So of course, the very next night Kayla and Adam both slept like angels and we all went to sleep together with out much fuss (just to spite me, don't you see?). Wednesday, my friend Cresta, her husband Aaron, and their two sons Alex and Johnathan came over to visit. They brought us a casserole, some shortbread, and a book for Adam - Going to Sleep on the Farm. We had a nice little visit, Kayla got passed around and complimented, and they left after a couple of hours.
All week I had been feeling dizzy and headachy, finally to the point where Thursday morning found me dizzy even while lying down. So I called the hospital and made an appointment. I wanted to see Dr. Parsons, our regular physician, but I was informed that he had no appointments available and I made an appointment with Dr. Blaze instead. We drove into town about noon and I saw Dr. Blaze. After a very brief consultation and a look at a few orifices, he pronounced that I had fluid behind my ear and gave me a free sample of Flonase. We were on our way out of the room and bumped into Dr. Parsons. He looked at us oddly, like "whaa...?" We chatted with him a bit and when Dr. Be was out of earshot I told him I had tried to book an appointment with Dr. P. but was told he was all booked up. He said next time to just have them call back, say it's me, and he'll agree to see us. I love our doctor. :)
Friday was my first trip out alone with both kids. We left in the morning for Pullman. We stopped at McDonald's, and Kayla and I had breakfast while Adam played in the balls. He invited me in to play with him after awhile (poor kid, I think he was lonely since he was the only kid there besides Kayla). When I told him that I was too big to play, he said, "Adam's too big to play, and Adam's tired and sleepy; it's time to go." I couldn't believe he could string so many thoughts together into once sentence, nor that I wouldn't have to fight to get him out of there, but I wasn't about to argue with his logic. We went to the drive-thru at Dairy Queen for chocolate shakes to drink on the way home. A stop for gas at the Chevron in Colfax completed our day out. I might've tried for more, but it was 11AM when we left Pullman and it was already getting kind of hot. Baby steps. :)
Yesterday Mike and I moved our computers back upstairs (I had been putting time in all week on my new desk, and it was finally ready). Mike had the majority of the work, especially since my back started giving me fits. Today I've mostly spent relaxing, reading (even posted a new book review today!), and nursing. It's plenty hot upstairs, but I figure if a day comes along that's so hot I can't stand it, I'll just go hang out downstairs. It'll be cool soon enough, and I'll be glad for the heat the computers generate.
Kayla and I went on our first mommy-baby-alone-together outing yesterday. I would have preferred if it wasn't so hot, but I was getting a little stir-crazy, so off we went. First stop: Endicott Food Center for provisions (water and chips) and to show K off. The folks who were there said she was cute. :) Next stop, the drive-thru of the bank in Colfax to deposit some checks (yayyyy, money!).
After that it was off to Pullman. I had lunch (K slept through it) at the Mexican place across from Dissmore's. It was not-good. It wasn't *bad* exactly, it was just kind of runny and tasteless and overdone. Hm, maybe it was bad, exactly. From there, we went over to Moscow. Stopped at a place called The Lock Shop to have a copy of the truck key made (I *still* haven't found my keys), then strolled over (same shopping center) to the Moscow Food Co-op to see if they had any fliers about playgroups that Adam could participate in. Struck out on the fliers, but a quick walk through the store told me they had some great, unusual foodstuffs there. I grabbed a bottle of just-add-water-and-chicken Indian Korma while I was there. One last stop in Colfax at the courthouse to show K off and visit with my friend Kris, then it was back home. My back wasn't happy with me (I should've used the sling at the courhouse) by the time I got home, but other than that it was a nice, uneventful trip.
What wasn't so nice was getting the kids to sleep last night. I think that's probably the hardest part so far of having two - trying to get them to sleep at the same time. It's virtually impossible for us all four to go to bed and all go to sleep in *anything* like a reasonable amount of time. Between the burping and the nursing and the screaming and the vomiting and the whining and the rocking and changing the sheets and changing our clothes and showering off the puke and and and and... For instance, I went to bed last night at 8:45PM. I finally went to *sleep* (last of the four of us) at almost 1AM.
Something just occurred to me: I have a daughter, and a son, and that makes me a mother. OK, that's not the first time it's ever occurred to me, but sometimes it really slams home. There's something just very wrong about being someone else's mother. I mean, being called on to have all the answers, anticipate all the questions, provide all the direction, and all the other stuff that goes into raising people. Maybe I'm just in a philosophical mood this morning, but it all seems so strange. Like, what gives me the right?
