Brotherly Love

At 7.5 weeks, I feel like we’ve begun settling into a sweet little family routine. And the love between these two (well, it’s one sided from Potamus to Lil G at this point, right?) is so sweet.

Yesterday I took Lil G down to Olympia to hang out with my bestie. When I came back it was late afternoon, and so we spent some time outside looking at the trees blowing in the wind and feeling the sunshine on our faces. Of course Potamus wanted to snuggle his baby brother and I captured this sweet shot. Be still my heart.

These moments are why people say they’re glad they have two or more kids.

6 Weeks: Twitterpated in the Sunshine

My parents came for a visit. Three nights. They’ve never been allowed to stay three nights in a row before (I have a two night policy for guests, and a two night policy for my own visiting. It’s best to leave feeling like “I wish I should have stayed longer,” rather than “I wish to never see these people again.”), but they recently bought a motorhome and the extra private space provided a nice respite from them staying in our house. Potamus loved going out to the motorhome to play games with them at night, and when my dad needed to take his real estate calls, he didn’t have to do it in my living room with a 4 year old saying “grampy, grampy,” an infant crying, and my mom sighing. It was a lovely visit.

And the sun was out.

Seattle has been unseasonably warm and glorious in the past two weeks, and I was able to get a few lovely shots of Lil G in our backyard. I’m surprised everyday at how much I love this child. It is such a sweet feeling to have again. And a sweet feeling to know that this is the moment, one to never be repeated again. There’s something about it, like the flowers in the background, opening to beautiful blossoms and then dropping off to the ground after their moment of glory. ❤

Joy in Comparison

One of my biggest fears in having a second child, is that I would constantly be comparing the two boys. It’s partially why I wanted to have a girl, so that in case the kids were different (which of course they surely would be), I wouldn’t be all like “why can’t you be like your brother?” I was afraid that I would make one child feel less than by these comparisons. I was afraid that I would favor one child over another.

We didn’t have a second kid in order for Potamus to have a sibling, that was an added side benefit. Instead, we had a second kid in order to experience the joy of watching another person grow up to be themself. And boy is this amazing so far. Comparison happens on the daily, but rather than this being a negative thing, it’s like a joyful surprise, the topic of many conversations, and is fully feeding into my desire to watch another small person grow up.

When Potamus was born, it was like falling in love at summer camp: heady, overwhelming, all encompassing. With Lil G, the love was like visiting the ocean on a warm day, vast, and calm, waves lapping at my ankles. I love my boys equally, but the feeling in my body is different. There’s no competition because they are completely different experiences.

The other night Lil G slept for 6 hours at night, which means that I got about 5. I didn’t get more than 4 hours of sleep with Potamus until he was almost 2. Lil G loves a pacifier, and can fall asleep in the swing, and Potamus needed to be bounced on the yoga ball and still sleeps in our bed. It’s not judgment on either kid. It just is what it is, and I’m loving it. I was so afraid of the comparison trap, but instead I’m enjoying it so much. I can’t wait to see who they grow up and experience the ways that they are the same and different.

Babywearing FTW

Of course in my obsession to foster attachment with Potamus (which, let’s be honest, was really in order for ME to foster attachment to HIM), I looked up all the attachment parenting tricks, and eagerly dove in to babywearing. In fact, Potamus slept on my chest or in my shirt for the first two to three weeks of his life, and from then on he was held pretty constantly, either by me, or by Boof when I wasn’t around. I don’t want to think that is the reason he’s 4 and won’t sleep without us…but, I digress.

I used the Moby at first, because when you see mainstream babywearing, the Moby and Ergo are the two go-tos. Baby Bjorn is considered sinful and a “crotch dangler,” but we inherited a hand me down version that Boof liked wearing with Potamus for awhile. But I did the Moby. I found it clunky and hard to wear. Then I used the Ergo, when he was old enough to hold up his head. It was great, except I’m only a shade too tall for it, so it didn’t quite sit on my hips right.

And then I found a sling.

It was a used sling, and it was great for hitching Potamus up on my hip for walks around the neighborhood. I used it well into his toddler years, and so with Lil G I decided to get myself a sling from the get go. I did a little online research, and went with Tula Baby ring sling, despite its price tag. And I LOVE it.

At first it felt a little stiff, but after I wore it once or twice, I was in heaven. It is so easy to wear, easier than the slightly padded hand me down I had used with Potamus. It’s super easy to put him in it, bee bop around the house or doing errands, and it has been a lifesaver with a 4 year old. I can easily strap Lil G in the sling, and play soccer with Potamus, or cook dinner, etc. While I’m not loving breastfeeding this time around, I’m loving babywearing more than ever!

