Attention to Detail

Soren has a razor-sharp sense for knowing when things are out of place. Lately, he has been attached to a gaggle of stuffed animals that migrate throughout the house with him from room to room.

Let me introduce you. We have:

• Lamby: best friend ever, goes everywhere.
• Big Lamby: a very large, pillow-like pal on whom Soren rests his weary head
• Cotton: This is a white Gund bear that we bought for Soren when he was only a few months old. He had been completely disinterested in Cotton until just recently.
• Teddy Bear: Pooh bear from my college friend, Tracy
• Tiny Bear: a small Pooh bear for Elodie that says 1st Christmas on its shirt.
• Django: a doggie puppet from Darby
• Bunny Rabbit: a purple bunny that we bought for him last Easter
• Susie: a red stuffed devil that Trev bought for me 100 Valentine’s Days ago
• Gaggon: a giraffe with a very short neck

Soren named Susie and Gaggon specifically. He would refer to them and we would have no idea what he was saying until we realized those were their names. Soren’s bedtime ritual is for us to put all the friends into his crib before bed, while reciting, “Big Lamby’s sleepy. Gaggon’s sleepy. Susie’s sleepy.” Soren says this in the cutest sing-song voice; it makes my heart melt every night.

In any case, I always arrange the animals in the left corner of the crib, but Trev thought he would be clever tonight and put Big Lamby on the right side. As soon as Soren went in the room for his bedtime story (Mother Goose lately), he said, “Big Lamby. Moving.” He kept repeating it until Trevor relented and put Big Lamby back on the left side. He also noticed immediately that Django wasn’t in the crib. If anything, this kid likes order. Now, if we could just get his sister to adhere to a reliable sleep pattern at night, I’d be in hog heaven.

6 Weeks Down

Ugh, maternity leave is going too fast. Although, I shouldn’t complain. I have been off of work since just before Halloween; it’s been pretty glorious. It is going to take me some time to get my head back into work.

Trevor and Soren are out right now, and I pledged to do no chores. I have been really good about keeping up with housework and chores, but then the holidays hit and now I just want to lie around, play on the Internet and eat cookies.

Elodie still sleeps a ton; she is different from Soren in this respect, I think. Soren definitely had periods of wakefulness and play time, but Elodie is just a lump. But a really cute lump.

We saw glimmerings of her smile starting on Thursday. She seems to smile a lot at Soren, which is so shocking. Soren is definitely in the terrible twos, so she must really like the sound of screaming.

So Pretty

So Pretty

Elodie Siobhan made her surprise appearance on Thanksgiving Day. She was kind enough to wait until I finished making the cranberry sauce, at which point my water broke. An hour later I was at the hospital and had started labor, and about two hours after that, she was born by C-section. (The Memorial Hermann system currently has a moratorium on VBAC.)

I had wanted to avoid spending Thanksgiving in the hospital, which is why she was originally scheduled for delivery on Nov 26, but in the end, it worked out really well. We are so happy to have her, and since she came on a holiday, people were in town and off work and able to visit her after such a grand entrance.

I can already tell she is going to be a drama queen.

The Countdown Begins

Yesterday was my last official day at the office, but I’ll probably be randomly online for the next week wrapping some stuff up. It is now time to get down to business and start preparing for Baby Cupcake.

The first thing I need to do is redesign this blog so that it’s not so Soren-oriented. I am already super paranoid that The Cupcake is going to have a complex because her older brother gets everything.

It’s a girl …

Doctors have confirmed it’s a Connie Jr and not a Trevor Jr.

Her estimated due date is Nov 30, which is my mom’s birthday. We were joking about naming her Emmalina Ferrar, which for some strange reason is the name on my mom’s birth certificate, though in fact that’s not her name at all. I’ve tried to ask, but all I get is a kind of funny giggle.

Chalk it up to poor record keeping in a tiny island country.

Let’s See Who’s Visiting

Baby Boyd, expected late November 2007.

Neglecting my duties

My blogging duties, not my mothering duties. Although with as much time as I spend at work, one could argue …

In any case, rereading the June 24 post. Talk about indepedence, Soren is full time in his crib for every nap and for sleeping at night. He tolerated the bassinet in our bedroom for a little while, but then promptly decided that he had humored us enough. The last night in our room, he spent several minutes screaming bloody murder and when we finally put him in his crib, he rolled over and fell asleep.

Ever since then he’s been progressing toward the fabled “sleeping through the night.” There were three days in a row around the time of my sister’s wedding that he slept from about 9 pm to 6 am and we had to keep on checking if he was breathing. Since then, he’s had a few 3:30 am wakings, but for the most part if he wakes up for a last feeding at midnight, then he’ll sleep through til 6:30 or sometimes even 7:30 or 8:30. It’s pretty amazing.

The bad thing is that all this sleeping through the night means that he is ravenous during the day. I can no longer keep up with his milk consumption, so he eats about 12 oz while I’m at work, and I pump about 8. I’m too lazy to do the math as to when I’ll eventually run out, although I suppose it will all even out again when he starts solids.

I love my baby. Have I mentioned that?

Independence Day

And by independence day, I don’t mean either the Fourth of July or the movie. Soren is growing up too fast!!

We have always taken the baby-centered approach to raising the tot, so he has pretty much told us when he is hungry, when he is sleepy, and well, he doesn’t actually need to tell us when he has a poo bomb; we can hear that a mile away. In any case, this approach has worked very well for us because Soren is a fairly ordered kind of kid — he’s got his own schedule and routine, and he more or less sticks to it.

Soren left co-sleeping behind about two months ago, when he switched him to the crib for daytime naps, and the bassinet (in our bedroom) for nighttime sleep. Well, I think Soren is about to leave the bassinet behind for good. Tonight, when we put him down for the night in the bassinet, he would seem to fall asleep and then fuss and cry and then be quiet and then cry. Finally, I picked him up and he instantly quieted and got that glassy look in his eyes. I held him for a bit, then put him down in his crib where he rolled over and fell asleep instantly without complaint. Sigh.

I’m proud of him for wanting to sleep in his crib, but since I’m still getting up at least once a night, I’m not looking forward to having to fully wake up in the wee hours. With him in the bassinet, it’s easy to pick him up, feed him, put him back and drift back to sleep within about 45 minutes. I worry that walking down the hall into his room to deal with the wee morning feeding will pretty much pull me out of sleep and keep me up between 4 a.m. and 7 a.m. when it’s time to start getting ready for work.

Sigh. I supposed I could work out at that time and catch up on some light reading. At least I have one more month of full-time breastfeeding before he starts solid food. It’s all going by so fast. Damn having to work!!

Blinders Keepers

I don’t know if 5 data points can be the basis of a scientific analysis, but I found my Johari window to be quite interesting.

I never would have suspected some of the ways people described me, although I suppose that’s why they call it your blind spot. Bold?? Interesting.

Tell me what you think of me

Just a little social experiment.