Poop much?

Wow, where to begin on what we've been up to. On the one hand, it hasn't been much because, well, there's a new baby in the house who's keeping certain family members up at night. But on the other hand I look back over the past two weeks and it seems like an eternity since he arrived (in a good way). Teddy continues to be a very calm and complacent baby, very different from Katherine. He'll go for good couple hour stretches between meals, which I am still not used to. Katherine was a grazer in every sense of the word, in fact I often joked that she wanted her bottles place on a slow drip in one of the dorky drink helmet things. Teddy gulps meals down at a rather rapid pace, which means at night he primarily all business (change me, feed me, rock me, put me down). Sure, we've had a few rough nights here and there but nothing that I can complain about. Maybe it's because it's number two, maybe it's because he has a different temperament than his sister but I can honestly say I'm actually enjoying these first few weeks and this is coming from a person who was absolutely dreading the entire first month.

Teddy had his two week checkup yesterday morning and he is GROWING. Current weight is 8 lbs, 11 oz, which, if you're keeping track, is a 1 lb, 4 oz of weight gain in about a week and a half (he came home from the hospital at 7 lbs, 7 oz). Holy moly! This puts him at the 50th percentile for weight but if he keeps this up, he'll be racing to the 90th percentile just like his sister did. Clearly my babies like to EAT. I had a sense before the appointment that he had gained a decent amount of weight. Maybe it's the hormones because there was a part of me that was actually sad that he was gaining so quickly, not that I want him to be a tiny newborn forever because trust me...I DO NOT. I think instead that I'm realizing this time around how brief this time period with all it's sleep deprivation and poopy diapers (we'll get to that) really is, so I'm trying to savor the little moments, like when he buries his head under my chin after a night time feeding.

And ahhh, I brought up the P word...Poop. What newborn experience would be complete without it? This kid is a pooping machine. He's a peeing machine too, don't worry I've experienced the baby boy pee fest many times but it does not hold a candle to the fact that the average diaper change involves multiple diapers because as soon as a fresh one is attached to his little behind, he christens it. I recently switched over from breastfeeding to formula feeding (I'm not getting into the whole breast vs. bottle debate except to say that breastfeeding really wasn't for me so after getting the benefits of the first few weeks I made the switch) and I thought that maybe this pattern had slowed down. Actually I was concerned that switch had made him constipated and I spent a good 6 to 8 hours one day all worried that he had not pooped (what my life has become), asking Ted "he should have pooped by now, right?" only to discover at about 9 pm that he was certainly NOT constipated, he was just saving it all for one big blowout of a diaper. Since then, the normal pattern has resumed where you lay the kid down, remove the diaper and the poop fest begins. I've tried being clever, waiting until you are SURE the kid is done with his business before you put the fresh one on but he's a clever little bugger and he can wait you out. At some point you just have to cut your losses and move on. I think I went through 4 diapers easily in one change. We used up the newborn diapers so quickly, not because he outgrew them but because he pooped his way through them. The fun nights are when you change him, start feeding him and he begins filling up his drawers before he's even done eating (in one hole, right out the other). My son, the pooper.

Papa and Gram Meagher are visiting this week, which has allowed me some additional much needed rest time and given Katherine a lot of one on one attention. And tomorrow is picture day at school so we're taking her in in the morning with the baby to get the first professional shot of the two of them together, I'm quite tickled about this. We'll see if we can get some pre-picture shots up here tomorrow of them all gussied up.