Week in the Life: Tuesday

The next few days are definitely going to be photo dump kind of days.  Today, I barely took any pictures.  I looked at my notebook at the end of the day and it said, "Tuesday" at the top. The word is underlined and fresh, it looks very promising, but unfortunately there's nothing underneath it.
I'm writing this on Thursday.  The work week is insane with two small children, from the second I get out of bed on Tuesday morning to the moment that both kids are finally in bed on Thursday night, it's go-go-go.  There's just so much to fit in, with my 9-hour workdays and sometimes 45 minute commutes home, it just all feels so crunched.  Admittedly though, being at work is actually relaxing compared to the evenings at home, but most of that probably has to do with how little sleep we're living on, so we're hard-core running out of steam by the time I get home around 6:00. 

These are the days right? The ones where we're supposed to cherish every minute with our small children.

Yeah, okay, sure.

Don't get me wrong, they're not bad days, but I am certainly ready for them to be over by their end. 

Morning at the office, getting booted up.  Getting up and out of the house is way too crazy and boring (can it be both of those things at the same time?) to document with pictures.

Note the massive coffee?  And the Subway breakfast.  I know, some may be grossed out by the idea of Subway breakfast, but I say don't knock it til you try it.  Egg and cheese and bacon and spinach and green peppers on a toasted flat bread?  YUM, I tell you.

Bonus this morning is that there is some sort of buy-one-get-one deal going on, so I got a free 6-inch sub for tomorrow's lunch.  Hopefully it doesn't get soggy and gross by then.  (Future Alicia here, it tastes fine the next day.  Score!)

Ahh yes.  8:30 AM, I have a date with the pump.  Just look at how much milk I get in the mornings!  It's sort of insane.  On a few occasions I have been playing on the computer and not paying attention when all of a sudden I feel dripping all over my lap because I've pumped so much the bottle is overflowing.  Ridiculous.  I will never complain about this though, after the stress of supply issues with my first baby.    

Steam cleaning the pump parts in the kitchen.  Whooooooo! 

Lunch with Ben.  Chilitos from Zantigo... so freaking good. 

Leaving work.  Praying traffic isn't terrible.  At least it's a beautiful day. 

Traffic is terrible.  So I take the back roads and avoid the parking lot that is Hwy 100, which means I get to drive through some of the most amazing neighborhoods in the metro.  And at least I'm moving, I get intense headaches sitting in stop-and-go traffic.

My Baaaaybee!  So happy to be home.

Crazy kid crapped through every other item of clothing we sent with to grandma's today, meaning he comes home in this mismatched hilarious outfit with no undershirt onesie.  I kind of love it.  The belly is irresistible.  

Better take a picture before I get rid of the bra, which usually happens almost immediately when I get home.  

Reconnecting.  This will be the last I see of the little guy before I hit the sack hours later.  Louie is tired out after a fun day at grandmas and lots of time outside, and goes to sleep at 6:30.  Makes dinner easier, but also makes me a little sad. 
    

Dan has heated up leftovers for dinner when I come out to the kitchen.  Gus didn't nap today, so it takes some work to get him through dinner without any meltdowns.  Enter: Leaptop.  

Leftover chicken wild rice casserole from this weekend.  Holy crap this stuff is good, I can't recommend it enough.  A delicious Pinterest find. 

Gus shows off his new tats that I'm guessing his aunt Julia gave him today.  

Okay, after dinner we go downstairs for a few minutes before Gus's bedtime and he has this strange burst of energy all of a sudden.  Normally on days that he doesn't nap, he comes home from grandma's and we're hard-pressed to keep him awake until 7:00, he's SO EXHAUSTED.  But tonight is strange.  He runs all over the basement, and I swear in the span of thirty minutes plays with every single toy he has down there all the while non-stop, breathlessly talking.

