Ellie turns 3 months old tomorrow. That, in and of itself, is an adjustment. She's such a fun little baby girl. Definitely still very temperamental but hey, at least you never have to guess what she's thinking! I'm not sure exactly how big she is now but at 2 months she was in the 92nd percentile for weight (13 lb 1 oz) and 96th for length (24+")--these are about the same percentages as her birth percentages, so she's staying on the same track. I think she's getting it from Melkamu's side of the family. Naturally, to maintain this rate of growth, she eats all the time still. She slept through the night on one glorious occasion last week but other than that, she wakes up twice a night or more to nurse. I don't actually expect her to sleep through the night regularly anytime soon. During the day, she nurses once almost every hour. She might go 90 minutes between nursings but somewhere within the 3:00 hour, the 4:00 hour, the 5:00 hour, the...anyway, she's probably eating.
I'm teaching two online classes and a face-to-face lab class this summer. It's a huge amount of work but so far it's going OK and I'm keeping up.
The biggest adjustment for us has been Jason's work. As you know, his job ended in February and he's been looking for a new one ever since. He got called by a legal temp agency about 2 weeks ago to do a job for most of the summer, which was great...
...except that the job is in South Carolina. We live in Atlanta. Atlanta is not in South Carolina. Atlanta is too far from South Carolina to commute.
This poses several challenges. First, a normal summer schedule at my college is two classes--the summer semester is only half the length of a normal semester, so there's twice as much work each week as in a normal spring or fall semester. I took on a third class because Jason wasn't working and it would help us financially. However, I also arranged these classes so that I could still be home with the kids in case Jason got a job (silly me expected that if he got a job, it would be here). Hence, I leave to teach my lab two nights a week at 7:30 p.m., when the boys go to bed, and do my online classes whenever I have a free minute, and most other evenings.
So basically, it's worked out like this: I am currently working 50% more than full-time, while also home full-time with the kids, one of whom is a newborn who doesn't sleep through the night and won't take a bottle. (Don't ask me how it works to be a full-time SAHM and a full-time WOHM/WAHM at the same time. There is no answer.) Jason is renting a room in a house in South Carolina and came home last weekend, but won't be able to come home again for several more weeks because he's expected to work on the weekends. Which means I am also doing everything around the house that I'd normally do plus everything he normally does. Like mowing our lawn. Have you seen our lawn? It's like mowing a black-diamond ski slope in 95F temperatures.
I miss Jason and his lawn-mowing prowess.
The kids are bearing up as much as possible. Melkamu says "I miss Daddy" at least 10 times a day. Patrick will be doing something and say "I have to remember to tell Daddy about this when we talk to him." We're doing all we can to keep up and keep the house together.
And we really, really miss Jason. It was such a nice surprise to have him come home last weekend--we didn't know he'd be able to but they apparently got their first weekend off--but know that he won't be able to do it often. He won't be home for Father's Day weekend, and our 12th anniversary is the next day. That's particularly hard, knowing he won't be here to celebrate his first Father's Day as a dad of three.
We'll adjust as much as we can, and hope that he's home as soon as possible.
Tuesday, June 7, 2011
Monday, May 16, 2011
Kids, kids, kids
I have awesome kids. 
They are all my sweet peas...one of them almost literally ;-)
They look cool.
They love to read.
They love to cook.
My kids rock.
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Just a quickie
(As a side note, have I mentioned how much I love the movie "Mr. and Mrs. Smith"? I could watch it all the time. And "Ever After".)
I finally got Eleanor smiling on camera! This is the cutest picture ever. She still has her dark blue eyes but they are starting to turn a little more gray. She is such a sweet little girl. Definitely more temperamental than Patrick was as a baby, with her own ideas on everything, but sweet as can be. She rolled over front-to-back for the first time at 5 weeks, 5 days old. I told her how impressed I was and promptly told her not to do it again--she's too young to start things like that ;-) She weighed in at 11 lb 10 oz at 6 weeks old, up from her birth weight at 8 lb 14 oz. She comes with me to teach my pharmacology class each week and either stays with my department chair or sleeps in the sling while I talk.
My baby girl is growing up way too fast, but we are loving every day of it.
I finally got Eleanor smiling on camera! This is the cutest picture ever. She still has her dark blue eyes but they are starting to turn a little more gray. She is such a sweet little girl. Definitely more temperamental than Patrick was as a baby, with her own ideas on everything, but sweet as can be. She rolled over front-to-back for the first time at 5 weeks, 5 days old. I told her how impressed I was and promptly told her not to do it again--she's too young to start things like that ;-) She weighed in at 11 lb 10 oz at 6 weeks old, up from her birth weight at 8 lb 14 oz. She comes with me to teach my pharmacology class each week and either stays with my department chair or sleeps in the sling while I talk.My baby girl is growing up way too fast, but we are loving every day of it.
