Big and Little

One of the amazing gifts that Vake and Gil received from Anne's best friend Margaret and my friend Elizabeth (they're sisters) were big brother and little brother shirts. I am obsessed. And here's to hoping that they wear them this spring and then again in the fall. Crazy that Gil's fits him already.

I've gotten a fair number of questions about how Vake is doing with the transition. The short answer is that he's rocking it out. The more complicated answer is that I think he is making the adjustments that could be expected from any child.

He seems to still like Gil. About once every two or three days, he'll ask to hold the baby and then will say to him, "Hello, little one." He seems to like to kiss the baby from time to time. Mostly, though, the baby gets a benign neglect.

The biggest way that any insecurity has manifested is that he is CRAZY in love with G-mary. From my point of view, it would be hard to pick a better person to love, but he is obsessed with her.

We're getting there!

All Animals Great and Small

One of the things that I love about Vake's preschool is that it is affiliated with a Baptist church and there's definitely a religious teaching component to it. Reasonable minds can disagree, but I like that they are building a little bit of a faith component into the curriculum.

That said, today was a little bit of a challenge- the assignment was to dress as your favorite Bible character. Vake, when asked, originally said he wanted to be Jesus. Needless to say, I was a little overwhelmed (especially on my first day back at the office) by the concept of dressing my son like the Messiah for school.

So we were able, eventually, to settle on Noah.

Noah, of course, is responsible for two giraffes.

And here's some gratuitous Moose cuteness.

Look at these sweet boys!

Whew!!!! What another two weeks!

Ok. So just as I was getting better at blogging again, Gil gave me (this time not Eric so much) another scare. When he was so sick with the respiratory virus that put him in St. Mary's, I basically gave up on trying to give him bottles and just nursed him exclusively. Which was fine, until I realized that I had to go back to work.

So we started introducing bottles, and there was refusing and projectile vomiting. It scared me to death. I took him to the pediatrician and we wound up having a couple of tense days waiting for an ultrasound of the GI tract. Long story longer, he's totally fine, just a really really slow bottle eater.

I went back to work today. It was fine, albeit filled with a little "first day back at work" crazy. I DID get promoted! Yip! So now I am a supervisor. How crazy is that that I am someone's supervisor now?

Eric and the boys

Eric is a fantastic dad. He and Vake played all day after church was over and had big fun. At the end of the day, Eric got Vake to read stories to Gil and then say prayers so Gil knows them.

Nicely done.

Our week in pictures (or really, our couple of weeks)

Would that we could be this lucky- look at my big boy in his Naval Academy tshirt from the beloved Uncle Grant. I asked Vake who we were going to see at church on Sunday. Without skipping a beat, the answer was "Thomas the Tank Engine and Uncle Grant"

We got to watch movies and eat popcorn with our friends!

And do some playing by ourselves.

My little pumpkin turned 2 months!

And we took a trip to the train station- so amazing.

And if you love him, you have to love his belly.

All these pictures were taken with my IPad. Isn't the quality of the pictures pretty amazing?

Who is who?

You tell me which is which.

Baby Gil at 2 months

Here are his new pictures- I cannot decide who he looks the most like right now...

http://www.photoreflect.com/store/Orderpage.aspx?pi=1WA7005E000000&po=0&pc=15

We've had a crazy crazy week. I was starting to feel like we had gotten out from under baby Gil's sickness finally on Monday when (spoiler alert- she's JUST fine) Stilly got hit by a car.

Stilly is quite possibly the nicest dog in America- and while I've been home without Huff and his allergies, she's been upstairs with me a lot more. But on Monday, I had some people in the house and one of the women was obviously not comfortable around dogs, so I put Stilly in the basement.

About 15 minutes later, I looked out into the backyard and noticed that the gate had blown down- we had had a lot of wind. I excused myself from our guest, grabbed the baby and put him in the sling and took Vake.

We crossed the street and I called for Stilly- she must've heard my voice and came streaking back across the street- and BAM- she got hit and looked like a square hit to the right rear hip. She ran off and streaked back home.

The next few minutes are a blur, but we got her to the vet and after about 2 and a half hours and a bunch of x-rays and pain pills, we were allowed to take her home.

Yikes.

When it rains, it pours.

For serious.

Daddy's Best Helper

Despite promising everyone that I was never going to put the house on tour again, Historic Richmond Foundation approached us about having our house on tour as part of Historic Garden Week (Ha! You know my thumb is basically black) and I want people to know how great the Boulevard is becoming, so I agreed.

Poor Eric, just gives him a NEW set of things to be done around this joint...and strangely a lot of them involve switching out light fixtures!!!!!

Thank goodness he has an electrician's assistant.

I offered to help Eric this morning.

A: "Eric, do you need any help."

V: "No, Mommy. Daddy and I have this."

And so it begins.

Vake is actually pretty interested in tools (they rank behind trains and are a likely tie with dinosaurs) so he's been in heaven today as he and his father have replaced light fixtures throughout the house.

Note the screwdriver in hand. He has a name. It is Turner. Turner. Ha. Very clever.

Guess?

Which baby slept through the night last night?

Go go go, sweet Gil!

Little Gil's Personality

It seems appropriate to tell you a little about this child's personality and how it compares to vake's- and how my experience as a mother may be affecting it.

Gil is about an easy baby as they come. He divides his day into even chunks. He sleeps, then he wakes up and nurses and then he "plays" which for him means looking at things and smiling and giggling, and then he goes back to sleep again. He cries when he is hungry or tired. Period. I've go e I to his room and found him calmly staring at his curtains, which he seems to like because they at bright colors.

He's a completely little zen Buddha baby. He loves loves loves to snuggle. The other day, a friend was over at the house and commented on the fact that Gil was trying to hug her. And I think he actually was. He loves to snuggle and be snuggled. He also really likes to be swaddled to sleep. Vake neve cared about that as much, so we didn't do it for long, but Gil really insists on it.

Maybe I'm the one that's different. I'm more confident as a parent and I know what my babies need. I also know that this is my last one, so I actually appreciate the gift of a baby more. It just kills me that I've go to go back to work...ask Eric and he will tell you that I will bankrupt him if I do t go back, but this tie of their being small is just so short and so fleeting. It kills me.

So may e it is him, may r it is me. It is likely a little of both of us but this baby is really encouraging me to slow down and appreciate his very babyhood. Yikes...it is already moving too fast.