Thaw before reheating.
This morning’s mission: impossible — taking a decent picture of my kids. With the help of my Mom, we put the kids in clothes, combed their hair, and turned on every light we could find. While there are a few decent shots in the bunch, the majority of the pictures we took in that short window of possiblity were outtakes (see below).
Here are my picks for “best of” from our photo session:
Nagin won. What the hell?
I vowed that I would provide my children with a scrapbook/picturebook of their first year and a baby book of their first years. I’ve kept Will’s babybook (a $12 Target book with pages for things like “popular movies when I was born” and “all about my first birthday party”) and will do my best to continue it. Today, however, I finished the other part of my agreement:
Will’s scrapbook is DONE!!! I’m very excited.
Now for Kate.
I’ve got a similar Target babybook and enlisted my Mom and Paul to help me put her footprints in it back when she was 5 days old. That’s all I’ve done so far (hey, she’s only 11 days old). Parents all say that you never can get as much done for your second kid and I don’t doubt it. But Kate, you heard it here: I’m trying my best! (Time for a 40% off Michael’s coupon so I can buy another baby scrapbook…!)
Will normally joins us in bed when he wakes up in the morning. We read a book or two, talk, cuddle, or watch a short “Bob the Builder” (sometimes all of the above) until he is ready to relinquish his binky and start the day. Now, Will asks to “hold Baby Kate” as part of his morning routine. He climbs up in bed, holds out his arms, and opens and closes his hands until Kate is settled on his lap. She loves to watch Will and does well when he tries to “share” his binky with her! 
At 8 days old, Kate already shows an uncanny sense of comic timing.
Last night, as she started into a rock-star, feed-me, burping, hiccupping, wide-awake and wild phase, I picked her up to be face to face with me to talk and sing to her (she loves this). Just as I got her settled, she let out a huge burp.
“Goodness” I said. “Got anything else in there?” Just as the words were out of my mouth, I realized that this is the point in every parenting movie where the baby then spits up all over Mom. And what does Kate then do? Not missing a beat, she spits up all over both of us. Timing.
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Kate’s crazy phase lasted most of the night last night (3-7am) and wore everyone out. I was okay until about 5:30am, when my incision point started to ache and sting — at this point I woke up Paul to take over. The long and short of it is that Kate kicked all of our butts. Earlier this afternoon, Paul came in to watch her for a few minutes. He holds her in his arms and says to her, “Wow, little one. You’ve brought us all to our knees. Mommy is exhausted, Daddy is falling asleep sitting up, and Granna is tired, too. What do you think about all that?” As if on queue, Kate bears down and grunts out a gigantic gorpul (our word for the sound that signals a diaper has been dirtied.) Timing, timing, timing.
Kate’s cord stump fell off today. I noticed it was gone while changing her diaper in the morning and couldn’t find it in her clothes. Paul found it on the changing table and asked if we should keep it. I hestitated, and then said to toss it.
An hour later, I dug out the tissue he’d wrapped it in from it’s resting place between her soiled diapers. I’m going to plant it in the garden in lieu of the placenta. It makes me smile just to think of having a special piece of something that so intimately connected the two of us in our backyard; I’m so glad I saved it.
Bathtime! Kate made bathtime interesting tonight by going through two outfits. She managed to poop (“gorpul”) three times, but did so after being washed up. She must have really liked the warm water; she got it three times. Her cord stump is hanging on by a thread.
