Our First Month with Lexi
March has left us and at an alarming speed. It’s hard to believe that I’ve been back at work for a full two weeks and Lexi was born four weeks before then. I think it’s fair to say that life with two children has us exhausted. I have previously said to people who asked how it was going that it was more than twice as much work, but after getting some puzzled looks and reconsidering, I realize that my assessment was completely inaccurate. The part that it took me nearly a month to come to grips with is that it’s just more work. Somehow I was just completely and delusionally unprepared for the additional work that a second child would entail. I can now honestly say that I think it’s less than twice the work, the problem is that we were already at 70% capacity, so yes, going from 70% exhausted to 100% exhausted felt like twice as much work when it was not. Part of the problem is the seemingly endless doctors appointments that we’ve had: Lexi’s check up, Lexi’s sonogram, Leigha’s accupuncture, neurologist, and physical therapy all take their toll in terms of time and energy. Progress on Leigha’s recovery has been very encouraging to her physical therapists and to us as well.
The month started off with Anna’s birthday parties. We did a little one for her when her grandmother was here on the actual day of her birthday but the official party was scheduled for the following week. All of Anna’s friends except Bella were able to make it and she really ate up all the attention. Leigha decorated with Sesame Street balloons and we thank the attendee volunteers who gave their time and energy towards helping us make the party a fun for Anna and all her friends.
Lexi is a champ herself. I feel like she’s already developing her little personality. She sleeps better than we could have hoped and is a good eater. A better way to describe Lexi is that she has very strong wake/sleep inertia. It is a challenge to move her from one state to the other. Getting her to sleep at night is mildly difficult, but once she’s out she’s out for the night. Similarly, she’s slow to wake in the morning. She lays there making squawking and short screeches as she tries to move herself from asleep to awake. During the day she catnaps lightly but she moves between the two inconsistently and without much conviction. Lately she’s started to give smiles, although I think we’re still in the phase where the smiles seem to be provokable, the success rate is so low that I almost wonder if it’s just coincidence. Her smiles are adorable but fleeting and so I’ve had no success (or opportunity, frankly) to capture them for your enjoyment.
Anna is for the most part fond of her sister. Jealousy that we expected to deal with never materialized and only on rare occasion has Anna had a problem sharing. She’s still excited to hold her sister, and invites Lexi to lay in her newly converted toddler bed with her. When Lexi cries, wakes up, or falls asleep Anna is very excited to report the latest status. When Lexi loses her binky Anna is enthusiastic (sometimes overly so) about retuning it to her mouth - even when Lexi’s not particularly interested. She gives her sister good night kisses and she is surprisingly gentle with her, although sometimes she does forget. She’s never even made Lexi cry a single time that I’m aware of.
Anna’s also stretching her independence. She likes to try to set the rules and is still fairly demanding. One of her new behaviors is yelling at me to “STOP!” while making an exaggerated police man stop motion. Usually it’s easy to tell what she wants to do independently, but sometimes nothing will be happening and she’ll halt me, leaving me confused as to how exactly I’ve displeased her majesty. it is a tough balance to decide when to give her latitude to try things on her own, and occasionally when she doesn’t get her freedom she’s makes her displeasure well known. But she’s not afraid to repeat herself in case you didn’t catch her subtle hint the first time.
The biggest hit of March was Easter egg activities. Anna went on three Easter egg hunts that I know of, including one with the neighbors that she probably did the best at. The other two easter egg hunts were of the open-field eggs-a-scattered variety. It mostly reminds me of a fight scene from some epic war movie where all the combatants (played here by 2 year olds) storm the field in a frenzy. Our little soldier is more of the timid variety, she mostly wanders aimlessly and has to be instructed to pick up each individual egg instead of getting the gist and doing it herself. She did better with our neighbor’s egg hunt but I think she just doesn’t get (or care about) the scarcity problem.
Painting easter eggs was a blast for Anna and she was really into that. She did a wonderful job and her hard work netted me some delicious deviled eggs, so who am I to complain? Leigha and Anna took the egg shells and made art work from them a second time, so she got some extra mileage out of her hard work as well.
April is moving right along with Leigha and Anna returning to Winwood and Lexi making her debut there. Leigha is glad to rejoin her class, Anna is transitioning back to school with only minimal complaints and Lexi hasn’t complained at all.
