Where were we, then?

It's one a.m. Anneliese, 10 weeks old, has been mostly sleeping through the night for a week or so now. I am revisiting my old friend, the late night shower. I had forgotten about the late night shower, even though that was part of my life for months, maybe even the first year, after Nora was born. I don't have time during the day so showering late at night when Jason is asleep, but around to (I hope) wake up if the baby cries, becomes my routine. This is, for me, part of life with a baby.

Another part is the baby crying in the car. My heart beats so fast it feels like it will come out of my chest, and my mind races. Do I need to pull over and comfort the baby? Will the comfort continue once I buckle her back in and start driving, or will she go back so screaming? Is it faster to (eek) just keep driving so we can get there and everybody can be happy and settled? There's no one-size fits all answer to this. Anneliese has been a relatively happy car baby, but in the past week or two we've had a few tough rides. I hope this isn't becoming our new reality. Nora hated the car for the first several months of life but chilled out when she was finally old enough to appreciate a toy or two, a stage that is coming soon for Anneliese. We'll see.

My gripes are minor, though. Really, the adjustment to life with two children has been more seamless than I expected. The day after I came home from the hospital Nora had to go to school, and so our new life began. After several days away from Nora, I really wanted to be the one to get her ready. Jason took care of Anneliese while I got Nora dressed and gave her breakfast and then we were off. (Anneliese had jaundice, so every morning that week we set off as a family of four and dropped Nora at school, then stopped by the hospital for blood work.) It felt so good to walk Nora into her classroom looking at least a little bit less pregnant than I had at pick-up the previous Thursday. I was the mother of two!

It helps that Anneliese has a incredibly laid back personality, something that is part of Nora's personality, too, but it took Nora a little longer to grow into it. It helps that she's the second child and we know we didn't break the first one so most everything will probably be okay. We were like, "We got this," from the very beginning. Changing diapers is like riding a bicycle--we'd changed a few thousand before and we're pretty fast at it. Okay, like there's so much skill involved, I know, but when Nora was born it had probably been a good decade or more since I'd changed any back in my baby-sitting days. And breastfeeding is a lot easier when you've fed a baby before and you know what to look for to know everything is going smoothly. I think the circumstances of this birth, which turned out to be a relatively easy one for me, made a big difference, too.

So now we are a family of four. And we have done a lot in ten weeks. We've cuddled, rested, played, and enjoyed lots of yummy food from our friends and members of our church. That meant that we didn't have to cook dinner for almost a month! Then we got back in the swing of things and started cooking again, which is actually fun in a way--I found I'd missed it. Jason has been busy at work. Nora has been busy at school and is full of wonder for the world. In her little world, this whole changing of the seasons thing is a big deal! When Anneliese was first born we were having wintery mix, aka snow and rain nastiness; two weeks ago we had 90 degree days. We've been to Greenville, the Atlanta Botanical Garden, Fernbank, Nora went on a special Saturday zoo trip with her teacher, and we've been, you know, everywhere else. Restaurants and malls and Home Depot, oh my.

We also went to Hastings Garden Center, which is a neat plant nursery and has a cool miniature train that Nora can't wait to see again. We planted a little garden of our own, a square foot garden. It's so small that my grandmother kind of dissed it and said it wasn't worth mentioning, but we're intensely proud of it so I'm mentioning it. It's our little sixteen feet of tomato plants, flowers, onions, lettuce, carrots, parsley, cilantro, bell pepper, and cucumber. And maybe a few other things, we'll see. We've done mostly transplants and attempted to start a few things from seed. We've really enjoyed putting it together and I know we're going to love eating out of it. We've already had some of the herbs, and the lettuce is ready for harvest any day now. Surprisingly, the only plant that looks really sad is a flower. I haven't take pictures since we first planted but I need to. As I've told several people, I don't think it's bad at all for someone who had never before in her adult life dug a hole in the ground! My parents weren't into gardening so I had practically no kid experience. Thank God for Google and the library. Both of the above help me succeed as a functional adult.

I don't want to end this on a gripe, but I have to go dry my hair. Major pitfall of the late night shower. If I sleep on wet hair, my hair will be more than impossible the next day. Mega cliche alert, but any minor inconveniences of being a mom? My kids are worth it.