Saturday, April 9, 2011
Three is even more fun than two
One of Ellie's nicknames is "Wiggle Worm". She was just introduced to the play gym two days ago and so far, she really likes it. It's about the only place that she's willing to be put down while awake without screaming her sweet little head off.
Caesar likes having Ellie down at his level.
Caesar likes having Ellie down at his level. 
Patrick and Kamu love Ellie to pieces. They sing songs to her when she cries, hold her hands, give her hugs and kisses, and are really gentle with her. Kamu occasionally gets a little tired of how often she eats ("You nursing the baby again?!?!?!") but other than that, his transition to big brother has been remarkably easy--much more so than I'd expected. He does take advantage of anytime I put Ellie down to cuddle with me but that's certainly to my benefit as much as his :-)
Eleanor doesn't mind tummy-time too much because it gives her easy access to slurp on her fist, which she loves. (And yes, I know she's in pink and flowers and ruffles in this picture. Some of it is kind of cute. Most of it makes me itch.)
Thursday, April 7, 2011
A little bit of Eleanor in my life
I've been told I'm not blogging enough since Ellie came. Mind you, I would argue that having blogged twice in the last month is pretty darned good for me but apparently my mom and sister others have a different view. I admit that it is hard to blog with a baby who refuses to be put down for more than two seconds while awake or five minutes while asleep, primarily because I can't sit close enough to the desktop to type or put the laptop on my lap. And the fact that she nurses all the time which means, at best, I have one hand free while the other holds her.
Then again, I can't argue with wanting to see more of this sweet pea. She is a month old today--I can hardly believe it! It feels like she's been with us forever and yet no time at all.
Eleanor is a wonderful little girl. (Look, I almost caught her smiling! She's been smiling at me for about two weeks and has just started smiling at other people.)
I admit that I'm having trouble getting into girl-type clothes, but there are some awfully cute ones out there that are not pink and flower-covered and ruffly. Then again, Ellie looks cute in everything...
Eleanor is starting to get onto somewhat of a more typical newborn schedule. She's up a little more often at night, to the detriment of my sleep, but we do often take a morning nap together. Actually, in the last few days she has started to take a morning nap and an afternoon/evening nap, so it's a little more predictable. She's much more alert during the day, which is lots of fun. While she still cluster nurses, she doesn't generally do it for 3-4 hours at a time anymore...it's usually only 1.5-2 hours, which is a vast improvement. Lately, she's decided that she won't cry when she's not hungry or overtired as long as you don't stop moving. "Moving" involves bouncing her, swaying, and walking--all at the same time. Sometimes it alxo involved patting her back and shushing her. This may be why I've lost weight so quickly.
We are indeed lucky to have our baby Ellie in our family!
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
"Oh, she's going to be a delightful 2-year-old"
Our Eleanor has a temper. Everyone told me girls were more dramatic than boys, but I kind of thought we had more than a week before we were forced to admit it. Silly me.
She is the sweetest, most content baby most of the time. When she is awake, as long as she's not hungry, she is happy to play the tongue-sticking-out game, the finger-grabbing game, etc. She can hold her head up for a few seconds at a time and enjoys looking all around. She likes dancing around the kitchen and prefers hip-hop to anything else I've tried, though she will tolerate country and rock. She likes to be held all the time and is sleeping with me in the nursery for now because she doesn't like to be alone in the bassinet. She'll wake up a few times to nurse at night but I fall back to sleep once she's latched on. We generally get a 4- or 5-hour stretch of sleep (after a 3- or 4-hour stretch of nursing--she is a cluster nurser to the nth degree) and a couple of 2-3 hour stretches out of her. Yesterday and today, Ellie and I got up with the rest of the family while Patrick was getting ready for school, then took a 3-hour nap after he left. Given that she's a newborn, we're reasonably well-rested. I don't expect it to last but each day she goes like this is certainly helpful!
But woe betide you if she's hungry.
