We kicked off this month with a visit from my Enid family, and it was truly the highlight of the month. I rather enjoy being on the "grown up" side of the spectrum, getting included in the grown up conversations and not being banished to the "kid table." It's fun to hash out parenthood with people who did it with five kids as opposed to my two. We soaked up the encouragement and promises that we would make it, gleefully accepted the extra cuddles for our kids, and were sad to say goodbye when they had to go back home. You can't ask for much more in a family visit, I would say.
So now I have a four month old and an almost two year old. Does this mean that I'm officially done with newborns? Does this mean that my soul can shatter? Despite my vents and shortcomings, I love newborns. I love cuddling them after they nurse. I love the peace that their "sleep grins" bring to a household. I love the overwhelming sleepiness I feel while they nurse. I love couch naps. I love how perfectly they mold into the curves of my body while we co-sleep. I love to watch their baby bird mouths search vigorously for dinner any time they smell me. I love it. Through the lack of sleep, you're oblivious to the exhaustion as your baby nurses for the umpteenth time that day, because you're so captivated by that "newborn smell." You know what else I love about newborns? They stay where you put them. And they love to sleep. And they eat what you offer them. And when they cry, there's a reason. There's no foot stomping and shrieks of anger filled tantrums. There's no spankings. There's no time outs. There's no overall sense of "Where have I gone wrong?!!?"Just a sweet, cooing baby that is so clearly captivated by the very sight of you.
I feel that was a great segway into the entire greek tragedy that summarizes Ella Morgan right now. We are in a hard phase. We are in a seemingly endless tunnel of "can't win" with that girl. And before anybody starts in with "terrible twos" or "Wait until she's three! It gets so much worse!," let me just say stop it. Stop it right now. What if we encouraged each other instead? What if it would be enough to say, "Hey. I've been there. Solidarity, sister." What if we said "It won't always be this way. You'll find new challenges and new victories every day. Just grab your coffee and get through it." I personally would LOVE that kind of encouragement. Instead of "Oh, you just THINK it's hard now. It gets so much more difficult. You don't even know misery. You don't know pain! No coffee will be enough! Good luck making it out alive!" Okay, maybe people don't say those words exactly, but it's what my brain hears. But I feel like as mothers, we should stand beside each other and say "Hey, bring your kid over here and go sing an N*Sync song alone in your car." Now, back to Ella. This is not a happy phase around here. This is a "How many hours until nap/bedtime?" phase. This is a "Is it time for Cody to come home and take a shift or do I actually need to take a shot of something at 2 in the afternoon?" Phase. Ella is wonderful. She is smart, and adventurous, and fearless, and intrigued, and independent, and stubborn. All at the same time. Every second of every day. She is old enough to know that she is entitled to her own opinion, and she's exercising her right to assert it. She refuses food even more violently than usual. She throws herself in the floor and cries when she gets frustrated. She screams when she doesn't get her way. She fights her sleep, and when she finally goes to sleep, she never sleeps longer than two hours at a time. Do you know what it's like to have a 4 month old that sleeps 8 hours at a time and an almost two year old that still doesn't have a consistent sleep schedule? DO YOU UNDERSTAND HOW INFURIATING THAT IS?! Especially after a day at war to be "the boss." Is she a brat? I don't think so. I really don't. I think she is expressing herself the only way she knows how. She is so brilliant. She amazes me. She can say and recognize all of her letters, numbers up to 18, and all of the animals and their sounds. She can successfully communicate through most of the day to day with "baby sign language," and that's usually enough. But when she can't convey what she's trying to say, she instantly loses her cool. And then it's just kind of a downward spiral until I can get her together. She gets embarrassed easily, especially if she messes up in pronouncing a letter, or if she trips and falls. Basically, she's two years old. She's learning that she's her own separate entity, and she's learning who she is. She's putting together all of the little pieces that make her "Ella," and it just requires a little more grace from me while she figures it out. She's super frustrating. So frustrating. But I love watching her learn. And I know that very soon, she'll be her own little functioning miniature adult. And that will be a whole new rodeo for us. C'iest La vie.
