Graham: 12 Weeks

Onward!

I love 12 weeks.  Last night Graham just hauled off and slept through the night.  Whaaaat?  And when Jude hit 12 weeks, he mysteriously wanted to start napping in his crib instead of only (and I do mean only) in my arms.  It's like they hit this particular day of life and a little button is pushed inside their squishy bodies and they are ready for a new phase.

Anyway, I am currently in baby heaven.  Graham -- I am obsessed with him.  He is at that age of solid gold where he just smiles, laughs, coos and gurgles at me.  His eyes actually twinkle, and they are bordered by these insane lashes that get caught in his eyebrows.  Swatting and attempting the grasps are the chores that keep him occupied while I'm chasing Jude, and when he needs a break he will usually just chill for a little bit until he gets bored or lonely.  I feel guilty that Jude still dominates every day, but I know that as Graham grows he will demand more attention and we will all figure out how to adjust.  The funny thing is, Jude is also in love with G, and spends a lot of time cooing at him and trying to give him too-tight hugs or pick him up, but when he is in Graham's line of vision he never holds still long enough so they Graham can respond.  Graham was smiling at Jude for the first time a couple of days ago as Jude inspected a train.  I said, "Jude, look!  Baby Graham's smiling at you!"  And Jude caught a sliver of that brotherly love before Graham was onto something else to stare at.  

I find myself thinking what friends have told me about the 2nd (or 3rd, 4th etc.) child: there's not that same rush for them to grow.  With Jude I was always full of anticipation for next phase, but Graham can just take his sweet time.  

I feel like Graham has been for me.  Like Heavenly Father crafted this little bundle of exactly what I need in my life right now.  I keep telling Jeff I've never been so happy. Sometimes when I say this to him I know he's thinking, "Are you sure?  'Cause you sure seemed to be spiraling last [day of the week]..." and of course I still have bad days.  But, I don't really know how else to describe it other than to say that I feel more fulfilled than ever, that since Graham's arrival so much has fallen into a wonderful place.  I am thinking it must just be spouting from the simple fact that it is a knotch deeper into Motherhood.  And Motherhood is a place I wanted to be my whole life.  So with all the things that must be sacrificed or pushed to the back burner, it's ok, because I've got this family that makes me feel so good.  I am a lucky girl. 

Now Graham, a request: Please don't grow up and start dealing drugs or get involved with insider trading.  Thanks!

One last thing:

I forgot the crowning glory of that bad day in the ENT office.  After Jude's nap we went to the mall so I could finally get the shamefully overdue birthday gift for a nephew.  We got that crossed off the list, I loaded up Jude in the car, and as I was plugging Graham's car seat in, Jude nonchalantly blows chunks ALLLLLL over.  Jude has had the stomach flu twice, and both times he barely seems to care or notice as he projectile vomits so much stuff I don't know how it ever all fit into his body in the first place.

Jeff brought home Gatorade, after the boys went down I scrubbed out my entire car, and that was the end of that day.

This picture cracks me up.

One of my favorite Graham pictures

He was about a week and a half.  HELLO EVERYBODY!

My Religious Zealot

A while ago Jude finally agreed to fold his arms during prayers.  He now wants to pray all the time.  When Jeff picks up his keys to leave for work in the morning, his arms go "folded" for family prayer.  I give him a sippy or put him in his booster seat, and he folds his arms to bless the food.  But my favorite is when we're just sitting on the floor playing or driving along and all of a sudden he's folding his arms.  So we gotta pray.  Cute.

That One Time I Bawled in the ENT Office

I think the topic of Terrible Twos will come up fairly frequently for the next little while, because I tell you what, I am up to my eyeballs in it.  This is one tale of life with a Terrible Two (whom I love to no end).

It's the Tuesday after Jude's tubes surgery.  Over the weekend we found a little dried blood in his ear, and when we called our ENT he told us we MUST come in on Monday or Tuesday.  We were able to get an appointment for Tuesday.

