Updates

Life is chugging along here. We've all started to adapt to our new schoolyear schedule, which now includes a block of worktime after Nicholas goes to bed. Thankfully he has recently been going to bed around 9. Joe and I are still trying to figure out which division of childcare time works best for us, but in the meantime work is getting done and commitments are being met. There is no real theme to this post, but here are some random updates into our lives:

• Our recent outings to the fair and Ft. McHenry have convinced us that we need to take Nicholas out more often, as long as it is to places where noise is okay. He tends to spend the first part looking around at everything in wonderment. Then, when he wears himself out from trying to take everything in, he gets fussy and then if we snuggle him in or close him up in the carseat/stroller and give him a pacifier, he falls into a deep, well-earned sleep. He gets to see new things and we get out of the house. Win-win. And both of those outings were with other people, so we also got a chance to catch up with other adults. So, if anyone has a kid-friendly outing they want to go on, let us know.
• Church is difficult. Nicholas has been trying really hard, but the deck is stacked against him. An hour of being still and quiet is really too much to ask. Yesterday he did pretty well for the first half hour, enjoying looking at the older boys behind us and the stained glass windows. He was talking a lot, but I let him go until his sounds started to get shrill. They were still happy noises rather than crying, but I figured it wasn't fair to everyone else. Then he went to fussy and crying and we spent some time up in the cry room, but by the end of mass he was hanging by a thread and I could feel him about to go from crying to full-scale meltdown, so we left before the closing song. And he then fell asleep as soon as we got in the car and slept for 2 hours. I can't decide whether or not to start taking him to the nursery this winter. He is allowed to go beginning at 6 months (so around Thanksgiving), and it would be great to be able to focus on mass (esp once Joe is back over with the choir), but I am really scared of the germs this winter.
• Many of you have asked how I'm feeling these days. Pretty good. I have been hesitant to post because I don't dare think this is the way it will stay, and always expect it to come back with force. But for the past month or so I've been alternating between feeling perfect and feeling pretty good. I'll have a week or so where I feel perfect, as though nothing was ever wrong, and then a few days or a week where I just feel a little off in the mornings and not really up for food. So even these "bad" days are dramatically better than my good days used to be, and completely a level I can live with. They are just enough to remind me that I'm not completely 100% healed. But for now I've indefinitely postponed the next rounds of tests the doctor had proposed. There were just too many negatives involved in them to be worth it if I'm feeling good enough to function.
• Now that Nicholas is a little older (and has discovered his thumb), he has recently begun to put himself to sleep or back to sleep from crying. This has allowed us to begin implementing two of our sleep-related goals: naps in the crib and no pacifiers in bed. These aren't hard and fast rules yet, but they have been introduced and our hope is that over the next few weeks they can become the norm. Our next sleep-related goal is to get him out of the habit of nursing himself to sleep at night. He often wakes up when I put him down and gets himself back to sleep, but the goal is to have him learn to do the whole sleep process on his own. My hesitancy on this one is that if he doesn't nurse right before bed, he'll wake up hungry sooner, which means I have to get up sooner.

So in general, life is chugging along. And Nicholas seems to finally be stirring after 12 hours of nighttime sleep (well, he was up twice, but still), so I should go get him.