Days at Home and First Outings

Lydia is 4 weeks old today!  It seems as though she’s already getting too big, too fast.  I guess that means it’s time for me to get busy here again.

                  
Our trusty infant carseat is good for one more round.  In other carseat-related news, Logan has moved up to a booster and into the back row.  Not that we were attempting to go very far during these first days.  Mostly there was cuddling . . . 

     
and sleeping, and stories . . .

lots of nursing, some diaper changes of course, followed by more sleeping in the hand-me-down swing from a neighbor.  (3rd kid and they’ve each had a swing and I haven’t ever had to buy one yet.)

                        
Eventually Lydia wakes up and we get a mini-photo shoot.

Personally, I think she looks almost exactly like her siblings did, except for two things: the dimples—we haven’t captured them on camera but they’re there—and her possibly blue eyes—at this point they show no sign of turning brown.

    
But now it’s time for more cuddles and more sleep.  Yep, life’s been pretty quiet around here.

                  
For her first official outing, we hit up Friday’s half-price happy hour at Velvet Yogurt.  Lydia was 4 days old.

   We made it to church and the farmer’s market that Sunday, where everyone cooed appropriately over the baby and gasped over her birth story.  Then, just before Jake had to go back to work, we finally managed a walk down to Trestles (Wed—9 days old).
 It felt good to get out.

              
            
Play in the waves, chase the birds, watch the surfers.

Life is good.

                     
Very, very good.

Introducing Lydia

Alright, it was one thing for me to plod along with this blog while our family still had the same cast of characters but now that there’s a new one, we’re going to have to mesh present day pictures with flashback photos from the catch-up era.  The back and forth may be a little crazy but you’ll deal with it, right? 

Because she’s worth it :)

 I did type up her birth story; if you’re still terribly curious I probably wouldn’t mind sending you an email with those details but I’m not going to pop it up here for everyone to read.  It took me a while to process that whole craziness, Jake and I even sat down one evening to put the pieces together since there were bits that I didn’t remember and I didn’t really have a chance to take stock of everything as it occurred.  I have to admit, it’s been a fun story to tell though :)

And yes, you’ve seen many of these pictures before on Facebook.  But I want the record here on the blog too.  So you get to look at them all again.

The transition for these two seem to be going pretty well.  The biggest “problem” encountered so far is that one of them will decide Lydia needs something, a blanket, a toy, a loudly-sung “lullaby”, while she’s already asleep.  The impulse is kind and well-intentioned though, so it’s hard to get too upset about it.

Also, I’ve gotten a lot of “superwoman” type comments because of the birth story.  The more I think about that, the less sense it makes.  I certainly didn’t choose to give birth that quickly, delivering my own child in the front seat of the car was NOT my plan.  The one thing I did do right through all of that adventure was be prepared.  Having that waterproofing underneath me in the car was genius and probably kept us from having to replace that entire seat.  My bag was packed: I had snacks, a brand-new toothbrush and deodorant (because I knew we wouldn’t have time to grab a lot of little things on the way out the door), and even a couple books, like the one you see us reading here, to greet the bigger kids with so they’d have something familiar and comfortable when they came to visit.  I can’t take credit for my crazy-strong uterus, but what I did have control over, I think I managed pretty well.

                
My girls.  (Actually, that still sounds strange to me.  At this point, I tend to mentally divide them up into “the kids”—Logan and Naomi—and “the baby”; I don’t really think of them in terms of one boy and two girls.)

     
I do think she’s beautiful though.  We’ve gotten quite a few comments about how nicely shaped her head is.  I guess that would be one of the benefits of the quick birth—no time for the skull to get squeezed.  

 
My boys :) 

               
So, after Lydia made her dramatic entrance and we got everybody cleaned up, it was a little after 5:00 (AM) when we moved over to post-partum.  Jake brought my bags up (didn’t exactly have time to grab those when we came in) and then turned towards home so that he could be there when Logan and Naomi woke up.  He was able to greet them with the news and make them a special breakfast before he brought them out to visit and meet their sister.  Meanwhile, Lydia and I were back at the hospital sleeping as well as we could in between interruptions “to check your vitals”.  So for those who stated that I look more rested in this picture than Jake does: you’re right, I actually was more rested at this point.  And if I get any super-mom points, Jake definitely deserves a few for being super-dad as well.

Despite the broken sleep and parade of nurses and corpsmen through the room, I’ve never really minded staying in the hospital.  It’s a day and a half to focus on just one child and not have to think about dishes or laundry.  And it’s even better when you’ve got a perfect ocean view from your hospital bed.

                 
These are from my own in-hospital photo shoot.  Lydia’s a good baby.  She latched on well right at the start and continues to eat well.  At her two week appointment today, she weighed in at precisely 8 lbs.  Best of all, she gets all of her alert time during the day and goes right back to sleep at night after eating.  So far, so very good! 

SD Natural History

I gave the kids first pick and, after describing to them what types of things each museum held, they chose to see the dinosaurs.
         
I remember being mesmerized the first time I saw a Foucault pendulum as well.  The dino displays were cool—the models were open on one side to show the bones but, as you can see, were mocked up on the other side to resemble a “real” dinosaur.

                
Another pretty neat display—you were able to move the bones to see the motion of the joints.
 There was a spectacular section on plate tectonics, movement of the earth’s crust and earthquakes, followed by mastodons, giant sloths and other prehistoric models.


A few more large-scale skeletons, but mostly lots and lots of skulls.  We actually had a pretty good discussion, comparing sizes, types of teeth, etc.
                
Then there was a nice little play and dress-up area.  Always good.

The design-your-own-skull/dinosaur station was our last stop here.

                      
Then we went to a playground, because . . . you know, it’s what we do.

Even from the playground, you can still see the bell tower of the Museum of Man.

   
Time to check in!  Instead of staying in a hotel and eating out all week, we rented a studio apartment with a full kitchen and brought all our food with us.  It worked out beautifully!

My dining and adventure companions :)