O, So Much Love: I'm No Superman

First, I'm overdue in thanking everyone for your thoughts and prayers. I'm constantly hearing about new people that are reading the blog, which is humbling - nurses, co-workers, friends, relatives, friends of relatives, and even relatives of friends. Although a few of you have said that I'm a really good writer, which makes me think you're accidentally reading the wrong blog. :-)

As I mentioned before, I have turned to the tv to alleviate some of the stress (and boredom) that comes with taking care of Sophie. Right now I'm watching season 2 of Scrubs. My apologies to those of you (Hi Mom!) that hate getting the theme song stuck in your head, but that's what I've had to deal with the last couple of weeks (that and Winnie the Pooh). If you aren't familiar with it, the chorus goes "I can't do this all on my own...no I'm no...I'm no superman". This has rung especially true for me lately. The support of my friends and family has never been so important to me as it is right now. Whether it be grandparents watching Owen, lunch with a friend, or just someone holding Sophie so I can do other things, life would be so much more tough without them.

I could also change the words to "I can't do this without sleep". My attitude suffers greatly when I don't get enough sleep. I get frustrated and emotional a lot easier when I'm tired. As with any new parents, getting sleep is a struggle for us. Between Sophie waking up with reflux or to poop (she gets a continuous drip feed at night so at least we don't have to worry about that) and Owen getting up in the middle of the night, we don't get a lot of continuous (or total) sleep. Owen will not go to sleep without one of us there with him, and gets up either in the middle of the night or really early the next day.

Owen is also a handful during the day. He throws a mini tantrum any time we say "no", and it takes a ton of energy to get him to do things like wash his hands, brush his teeth, take a bath, or change his clothes. As I write this he is throwing a MAJOR fit because Daddy is putting him to bed instead of me. He's been screaming for 5 minutes and is still going. [Postscript: I ended up going upstairs and putting him to sleep because he would just not calm down. Right thing to do? Maybe not, but he was going to hurt himself if he continued. Once he calmed down I explained to him that some nights Mommy is going to put him to bed, sometimes Daddy. Doesn't mean I don't love him when Daddy puts him to bed, but we like to take turns and share. He said, "oh". I told him that tonight I would put him to sleep but tomorrow night Daddy would. He said that would be ok. We'll see what he does tomorrow night.] Yesterday he wanted a lollipop, and since he had just peed on the potty I was going to give him one as a treat. But he refused to wash his hands, so I told him no lollipop unless he washed his hands. I could tell he was thinking about it, but he never did wash his hands. I never thought that he would be such a terrible two. Obviously the stress of Sophie being at home is getting to him. At least he's a good eater - along with the green beans, he continues to eat healthier than a lot of adults: pinto beans, edamame, okra, and even collard greens.

Unfortunately there has been no progress on the feeding front for Sophie. She is consistenly taking only 30-40% of her feeds from the bottle. We are hoping to work with a speech therapist that specializes in feeding issues, and are currently working with her other doctors to make sure she feels her best. This is, of course, frustrating for us, most of all because we don't know what the future holds. A trip to the P.O.P.S.I.C.L.E. website for feeding issues makes me both depressed (knowing what issues some people have) and hopeful (that Sophie is not as bad off as others).

She still cries a decent amount, but Sophie is continuing to get bigger and is starting to get out of the newborn phase. When people see her for the first time they often say, "Oh, how small!". But to me she is huge - she is now double her birth weight (10 lbs). She has more alert periods and keeps her gaze on us often. I can tell she is on the verge of smiling at us and making goo-goo noises.

Despite all of the frustrations we are slowly getting into a routine and do occasionally have some fun. This was the first Halloween that Owen went trick or treating, so we had a lot of fun this past weekend. Saturday morning was the NICU's annual reunion. It was nice to see a lot of Sophie's nurses, albeit a little weird to go back to the place that was the location of so much emotion for us. We went to Tempe's Halloween festival on Saturday night. Owen got to go in a fire truck and jump in the bouncy tent, where he had a lot of fun in his own reserved kind of way (the other kids in the tent were jumping all over the place, while Owen bounced in one spot). He was an alien at the festival since we didn't really have time to go look for a costume. He had asked to be an elephant, which I thought would be impossible to do last minute. I was hoping to get a pumpkin at the last minute, but alas, no. Imagine my surprise when we happened to see a toddler elephant costume 50% off at Albertson's the morning of Halloween! Owen himself really surprised me by absolutely loving trick or treating. After every house he would say "Let's go to another house". He even asked to go in our neighbor's haunted house! I guess the dark and/or the costume helped him overcome his shyness.

Please continue to pray for us as we learn to navigate life with two kids who demand a lot of our attention. There are times that we definitely need all the (divine and earthly) help we can get!

Here are some recent pictures. More are on our Picasa websites here and here.