Memory loss

As I watch Joel get bigger and start to become more aware of his surroundings and all of us, I am flabbergasted at how little I remember when Gabriel was this age. I remember that he cried much more than we ever thought possible. I remember that it was really hard to get him to go to sleep. But I don't remember his smiles or giggles, or little noises like he wanted to talk to us. I had to go back and read my posts about Gabriel to help give my memory a little jolt. I fear the same thing will happen with Joel and in a few years I won't remember any of this. And to make matters worse, I find I am much lazier (or just busier?) about taking pictures and video with Joel.

There are already so many differences between the boys. Joel is a talker already. The minute he sees one of our faces, he starts making his little baby talk to us. Poor Gabriel, being the firstborn, had a Mommy that didn't realize I was supposed to be talking to him, and I partially blame myself for some of his speech issues now. On the other hand, I realize now how lucky we were with Gabriel in that we didn't have to take him to the doctor for illness until he was over a year old. I never called or was concerned or anything. I think by the time Joel was a month old we had called 10 times about various things, sometimes in the middle of the night. But many of those calls had to do with me taking meds to get over my cough and were they safe to take while nursing. And although Joel doesn't cry near as much as Gabriel did, when he cries he is much louder than Gabriel every was. It was a production followed by prayers to get Gabriel to sleep for the first three months or so. Joel falls asleep so easily that I can't rouse him for his last feeding some nights. Personality-wise, I think Gabriel takes after me. He's impulsive, he doesn't like to sit still and can be a bit manic sometimes. I believe Joel will be more like Jav, calm and laid back. Gabriel is my Speedy Gonzales and Joel is my Slowpoke Rodriquez.

We all attended Mass last Saturday for the first time since (I'm embarrassed to say it) September. We had been so nervous about taking both boys, but it went so well. Joel was awake for the first half, then got fussy so I found an empty room and fed him. He slept through the rest of the service. Gabriel was so good we wondered if elves had kidnapped our child and replaced him with someone who actually minds us. He even picked up the hymnal and tried to sing every time there was a hymn. It felt really good to go, and I got all emotional thinking about these two gifts God has given us. When we were walking out Father Paul wanted to see Joel and when he found out how much he had weighed at birth he literally shouted, "Holy Mother!" Jav and I found this hysterical. We were happy to find out that our friends that we sit behind had their second boy (their first is a year younger than Gabriel) last Wednesday. What is the deal with people having boys? Not one person that's been pregnant lately has had a girl, and all the babies born in the hospital the night Joel was born were boys.

I must try to make a commitment to myself to drag out the camera and the video camera every day. I don't want these sweet days to fly by without some documentation.

Brothers

Even though it's a little blurry, I love this picture. And how I love these boys.

Western Week

I'm so proud of Gabriel for wearing his hat into the classroom. I just wish he would have sung his cowboy song - "Yipee Ti Yi Yoooooooo, Little Doggies"

Growth spurt

Joel started his six-week growth spurt Thursday. For the first time he was eagerly eating at every feeding without falling asleep after 3 minutes. Which led to better naps and more peaceful wakeful times, which meant we had a couple of really great days. Especially Friday, which was just about as perfect of a day as you can get with a newborn in the house. Today I'm not sure if the growth spurt is still going on or if he's just decided that eating is fun, but he has been wanting to eat every hour to hour and a half today, and hasn't wanted to take much of a nap at all. It's exhausting! On days like this I come close to thinking I want to give up, but then I remember how far we have come and I decide to stick with it at least another day. I'm really hoping to continue breast feeding for a year. I don't want to have to buy one can of formula. But the main reason is that when it works, it's just such a perfect feeling. He has started sucking on his hand and I'm trying to decide if it'd be ok to give him a pacifier. I've read that I could run the risk of really messing things up by giving a pacifier to a lazy eater like Joel.

We set a busy agenda for ourselves this weekend. Jav wanted to take some big boxes out of our garage and put them into storage (thank you Mike and Susan!) We wanted to finally get all the Christmas decorations put away and back up in the attic. All of this so that Jav can start parking in the garage. He hasn't had a radio in his car since his got stolen months ago. I don't know how he's gone this long. My goal today was to wash all of the pets bedding, and clean off anything that had pet hair on it, like cat scratch posts. I haven't washed the cats' bedding in about 6 months. Yuck! Even though Bones keeps himself really clean, he does have periods of shedding. Zoe is another matter. We call her Pig Pen, because she is not very good at grooming herself and walks around the house in a little cloud of white hair. When I started brushing her every day, though, she got better at doing it herself. Since Joel's been here I stopped brushing them, but have now started up again. It's a good feeling to have at least one aspect of my house clean. I also did four loads of laundry today, which may be a record. Why does one tiny person increase the laundry tenfold? It just doesn't make sense to me.

