Then James can talk about our trip to the Isle of Man in November and I'll talk about Ohio for Christmas... followed swiftly by the January update and then we'll be up-to-date! phew! (and to think that Finn's baby blog was weekly!!! I thought I was busy then - I knew nothing about busy!)
Anyway:
Finn first:
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| 37 months old |
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| 38 months old |
And Orry:
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| 0 months old |
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| 1 month old |
You can see in this photo how bad his cradle cap was and how awfully crusty his eyebrows got. His head got it even worse...
But then, thankfully it got much better, though his hair did fall out... It's growing back now and the cradle cap got much much better for a time, though it is getting worse again... Really really gross for a while though! And a bit embarrassing when people saw him for the first time - luckily it's cold enough that he could legitimately wear a hat :)
But I'm getting ahead of myself!
There's so much I haven't said about the beginning of life with Orry that I don't know where to start.
So I think first, I'll get a couple random things out of the way and then see where I am.
In James' update he mentioned that Finn really likes using the camera to take pictures and pose us all and that sort of thing. But James didn't include one of my favourite pictures from Finn. One where he gave me the camera and told me exactly where to stand and what he was going to do and then shouted when it was time for me to take the picture... it is clearly a work of exquisite art!
Behold:
Clearly he has an inherent talent that's just waiting to come out...
Next was one of my favourites from the newborn photoshoot. Finn really wanted to get in on the photo taking action and because Orry had his clothes off, Finn had to take his off too. There are some funny ones of Finn trying to replicate Orry's poses but, as he's naked in them, I won't post them. I will share one of him just sitting still because I like it - and put it next to one of James from when he was three. I wonder who he takes after?!
And speaking of Finn, I have a video to share. I think we've mentioned a few times about Finn's propensity to tell stories and be creative. Well James managed to get a bit of a story on video when he was walking Finn home from nursery. Finn started randomly talking about rescuing penguins and James grabbed his phone to get the rest... the sound goes in and out (and Finn is rather hard to understand by people who aren't used to him) so click on the "cc" button to see the subtitles - and I've written up the transcript after ..
James: Are you going to get off your bike to go and rescue some penguins?
Finn: Right. Some penguins are stuck in the bush. That’s funny, let’s go rescue them out the bush… Come out the bush, out the – I’m telling them to get their, the, the cars out.
J: Yeah, are you going to get the penguin cars out?
F: Cars out, cars out – This is their cars out! Look, that’s not a car, silly leaf (J: oh yeah, it’s a leaf) Some cars! (J: oh yeah!) For the penguins out! Come on penguins. Some cars! They are cars. We taking them… look that way – might be trouble with the airplane and stuck on, in, on the airplane and they couldn’t get out, off the tram and the penguins ‘cause they didn’t want to try land it so they need help. Let’s help them get off the airplane ‘cause this one is very wobbly, yeah, we need just a hot air balloon, yeah. Can we get the hot air balloon? (J: Yeah) This is the hot air balloon (J: is that a hot air balloon?) yeah. Vvvooowow! Now we just pull this and we rescue penguins – pull this... now just… look! How about… let’s sit on bench and see some, some, more airplanes are gonna come
J: yeah?
Elsewhere: shouting
F: oh! Hey! Hear that noise! I can’t hear that noise – that’s a funny noise – hey what’s that noise? He said ‘Hey’ deedah, he said hey…
And lastly on the random front is the picture from Orry's passport. Once again we had to rush to make sure we would get both of the passports in time (US and UK - and yes, he legally needed both to travel, it's a long explanation, just trust me) to go to America for Christmas so once again the passport that will last until 5 years old has a picture from about 5 days old. Classy. And here it is:
That is really something special right there.
So! That's all the random out of the way... how about some updatey type things?!
Well, I guess you could say that Orry was a bit... difficult... at the start. Thankfully he has mellowed out quite a bit but the first few weeks (up until about the first week in America so until he was about 6 or 7 weeks old) he was crying a LOT. He was either asleep or crying, not much in between. There were a few moments of calm from time to time but I felt like I spent most of his awake time just desperately trying to get him to go back to sleep. This had a lot to do, I think, with the fact that he was on antibiotics for the first two weeks of his life
*side note - the short version of this explanation is this: I am a carrier for a bacterial infection (Group B Strep) that is symptom free in adults but can be fatal to babies. So I was supposed to be given intravenous antibiotics for a minimum of four hours while I was in labour before he was born so that it wouldn't be passed on to him. But I wasn't in labour for four hours full stop. So I wasn't able to get them which meant that there was the potential to pass the infection on to Orry. Because of this we had to stay in hospital to monitor him for any sign of infection. He showed a few signs while in hospital so got a lumbar puncture to test and high doses of three different multi spectrum antibiotics for three days, just in case. The lumbar puncture then came back clear so we were sent home. The next day the midwife who came to our house to check up on us was concerned with some redness around his umbilical cord. I went immediately to A&E and they did a swab of the area and gave me stuff to clean it with. A couple days later I got a call that the swab had come back positive for the bacteria I was carrying and to bring him back in for more antibiotics which we then gave him orally for three times a day for two weeks. It was banana flavoured and is why you might notice his yellow lips in some of the early photos... And then all was fine and dandy!!
