Who Needs Sleep, Anyway?

There really isn't a whole lot to report since last Saturday or so.

The biggest thing this week was getting Luke past his cold so that everybody in the household could sleep again. I think Luke's cold coincided with a sleep regression, which is a fancy way of saying a period when babies seem to take a few steps backward on learning to sleep through the night. I wasn't really expecting one until 4 months, but it seems Lukie hit his early...or maybe it was just the cold and we can still look forward to the 4 month regression.

Anyway, he basically slept from 8-midnight or so, and then would be up every 1.5-2 hours after that. I was going out of my mind, mostly from sheer exhaustion. Pete even had to take him early in the morning a couple of days so that I could get an hour or two of uninterrupted sleep while he and Lukie slept downstairs in the living room.

Last night, however, Luke slept from 7:30-1 a.m., and then from 2 a.m.-6:30. That's progress! Well, it's actually just back to what he was doing before the cold. Honestly, though, the wake-up at 1:00 was my fault, though I imagine he'd have been up at 2:00 or so anyway. Lukie is still sleeping in his buzzy seat next to the bed, since he still has some significant sinus drainage and a cough. Light sleeper that I am, I was kind of half awake and reached down to check him, since he hadn't been awake yet and I was used to the wake-up-every-two-hours thing we'd been doing for the last couple of weeks. In my half-awake state, I couldn't feel him breathing and I freaked out and woke him up. Silly Mommy.

Luke gave me his cold. That's the other news. So in addition to operating with the cognitive capacity of a squirrel lately, I now get to operate with the cognitive capacity of a sick squirrel whose throat, head, and sinuses hurt. Oy.

That said, I hope it's Luke's cold that he gave to me and not something new that I could give to him. I'd take all the colds if it meant that he didn't get any.

Oh, and by the way, Lukie is 12.5 weeks old! He turns 3 months this Thursday, so expect an update after our 3 month birthday party (with special guest, Suzi Greene!). Until then...

Oh yeah, and Lukie's "school pictures" are in. I haven't bought them yet, and when I do, I'll have to scan them at work because I can only get hard copies...but trust me...THEY'RE ADORABLE.

Under the Weather (but at least the weather's nicer...)

Most of this was written Thursday. I was waiting to publish it until I could take some decent smiley pictures of Lukie.

Thursday:

I guess I should have expected it. Lukie got his first cold after being at daycare for a week. I knew I wouldn't LIKE seeing him sick...I didn't know that it would turn me into a psycho mommy.

We had a pretty nice weekend before Lukie really showed many signs of being sicker than just having a runny nose (which I mentioned in the last post). On Saturday morning when he woke up, it was running pretty constantly. He and I spent some time wrapped up in blankets on the front porch, swinging back and forth while I wiped his nose every once in a while. Luke LOVES being outside, and I figured if he didn't feel very well, that was the place he'd enjoy cuddling up to me the most. I even took a rare selfie (actually, there's another one later in the post) of him and me hanging out on a Saturday morning.

It was so nice and cool, we just snuggled under blankets for an hour or so. He went down for a nap, and I watched some Looney Tunes, but eventually, we made our way back out to the porch. The weather was so nice that we actually spent a good part of the day out there. I even moved his swing out so he could sleep out there while I read a book and Daddy mowed.

Sunday afternoon we went to a concert at Dogwood Park. Pete works with a group called Rural Resources which supports local agriculture and runs children's and adult's programming to educate people about sustainable farming. Pete is on the board, and they had asked him to come help with the concert, since Rural Resources was providing all the food as a fundraiser. I decided to tag along with Lukie. Despite feeling a little sicker by then (I have to assume), he really did a good job staying happy almost the whole time. Of course, sleeping through half of it helped, too.