Kayla is showing signs of development (besides just growing and growing - she weighs over 10 pounds now). Lately, she's been reaching out to try to grasp things that are within her reach. She's still pretty bad at it, but you can certainly tell that whatever fuse controls letting little people realize that they have some kind of control over those hands has been pushed in. Adam has pretty much completely gotten over that little bit of sibling rivalry, and is now very loving and concerned where his baby sister is concerned. He'll often bring her one of her toys to try to amuse her, and will pat and kiss her without prompting. As we're driving along in the truck, he points things out to her. "Look, Tayda, outside! Tack-ters!" "No, no, Tayda, don't kick Ammin."
Some baby pictures, just because. First, the true image of motherhood: burp cloths and bad hair.
Adam at 10 days, Kayla at 10 days
...but brother and sister they finally be.
Aunt Liz and Baby Kayla, Grandma and Baby Kayla, Dad and (guess who!) Baby Kayla
One more brother-sister picture
Kayla continues to grow amazingly fast. She's already outstretched many of her 0-3 months clothes and has moved into the 3-6 month range. The last time we took her weight (a couple of days ago) she was at 9 pounds 12 ounces, buck naked. No wonder I'm hungry all the time!
Yesterday was Adam's birthday. My big boy is two years old! He had a great time, eating tuna fish and fruit cocktail for breakfast, opening gifts and watching videos all day, being read to and cuddled lots, and then having shrimp Ramen and fizzy (fake champagne) for dinner, followed by an over-dry cake (don't ask). He didn't eat a bite of cake, but he nibbled some frosting and smeared the rest of the frosting around. I asked whether he was eating his cake and he said, "No, just painting." Paint away, Picasso!
Last night after everybody went to bed, I puttered around some - mostly doing laundry. It's a never-ending battle to keep the house clean with two kids hell-bent on destroying it, but we try. Between the diapers overflowing the bucket and the toys occupying every spare inch of floor space, it's a wonder no one has broken their neck yet!
I'm still doing little smidges of quilting every now and then. Right now I'm doing some hand-buttonholing on the Snowman Collector quilt I started two years ago. In theory, it's a block-of-the-month (you make one block each month, then put it all together at the end of the year) but in practice, I just collected all of the blocks, and will finish it when I finish it. It's portable, easy to put down, and doesn't require me to spend a lot of time chasing Adam out of the sewing machine. Eventually, I want to get back to work on the Mariner's Compass I started a year and a half ago (something for ME, can you imagine?), but I think I'm going to wait until we move back upstairs and the furniture situation shakes itself out. I still haven't gotten my desk or Kayla's dresser put together yet. Mike's rearranging some computer stuff upstairs, and we're waiting for him to get that finished so we can vacuum/straighten, then haul out the old "desk". I don't even think it's been unpacked yet (it's heavy, and he was planning to do it in stages).
Shopping is FUN. Well, online shopping is fun, and buying stuff is fun, and when my back doesn't hurt and my abdomen isn't killing me, even shopping with kids is fun. Over the past couple of days, we've been busy playing the parts of Mr. and Mrs. Good Little Consumer, including spending some birthday money from Mike's parents.
Yesterday we went to Wal-Mart (all four of us, and brother, I WANT AIR CONDITIONING) and got loads of stuff for Adam's birthday tomorrow. Mostly videos, but there was also a Bob the Builder PlayDoh set, a "police station" for playing with Matchbox cars and trucks, some clothes, a couple of books, and a few other things. We also purchased (courtesy of Mike's parents - thanks Mom and Dad!) a dresser for Kayla's clothes. I'm glad, cuz we had just been sticking her clothes in random available spots. It's basically an exact copy of Adam's. Mike picked up a few hanging pots to go in the greenhouse and expand the useable space there.
After Wal-Mart, we went to Staples and I bought a desk. It turned out to be $40 less than marked in the store, so I was pleased! It left me with money to do even more shopping, so today I went online and bought an Ott-lite! I comparison shopped at dozens of places online, and AllBrands had the second-best price (by four cents) and was offering free shipping. I ordered it about 12:30, then at about 5PM I got an email from them saying it had shipped, giving me a Fedex number and an estimated arrival date (Monday). I am well-pleased by this.
I had yet more money for shopping, so I went to Amazon and got a book of quilt block patterns I've been wanting, the latest Toby Keith CD, a couple of CD's by a band called Lifehouse (their vocalist - Jason Wade - sings a song on the Shrek soundtrack that is awesome; he has a great voice) - I got No Name Face and Breathing, and an Indian cookbook called Curried Favors: Family Recipes for South India.
I still had a little left, so I went to a quilt shop and bought three yards each of three different colors of Moda Marbles: red, pearl gray, and tan. I also got a pattern that I hope to make up into a quilt for Adam by Christmas. We'll see.
Happy birthday to me!
