Little Miss A and Mr. K: Settling in with Baby K

I have to admit, I have it relatively easy when it comes to settling in with a new baby. My wonderful mother has been keeping A-bug on and off since K was born, or has been staying at our house. J also took the entire week right after he was born off from work, so I had a TON of help the first week. Even this week, since A has been with her Mimi and K sleeps constantly, things haven't been bad. Tomorrow will be my first full day with both of them and just me. 2 against 1. We'll see how it goes.

But even with all the help in the world, there are adjustments that any household has to make when a new baby comes along. We also had lots of little things to finish up after we got home from the hospital, since we weren't expecting our little man to come along for another couple of weeks. So J finished putting up his shelves, we finished unpacking his clothes, discovered we had no where near enough diapers for this little pooping machine, and bought some more warm sleepers. A was always such a hot baby that we never put her in fleece until it was the dead of winter. K gets cold much easier than she did, so we have to get him more warm clothes than we had realized.

So far, he's been a much easier baby than A-bug was. Long-time readers may or may not remember the long-term battle we had with her severe acid reflux. She had a hard time relaxing, was a terrible eater, and couldn't ever calm herself down enough to sleep well. We mostly lost our sanity and knew that we couldn't handle something like that again. Fortunately, this little man is just an eating, sleeping and pooping machine. I kid you not, that's all he does. And he does all 3 frequently. He rarely cries, and only occasionally fusses when he's hungry. The only difficulty we've had so far is that his days and nights seem to be mixed up, especially the hours of midnight till 2-3am. None of us are getting much sleep during those hours. He has no issues sleeping all day long, however, and we're working hard to train him that light time = awake time, and vice versa. He is getting better, but I'm still looking forward to going to bed before 2am sometime in the near future.

As I wrote in the previous post, A is just crazy about him. She loves kissing the top of his head and patting his hands. She's still confused as to why he doesn't talk back to her, but I think she'll get the point eventually. So far, her shrieks, squeals and cries haven't bothered him in the least - he can sleep right through them all. She's a little more wary of his fusses and cries, however. It makes her very nervous when he cries, and sometimes she'll join in if the fussing goes on for an extended period of time. She also loves riding in the car with him because she can see his face, and he's a captive audience to her chatting and singing.

Here are a couple more shots of life at home, Week 2 with Mr. K.