How it's going.
So, we had this kid last Saturday in the early morning, and then spent a week with various relatives tromping in and out, figuring out how this kid works, and doing some clearing out of boxes in order to have a lot of people over on Sunday for a ceremony about which I remain pretty profoundly ambivalent, though it was lovely to have a lot of people come and welcome the baby.
The most amazing and unexpected thing is really Little S., who, I SWEAR TO YOU, grew several inches and put on 25% again of her body weight while I was in the hospital. All of a sudden I'm bathing her or helping her with something and I realize that she's HUGE. She's still doing pretty well, I'm still holding in abeyance the "it's totally ok to have negative feeling X about the new arrival" talk until it's clear she has some specific negative feeling X or a few more weeks pass. It's clear she's affected, maybe 10% more irritable and oppositional and with school saying she's noticably more hair-trigger on being upset than usual. But I'd be 10% more irritable too if I suddenly became a GIANT version of myself. We sent her off to school with a photo in a frame she made and some cupcakes to have a "big sister" celebration, and generally are trying to make some of this about her, but it's an uphill battle and one we'll occasionally be losing, I'm sure.
The most amazing and unexpected thing is really Little S., who, I SWEAR TO YOU, grew several inches and put on 25% again of her body weight while I was in the hospital. All of a sudden I'm bathing her or helping her with something and I realize that she's HUGE. She's still doing pretty well, I'm still holding in abeyance the "it's totally ok to have negative feeling X about the new arrival" talk until it's clear she has some specific negative feeling X or a few more weeks pass. It's clear she's affected, maybe 10% more irritable and oppositional and with school saying she's noticably more hair-trigger on being upset than usual. But I'd be 10% more irritable too if I suddenly became a GIANT version of myself. We sent her off to school with a photo in a frame she made and some cupcakes to have a "big sister" celebration, and generally are trying to make some of this about her, but it's an uphill battle and one we'll occasionally be losing, I'm sure.