 

 First he sets up Lightening McQueen, Chick Hicks, The King, and Doc Hudson to race on his little orange track.  They're really just four matchbox cars that somewhat resemble the characters in the Cars movie, but he carries them all over the basement telling me how fast they are and asking me to hold each of them.  

Then it's on to his play kitchen, where he cooks up some broccoli that we each take turns nibbling.

"Mommy broccoli." 

"Mmmm.  Yum.  I'm not really hungry though buddy."

"Gus's turn, Gus broccoli."

"Is it good?"

"Daddy broccoli."  

"Thank you Gus, it's delicious."

Then he makes us eat the green grapes and moves on quickly and starts searching frantically for the "purple grapes".  

 

Then he runs to his train table and starts talking breathlessly about each of them, telling stories, "No James!  be careful James!  Oh!? Where are the chickens?"

 

Clearly this kid needs to go to bed, but we're having so much fun playing with him and listening to him talk a-mile-a-minute, we aren't quite sure how to break up the party without ruining the moment.  

Finally we get him upstairs for bed, and start to get him into his pajamas and night-time diaper.  We quick remember to ask him if he wants to go potty, and of course he does!  Another way to stall bedtime!

He sits and goes immediately, he's totally starting to get this!  I think at this point we need to just start reminding him about the potty more often, he's showing all the signs of being ready.

Anyway, potty means he gets to pick out another tattoo, but his arms are pretty much covered at this point, so Gordon goes on his belly.

Only one bedtime story tonight, this kid has GOT TO GO TO BED.

More household tasks after he's asleep, dishes, daycare bag, washing pump parts, that whole deal.  We remember at 9:00 that we wanted to make a casserole for my Dan's brother and sister-in-law to bring over tomorrow when we visit the new baby.  So that gets done too.

I'm exhausted when I finally go to bed at 11:00.

Week in the Life: Monday

Monday, April 23, 2012


My night of sleep is a blur, but I know I spent a good portion of it sitting up in bed, propped up by pillows, dozing on and off while nursing a baby. It is an understatement to say I am tired.

I do know that at 4:55 AM I wake up sweating, nauseous, and light-headed, with Louie asleep on my lap. I put him in his bassinet and lay down, feeling some relief to the dizziness, but he starts stirring almost immediately, then audibly poops and wakes up fully. I sit up feeling ready to cry, and beg Dan to change his diaper so I can go get a drink of water.

I literally feel like I’m about to either hurl, or pass out. It is a familiar feeling, but I can’t quite put my finger on it… hmmm… that’s it! I feel HUNGOVER! But I didn’t drink anything last night, of course, so what the hell? In the kitchen I chug my water and then start pounding strawberries down my throat. It makes me feel better. That was weird.

I go back to bed, nurse a freshly diapered Louie back to sleep, and drift off myself until Dan kisses me goodbye at 6:00. At 6:15 I hear Gus yelling for me on the monitor. Blergh. It’s my day off child! I quick jump out of bed to turn it off so he doesn’t wake up the baby, and head up there armed with his milk and climb into his bed. I tell him, “Mommy’s tired, let’s snuggle”, and he pretty much obliges for another 30 minutes or so, a few times when he starts to get restless I grab a book from the night stand and toss it at him. Finally he gets tired of lounging in bed and letting me doze, and climbs down, grabs a diaper, and tells me, “New diaper mommy, go downstairs.”

Fiiiiiiine.

We have ECFE today at 9:00, so I can’t doddle too much. Less than two hours to accomplish breakfast for Gus, get in a pumping session and a nursing session, get both kids dressed, pack a bag for Louie at my mom’s, and get my own self presentable. Good times.

Needless to say, I was running around super stressed out at 8:45 trying to get everyone out of the house No matter how early I start, if there’s a specific time that I need to be somewhere, it always ends with frantic pacing of the house and yelling at the crazy excitable dog and pushing Gus out the door.

I don’t know how to fix this about myself.