Mike's parents have left. :( Well, actually, I don't know if they've *left* left yet or not. See, Mike's mom was having trouble with her back, so they were parked out at the campgrounds in Mockonema (just outside of Colfax) so they didn't have to try to bump over the bad roads to our place. We all went out there yesterday to celebrate birthdays (all four of us have birthdays within about a month). It was pretty cramped with six people in their motorcoach, but we still had a good time. Adam especially enjoyed getting to run around the fairgrounds with his grandpa, looking at tractors. We had burgers, fries, and cheesecake for dinner. They're going to be heading back homeward either today or tomorrow, and we'll all miss them. *sniff*
Today I finally broke down and made a couple loaves of banana bread. I'd been wanting some more for quite some time, but kept whining (in my head) that it was too hard to make. Well, that's a crock, and the bananas were going bad, so in a few minutes I'll have two fresh loaves and one less thing to moan about. I also folded and put away some laundry, put away a load of dishes, and organized our "plastic bowls and stuff" shelf, throwing out a ton of lids with no matching bowls. I overdid, and now my abdomen is making me pay for it. I'll be lazy the rest of the day.
Thursday, our friend Liz came by for a visit, bearing PIZZA!!! I had been craving pizza for the whole second half of my pregnancy, but was trying to keep sodium intake low so was abstaining. I thought Kayla was going to turn out to be allergic (she had a fussy, gassy time of it that night), but I tried the same pizza (leftovers) again for lunch the next day, and she had no reaction. I guess it was just a fluke. At any rate, we had a good time chatting with Liz, gabbing mostly about babies. Liz: I'm sorry AGAIN for the whole poop thing, and thanks so much for the help with the cleanup efforts!
Kayla had her first well-baby visit on Wednesday. She'd gained 13 ounces (plus whatever she initially dropped) and was weighing in at 9 lb 4 oz. Of course, as soon as they finished weighing her, she pissed off (literally) about 2-3 ounces, but still - she's healthy. Adam had his two-year checkup the same day, and he's doing perfectly well, too.
I know everyone's expecting me to say that I'm exhausted, five days after Kayla's birth, but the truth is, I'm really not. She's an excellent sleeper, and I learned the first night that I should nurse her lying down any time we were in bed together. I kept trying to nurse her sitting up, then lie her down and snuggle next to her, but all of the moving would wake her up and we'd have to start all over again. Luckily, I had mastered nursing-lying-down from when Adam was small, so it was no big deal.
I should fill in some of the details of our lives from where the birth story leaves off, I guess. We moved over to the recovery room after about 30 minutes of nursing and I got settled into the bed. This time they didn't give Mike a bed of his own, but there was a fold-out couch that he and Adam could share. Mike had already called his parents, so they were on their way in with Adam. I was excited to see him again. It had only been a few hours, but I really missed him. They got there pretty soon (1:30?) and we introduced the kids to each other. Adam had fallen asleep on the way in, so he was still a little bit punchy. He was put into the bed with me and I told him that this was his baby sister. She was wrapped in a blanket at the time, and he unwrapped her legs. He pointed at her feet, so I took off one of her socks. He said, "She has toes," then said I should "cover her up".
He didn't show a whole lot of interest in her after that, especially since lunch showed up. Then he spent lots of time playing with toys, both new ones and old favorites that had been stashed away over the recent weeks. He was amused most of the day, and enjoyed dinner when it finally rolled around. The first night was a little rough since Mike was low on sleep and Kayla would wake up screaming any time I clambered out of the bed to go to the bathroom. We had been considering staying through Wednesday even though the boys didn't really have a bed, but Mike found out that night that a new hospital policy meant he couldn't walk the hallways with the baby. That miffed us both, and since it's pretty damn near impossible to get actual sleep in a hospital bed anyway, we decided to just check out the next day.
The next morning Dr. P brought a couple of interns around for rounds about 9:30. He checked both Kayla and I over, asked about our health, pronounced us permitted to discharge whenever we wanted, took a couple of pictures holding Kayla, and split. I was surprised he had come through so early, since I didn't expect to see him before 12:30 at the very earliest, but I wasn't complaining! Mike called his folks to come to the hospital to get Adam (I wasn't going to drive doped up on hydrocodone) and we started getting packed and checked out. That took several hours, due in no small part to the fact that Kayla suddenly developed little red spots all over her head and chest that quickly spread to her tummy and legs. We wanted Tammy, the OB nurse, to look at it before we left. It took forever to track someone down, but an OB nurse said it was normal - "baby acne". We saw Dr. Mellor on the way out, asked for his diagnosis, and he said it was "erythema toxica". When we got home we looked in our baby books and found that (unsurprisingly) the doctor was right, and everything was normal.
Since we've been home, we've been trying to figure out what "normal" means for a family with two kids. Kayla is an excellent sleeper, and I've made a point of taking periodic naps with her any time I start to feel sleepy. Like I said - I'm not chronically tired the way I was with Adam, but I am only too ready for bed once 10PM rolls around. A few of the other bullet points of what's been happening around here, in no particular order (other than the order in which I thought of them):
