Benny

I have a confession. I have fallen in love with another man. Again. His name is Benny and he is amazing! I remember when Nathan was a baby and becoming more aware and showing off his personality, how I fell in love with him too. The smiles and giggles and the way your baby looks at you. Just like falling in love with their Daddy - those little devils can really charm you!

The other day we were Skyping with Dad and Jo and I put Ben on the floor in front of the computer. He went from his belly to his back for the first time with an audience! Now when he is on his back he will fling his feet over and try to go from back to belly - making it all the way half the time. He moves in a circle, kicking his feet around. He smiles all the time. He will coo and agoo at you, even more when you talk to him. And when he needs something, it's usually pretty easy to figure out. He gets fussy when he's hungry, dirty or tired. Other than that he's happy as can be in someone's arms. He sleeps a lot but is certainly more awake as the days go by. He pays attention to the TV now. We find he loves to watch hockey, like Nathan did. We put him in one of those exersaucer things and he does well. Now of course we have baby and big boy stuff all over the place. But it's ok. It's a sign of a fun and busy house full of kids. He sleeps through the night for the most part and today I have been putting him him his own crib during naps to get him used to his own room.

The newborn stage is over. . . Damn that was fast!

I remember this part too; wanting to say so much more about your beautiful little baby but not having the words. Just wanting to look at him and the feel the feelings since no words can match the moment. That's where I'm at. Just happily in love with Baby Boy #2. My newest beau. And his name is Ben.

Cookies, Road Trip and Sickness

So I'm sick. I have an upper respiratory infection. Ick. I've got a cough that won't quit and a sore throat. Leo has to put up with my hacking all night but during the day all I can do is whisper so it's not a complete loss for him. Haha. It's thrown me off, feeling so crappy and having to cancel plans this week so I can stay in and get better. But as always I try to make the best of things. So to the kitchen we go. Monday Nathan and I made cookies. Ok, we really just opened the package and put the pre-cut dough pieces on the cookie sheet but this is all he has the attention span for. Also, it was his idea when he saw the cute Mickey Mouse/ I <3 Mom picture on the box. Yesterday we made chocolate dipped pretzels. Sorta. They had them at our little BBQ/ pool opening event the other day and he thought it was a great idea. So I melted a bar of chocolate, dipped some pretzels and covered them in sprinkles and m&ms. He thought this was lots of fun too. I finally figured the kid out - make it short and sweet (literally) and he will pay attention. Anyway, it's helped to pass the time and remind me what it's like to have my buddy back. My growing boy has favored his daddy so much I wondered if he forgot about me.

We had lots of time last week though, to get to know each other again when my mom and I ventured up to NY for a long visit. I packed up the many bags required to hold all the crap for two little boys and a mommy, including lots of DVD's, toys, and snacks, and off we went. We left Thursday morning and made a stop in MD for a long overdue Garrison visit. Jim & Jane were kind enough to open their home to me and my crazy boys. Aunt Mary and Elaine came for dinner as well. Nathan made himself at home with all the toys Aunt Jane put out for little boys like him. All the 'little people' and other such toys I used to play with as a kid. So fun that she saved it and now my kids can play with them! He loved walking around visiting with the statues in her garden - a turtle here, a frog there, live birds eating and bathing - the listening to the sound of the tree frogs in the distance. He spied a playground from their sun room window so of course we went off to investigate. He saw the parts of Uncle Jimmy's fire truck he is putting together and asked about the fireman helmet on the wall. "Is it real?!" He even got to try it on. He was very comfortable, busy and very good. Nathan loves to explore new places and people.

The next morning the kids were better than I could have hoped for. They slept almost the entire way. We made it to North Jersey, close to Greg & Danielle's exit, before stopping for lunch and a break. When we got to Rockland we had a quick visit with Ed's mom, Janet. She was so happy to see the little ones. And I think Nathan enjoyed her little dogs.