Ellie doesn't cry. Ever. If she's not hungry, she's not crying--she's either sleeping or happy to be awake, looking around with her big blue eyes. If she's hungry, she screams. There is no warning beyond some squirming and turning red for a few seconds. Then she yells with all her might until she has no choice but to take a breath. She flails her fists (Patrick came down the other day and said "I got beat up by a baby girl!"). She arches her back. She turns bright red. She tries to nurse on your chin or arm, or any other body part she can get her mouth on. She is the angriest, hungriest baby ever because the food is not there RIGHT THAT SECOND. It doesn't matter if she's eaten 2 hours before or if I'm just switching her to the other side after finishing the first.
If the food doesn't come fast enough, in her opinion, she does what Jason calls "playing dead" (this only happens if someone else is holding her). She stops crying and goes entirely limp. She closes her eyes. As soon as I take her, she immediately opens her eyes, yells at me, and starts trying to nurse through my shirt.
Today, I had the selfish notion that I should feed myself--after all, if the food source does not occasionally get nourished and watered, she has trouble producing food for Her Highness. And shamefully, I wanted warm food--clearly, that was taking way too long. Jason was holding Eleanor. He tried rocking her. She yelled. He tried putting her in the bouncy chair. She screamed. He picked her back up and rocked her some more. She yelled louder until her voice started going hoarse, then played dead. (This all took a grand total of no more than 5 minutes.) Mind you, I'd finished feeding her right before I handed her to Jason.
When I sat down to nurse her 30 seconds later, she was all sweetness and light as soon as she latched on. She spends 99% of her day like that. It's only the other 1% of the day when she's hungry and not actively eating that she turns into this 9-lb raging red ball of baby.
It's impossible not to be head-over-heels in love with this little girl, even when she's not so happy.
She is the sweetest, most content baby most of the time. When she is awake, as long as she's not hungry, she is happy to play the tongue-sticking-out game, the finger-grabbing game, etc. She can hold her head up for a few seconds at a time and enjoys looking all around. She likes dancing around the kitchen and prefers hip-hop to anything else I've tried, though she will tolerate country and rock. She likes to be held all the time and is sleeping with me in the nursery for now because she doesn't like to be alone in the bassinet. She'll wake up a few times to nurse at night but I fall back to sleep once she's latched on. We generally get a 4- or 5-hour stretch of sleep (after a 3- or 4-hour stretch of nursing--she is a cluster nurser to the nth degree) and a couple of 2-3 hour stretches out of her. Yesterday and today, Ellie and I got up with the rest of the family while Patrick was getting ready for school, then took a 3-hour nap after he left. Given that she's a newborn, we're reasonably well-rested. I don't expect it to last but each day she goes like this is certainly helpful!
But woe betide you if she's hungry.
Ellie doesn't cry. Ever. If she's not hungry, she's not crying--she's either sleeping or happy to be awake, looking around with her big blue eyes. If she's hungry, she screams. There is no warning beyond some squirming and turning red for a few seconds. Then she yells with all her might until she has no choice but to take a breath. She flails her fists (Patrick came down the other day and said "I got beat up by a baby girl!"). She arches her back. She turns bright red. She tries to nurse on your chin or arm, or any other body part she can get her mouth on. She is the angriest, hungriest baby ever because the food is not there RIGHT THAT SECOND. It doesn't matter if she's eaten 2 hours before or if I'm just switching her to the other side after finishing the first.
If the food doesn't come fast enough, in her opinion, she does what Jason calls "playing dead" (this only happens if someone else is holding her). She stops crying and goes entirely limp. She closes her eyes. As soon as I take her, she immediately opens her eyes, yells at me, and starts trying to nurse through my shirt.
Today, I had the selfish notion that I should feed myself--after all, if the food source does not occasionally get nourished and watered, she has trouble producing food for Her Highness. And shamefully, I wanted warm food--clearly, that was taking way too long. Jason was holding Eleanor. He tried rocking her. She yelled. He tried putting her in the bouncy chair. She screamed. He picked her back up and rocked her some more. She yelled louder until her voice started going hoarse, then played dead. (This all took a grand total of no more than 5 minutes.) Mind you, I'd finished feeding her right before I handed her to Jason.
When I sat down to nurse her 30 seconds later, she was all sweetness and light as soon as she latched on. She spends 99% of her day like that. It's only the other 1% of the day when she's hungry and not actively eating that she turns into this 9-lb raging red ball of baby.
Thursday, March 10, 2011
Eleanor Desta has arrived!
