Still here!

I'm still here!!

I promise.  :)

Worst blogger, right here.  I can't really even pretend like I have been that busy because half of all bloggers have at least one child and they still manage to post on a semi-regular or very regular basis.  Let's just call a spade a spade here... I'm lazy.  And if I have to pick between showering and blogging, I'm going to pick showering (for my husband's sake).

I started like 5 blog posts a couple of weeks ago (including Henry's birth story) and haven't finished any of them.  Awesome.

Here's a recap of what we have been up to:

We spent our first week at home trying to sleep, dealing with nursing issues, and dealing with postpartum fun.

Our second week had Phil's parents here while we continued to work through our nursing issues and figure out this new little person we had in the house.

Last week, we graduated from the lactation nurse (blog post to come) and I honestly can't remember what else we did last week.  Ok I just looked at my calendar for last week.  We also went to a dinner party at Phil's advisor's house with Henry (and he did GREAT) and I actually went to a work meeting one night.  It was the first time I had really spent time away from Henry.  It was weird.

Now we are trying to figure out some kind of routine we can get our little family on.  Like when to sleep and when to work (because I am doing work again already and Phil needs to hit his dissertation HARD).  And how to do things one-handed or while nursing.


And since I am super lazy, I haven't downloaded any pictures from our newborn shoot or my camera.  :)  So here are a couple of iPhone pictures to hold you over.  Maybe I'll work on the picture thing tomorrow.  Maybe.

I made the pictures big because I think he's the cutest baby EVER.  No bias or anything.  :)

Three

Today is our third wedding anniversary.

{Photo by Miller Photography}

In some ways, it seems like we surely have been married longer than three years.  In other ways, I feel like we have experienced enough stuff in our marriage to fill way more than three years.

Last year, our anniversary celebration was changed a little because my uncle had a heart attack and I had to cover a meeting for my dad.  We ended up taking the Taylor to the park and eating McDonald's for dinner.  It was romantic in a different kind of way.  Perfectly representing the fact that our marriage has been full of surprises and efforts to make the best out of difficult and less than ideal situations.

This year, our celebration will be less than typical as well.  Our plan is to go out to breakfast with our new little man.  Hopefully he will cooperate.  He does pretty well in the morning.

The second wedding anniversary gift is cotton.  As you may know, we interpretted that a little loosely and ended up with this:

While the traditional third wedding anniversary gift is leather, we decided we'd go a little bigger this year...

So much better than a new wallet.

And each day I am reminded more and more of just how amazing the man I married is.  As if the whole thyroid cancer experience wasn't enough, now I get to watch him be the world's best dad.

I hit the marriage jackpot.

Postpartum Days

Wow... I'm a great blogger.

I got an e-mail from our Bradley instructor asking for our birth story, so I will be working on that soon.  And I guess I am feeling brave enough to share it.  I gave the reader's digest version to one of our friends from the Bradley class last week and realized just how not super pleasant the whole experience was.  It's ok though.  Everything turned out fine.

But I do think the experience has caused my postpartum days to be a little different than what is typical.  I honestly wonder what would have been easier, this recovery or recovery from a c-section.  And I hate to complain because I know what an absolute gift it is to be pregnant and give birth to a healthy baby.  So don't think of this as complaining.  I will just say that I think one method of preventing teenage pregnancy might be to have teenage girls come spend time with some postpartum women.

So far, we are adjusting fairly well to the new little man in our lives.  We honestly had a few rough days when we first got home.  One of my not-so-normal postpartum gifts was a full body rash.  Apparently it is a hormonal thing that just takes 7 to 10 days to go away and there is really nothing you can do to make it better.  I found myself using bags of ice to just take away as much of the overwhelming desire to itch.

The rash made everything SO MUCH more dramatic.  It wasn't just that my milk wasn't coming.  My milk wasn't coming it AND I HAD AN AWFUL RASH.  It wasn't just that Henry was super fussy from being starving.  He was super fussy AND I WANTED TO RIPE MY OWN SKIN OFF.

I think it made my Baby Blues so much worse than maybe they would have been otherwise.  But thankfully I have had Phil and my parents keeping tabs on me.  I think I am doing better now.  I still have some random crying.  Like this afternoon when I cried at the ending of Con-Air.  Have you ever seen Con-Air?  The awful acting is what should have made me cry, not the story line.  Phil laughed at me when I started crying because it was so ridiculous.  Can't blame him on that one.

Henry is now 11 days old and the rash is FINALLY subsiding.  My Baby Blues are getting better.  And we are starting to figure out feeding (I think I will do a separate post on that) and parts of our little man's personality.  It helps that he is SO STINKIN' CUTE!!

{Cotton LOVES Henry.  Maybe a little too much.}

{Blurry but cute}

I will work on being a better blogger.  Maybe now that the rash is almost gone.  :)