My dear little Peanut,

Today you are one month old. I feel like it was just yesterday that we brought you home from the hospital. You fit into our family so perfectly it’s hard to believe that you just joined it! Your brother is especially taken with you. He wants to give you hugs and kisses all the time. He also wants to help with anything that has to do with your care. If he hears you crying he is the first to come running because it is “his turn” to pick you up. If you are upset in your car seat he wants to rock it to make you feel more comfortable. If you are lying on your mat on the floor he wants to curl up next to you. He also thinks you deserve to play with his cars and dinosaurs and tries to make you hold them (you can remind him of this when you are older and want to take his toys).

From day one you have had your nights and days figured out. The moments you spend awake are always during the day and you sleep long stretches at night. The routine you have set yourself on is going down for the night around 10 or 11 and then waking up for the day around 10 in the morning (with a few feedings in between).  The first couple weeks you slept two-four hours at night and you are slowly moving toward sleeping four-six. You only wake up long enough for me to start nursing you and then you promptly fall asleep again. Daddy leaves for work around 7 and when you wake up for your feeding after he is gone I leave you in bed with me. I love the time I have to cuddle with you before your brother wakes up. When he wakes up (normally around 8 ) I leave you to sleep the rest of your night and get to spend some quality time with him.

Just within the past few days you have become more aware of your surroundings and stay awake for a few hours at a time instead of a few minutes. You have started to stare at our faces and make cooing noises and little smiles. I have a few wraps and slings I use to carry you when you want to be held (which is all the time). This makes it so easy to hold you and play with your brother at the same time.

You weigh 10 lbs 10 oz.

We took these pictures of you today so you can see what you were like at one month:

This is a picture of you in an outfit made by your paternal great-great grandmother:

Pictures with the family:

We are going to use this big dog to mark your monthly growth:

After only one month you have captured the hearts of everyone in the family…your cries bring everyone running hoping they can help calm you down. I can’t wait to see how you grow and change in the next few months!

Love,

Momma

Today Sweet  Pea woke up from his nap screaming. I went in to pick him up and he kept telling me he hurt and didn’t want to be put down. While he was crying I managed to place a quick call to our doctor and rushed both kids out the door. Charles met us up there and the doctor poked and prodded Sweet Pea, asking us questions all the while. She kept going back to his stomach area and finally headed out the door to find her partner. It was all a bit unreal to me after that. Sweet Pea was lying on the exam table with two doctors hovering over him talking in quiet voices to each other. They finally looked up at us and told us we needed to go to the ER and have his stomach x-rayed because they felt a mass. They had us feel what they were talking about and sent us on our way.

I have to admit I have never been so scared. When the second the doctor left to get her partner to look at Sweet Pea I feared the worst. My son, one of the most precious things in the world to me, had a mass on his stomach and their worried faces told me they had no clue what was going on. The drive from the doctor’s office to the ER was a long one. I wanted to get there to find out what was wrong, but I also wanted to take my son and go the other direction and pretend this wasn’t happening.

Praise the Lord that it only turned out to be an infection easily treated with antibiotics. But even though this situation turned out all right, my heart is still heavy. I only had to fear the worst. There are so many others who are living the worst. Tonight my only prayer is that those moms and dads find some relief. Find some way to find peace. I pray that the love and power of Jesus is with them as they deal with something I only caught a glimpse of. And if you are home with your kids, sneak into their rooms and hold on to them a little tighter than you normally would.

(At this visit Sweet Pea weighed 34 pounds and was 3 feet 2 inches tall)

In my last Wordless Wednesday post I posted pictures of Sweet Pea playing with my friend’s iPod. He is so amazing! He just turned two a few months ago and can already unlock the iPod, find the application he is looking for, and turn it on and play it. I am still amazed. It’s a good thing I don’t actually own an iPod or we would be in trouble. My friend’s iPod had this really cool Wheels on the Bus application. It would sing the song, but you have to use your fingers to make the bus go. Sweet Pea loved it! And I like that playing it is becoming a special treat when she comes over, not an everyday thing. If you look at the pictures you will notice that Sweet Pea had to show his little sister. I love how much he loves her.

On another note, Peanut slept six hours straight last night! I couldn’t believe it. Sweet Pea didn’t sleep that long until almost a year old and she is only 3 weeks. Really I am still in shock. Hopefully she will do it again tonight…and if not at least I got one good night of sleep.