The only bad thing about the situation was that Pete and I forgot to get cash before the event, so we couldn't eat there, and the food smelled SOOO good. Pete was cutting watermelons, but the spot next to us was dishing up roasted vegetables that had been cooked in these giant blue hubbard squashes. There was barbecue, stuffed peppers, goat cheese and crackers, ice cream...it was AWFUL to not be able to eat it all! That said, we came home and had some Mexican sweet potato lasagna I had whipped up earlier in the day, so at least we got good food later!

Okay. We've reached Sunday night in our little recap. Sunday is when it all went to hell in a handbasket. He went down fine at about 8:00, like usual. His nose wasn't really even running. He woke up at 11 or so, which is unusual for him, but he went back down so I thought everything was fine.

Then, at 2 a.m.....it all went to heck. I heard one cough and thought maybe I'd made it up, since sometimes I THINK I hear him when really it was a dream, and the cough sounded really weird, anyway. But then I heard it again. Lukie sleeps in a bassinet right outside our bedroom door; we had to move it out there because I'm such a light sleeper that every little move he made would wake me up when he was in the room with us. He started coughing and it sounded AWFUL, like a seal barking. It was croupy and congested and so scary. I brought him into the bedroom and woke Pete up, telling him that Luke was sick, and then I tried to nurse him to calm him down.

Then Luke spit up, coughed, and gagged all at the same time and I swear, it sounded like something out of the Exorcist. It scared me so much that I said, "Oh, my God!" and pulled him off of me, which just upset him more. I was shaking by then because it sounded like he was choking and couldn't get any air. I gave him to Pete for a minute, but I couldn't take not holding him myself and I asked Pete to give him back to me. I told Pete I wanted to go to the ER because Luke was gagging and choking and gasping. Pete talked me off the cliff and told me to calm him down first and we'd see if it was serious. I finally got Lukie calm and he stopped coughing. He fed, and then we put him in his buzzy/bouncy seat next to the bed for the rest of the night. I got NO sleep, but Luke really didn't do too badly.

I called the doctor in the morning and they got me in at 9:30. The doctor told me Lukie had a cold, that the drainage had caused all the nighttime problems, and that he was doing fine but that I needed to stay home with him that day (I had no intention of sending him to daycare, anyway). He slept a lot that day and wanted to be on me ALL. DAY. LONG. Which I really didn't mind...

 ...because I kind of wanted to hold him, anyway.

 Luke never ran a fever, and he really didn't do too badly on Monday, though he was tired and quite a bit fussier than usual. By Tuesday, he was clearly feeling better, barely sniffling, and coughing just a little bit. I'm actually quite impressed by how quickly he bounced back from the cold. He still coughs a little, but it doesn't sound too congested, and I'm constantly watching to make sure it's not developing into a secondary infection. We're still letting him sleep in his buzzy, just so that he's upright and we don't have another incident where the drainage starts choking him, which is ultimately what had happened on Sunday night.

I was also impressed by Lukie's ability to still be smiley a couple times on Monday when was his sickest. He cried a lot of the day, and it was a sad, pathetic, drawn-out whine that just BROKE my heart, but there were a couple of times he seemed to bounce back a little. I got a few smiles out of him. They didn't last long, but at least I knew he was feeling okay-ish.

Nothin' makes a man smile like a clean diaper.

So that was the big hullabaloo this week. My baby got sick. And honestly, I wanted to pull a Miss Frizzle and shrink myself down, get inside him, and hunt down whatever bugs were making him sick and GET. THEM. OUT. OF. THERE. I felt super helpless, like I just couldn't fix it. But at least Luke had a better attitude than I did. I think the cold was tougher on me than on him!

In other news... Lukie turned 11 weeks old on Wednesday! Time is flying so quickly now that I'm back at work. I still take him to daycare even on my days off, mostly because those are the days I can catch up with all the work that still needs done at home.

