Ray, 5 weeks

I can’t believe 5 weeks has gone by. It feels fast. Christina keeps harassing me about putting up more pictures of Ray, so the pictures are for her. The update is for my journal. Here’s the update on Ray:

He’s a good baby. He loves me and calms down pretty much immediately whenever I pick him up and talk to him. He seems to know my voice and I love that. He smiles a lot. He sleeps a lot too, but he’s a loud sleeper, so we’ve had a hard time sleeping at night – Daniel and I have had a hard time – Ray seems fine.

Finally, last night, we put Ray in the office/nursery in his bouncer with the monitor. And we had the best night’s sleep we’ve had to date. Ray slept from 11:30 to 3 am, then he nursed and burped and hung out with me in our bed for an hour, then Daniel put him back in the nursery and from 4-7am he slept and we slept too. It was such a relief, to sleep that is. It makes a world of a difference to sleep. Then Ray spent 7-8:30am in bed with me, nursing and burping and then sort of sleeping/grunting. I have been so worried about having him in another room because he seems so young still – and he IS young, but it worked out great. It’s what monitors were meant for. Plus, we can buckle him into his bouncer so I don’t worry about him wiggling and skwirming his way out of it.

We took Ray to park day yesterday and that was the first time he’s been to the park and seen all my girlfriends – he was a hit. I dressed him up in plaid shorts and a matching polo and he wore his little soft skater shoes. I loved it. And Ray slept through the whole thing. He did wake up when we stopped by 7-11 on the way home to get a free slurpee (because it was 7-11-2012 yesterday … free shlurpee day), but I just held him and went in. It was fine. Here is a picture of Ray after the park … it evidently tired him out to sleep the whole time:

I worry about taking all three boys around. I worry, not because anything has gone terribly wrong thus far, but because I have been in some pretty crazy situations in the past. I have seen the pattern happen before, this pattern – I think, “wow, things aren’t that bad! I can do this, see everything went well, didn’t it?” Then I feel capable and I go out again with the boys and things fall apart – big time. Crying in public, flashing a breast on accident, poopy accidents in Target with no extra clothes, losing sight of one of the boys and panicking, dropping a jar of pickles in the grocery store, breaking a keg of alcohol in Costco, watching my boys run in opposite directions and not knowing which way to go first, fumbling at doorways, threatening/bribing the boys to stop whatever it is they’re doing …. major embarassment. And the last step of the pattern? Feeling major anxiety everytime I go out somewhere with all the boys. But so far, everything has gone well and that’s something to be happy about.