Friday evening, after a quick visit with my Dad and and short rest after the ride, we went down to visit Grandpa Truck in Orangeburg. It was a surreal moment: pumping the Beastie Boys at top volume in my Dads van with my kids in the back. Never imagined that scene when I used to drive those streets. We had some delicious NY pizza and Nathan got to play in the yard, on the same little playground Leo and Kerri used to use next door. He was worn out good!

Saturday I enjoyed a walk with Joanne around Rockland Lake (a usual event on the weekends I like to participate in if I can). Dad was left with the boys. When I was walking out the door he was bent over a dirty diaper exclaiming "Oohhhhhh." See ya later Dad! They survived.

A quick shower and we were off again, to Pearl River. We met up with Christine and Liza and their kids. Again, who would have imagined it, all of us sitting around with our kids. Nathan was only slightly amused with the girl toys laying about. He was more interested in abusing the dog. Our visit didn't last long after that. Benny of course is so easy still - he's either sleeping or looking around smiling at the world. I would have liked to visit with other cousins in the area but nap time was looming. We were only 10 minutes in the car and Nathan was passed out. Aahhh....a little break.

Later in the afternoon we went up the Haverstraw to a park Pop wanted to take the boys (well, Nathan). It's up near where Bay View used to be, right on the river. It's a huge playground area next to picnic areas and a 9/11 memorial. We were there for hours watching Nathan run between all things he could climb and explore. Seriously, this kid is so lucky he gets to play so much. And I'm so lucky he can get his energy out and climb. He's so very good at it. We were getting ready to leave when Dad told me to hurry with the camera. There was a red-tailed hawk just sitting there by the cars with a squirrel in his claws. We watched for a good 15 minutes or so as he tried to escape the crowd with his heavy dinner. It was so cool.

Sunday started out early and I was eager to get up and go and not just because I was leaving both boys with Pop and Jo. (Well, Pop. Joanne went out walking again. Thanks Pop!) I met friend and photographer Sarah at the hook to take pictures of Greg, Danielle and Lily. I was excited to witness one of her shoots and of course to see the beautiful Lily without my wild one running all over the place. I enjoyed watching her work, being out in Nyack and being without the boys for a little while. They were literally on me the entire time otherwise, or so it felt, but that's another story. I saw the pictures from the shoot later that week and they are amazing. I would have liked to get a session with Sarah the Great but you know what they say - you get what you pay for. We are going to have to save our pennies for a session with her someday!

Sunday afternoon was all about family. I invited whoever I could think of and Dad and Jo opened the doors. Tim & Jen, Greg, Danielle & Lily, the Martins and the Subbas were all there. Dad put on music, Jen ran around with the kids, Jo was busy in the kitchen. From the spread you would have thought it had been planned for more than 24 hours. It was the perfect impromptu coming together of families!

Sunday night we were of course zonked. Every night felt like that actually. Which would have been good. If Nathan didn't fight me every single night. The one night at Jim and Janes he did sleep with me but the rest of the time he had his own little bed. That he did not want to sleep in. But I fought it. I so wanted to big bed just for me. Just a for a few hours before I had to get up to feed Ben again! After much fighting, for many hours, Nathan did sleep. But the last few nights I was exhausted. And caved. And was surrounded by little bodies. Oh how I love those little bodies but I'd rather not get smacked in the face at 2am! Nathan doesn't stay still even in his sleep! (This is why I'm sick now people. No solid sleep will really wear you down.)

Monday we decided to go the Central Park Zoo where Aunt Jen works. An early start did not happen and traffic was no in our favor so we got there around noon. But it was ok. We had a movie going in the car and a nice cool overcast day was perfect when we got there. My favorite part: when Nathan looked out the window as we crossed the GW and said "Look, there's NYC!" My 2nd favorite part: Dad yelled at the morons driving and talking on their phones and yelled "Get off your damn phone!" Later Nathan repeated to the cars, "Get off your phone." We walked around the zoo for a while, a nice treat since we missed a zoo visit with our friends in NC the week before. We ventured through Central Park as well. I could spend days there. I love that place. Benny missed it all. Such a good sleeper.

