#twoundertwo, two months in

This beautiful little boy is already 2 months old.

In fact, he's closer to 3 months by now. I was reading off my list of what we needed at the huge kids consignment sale to Eric. I had 3 month pjs for Royce on there, but I realized he was already too big to bother buying more in that size. And the next thing I knew there were tears rolling down my face. Hormones. Babies. Always with the growing. 

The best picture I have of them in these shirts. 

Since I've gone full mommy blogger, here's what our crew is up to. 

Royce

Age: 11 weeks

Stats: 11lbs, 10oz, 22.5 inches tall at his two month appointment

Clothing size:  Some 0-3 month but mostly 3 month

Diapers: He's mainly in cloth! At first, his skinny little legs were so scrawny that none of the diapers could get tight enough and always leaked, but he finally fits in a decent number of them. In disposables, he's a size 1. I wasn't sure we could keep up with cloth diapers for two, but so far, so good. 

Milestones: Smiling, batting at his toys, so close to laughing, fluent in 3 languages due to superior parenting (although it would have been 5 if we'd had a natural birth and I'd eaten my placenta).

He's not happy at all to see daddy. Nope, not at all.

Sleep: HA! Like I would ever be dumb enough to talk about baby sleep on the internet. I'm not trying to be up for the next 4 nights straight. I will say he likes sleeping in our arms, and we like it too. In fact, he's currently snoozing on Eric after a long snuggle with me. 

His whole life is a nap.

Baby crap you buy to make your life easier: This kid is a swaddle and pacifier junkie, like his brother. He also loves him some white noise and being worn in the Ergo or the Moby (and probably any other baby wrap but those are the ones we have). 

Baby crap that turns out to make your life harder: The car seat. He freaking hates that thing currently. He screams bloody murder about 95% of the time I'm driving. The sound of my newborn sobbing makes me feel like my skin is peeling off. (In contrast, toddler screaming can easily be solved with headphones and an audiobook.) I've discovered I'm more limber than I thought as I've engaged in elaborate techniques to put the pacifier back in at red lights, including one epic moment when I managed to do it while pumping. 

Eating: He nurses usually every 1-2 hours during the day. Sometimes he goes a 3+ hour stretch. Come to think of it, there's not much of a pattern. He nurses on demand. We planned to give him bottles daily to prepare for when I return to work, but it's been more like weekly. I hate giving bottles. It's so much more work. 

Dalton
Age: 22 months. I've started to graduate to just saying "almost 2" when asked his age by well meaning strangers. It pains me to round up, but I think we're officially past the point where random cashiers need to hear exactly how many months he is.
Stats: IDK, he hasn't been weighed in forever, feels heavy though.
Clothing size: Usually 2T, size 6-6.5 in shoes
Diapers: size 4 in disposables
Milestones: TALKING!!! Yes! Everyone told me he would one day just explode with words, but I think it's the kind of thing where you don't really believe it until you see it. Well, that day has come, right around last weekend, which was our 8 year wedding anniversary. All the sudden, Dalton was like, hey, I can say any word you want, NBD, and I'm going to just let loose with like 15 new words a day that you didn't even know I knew. It's amazing. And SO FUNNY. Somehow, he has us cracking up even more than before with both his adorable mispronunciations and using language to put us in our place. I want to type them all up but one way humor sure doesn't translate is when adults try to type up the ways little kids say things. Also, you know who sure doesn't care? Anyone but parents or grandparents. So I'll keep that for my private diaries (aka swear I'll remember it always and try and fail to take videos).

Sleep: We consider an hour long nap a really good one. He can skip a nap and stay up all day without missing a beat, so I suspect his napping days might be limited. He WILL NOT sleep in the car. Ever. Literally never. In fact, he's a sleep diva like his mom and will only sleep in his crib. I see pictures of little kids randomly passed out in all different places and it just confuses me.

Baby crap you buy to make your life easier: Actually, nothing comes to mind aside from typical toddler items (high chair, toys, etc). 

Baby crap you buy that actually makes your life harder: We obviously didn't buy this, but he's obsessed with the Twenty Trucks videos on YouTube. He loves to binge watch (which for him means like 3-4 times) and then the song is stuck in my head for approximately 3 days. It's in my head right now. It's so freaking catchy.