I drop Louie off at my mom’s around 8:55 (thank goodness she lives about two minutes away from me) and drive another five minutes to the school. We end up arriving in the parking lot only a few minutes late, which is good for us, but per usual I never account for the extra time it takes to walk into the school. Gus walks soooooo slowly through the parking lot, and has to point out every stop sign on every bus.

Today he stops every few steps and says, “Huh?! Oh! I hear a train! Mommy! I hear a train!”

“Yes, I hear that train too, it’s far away, we can’t see it buddy. Keep walking, it’s time to go to school and see teacher Ann and all your friends.”

“Look, a stop sign! It’s a stop sign on the bus!”

“I see the stop signs, yes! Look at all the kids getting off the bus for school! Come on buddy, keep walking.”

“Oh! A train! I hear it!”

We have this same conversation about 12 times on our walk across the parking lot.

Finally we are in the building, free of motor vehicles, and I can let go of his hand. He knows exactly where to go and walks down the hall to the lockers. We used to put our jackets in the “W” locker, because it’s Gus’s favorite letter (who knows?), but over the last month or so it’s always full of someone else’s stuff! Frustrating! Gus picks “O” this time, and Eureka! The “O” locker is empty.

We wash and dry our hands and run into the classroom. We’re late, but not the latest, so that makes me feel good. The first fifteen minutes of class is just free play anyway, but still, I always feel guilty rushing Gus around and giving him less time with the toys before circle time.

Teacher Ann starts singing, “Come, come, come, together…” which means it’s circle time. Gus gets a carpet square from the basket and joins the circle that is forming and sits down.

Then he gets up to go get his favorite red car.

He brings it over to the circle and sits down again.

And then he gets up and runs around the room and sneaks back behind the teacher’s desk and starts messing with her computer.

I go get him and join the circle again, sitting him down on my lap.

And then he jumps up again and starts pushing this huge yellow bus all over the room while I try to quietly entice him back to the circle.

I am unsuccessful.

As the teacher slowly goes around passing out little stuffed frogs for a song about frogs to all the little boys sitting on their mommies’ laps waiting their turn, he takes it upon himself to jump back into the middle of the circle and snatch his own frog from her basket, inspect it, give it to me, then reach back in and try to take another one.

Circle time is over, THANK GOD. That means it’s time for me to go to another room with the other moms and sit and relax for the first time today. For a whole hour! It feels luxurious.

Today we talk about our children’s self-esteem. Interesting stuff for sure, I love this class, and love that the curriculum is based on positive-discipline methodology. I really believe in the theory behind it all, but sometimes it’s SO HARD to follow through with the techniques. On good days I am able to stop, think, and be mindful about how I’m parenting. It is much more difficult on the bad days.

After class, when I walk back into the children’s class room, all the kids are jumping around to music shaking little bells. Gus is sitting smiling on the teacher’s lap.

Teacher’s lap = Gus was pushing. UGH.

She lets him off her lap when she sees us walk in, and he starts jumping around to the music and running crazily in circles and accidentally sort of runs into this other kid, then comes to a stop, look at him, and just flat out shoves the kid to the ground.

!!!

I practically leaped through the air as this was all happening in front of my eyes.

After making sure the little boy was ok, I pull Gus aside and I talk to him about what happened, about the pushing, but as usual, it doesn’t feel like I’m getting through to him. Every time we think we’re through this stage, there it is again, making me feel like my kid is that kid. But I don’t mean that how it sounds. It’s not about me being embarrassed, that’s not even it. I could care less about what other parents think of me, I am more concerned about my kid (and of course the kids who feel the brunt of his pushing). I don’t want him to be dismissed as that kid. It breaks my heart to think of him that way, because he is so loving, and kind, and funny, and smart, and jubilant, and curious…

…and aggressive.

I wish I could know that I’m doing everything I can to help him get through whatever is going on with him, and help him get past this.

He apologizes to the little boy, who is whimpering and being held by his daddy, and they assure me its ok, it was an accident. I say no. I saw it happen and it wasn’t an accident, but still, we’re sorry.

