Low expectations

I trembled in fear when Mike's paternity leave ended and it was time for him to return to work after Alex's birth. Could I really manage a newborn and a preschooler on my own, plus work part-time from home, pay the bills, buy groceries, cook meals and keep the house reasonably clean?

I decided to set the bar pretty low: each day Mike's at work, I have two goals: 1) take care of Meredith and Alex, and 2) accomplish one additional task. That's it. That one additional task could be anything from doing the laundry to buying groceries. If I manage to accomplish more than that in any given day, then I'm doing great! I'm supermom!

Today, I am still in my pajamas, and Meredith is on her third mismatched outfit of the day (she changes clothes A LOT). The house is messy, and I have piles of clean laundry sitting around that need to be folded and put away. It looks like Toys 'R Us exploded in Meredith's bedroom. Dexter needs a bath. Unwrapped Christmas presents are beginning to pile up in our closet. I am still behind on my thank you cards and Alex's birth announcements, and I haven't sent our Christmas cards to the printer yet.

If I looked at all that was un-done at our house, I'd probably cry. But since I have low expectations and am looking at what I HAVE done, I'm actually in a pretty good mood. Meredith and I cooked lunch together, I got Alex to actually lay in his crib for a little while without crying (he prefers to sleep close to Mike or me), I made two big trays of peanut butter-chocolate fudge for the bake sale at Meredith's preschool, and I did the dishes. Before Mike gets home tonight, I'll make dinner and straighten the house up a little bit. See? Supermom!

First bath!

Alex had his first tub bath on November 19th. He was perfectly content to lay calmly in his baby bathtub at first.


Then pee shot out from him and went everywhere. Good times.

I had to put the camera down after that because Meredith decided that the best way to "help" bathe Alex would be for her to climb into our bathtub, where I'd placed his tub, and pour water on his face. I managed to restrain her and keep her out of the tub, but she was practically climbing on me the whole time, trying to "help" with the bath.

I got frustrated with Meredith. Alex seemed to pick up on my frustration - and on his sister's desire to pour water all over his face - and started crying. And Mike stood there the whole time, filming everything. I'm sure that video is all warm and fuzzy. Toward the end of the bath, I finally got Mike to put the video camera away and help me get Alex dried off and diapered before he peed all over himself again.

Much happier wrapped up in a cozy towel.


Needless to say, Alex's first bath was not the sweet, calming, gentle experience I'd hoped for. I told Mike that next time, we'd wait until after Meredith went to bed to bathe Alex, at least until the novelty of bathing a baby wears off for his big sister.

Two kids

Often when we're holding Alex, Meredith will climb onto our laps as well, exclaiming, "Two kids is AWESOME!" Yes sweetheart, snuggling with two kids really is awesome.

Smile

On Friday night, the night before his one month birthday, Alex smiled at me. I mean REALLY smiled, none of that "gassy smile" stuff he's been doing.

He'd woken up from an evening nap, and Mike had taken him out of the room to change his diaper. He was still a little drowsy when Mike brought him back into the living room and handed him to me. As he was placed in my arms, Alex looked up at me and broke into a huge gummy baby grin! To make sure it wasn't just gas, we spent the next few minutes talking to him, smiling at him and encouraging our sweet boy to smile back. And he did! I love his happy baby face!

Now my mission: capture that adorable smile on camera!

Snow???

Snow is not something we see very often in central Texas, so everyone is abuzz with the news that there is a 70% chance of rain and/or snow on Friday. The forecast high temperature is only supposed to be about 36 degrees.

I can tell that 1) I am a southerner and 2) I've lived in central Texas for a while because my first thoughts upon seeing the weather forecast this morning were: "Holy cr*p that's cold!" and "I need to go to the grocery store, just in case." In case of what, I'm really not sure. Odds are highly against us getting much in the way of snow and ice. Even if we did get a lot of snow and ice, the high temps have been in the 40s and 50s for a week, so the roads are too warm for anything to really stick and make driving hazardous. And the forecast high for Saturday is in the 50s, so it's not like we'd be snowed or iced in at our house for a long time.

There's just something about a winter weather forecast when you live in the south. It compels you to rush to the store and buy up enough food and supplies to last a week. You know, just in case. I know our readers from up north are probably going to read this post and laugh, but do bear in mind that on the rare occasions when we DO get snow and ice here, we have no way to deal with it. We don't have snowplows, salt trucks, or anything like that. I doubt most residents here even carry an ice scraper in their vehicles. We all just sit around and wait for it to melt. Sad, I know.

For Meredith's sake, I'm hoping we see some snow on Friday! She'd love it!

On my own

Mike returned to work today for the first time since Alex's birth. I am on my own with both kiddos. Gulp.

We're off to a roaring start: I had to work last night (yes, I'm back at work already), so I was up way too late, and then Alex was up during the night projectile vomiting all over himself. And all over me. And all over our bed. Between the puking, the clean up, and his normal nighttime nursing sessions, I think I clocked about 3 hours of sleep before Meredith woke up this morning.

I checked in with the pediatrician because of the vomiting, and he wants to see Alex. That means I will be making my first solo outing with both children today. I think Alex is fine, and so does the nurse, but because of his age, the pediatrician wants to see him just to make sure everything is okay.

Before Mike left for work this morning, he looked at me and said, "You're going to have a tough day today." Thanks for stating the obvious, honey.

The First Thanksgiving

Okay, so not THE first, but it was the first Thanksgiving we've hosted at our home, and of course, it was Alex's first Thanksgiving.

