life with two.

i've felt the need to write some things down lately.
i have a lot of feels. like all the feels.

bradley got to stay home with us for 2 weeks after oliver was born, which was amazing. the first week was all a blur of moving in and loafing about and sleeping and recovering and stuff. my mom was with us too which was really nice. but halfway through, i got slammed with baby blues. hard. i hate the term "baby blues". it trivializes something that is literally debilitating and terrifying. i was oscillating between either crying hysterically in the utter depths of total despair or staring off into space, completely zoning out and completely numb to everything, which freaked me out and sent me into a panic. i had one good day in between all of it but for the most part the second week post-partum was a terrifying display of all-encompassing depression and gloom. it was bad. i had this after bea for a while, except with her it didn't hit that soon, i had 4 really great months and then it slammed me for a long time before we could get it under control. so i was expecting a similar time frame this time around. and since i felt great in the hospital i thought i would be ok for a while. but like they say, each pregnancy/recovery is different. so we saw the proper professionals and started treating it the day before bradley went back to work, and i've been functioning and feeling much better.

week 3 was nice, even though bradley had to go back to work, my mom and abby came down for a few days to keep me company and make sure i was doing ok after everything that went down the week before, and then some good girlfriends of mine came by on the other days for a few hours to help me out. i mostly just needed company, and someone to help me entertain bea/hold the baby. i think bea was getting kind of bored of me since we were still homebound and a little stir-crazy. i ended the week with an amazing girls' night at my house with a bunch of my girlfriends from high school that all happen to live in utah right now. i am so blessed to have them close. it was a lonnnng night of laughter, snacks, stories and memories. a much needed boost from some of my very favorite people. and then on sunday i got to go to a missionary farewell from one of the kids i used to nanny back in connecticut many years ago (he was only 11 when i started!) which was wonderful. it was our first time bringing oliver to church and he was really good. (we only stayed for the first hour but hey! it counts!) i can never believe how many of my dearest friends ended up in utah! it makes me really happy to be here. it reminds me a little bit of what heaven will be like, surrounded by all of our closest friends, able to visit anyone of our dearly beloved at our own whims..

she was so bored with me and playing with the same toys by herself day in and day out. luckily our friends came to bail us out!

week 4 has been good too. i mean it's only wednesday but i've been able to get out of the house all by myself with both kids each day this week! (and even showered a few times!) and we are getting out again tomorrow! i have bea signed up for one of those trial tumbling classes at the little gym to see how she likes it. if she does, we will finally have a weekly activity again and be able to get back into something resembling a routine. oliver is a pretty good baby overall, he sleeps long stretches day and night still, waking consistently every 3.5-5 hours to eat. he does the 5 hr stretches at night which is awesome. brad takes the one night feeding and depending on when oliver wakes up, we switch off for the first morning one. if it's before 7:30 brad takes it and if it's after, i do it while he gets ready for work. the only thing oliver doesn't like is getting into his carseat. i reallllllllllllly hope he grows out of this soon bc we need to get in the car. a lot. and i would love to do that without 20 min of incessant screaming. he likes tummy time which is nice. he's even rolled over twice! we can't figure out if they were intentional or flukes but it's pretty impressive. he is huge and still growing and eating a TON. twice as much per feeding as bea was eating at this age. he is the size of a healthy 1.5 month old but he is still flopsy like a newborn so that makes some things a little problematic. like wearing him. he likes to be worn in my new wrap, and i like to wear him in it. BUT he is so big that his head doesn't like to stay inside the head fold of the newborn wrap..but it still works out ok. i need to be brave enough to wear it in a store or something now... i just hate getting him out of the dang seat! he hates getting in and out of it so much.... But, overall. good baby.

i'm going to be honest with you guys, it's taken me longer to bond with him than it did with bea, and that may partially be due to the PPD or maybe my guilt with having to divert my attention from bea at what was such a sweet moment in our lives. i'd be lying if i told you i didn't miss the days where it was just me and her sometimes. that doesn't mean i love oliver any less or have any regrets or anything, it just takes me a long time to get used to big changes. and this is probably the biggest change we will have for a verrrry long time.
i'm struggling a little with the newborn phase this time around too. i LOVED it with bea. and on the whole, i really do love newborns. but now that i have a toddler, i always feel rushed doing things with oliver so that i can get back to entertaining bea. and it frustrates me. i loved the slow days after bea was born where i literally had nothing to do but lay on my couch with a snoozing little newborn on my chest. but i can't do that all day err' day with this little snuglet. i got stuff i gotta do. plus it's summer so the ever-pressing need to go out and do stuff is always hanging over me. since bea was born in winter, i felt so much less pressure to be active. it was too cold to go out and do anything so staying in and doing nothing with her was very satisfying. like we were waiting out the winter together. i mean, there are definitely plusses to having a summer baby (no rsv, no billion layers of clothing, no worrying about whether they're freezing at night, etc) but the need to be out isn't one of them. at least not at the beginning. i am grateful now that i'm more into getting out and he is getting bigger that it's easier to just pop out the door without having to bundle up and stuff. i just find myself wishing away the newborn days every once in a while because i feel like i just don't have time for him to be so needy. like, i just know getting out and doing stuff will be so much EASIER once he turns 2-3 months. but i need to cherish these days while i have them because when they're gone, i'm never getting them back and it really is a sweet time. i need to release the guilt of plopping bea in front of a show while i feed and snuggle the baby because otherwise, i wouldn't get that time with him. one day we'll watch less tv, as a wise friend once told me, and i just have to keep telling myself that.
bradley, on the other hand, bonded with oliver instantly. it's been really sweet to watch actually. oliver LOVES him. he's more into the daddy than me right now i think, which is ok. he stops crying faster when bradley is holding him, likes it better when bradley swaddles him, feeds him etc. it's actually pretty adorable. it took brad a while to bond with bea because he was just so dang nervous about having a new baby. this time, he got right in there immediately and became super newborn dad right out of the gate. which really impressed me!
now that oliver is "waking up" a bit, and showing bits of his budding personality, it's been a bit easier for me. i feel like i'm getting to know him. it's weird, i never thought of new babies as strangers but that's totally what they are. they're a whole brand new person that you've never met and you really do have to take some time to get to know them. and it doesn't mean i love them any less. i mean, obviously i would do anything for him. since the moment they plopped him on my chest, i knew i would jump in front of a bus for him. i've loved him since day one. but i didn't know him yet. and i'm finally starting to feel like i do.
it's also funny to me that oliver looked(s) like a legitimate newborn. he's still a little goofy looking, as most newborns are. bea was like the only exception to this rule. she was such a bizarrely cute newborn, and we constantly heard about it from other people. so it's been a little...not disheartening really, but like. a blow to my pride? no.. i don't know. it's just been weird this time to not constantly be hearing praise for what we made. and i mean it's because he's a normal newborn! he doesn't have the dimples or the constant smile on his face like his sister did. which is fine! and he is totally getting cute in his own googly-eyed way. (i LOVE his googly eyes.) but i know what they mean now when they say that only a mother finds something cute haha

