a little birthday

We baked up the birthday cake Guthrie and I had picked out when we were anticipating Laithe's arrival a few weeks ago for a little 1 week birthday party.
Didn't Gus do an awesome job with the frosting and sprinkles and candles??

We're slowly settling in - all four of us. Laithe is getting slightly less grumpy-old-man looking as the days go by although grumpy has turned into serious. He does what newborns do best- eat, poop and sleep. I'm still getting used to the possibility that I may, and usually will, get peed on at every diaper change. And that it will actually be aimed at me. He's a wonderful nurser. I'm feeling so lucky about that. We had about a month of challenges with Guthrie (which is probably one of the reasons I nursed so long with her - you don't give up something you've worked so hard for that easily!) and literally right out of the hatch Laithe has had no issues. I'm so glad there haven't been any middle of the night tears on my part because baby won't latch on or baby won't stay awake, etc. He will pull off and burp, without any help, sit for a second and then go back for more. And where it was a challenge to get Guthrie to wait for the nutrient rich 'hind milk' to come in Laithe seems to take it in stride. I'm crossing my fingers this keeps up.
We go in today for a weight check and all around newborn check. I'm interested to see how much weight he's gained and where he falls in the percentiles.
The other great thing - something I was so looking forward to- is that I've been able to wear Laithe in a couple of our slings now and he loves it. John wore him at the hospital when he was barely 24 hours old and he was pretty darn content then too. I love having him so close to me!

And big sister? She's doing as well as anyone could have hoped for. She still asks me not to leave her on a daily basis - which she's been doing since I came home from the hospital - and she's pretty emotionally needy right now. She's also thrilled to shower Laithe with kisses and hug and cuddles and is so proud of her baby brother - whom she sometimes calls Nathan. Whatever.

We've had a couple outings as a four person family and they've gone well. Exhausting, but well. I'm definitely still recovering and need to take it easy. It's hard when you are so used to being self-sufficient and all. I had to catch myself from putting Guthrie up onto the kitchen counter the other day when she asked. It's so second nature to just do what needs to be done. But, I'm trying to be careful. I go back to the Dr. tomorrow to check on my incision and hopefully get the go ahead to drive. There are some things that I'd forgotten about in the recovery process - one of which is a splitting headache from the spinal anesthesia that lasts for about a month. And given that I got a sort of double spinal this time because the first needle wasn't long enough- yuck- I'm betting this one lasts longer. It's so not cool. And then there's that whole, oh they shaved along the incision and now the hair is growing back thing. Under my steri-strips. Awesome. And since we've just discussed my hair down there we might as well go to this - I was at the store doing some shopping for uh, something to help the side effects of painkillers and discovered they sell chocolate flavored laxatives. Really? Who buys those? Seriously.

And John is exhausted. He has none of the new mom hormones to keep him going and is really feeling the lack of rest. He goes back to work next week and we're all a little anxious to get a routine going, but also not anxious at all to have him not here during the day. It's been a nice space for our family to grow into itself this past week.


Ugh, doesn't your heart just melt when you look at them? It's almost more than I can handle.