Step Into the Sunshine

There’s something about a confession that leaves even just the slightest bit of room for a shift. I wrote in my last post, I hate Breastfeeding that the second time around, I am hating the whole breastfeeding process. It felt good to say. And it’s not entirely true, anymore. It was true then. It’s not true today. I’m okay with that.

Maybe it’s the sunshine, or the fact that my nipples are mostly healing, or that it’s week 5 and we’ve settled into a little bit of a routine, but I don’t hate nursing today. I don’t love it. I don’t feel the necessity of it in the way I felt with Potamus. I feel ambiguous about future weaning, but I feel ambiguous about a lot of future events (like him starting daycare at 6 months old). But today I don’t hate breastfeeding, not in the sunshine, in my backyard, with this sweet lil G man.

One Month: Tongue Tie

After 3 weeks of nipple pain, a bout of mastitis, and a visit with my lactation consultant friend, and a lot of Googling, it was determined that Lil G had a posterior tongue tie and an upper lip tie. I hemmed and hawed for about a week, hoping my nipples would heal, and that the ratio of painful latching to non-painful latching would become more balanced, that he’d get bigger, and everything would be peachy…I realized that it wasn’t going to happen. And so I made an appointment with a naturopathic doc who specializes in tongue ties.

I am SO glad I made that decision. Already, only 24 hours post op, the nursing pain has decresed incredibly. Could I finally be healing? And, “oh yes, this is what nursing should feel like,” goes through my mind when he latches on. Sure, it wasn’t a miracle cure, yet, as he needs to still work on his sucking mechanics, but overall I am feeling so much hope for the future of nursing this lil dude. He turns a month tomorrow, and I can’t believe it! Flying by!

4th Birthday Love

On December 20th, Potamus turned 4. We had celebrated his birthday earlier in the month, but with grandparents and aunties in various locations around the state, really this kid is getting birthday month (um, as it should be? Speaking as another December baby for a minute here…).

Four years. I have so many thoughts about these last four years. I used to tell people that when you move to a new place it takes four years to settle in. I really believe that about places, but I also believe that about parenting. I have felt an amazing connection to motherhood in the past four years, but what I have noticed lately, is my distinct lack of angst about getting him yet another peanut butter cracker/glass of orange juice/etc. What used to feel like having competing Internet Explorer browsers open, now feels a little bit more like a humming program running in the background, while the internet browser is open to whatever tab I want it to be.

I know that in 8 weeks this will change with the birth of my second kid, but it feels like year 4 with little dude is in a really good place.

And look at how sweet he is in that picture? So big. So big that Boof said, “I barely recognize him in those pictures from his first year.” I know. It’s crazy.

Happy 4 Years Buddy. I’ll leave you with this recent quote of his:

“Before you were born, I was just a lady. And you made me a mommy.”

“Yeah! And you made me a [Potamus] and I made daddy a daddy. We all made each other.”

WE ALL MADE EACH OTHER.

Wisdom from a 4 year old.

 

Bright, inquisitive, and sometimes hard to understand…

Yesterday Potamus was a part of an early intervention screening process at school daycare. It’s a part of a grant in the county, and I was happy to take part.

Today, I tried not to panic, when I got a phone call from the screener asking for a callback to discuss his results. She had told me originally that the results were going to be in the mail. Wuht?!

Turns out my kid is bright. Inquisitive. Does well with others. Answers questions with good sentence structure when asked.

And during times of ‘spontaneous language,’ when just observed by her, he has difficulty being understood. This observation is not something out of the blue for us. We’ve noticed. His teachers have noticed. Yes, our kid sometime speaks in a language that sounds like elvish, or Pentecostal tongues.

He’s also the youngest in his class. And when he does speak, he’s expressing complex ideas that, to my untrained child specialist brain, seem far advanced from a 3-almost-4 year old. Like a discussion the other day about how his friends M & J “don’t like things that are different,” when explaining why they “get really angry with me,” because he brings a My Little Pony to school. So while we are exploring the suggestion of, in a few months, having him screened again to see if it’s changed, and I’ve reached out to a speech language pathologist that I know and trust, we also are in the same boat where we feel like our little guy’s brain and mouth are in two developmental spots.