The funnest thing we did happened this afternoon. We had our first family walk with both boys and Molly. It was a beautiful day and we all enjoyed ourselves thoroughly. (Well, Joel slept through the whole thing.) It felt so good to get out of the house for awhile!

Joel is really looking around at everything now. He started smiling and laughing (on the same day) about three weeks ago, but now his whole face gets into the smile. Gabriel loves it when Joel smiles at him. He's making the wonderful little cooing noises that babies make, and today squealed really loud. He's been enjoying his sponge baths, and I'm so ready to give him a real bath to see what happens, but his little umbilical stump still hasn't fallen off.

I'm wondering if I should give up drinking milk since Joel has been extremely fussy in the evenings. I don't know if you can call if colic, but it seems close. Several things bother me about this. One thing is that I drink milk all day long, so wouldn't he be fussy all day, not just in the evenings? The other thing is that I eat all kinds of food that could be causing his tummy to act up (cabbage, citrus fruits, etc...), so how do I know it's milk? I LOVE milk and am going to be really upset if I have to stop drinking it for awhile. I guess it could just be typical baby evening fussiness for reasons other than digestion, especially on days like today when I know Joel hasn't gotten enough sleep during the day. Sometimes I think all the reading I've been doing on first year issues make me think too much.

And on a very sad note, the devastation in Haiti from last week's massive earthquake is almost more than I can comprehend. My sister-in-law told us about a teacher's aide from Haiti at her school. His mother had gone home to visit relatives and passed away in the earthquake. They still have not been able to contact any of his wife's family, and fear the worse for them, too. That is just one of literally millions of stories of people who have lost loved ones. I am praying for the victims, their families, the rescue workers and the people trying to get relief to them.

Long days

Why is it when you have a newborn that every day seems to last about 72 hours long? And that's with a good baby. Because Joel is a good baby. He's sleeping in 2-3 hour stretches at night, and takes short cat naps during the day. He has his moments when he gets really tired and cranky, but that's only towards the end of the evening. Our biggest issue has been breast feeding, due to his sleepiness and me continually trying to make it harder than it needs to be. But I think we finally made it past the learning curve and are doing pretty well now. It's amazing to me how much you forget about having a newborn. I had not forgotten about labor, but I had forgotten about how helpless this little guy would be, and about the crying and how horrible it can make you feel when you can't stop it.

It also seems much harder this time because we have Gabriel. He is very sweet and never complains outright about the fact that

I have very little time to sit down and play with just him. But I know he is a little irritated because he doesn't want me to play with him if I'm holding Joel. And he has definitely reverted back somewhat and cowers behind me when I try to drop him off at Mother's Day Out. He loves testing me these days, which leaves me feeling like all I do is gripe at him all day long. And I don't even want to discuss potty training, or our lack thereof.

And then there's me and my OCD about having no clutter and a clean house. When Gabriel was a baby, if he took a short nap I would try to get some cleaning or laundry done. I realized that if Joel takes a short nap I need to try to play with or read to Gabriel. If I go absolutely bonkers because the house is such a mess, so be it. Which, of course, is easier said than done. Sometimes I just can't stand it and pick up the broom. Then I feel guilty when Gabriel comes up later and asks if I want to play and I'm feeding Joel and can't get up off the couch. That has definitely been the hardest part of this so far. And getting used to functioning on only 4-5 hours of sleep within a 24-hour period.

Jav has really stepped it up in more ways than I can count, He is feeding the pets in the morning, doing the dishes after dinner, and putting Gabriel to bed most evenings. (He was already giving him a bath every night.) I am so lucky to have such a fantastic husband and father to my kids.

The weather hasn't helped the long days either, with the coldest temps we've had in a long time keeping us all inside and with growing cabin fever. I don't think there's ever been a stretch this long that I haven't gone outside since I've been an adult. I probably am suffering from a vitamin D deficiency. But with temps in the teens and 20's, there's no way we're going outside.

We've also had stresses around the house too lately, like our garage door broke and we couldn't get the car out for a couple of days. We finally got them both fixed, though, and now it's been great to load up the kids in the warmer garage before heading out. Our vacuum cleaner is falling apart. Then during the last cold snap we woke up with no water coming out of the kitchen sink. I guess we should have taken my Dad''s advice and had a plumber come and wrap the pipes in the attic (or at least we could have remembered to keep a slow drip going). I think we dodged a bullet, though, because after Jav and my Dad did some things to try to thaw out the pipes we had running water by lunch time and nothing had busted.

But there are the truly sweet moments, like today when I was nursing Joel and Gabriel crawled in the big green chair with us to watch TV. I am still pinching myself that I get to have two kids. It also helps to keep me awake!

Gabriel's haircut

Gabriel came home from his recent haircut looking like Little Ricky, with his hair all slicked up in the front with gel.. All he needs is a conga drum.