One Month Old

Adelia Mae is one month old today! It's amazing to think we've survived for this long already. I guess a lot of exciting things happened the first month that kept our minds occupied. Now that we're back to real life, I'm realizing that real life is hard. Don't get me wrong, it's been good too, but it's also been a bit of a struggle.

Adelia is a wonderful baby and we love having her around. It's funny because even though all she really does so far is eat, sleep, and poop, which is what all babies her age do, you can feel the difference in her being a girl rather than a boy. I don't know how to explain it really, maybe it's just her little spirit. Maybe it's that she's more fun to dress...who knows :) 

She sleeps great...during the day. We've been having some trouble at night. She has about a three hour stretch every night where she'll eat and then pull away and arch her back and cry and cry, and the only thing that will soothe her is eating some more, but then she pulls away and cries. So basically, she and I get to hang out awake together for three hours and listen to each other cry. It's a little bit frustrating. We took her to the doctor, because we thought that she might have acid reflux, even though she's not really very spitty. He gave us some medicine to try. He said if it was going to work we'd notice a significant difference in about three days. We are on day number two so far with no changes. If it's not acid reflux, the doctor said it was probably colic, which means we're probably in for the long haul, because there isn't really much you can do for a colic baby except wait for them to grow out of it.

Ivan is another story. Ever since Adelia was born he's had a very runny nose. But up until the last two weeks it's always been clear. Then it started turning yellowish and getting thicker and he started coughing. He also started waking up a lot in the night, probably because the snot was running down his throat and bothering him. We tried the humidifier, which didn't really make much difference. Then every so often he started throwing up. Not after every meal or anything like you would expect with the stomach flu, but every other day or so at random times for no real reason that we can determine. We thought maybe he was gagging on his snot, and that's what was causing it. We took him in to the doctor, who thought he probably had allergies. We got some allergy medicine and have been giving it to him, with no improvement at all. Then he started also having really nasty diarrhea. Super. So now I'm thinking that maybe he has a food intolerance of some sort. My guess is milk. We have had him off of all dairy for about 4 days now. He hasn't thrown up in the last two, and his diarrhea is improving slowly. But who knows. A food intolerance wouldn't really explain his nose running off of his face all the time. I think the hardest part of being the parent is the guessing game we are constantly forced to play. I just want to know what is wrong with my children so I can fix it. I would like it if Ivan would go back to sleeping at night, because of course he's never awake at the same time as Adelia, usually he wakes up right after I finally get her down.

And of course the list wouldn't be complete if we didn't include Lincoln. Thankfully, he is perfectly healthy at the moment and mostly sleeping at night. My dilemma with him I can't tell if it's just age or stage. He's always had unlimited amounts of energy, but lately he seems hell bent on using it to drive me up the wall. He's in to everything he's not supposed to be. He's decided that using an inside voice no longer applies to him. He's mean to Ivan, takes his toys, hits him, pushes him, shuts him in rooms, etc. He's only slightly nicer to Adelia, he throws things in her general direction, shakes her chair when she's sitting in it, tries to climb on top of her when she's in my lap, steals her blankets, etc. He's contrary about everything. He fights everything. He won't do anything he's asked the first, second, third, or 20th time he's asked to do it. He whines a lot. Cries a lot. Gets sent to time out and won't stay there a lot. And he won't nap. I keep trying to be patient with him, but I'm having a rough go of it. I've usually morphed into Mom-zilla by the time Aaron gets home from work.

I don't mean to sound like I'm complaining. I knew that having three kids was not going to be easy. I guess I just wasn't expecting so much all at once. And I do know that eventually, we'll get it all worked out and we'll come up with some kind of schedule again and things will feel normal again. Maybe I'll even get to sleep again at some point in the distant future. :) But for now I guess we'll "just keep swimming, just keep swimming..."