I can't believe we are almost 2 months into parenting 3 kids. In some ways it's hard to imagine life without toting Celia around in the front pack. On other days, I realize that if she was sleeping in the bouncy seat or in the car, I might forget that there was another person to worry about. We are lucky that she's still a pretty easy baby and that the girls are still thrilled about having her around. While they complain about lots of things, we've never heard a single complaint from Nora or Erin about Celia. Lets hope that lasts.
Celia continues to be a pretty good sleeper. She's going for 6-7 hours at a stretch overnight and is starting to go to bed earlier in the evenings. I got her to bed by 8:30 last night and it was fantastic to have the whole family in bed and asleep by 9 (yes, Matt and I thought we'd won the the lottery and went to bed right after Celia was in her crib). She's thrilled to nap for hours on someone, in someones arms or in the carrier, but I'm slowly trying to get her to nap either in the crib on the swing (I had high hopes about the nirvana of a baby sleeping in the swing, but she's skeptical). Since she is being carted around so often as we take the older kids to school and activities I guess that we can be thankful that she sleeps in the carrier and we'll worry about the rest of it later.
This week we've finally been treated to lots of smiles. Before she would flash one every once in a while, but now she's got lots of smiles and coos every time she's on the changing table. Sometimes she's still looking over my shoulder or flashing her best smiles at the wall, but we'll take it. While I always mourn the fleeting new, curl up in a ball and sleep, tiny newborn stage, I'm always thrilled to have them actually interact and notice me. So nice after all of the hours of care to be noticed. I'm biased, but she's turning into a pretty cute baby.
Celia's finally over her first cold (thank you Erin and Nora) and I'm sure will be treated to her second one in short order as Nora started coughing yesterday. I just hope that we'll get through it again without too much trouble. I guess I really got spoiled by my spring babies and now I'll get to live through the cold season with an infant. Good times.
Nora is doing great and seems so big now that we have a real baby. She's loving school and we haven't had any tears with drop off for a few weeks. She is finally getting her colors down and is good with red, blue, yellow and usually green. Any other color is a crap shoot and she'll probably guess blue. She sings some of her songs from Zoom in Spanish, but otherwise not talking a lot in Spanish, but she understands tons, so I'm being patient for the words to come. She does have tons to say these days in English and usually doesn't stop talking during the day. She's still harder to understand than Erin was at this age, and her use of pronouns is suspect, but it makes for some good entertainment. She loves to talk about Celia's "cute yittle yips," and "cute yittle yegs." She still loves to ask "what your talkin' 'bout?" We hear "myself do it," or "my do it" about a hundred times a day. Last week she started telling me to "your think 'bout it," when I ask her a question. She's still a ham. She still does really well playing independently and is throwing less and less tantrums.
Erin is finally settling into Kindergarten. Her really rough patch at home lasted from the day after Celia was born and magically ended about 2 weeks ago. We're now have our normal, helpful, only sometimes cranky, Erin back. She could not have returned soon enough. Erin is still thrilled with her friend Tess and they got to go trick-or-treating together last week. She still seems a bit overwhelmed by the social complexities with a school or hundreds of kids, but we are proud that she's friendly and outgoing and making lots of new friends. She is finally reading. It seems that she just needed someone other than me to get her going. She's still not sold on independent reading at home and would rather not expend the effort, but is much less resistant. We are still very happy with her teacher who seems very experienced, engaged and effective. Erin is going to her first school friends birthday party tomorrow.
Matt and I are exhausted. It seems that juggling life these days is taking it out of us. I'm sure things will get easier and in many ways they already have. But, we have the looming question of where we will live next year and the anxiety of potentially making another huge move and starting over. It's sad to think of moving Erin now that she's happy in school and making friends. Given how tough this transition has been for all of us, I'm likely going to take an extended leave from work and maybe go back in February instead of December. We'll see.