EXCEPT that all of the antibiotics destroyed all the good bacteria in his guts as well. So he had horrible issues with digestion and pains and would wake up screaming even just to pass a bit of gas. It was pretty intense and really hard to watch him go through it. I don't know how much we can realistically blame on the antibiotics because he still has really awful guts (lots of gas bubbles and runny poos that NEVER stay in the nappy but CONSTANTLY shoot out the back - seriously. He's gone through 3 outfits today) but they don't make him cry near as much as they used to. Maybe he's just getting used to it or maybe his bacteria is re-growing, I don't know. But it meant that he was crying a lot in the first few weeks and couldn't sleep for any length of time because his belly would wake him up. And he was pooing quite a lot as well and I couldn't leave him in a dirty nappy so I would obviously change them when he pooed, even in the night. Though in the night I wouldn't walk them all the way to the bin - instead I just put them on the floor by the side of the bed to take all at once in the morning. Like so:
I think the record for one night (meaning from 10pm - 6am) was 7 poos.
Intense.
So there was a lot of crying at the start and it was a bit stressful. I hit the point where I wasn't coping very well.
And JUST when I was at a very low low, when Orry turned 1 month old (29th November), he smiled at me for the first time. And all of the sudden everything was fine and all was happy and right with the world. It's amazing what wrongs can be righted by a baby's first grins.
I grabbed my phone so they aren't the best pictures but here are a couple of his very first smiles. They are brilliant.
The nighttimes were the worst of course. We tried him in the bedside cot for a bit but I got so tired of getting up and down all night long that it was easier for him to just be in the bed with me. But there wasn't really enough comfortable space for us ALL to be in the bed so poor James got kicked out to the sofabed (though he probably didn't mind since it meant he wasn't woken up all night long and he didn't feel guilty for the late late nights he was putting in to his Manx Literature project - that I'm sure he will mention later).
And Orry came into the bed with me and sometimes actually blissfully slept
Finn was still in Nursery 5 days a week and James dropped him off there at 8 so I would often not even see them off - just try to sleep as far into the day as the two of us possibly could. It wasn't the ideal solution but it worked out for us and everyone ended up getting enough sleep to function again. It was never longer than 2 or 3 hours in a row, but it was something.
The other thing that was extremely difficult was having two of them. I didn't anticipate just how much harder it was going to be.
For the most part Finn is hugely in love with his baby brother and very very proud to be a big brother. He would tell random strangers on the bus that he had a baby brother now and he was a big brother. He would (and still does) randomly give him hugs and kisses and cuddles. He insisted that we make a shirt so that everyone would know that he was a big brother...
He doesn't like to hold him because he is 'too heavy' and 'too hot' but he DOES like to help out in other ways. He loves to help give him a bath and thought it was great to share them with him.
It was lovely to see how gently he would (and still does) use the sponge to clean him. He likes to make him smile and laugh and I have heard him do his best to console him when he starts to cry and I'm not in the room. He is a fantastic big brother and has taken it all in his stride in quite an amazing way.
That being said, Finn hasn't stopped being himself. And Finn is a very demanding self. He likes a lot of attention and it was a bit of a shock when he started not getting as much attention as he had before. Especially from me. All of the sudden it wasn't Mama who read him stories every night, or fed him breakfast every morning... Everything worked smoother if James and I divided the responsibilities and I dealt most with Orry and James dealt most with Finn. It works quite well but Finn needed to get used to it and would sometimes react by being even more clingy and insistent on sharing me than he was before. All of that is to be expected of course but it was still difficult on all of us.
Especially as Orry (like Finn) is not a fan of being put down to nap. And we were at the point that we were all so exhausted that we didn't care about bad habits or anything other than letting poor Orry get some rest. So we (like Finn) hold him while he sleeps during the day. And that means that the boisterous play that Finn is used to is not always possible. And he wasn't happy about that. A lot of 'just put him down now and play with ME' and 'give him to Deedah now.'
But again, all of this was completely to be expected - just made me feel guilty. Luckily Finn definitely errs to the side of happy rather than not. And even when he doesn't seem to be entirely happy that he's not the centre of universe anymore, he's never really taken that out on Orry. He may ask that I put him down sometimes but he has never asked that I take him away. In fact he takes it upon himself to make sure that we're not ever going to leave him behind somewhere or that I 'don't forget Orry!' He seems to be completely on board with the idea that we are a 'whole family' (as he says) now and that Orry is definitely a part of that for better or for worse. Which I think is more than enough to ask of a three year old and I'm proud of him for it!
That's all I can think of at the moment... I'm sure there's more... but I'm going to leave it there. As always I'm pushed it quite late now and I'm too tired to think about what still needs written much less to write it! So I'm going to let it just peter out...
Though I'll leave with some pictures from the very end of November when we went to see the Christmas tree at James' work and tried to take some pictures of the two of them. It was too dark for anything any good, but it was still fun to try! I do love these two boys. They make my heart swell just looking at them.
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