also, bea has changed so much during all of this, which is throwing me for a loop. i thought she would be acting out more or being a brat or maybe regress with her potty training or something. but that stuff hasn't happened much. she has instead become so incredibly precocious and outgoing, which she kind of has always been but she was a little more subtle about things before. and a little more coy. i think now because she is meeting SO many new people, she is really bursting out of her shell with extreme prejudice. i never really considered bea a "spirited child" before now; she's been pretty even-keeled and mellow on the whole, but now she is just bursting with bubbly energy and wants to be instant friends with everyone she encounters. subtlety is no longer in her social vocabulary. i suppose part of it is just her growing up, 2 and a half is a lot different from 2, and she's definitely made the leap. i kind of miss the sensitive, tentative part of her, which still peeks out sometimes, but is mostly eclipsed by the vivacious and gregarious kid she's becoming. and holy cow she is so smart. it's unreal. the pediatrician was (and most people are) shocked by how well she talks for her age and for how unabashedly communicative she is. she talks in long sentences, knows synonyms for most simple words (like she likes to say "GIANT!" and "HUGE!" instead of big, and "little tiny!" instead of small), and tells stories constantly. it's pretty adorable. she spent the whole ride down from midway yesterday reading imaginary books about dinosaurs and "BIG HUGE GIANT BUBBLES!" to me. it was pretttttty cute. her memory is also kind of scary. like i think she heard in passing one time that we moved to sandy and now she keeps referring as our house to "bea's new house. bea's sandy house." and yesterday on our way to story time, she said "we went to lots of story times when we lived by new york city!" and she saw a small pool on tv the other day and said "hey! that's like the splash pad in the city! i went to the splash pad with penny in her city!" which was like the first week of may, and she still remembers. she remembers evvvvverything. she's a smart cookie. and she lovvvves her baby brother. she hasn't had ANY negative reactions or feelings toward him at all. she always wants to help him out and make it better when he's crying. the only thing she's done that wasn't so stellar was the first day brad was back at work i had to take a break from playing dress up with her to feed the baby, and she took his bottle from me and ran away with it. but that was an isolated incident and i think now she gets that i'll pay attention to her again while/when i'm done feeding/changing/soothing the baby.

anyway. i don't want this to sound like a totally downer post, because i truly don't have any negative feelings about bringing oliver into our family. he definitely belongs here and we love him to pieces and he totally and absolutely completes our family. but going from one to two has been a struggle in ways i didn't really expect. and i don't think many people talk about it, because maybe they're ashamed. i thought i would struggle with like actual, physical tasks. like, the day-to-day keeping up with laundry, dishes, catering to both kids at once, going places etc. and while those things are harder with 2, i really haven't struggled with them. like at all. i'm on top of housework like a freaking boss and i'm getting stuff done and needs met. but emotionally it's been sort of a rocky road, which kind of blind-sided me. i thought our connection would be instant and that it would feel like he'd always belonged here with us, and that something was missing before and things all feel "right" now, when in reality it took time to get used to him and feel like he was "supposed" to be with us, if that makes sense. like it took a week or two for me to see him and not be like, "...what are you doing here?" which i think is a lot more common and normal than people would like to admit.  a lot of my friends just had their second children and all i've seen are instagrams and facebooks of my friends blowing up with "overwhelmed with love for our new little one" or  "we are so in love!" and "this is such a dream!" and blah blah blah and i feel like i missed something. i'm discovering online now (thanks to the google.) that a prolonged bonding process is TOTALLY normal with subsequent children and that i'm not alone, and i just wish someone would have told me it was a very likely possibility. because i felt (and still do sometimes) feel like a horrible mom and human being because it's taking me longer to get to know my second child than it did with my first. and i shouldn't feel that way, because it's completely normal. mom guilt you guys. the struggle is real.
i get a lot of moments here and there, just brief ones, where i see a glimpse into the future of bea and ollie playing together when he is bigger, or walking to school together, or telling each other jokes, being there for each other as teenagers, and my heart feels so full it could burst. i am so excited for the friends they are going to be. and those glimpses are what get me through the day. when i am struggling with dividing my attention between two, or feeling guilty for not giving all my love and affection to only bea, i remember those pre-memories (is that a thing?) and everything feels right. it feels like this is how it's supposed to be. these two need each other and i'm so glad i could bring him to her. and i'm so glad they're mine.