I talk to his teachers and they tell me it was quite a day, and not just for Gus, he was just getting sort of crazy manic there at the end. She tells me the whole class was a little kooky today, even the kids who aren’t usually aggressive were aggressive, and they went to the motor room to try to get some of their energy out, and they just got even crazier there, feeding off of each other’s excitement.

This makes me feel a little better, but still, he was the one on the teacher’s lap at the end of class. He was the one who made another kid cry.

Moving on.

It’s 10:45. We head to my mom’s to pick up Louie, and he’s hungry when I arrive. So I feed him, or try to at least, he is too distracted to eat these days anytime we’re out of the house, it’s quite frustrating. I’m also discovering that he’s not the kind of kid who can just be nursed to be comforted, or put to sleep. If he’s tired, he’s tired, not hungry. And he gets pissed if I try to feed him. This is crazy to me. He is SUCH a different baby from Gus, who would have nursed all the live long day forever and ever amen.

Not complaining, just have to adjust my expectations, and techniques.

It is beautiful out, so we go to the park across the street with my mom, since there’s some time left before lunch/nap.  Well, barely. I always overestimate the amount of time I have and always end up rushing and stressing. (See also: this morning.)

We meet a nice mom with two sweet little girls, the younger being a little younger than Louie, and the older about a year older than Gus. Gus has a great time playing with his new little friend, and I push both of them on the swing while her mom nurses her sister and my mom entertains Louie.

We head home about 15 minutes later than we should, and I immediately put Louie down for a much needed nap and get going on Gus’s lunch. He’s super hungry at this point, demanding things, so I give him some fruit to tide him over, which means he ends up eating some celery and the fruit and not touching the PB&J sandwich I throw together. I sit next to him and eat celery and peanut butter directly out of the jar.

I am a class act.

My brother calls while I’m trying to get lunch on the table and stresses me out with questions about work and news that something I thought I had until Tuesday afternoon to accomplish needs to be done today at 3:00.

It is 12:30.

Nap time feels rushed because I know Gus is over-tired and now I know I have work I NEED to get done while the kids sleep and I am distraction-free. I am stressed out, this is the exact opposite of yesterday when it was my favorite time of the day. Louie wakes up while I’m lying with Gus, so I bring him up and try to nurse him in Gus’s bed. He’s refusing to nurse side-lying and is getting fussy. I can tell he’s still tired.

I tell Gus to stay in bed and go to sleep, I will be right back. I’m going to go put Louie in his bed.

I go downstairs and Louie refuses to nurse, and freaks out when I put him in his bed. I hope he can settle himself, and I head back upstairs to climb in bed with Gus (who is now lying on the floor reading a book).

Louie starts to get really worked up downstairs, so I tell Gus again that I’m going to go deal with Louie, and he just smiles at me and giggles and gets that wry look in his eye.

I go downstairs and calm him down, and put him in the swing. He’s not happy about that either.

I head back to Gus’s room and he’s now rolling around on the floor laughing and thinking he’s hilarious. I have to pick him up and put him in bed. He kicks around and acts really annoying. I know he’s tired, but I have definitely missed the window during which he will go down easily.

Louie is being crabby in the swing downstairs, but isn’t really crying, so I continue to lay with Gus, telling him to go to sleep.

“Louie’s crying mommy.”

“Put your head down and go to sleep!”

Finally, Louie stops fussing long enough for Gus to stop talking about him and I feel him get very still. He’s asleep. I climb out of bed, go downstairs, and retrieve the baby from the swing. I bring him into our room, nurse him, and he falls asleep.

I go out to my kitchen, it is a DISASTER.

It is 2:00. Nap time ended up being an hour and a half ordeal, and I have one hour to get my work done.
 

The network is crazy slow and what would have taken me 20 minutes at the office takes almost an hour. I get everything done for my 3:00 deadline by 2:59. Seriously.