Tuesday was a rainy, lazy day. We had some last minute visits and errands, laundry and collecting of stuff throughout the entire house. I spent time in the basement getting together Nathan's first stash of big boy legos. This was a great investment of time. We have been playing legos every day since we got home. For more than 5 minutes at a time. This is a big deal for him as he appears to have ADD at times between all the toys and activities. But legos are a winner!

Wednesday we headed home. Dad dropped us off at Greg's where we hoped into Mom's (newly repaired) car and off we went (yet another story!). It was nice to have one more little visit (and some NY bagels) before we left (thanks Greg!). The ride home was rough. It's a long way for little boys. But we made it. And we were very happy to see Daddy. Next time he's coming with us. Being both mommy and daddy was exhausting!

I don't know when we will be back but I'm glad we got all those visits in. As much as we missed Daddy, I was happy to reconnect with my Nathan, my little buddy. And there won't always be a reason to get up to Rockland. Our parents are retiring and getting ready for a new phase of life. Moves are in the future for many of them. So visits "back home" won't always be there so I'm glad for the chance to enjoy it all a few more times.

Picture Update

I have a love/ hate thing with technology. It makes our lives easy but at the same time I always feel behind, especially with pictures. I had a few minutes of peace while the kids are sleeping so I updated our PicasaWeb pictures. You can see them here: https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/myphotos. I don't always post a bunch onto facebook but I try to put most of them on picasa. I mean, how many places can I put pictures people? I try not to get too overwhelmed. I know someday more time will come to me and I just try to organize the best I can in the meantime.

Anyway, even if I don't have time to blog about our lives at least there are a few pix here and there to capture the moments. And boy do we have moments! Enjoy the pictures!

Celebration Trifecta

Yesterday we celebrated all the good stuff we have going on around here. Benny being born, Nathan's 3rd Birthday and our 5th Wedding Anniversary. How lucky to have so many things to be grateful for. Our small celebration turned into the regular Trend Haus 35. It's the average number of adults that come to our events these days, not counting the dozen or so kids that come attached. But we don't mind one bit. The more the merrier and that was true yesterday as well. The weather was perfect for a silly little Easter egg hunt on the front lawn (to throw in another celebration) and for the kids to play outside. They all loved Nathan's birthday present from Tim & Jen, his air rocket that is easy and safe and fun - the ideal gift for a 3 year old!

The night before, the weekend was kicked off with Monster Jam. Leo took Nathan along with Grandpa Truck, Kerri, Rob and Logan. I was glad they went and even more glad to stay home with Benny. We enjoyed sushi and a movie and peace and quiet. Well, kind of. Ben's nose has been on and off congested since birth but was worse over the weekend and sounds much like Darth Vader with a cold. As if just sounding like Darth Vader isn't bad enough.

The hours of quiet was awesome and was broken quite quickly when they all returned home by 9:30 or so. The boys didn't last the whole thing through - it's very loud and very scary according to the boys - but they still had fun. And continued to overnight. Logan stayed over for the first time and the two of them chased each other through the house for the next 18 hours. They are super cute together. And double trouble. At one point, when the party was winding down on Saturday, I found Nathan and Logan in the bathroom. With their hands in the toilet. Splashing. Laughing. And drinking the water! I wish I could have approached with poise and forethought. I would have taken a picture to show them 18 years from now. But instead I reacted and yelled at them. They were drinking toilet water after all. And who knows if it was clean. They each were pulled in different directions to be washed up and reprimanded while I wiped up the floor, walls and toilet bowl. Good grief. "Bendy" (as Logan calls Ben) decided to get in on the action and pee all over the changing table, wall AND crib and mattress. Ah the stories we will tell years from now. Just try to think of the stories, that's what I tell myself.

I wanted to say that I hated that Nathan's birthday went by without much mention. As mothers know, it's a celebration for us as much as it is for our babies. And I wanted to mark the time in writing, to tell what he is up to and how special he is. But there is so little time to sit and reflect. Even when I was writing out Leo's anniversary card there was so much I wanted to say and there were barely 5 minutes in the day where I could sit quietly and do just that. There are always distractions and things to be done and people needing me. But having all those things going on is the product of the life we have right now. As much as I want more quiet time and to be needed less, I know I would (and will someday) miss it. I will try to take some time to reflect on my growing boys as the months go by. But in the meantime, when I look back I will know that while I had little time I had to write about it, the more time I was spending living it!

