What a Life!

She’s here…and has been for about a month. Caroline Elizabeth arrived on September 8, 2009 at 4:01 p.m. 8 lb. 12 oz. 22 inches. She arrived one day before her due date, after I had acupuncture induction – it was the latest appt I could schedule in hopes to have her born on her due date. Ha!

She is a high-needs baby. She is either sleeping, eating, or crying. Ben had to be swaddled in the evenings or he would cry and cry. Joey had an hour or so of fussy time in the evenings, but we never swaddled him. Caroline needs to be swaddled practically 24/7. I swear she is held more than my other two ever were, but with all that crying I still am left to wonder if 1) I am too distracted with two other children to give her sufficient attention, 2) I am too self-confident as a mother to take her seriously enough, or 3) she is just a fussy baby. Now that she is a month old, I have gotten a couple half-smiles from her here and there, but no big smiles…yet. I’m still hoping!

She is growing well. At her one-month check-up, she was 11 lb. 2.5 oz. a la 95th percentile. So apparently she is getting enough to eat. She has settled down on the sleeping end at night, for the most part. She is fussy mostly in the mornings – like she’ll sleep a half hour and be awake and screaming again. She sleeps during the afternoon and then does the fussy thing again in the evenings. But for the past few nights she has only gotten me up two times or so, which means I am getting more sleep and thus feeling more like a real person.

Mom came a week before she was born and stayed two weeks after. Dad came two days after she was born, then spent a week in South Dakota checking on his land, then was here for a few more days before he and Mom left together. I went back to work the week that she was born, albeit slowly. When one is self-employed, you work or you don’t get paid. I’ve gotten back up to speed with that, for the most part.

The nicest thing about no longer being pregnant is that I have my energy back. I hadn’t realized how much pregnancy made me tired…the entire 9 months. Last week we got back up to speed on homeschooling. Now I’m ready to try resuming other things…like blogging. We’ll see. I’m quite busy these days. I’m hoping for once a week, at least.

I have gotten caught up on uploading pictures, at least back to when Caroline was born. The picture at the beginning of this post was taken the day after she was born, so if you click on it, you’ll be back to about the beginning of recent pictures. I have lots of things to blog about, but for now, I wish you happy viewing!