Case in point: today I dropped him off, went to the gym, the produce stand, the gas station, and got a cup of coffee. (Ok, a chai latte. I hate coffee. At least now I've found something that I can drink and it makes me feel like a grown-up.) Then I went home, unloaded the groceries, did the dishes, cleaned the bathroom, the living room, and the kitchen, vacuumed the entire house top to bottom, did 4 loads of laundry and folded all of them, made a casserole for dinner, made zucchini bread, changed the sheets on the bed, and pumped 3 times before picking Luke up at 4:30. I think I work harder on my "days off" than my "days on". And I STILL don't get everything done! There's still a garden to weed. That, plus making meatloaf and a Moroccan chili recipe I found this week, will have to be a weekend project.

Update Saturday: Here are some "11 weeks old" photos from this morning. I definitely don't take as many pictures of him now that I'm working, but I got a few today! The mark on his nose is from him scratching himself. Those little nails are like razors!

Also, the Moroccan chili was a total success!

Dressed for Success!

Lukie made it through a whole week of daycare! Not without a runny nose, though. Sigh. I have a feeling that's going to be a part of life for a while. I noticed that the other 2-month-old has a runny nose right now. He's probably got her bug. It's hard to see his nose running because I want him to somehow remain just perfect and healthy and beautiful...and I don't like the idea of something being in his body that I can't fix. I know it's for the best; by the time he goes to kindergarten, he'll have a good immune system. Doesn't make it easier to see his sniffly little face and know he doesn't feel great!

Other than that, though, Lukie is doing really well at daycare. The ladies really like him a lot, and Sara (his teacher) sends me at least one picture every day. Yesterday, apparently, he was super snuggly all day. I wonder if he was already feeling kind of crappy and just wanted some comfort.

On Thursday, they sent home a note that Friday was "school picture" day. They were going to have a photographer in to take individual pictures of the kids, and then they'll give us the pictures for free in a couple of weeks. I really wanted to find a clip-on baby tie to clip to his onesie for his picture, but with so little time, I couldn't find one in Greeneville. Then I had the brilliant idea of hand-embroidering one onto a onesie. Cut forward to 11 p.m. on Thursday night, and I finally finished it (thank God Lukie went down at 8 p.m.). We sent him to daycare yesterday looking like this:

The daycare ladies loved it and it made it all the way through the day without a blow-out, so I'm really looking forward to seeing his pictures.

There's not a whole lot more to report other than that. We're slowly getting back to something like normal around here. I'm still only working three days a week, so I have a little time to get the house back in order and do some cooking during the week. Basically, I take Lukie to daycare, go to the gym and the grocery store, prep something for dinner that night and something for Pete to throw into the oven the next night when I leave work. It's been nice to have real dinner at the table with him, even if one of us (usually me) is bouncing Lukie's bouncy chair with her foot to keep him happy while we eat! I'm really looking forward to the days when Lukie can sit at the table in a high chair and we can feed him little bits of whatever we're eating. It'll make dinner more of a family occasion.

That's it. It's Saturday morning and Pete's teaching an online course, Lukie's asleep, and I'm watching Looney Tunes. The old ones-- none of this Looney Tunes Show crap. That's basically just a sitcom with Bugs Bunny in it.

I've decided Saturday morning Looney Tunes is a perfectly acceptable tradition in our house, though. I don't really want Lukie watching all the cartoons on Cartoon Network-- you know, the ones that are crazy loud and focus on kids trying to outwit adults and being bratty little turds. But Looney Tunes-- they're creative, they're funny, they're innocent. I'm on board with Looney Tunes, Sesame Street, and the Muppets. And I'll have just as much fun watching as he will!

I leave you with some 10-weeks-old pictures:

Something like normal.

Wow. What a week so far.

First, Lukie is going to daycare every weekday now. Yesterday was a little rough...for me. The only tears anybody cried in the morning were mine as I was leaving the house. Pete was taking Lukie to daycare, so I headed off to work leaving them both at the house. Pete dropped him off at the daycare and said he was charming the ladies there when he left, grinning big grins at them and looking adorable in the little outfit and socks in which I'd dressed him.