At 3:00 I start cleaning up my disastrous home and prepping dinner. I whip up a pasta dish (chicken ravioli from Costco with marinara and sautéed peppers) that we can throw in the oven at dinnertime. This will make getting dinner on the table when the time comes so much less stressful. I’m always proud of myself when I think about dinner before 6:00, when we’re all falling apart from hunger.

I begrudgingly wake Gus up at 4:00, when Dan gets home, lest he be up until 10:00 PM tonight.

He wakes up super crabby and takes some time warming up to the fact that he is awake. Louie wakes up soon after and in the end both boys ended up taking really long, good naps, but I’m still feeling drained from all the effort it took to make it happen. (sigh)

The boys play while I sit on the couch and catch my breath. I hate having to do any work at all on my day off, it takes up the precious little time I have to get anything done at home, or to relax a little.

These adorable shoes for our toddler came in the mail today, but of course were too small. I hate kids shoes sizing, every damn shoe fits so differently! ARGH.

We also got about 7 kajillion catalogs today. We get so many catalogs, and it is not by choice. I try to unsubscribe but then they just keep on coming! Such a waste of trees, but good bathroom reading.

The pasta is baking and Dan is prepping a salad, but Gus is super hungry, so we play some Curious George games on pbskids.org in an effort to distract him. This is a special treat for Gus, we don’t give in to his requests for computer games very often because when we do, he becomes a greedy little mother demanding them all the time and throwing tantrums when we say no.

Dinner is delicious, but hectic because Louie wants to be held. That’s ok, we take turns eating and holding the baby. Gus gets up and down from the table over and over and over and drives me a little insane.

Playtime after dinner. Mostly flying and crashing airplanes all over the living room. 

Louie snuggles his bird on the couch.

I’ve been talking about wanting to get out and do a little shopping without Gus, so Dan suggests I take Louie and go, since the little guy is getting tired he’ll likely sleep in the Babyhawk while I browse.  

Great idea. Louie and I head to Marshall's and Target and it is lovely. I score a whole bunch of new clothes (hoping they’ll fit) and pick out some cute baby things for our new nephew. (The picture has my finger in it, oops.  I was embarrassed to be taking a self-photo in public and sort of panicked and ran.) 

Gus is in the bath when we get home and it’s definitely bedtime for Louie as well, so I get him in his pajamas.

Louie is trying so hard to roll over these days, but I’m okay with him not hitting this milestone quite yet as it may bring with it some new sleep challenges. Though the last week he has been sleeping just terribly, so really, what do we have to lose?

The biggest challenge is that I think he’s growing out of the co-sleeper crib, and it would be really hard to fit a pack and play in our bedroom. I don’t yet feel ready to deal with putting him upstairs in the bedroom next to Gus’s and dealing with the potential for the two of them waking each other up. I’m just not sure where to go from here.

Ahh well. A decision for another day.

Bedtime for the boys, and I spend the next hour or more doing the dishes we left from dinner, pulling together everything for the daycare bag, and freezing all the pumped breast milk in our refrigerator that I have not dealt with. After all that I have a light snack (a bowl of applesauce, I am craving something sweet), watch a little TV, take a shower, and head to bed around 10:30 when I hear Louie starting to wake up, ready for another crappy night of sleep.

And that’s Monday. The end.

Week in the Life: Sunday

Sunday, April 22, 2012

(Laura is hosting this Week in the Life/Day in the Life project. Three days into it I'm feeling very overwhelmed by this project, but hopefully I can follow through.  I've been taking pictures and notes, it's just a matter of getting all these posts written!  Laura is posting every night, that is NOT going to happen for me, obviously.  Anyway, I started with Sunday.  Hopefully Monday and Tuesday will not be too far behind this post...)

Sundays are definitely our slow, easy, lazy, minimal planning days. The whole family takes a while to get going, and sometimes we stay in pajamas until nap time. This was definitely one of those Sundays, and it was lovely.
 

