flea

Dillo is doing well - such a settled, good baby. It is easier the second time. I'm almost, um, bored. His "routine" (two days is a routine, right?) is to sleep lots in the afternoon and early evening, just waking up every 2-3 hours to nurse. This allows me to nap in the early afternoon and play with Casper when she gets home from school. He's rather awake for a while at bedtime (9pm; mr. flea sits holding him while I read to Casper) and then again for a couple of hours in the deeps of the night (yesterday, 12-2 am), and then again in the mornings.

He's starting to peel (this is normal), mostly on the hands and feet and armpits. I cut his nails again today.

mr. flea gets pooped or peed on almost every time he changes a diaper. I have yet to be hit.

Casper had a hard day yesterday - didn't want to go to school ("can I go to work with Mommy? Please please please?"), had terrible trouble getting along with mr. flea at bedtime. (Weaning didn't stop her from being Mama's girl, and apparently neither will big sisterhood). Today a good morning, though - I just sat and nursed Dillo while she read him a book, and then got into her normal morning routine with mr. flea.

Books read:
Mary Balogh, The Ideal Wife (1991?). I had to struggle to finish, as I didn't like wither mani character much. He's practically perfect and entirely lacking in personality; she's a wet noodle and also a fool. They get married.

Julia Quinn, It's In His Kiss (2006). The one about Hyacinth. As with most Quinn, I read with enjoyment up until the point where they had sex, then skimmed the rest of the book. Somehow she always loses me there.

Well, there's a lot going on:

1. So. Tired. I've had maybe 3 hours of sleep each of the past two nights, in non-continuous segments.
2. Yet, cannot sleep, due to being stressed out about:
3. Is baby okay (having exact same latching issues I had with Casper at first - it is hard to get tiny ones to open their mouths far enough to get a good latch, plus 24 hour bilirubin is on the high side so they'll test again at the ped tomorrow, so I fear we'll also repeat the Casper jaundice not bad enough to treat but resulting in sleepiness and forced waking to nurse and cold washcloth on the feet).
4. Also, it's hot and humid again so I get to be sweaty and worry that the baby is dehydrated. Why wasn't the human body designed so that the milk comes in faster???
5. Casper's a bit of a wreck, and it's stressful and sad-making. A lot of the time she seems fine, but then she'll have a breakdown. And of course she suggested we leave the baby at the hospital.
6. Did I mention I hate being in the hospital? They don't let you fucking sleep, they keep taking away your fucking baby, the food sucks and it's a gigantic paperworky pain in the ass. I was very happy with my care from admittance to an hour after delivery, and then rolled my eyes and huffed in impatience for the next 26 hours until we got to go home. On the plus side, their air conditioning is better than ours. Redoubling the negative, there's no wifi in the entire damned place.
7. Another positive: except for the so tired I have a headache and could die, I feel really great for having had a baby 36 hours ago.
8. My mother's also stressing me out a bit. Such is life.

I want to write up about the amazing speed and intensity but easiness of Dillo's birth, and how he cried a lot at first (unlike Casper) and was all puffy and Winston-Churchill-y (unlike Casper) but after a first big nap spent most of last evening and night awake and alert and all about his fingers, which are slim and looong and hyperextend and he rubs his face and successfully gets one in his mouth and sucks it like a mad thing. (See, if they'd had wifi I would have been writing this at 12am instead of annoyedly waiting for them to return my kid.)

Instead you get tired sweaty worried sleepy baby cranky toddler worries. Sorry. But, there are pictures: http://www.flickr.com/photos/casperflea/