I was pretty nervous all day, mostly because Lukie had started fighting the bottle again. Sara, Lukie's teacher, texted me a couple times during the day. She told me he fought the first bottle, but eventually, he got hungry enough and took the rest of his bottles throughout the day with very little fight. I have to say that I really like Sara. She sends me texts and pictures throughout the day so I know how Lukie is doing. She sent this one on Monday:

(Their bib, not ours, but he IS Grandma's favorite, so it's appropriate.)

 

He didn't sleep very well at daycare on Monday because he's getting used to the noise, but he slept like a champ last night, so I can't complain.

I had the day off today (Tuesday), but Pete and I decided Lukie should go to daycare anyway so that we start getting him in a routine and he gets used to Sara and the daycare. I'm kind of glad we sent him because I got my first "day off" in 10 weeks. I was able to use the time to take care of lots of things that had been bugging me about the house since Lukie was born, and to do a few things that I had missed. I went to the gym and the grocery store, then got home and made soup for dinner tonight and cabbage roll casserole for dinner tomorrow night (Pete had been wanting some cabbage). I cleaned the first floor of the house (the second one I saved for Thursday) and did some laundry. Then I went to pick Lukie up and took him to Pete's museum while I gave a guest presentation to his class. Lots of productivity!

Meanwhile, Sarah sent me this adorable picture of Lukie, who apparently fell asleep during tummy time...

When I got to the daycare to pick him up today, he was crying because he'd just had a massive BM and the teacher was feeding another one of the babies, so I went ahead and changed him and then held him on my shoulder...and he just melted and stayed there looking at me. He was so happy to be with mommy...kind of made me feel bad that he'd been there all day, but also made me feel really happy that he was so glad to see me. He'll learn lots of great things at daycare, but he'll also always be glad to see me, and it made me great that he knew who I was and being in my arms relaxed him right away. This evening, he seemed content to just hang out on my shoulder while we sat on the porch swing. Four weeks ago, an hour of Lukie being awake AND content would have been unimaginable. Tonight he just wanted to cuddle with me.

The other development this week: I went to work on Monday. I have to admit that despite having to leave Luke to do it, it felt GREAT to be working again. Maternity leave really showed me how much I love my job, and I think being a working mom is going to give me an opportunity to be myself while still hopefully being a great mommy. It was so nice to be working at the library, moving around helping people without a giant, pregnant belly weighing me down and exhausting me! I'm going to attempt to continue breastfeeding Luke while I work, so pumping isn't super fun, but I know it's the best way to feed Lukie and it makes me proud that he's still being breastfed. It's weird, but I feel like it's a connection I still have to him while I'm working. 

The one problem with Lukie being at daycare all day...I don't have nearly so many 10-week-old pictures as I do his other weeks! Just a couple from my iPhone:

(I forgot to post about this last week, but we had Lukie's 2-month doctor's appointment on Thursday and he weighs 14 lbs 9 oz! That puts him in the 90th percentile for weight, but he's in the 75th percentile for height, so it's not that he's JUST fat. He's also just a big kid! In fact, he dwarfs the other 2-month-old baby at daycare.

He had to get three shots in his legs at the appointment. He HATED the shots; we're talking wails of panicked frustration. However, I had brought a blanket that smelled like home and I wrapped him up and nursed him right away, so he only cried for a minute or so. I was worried he'd have a reaction to the shots and be super fussy all day. For once, I was wrong! Lukie slept all day long, and when he woke in the evening, he was a happy guy. He had a slight fever, but it didn't seem to bother him, and he slept like a champ that night after I gave him some baby Tylenol. He did a great job getting through his first round of vaccines; I hope all of them go so well!)

The Flab Five...

Lukie starts daycare tomorrow. I'm simultaneously SO ready and SO not ready. I spent the entire day scrambling around making sure everything I can possibly prepare ahead of time is ready to go.