Brewery Blowout

When you double the kids in your house, the basic principles of the universe don't apply. For example, math. +1 kid = +1 persons' worth of laundry. Wrong! It equals three! I forget how much laundry is generated from one tiny, messy human being. I did it all on Friday morning and by Saturday night I had to do two more. How does this happen? Let me explain.

We were leaving the house Saturday to meet Uncle Tim and Aunt Jen (who were here for the weekend), Gigi and Grandpa out for lunch. We were ready to walk out the door, all of us clean, and looking nice for the day, when Benny threw up all over his cute little red outfit. Ew. It was a lot. Ok, no biggie. He's got a lot of cute outfits. I changed him, packed another (on top of the other extra outfits already in the bag) and away we went. We met at Tobacco Road in Durham (great place, btw) and then we went to Fullsteam Brewery for a little visit. We heard it's an open area, family-friendly and good beer. So we made that our afternoon destination. It was relatively quiet when we got there and got settled at a picnic-table style area and we had the corner to ourselves. I decided I would discretely feed him (hey, it's family friendly and no one could see a thing). This went well. Until it didn't. Ben let out a big wet push and I knew a diaper change was in my immediate future. I didn't yet know it was too late. As I left to take him out to the car for a change (I'll feed him in public but changing while people are trying to enjoy their beer isn't nice) I noticed a strange warmth on my leg. I look down to see a long, wet yellow stripe dripping down my pant leg. The kid EXPLODED on me. Ugh. Tim and Leo were there to help me. Tim was a champ and reached out to take Benny and walked out to the car with me. OMG it was disgusting! I was so very happy to have a big new box of wipes for both me and Benny to clean up with. Several minutes, many wipes and a new outfit later (him not me - I had an awesome wet spot all down my right side) we returned. I was worried we made a trail of poop without knowing. We didn't but he did make a puddle I didn't see, right under the bench. Worse - my moms purse had fallen on the floor minutes before and yes, it fell right into the puddle. Ugh! Well, by then I couldn't stop laughing (because really, I might have cried otherwise) and I cleaned up the puddle from the floor and bench while Gigi cleaned up her bag. Ew. Ben then spit up on my shirt and dripped on my leg but by then who cared - I was such a mess anyway. It was getting hot in that place and I was done holding an explosive child so we went on our way to my moms.

There, we celebrated Nathan's birthday. Dinner, cake, gifts, etc. No catastrophic messes. On the way home, my tired three year old fell asleep. When we got home, Leo picked him up and tried to get him ready for bed. In the process, half asleep, Nathan started to pee. All over Daddy! I do mean all over - like a fire hose. Leo freaked, Nathan started to cry and Benny was already wailing from the car seat sitting on the floor. I went in for rescue and clean up only to kneel in his puddle of pee. Awesome! I was literally covered in my kids fluids. Thus the immediate need for laundry. Infant outfits, toddler PJ's, mommy's jeans, blankets and towels - all soiled in the space of 10 hours. Ugh! I'm still laughing though. The site of me walking around with fluorescent yellow down my leg just had to be funny. I would have pointed and laughed at me too!

Despite the messes, the weekend was fun. Tim and Jen arrived to our house Friday and we made the trek to Pullen Park to ride the train and carousel once again and enjoy ice cream afterwards. That night we wall went to Red Robins for dinner when the birthday boy was serenaded Happy Birthday for the first time by a wait staff and got his own little sundae. We opened a big gift at home and the boys put it all together. (Thanks Truck for the b-ball hoop!) Saturday Nathan got an e-reader (which he likes to think of as his own ipad) and a cool rocket ship for playing outside which fit in with our space theme. The dining room was decorated with the planets we made earlier in the week and the walls were decked out with stars. The cake was a work of art by Tim and Jen, as Saturn, complete with aliens entering their space ship. I have to say I'm glad we didn't go all out for a party this year. Even though he would have enjoyed it I think the whole theme thing was lost on him. And when you ask him how old he is, he is still saying "3 in March." There are plenty years to come where we can have a big bash. This year it was just fine as is.