His first true love is vehicles.

Eating: He eats anything and everything. He's a typical toddler where one day he loves a food, the next day he wants nothing to do with it. Sometimes he'll devour everything on his tray and ask for more, other times he'll eat a bite of the cheese off his pizza and that's his entire dinner. Cheese is his favorite food. It was his first word. Not even joking. His first two word combination was "more cheese". Still not joking at all. It would be in his baby book, if I had updated his baby book since I returned to work. I didn't know if I was more proud that he was talking, or that he ate an entire dinner of only cheese. 

Feeding Felix when he came to visit!

Adjustment: Dalton LOVES his little brother to death. He is constantly kissing him, hugging him, holding his hand, trying to help me care for him, and wanting to share toys. If Royce cries, Dalton immediately stops whatever he is doing and runs over to try to give him the pacifier. His face just lights up when he sees Royce. It's the best.

He really wants Royce to be big enough to play with his toys. Or he thinks he does, anyway. 

There are obviously times when he's jealous and wants my attention when he can't get it, but he generally directs his anger at me and not Royce at those times. Probably because he's too young to truly read the situation, so, #twoundertwo FTW.

As for me, my maternity is almost over and I reserve the right to be whiny AF about it. I don't really understand how maternity leave is the fastest increment of time that ever existed. I swear my water broke moments ago and now I have to return to work in less than two weeks. While it sucks, I'm dealing with it much better than last time. I literally couldn't even talk about returning to work while I was home with Dalton because I would just start sobbing. I cried every single day thinking about it and would lay awake at night terrified that something horrible would happen to him if one of us wasn't caring for him. It was bad. This time, I'm just really sad about not getting to spend every day with my boys. I've only ever left Royce for an hour or two here and there with Eric and I'm not looking forward to being without him. It's pretty criminal to be forced to separate from your baby when he's still practically a fetus, in my opinion. Still, it's nice not to have any anxiety about it this time. The boys will be going to the same sitter who's watched Dalton in her home since he was 3.5 months old, and if we can't be with them, there's no one else I'd rather have care for them. We really lucked out with her.

Remember when that "Me-ternity" book came out and all the moms were up in arms about how maternity leave isn't a vacation? Well, mine felt like one, sorry not sorry. Just last week, this whole newborn thing caught up to me, and I was exhausted. I sent Dalton to the sitter after breakfast and decided to rewatch the first two episodes of Game of Thrones. I was laying on the couch, nuzzling Royce's sweet little baby head while he slept on my chest, crying while Jon said goodbye to Ned at Winterfell. At like 11am on a Tuesday. If that's not a vacation, I don't know what is.

While I was pregnant, I had visions of doing all the cool stuff that Dalton is finally old enough for (museums, nature centers, storytimes, play places, you name it) and work normally gets in the way of with a snuggly newborn strapped to my chest. Unlike most pregnant fantasies, this one actually came true. We have done ALL THE THINGS. (But, as I looked back at my phone, apparently didn't take all the pictures. Was possibly busy.)

Music class - he had to bring Royce every single rattle.

Watching the rain with his BFFs at our house

Getting messy - turns out he hates getting messy and ran away shortly after this picture.

Picnic lunch

Music room at Port Discovery

Turtle pond

While every day is different, our pattern is often some sort of fun playdate in the morning, and then either home or daycare for naptime (Dalton still goes a few afternoons a week for consistency, otherwise August would be a cluster). I have the most incredible friends who scout out all the good free kid stuff and then help me wrangle/feed/chase my toddler and just generally singlehandedly maintain my sanity. All those times I just sit and chat with them while our kids play and Royce sleeps in my arms...also a glorious vacation. 

Sure, maternity leave is filled with diaper changes, kids crying, and stepping on all the crumbs I should have swept up but didn't. And sure, I may be a hot mess. I swore to Eric I was going to cook a healthy dinner for tonight. I didn't even buy the ingredients. In fact, I didn't even find a recipe. We ate those frozen Costco chicken bakes we found in the back of the freezer. It took me three days to write this blog post, and it's not exactly winning a Pulitzer. But I get to spend all day with my favorite people, and that's worth even  the twenty trucks fire engine song being stuck in my head for an entire week (which it has been, and still going strong).