IrishOboe

The title should warn those not interested in the subject . . .
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Yesterday was Joseph’s first month birthday already!  We celebrated by saying goodbye to grandma and spending the day all by ourselves. L  I’m certain that part of why Joseph was unsettled was because the apartment was so empty.  We were so blessed to have daddy home so much and grandma with us for a month after the birth.  Joseph did eventually calm down and let me get a two hour nap (that’s a nice birthday present)!  In the evening we went to Valda’s for dinner with friends, which was lovely.  Last night Joseph made up for not sleeping much on his birthday by sleeping a 4, a 3, and a 2 hour stretch – lovely!  Sleep is a beautiful thing.
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Quite a few months ago I made yet another attempt at getting my life organized and while looking online for the best filing system I read about Getting Things Done by David Allen.  It intrigued me and after reading the summary on Wikipedia I thought the ideas worth a try.  I implemented a few and it all but revolutionized my life.  I’m talking big life changes such as always having a clean desk as opposed to always having stacks of unorganized papers collecting – and it was so easy!  I’ve been trying my whole life to keep a clean desk, so this was major for me.  I annoyed all my friends talking about how wonderful and amazing it was.  So with all the excitement over results I figured I’d better get the book and read the whole thing.  It turns out the university business library has it, so I got it out of the library.
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I borrowed a book from my sister on EC (Elimination Communication) and read it a month or so before Joseph was born.  It sounded like fun and possible to try as much or as little as desired so I was excited to try it.  The book recommended not bothering to think about EC in the first week, but I thought “Why not?”  Ha!  I didn’t even think about not giving EC a thought in the first week.  In fact, I didn’t even change one diaper the first week (yeah husband!).  It wasn’t until Joseph’s third week that I gave it a thought and made few feeble attempts at putting Joseph on his little potty, though it must be said that since he has a habit of pooping and peeing during a change we’ve been given the “cuing” sounds so he has been getting at leas some sort of correlation between the act of peeing and pooping the their respective sounds (pshshshsh and bththth or something like that).
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Warning:  This is a long post.  Here’s the short version: It was long.  It hurt. Joseph was born.  We’re very happy.

Just a few weeks is enough to start altering the memory, but here I will recall as best as I can the story of Joseph’s birth.

In the weeks leading up to the birth the baby occupied little of my mind.  I was frantically studying for the Goethe German C1 test that I’d failed to back out of in time and I thought I had at least a week after all my obligations were finished to focus on getting ready for Baby.  I’m very grateful now that I still made a point of getting enough rest each night despite studying so intensely.  Of course because I’d dropped everything to study my German, after the test I had to cram in practice for the harp piece I was playing for Cornelia’s wedding the day after the test finished.  We all had a lovely time at the wedding and thought we did well by leaving early and in time to get home by midnight.  I relaxed into bed thinking I could now finally take it easy and finish the preparations for the birth.  All the major stuff was done, but there were still plenty of nesting tasks I wanted to complete.

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More pictures here.  You’ll need a login: it’s a popular TV series about six adults in an apartment and the instrument Janet got her degree in. Capitalize the first letters.

If that’s unclear, e-mail me.

Joseph is eating like crazy (which is great because I have a lot of milk for him) and starting to plump up.  Today he found his thumb, though often it means an index finger in the eye as well, poor guy.

 

Recovery is slow but steady.  I've been on a few walks and can get a bit of work done during the day.  It's amazing how much time and energy a little baby needs!  It's all paying off, though - he gets cuter every day!

There's new life for this blog!

For an introduction and photo see this blog post by my wonderfully supportive husband.

Here I am, 8 days before my due date at my sister-in-law's wedding.  What a great celebration!  Little did I know that the next morning at 4:30 my water would break and I'd be off to the races!  Well, the endurance races, because Little Guy didn't arrive until the following morning, but this post is about bellies and not yet babies . . .