Meanwhile, Mr. Adam is just the easiest and breeziest guy around. He's the chunkiest little guy I've ever seen, and I. Love. It. His thighs. His thighs make me go all kinds of cliche "white girl," because I CAN'T EVEN. He's starting to stretch out a bit, so we're starting to see those signature enormous "Gaines Eyes," but there's still plenty of Chins to go around. He's started rolling over, but there's no sign of sitting up in sight. He's a belly sleeper, and wakes up almost immediately if he ends up on his back... which has been troublesome lately, as he started rolling in his sleep. His most irritating quirk is that he likes continual movement if he's awake, and unfortunately has gained just enough weight that his swing says "Nope." So he cries to be held pretty frequently lately. It melted my uterus to bits when Cody threw him in the backpack baby carrier and helped me clean the house while Adam's big eyes looked to and fro. He coos and grins at just about anything, and unlike his sister around this age, he's an easy laugh. Minimal comedic effort required. He's wonderful. They don't lie when they say little boys grab ahold of their mamas and don't let go. He's beginning the "crying with strangers" phase, and it always toots my horn when he stops crying when I hold him. We love to watch his eyes light up when I sing to him, and he absolutely loves for me to sing him to sleep. It's a really precious, special time for us, because I really don't get a lot of "only Adam" time. When we get those moments alone, I soak up every second of them. I'll miss him so much when he's grown and rambunctious, because he's so precious right now. His sweet spirit and "chill" demeanor is so wonderful for making me stop and take a breath. The coos and sighs that accompany a few minutes with Adam are wonderful reminders for me to stop and take in the details of both of my kids. Most of the time, Cody and I don't really remember what life was like before we had babies. We're so tired, somebody always needs something, and it's usually midnight when we fall into bed before we say "Hey, so how was your day?" But in the same breath... Ella will be two years old this week. We're both blown away by it. And Adam is already on the flip side of his first six months of life. I don't want to miss too much in waiting out the "hard days." Maybe things will always be hard, with a little bit of sweetness to carry us through. Or maybe there really is an end in sight to all of these little details that summarize our exhaustion, and there's a day coming that is mostly easy, with a few kinks in the chain.
While we're on a rant about things being hard... Cody left us for a over week this month. NINE DAYS, do you hear me? Those were dark days, y'all. And I would never, ever, in one million years begin to compare my nine days to the life of a single mother, because at the end of every exhausting day, my husband called to check on me. And I knew when we woke up at the beginning of each day after a night of no sleep and cries for Daddy that my husband was coming home. Each day that we soldiered through meant one step closer to him. And it was so hard when Cody called to check in not to "word vomit" my entire day of challenges at him, because I knew how badly he wanted to be home. He was sick while he was away, so he was miserable in his own ways. You know when you're at your sickliest and you can't lay in the bed and sleep it off (AKA Motherhood)? That was Cody's week. But he pushed through and probably still worked hard with a smile on his face, where I would have worked in sunglasses and blessed everyone with a super bad attitude. So, while we were battling equally hard days, It was a weird thing, because as the one at home with the kids, I was like "Oh hey, will you please come home right now because we have two really needy babies and I'm probably going to die before you get back" and he was all "Hey, I'm surrounded by junior high and high school kids and I'm so relieved that our babies have 10 years before we get to this phase." He missed his family so badly, and while I felt so loved, I also felt so annoyed that he was gone. And that he was sleeping all night, while Ella slept until 2 A.M. before she woke up crying and stayed awake until 6:30 or 7:00 A.M. before she crashed again. Did I mention Adam was waking up at 7:30 to eat after sleeping ALL NIGHT LONG? So I would drag Adam into bed and attempt to sleep, finally falling asleep around 8 or so, only to have Ella wake back up at 9. Then when the night rolled back around, I would get her to sleep, and then be afraid to go to sleep... because I knew how hard it would be to wake back up. So I was falling asleep at 1 A.M., only to get my wake up call an hour later. It was the longest nine days of my motherhood so far. But we made it. And Cody came back home and Ella didn't let him out of her sight for three days. And when we went back to work a couple of days later, she cried the entire day. And I called Cody like "Oh hey, can you come home?" and he was like "No." So we had to work through that. So for the first couple of weeks of June, we were in survival mode... maybe even more so than when we brought Adam home. But we're on the other side of it, and I've never been more thankful for a husband that committed to co-parenting with me. So now the conundrum we'll face next year is whether it's worth interrupting my kid's routine to spend nine days seeing Daddy at meals and bedtime, or whether we solider through it and sleep in our own beds. I would say the answer is simple, but anybody that's ever traveled with children will understand. We'll see. We have about ten months to decide.
That just about sums up our month. This month also marked the end of the #twoundertwo phase in our lives. Of course I'm sad that Ella is embarking on an official "Toddler" phase, and there's nothing baby left about her. She has stinky breath in the mornings and her bowel movements aren't pleasant. She's communicating in her own ways and finding her own sense of humor. She knows what she likes and what she doesn't, and has the power to voice her opinion, whether it's asked for or not. I've already talked a lot about this, but I'm just crazy about her. On our worst day, I'm so amazed that I made her, and (with a lot of help from Youtube) taught her the things that she knows. She's a little clone of Cody and I walking around, and she thrills me to my core. Cody and I are entering in a phase of our lives where we feel a great need for "experiences" over "things," so for her birthday, she's getting a trip to DFW, with a week dedicated to all of the things she loves, with the Zoo being the highlight of the trip for her. She doesn't "need" anything that money could buy, and I'm so excited to capture the look on her face when she sees a lion in real life for the first time. That being said, her birthday blog will be up after our trip, which will be toward the end of July... but do not distress. I would never miss a birthday blog. So, until then, here is sweet Adam's 4 month picture, and first "you two don't fit in the chair but let's make it work" picture.