It seems to go in waves. There will be weeks where he’s clear as a bell, and then it seems like he goes through some sort of developmental leap (physical or emotional or even in language learning) where he speaks gibberish and is hard to understand (and is now able to express frustration at us, mostly through deep sighs and body language resembling a teenager), and then one day snaps out of it with an enhanced vocabulary that’s clear as a bell.

Googling hasn’t been helpful, or I’m not using the right search terms.

At any rate, it was nice that there were no big surprises in this screening. Nothing signalling that our parenting gut isn’t right on. And now we get to decide…how much intervention to explore, and how much to wait and see its natural course.

To be honest, I’d rather he see someone to break his picky eating habits…but that’s another entry…

My 20 Week Ultrasound = Wendy of Neverland

We wore the colors that we thought the baby would be. I’m in pink. Boof in blue. In typical Boof fashion, he was right. We are having a BOY!!!!

To be perfectly honest, in the few days leading up to the ultrasound, I had this suspicion. Boy names kept popping into my head as I laid there trying to sleep. The unconscious prayers in my head of, ‘please be a girl,’ felt different, like those fruitless prayers of ‘please ask me to prom,’ knowing that in this universe it was not a reality. And with the confirmation ultrasound, it was this sigh that left me. Friends who knew I was pulling for a girl texted nervously, “are you disappointed?” and “how are you doing?”

Honestly?

I’m amazing.

I can’t explain how relieved I felt in learning that I get the privilege of being the mom to two boys. It feels so cosmically perfect I can’t even explain, like I’m Wendy being dropped into my own little Neverland, and I get to experience this adventure that I didn’t even know I wanted, but I needed in my soul.

Did I mist up when, after the ultrasound tech left the room, I told Boof we would never use our girl name. Yes. It was like this little loss. A balloon let go and into the wind. Watching it float away. But there he was, swimming around in my belly, my son. Potamus’s brother. It’s just so right that I can’t even be sad. Maybe there will be a day I’ll long for that little girl, and that will be okay, too. But for now I’m planning our next adventures…

The face of an excited Big Brother!

Labor Day Weekend Adventures

The epic balloon battle

The parts of Eastern Washington that aren’t still on fire, are filled with smoke, leaving the air quality (according to my mom) “very bad for kids, elderly, and asthmatics like me.” She asked that we change our Labor Day weekend plans to their house to something else, entirely. The conversation went something like this:

“We’d like to pay for a night at the Great Wolf Lodge for all of us.”

“Sounds fun. Crazy, but fun.”

To be fair, it was a little more in-depth, mostly around the discussion that Boof would not feel comfortable with us all sleeping in the same room, but that would work out great because he’d drive the 1.5 hours home to let the dog out, thus eliminating the need to get a dog-sitter for the weekend.

So, four adults and 1 child, set out on the Great Wolf Lodge adventure. And I’m happy we did it, despite the craziness of all the kids running around the lodge on their Shadow Quests and heading to the water park. If you haven’t checked out their whole clever practice, you should. For added packages kids get magic wands and can go on these quests throughout the lodge, unlocking secret things.

The thing Potamus loved the most? The free balloon sword in the lobby on Saturday night. I hate using gendered cliches, but give a boy a balloon sword…wait…give 10 boys balloon swords, and a balloon battle of “hiyas” will ensue. Seriously. We were just sitting there, and like five little boys in footed pajamas approached Potamus to engage in epic battles. It was hilarious. And adorable. And rambunctious. And made me glad I only have 1 kid. I know that’s going to change, but I’m hopeful the age difference will allow me a different sort of crazy than the Irish twins I saw running around.

My adventurous boy loved the water park as much as the balloon battle. Not only did he get adventurous and go down a (smallish) water slide by himself, he was obsessed with the wave pool. Even braving the depths in mama’s arms, to rock in the deep waves. Thankfully I’m 6’1 and could always touch, since it got kinda crazy out there. In grandparent focused moments, Boof and I were able to sneak away to ride the super fast tubular rides. I only managed to get a small concussion falling out of the speed tube slide and cracking my head against the wall, and feeling the shame as I had to slide down unaccompanied by my tube. I’m still nursing a bruise on my noggin, but got back up in the pony saddle the next day as I took my dad on the same ride. He’s a thrill seeker, too.

I couldn’t have asked for a better vacation. Sure it was tiring, but a 1 night stay was the perfect amount of time, and left the rest of the weekend for getting things done around the house. It’s back to work this week. So I’m glad to have had a little mini hurrah before the grind begins again…