We welcomed our daughter, Eleanor Desta, to the world on March 7! She sure took her sweet time in arriving but as she is such a sweet little baby, it seems appropriate that she made such a wonderful entrance. Ellie kept us guessing about when she would come right until the end--well, she kept me guessing until the end. Everyone else who was here seemed to know a lot sooner than I did :-)
I started having the contractions that ultimately led to her birth at about 11 a.m. on March 6, while I was waiting for Patrick's Sunday school to end. We got home around 1 p.m. and I told Jason that I was having contractions about 4-5 minutes apart and had been for a couple of hours. "So, just another Sunday?" he asked. "Yep, pretty much," I told him. I'd had contractions like those multiple times in the last few weeks. One of those times they were like that for 22 hours, so I didn't read anything into them.
They started getting the tiniest bit stronger and around 3 p.m. I decided to take a nap. After laying in bed for about 15 minutes, I had one and actually felt downward movement from the baby, so I thought I'd call my midwife and give her a heads-up that something might be happening (this will be a recurring theme). I had a contraction while on the phone and apparently my midwife said to herself "Oh yeah, she's in labor." She called her apprentice to let her know.
I got up since I didn't like being in bed anymore and just hung around downstairs for a couple of hours. My midwife called back around 5:30 to see how I was doing and said she and her apprentice would just come over and see what was going on. They came around 6:15 or so and listened to the baby's heartbeat, asked how I was doing, etc. Around 8 p.m., we'd put the kids to bed and everyone started bringing equipment in from the car. I called my friends who were coming and told them that the baby would probably come that night. Mind you, I didn't believe it but figured that if my midwife was bringing things inside, it was a reasonable thing to do.
My friends got there within the hour and we all sat around waiting for something to happen beyond the contractions. And waiting. And waiting. They were pretty regular and certainly stronger compared to earlier, but I didn't buy it. I did get into the birth tub at one point but my contractions basically stopped after that, so I got back out and went back to what I'd been doing.
I did a lot of laboring like this. Jason was an awesome coach, of course.
At around 1:30 a.m., I decided to lay down for a while. I was tired and nothing seemed to be happening, so Jason and I went upstairs to take a nap. I slept until about 4:30 a.m., then Jason suggested we walk around downstairs for a while. We did that for a little over an hour and the contractions picked right back up. I still thought it might fizzle out again, but my midwife's apprentice watched me labor for a while and called my midwife to come back (she lives close by and had gone home to get a bit of sleep so that her apprentice could use our guest room). It was a good thing everyone else believed I was really in labor, because I certainly didn't!
Still, we kept on all morning. I spent some more time in the tub, more time laying down, a little more time sitting. I was able to eat and drink as I needed. The kids were awesome--they watched videos on iPads and played upstairs and read some stories. My friends Rachel and Lovisa were fantastically helpful--making coffee, entertaining the kids, helping me with whatever I needed, keeping me entertained between contractions. We talked a lot and it gave Jason the freedom to help me emotionally and physically. He was the one always there wherever I was, to help keep track of how things were going, giving me lots of excellent massages, encouraging me every minute.
I'm not sure when I got back in the tub for the last time but I was in there through Ellie's birth. I'd been having really powerful contractions--the last of which actually had me in tears--but when I got back in, they became so manageable! I could still feel them but they didn't hurt much anymore, even though they were clearly just as strong as they'd been. It was wonderful. I was able to eat some lunch about an hour before she came.
Everyone else knew what was happening. I, despite being the one actually in labor, didn't really believe it was going to happen. At 3 p.m., we heard Patrick's bus come by and Jason remarked that Patrick could have gone to school that day. I said "No, the baby will probably come today so I'm glad he stayed home." And immediately, everything picked up. I went into transition and had a couple of contractions that had me sobbing. My midwife checked me because I felt like I wanted to push and said "There's the baby's head."
Me (now sobbing semi-happily): "Oh, I'm so glad. I was afraid you'd check and I'd be like 5 cm." Everyone else laughed but I'd been serious--that's how much in denial I'd been all day. (Mind you, it was the one and only time I was checked.)
Push #1 was at 3:02 and was so intense that I felt there was no way I could do it (I yelled a lot more this time around than I did with Patrick). My water broke with push #2. I could feel the baby's head with push #3--that was when the kids came in and I told them that it was OK if I yelled, it was hard work but I was OK. Push #4 had the baby's head out. Push #5 brought our beautiful baby out into the world at 3:18 p.m., screaming and pink and perfect and chubby.
I asked Patrick whether he had a brother or a sister and he said "Brother." Then someone moved the umbilical cord and asked if he wanted to look again, and he said "It's a girl." We told him her name so that he could share it. Melkamu came over and touched her head, smiling the whole time even though he'd said he wanted a brother. I said that she was so big and thought she was around 8 lb--my midwife said "Maybe 7 1/2 or 8 lb." And I said "She has hair!"