Tuesday morning I meet my friend Brittany and her 3 kids at the park.  Brittany was going to have a babysitter meet her at the park, and then leave from there to go do hair and make up for a Nikki Minaj music video in LA.  The only problem was there was going to be a 20 minute gap where she needed to be on the road, and the babysitter would just be leaving high school.  This was close to when I needed to leave for the doctor's office, but Britt was in a bind so I offered to watch her kids until the babysitter came.  I should mention there had been an attempted kidnapping at this park 2 days prior, and people were still a little on edge being there, myself included.  So then I had a 5 year old, two 2 year olds, and 2 infants (including my kids).  The toddlers kept trying to escape in 2 directions, the babies were crying, and the babysitter was late. And this meant I was also late in leaving for the doc that I did not want to reschedule because I was really worried about Jude's ear.  So my little pulse was going wild.

Finally the babysitter comes, and I load the babies up and jet.  We're late to the doctor, but they haven't bumped us, and we take a seat with Graham in the Bjorn and Jude with some books next to me.  But Jude has been over the waiting room experience for a while, and understandably so.  In one month we had been in 8 waiting rooms, whether it was for me, Graham, or Jude (mostly for Jude, though).  This is the child who doesn't like to wait or be quiet or restrained for any reason for any amount of time.  He's getting antsier and louder by the minute.  I realize I haven't had a chance to eat since breakfast, and am really wishing I'd thrown a granola bar into my purse.  We hang out in the waiting room for AN HOUR AND FIFTEEN MINUTES.  I am about to start standing on my head to keep him quiet and entertained.  I even go up to the front desk with Graham in front and Jude on my hip and say, "I'm sorry, I know everyone here is waiting too, but do you know about how much longer it's going to be?"

Finally they take us back, but now we're just waiting in a smaller room with cabinets and drawers filled with swabs, little instrument attachments, cleaning products, and there's a very special and expensive looking chair with a computer attached and little buttons to move it all around.  So now Jude has vehicles to increase his madness and naughtiness.  He gives me the ALL BETS ARE OFF, MOM! look.  I redirect, put him in Time Out in the corner, redirect some more, try and get him to marvel at Graham, sing songs, recite books I have memorized, etc. etc. etc. to no avail so finally,

I sit down on the stool and start crying.  Like really crying.

And actually, this startles Jude and his face goes from "I'm going to be naughty because I CAN!" to "Oh shoot, what have I done??"

And then a minute later, the ENT finally comes in.  The tubes look fantastic, just a small amount of flukey blood, and he says that since we came in today and everything looks wonderful, we don't have to come in again in 2 weeks as he'd told us the day of the surgery.

Phew.

And we beeline outta there, Jude goes down for a nap, and I snuggle with Graham while stuffing my face with many, many bomb chocolate chip cookies.

The End.

Not twins, but definitely siblings.

Sometimes Graham makes faces that shoot me right back to infant Jude days.  I can never get them in a picture, though.  They definitely have their own look, but are definitely brothers.

Graham: 2 months

These days, our Baby G:

- Gives us coy smiles and spunky smiles.

- Coos and squeals.

- Still sometimes arches his back and tucks his legs to his chest after eating or waking up, but that's fading away (sad face).

- is in the 90th percentile for weight and height, and 95th for his big old head.

- Two nights ago at 2 am I went to appease his cries for sustenance and woop!  He'd rolled over.  This means he's somewhat mobile now.  I am not really excited about that.

- Kickkickkickkickkicks and waves his arms around constantly.  It reminds me of his big brother.

- Has buttermilk skin.  This is how we expected Jude's skin tone to be, but I think the olive-ish base my sisters have snuck into big brother's genes. 

- He's rocking the male pattern baldness right now.  There's fuzz filling in.