Diaper bag: packed
Bottles: made
Laundry: done
Forms: filled out
My lunch: made

Mommy: freaking out a little bit.

I've been trying to figure out what it is that bothers me about the daycare situation, and it's not the daycare, which I like, or fear that he won't be taken care of properly, because I know he will. I know he'll learn tons of new things and be around other babies. I know we're starting him at a good time. He'll never have separation anxiety when we take him to daycare because it's really all he'll ever know.

I'm just sad/worried that I'm going to miss out. Every day he changes so much, and it'll be hard not to see every little goofy grin or sound he makes. I suppose that's the cost of being a working mommy. But, in exchange, I know my son will have a great example of somebody who works hard for everything they have and made sacrifices so that his life, and our family's life, can be better. And I'll SERIOUSLY take advantage of the time I have with him before and after work. (Please don't take this to mean I don't think SAH mommies can teach their kids the same lessons!)

I think the whole thing is teaching me how little time we have with him when he's a baby. I know how quickly he's grown so far; it'll seem doubly quick when I don't see him all day long, every day.

One thing we're going to focus on: we're going to make a point of getting out and DOING stuff on the weekends. I want Lukie to be an adventurous baby. I have a great friend, Kim, who took her baby everywhere and never let having a kid stop her from doing something fun. Consequently, Ben is an adventurous, outgoing little boy who doesn't know a stranger. I want to do the same with Lukie. Pete and I haven't taken advantage of living in a really neat natural area, so we're going to make a real effort to get out and see the Southeast. As soon as he's just a little older (like, able to hold his own head up a little bit better), we're going to start going on adventures!

In closing, Pete and I had a funny idea for a post the other day. I love every little roll on Lukie's body (and trust me, that's a lot of love). I'm not making fun of him here, and most of the flab has more to do with the way he's sitting than real life. I'm celebrating our sweet, chubby, wonderful little boy. Behold, my favorite five chubby pictures, herein titled THE FLAB FIVE.

Lukie's 2-Month Birthday!!

We made it to two months!

It's been a bit of a nutty week. Last time I wrote, I was talking about how important it was that we get Lukas on a bottle-feeding schedule because he's going to start daycare on Monday (heart attack). I had posted that Lukas was refusing bottles of formula, but taking bottles of breastmilk (we had had a hard time with powdered formula, but at the time, even though he fought it a bit, he'd at least take regular breastmilk in a bottle). Well, somewhere around Thursday last week, that escalated into refusing ALL bottles ALL the time, even from Daddy. If I was going to be a stay-at-home mom, that wouldn't have freaked me out so much (though having a bottle-trained baby does give you a certain amount of freedom), but with me going to work on Monday, I was FLIPPING out. How could I leave him if he wouldn't take a bottle? Enough people told me that if he got hungry enough, he'd eat (this kid OBVIOUSLY loves to eat), but I didn't want daycare to be any more traumatic than it's already going to be, either for him or for me, since I knew I'd worry about him all day long.

Thank goodness my mom was coming in to visit. By Friday evening, I was really worrying, but Grandma Vickie came to the rescue. She insisted that Pete and I take a day trip to Asheville, NC on Saturday, just the two of us, while she worked with Lukie on the bottle issue. I was nervous to go-- we even considered only going on a date to Johnson City so that if he absolutely wouldn't eat, we'd only be 40 minutes away, but ultimately we decided that he's going to daycare on Monday anyway, so we'll have to leave him then regardless. I'm so glad we went.

I didn't take a whole lot of pictures, but Pete and I had a really nice time. First, we went to a woodworking/hardware store that Pete had heard about. It was cool even by my standards. They had lots of hardwoods for woodworkers to buy, but more importantly as far as Pete was concerned, they had a really great selection of antique planes. He had a lot of fun looking at them all.

