11 days old and some newborn photos!

Baby R is 11 days old!

How is that even possible? Eleven days when I was pregnant took forever, but the last eleven days have flown by. Already R is putting on weight (although he still has the sweetest, scrawniest legs) and he is becoming more and more alert everyday.

 I find this to be so bittersweet. I love watching the way he changes and grows everyday, but I love the newborn phase and I feel like it flies by far to quickly.

Anyway, so far R has been pretty much a dream baby. We have nursing down, which is such a huge relief to me since I was not able to nurse L2. We had a small issue the first week where his latch was really shallow. He was still eating fine, but it was really hurting me and I was having some cracking and blistering. It was the worst at night, when he would be tired and a little lazy, and I would be tired and a little lazy, and I wouldn't correct his latch even if I could feel it was shallow. But I watched a few videos to remind myself how to get them to get that "perfect" latch and it's been fine ever since!

He's not on any type of schedule yet..... it's still pretty much eat, sleep, poop, repeat. He eats A LOT!!! I feel like I"m nursing most of the day, but I"m perfectly OK with that! He is pretty good at night. He usually eats around ten and then I put him down and he will sleep until one or two, which is a nice long stretch for me. However, once he wakes up at two he eats only enough to put himself back to sleep. He will only eat on one side and then he is out. Then he will wake up again at three and repeat. And then four. And then five. He definitely likes to snack and snooze in the early morning hours! Usually at the five o'clock feeding I will bring him into to bed with me and side nurse and then let him sleep with me. I know it's a horrible habit, but he snuggles up with me and sleeps so well and I just love it so much!!!!

S went back to work on Monday and my family left on Wednesday. Luckily S has a schedule that is allowing him to take every Tuesday and Thursday off through Thanksgiving, so he is only on three day work weeks. This is a huge help to me as Tuesdays and Thursdays L has school so S is in charge of getting him up and dressed and off. As much as I miss having my family here, and it is a little overwhelming still, being home alone with all three of the boys, and I am looking forward to getting back into a routine. Next week I am going to go back to the gym and see how R does in the nursery and see if we can figure our some sort of nursing schedule there. I also ventured to the store on Wednesday and survived. The biggest pain right now if getting everyone in and and out of the car, and of course if one of them has a meltdown it can move to crisis mode pretty quickly.

L adores his new baby brother. It's probably the sweetest thing ever. He always wants to hold him and smell him (he says he smells like pineapple?) and is asking how he is doing. He is a little confuse by the whole nursing thing. I explained it to him several times that this is how mommy feeds the baby and that he is getting milk and that this is the same way I fed him when he was a baby. He is concerned that the baby is biting me! He is also very gentle with him, and although we've seen some acting up (which we expected) it hasn't been bad.

L2 has taken things a little harder. He was really mad at me for the first few days, after we brought the baby home. Like, he wouldn't be in the same room. It broke my heart, but he has since warmed up and is back to loving his mama! He is also fairly gentle with the baby and seems to be getting more interested. We have to remind him to have gentle hands, but so far he has been OK. I knew it was going to be harder on him. He was "babied" for a long time, not only because he was the youngest but because of a lot of the medical issues we had when he was younger.

We also did a newborn photo shoot last weekend (obviously that is where all these adorable photos are coming from!) Our friend Ali, who also did our amazing maternity photos did them for us. I didn't realize how much work and time a newborn photo shoot would take! R had to nurse like four times before he finally went into a deep enough sleep that we could get some good shots! Ali was super patient with us though, and I am in love with the way all the pictures turned out!

So that's where we are right now. We are tired, the house is a disaster, my kids hair hasn't been brushed in days and they are eating for more Popsicles than we normally allow...... and I couldn't be happier. I feel like I am floating on cloud nine all the time. I know the next few weeks are going to be a time of adjustment for our whole family, but it already feels like baby R has always been here, so I don't think it's going to be too difficult (knock on wood!)

Plus we have the holiday coming up, which is my favorite time of the year, and I am so excited to see the excitement of the older boys and have R with us this year!

I'm going to try to keep being good about updating the blog, but if like gets a little crazy over the next few months, please forgive me!!!