Breakfast/coffee routine is pretty lax today. So lax, that when Gus is refusing to stay at the table I bring his plate downstairs and set it on the ottoman and let him watch Cars. I didn’t even feel guilty about it because, you know? Whatevs. Some days I just have to let it go. Especially when my 3-month old is getting over a viral infection and has decided he can no longer sleep at night anywhere but in my arms. I am exhausted and there are bags under my eyes to prove it.

 

So yeah. Gus eats his homemade banana bread and strawberries while jumping around the family room singing Life is a Highway. (He is so cute when he sings his jibberish.)
 
Louie is sleeping in (of course he finally decides he is going to sleep after a night in which he let his mother have very little) so we’re able to ease into the day slowly. It is nice. I drink a second cup of coffee while folding laundry.

Whilst folding I have an encounter with a massive and disgusting silverfish which causes me to squeal and jump and start running in place frantically waving my arms. I demand that Dan move the end table under which it is hiding and dispense of the horrible creature immediately.

He obliges, and I resume folding laundry, feeling twitchy.

A few minutes later I hear loud pounding behind me and turn around to find Dan banging a Thomas flashlight on the carpet killing another silverfish that crawled out of some clean overalls he was folding. Gross gross gross gross gross.

FYI they were Gus’s overalls. Neither Dan nor I are sporting the overalls these days. I’ll leave that up to Alicia circa 1999 moving into the dorms.

Louie is still sleeping and this is amazing. I don’t know what to do with myself! So I put away the boys’ laundry upstairs.

This day is edge-of-your-seat thrilling already right? Coffee. Laundry. Creepy crawly insects. Hold on to your hats, it’s a thrill-a-minute over here!

Louie gets up at around 9:00 and I get him dressed and ready for the day.

At 9:45 he is nursing and we’re both a big old mess with milk shooting out everywhere, on his face, all over my pajamas (good thing I’m so lazy and am still not dressed!), and he is PISSED. During this ordeal I remember that I forgot to pump, thus the oversupply/overactive letdown issue. Freaking a. I keep doing this since I started back at work. I associate pumping with work so much that I forget that I still have to do it every morning when I’m at home. Ugh. I am sick of it for sure, but don’t know how to wean myself off of that morning pumping session without getting engorged or having really frustrating nursing sessions like this one with Louie.

9:55 – Pump and make a list for Target. Dan and Gus will be running this errand together.

Per usual Gus is super uncooperative about getting out of the house. Seen here, dad wrestles his coat and shoes on as the child continues to read and play.

It’s nice to have the house to myself with just the baby, but Louie is super cranky. He’s still not 100% after his sickness last week, and I end up just wandering the house, tidying up, and listening to the radio with him in the Babyhawk.

The tidying up is much needed.  This place is a disaster, it gets this way soooooo quickly when we're all home.

I feel much better about my life and level of sanity when I make the bed.

Look at all these baby contraptions cluttering up our house! I HATE THEM!  Not pictured: giant exersaucer sitting in the dining room.  (Yes, clearly we need to put away some shoes.)

10:45 – Baby goes down again. Jeez. He is not himself for sure.

Nap time means I shower and make myself presentable. Well, half-way presentable. I pretty much don’t get dressed until I’m ready to leave the house these days, in an effort to keep my clothes spit-up free for as long as possible.

 

Dan and Gus come home from Target and putz around outside in the back yard and garage before lunch. I am making sandwiches in the kitchen and look out the back window to see the two of them on the patio hanging an empty Quaker Oats tub.

Upon further inspection (meddling) I find out the two of them made a homemade birdhouse.

So random. So sweet. At Easter a few weeks back Gus was super obsessed with my grandma’s birdhouses (she is an avid birdwatcher), and demanded that Dan lift him up to every single one throughout her yard (there are a lot) so he could look inside. Anyway, I am totally charmed by this spur-of-the-moment father/son project they took on. What a good dad.

