What we did (are doing) on our summer vacation...

Lots of things have been going on since Max was born:

1. I finished my second semester working on my paralegal certificate

2. James has started taking classes, studying computer programing

3. I went back to work

4. We went on a wonderful family vacation to Gulf Shores Alabama, luckily before oil started washing ashore.

We have lots of pictures to share, but are in the process of reorganizing our lives. James is off work for the summer, staying home with the kids and keeping busy with them. We're trying to clean out our house and get rid of the stuff we don't use but hang on to "just in case, I might, maybe have a reason to use it in the near future".

Max is nearing the end of the newborn phase. He is much more alert, lifts his head like a champ, and doesn't take nearly as many naps. His night sleeping has improved somewhat. When he was brand new he woke every 2 hours on the dot. Now he can sleep in stretches of 4-6 hours. He will sleep longer if someone is cuddling with him. He is not the biggest fan of his crib (he prefers our bed, memory foam) or the baby papasan chair, but enjoys the swing. Unlike his big sister he enjoys the front pack (must be the cuddling thing) and likes going on walks.

Lily is so grown up we can hardly stand it. She is no longer a baby, and very much a big girl at 3 years old. I am proud to report we had her potty trained before Max was born, and no accidents since. She got her ears pierced for her 3 birthday, something she asked for. And she is looking forward to swimming lessons in July (first time in a parent-free class).

Until we can get back on track these are some cute pictures of Max taken by Rebecca Haas of RPetersPhotography.

The one where I explain why I don't post much anymore

Really its because we have a new baby, Lily is out of daycare for the summer and I'm trying to finish up my semester of Civil Litigation and Business Organizations. Everyone tells you that 2 kids is NOT 2x the work, but rather 4x the work. I disagree. Its 10X the work!! And talk about lack of sleep. James and I are walking zombies right now. He's officially a stay at home dad now, Lifetouch season ended in April. Lily doesn't go to Preschool until August. Max sleeps a lot, but only in 2 hour spurts and does not extend them at night. By this point in her life Lily was at least giving us 4 hour stretches at night. Oh well. James and I have a system. I go to bed early, usually with Lily and he stays up playing video games or watching something on Netflix streaming and keeps Max with him. So that way I get a good 3-4 hours of solid sleep. Then if Max wakes up in the middle of the night or wee hours of the morning I get up (since I have to feed him anyways). And James gets a good 3-4 hours of sleep. Max usually wakes up at 2am on the nose and again at 5 or 6am. Sometimes I get him to go back to sleep after the 6am waking, but usually hes up and stays up until about noon. You would think with all that awake time he would sleep more soundly at night. But he's what I call a hungry hippo. He eats all.the.time. If I nurse him, I'm lucky if he'll go 2 hours with out being hungry. If we do a formula bottle, we can get somewhere between 2-3 hours out of him. But lately he's been overfilling his little belly and urping, so we've started just giving him 2 ounces at a time. Which means sometimes we can spend 2 hours feeding him 6oz, only to start the process again an hour after he finished. It's a growing thing I hope. He has his 6 week checkup Thursday so I will be asking about this.

I need to post pictures, I'll get around to it eventually. James takes all our pictures then edits them on our home computer which is upstairs. I normally NEVER go up there and he's now to the point that he doesn't like to go up there either, if he has to tow both kids with him. We need to figure out a place downstairs for the computer. We haven't even done Max's announcement. We will get that done before we leave for Gulf Shores in 2 weeks. If we even get to go. Stupid Deepwater Horizon had to go and blow up and potentially ruin the only family vacation my family has planned in like 2 decades.

Ok, enough procrastinating. Must.do.homework.

3W6D

That's 3 weeks and 6 days.

Maxwell James Wear
March 24th 2010
9:47PM
6lbs 10oz 19 inches

Having 2 children had decreased my IQ significantly and I still have about 5 more weeks of school to go this semester and James has another week left of work before his summer break. Once we are back in the swing of things I'll post more. But for now I have a cute baby to cuddle.

37W5D

Its go time. Looks like Baby M's birthdate will be March 24th. My water broke last night at about 930pm, we got to the hospital about 11pm and they confirmed it. Its now 1:04am. They are going to let me go all night until Dr K does her rounds, if I haven't progressed on my own, they will induce (gag!). I also recently discovered my netbook has a webcam. This oughta be fun!

37W1D

How Far Along? Full Term!!
Labor Signs? Unfortunately none
Sleep? I slept last Sunday. Mon-Thurs Lily was sick and kept me up most of the night. I'm slowly catching back up but now I have a cold.
Best moment this week? Finding out the new building going up a mile from our home is a DUNKIN DONUTS!!\

(New Category) Worst Moment this week? KU losing to UNI, not that they deserved to win, but still.....blah.
Cravings? Sweet Tea. Thats normal.
What I miss? Open toed shoes
What I am looking forward to? Meeting Baby M
Milestones? Hit full term. Now I am fully baked.

Bubbles in the Park

Yesterday, even though Lily was still sick, we decided to get some fresh air and go to the park. She had her temp taken at my doctors appointment and it was back down to normal, and it was sunny and in the mid 50's. She really wanted to play with her bubbles. The bubbles were her Potty Training reward. The first day we took her to school with no pull up or diapers, I promised her a toy if she didn't have any accidents all day. That was the beginning of her potty training and she's been pretty much fully potty trained since then. Almost 2 fulls weeks, including naptime and night time.

This is Lily in the living room after we steam cleaned the carpet. All the furniture is at the other end of the room, but she couldn't wait to watch Sesame Street.

B and B

Means Basketball and Brackets. The only other sporting event I can sit on my tush for days and watch besides the Olympics is March Madness. And I didn't even go to a NCAA Div 1 school. But like the rest of the nation, I get sucked in. It helps that they set up big screens at work and give us free popcorn and soda. It also helped that I once went on vacation to Las Vegas during March Madness. Talk about MADNESS.

It's 66 degrees and sunny here today. Fabulous spring weather. And I'm at work. I took Tues and Wed off to finish "nesting" but Lily got sick at the same time and couldn't go to school with 102 fever. So we modified our nesting a bit and did some other stuff that still needed to be done. Laundry, baby clothes folding, steam cleaning the living room carpet, paid off my car, returned some items to BRU, doctors appointments (one for me, one for her). Tomorrow its going to be a bit cooler, then Saturday??? I don't think our weather people have any idea what is going to happen. One minute they say rain with a possible snow mix. The next they are saying a lot of accumulation. Whatever. All I know is that I can sit on my tush, watch some b-ball and no one can complain. If it was nice outside I'd feel obligated to take Lily to the park again. Or go to the Zoo. I've got more than one "party" to go to this weekend, and I don't think I can handle going to more than one. So I have to decide. And that's only if James doesn't have a lot of b-ball videos to edit. We shall see.

Update from Doctor: No update! She saw my sonogram results. Said "behave this weekend, I'm going to be out of town". No change in due date, no cervix thinning, not concerned with baby's size. All is good. Which is great, I don't really want this baby coming before April. I've got a very tight maternity leave schedule without a lot of wiggle room.