I can officially make the following comments:
- The newborn stuff is SOOOO much easier the second time around. I have almost no anxiety this time, I am managing his feeding better, and I am forcing that baby to sleep two four-hour sessions at night (by feeding him very frequently in the day). I also said “BOLLOCKS!” to that nipple confusion nonsense and gave him a pacifier from Day One – a Very Good Idea, if I may say so. I risk the wrath of the gods by saying this, but so far? Cake.
- Therefore, I have funneled most of my postpartum anxiety and blues into worry about my oldest son. Ever the leading edge of my parenting experience, poor Jack will always suffer from an overload of maternal anxiety. He has been coming up to me and just hitting me, out of the blue, then giving me a challenging look. That made me cry, not because my baby hit me or was angry at me, but just because it shows just how uncertain and unsteady he is, and I hate to see him so fragile. It’s like a challenge – if I do THIS, do you still love me? What if I do THIS? Anyway, we gave him a little more free reign than usual during the first week – I met his blows with hugs and kisses and attention – but after that first week, we’re back to time outs. He’s simmered down a little, and I’m trying my best to preempt this attention-seeking bad behavior by taking as much time out to play with him as possible before he does something bad. Since I’m feeding the baby for an hour out of every two hours, this is not easy, but I think it’s the right thing, and it seems to work. He hasn’t hit me in a while, anyway. Though he does mimic the baby’s newborn cry whenever Liam cries. Fun times.
- Jack may hate me right now, but he love love loves the baby, kisses him and rubs his cheek on the baby’s head (I do that, too – so soooooft), talks to the baby, and always tries to include him in what we’re doing. It doesn’t work out so well when “what we’re doing” is taking turns each putting a bucket over our head as a joke, but I love that his impulse is to include his brother.
- I gave birth to my husband. I predict Liam will be the spitting image of his father.
- My mother’s been here helping out, but she had to fly home suddenly today because some paperwork came from the bank that requires her signature in front of a Tennessee notary (a Louisiana one won’t do) and has to be postmarked 24 hours from the date of receipt. Um, what?? How inconvenient. She’s trying to decide whether or not to come right back. I told her either way is fine, with a bit of a whimper. Really, I can manage these two, but not much else, and it’s been really nice to have dishes and laundry and sweeping and everything all done regularly.
- In this crazy busy month, I graded on to moot court board and accepted. Moot court is just what it sounds like – practice pretend court sessions – and my role in it will be to help arrange and run some of the competitions. It’s a 30 hour time commitment, so not too bad (that’s over the course of the semester.) Then I also got invited onto a law journal, just today – in early June I wrote a case note (a 15 page paper) IN 24 HOURS – people, this case note was terrible. I’m not being modest. It had kernels of some good ideas, and I can write a grammatically correct sentence, but I didn’t even have a chance to proofread it, and it was pretty flabby and loose legal reasoning. Therefore, it is clear to me that very few people participated in this competition. In any case, I have until Sunday at 5pm to let the journal know if I accept, and thus to decide if I can handle 5 classes, moot court board, being on a journal, and being a nursing mother of a 2 month old and 2 year old, neither of whom go to full time daycare (which my husband knows is freaking me out – the daycare bit.) The moot court thing is a done deal, and it’s very good for my resume – but if I’d had the chance to consider both and only pick one, I would have chosen to be on the journal. I will write to some people and try to get an idea of just what exactly the time commitment for it will be, to see if I can manage both. I may also drop a class, though I was really looking forward to all the ones I have signed up for. I find that I am framing both choices in terms of what I owe my boys – do I owe it to them to spend as much time at home with them now as possible, enjoying their babyhood while I can, or is it more important that I groom myself for the most career options I can while in law school, so that I can have the luxury of (a) having a job at all when I graduate, and (b) if the economy turns, having a pick of jobs and being able to choose one that allows a nice balance of work and family. This dilemma also makes me cry. I am brimful of tears these days. I blame hormones.
- All that said, I think I’ll probably accept the journal invitation and drop a class. I’ll go to all my classes the first week and then pick the one that I like the least to drop. I’ll still be a full time student, just barely. I can make up the extra credits in my third year, when Liam is no longer nursing.
- Sometime in here we have to potty train Jack. He’s showing interest. Gah. I mean, fabulous, that would be so fabulous, but hoo boy.
- Jack is talking now. Voila. All it took was a visit from his chatterbox little cousin. Seriously. I think he observed her mimicking her parents, and was like – oh. So that’s how this works. And now he parrots us all day long. THANK GOD. However, he hasn’t eaten a thing in three days. Not. A. Thing. Well, except he licked some peanut butter off a piece of bread two days ago, and yesterday he ate about 5 canned mandarin orange slices. He doesn’t appear to be weak or flagging at all, so I guess we’ll just chalk it up to toddler eccentricity.
- Liam pretty much does nothing, but in that delightful newborn way. He makes contented noises while nursing, he waves his arms and seems surprised to see them go flailing by, he sleeps in the delicious newborn curled up ball of heat on my chest. He’s already surpassed his birth weight, which is a good thing. He’s a good sleeper and a good eater and pretty content.
- These are good days.