Almost a month

She'll be a month old tomorrow. How is that possible?!

Things here are good. Busy, but good. Yesterday and today I managed to not only cook real dinners but get everyone sitting at the table for them at the same time (remember how I used to complain how hard it was to feed everyone dinner, and that was without a newborn?!) The baby (yes yes yes she will have a name soon) is a lot like Barak was at this age--fortunately I'm not like I was at that age. You won't let me put you down for more than sixty seconds at a time? Okay, I can deal with that. With Barak, another I-will-die-if-you-don't-pick-me-up-now baby, most of the sleep deprivation came from my own inability to sleep anywhere but lying down in a bed. Now I can pretty much sleep anywhere, anytime, and I can sleep with a baby in bed with me--it's not like sleeping under lots of blankets by myself, but it's a heck of a lot better than getting out of bed fifty times a night trying to resettle a baby in a crib (and failing). I can even sleep pretty well in a rocking chair with a baby tucked into a Boppy. I usually try to get her to sleep in her bassinet/bouncy seat once or twice at the beginning of the night, and then I take her into bed with me and we both fall asleep. Pretty predictable really. She has all day to catch up on missed sleep, and I don't. She wins.

I'm also much better at carrying a baby in a sling than I used to be, and more comfortable with doing more things with said baby in said sling. There are still limits though. I can't (won't) cook with a baby in a sling--it just feels too dangerous to me and I'm not going there. No hot stuff, no sharp blades, so that really complicates, oh, dinner preparations. It's also hard to do things like change diapers on recalcitrant toddlers, wrangle children into snowpants, etc. But--BUT--one can knit with a baby in a sling, which discovery has improved my mental state enormously.

I still have Asnat here for three hours in the morning, which is a huge huge help--I usually manage to get a nap in while she's here. I also arranged for Iyyar to spend 20 minutes every day in afternoon playgroup, which is all the time I need for my husband to come home for lunch and me to run get him (or for my husband to go get him if I am sound asleep when he arrives, which has happened lately too)--and this means I don't have to wake up Avtalyon if he's still asleep at 12:45, which he usually is. AND my friend's son, who rides the bus with Barak, is walking Barak home from the bus stop--this means I don't have to wake up any nappers, wrangle three children into winter clothes, and go out to wait for the bus every afternoon. Another very big help.

Anyway, so, things are finding their new normal around here. The boys are generally doing OK--Barak actually seems more relaxed than he has been in a while (which still isn't very, but that's Barak), Iyyar really likes the baby, and Avtalyon, well, Avtalyon is working very hard to be sure that he is not neglected in all the bustle, and generally succeeding. I kind of wish he hadn't thrown all those black beans on the floor, but Iyyar picked them all up for me so no harm done. It's 9:30 PM though and I still haven't managed to clean up from dinner, pack lunches, or put the laundry away, so I'd better get going.

Name post soon. Really. Sometime within the next month for sure. Bli neder.