A post, at last...

I know that I should have written sooner and in fact, I did, but Blogger lost the post. I got so frustrated that I did not rewrite the post at that time.

Things have been going pretty good. Nicholas has given me the gift of sleep deprivation for Christmas, that along with the fact that I did not wrap a single gift until December 23, I have only been getting about three hours a sleep for the last three to four days. The baby is growing well. His little legs, hands and face are starting to fill out. I sit for hours a day and watch him. He is beautiful, but that could be me just being a mom.

Sophia had a great Christmas. She was running high for several days. She got lots of stuff, including a fish tank, tricycle, dress-up clothes, DVD’s, games, play food, a cash register, and some clothes. Now that Christmas is over, we can no longer use the threat of “Santa is watching” on her. This really sucks, because it worked.

Bob and I did not really give each other gifts this year (we got each one very inexpensive gift), this helped us to save some money. Being a one income family makes the holidays very difficult at times. I have some friends that spend a ton of money, but I refuse to do that. I refuse to use a credit card, just so I can say that I got a bunch of stuff for Christmas.

One of the best gifts that I received for Christmas was the news that a good friend of mine is expecting. I was so surprised and in a way I feel like my family is being extended by this. I look forward to being supportive to my friend and am just so happy for her and her husband.

He had his first bottle of expressed milk today. He drank it like a champ. I was glad it was easy for Bob. This will make it nice for me to get away once in a while. I was so excited that the pumping worked, I always had problems with that when Sophia was a baby.

My friend is coming in from South Carolina with her children this week. I look forward to seeing them. Her oldest is my Godchild and I have not seen him in many years. He is practically grown now, but to me he will probably always seem like a little boy (I am sure he would not want to know this).

I think we will just be staying in for New Years Eve, it would just be too hard with a new baby. We have a few friends who might be stopping by for the evening. This will work great for us, because we can put the kids in bed and still hang out.

We are now starting to plan Nicholas’ Christening. We had about 70 people at Sophia’s, but I think we will have a few more at Nicholas’. I have to find a venue to have the reception afterwards. I hate the idea of spending so much money, but I don’t want to have so many people at Bob’s parent’s house. I will do the food myself, so this will save some money. I will keep you posted on the planning.

I hope that you are all well. Please forgive me for my absence. I am still trying to get used to the new baby and all that goes along with it. Please bear with me!

And so it begins...

things have been wonderful here. Well sort of, in a very sleep deprived way. Nicholas is waking up every two to three hours at night to eat. That coupled with the exhaustion from surgery and having staples in my belly, I am running on empty most days. These are the sort of things that you forget about from one baby to the next. People always say that you forget about the pain of childbirth and all that follows, I guess they are right about that. Thankfully, Bob is still home with me through the end of next week.

I had hoped to get all of my Christmas cards written out during my stay in the hospital, but only got about 1/3 of them done. I still have to take the kids' picture to put in the cards, but cannot do this until we get our Christmas tree up. I am hoping that we will go out and get our tree tomorrow. The only bad part about this is that it is only supposed to be in the 30's tomorrow. We will have to judge as to whether or not we want to take the baby out.

Sophia as expected is going through some growing pains. She wants me a bit more now that she sees me taking care of Nicholas. Overall, she has been wonderful, but there is some points where she is bad just to be bad. Case in point, I had to go to my doctor's today to have staples removed and she wanted to walk back to the exam room with me, when I told her that she could not she had a major blow-out right in the middle of the doctor's waiting room. I only smiled and walked away. I know that I have many more of these days ahead. To be fair to her though, she has had a cold over the last week or so. We took her to see the doctor yesterday and she apparently has a virus that will just take time to get over.

I am breastfeeding and this is a source of questions for Sophia. She was thinking that the baby would be eating off of a spoon when I explained the whole biologicial happenings (on a three year level, of course) behind nursing, Sophia said, "You are a cow." Well I had to laugh at that. We had always told her that cows make milk, so I must be a cow.

We had to take Nicholas to the hospital to be weighed by the lactician consultant. He has been spitting up quite a bit and I felt that he was not gaining weight. Sure enough, he had not gained anything since we left the hospital and had lost a bit under an ounce. We took him to the hosptial on Tuesday and he went for his one week well-baby appointment with his pediatrician on Wednesday and from Tuesday to Wednesday he had gained two ounces, so hopefully, he has turned the bend. We are taking him to the hospital and to the doctor's office next Wednesday for follow-ups.

As far as the Diabetes goes, it is gone with Nicholas' birth. Thank God for that. I now just have to watch it. My doctor suggests having lab work done on a yearly basis. I actually hope to take better care of myself and work out. I have taken better care of myself in the past, but after Sophia was born, I found it to be something hard to do, but now, I feel like I have no choice. Nicholas was also watched when he was first born and he was also fine.

The one person who really seemed to be confused over all of the happenings at home is my dog. He missed me so much and now is confused a bit by the baby. He is very gentle with him and comes running when he hears him. He does not understand why he cannot sleep in our room right now. Once Nicholas moves into his bedroom (probably in three to four months), he can come back in at night. It is just that Vinny is so tall he can put his head right into the craddle and that makes me very nervous. I don't think Vinny is a threat, but I really need to make sure.

I want to thank all of you for your comments and good wishes from my last post. I feel sorry that I have left everybody hanging on for so long. Hopefully, I can get back into the swing of things real soon. For now pray for my patience.

I hope you are all well.