Here is Peanut getting a puppy kiss from Sweet Pea:

Before I was even pregnant with Peanut I saw this great idea on Chasing Cheerios for marking your child’s yearly growth. I thought to myself if I ever have a little girl I am going to do that!! Each year she is putting her daughter in her wedding dress to mark how much she has grown. So here is the beginning of ours! Here is Peanut “in” my wedding dress a few days after she was born. We will continue by doing this every year on her birthday.

Now that we have two kids I have had a lot of people ask me how we are adjusting and what the main differences are between having one kid vs. two. For the most part we have had a relatively smooth transition. Sweet Pea loves is sister and is always willing to smother her with kisses and hugs. He is acting out a bit more, but I can’t decide if it is because of her or because he just turned two. Probably a mixture of both. But there are a few things that I have found more challenging and here they are:

• Here is the obvious one: getting up in the morning. I didn’t have this problem with Sweet Pea because there was no need to be awake if he wasn’t. This time around I have to be up at 8 no matter how little sleep I got because Sweet Pea has to get up and stay on his schedule. Thankfully Pumpkin is a great sleeper so far and only wakes up to eat, not play. Once done nursing, she promptly falls back asleep. Hopefully this won’t change or I am done for.
• Showering: I am not one to leave my kids wandering the house while I am in the shower…I mean he is only two. Before Pumpkin came along he would either bring a few books and toys into the bathroom and play while I showered and got ready or he would just take a shower with me. Now I am having trouble deciding what to do with both of them. Sweet Pea is still to young to be on his own in another room, but I can’t leave them both on the floor while I am in the shower. Sweet Pea does love his sister, but he doesn’t understand how strong he is. I was talking to a good friend today about my shower predicament and she suggested a water sling. And it just so happens that I have one of those! I may try just bringing the baby in the shower with me and letting Sweet Pea play on the floor. Who knows?! I still haven’t figured it out. So the past few weeks I have only showered when Charles is home. Which would explain why in a bunch of pictures of the last few weeks I haven’t showered.
• Taking out the trash: This is something that Sweet Pea and I used to do on a daily basis and he loved it. We live on the second floor in our apartment building so he would help me carry the bag down the steps and he would throw it in the dumpster. It was quite the fun game for him. At this point I am not talented enough to carry the trash, the baby, and make sure Sweet Pea gets down the stairs without falling. So needless to say the trash just piles up until Charles gets home and can take it out.

It’s hard to come up with more because for the most part it seems like she has always been here. Even Sweet Pea acts like we have been living like this all along. We are waiting until she is about a month old to really start leaving the apartment and I am sure there will be a whole new list for that, but for right now we are adjusting well. She is a wonderful part of our family.

One of the things that I still have a hard time with is that when Sweet Pea was born I didn’t get to be a part of any newborn activity. Because of the c-section I was pretty out of it the first couple days. I didn’t get to witness his first bath or see him get weighed. Thankfully Charles was able to be present for those things, but there is still a part of me that is sad I didn’t get to be there. So being able to keep baby girl in the room with us and see everything was so wonderful. Here are some pictures from her first “bath” at the hospital.

Here is one from her first sponge bath at home when she was five days old. Sweet Pea wanted in on the action so he helped be wash her hair with a washcloth.

Here are some quick baby stats that I need to write down before I forget:

• Baby Girl was 9 lbs 1 oz at birth.
• She was 8 lbs 3 oz when we left the hospital.
• She was jaundice at birth and the first pediatrician we took her to when she was two days old was worried about her levels. She actually wanted us to bring her in to their weekend clinic to have her levels checked.  It was weird for us because when Sweet Pea was born he was more jaundice than she was and nobody was worried at all. The difference now is that with Sweet Pea we had a doctor we trusted and this one we have now we just picked off our insurance web site. All that to say we didn’t take her in because we decided to follow the advice from when Sweet Pea was an infant. Now if her levels had been higher than Sweet Pea’s we may have taken her in, but that wasn’t the case.
• Between the time she was two days old and now we found a pediatrician that we actually like and at her two week appointment the doc confirmed that her jaundice levels at birth were not concerning and she is in fact no longer jaundice. Just goes to show that sometimes you should follow your parenting instincts rather than listen to the doctor.
• Also at her two week appointment she was 9 lbs 4 oz. The doctor is very happy with how well she is gaining weight. She is nursing like a champ!

Last week (8/5) Sweet Pea painted for the first time! He was so excited and so serious about the whole thing. He did very well dipping his brush in the paint and actually making it to the paper. Although at one point he did try to pick up the glass of paint and drink it. My aunt swooped in and stopped him. Painting is now going to be a weekly thing for us!!

Until I can take my eyes off her long enough to write something here are some pictures.