Blessed...

Lately I've just been feeling really blessed to be Jacob's mommy. He's such a sweet, adorable little boy and I feel incredibly lucky to be able to be a part of his life...and have him as part of mine. He's still not as interactive as we're looking forward to him being (I know, we need to enjoy every stage, and we do...but it will be so much more fun when he actually responds to the toys hanging above him in his little baby gym, as opposed to just accidentally swatting them when he flails), but what signs of recognition we do get are really nice. Yesterday he seemed to be hugging back. May have just been that he was upset about something and was gripping a little more fiercely, but it was different and it was nice to feel needed! Smiles are always the best, and it makes me smile with amazement every time he flashes a big grin. Every time I click back to my desktop on my work computer, I smile because I created wallpaper for myself with the four pictures I've posted here from the Saturday morning "I slept through the night" photo session. It just makes me smile no matter what. Even just watching him sleep is enjoyable...he's like a little angel. Everything about him is just too cute. I thought this morning that me telling him how cute he is is going to have to stop once he can talk, because he'll go around telling people just how cute he is! There's a certain energy inside me every time I think of him growing older and learning new things, and seeing what kind of person he will become. And, I'll admit, I cringe at even the slightest thought that anything would ever prevent me from seeing that happen. He's just so amazing and I just keep wanting to know and see more. When I can put the exhaustion aside and just enjoy him, parenthood is the best thing ever.

Ok, enough of the heavy stuff...just a funny little story to head into the weekend. Until this week I hadn't taken any of the token bath time pictures of Jacob. I think the first time around we were too nervous, and every other time I've pretty much gone solo and there's no free (dry) hands for a camera. This week Craig was home at bath time so I asked him to go get me the camera once I had Jacob in the tub (which is when I always remember that I want to take pictures--and once he's there, I'm obviously not going to leave him). So, I took a couple pictures of him on his belly holding his head up, and then I turned him over to take one face-up picture. Craig scolded me for taking one that showed his, umm, stuff, but I insisted that pretty much everyone has that one (or more) embarrassing shot of them naked in the tub...and far be it from me to deprive Jacob of that embarrassment 20 years down the road! I dunno, maybe that's bad of me, but seriously, it's cute. I will, however, save him the embarrassment of publishing it here!

Happy Weekend!

Fascinated by Facebook

As I mentioned at one point, I recently signed up for Facebook. For those of you who don't know much about it (and honestly, I was one of them until I actually did it), it's a site where you can connect with friends. You can post pictures, leave people messages, and enhance your profile page with all sorts of stuff to show your interests or personality. I have 60-some "friends" right now (mostly means you can access their profiles and get updates when they add pictures, leave messages, etc.), which is nothing compared to some people. However, I don't just make friend requests randomly...I really want to try to keep it to people that I really am/was friends with, unless they request my friendship first. The majority of my friends are people I know from high school or college or work (past or current).

It's been an interesting couple weeks playing around with the site, and downright bizarre looking through people's photos. See, there are a lot of people from high school and college that I haven't seen at all or have seen sparingly since then. These days many of these people have kids. Over the weekend my college roommate Mary said she felt like she was in bizarro world, since I have a baby and she never saw me pregnant, and our friend Lois is married and she didn't meet Lois' now-husband until the day before the wedding. The last time she saw either of us things were just normal...and now, they're totally different. It's much the same with the pictures I see on Facebook. I never saw any of these friends pregnant, or in some cases haven't even met their significant others, but all these years later people have these completely different lives with kids and jobs and whatever else. It's not like I expected everyone to stay the same...but it's just weird to look at pictures of kids and see both of their parents in their faces and marvel at how far we've all come since school. It's just odd. Even weirder when I see people who were younger than me with one or more kids (like, they were just naive freshmen when I was a senior, and they ended up with kids before me!), or people with many kids. I can't get past one kid right now and I have friends from college with 3-5 kids. Wow.

For the first time the other day it started to sink in how fast life really goes. It's been speeding up pretty much since the end of high school, I think...to the point that the past 12 years have sped by like crazy. I'm already 30, which just blows my mind because that's always been an "adult" decade in my mind...that by 30 you're pretty much an adult whether you like it or not. It always seemed so far away, and now it's here. The next milestone I face is the dreaded 40th birthday, complete with various Over the Hill-imprinted gifts, and as fast as my 20s went, I can't believe I'll hit 40 that quickly. On the bright side, I did cram an awful lot into my 20s, so I can only imagine how full my life will be in the next ten years now that we've entered the kid era of our lives. Everyone says it only goes faster once that happens, so I'm holding on for the ride. This summer alone has gone so quickly. The crazy thing is that I'm getting ever closer to the point where I can actually remember my parents when they were my age. Not yet, but close. Of course, I'm sure there are moments where they look at me and can't believe it's been 30 years since they were holding me as a baby.

