Since we've been home

The first few days...










Honestly, I have the most amazing children.

Abbie has been so great, such an easy baby. Yes there have been some hard times, but overall she's been a dream. She nursed great in the hospital - never once had a problem. When we got home she was also doing well, but then after a couple days she would not do it. We had to give her a bottle and it was really stressful for me when she refused to nurse. Today she still isn't getting it as quickly as she was in the hospital but she's gotten better and I am learning a lot from the experience. She sleeps great and goes long stretches between eating. For the past few days she's been eating around 4, 8, noon, 4, 8, midnight. I know they say newborns should eat every 2-3 hours but both of my babies have never needed that often! She sleeps great in her crib, the swing, car seat & of course while being held.

She doesn't cry too much and loves being swaddled, but also likes having her arms out. She really didn't like getting her diaper changed the first few days but she is now getting more comfortable with it. She does not like to be naked though, which we learned during her photo shoot this morning... We gave her a bath last night and she was a little whiny at first but ended up loving it. As long as she wasn't too exposed she loved having her head, back and tummy massaged. She has spit up maybe two or three times ever, and even then it was just tiny little amounts.

Jackson has been amazing. I was really nervous about how he'd react to Abbie. When he first came to the hospital he did well. He was with my mom and Tyler and he walked in the room to see me holding Abbie. While he didn't run right over to me, he acted happy to see me and had lots of fun running around the room. Eventually he came over to me and came to give the baby kisses. That's how its been at home too. He will do his own thing, and then notice something of Abbie's - stop what he's doing and look for the baby. If she's nearby he'll go and give her kisses, of course the 2-year-old handles her a little more aggressively than I would like, but I'm thrilled he views her that way.

When she was 4 days old I finally was the one who came and got Jackson when he woke up in his crib. When I peeked in his room he was happy to see that it was me at the door and exclaimed, "mama!" but then immediately got his serious face on and said, "baby! where baby?" He associates the two of us together but luckily doesn't treat me any differently. There have been a couple times when Tyler holds Abbie that he has gotten a little upset, but I think it's mostly because it surprises him. One minute he'd been playing with his daddy and the next minute he looks to him and he's holding Abbie. He's always been more of a daddy's boy so this doesn't surprise me. He has still handled himself really well though, he's getting really mature.

He has been playing great with my mom and sister and is totally comfortable and at ease with them. Even though it had been 3 months since he'd seen them he picked right up where they left off. He's also gotten much better at playing independently. Just a couple weeks ago he would never go in the backyard to play by himself for more than a couple minutes. He'd normally only want me out there with him if he played. But this week he has been out there a lot alone and while he will run inside often to tell us something, he is ok with being alone. I couldn't have asked for better timing with this.

Really I am so incredibly blessed to have two amazing, cute, healthy children. Blessed to have a husband, mom, and sister here to take care of me. We've got 2 adults to 1 kid right now so we've got a pretty good handle on things. We'll see how I do next week when it's 2 kids and me, but I have faith that Jackson and Abbie will be great :)