One month old!

Well, CJ has now made it outside of the womb for 4 weeks, yay! He's doing quite well, he's a strong little boy and such a peaceful temperment. We are blessed yet again! His blue eyes are getting lighter and lighter each day. Its been fun to see which traits of both John and I each of the kids have developed.

Hayden has: John's coloring, John's thick eyelashes, Hazel eyes like John's, my "smiley eyes" and John's curly locks and light brown hair.

Connor (CJ) has: my blue eyes, John's eyelashes, a cute dimple in his chin - not sure where that came from, my coloring and dark hair.





Well, thank goodness that CJ is our second child, because we know that things will change and all the exhuastion and sleep deprevation is only temporary. This is the hard stage of things -- up on and off all night long with CJ and then trying to wrangle both of them during the day. AND I have John's mom here to help --- I may just give up after she leaves. I've been SO grateful for her help during the day!

The other pain-in-the-butt stage of things is feeling like a milk cow. Breast feeding wasn't the most successful thing again, so I am breast pumping and feeding CJ with a bottle. The nice thing about that is that others can help feed him, but the worst thing is feeling like I am tethered to a machine that is zapping electric impulses of pain -- 8-10 times every 24 hours. At nightime we get up to feed him and then it never fails that about 30 minutes after we get him back to sleep, my boobs start aching and then I have to get myself up again to pump for half an hour. Ugh. During the day if I'm going anywhere I have to make sure that I pump until the second we are about to leave and then as soon as I get home, rush to go pump again otherwise the painful consequences will cause me to cry. It is not the party that one would think it would be.



But, onto our little angel Connor, or CJ. He is just such a sweet little baby. With Hayden we had colic to contend with and with Connor he just is patient and low key -- just feverishly hungry -- its a wonderful thing. We are all madly in love with this little guy. Even Hayden is coming around. She doesn't seem to be jealous at all of him, she doesn't NOT like him.... she just is wary of him, but that is changing. She worries about him when he cries -- she'll come rushing in with a worried "baby cry, baby cry!" and the other day she very GENEROUSLY brought him in her binky and "blanky".

She learned a short while after he came home from the hospital that CJ did not have milk in his bottle. It was so funny, she had grabbed his bottle thinking it was her nightime bottle of milk and then about gagged herself after she took a big swig! John had tried to warn her by telling her that was Connor's bottle :) Now, there is no hesitation, if it is "Connor's bottle" then she promptly takes it straight to the baby. :)

For Hayden's birthday we got her a mini-trampoline and she loves it!



We have transitioned Hayden to her first "big girl bed" and we were shocked that she stayed in her bed successfully all night long. She is such an obedient girl though and even though she cried at being left to go to sleep, she stayed all snug in her bed. It is so much fun to see her hop on her bed and curl up with her "blankie" and stuffed animals (she loves her pillow pet that my friend Debbie got her - won't go to sleep without it!). You can see an exhausted John also snoozing, poor guy is completely worn out!





Hayden also got a little easle that she can draw on, and we've had lots of fun with that. $14.99 at IKEA -- thank you IKEA! :)



P.S. I've officially lost 50 pounds over the past month since I gave birth. Yay! The one upside to being pregnant (for me anyway) and since I only gained 35 pounds with CJ, I'm down 15 pounds from my pre-preggo weight :)