Long story short, Facebook has provided me an interesting opportunity to catch up with people after 8 or 12 years apart, and it's been quite a jarring experience, almost like being in a coma for a while and waking up to a whole new world. It's been fun, though, and at least I have my own little jarring surprise for anyone who hasn't seen me in a while! It's been a nice way to show off Jacob, and he's received rave reviews!

Getting harder...

I've decided it's getting harder to drop Jacob off at day care each day. I actually hadn't had to do it so far this week because Craig was working from home and did it for me, but last week I found it tough and again this morning I hated leaving him there. Now that he's more fun and less demanding, the thought of spending all day with him doesn't evoke the fear of frustration that I had near the end of my maternity leave. Near the end I was starting to feel a little isolated, missing the daily social interaction of work. Jacob would eat every two hours, so every hour and a half (or even less in the evenings) I was stuck back on the couch for another half hour or so. As much as I tried to nap, I still didn't sleep much and it was starting to wear on me. I was tired and feeling like I was in a bit of a rut. I was afraid to go out much on my own, and didn't want to strand Craig with a potentially hungry baby in the evenings if I needed to go out for a bit. Every time Craig had a work commitment in the evenings it drove me nuts because it meant that I'd be home alone without a break for that much longer. The one day I was so determined to get out of the house and feel like I had a life that I took Jacob out to this bar/restaurant where Craig's event was, in a torrential downpour. I probably gave the hostesses quite a laugh when I lumbered up to the place with my umbrella in one hand and the baby carrier with a blanket over it in the other...I wasn't exactly the epitome of grace, and to bring a baby to the bar (shades of the movie Sweet Home Alabama - "You've got a baby...in a bar...") on a night like that must have seemed crazy. But I had been looking forward to it for days, getting myself psyched up for the trip out, and I did not want to spend four more hours home alone!

These days I'm a little more confident. I'm still a little nervous taking him out, and it's not always the easiest to cart him around, but for the most part I do it as long as I can work out the timing around his feedings. My biggest fear is that he'll do one of his massive poops while I'm out, but I did survive one of those when we were on the road on Friday, so I suppose I could anywhere else...assuming I'm not holding him when it happens.

Now that I am feeling more confident and Jacob is more fun to play with, I'm constantly wishing I could spend more time with him. I try to carve out at least a few minutes each morning after his feeding to play with him before getting him dressed and rushing him off to day care. In the evenings there's always so much to do, but I do my best to make time to play with him as much as I can while staying at peace with my to do list. Work is great, and I still know I couldn't stay at home full time, but to get even a couple extra days out of the week to hang out with him and make sure he likes me more than the people at day care would be awesome (I know, I know...I'd just like there to be no question!). It's definitely made me appreciate weekends more. They're so much more than just a chance to sleep in now...though they're still good for that now that he sleeps through the night and will go back to sleep after the 6:30am feeding. I'll take what I can get! This past weekend was tough because I didn't get a lot of face time with him, but I think this weekend will be fun since we'll be hanging out with my parents and they get such a kick out of him. It's the best of both worlds...I get to spend time with him, but I have some backup when I need a break as well!

Even with a good weekend with him, I know it will be hard to drop him off again on Monday. He's just getting so cute and I don't want to miss any great moments! Just look at the picture below (4th and final in the series of the Saturday morning photo shoot), and think just how tough it is to say goodbye to that face every morning!!

The weekend

Well, we survived. It was quite a busy weekend with a lot of driving, and I am exhausted today. Jacob did pretty well on the drive, with only a couple fussy times on the way down (both completely allowed because he was getting hungry and we were just trying to get to a rest area or the hotel to feed him) and a few more on the way back. But as a whole he was good considering he's only 11 weeks old and 5-1/2 hours is a long time to sit in a car for anyone. Arranging the weekend around my motherly duties was interesting, but in the end it wasn't too bad. Having Lori there was a huge help. I couldn't believe how much we had to pack, and most of it was Jacob's! There was a bag for his bottles, a bag with extra burp cloths, diapers, and wipes, my breast pump bag, a bag with the boppy pillow and the Baby Bjorn carrier (since we couldn't fit the stroller, just in case), and the pack-n-play, plus he also got a quarter of my suitcase for his clothes. You can never be too sure with a baby. And good thing for the extra clothes...he chose the drive there to have another of his massive poops. Only a little snuck out of the diaper (enough for a clothes change, though), but there was a LOT in it. Could have been worse.

