noah - the first month

 happy first birth month noah! here's the little guy with his giraffe nana gave him:

what can i say - being a mom again (or times two) is amazing, certainly worth all the lost sleep and totally mismatched schedules and LOTS AND LOTS OF POOPY DIAPERS. and i say that when noah is still basically just an eat-poop-cry-sleep-(sometimes)-then-repeat machine so i am fairly confident i will love it even more when his repertoire expands.

caleb LOVES his brother and is very doting. check out this video:

he is very attached. when he hears caleb wake up he has to go see him. luckily he quickly got over his expectation that we would let him walk around and carry noah, as well as his idea that noah should lay down with him for naps. harder concepts to grasp are that noah can't yet play with his trains or have a bite of his pretzels. but we are getting there. he likes to announce/inform me of noah's status and needs ('noah seeping' or 'noah hunry, mommy feed noah' or 'noah sad, dahper change.') and thankfully aside from being a little whinier than normal caleb has been so fantastic. he has not shown any resentment or jealousy, at worst just frustration when i can't quite fit them both on my lap when nursing. the biggest threat caleb poses is through the germs he transmits through his many many (slobbery) kisses.

caleb gets some noah time. 

notice also how noah's legs totally fail to 

reach the bottom of his pants legs. 

noah himself is quite the serious little guy. but then, he has been through a lot. he gets gassy pretty easy, and while he is not what i would fully call colicky he has kept me up plenty of nights grunting and squirming away in discomfort. this has led me to inflict a diary-free diet upon myself which is surprisingly hard and also surprisingly not much healthier. he has sad peeling skin and little baby acne and a weeping crusty eye and a receding hairline (looks like baby bruce willis to me) but he has cute little sideburns and beautiful blue eyes that i really really hope stay blue (one of them has to look something like me.)

seb trying to cheer up the little fuss-bucket

he is long which is the only way he is starting to fit into newborn clothes as opposed to the preemie clothes we went out to buy him the day after he got home. he has already gained almost 2 lbs, which is probably because he EATS ALL THE TIME. he started out almost a pound lighter than caleb but may be heavier than caleb was one month out. so far his tricks include insatiable hunger, peeing all over us, giving out accusing stares, blowing spit-up out of his nose, an these adorable little sneezes (probably because of the spit-up) that are always 2 actual sneezes followed by 2 almost sneezes that come out as exclamations instead. it's the cutest thing he does. i hope to luck out and catch one on video sometime.

it's hard to believe that it's already been a whole month that the little guy's been around, and that enough time has passed that all the drama of his first week seems like a distant memory. his heels are finally healed and all the evidence that remains is a stubborn patch of adhesive on his foot and the vein in his scalp that is still a little irritated from the IV. he's a normal baby doing normal baby stuff, and he's been out to the zoo (that will be another post) and even went shopping with us (we realized after 5 years in hawaii we were ill-prepared for fall and winter weather in the clothes department.)  

i celebrated his one month birthday with some pretty big steps myself - i was up, dressed, and ready for the day with coffee in hand before either seb or caleb were awake for the first time since i came home (noah usually keeps me up long enough that i'd been sleeping in as long as i could); i took both boys out by myself for the first time, to the park, and did not lose my mind about all the germs we were coming in contact with; i rewarded myself for this bravery with a soy decaf iced mocha that still tasted pretty good despite the soy; i prepared an actual meal with three parts (steak, rice, and salad) that i actually got to consume within only ONE HOUR of it being served. it was a pretty sweet day. 

caleb celebrated with his favorite park-time activity - playing in the rocks. when he plays with the rocks, he is in his own little rock world and simply cannot be bothered with silly questions:

notice how he goes from humoring me to totally ignoring me. oh and forgive the volume please, i am NOT proficient with video editing enough to equalize things.

 

he was looking pretty sharp that day, and i could not help but catch a few pictures:

man on a mission

gotta love that smile!

so it's been a really great month, and it's been rough at times but it was enjoyable and much easier than it could have been thanks to my mom and my mother in law, who both gave up a lot of their time off and time from their personal lives and suffered through my post-partum and just plain old every day neuroses to come and help us out in the first three weeks. 

yaya with both her grandbabies 

(and about to have another in just a few weeks!)

nana and grandpa admiring noah

so thank you SO MUCH to the both of you, we really love you and really appreciated your help. we hope you had at least a little bit of fun too ;)