Home With Hallie - Week 1

What a whirlwind the first week being at home as a family of 4 was. I'm already forgetting things as lack of sleep turns my brain into mush. So things I want to remember about this past week are:

• How incredibly sweet aiden is with Hallie. He is protective and loving. He wants to hold her, kiss, her, help bathe, feed, diaper her. He wants to share his toys and his blankets with her. He has taken to her wayyyyy better than I could have ever hoped for. My sweet tender hearted boy has made me very proud!

• Hallie is an amazingly easy baby. She sleeps a lot and is not demanding at all. We have only heard her out and out cry a handful of times and ben and I both have asked the question "is it weird that she never cries?". She will fuss and make noise when she is hungry or unhappy but you have to really tick her off to make her cry.

• Hallie has her days and nights mixed up. This is by far our biggest obstacle as a family of 4. Hallie prefers to sleep all day and when the sun goes down her bright blue eyes pop open! She will spend several hours at a time just wide awake between the hours of midnight and 6 am. The rest of the time she would prefer to sleep, despite our best efforts to let aiden make a TON of noise, to change, bathe, burp, or feed her. She is like comatose baby until she is good and ready to wake up and wake up time seems to be around midnight.

Everyone has been incredible with helping me out. My mom has taken aiden on numerous occasions so I can try and just worry about hallie or try to get some sleep and that has been awesome. I feel guilty when aiden is not here though. I want to have both my kids home but I'm still trying to adjust to what that looks like for me. It's so different with the 2nd baby, you don't get to just sit around and stare at your newborn. You're still working the full time mommy of a 3 year old gig and everything that goes with it, you're just also the mommy of a newborn, oh yeah and still healing from your own ordeal of giving birth. It's definitely different the 2nd go round. There have been moments in this past week where I am literally trying to tend to one kid with one hand/ arm and the other with my other arm. Every time, I'm thinking this cannot possibly be the best way to do this?!?! I'm sure I'll figure out the best way for us soon enough. Practice makes perfect!!!

So that's the synopsis of week 1.

My plan is to take a picture a day of hallie for as long as I possibly can. I'd love to do it for the first year of her life and have 365 days but right now I can't seem to plan beyond this evening...so we'll see how far we get. My hope though is that when she's 17 and graduating from high school and needs baby pictures, she'll have plenty to choose from the way aiden certainly will. I have captured close to 3000 pictures of aiden in his first 3 years. I know this cause ben constantly takes stock of how many pictures we have on our hard drive and then gives me a hard time about it! :) I totally see why 2nd, 3rd and 4th children get the boot on this though, for the same reasons I mentioned earlier. The 2nd go round mama doesn't get to just sit and stare at the newborn or snap pictures of every facial expression. Mama's only got 2 hands!!!

So here they are...the pic of the day for week 1

Day ONE - 2-19-11

Day TWO 2-20-11

Day THREE 2-21-11

Day FOUR 2-22-11

Day FIVE 2-23-11

Day SIX 2-24-11

Day SEVEN 2-25-11