So, my sweet Boog is now three weeks old. Holy crap! Where has the time gone?! I’m not sure if it’s because she’s my last baby or what, but she seems to be growing up a lot faster than her sister did. It makes me a little sad, but also really proud. She’s already trying to roll over! She’ll get from her back to her front, but doesn’t know how to get her arm out from underneath her. She practices holding her head and chest up when she lays on her Daddy’s chest, and when she does that: she sort of looks like a turtle, because she blinks and looks around slowly and makes funny shapes with her mouth.
She’s gained all her birthweight back and then some, which is a point of pride since I’m nursing and (apparently) not all breastfed babies gain their birthweight back well. Considering the fact that she nurses for several hours a day: it would have been a bigger surprise if she HADN’T gained her weight back.
She’s also learning that she doesn’t have to be a little fetal ball anymore. She’s started stretching out, exploring the world, and doesn’t need to be swaddled anymore. She loves to sprawl across my lap after we nurse, arms and legs flung wide, milk dribbling out of her mouth, and then fall asleep. M keeps telling me we need to send a picture of her doing that to a photo dictionary as the picture for the word “sated”.
Being the mother of two is a bit of a juggling act. I’m getting better at it, but still not confident enough to do it by myself. M went to work last night, after Nea had been in bed for an hour, and about five minutes after he left while I was nursing Boog, Nea came into the living room, naked and telling me she had to poop. Um. OK. So Sarah and I went into the bathroom, continued the feeding while I sat on the toilet and Nea sat on her potty chair, only to decide that she didn’t have to poop, because it was just gas. Great. You got naked for gas. We got her re-dressed, tucked in, and settled. I felt ridiculously proud that I had managed to handle this rather mundane and common situation, all done one-handed and with 8 pounds of irritated newborn hanging onto my breast.
When M came home, I wanted him to throw me a freaking parade…give me flowers…fall down on his knees and worship me in my maternal brilliance…SOMETHING. But all he said was, “Oh. Well, I’ll go make sure the little nudist kept her jammies on.” Yeah, you do that.
Four years ago, when I was pregnant with Linnea, I bought a shirt while we were on vacation at the beach. It had some little picture on it (might have been a flip-flop) and underneath it had the words, “Life is good.” It was just a great vacation at the beach tshirt, and I liked it because when I looked at it in the mirror I always read, “Life is boog.” Rather than reading the entire sentiment backward, I only read the last word backward, and “Life is boog” always made me giggle (clearly, it doesn’t take much to amuse me). I’d forgotten about the shirt until yesterday, when I was on the couch nursing Sarah, and Linnea came and snuggled down between my legs, her head resting on the Boppy. Both my girls fell asleep, Sarah holding my finger, Linnea with her hand on Sarah’s side.
Life is indeed boog.
Mairsy Dotes 