He also chose this weekend to stop sleeping through the night (though he picked right back up where he left off when we got home...whew). I'm not sure if it was the lack of the white noise from his humidifier, the lack of moisture making him cough more, or not being in his own crib, but both mornings he was awake at 4:30. I fell back to sleep on Sunday, but no such luck Saturday...making it an extra long day. Thank goodness for adrenaline and caffeine!

I pumped three times on Saturday (twice before I got dressed and once about 6 hours later at the reception--ouch, not fun to go that long), handed off the milk at the wedding, and even got to have a couple glasses of champagne since I wouldn't be feeding or pumping again for hours at that point! Other than a bottle at rest stops along the thruway each way, I managed to breastfeed him the rest of the time on Friday and Sunday, which was good because I missed seeing him on Saturday and needed whatever bonding time I could get. I started to get nervous when he was fixated on Craig at the wedding and would only smile at Lori on Sunday morning, but he seemed happy to see me by last night and this morning.

I did get a lot of compliments on my figure, which was nice. This wedding was a bit of a target for me throughout my pregnancy, as I wanted to be looking good by Lois' wedding. I found out she was getting married the day before I found out I was pregnant, so it's been this constant goal ever since. It's now come and gone and while I'm not 100% happy with my figure at the moment, it's not too bad and I can camouflage it well. I still attribute that to some good genetics and a lot of working out for eight months of the pregnancy. The bridesmaid dress helped too...very fitted so I had to have good posture, but it covered the areas that needed covering.

As a whole Jacob did well at every event we had him at...the rehearsal, the wedding, and the breakfast. He got rave reviews from everyone (neither Mary nor Lois had seen him yet), and it definitely added a go-to conversation topic for any of those awkward "I don't really know you that well but feel like we need to be social and chat" moments that happen so often around weddings. Craig and Lori kept him happy or at least moved him out of the room whenever necessary. He tired Lori out on Saturday night, but she had a lot of fun with him and got a couple great pictures of him smiling. No such luck for me...I don't have any pictures of him from the trip :( I do, however, have these:

Mommy & Daddy's first night out alone!

Mary, Lois and me (don't we all look so nice?)

We had a really good time and I couldn't be happier for Lois! I'm also excited because I may see Mary twice more this month (when it rains it pours--I hadn't seen her or Lois in almost a year, and we hadn't all been together since June '07), so that could be really awesome. One of my goals upon having Jacob was to not let it totally change who I was. There's all these stories you hear of moms losing themselves. I know why it happens, and to some degree it's not a bad thing. You become consumed by your child and their world, partly out of need and partly because you want to. My girl weekends have always been fun and they're one of the few friend interactions I have at this point, so I didn't want to lose those just because I had a baby. Now I'm pretty sure that one way or another I can pull them off. This was a great start, at least! I will say that I'm happy to be home, and once I catch up on my sleep, I will look back on this weekend even more fondly. It was really great.

Big weekend!

It's a big weekend, with Jacob's first BIG trip. I'm in a wedding for one of my best friends from college, and it should be pretty awesome. It's going to take a lot of coordinating since I'll be pumping periodically tomorrow and having to pass it off at some point. Godmother Lori is coming along with us so we can have an adults-only evening, which will be weird but nice. I'm sad that I won't see Jacob much tomorrow, because I'm off to get my hair done around 8:30, then I'll see him for a few minutes after the wedding (though I'm afraid to hold him for fear I'll wreck my dress before pictures--you never know what might come out of him! Also the reason I'm exclusively pumping and not nursing him), and then that'll pretty much be it for the day. Today and Sunday are long car rides, but at least I can look in the mirror on the backseat and catch glimpses :) It's been a lot of packing and coordinating (I think Jacob's got 1/4 of my suitcase and about 4 bags--boppy and carrier in one; diapers, wipes and extra burp cloths in another; bottles in another; my breast pump; plus the pack-n-play and a cooler to keep the milk cold.), but it will be worth it! Speaking of which, I need to finish getting ready. Here's another picture from Saturday's photo shoot to get you through the weekend!

Is it fall already?

It hit me this morning as I looked out my kitchen window and could vaguely see cars in the school parking lot behind our house that today was the first day of school. Seems like just yesterday I was looking out that same window wondering when school was going to be over...because for those students it didn't end until June 27th...a full week after Jacob was born.

