This is indeed life as we know it

Welcome to Week 3 of maternity leave. First week was all about coming home from the hospital and getting settled at the house, and the bris of course. After all the family left and the commotion died down, we had Week 2 which was a chance for Mike and I to bond with the baby in peace and quiet as I continued my recovery. We accomplished a bunch of tasks around the house, went out to lunch a couple times (we had some good Groupons to use), and tried to get Ivy back into the swing of "normal" life. More about that later.

And today, Mike went back to work. Now I'm really on my own! Thank goodness I'm feeling much better, though by day's end I'm beyond exhausted and my back is killing me (note to self - do not get pregnant or give birth again until you can afford weekly - or monthly - massages). I'm determined to make the next couple months more productive and enjoyable than my leave was with Ivy. For one thing, I'm less overwhelmed this time, with newborn care at least, and more motivated to do things having learned my lesson 2 years ago when the time flew by and I accomplished practically nothing. And I'm talking about making baby scrapbooks and such, not much else. I am going to try to enjoy the time with Sidney in ways I couldn't with Ivy, and then of course enjoy Ivy in the afternoons when she gets home.

I am so grateful that this time around I have a number of other friends with newborns who live close by. When Ivy was born, I had a few other new mom friends, but the babies were born within months of each other...this time it's days and weeks, so we're all at more or less the same stage of baby-ness. In fact today, Penina, Candice and I are off to the Grove with our little boys to the Monday Morning Mommy Movies to see LIFE AS WE KNOW IT. I admit I'm the first one to snark on this movie, but it's a good excuse to get out and be with friends. And then I have to do some wifely/mommy duties and grocery shop, since we seem to have an abundance of lettuce in our fridge and not much else. We finished off our leftovers last night, and this morning Ivy took a PB sandwich to school for like the 764th day in a row...yup, just call me Mom of the Year. (Though I did sew a button onto her dress this morning, so that counts in the domesticity column.) I thought I'd be more excited to do my favorite household task that I haven't done in 2 months, but honestly I'm a bit overwhelmed.

Speaking of being overwhelmed, let me say this - the infant is a piece of cake; the toddler is a whole other story. Ivy loves her little brother to bits, wanting to be with him and kiss him all the time. It's awesome. But she has also decided that she doesn't want to nap anymore...or go to bed at all...or sleep til a decent hour like she's always done. I would be fine, in theory, with her dropping her nap except that she's so freakin' cranky by mid afternoon that we're all on the verge of implosion. We've been forced to take her out in the stroller on weekends where she'll finally fall asleep for about half hour or so...it sucks, but we'll take it. And no matter how early we get her to eat dinner and begin bedtime routine it always ends up getting derailed and she's overtired and crying until much later than intended. Oy. This too shall pass, I suppose...

So while she generally loves the baby, Ivy's greatest disappointment thus far is Sid's apparent dislike for pacifiers. In her big sister book, which has been her bible for the last few months, she learned that when the baby cries it may want milk or a pacifier. Well I'm not going to start pumping for another couple weeks (though she likes touching his head while I nurse and saying "I'm feeding him!"), so she's been pushing the binky really hard. And well, he's just not that into it. We've tried a couple different kinds but he's just down. He scrunches up his face when he realizes the object being put in his mouth is not dispensing milk. We're going to need to find other ways for Ivy to be a good helper...maybe she'll be up for changing poopy diapers? One can only dream.