One Month

Today is the 8th, which means that Ivy is one month old, officially. I have now been the mother of two children for a month. In some ways, it has gotten easier. For instance,we have practiced and become much more adept at getting out of the house in an expedient fashion, two little ones in tow. Breastfeeding is going swimmingly and the girl is growing like a weed. And despite Ivy's overall lack of a schedule, and indeed the lack of any structure to our daily routine as a whole (with neither parent working at the moment), Nat and I have settled into a rhythm of caring for the two little ones. In general this involves Nat taking Jack while I take Ivy-- the presence of my functional milk ducts making this the most sensible choice-- though I try to tuck the boy in to bed and spend other moments with him when possible. We have even gotten cavalier with our energy levels and have begun to tackle projects and tasks outside of the basics of dishes, laundry and diaper changes (see deck below, and our painted porch floor). I don't take naps any more. (sigh. I miss that.)

Other things are not getting easier at the rate I had hoped. Jack seems to care about his sister, and is sweet and loving to her-- but he continues to pull out new and interesting ways to manipulate our attentions. This involves, thanks to his highly verbal nature, talking back, arguing, and generally being contrary to our wishes at all possible times. Ivy continues to be serious about her sleep-- during the day at least. And really at night as well, as she gets a 4-5 hour stretch of sleep at most times. But she is moving more and more into that phase of babyhood which involves a "witching hour"-- or hours, really-- in the late evening, fussing and demanding much more bouncing and direct ministration that we'd gotten used to, between the hours of 7 and 11, and often throwing in a good long alert period after 11pm. You know, right when we are realizing that perhaps we did a bit too much with our limited energy and we'd really like to be in bed... It is nice to remember that evening fussiness tends to peak at 6-8 weeks. Close to the top of the hill means we are approaching that downslope. And anything is possible for a short amount of time. I also need to remind myself that we can't begin to expect this new little person to have a schedule or a sleep routine anytime before we hit that downslope. If then. And this is normal. And really, it lasts for such a short time in the scope of a childhood. Before we know it, Ivy will be the surprisingly manipulative 2 year old. And in the meantime I must try to suppress the frustration with myself, the thinking that as a second-time mom, I ought to have more of the answers, this ALL ought to be easy, that I shouldn't have had to write this paragraph in the first place...