ramblings

Charlotte

I feel like a bad blogger, especially if this is supposed to serve as a baby book since I can't remember anything anymore.

We are all still alive.  I have not been feeling 100%- part of it is exhaustion, and I think part of it was a sore throat that just never went away.  Eric had the sore throat, so I think I got it from him.  Just as long as none of my babies got it!  So every minute of quiet or nap time I got, I was trying to rest or nap.  I certainly feel guilty about it, but I know those moments are limited.

Charlotte is 3 weeks old today!  In some sense it feels as if she has always been a part of our lives, and yet she is still such a little peanut.  She is already growing and changing. She has put on more than a pound since she was born, and is in size 1 diapers and outgrowing her newborn sized clothing.  I can see her eyelashes getting longer.  She has good neck strength and will hold her head up and look around more and more.  She still sleeps most of the day, but is having longer periods of awake time.  She makes the funniest faces sometimes.  Her nighttime sleep has been pretty consistently good, too.  Some nights she wakes up twice a night, very rarely three times a night, and there have been a few nights where she only woke up once.  Last night she was up at 3 am, 6 am, and then 8:30.  It's really not bad, but it does make it hard to catch up on sleep when I wasn't feeling well, or when the boys are up at 6:15.

Benjamin & Asher seem to be adjusting relatively well.  Their teacher at school has been great and made a BIG deal out of them becoming big brothers, which I think was fun for them.  The other day they chose to wear their "Big Brother" shirts to school.  Asher is attentive to Charlotte and often wants to help, and give her big hugs and kisses at bedtime.  I make an effort to put her down if they ask, and to sit with them and read whenever we can.  Eric gets up with them almost every morning so that I can get a few extra minutes of sleep, so they are getting special time with daddy, too.

Having one baby is about 100x easier than having twins.  Or maybe it's just doing this all a second time and kind of knowing what I'm doing and what to expect.  But when the boys are in school and all I have is 1 baby, it is so easy.  It makes it easier to enjoy this stage- I remember with the boys feeling overwhelmed a lot of the time.  I still feel overwhelmed- like last weekend when Eric was replacing our front door and I had all 3 kids all weekend and it was too cold to play outside and my parents were out of town and couldn't help...

Charlotte and I are participating in a study at the Monell Chemical Senses center.  It's a study on taste preferences in moms and breastfeeding babies.  It goes on for over a year, but it pays well, and I am always happy to further science.  We had our first meeting there on Wednesday and it took 4 hours!  Charlotte got weighed before and after eating, and she ate almost 3 ounces in a feeding.  What an eater!  Then she wanted to nurse some more and it was too much and she vomited it back up on to the floor of the office.  Whoops.  Her first vomit, in an office.  Then they asked me questions from a questionnaire including, "does your child ever vomit after feeding?" and I had to say yes, even though if they had asked me 5 minutes prior I would have said no.  I just hope she doesn't make a habit of it.

Both boys are talking more and more. I know they are still behind their peers, but they continually make progress and are able to tell us more and more.  Benjamin is hard to understand sometimes, but he does talk more, and talks in sentences now.  I am sure Benjamin could still qualify for speech therapy but I haven't called for an evaluation.  I can think of a million different ways in which I am letting my kids down as a mom... but I don't have the time for someone to come into the house right now, and I am hoping that all progress is a good sign.

That is it for what qualifies as news around here.  We have been given so much from friends and family- people are continually dropping off food and gifts for us.  We are very lucky to have such generous people in our lives!