Dear Keian, (two weeks)

Dear Keian,
You are two weeks old today at 4:36p.m. But who's counting?
You've peed on me three times this week. If you're keeping track, that is an average on every other day. Each time that it happened I thought I was prepared for battle, but it turns out unless I go in full Haz-mat gear to change your diaper I am not safe. I thought this was just a joke reserved for Baby & Me movies and the odd television commercial, I see I was wrong.

For some reason you refused to breast feed after Thursday of last week. We didn't give you a bottle for a long time, hoping it was just a phase you were going through. (Baby anorexia? Yeah, I don't know what we were thinking.) We just kept offering boobs to you ever hour, hoping you would pick one you liked and stick with it. No such luck. It was two days of hell, up with you all night listening to your fire-engine-wail and trying to soothe you as you frustratedly thrashed about trying to feed. It seems like you just forgot how.
Maybe it was just new parent jitters, but I was convinced you were starving to death, I don't care what the lactation consultant says. MY BABY WAS STARVING TO DEATH.
We got a breast pump and now you eat from a bottle. Now, instead of just feeding you every few hours I have to pump every two hours. Your father thought it was the neatest thing for ten whole minutes. I feel more like a cow every single day.

I continue to try and draw and paint, but it seems like you only have two spurts of sleeping for more than an hour and a half, and I try to sleep for one of those. I wind up painting at 3:30a.m. after the feed/burp/change cycle with you. I used to paint all day long and still complain about not getting anything done, I appreciate that free time more than I can describe now. While I am drawing or painting you are in my lap being jiggled to sleep. Jiggled. I know. We have 1500 pamphlets on why you Should Not Shake Your Baby, but I'm sure if anyone else were to watch us putting you to sleep it would certainly look like we were SHAKING OUR BABY. But you prefer to be jiggled to sleep rather than rocked. I'm just proud that I haven't spilled paint on you yet.

You got your first real bath today, because your umbilical cord finally decided to part ways with your belly button. You hated it.
You hated it so much that you screamed louder than you have ever screamed before.
Great. Also, you've been extra fussy and hungry these past few days... what is with that? You refuse to go to sleep in your Moses basket, you refuse to take your pacifier. You will only sleep if I am in bed with you and you can use my breast as your own personal pillow. I tried to move away to get more comfortable and your grabbed my boob in a death-grip. I'm not joking, your hands are tiny, but that just means I have a tiny bruise now. Also, remind me to file down your nails, again, those things are so sharp that they slice right through my thin skin... its like five little paper cuts. If paper could grip and twist and shred through skin, which it can't.

Your father and I call each other mommy and daddy now. I swore I would never do that. You open both your eyes now. You kick your legs out of blankets no matter how hard I try to keep you swaddled. Sometimes I just lay in bed with you and tickle your toes. I love watching the way your toes curl up just like mine, with the second toe under your big toe. It drives your father crazy when I do it. I can't wait to discover all the other things we do that are alike, that drive your father crazy.


Love,
Mommy