Maternity leave is over

Henny and Papa, who rented a small house nearby for a month, left two weeks ago and Grammie swiftly took their place. She actually stayed with us and pretty much had zero breathing room from her adoring brood of grandchildren. I admire her stamina. A lot.

Yet, all good things must come to an end, including this stay-at-home-mom's version of maternity leave. Grammie left yesterday and our "new normal" begins tomorrow when Matt leaves for work. I'm hoping our new normal won't include an uptick in meltdowns, timeouts and general domestic disorder but let's be real -- it will.

It's a good thing there's ice cream in the freezer, wine in the pantry and an Internet connection. As far as I know, there's nothing a little dairy, Cabernet or Berenstain Bears on YouTube can't ameliorate, right?

Nocturnal comic relief

Last night was rough. Jamison was up constantly and difficult to settle back down. Icing on the cake was that Emery, who rarely wakes us up in the night, hollered out on four different occasions with four different dilemmas. One of which was that her "foot wrists" hurt.

So I guess she doesn't know the word ankle yet. Taking solace in the fact that I was able to laugh at this despite my ever increasing sleep deficit.

Four weeks and counting

Jamison is now four weeks old and thus far we've gotten quite a taste of life with three kids. I say "taste" because Henny and Papa have been here, Matt's mom comes next week and the meals from church have been a'flowin. So I'd say we've been sampling reality in spurts so far and from what I can tell, much about life with three is great (or, let's be honest, will be great when we get through this rocky, needy newborn phase) and lots of it is hard. Case in point - Jamison has his first cold. Emery didn't get a cold until she was seven months old. But, every time I turned my back this week, snotty-nosed Anna Kimball would snag an opportunity to put her face right up close to his and just stare. So be it.

It's no fun seeing your newborn sick, but he's hanging in there and has promised to sleep tonight.

He's growing rapidly and has already jumped from a birth weight of 7 lb. 6 oz to somewhere in the low 9 lb. range. And I swear he's been smiling for the past few weeks even though that's not supposed to happen until 6 weeks. 

Jamison spends his nights snug as a bug in the carseat in the living room. Doesn't he look regal there? We're holding off giving him Anna Kimball's room until he learns to sleep on his own ... and I am counting down the days. Even caught myself Googling "cry it out four weeks" the other day. But I'm not that heartless. We'll give it a few more days ... ok, weeks.

Night, night Jamison - remember your promise about tonight? Love, Mom.