Sing a song of eating

We're delirious. It's official. We made up this song yesterday, because Christmas songs are stuck in our head for some reason.

He knows when you are sleeping, he knows when you're at work
He knows when you have just changed clothes, so beware for that clean shirt!

Oh, you better not eat, you better not nap
You better not pee, I'll tell you and you'll see
Jackie-bear is coming for the boob!

More lyrics to come, I'm sure.

Two weeks

Friday night, Jack was two weeks old, and we accidentally celebrated with slushies. Christopher was holding him, and I asked if there was anything I could get for him. He's been so sweet to me lately -- watching the baby while I slept -- and I wanted to return the favor. He jokingly said he wanted a watermelon slushie, and I volunteered to run down the street to Sonic to get it. I got back around 11:30 with his watermelon slush, and a lemon slush for me, and realized that the night Jack was born, right around the same time, my stepfather brought us the same drinks at the hospital. It really drove home the fact that we've been through two whole weeks so far, and we're surviving. Maybe even thriving.

I love to watch him with the baby. He struggled a lot with the idea of having a child throughout the pregnancy, which is apparently pretty natural, and he was pretty thunderstruck at birth. He was so concerned about the pain I was in with the problems with the anesthesia that I think he couldn't really wrap his mind around the arrival of baby. But over these last two weeks, I've watched him morph into an amazing father, and it's been beautiful to watch. Sometimes I have to pry Jack away from him, and he's so sweet and gentle with that little body. I'm a lucky, lucky girl.

Even if I don't really have a schedule at all any longer. zzzzzzzzzzzzz

Looking ahead

Sometimes, when he's sleeping and his face is relaxed, I can almost see what Jackie-bear is going to look like when he's older. I can picture him as a little boy running around the house, chasing the cats, giggling and stumbling on chubby legs.

No confusion here

After reading Furrow's bit on her daughter's oral fixation, I just had to talk about The Things That Go Into Jack's Mouth.

So I'm breastfeeding, which is both wonderful and incredibly weird, and has led to many boob-related jokes around the house. It also means that, before we left the hospital, there was a lot of discussion about "nipple confusion." We weren't to give him a bottle or use a pacifier, if we were so inclined, for about a month, to establish that mommy's bewb is the one and only place for food. But Little Jack had the jaundice, like I did, and so I had to supplement with formula for the first few days. No big deal; we did that with syringes to avoid that whole nipple confusion issue. But let me tell you something: there's no confusion here. Here are some of the things the child has thus far put into (or tried to put into) his mouth:

Fingers
Entire fists (his own and others)
The knuckles of family members
Faces
Necks
Shoulders
Mommy's tummy
Blankets
Spit rags
His "boxing gloves," or rather, his little mittens
The sleeves of his shirts
The side of the co-sleeper
The 1989 Denver Broncos (not really, but I bet he'd try)

After reading about babies with "intense sucking needs," we finally gave in and broke out the newborn pacifiers, and it's helped with calming him down when he tries to eat himself sick (which he does about twice a day). This kid would nurse all the time if I'd let him. I keep waiting for the first time he bites (or gums) one of the cats. I've been trying to keep them away from him, and the cats don't seem to understand that I'm doing this for their safety rather than his.

In the beginning

So I used to have a blog. A personal blog, I mean, because I'm a blogger by trade. I stopped several years ago, however, and I'm not sure why. Lack of time, I guess, or energy, or anything to say. Besides, when you're blogging to make money, it's harder to blog about random thoughts on a separate page; at the end of the day, I'm all blogged out.

But things have changed. No, I don't think I have any great wisdom to impart or anything (probably the exact opposite, really), but on February 8th, my husband and I had a baby boy, and I want -- need -- an outlet, or a diary, someplace I can record the ups and downs. So here I am, back again, to talk about Jackie-bear. This is day eleven. He's in the swing next to me, lost in the folds of a huge nightgown, and I should be sleeping. Instead, I'm scarfing down breakfast and googling childrens' songs in an effort to remember the things I used to sing with my mother. It's my first day on my own with him and I'm determined not to call anyone for help.

And just in case you don't believe me about the Elvis smile in the blog description: