Levi at one month old

Levi and I are getting to know each other better. We are over the hump of the first month. He is now starting to organize himself, understanding the patterns of our day a bit better. Although I regulary stay up with him 2 hours in the middle of the night still, making attempts to keep him from waking Kaylee (and Eric if he's not already engaged in helping with Levi). Eric is very helpful with the kids and very good at calming them both and keeping Kaylee disciplined as necessary. Levi's also understanding more the attempts we make at comforting him, and being more receptive to us as we are making our way towards satisfying his needs, i.e. there's less crying and more of little protesting squeaks instead. Levi has started to coo a little bit. He's made a couple of sounds that are not cries or squeaks but are the use of his voice. I get so excited every time he does it. Also, he smiles at my efforts to play with him at least a couple times a day now. Some of the smiles are large, open mouthed excited-looking smiles. So cute! I weighed Levi at Oct. 5 - one month old - and he was 12 lb 2 oz. He's a big boy but very proportionate in his size. Eric and I are both having our aches and pains related to carrying, holding, sitting and rocking as needed to care for him.

I am feeling better each day and have been having more days when I don't take a nap with Levi. I have found that it's just easier to go to bed at 8:30 or so with the kids and get all the sleep during the night. I now have only 10 lbs to lose and I know those are going to probably be the hardest from my experience with Kaylee. But it's only 5 weeks postpartum so that's pretty good, there's a lot of time left - as my doctor puts it "It takes you 9 months to get this way, why would you not allow at least 9 months for yourself to get back to the way you were before pregnancy?" Makes sense but I'm impatient.

Sunday we went to the apple orchard with the family. It was fun to see how Kaylee reacted to the apple orchard this year. She loved picking up the apples from the ground, even though we weren't supposed to take those we did let her have one. She was disinterested in the pumpkin patch but liked the hike up to the patch anyways. She loved seeing the little play house for the kids, watching the tractor rides (the line was way too long for us to go!) and she enjoyed her apple doughnut snack very much. We opted out of the shopping side of the trip thinking the day had gone well so far without deviating too much from her nap time. It was good to see everyone in the family, but the trip is getting more challenging with the family growing more. Each family has its own thing it wants to do. But the trip was still very fun and hopefully I will have some cute photos to post here soon.

We also went to the zoo. It was fun to see how she reacted since it had been a while since I took her myself. My mom and I took Levi and Kaylee and I can say if I had done it by myself we would've only lasted about 15 minutes - that would not have been good. We saw the new polar bear exhibit, the tiger/lions and the seal/fish building. That was enough and then we called it quits. Of course Kaylee doesn't really want to stay in her stroller so that adds to the challenge of the trip. We decided to stay in the one location and have lunch at their deli, and that worked out really well again allowing us not to deviate too much from nap schedules. at the end of the day she said she had fun and "I like the tigers - rahr!"

If anyone wants to come by and visit - feel free. We are doing well and ready for visitors! Just give a call!