were getting strong enough that I was having to sort of focus on breathing through them. They weren't so bad that I couldn't eat, though. My favorite part of dinner was when Bill looked at the waitor and said calmly, "My wife is in labor. So if you could go ahead and drop off the check, that'd be great. That way we can leave in a hurry if we need to." You know, like, oh yeah, she's in labor. Happens all the time. Pass the steak sauce.

I called the hospital from the parking lot after dinner, because it had been about an hour of regular contractions about 7 minutes apart. We were thrilled to discover that the same doctor that delivered Louisa was on call that night. He said that I still sounded pretty good (or calm, or something) and that we might just want to go home for a while and wait until the contractions were more like 4-5 minutes apart.

So we went home. By 9pm, my contractions were still about 6 or 7 minutes apart, but I started to feel like they were changing and I thought it might be smart to go ahead and go in to the hospital. Good thing I know to trust my hunches. It was about 9:40 when we got into the delivery room. I'll spare you all the details, but by 11:20, I was holding Bridget in my arms. Just like with Louisa's birth, I was able to get through this one without an epidural. Unlike Louisa's birth, this time I didn't have the narcotic shot either. There were about 10 or 20 minutes there where I thought that opting out of the narcotic shot was the worst mistake I've ever made. Also, you know how I thought it was dramatic when my water broke on the street before Louisa was born? It turns out that what is really dramatic is when the water breaks during a pushing contraction.

And then she was born. 9 pounds, 8 ounces of chubby delicious baby. And as soon as I was holding her I realized that avoiding the narcotic was actually a great thing because this time I was so much more aware of what was going on in those first few minutes. It's probably also because the really strenuous part of the delivery went so much quicker, but I just didn't feel as exhausted and run-over this time.

So yeah, it's been pretty different this time. Bridget was half a pound bigger than her sister was a birth. She has been a really good eater from the very beginning. She also seems to be, so far, a good sleeper. And by that I mean: she sleeps at night. Not all night or anything, but for several good long stretches with no real fussing in between. (We're cheating a bit, as
i took the advice of a friend and I've actually been sleeping with Bridget in the spare bed. This is not a long-term solution-- I want her sleeping in her own bed, but this is working for now and it's making these early days manageable so we're going with it for another week or so.) I've got my fingers crossed that she continues with the good-sleeping trait even after we switch her to the bassinet and then crib, because I still wouldn't characterize Louisa as a good sleeper and having two kids who don't like to sleep sounds kind of impossible.

I'm sure part of it is just that I'm more relaxed and confident this time, but this baby stuff seems way easier this time. Of course, we also have a nearly-three-year-old to deal with. Louisa has been mostly great with the baby. The biggest challenge is that she's sort of aggressively affectionate with Bridget, so she requires constant monitoring when she's near the baby.

And now, my good sleeper needs a fresh diaper and a little something to eat.