Strange, Wonderful, Perfect and then Overtired

Being a new parent of course is very strange but it's helping that Little Lu is apparently the perfect child. She doesn't really cry, she eats, sleeps, looks around a little bit and then goes back to sleep. I know she's looking at Jason and I and thinking, "Oh great, I got a bunch of rookies. Just put the fucking tshirt on already, this shouldn't take you 5 minutes. Can't you see I'm pretty much naked? LET'S GO ROOKIES, GET YOUR HEAD IN THE GAME"

Jason and I have settled into parenthood like champs although it helps having the support staff of the Gods. My Mom has been staying with us and cooking meals for us and cleaning up which is so awesome. She thought that it would be the crazy house with the baby and would have to help more with her, but since Lu is so perfect and Jason and I have a lot of that under control there hasn't been much to help with there. If she wasn't here though...it would be D'Augs or Penny's Noodles every night and our living room would be covered with baby blankets, diapers, pacifiers, pillows and god knows what other treasures we would find there. So that has been such a huge help. My Dad and Sue of course are here all the time and my Dad has been able to run some errands for us when we need stuff and so on. I don't know how calm we would be without the three of them around.

So all was perfect and Lu slept and she ate and she slept and she looked around quietly. Then last night we did our tree decorating and my Mom made dinner and there was just a ton going on. Poor Lu couldn't quite get to sleep between two of her feedings and then the poor kid was so overtired that she was awake for many many hours. She was fussy and just could not close her eyes. Well she would, but then they would snap open like a baby doll and we would have to start trying to calm her down all over again. She stayed awake till her next feeding and then for a few more hours after that. Finally finally, she fell asleep on my chest. She did wake up an hour later to eat, but then we put her right back in the bassinette and she drifted right off for a nice 4 hour snooze. This morning she hung with Jason and I in our room after eating and is now back asleep. Before she went to sleep she was making some pretty spectacular faces which was fun to look at. She makes one face and she looks just like Yoda which of course Jason the Star Wars King loves.

Today Jean and her baby Ethan are coming to visit so that should be fun and then tomorrow we are having a Holiday Party/Come poke the baby open house deal so that should be fun....hopefully not too much stimulation :).

As far as me, I'm feeling great. I'm not going to be one of those people that is all talking about my weight and if I'm back to my pre pregnancy weight and yadda yadda. I know I'll get there soon enough but I will say that the weight was a whole lot of baby and fluids I think because I just have a little pooch left. I can start running again in like 4 weeks and I'm really looking forward to that. I'm going to coach my Dad and I think with me coming off of abdominal surgery he'll be able to go a lot farther than me, but he better get ready for the coach from hell that's going to come knocking on his door with the temps at 2 degrees. LET'S GO RUNNING!

And of course since no one really cares about all the of above and just wants to see pictures of the little one. Here you go. There will be lots and lots of pictures at this location which is updated daily if you are interested: http://leahc.smugmug.com/Children/Lucy. Enjoy!

 

 

 

Write More to Write Better.

An e-mail got sent out at work today with some tips on how to be a better writer without having to work at it. While there was some good tips in it, I didn't like the topic of becoming a better writer without working at it. It's impossible to do that. The only way to get better at anything is to work at it. Want to run a marathon faster? You train harder. Want to get better in your job? Work harder and study. So why is it different for writing? True for all of these things it's nice to have some tips and tricks in your pocket, but in the end it's all about practice.

So now that I am on my high horse about writing making you a better writer, I better work at writing more. So while my code checks in at work, I'll take some time to do some updating here. Jason and I have a goal to write 4-5 times a week. Jason is working on starting a new blog. I'll post it here when he gets more in a rhythm of writing on it, but I can tell you so far it's *very* funny.

It must be funny as a parent when you see your kid acting a lot like you. Even more funny is when the kid realizes that they have so much of their parents in them. My dad is slightly stressed these days as he deals with some apartment renting drama and getting ready to go back into teaching after 4 years of retirement. Jason and I have been laughing because I'll question why he is acting the way he is and Jason just looks at me and say, "Really? You don't see it?" I'll step back and laugh when I realize that there is just about no difference between the way he is acting and the way I would respond to the same situation. My mom called me the other day and told me she fell off her bike and her knee swelled up. Not only did she finish her planned bike ride, but added on a couple miles for good measure. Yeah. How many times have I gone out running injured, just to get 5 or 6 miles out and have to hobble home in pain because I couldn't take the day off.

We are naming our daughter Lucille Jean after my two grandmothers and recently I realized how much of those two woman are in me. Lucille was my dad's mom and Jean is my mom's mom. I was knitting the other day and my dad said, "If my mom was here she would say, oh put that down and let's go to Wrigley Field". I laughed and said, "Yeah well my other grandmother would be fixing all these mistakes that I made." Not that I don't wish that I could be a every Cubs game because I do. My Dad's mom died when I was only 9 months old so I never met her (or that I remember anyways), but from the stories I have heard about her we are a lot alike. My mom's mom was always around when I was growing up and while me and her tended to disagree a lot some of her has seeped into me. Unfortunately, she is doing very badly these days as she struggles with the end stages of Alzheimer's and I think about how much she would have liked playing with Baby Lucy and it makes me sad that she won't be around to see her grow up. Or moreso see me being a mom.

But then I step back and I realize that she is in me. And Lucy will have some of that. And thus it continues down the line. We are all made up of the people that came before us. Now, I wonder what Lucy will be like with the crazy of the LeahC side and the calmness of the JasonR side. Maybe intense but calm about it? She'll be an oxymoron that's for sure and I can't wait to find out!