My blue eyed, dark-haired baby girl.
Jason could not be happier to have a daughter.
I started having the contractions that ultimately led to her birth at about 11 a.m. on March 6, while I was waiting for Patrick's Sunday school to end. We got home around 1 p.m. and I told Jason that I was having contractions about 4-5 minutes apart and had been for a couple of hours. "So, just another Sunday?" he asked. "Yep, pretty much," I told him. I'd had contractions like those multiple times in the last few weeks. One of those times they were like that for 22 hours, so I didn't read anything into them.
They started getting the tiniest bit stronger and around 3 p.m. I decided to take a nap. After laying in bed for about 15 minutes, I had one and actually felt downward movement from the baby, so I thought I'd call my midwife and give her a heads-up that something might be happening (this will be a recurring theme). I had a contraction while on the phone and apparently my midwife said to herself "Oh yeah, she's in labor." She called her apprentice to let her know.
I got up since I didn't like being in bed anymore and just hung around downstairs for a couple of hours. My midwife called back around 5:30 to see how I was doing and said she and her apprentice would just come over and see what was going on. They came around 6:15 or so and listened to the baby's heartbeat, asked how I was doing, etc. Around 8 p.m., we'd put the kids to bed and everyone started bringing equipment in from the car. I called my friends who were coming and told them that the baby would probably come that night. Mind you, I didn't believe it but figured that if my midwife was bringing things inside, it was a reasonable thing to do.
My friends got there within the hour and we all sat around waiting for something to happen beyond the contractions. And waiting. And waiting. They were pretty regular and certainly stronger compared to earlier, but I didn't buy it. I did get into the birth tub at one point but my contractions basically stopped after that, so I got back out and went back to what I'd been doing.
Still, we kept on all morning. I spent some more time in the tub, more time laying down, a little more time sitting. I was able to eat and drink as I needed. The kids were awesome--they watched videos on iPads and played upstairs and read some stories. My friends Rachel and Lovisa were fantastically helpful--making coffee, entertaining the kids, helping me with whatever I needed, keeping me entertained between contractions. We talked a lot and it gave Jason the freedom to help me emotionally and physically. He was the one always there wherever I was, to help keep track of how things were going, giving me lots of excellent massages, encouraging me every minute.
Everyone else knew what was happening. I, despite being the one actually in labor, didn't really believe it was going to happen. At 3 p.m., we heard Patrick's bus come by and Jason remarked that Patrick could have gone to school that day. I said "No, the baby will probably come today so I'm glad he stayed home." And immediately, everything picked up. I went into transition and had a couple of contractions that had me sobbing. My midwife checked me because I felt like I wanted to push and said "There's the baby's head."
Me (now sobbing semi-happily): "Oh, I'm so glad. I was afraid you'd check and I'd be like 5 cm." Everyone else laughed but I'd been serious--that's how much in denial I'd been all day. (Mind you, it was the one and only time I was checked.)
I asked Patrick whether he had a brother or a sister and he said "Brother." Then someone moved the umbilical cord and asked if he wanted to look again, and he said "It's a girl." We told him her name so that he could share it. Melkamu came over and touched her head, smiling the whole time even though he'd said he wanted a brother. I said that she was so big and thought she was around 8 lb--my midwife said "Maybe 7 1/2 or 8 lb." And I said "She has hair!"
We didn't weigh her for several hours but when we did, we found that she was actually 8 lb 14 oz. I can't believe I grew an almost-9 lb baby girl to 40w2d and delivered her naturally at home! (For reference, Patrick was born at 37w5d weighing 6 lb 11 oz.) Her head is so perfectly round because my water didn't break until minutes before she was born, so she was cushioned the whole time. I look at her now and wonder how she could possibly have fit inside me!
We are incredibly lucky to have her. She is a cluster nurser and will nurse basically every hour for several hours, then sleep for about the same number of hours. She only cries when she's hungry or needs to be changed, and has been much more alert today. Her name, Eleanor Desta, is a very special one to us--she is named after Jason's grandmother Ellen. Her middle name is an Ethiopian name that means "Happiness", which honors Melkamu's firstmom since her name, although different, means the same thing.
I can't tell you how my heart filled with happiness when Jason said "Hey, how are my girls?" as I nursed her the other night.
The boys really, really love their baby sister.
A lot.
Jason could not be happier to have a daughter.
She's been out for fewer than 60 hours but has already helped make our family even more complete. Welcome, my Ellie. We've been waiting for you for a very long time.
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