This was my lunch, after the sandwich was eaten and I remembered to take a picture. Lunch is nice today because for once Louie does NOT wake up the second I sit down and go to take a bite.

12:30 - After lunch Gus and I head upstairs for his nap. We read a book (Five Little Monkeys Bake a Birthday Cake – I know it by heart at this point) and then I put my hair in a ponytail so Gus can snuggle me and clutch my hair. He is asleep within fifteen minutes.

On exhausting days of parenting, which seem to be the norm these days now that there are two, this is my favorite part of the day. I mean, I love the time during which Gus is actually taking a nap of course, because even if Louie ends up being awake at that time it feels like a break. But it is also just so lovely to climb into his warm bed, snuggle under the covers, and cuddle with the little guy who is hard-pressed to stop moving throughout the rest of the day. He is so sweet, he asks for hugs and kisses and always falls asleep curled up on me. This nap time routine has definitely made for wonderful moments I hope I never forget. Some days he is not very cooperative and the scene is decidedly less serene, but today it was lovely, and I am thankful for that.

Louie is up from his nap when I come downstairs, (he slept a whole two hours, good Lord!) and Dan is dealing with a blowout (better him than me!) that somehow managed to miss the little guy’s clothes but get all over our quilt. Sweet. More laundry.

 So while Dan mows the lawn, Louie and I play and fold more laundry and watch some HGTV. He goes back down at some point. (I know! Clearly he is needing to catch up on sleep after such a sucky week.) We end up having to wake up both kids at 3:00 when it’s time to head to my aunt’s house for a little extended family get together.

After waking Gus up I ask if he wants to go to the potty and for the second day in a row, post nap, he does! It feels like we may be having a tiny breakthrough. He has pretty much REFUSED to even sit on the potty chair since last July when he had a brief few weeks of interest. I try not to stress about it, I know it is a process and tends to take even longer for boys (I’ve read that the average age for boys to be potty trained is 3 years, 3 months), but it’s nice to see little inklings of promise. I make a big old deal about it and we both excitedly run downstairs to tell daddy and to get a Thomas tattoo.

We arrive at my aunt’s house fashionably late (is 30 minutes still fashionable?) and have a good time catching up with family. It’s my cousin Laura’s birthday, and she’s home from college, so it was a good excuse to get everyone together.

My cousins entertain us all.  They are so talented.

Gus swinging with his uncle Ben.

Holy crap these two are spitting images of each other.  I mean their hair is even winging out the same way!  So cute.

We secure a babysitter (my brother and sister-in-law) for a few hours this evening so Dan and I can run out to St. Paul to meet our new nephew Matthew, born the night before after a looong 20-ish hours of labor. I stress a little, because Louie has been tough at bedtime lately, and still is not the biggest fan of bottles, though he takes them begrudgingly, but I just need to let go sometimes. I can’t control everything, it won’t be a HUGE deal if he fusses and cries a little for someone, eventually he will go to sleep, and I need to not be such a ridiculously guilt-ridden lunatic about my kids and sleep and them being watched by other people.

Well, Louie ends up going to sleep easily at 7:20, right before we leave, so I worried for nothing, per usual.

Gus dismisses us with nary a wave goodbye because he’s so excited to see his aunt and uncle, so we head out, and it is a lovely, peaceful, child-free drive. Ahhhhhhh.

The baby is gorgeous, of course, and it’s fun to catch up with his mom and dad, hear the birth story, talk about Hunger Games (random!).

We get home around 9:45 and Louie hasn’t made a peep since we left, and Gus is fast asleep upstairs after reading stories and snuggling with his aunt and clutching her ponytail.

It feels sort of awesome to have skipped over the sometimes stressful bedtime process tonight. Yeah, it’s actually really awesome. Amazing how nice it is to get away for even just a few hours.

And now it’s bedtime for Dan and I, because there’s another long, though hopefully rewarding, week ahead.