This morning we had everyone over for one last visit before Tim and Jen left. The Trend Brunch is a favorite event around here. And now it's Sunday. Aaahhhh. We are hanging out, watching March Madness, having left over cake and playing with new toys. Oh yes, and doing laundry.

Groovy

I hate when people say "I want to but I never have time for that!" The truth is, if you really want to do something, if it's really important to you - you make the time. And so, instead of scrolling through FB or messing around with a game on my Kindle when I have a minute or two, I will do my best to spend time here, updating the blog. It's what I really want to do and it is important. So here we go . . . a small minute at a time.

That's usually all I have. A minute at a time. Sometimes 5 or 10. At night I'll even steal an extra 30 if I can, to read, because it's time just for me. But it's a challenge. I'm always interrupted in everything I do so that there is rarely a meal I can get through without helping to feed, hold or clean up someone else; a night, obviously, that I don't have to get up to change and feed someone and sometimes even more often, put back into bed and calm after a bad dream; a shower where I don't have to stick my head out to check that the big boy isn't abusing the little boy. Even this sentence was interrupted by the big boy who wanted a snack. Adding a kid to the family is like learning to drive a stick. You start and stop a lot. Uphill seems impossible. And switching gears is jarring and grinds your gears. But after a while you become a pro. You can go on any road you want regardless of hills. You can switch gears all day long and never stall. You find your groove. We're getting there.

The last two nights we had less interruptions. The other night there was only cry out from Nathan in the middle of the night. Last night, none, and Benny only woke once for a feeding. (I admit I may have slept through the motions of another feeding somehow but I'm pretty sure it was just the one.) If we can keep this up, I can continue to catch up on sleep and find a nice groove for a while. This idea, and that I wrote instead of doing mindless FB stalking, are both good. I'm going to stick with it. It feels groovy.

The Good, The Bad and The Tired

When we bought Nathan home for the first time, it was one of the longest nights of my life. He was congested and had trouble nursing. So he was hungry and tired and inconsolable. I had to call my mother to come, at 5:30am, to come rescue us. I'm so tired, I remember saying. He won't stop crying! She came. We gave the poor kid a bottle. We all slept for a few hours and a tiny bit of sanity was restored. Getting past that night was huge. We learned a lot of lessons all at once and I knew right away that every night after that would be better. How could it be worse? (I was also dealing with the pain of a c-section on top of a new baby. Ugh!)

Right now, I'm wondering what will be our worst night this time around? We know so much more than we did the first time so we haven't wasted time on worrying about the small things that usually trip up a first time parent. (Like, should I give him a bottle if he's hungry or will that cause 'nipple confusion' like all the books say?!) We knew what the sleeplessness would be like. We knew there would be crying and messes and a little bit of madness. But it's so different when there is already a kid in the house. And that kid is sick.

I don't know how much sleep I did or didn't get last night. I just know I saw just about every hour on the clock. (Except 10p. I slept well from about 9:45 to 11:30. And that is pretty much the longest period of sleep I got at once.) Leo and I were both up. If it wasn't one kid who was waking up hungry, it was the other one hacking up a lung. Nathan has a cough that won't quit and has been accompanied by a very annoying whine and on and off fever. It was constant. All night long. At one point, all four of us were up and I had to force the positive out of the situation - at least I had some company at the wee hours of the morning. By 7am we were all in bed and got another block of sleep. But still, this day is going to be a long one and again I wonder, will this be the worst of it? The answer of course is yes and no. This may be the worst of it this time, this week, this cold we are fighting. But man, it could be so much worse. And may be at some point. But overall, we are healthy and happy and well taken care of. Even though these long nights really suck, we are once again learning lots with every mishap we have to deal with. And like I said, at least I have company along the way.