Oct

No, your eyes do not lie, it is in fact a new Team Kirith blog! Yay!!! I know, I know, it’s been 6 weeks since Eli was born. While I was pregnant, everyone kept telling me that having two kids was way more than twice the work of one. I remember thinking “yeah, yeah, what a bunch of whiners”. Well, they were RIGHT! The last six weeks have been wonderful in a lot of ways, but also UNBELIEVABLY stressful. Those of you who don’t have kids will now be thinking “yeah, yeah, what a bunch of whiners”; those of you who do have kids will be nodding knowingly.

I won’t rehash all the details of Eli’s birth here (his birth story is up on the website now), though I will say that after 46 hours of labor, pretty much any baby would’ve looked good to me! But Eli is beautiful (in my *completely* unbiased opinion %-). At first, I thought he was going to look like me, since right after he was born, blond hair started growing in under the darker hair he was born with. But, alas, it seems as though he’s going to look like Craig, too. People in my family try to tell me they *both* look like me, but they’re just trying to make me feel better – they are both Craig’s little “mini-me”s. It doesn’t seem fair – I go through the pregnancy and childbirth, and they both come out looking just like Daddy!

In terms of disposition, Craig thinks Eli is an easy baby, much easier than Sami. I agree and disagree with that (typical me! . It’s true that he soothes really easily – when he’s crying, he calms down as soon as we pick him up. We are also INCREDIBLY lucky with how well he sleeps – he sometimes sleeps for 5 hours at night! Not every night, of course, but 4 hour stretches at night are pretty common for him, and have been from the beginning. Very different from Sami, who was awake every two hours like clockwork.

BUT, Eli is even more of a “cuddle slut” (as Craig puts it) than Sami was, and she was pretty bad. Eli needs to be held almost constantly when he is awake, and often if we are holding him and he falls asleep, he wakes up when we put him down. Also, whereas Sami was content to sit in the swing or bouncer seat, Eli will tolerate them for only a few minutes at a time before wanting to be held again. All of which means it is EXTREMELY difficult for Craig and me to get anything done while Eli is around. And we don’t have him in daycare yet, so he’s around A LOT!

He’s worth it, though – of course he is! He’s so soft and sweet. And yesterday he smiled at me for the first time! That makes it all worthwhile. When I get frustrated at having to hold him when I REALLY need to be doing something else, I try to remind myself that all too soon he’ll be grown up and then he won’t want me to hold him at all. That helps me realize that the things I’m doing aren’t really so important (well, *most* of them aren’t! %-).

How is Sami doing with Eli? She LOVES him – sometimes a little too much! She constantly wants to hug and kiss him, and hold him, but she doesn’t understand why she needs to be gentle with him. One really cute thing is that she’s developed a lot of mothering behaviors since he’s been born. She has three “babies” (dolls) now – the (really ugly) one my mom bought her back in June (her name is “baby”), a blond-haired pink baby that she got as a gift from my friend Bobbi on the day of Eli’s bris (she doesn’t have a name), and a baby covered in blue fur (named, oddly enough, “blue baby” . She rotates the babies, and puts them in the swing and the bouncer seat, puts diapers on them, covers them up with Eli’s blankets, etc., etc. She also mimics the way we talk to Eli and repeats it (to the babies and to him). It is all what can only be described as “precious”.

In other news with Sami, she is continuing her “terrible two” phase, even though she’s only just shy of 20 months old. She’s also had a verbal explosion – not only can she say two word utterances, she can now say full sentences as well. She still does her little gibberish sometimes, but she talks more and more (and better and better) each day. More on all of that later – right now, Eli is crying and ready to be held some more! %-)