Needless to say, this summer has been a bit of a blur. I liken it to the summer Craig and I got married, where we spent the beginning of summer waiting for the wedding, and by the time we got back from our honeymoon in early July, the 4th of July had passed and summer was already on the downswing. Even worse, we spent the next month packing to move into a new apartment, so by the time we were settled, it was well into August and summer was almost over. This year has been much of the same, with similar timing. We waited for Jacob all through June, then spent all of July trying to get used to life with a baby. I went back to work in early August, and suddenly my birthday's passed, Labor Day was early this year, and we're already three days into September. Kids are back to school, the trees are starting to turn (yep, seen a bunch already), and fall is well on its way. I don't want to say that I feel gypped, because it's really been quite an amazing summer as far as life experiences go. However, the weather is only good for so long around here before it turns to crap for about eight months, and I feel like I've missed out on a lot of usual summer stuff. I didn't get to ride my bike at all this summer, Craig and I didn't get to do our annual trip to the drive-in (though Jacob will definitely enjoy it for years to come), I hardly got a tan (a couple sunburns did fade into a tan I couldn't sustain, though), I never got my blond summer highlights, and I still haven't been on a roller coaster for a couple years. I tried to enjoy the nice weather by taking walks with Jacob while I was on maternity leave, but even that took more coordinating than I expected so it didn't happen much. If the weather was good, I was inevitably more interested in a nap. If Jacob was finally fed and changed and ready to go, it clouded up for one of the many freak thunderstorms we had this year.

I know all of that stuff will come back in the summers to come. I'm not upset or anything--how could I be when I have such an amazing little boy to show for it?--but it's just an odd feeling knowing that summer came and went so quickly. I think mentally I was waiting for some of those summer traditions to happen, and now that they never did and summer's ending, it's like, "Wait a second..." I'm thrown off by all of the Halloween decor in the stores already, and hearing and seeing things about fall, fall colors, or the coziness of fall make me feel like I'm losing my battle to hold on to summer. The weather hasn't turned yet, thank goodness, but I'm sure that's not far away. I'm not even remotely prepared to dress a baby for cold weather right now, so I'm dreading that even more than usual, I think!

It also blew my mind, by the way, that it's been two years since Craig and I took our trip to Seattle and Portland. We left the Wednesday after Labor Day (in essence today, though it was the 6th or something that year) and had a fantastic time in both cities. The weather was perfect, but by the time we got back to NY, it seemed like fall had set in here. That was a bummer...hopefully it holds out longer this year. Amazing to think how much has changed since then, with us having a baby and my brother and his wife (our hosts for the Portland leg) getting ever closer to a baby of their own. How time flies.

Anyway, for today I'll leave you with another photo from our "Jacob Slept Through the Night" photo shoot from Saturday morning...

What a weekend!

It started out great with Jacob sleeping through the night, and the weekend ended up being pretty fantastic. Saturday was busy with running around preparing for Sunday's baptism, but we had a good time and Jacob handled it like a pro. Sunday was really nice. Everything just worked out great. Jacob did really well during his baptism, and we had a nice time at the party afterward. My aunt (my godmother and the mother of Jacob's godmother) and uncle hosted it, which was so helpful because I can't imagine what I would have done if I had to clean the house last week and set up the party that day, in addition to everything else. The weather was perfect, the food was great, and we were so happy to have so much family around to celebrate. I will say that it's tough when you have both sides of the family around, because it's hard to split your time. The guest of honor was in high demand as well, so coordinating people's opportunities to hold him in the midst of running around checking on party stuff was a little crazy, but I think it all went pretty well. It was just nice of everyone to come out. That night we went to the Red Wings baseball game, mostly because Craig had a Rattlers' player set up to throw out the first pitch. We figured it was a good opportunity to take Jacob to his first game, and Godmother Lori came with us. We had a lot of fun and once again Jacob was pretty well-behaved...and when he fussed it just took a little walk around (he was in the Baby Bjorn carrier) to chill him out. We decided to leave a little early because we thought Jacob might not be a fireworks fan just yet.

Yesterday was a great day as well, running around to do some errands and just hanging out. It was tough to drop Jacob off at day care this morning because we had such a fun weekend. Sometimes it's a relief to drop him off, like after a long night constant feedings or lots of crying, but this weekend was so much fun ('cause he's getting cuter and more smiley every day) that I wanted more! Next weekend's going to be interesting, when we head off to my friend Lois' wedding and have Lori as our "nanny" for the weekend. Eleven hours (at least) in the car with a 2-1/2 month old and arranging feedings and pumpings around my wedding duties will be quite interesting, I think, but I am SO looking forward to it. That was my consolation this morning as I dropped him off, that I only had to do it for three days this week before getting him back for three more.

Sorry I couldn't offer up more, but I have to get back to work...all so I can get home quicker to my two favorite men :)