We were joined for the holiday by Mike's parents (aka Grammy and PopPop) and by his sister and brother-in-law (aka Aunt Jill and Uncle Dave), who flew in from the east coast to meet Alex and eat lots of turkey with us.

Grammy and PopPop with our little snuggler and our lollipop monster.


Alex was not overly impressed by Thanksgiving. He spent most of the day asleep in either his bouncy seat or in someone's arms. Hopefully he'll appreciate the holiday, and the cute stuffed turkey, more next year.


For our first time hosting Thanksgiving, we decided to go with a fairly simple menu, combining dishes we enjoy with dishes traditionally served by our families. Our friends, D & R, generously loaned us their turkey fryer so Mike could fry up a turkey for everyone to enjoy. Mike and Papa fried a turkey together at some point last year, and Mike has been itching to try it by himself ever since.

PopPop and Uncle Dave supervised the turkey frying (complete with fire extinguisher in hand), and Dexter joined in the fun, begging for turkey.


Fortunately the fire extinguisher was not needed, and the turkey was fried without incident.


Mike also got to break out his new electric knife to carve the turkey. Electric knives are one of those random kitchen tools that you don't need very often, but they're pretty handy to have around for carving turkeys and slicing bread.


To round out our Thanksgiving meal, I made turkey gravy, sausage-apple-chestnut dressing, sweet potatoes with a brown sugar-pecan topping, a cheese-y green bean casserole, whole cranberry relish, and rolls.



The grown-ups enjoyed La Crema Pinot Noir and Ferrari-Curano Sauvignon Blanc wines (posting the names of the wine here for Aunt Jill, who wanted us to write them down for her), and Meredith enjoyed apple juice from a grown up wine glass. Yummy! Juice is ALWAYS better in a fancy glass, she says.


Dessert (which we forgot to photograph - we're hoping Grammy or Aunt Jill took a picture) was pecan pie and a "pumpkin pie spectacular". It was basically pumpkin pie with a decadent layer of gingersnaps and pecans topped with a streusel topping and ginger-cinnamon whipped cream. Mmmm...

Alex, in typical Alex fashion, woke up and decided he was hungry right before dinner. I was still trying to finish the side dishes and get the table set, so Grammy gave Alex his Thanksgiving dinner - a bottle of Mama's milk.


Finally, a few quick snapshots of the new family of four, taken before Grammy, PopPop, Aunt Jill and Uncle Dave had to head home. Alex was not impressed with our impromptu photo session, and unfortunately he's crying in every family shot we have.



We're thankful for so many things this year, including:

• Alex and his safe arrival in the world
  
• our precious daughter and her adoration for her new brother
• each other, our marriage and the life we've built together
• our jobs and their ability to keep a roof over our heads and food on the table
• another year with Papa and his ability to beat the odds
• all of our family members and friends who've been so tremendously supportive and helpful as we've welcomed a new child into our family
• our family members who drove and flew in from far away to meet sweet Alex, spend time with Meredith, and celebrate birth and Thanksgiving with us. We are so very blessed!

We hope everyone had a safe and wonderful holiday!

Post-Thanksgiving conversation at our house

After hosting our first Thanksgiving dinner, we sat in awe of what we'd accomplished:

• nothing was set on fire or burned beyond recognition
  
• none of the good china was broken
• there were no tantrums at the dinner table
• no one was sent to time out
  
• no one cried during dinner
• no wine was spilled on anyone
• the meal was excellent, and every dish was delicious

In other words, we managed to pull of hosting Thanksgiving like we'd been doing it for years. Mike commented to me, almost in surprise, "We did it! We're like, grown up and stuff." Ha!

Pictures, details, and recipes to come.

Papa and Alex

My dad, getting some quality snuggle time in with his little namesake.


My dad was diagnosed with stage 4 neuroendocrine cancer four years ago, around the same time I got pregnant with Meredith. His cancer is very rare and incurable. We hoped and prayed that he would be with us long enough to meet Meredith. That he is still with us, still his funny, wonderful, outgoing self, is such an amazing miracle and blessing. I can't begin to put into words how much it means to Mike and me that he was able to come to Texas for Alex's birth and that he was able to spend time with both of his grandchildren.

More from Alex's first week

Meredith is very into celebrating birthdays right now. If it were up to her, we'd all have a birthday at least once a week. Naturally, she was very excited to learn that the day Alex was born was his birthday.

She sang "Happy Birthday" to him, which was insanely adorable, and she was beyond thrilled when we told her that perhaps we needed a birthday cake to celebrate Alex's birth. She told us that she wanted to make a chocolate cake with chocolate frosting and lots of rainbow sprinkles for Alex. NeNe and Meredith went to work in the kitchen and whipped up a delicious cake for the occasion.

All good good bakers know that cake batter tastes best when it's licked off a spoon or a mixing beater.

Showing off her Big Sisters are the Coolest shirt, a gift from Miss Diana and Mr. Roland. Meredith was supposed to go to preschool the day Alex was born, but she asked if she could stay home with us, and we let her. She wore her big sister shirt on her first day back at preschool, and she carried photos of Alex in her bag to show to her teachers and classmates. She was so proud!


Meredith was also beyond thrilled to help give Alex a bottle for the first time. I'm nursing and pumping so Mike and Meredith can share in the baby feeding duties too. Meredith loves to hold Alex and give him a bottle, but she has a very limited attention span and only wants to do it for a few minutes at a time.