Finding the new normal

Overall, it’s been a nice long holiday weekend. We’ve been trying to get out more often with the baby in tow. Sometimes it’s easy, sometimes it seems so daunting that we end up scrapping or changing plans, but that’s to be expected. We managed to have a nice lunch out on Saturday while Miles snoozed in his car seat at the restaurant, and then a lovely dinner out on Sunday while Curly snoozed in the baby bjorn that I was wearing as I tried to eat my meal without dropping any food on his head (success!)

We are trying to plan more lower-key expeditions…a picnic here, a neighborhood or nearby city stroll there…places where we can spend time outside should the little one have a meltdown, and places where we can change him or feed him easily. It won’t always be easy, and we’ve been lucky so far, but it’s been wonderful getting out as a new family, even if only for a couple hours at a time.

Things are still challenging at home. We feel bad when all his needs are taken care of and he still cries. We are lucky, however, in that he sleeps large chunks of the night away…anywhere from 2 to sometimes as long as 5 hour stretches, with room in between stretches for a change and feed. Nutella is getting by with me having gone back to work; fortunately(?) his worst meltdowns happen in the evenings, so she doesn’t have to deal with them alone. And I’ve found it nice to be back at work and have some normality and structure back in my schedule. It’s hard, but we’re doing our best to find the ‘new normal.’

Finally, our dog has been outstanding in her adjustment to the new human in the house. At first, she freaked out when he cried and ran to find us, or the one of us that wasn’t already comforting him. Now she knows it’s just par for the course. She likes to be with Nutella when she’s breastfeeding and curls up on the footstool. She has thoroughly smelled Curly and accepts him as one of the ‘pack.’ It’s very cute, because right now they’re pretty much the same size, and we just died of cuteness when she curled up next to him just after he was swaddled the other night (evidence below).