 Then we went to our favorite Indian restaurant. It's a buffet, so you get to try a really wide range of awesome foods. Last time, we went with our friend Kelly and we all went nuts over the chicken korma. This time, my favorite was definitely their vegetable meatball curry, followed closely by some awesome fried onions and a pretty killer curried chickpea soup. We stuffed ourselves. Kelly, you can be jealous. :)

We did some antiquing after that, but I was feeling pretty physically exhausted-- it's hard to do an entire day date when you're running on "new parent" sleep!

While we were gone, Mom got Lukie to take a bottle! I had worried about him all morning, but she texted me to tell me that he was taking a bottle by lunchtime, and it made it a lot easier to enjoy our meal and the rest of the day. Apparently he fought her a bit in the morning, but by the afternoon, the only time he really screamed at her was when there wasn't enough in the bottle!

Since then, we've been keeping him on a schedule much like he'll be on when we're into our daycare routine. I nurse him in the morning, then starting at 8 a.m. or so, he takes bottles of breastmilk throughout the day, and then after about 5:30 or 6, I can nurse him again and through the night. I'm going to keep up the practice now that Mom's gone until the whole bottle thing is really set in his brain. He'll even take one from me now!

 (Playing with Grandma Vickie)

On Monday, Pete had to work, but Mom and I went shopping. I didn't have any jeans, since I had ripped my only other pair, and thankfully, I can wear jeans at work, but not hole-ridden ones. My old size actually fit at the store! I did size up though. There wasn't much room for shrinkage. Sigh.

(Grandma Vickie and sweet, sleepy Lukie...and yes, she's wearing a "Who Farted?" t-shirt. Don't you wish your grandma was this cool?)

Lukie was a dream on his first shopping trip. He slept the whole time we walked around the mall in a stroller I bought at a garage sale a decade ago while I was babysitting. A gentleman asked me how old he was, guessing he was 3 months. Nope, he's just huge.

And he even let Grandma Vickie and me try out Five Guys Burgers. The burgers were sooo good...but I don't think you'd want to eat one more than, say, once a year.

I sat and rocked him in his car seat while we pigged out on calorie bombs. Eventually I had to pull him out and rock him on my lap, though.              

                  

He didn't cry all day until we were about 10 minutes from the house...and then he'd had enough. But can you blame him?

Tuesday we went on a trip to the Kingsport Public Library, just to bring Lukie to see everybody before I head back to work. He probably won't get up there that often after that because I don't really go to Kingsport unless I'm working. We went to Grandma Rebecca's program for a few minutes until he got hungry, and then we went for a walk and got bagels. He fell asleep and let us cart him around the library a little...until he filled his pants and it was time to go.

I was able to do some cooking Tuesday evening, which felt really nice. I made hoemmade pizza for dinner, and then I actually had time to make a birthday pie for Lukie (well, for Lukie's parents and grandma). I've decided that for this first year, we're going to celebrate his month birthdays. They're congratulations to me and Pete for getting him through another month, and it's fun to look at the photos and see him (and us) change from month to month. In another couple of months, Lukie will be able to partake of at least a little pie filling. Apparently, coconut pie is the traditional monthly birthday party dessert.

We're still using that stupid "4" candle I found for the last one. I can't believe how much Lukie has grown between this birthday and the last! Here's his 1-month birthday pie picture:

And Tuesday, at two months:

Pretty crazy, huh??

Mom leaves today, and I'm so sad to see her go. She was such enormous help, and we won't see her again until November, maybe for Thanksgiving. Lukie will be 4 and a half months old at Thanksgiving, maybe even sitting in a high chair and starting on some solids. I can't imagine how much he will have changed by then!

Finally, one last comparison. Lukie has a doctor's appointment on Thursday, so we'll see how much he's grown since last month. I have to imagine it's a whole lot...he's a big, big boy!

Lukie at one month:

And Lukie on Tuesday, September 3rd, his two-month birthday:

By the way, will someone explain to me how he can sleep like this...