1 month

Look who's a month old.... and a little more (insert eye roll here).

At a month old Bram (again with the bulletts, sorry!)

* weighs 9lbs 11oz. holla for not starving my son!

* is rockin a teen worthy case of Baby acne.

* cries a lot less than he used to

* but he still has some uncontrolled reflux so we still have our share of crying.

* has hair!!!

* has come around to bath time

*hates diaper and clothing changes

*hates the car seat

* loves social gatherings. It never fails, he's been taken to quite a few squadron functions, which are notoriously loud, and yet, he sleeps right through....not a peep out of the kids the entire night. I think that our friends in the squadron think I'm making up the fact that this kid gives us a run for our money.

* is a rock star at holding his head up

The strider circus

We got Ambrose a Strider for Christmas, and while he used it and played with it intermittently , he was slow as molasses on the thing and I wouldn't let him take it down the block to the park because I knew it would take forever to get there, and I'd end up carrying the bike after he made it two houses away. It's just recently that he's been able to get going with any kind of speed and he'll *usually* (you'll see why I say usually) ride to the park and back on his own.

Had you been in this exact spot 15 minutes later you would have been privy to Ambrose throwing his Strider on the ground and (quite loudly) refusing to ride another step. Bram was doing his standard act of screaming as I perform my dance of swaying, rocking and bouncing him in the sling. I inform Ambrose that I cant carry him, the strider and Bram so he has to walk. In true two year old fashion, he throws himself around my legs and cries. This scene goes on for 30 minutes as I walk with a tantruming toddler around my legs, a bike in one hand and a screaming baby in the other. I'm sure every person home was peeking through their curtains to see what type of circus had pulled into their neighborhood. It was us :)

Bullets, but with picures

Tummy time is just about as successful as it was with Ambrose. Not at all.

Bath time is by far the busiest time of the day! This was the first night that we were able to bath the boys together. It was chaos, and we haven't attempted it since, but hopefully one day we'll get to the point where we can throw both in the tub together!

While neither of my kids are huge fans of the swing, Bram will at least tolerate it for about 10 minutes before screaming, which is about 9 minutes longer than Ambrose ever would.

Ambrose loves to be a helper by pushing Bram in the swing. So far, he's actually very gentle :)

wanna know a secret?

* I still get a knot in my stomach every morning when John leaves for work and it's just me and the boys.

* sometimes at night, instead of sleeping I hold my littlest boy long after he's fallen asleep and just look at/enjoy him.

*Recently, there have been times I've weighed the pros and cons of cleaning the house vs. lighting a match and starting all over ( I kid of course).

*John's leaving for a work trip soon and I'm torn between feeling totally jealous and feeling bad for him . Jealous, because he gets to sleep for 8 glorious uninterrupted hours and feeling bad for him because Bram is growing up lightning fast and in even a few days, he'll miss a lot.

* Even though my sweet boy's face is filling out and he's developing his first thigh rolls I still worry that I'm starving him somehow (Ambrose's early days have left their scar!).

* Even though sleeping in the sling is the *only* way I can get him to sleep, the sleep trainer in me worries that in a couple of years I will be walking around with a 3yr old slung over my shoulder trying to get him to take a nap.

*Ambrose may or may not have eaten an entire bag of croutons as a snack in his pj's at 11:00

Clearly, the road to being a mother of two hasn't exactly been a smooth one, but I'm enjoying every bump.

A little different

The second time around, parenting a newborn is a little different.

* Bram has been left to cry more than Ambrose ever was. Not because I'm letting him cry it out at a mere three weeks, but because currently, life is a giant triage room. The person with the most pressing and urgent need comes first, and usually, Ambrose inserting paper clips into the dishwasher, spraying the bottle of water and vinegar cleaning solution in his eyes or cleaning cherry tomatoes out of his pockets wins the most urgent award and Bram is left for a couple of minutes while I attend to the most urgent need of them moment.
*There is zero procrastinating. I used to check my email, warm up my cup of coffee or sit down and watch a couple of minutes of a morning talk show when I was the mom to one...but now. No way. Once Bram is asleep (which takes some serious skill with this kid) I gingerly lay him down and hit the ground running. The very few minutes I have to get things done without a baby in my arms are priceless and will not last long. If I procrastinate for even a minute, the house just seems to fall apart around me.
* Forget alone time, I'm striving to carve out one on one time now. It is so important to me to find one on one time to spend with each of my boys ( husband included), now, unless I make the conscious choice to play trains with Ambrose, stair at and talk to Bram, or have a meaningful conversation with my husband, the entire day can go by and I've spent zero quality time with the wonderful boys in my life.

* We get out. With Ambrose, it was just easier to stay in the house all day, but poor Bram has been schlepped across this town in search of the toddler cure for the stir crazies. While getting out with Bram and Ambrose together is hard, staying in and dealing with the discipline issues that come with a boy who has been cooped up all day are even worse, so out we go.

And then there was two

So, turns out, life is pretty busy around here, but I at least wanted to pop on and add a couple more pictures.

My mom left on Thurs (well she was scheduled to leave on Thurs., but due to some airline issues, she didn't get out of El Paso until Fri, but for all intensive purposes, she was gone and I was on my own here starting on Thurs.) and life with two little one's has been....well....an adjustment.

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