- He still sleeps through all the noise in the world during the day.  But he still has been waking up 2 - 3 times a night, and I'm dragging because of it.  At his 2 month check up yesterday, I told the doc I was planning on pulling the plug at 3 months.  He encouraged me to wait until 4 months to stop feeding him at night (if he wants to).  However, he did say Graham might start sleeping through the night before then on his own, but to help that along I need to put him in his crib at night awake, and then I should make him wait 5 - 10 minutes before going to him when he cries in the middle of the night.  So last night at about 9:00 I fed him, got him all set for slumber, sang him a song or two from the glider, and put him in his crib.  It took him a few minutes to become sad, then cried like crazy for about 20 minutes, and then was sawing logs.  He didn't wake up until about 4 am!!!  And then at about 8 when the rest of us woke up, he was still out.  I woke him up, and he gave me a huge grin when he opened his eyes.  This child is so easy going.  I can handle 20 minutes of sorrow.  Jude cried for 3 hours the first time I denied him a nocturnal snack.  It doesn't matter, because either way we believe in sleep training, and Jude's personality is just very stubborn which will serve him well in many ways in life, but I appreciate the swift end to last night's crying session.  

And tonight, he didn't cry at all.  

- I've given him a pumped bottle or two and he takes it, no problem.  Our boys don't seem to care where their dairy is coming from, as long as it comes.

- I'm very happy that I've been able to keep him fed and fat with just nursing.  With Jude I was a little cavalier with my milk supply and gave him formula when convenient but never pumped.  That really did a doozy on nursing long term.  I really want to try to make it a year.  If I can't, that's ok, but I want to try.  

- We have loads of nick names for him, among them Graham Graham, G, The Cracker, Graham Cracker, G-dizz, The Lion, and that's all I can think of right now.

- He tolerates Jude's violent affection fairly well.

- He's not exactly on a nap schedule yet, and one of my friends asked if I ever am dying for time when both kids are sleeping.  Graham isn't really work right now, and I LOOOOOVE having one on one with him.  He'll probably start to want 2 regular naps before I'm wanting that 100% alone time.

- He's a bucket of squish and love and I can't believe he's mine.

JUDE & LYLA'S 2nd BDAY PARTY

For Jude's 2nd birthday I actually pulled through and threw him a party!  It was easier to do because I shared the duties with Lyla's family.

Sometimes Ladera Ranch is more CUTE than I can bear, but cute does come with a lot of parks.  We sent out an evite, reserved the gazebo at a neighborhood park for $25, got a decoration package from Minted, brought drinks and homemade cupcakes.  Really, I feel like we simplified almost as much as we could.  The decoration package was probably the best part.  I have thrown tons of bridal and baby showers in the last few years, and each time I wander Target aisles trying to piece together decorations that are cute, cohesive, and cost effective.  I never really feel like I nail it.  With the Minted decorations, it looked way better than anything I would have thrown together, and cost less than what I've done in the past.  

Then the park aspect worked for everyone.  I got anxiety just thinking about trying to get a group of toddlers to participate in, let alone enjoy organized games.  This way, the parents chatted, and the piglets roamed their park turf.  

Jude had a great time, I let him eat as many cupcakes as he wanted, and really, Jeff and I felt lots of love and support from friends and family as we celebrated our babies.  I can't believe I've been a mom for over 2 years now.  Good days, bad days, I always know I'm in the middle of my absolute favorite thing.  Being a mom makes me happy.

You won't believe how much sugar was on the inside and outside of my son this day.  He's like me and is really in it for the frosting.  The cake can go to blazes.

Nursing G at a park is so much fun.  At least I'm not as uncomfortable as I was with Jude.

My dad was out of town, but Mimi made it.  Jude saw her before I did, ran over and into her arms.

YAY!

Singing the birthday song pulled a sweet bashful smile onto his face. 

"Do I have something on my face?  There, did I get it?  No? How about now?"

Here they were taking turns leaning down to Graham in his car seat and saying, "HI!!" Then belly laughs ensued after a few rounds, because duh that is hilarious stuff!