Day 14-- Two weeks down

Sabrina is 14 days old today. She had a rough night last night, acting colicky like Edgar did. Fussing and crying for hours. It still wasn't as bad as Edgar was, but it was trying. I caught a little sleep on the couch, and then took Sabrina and she slept on me in the rocking chair. Jen was generous enough to take Edgar first thing this morning. 

Honestly, I'm getting really sick of the sleep deprivation. Intellectually, I realize that we have very little to complain about. We have a relatively easy baby, a toddler who is potty training himself (!), and two parents, staying at home full time with two kids. This should be easy, right?

Then why is it so hard?

I stole Edgar this morning, and ran some errands. With a new Wii, and a leftover birthday gift card, we went video game shopping. We bought a strange assortment of games for SNES, N64, and Game Cube as well as Wii. I even picked out a few classic NES games, but put them back on the shelf when I saw how much I'd picked out.  Edgar played in the store while I looked. We got a little plastic Mario figurine with our purchase that he loves.

After naptime, we had kiddy-chaos at our place for an hour or so. I dearly love our next-door neighbors, but 7 kids in our apartment at once makes me crazy. Fighting a fussy baby and a contrary Edgar all night, I was on the verge of losing it all evening. This is reminding me of the darkest days of having Edgar as a baby. Over-tired, achy-headed, nerve-frazzled, and ready to give into despair at the slightest setback. I can't take much more of this.

Edgar was contrary all night-- doing just about the opposite of what anyone asked, menacing his little sister, but never being bad enough to get in trouble.

He spent HOURS today potty training. Sitting there, getting up, changing position, sitting, peeing, being excited, washing his hands for 15 minutes at a time, refusing to get his diaper back on, asking to get back on the potty, etc. Jen informed me that many guides to potty training say to ask your kid if they need to go potty every 10 minutes! That's 160 times in a typical day! I'm not ready for this. Edgar did manage to extrude the tiniest turd I've ever seen into the toilet, so there was the requisite celebration.

Our neighbor suggests that Edgar is potty training himself to get the one-on-one parental attention that he craves. It's working, he gets our attention, praise, love, etc. time and again all day. I'm not sure how I feel about that. I guess that's a really good way to get the attention he craves, and it certainly could be worse. I'm just so tired from everything else that I don't want to be as patient with him as he needs. blah.

I bought the classic old-school Donkey Kong Country for the SNES today, as well as the new Donkey Kong Country for the Wii (I've heard it's way hard), so I spent a few minutes this evening unwinding over the super nintendo. It was a moment of peace in an otherwise hectic day.

Okay, well that's it for today. Garrett has invited Edgar and I over tomorrow, and I'm ready for the distraction. Bring on the night.

Day 6 -- Wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii

Yay! We got the first of our pictures back from Danita.  She's so adorable, and isn't that just our family?

Okay, what was today?

Oh yeah. I got up early and started laundry, and went to work. Yes, I went to work. I had a meeting scheduled that I was supposed to lead, and my co-worker who was going to be my backup should the baby have come on-time or early begged me to show up if I could. So, I did. Too bad they rescheduled the meeting for Friday. They sent me an email, but I haven't been able to access my work email from home, and quite honestly, I haven't tried too hard. Guess who doesn't care enough to make it to work again tomorrow? Yeah.

The rest of the day was spent with my new addiction to Super Mario Wii. I've discovered that if you hand Edgar a controller, he's happy, regardless of if his controller works. So, I spent hours. I played late morning, I played all of Edgar's nap time. I played after nap. I played into the evening. It's a good thing that I have an understanding wife who bought me the Wii for christmas, and a newborn that's pretty easy so that my wife can split her attention with the toddler.

Yeah, I think I overdid it a bit, but I haven't abused my wife's kindnesses just yet.

We had a few visitors to see the baby. We had dinner brought in from someone in our church congregation. (that's always appreciated. I'm a lousy cook-- okay, not a lousy cook... I'm a great cook when I'm inspired, and today, all I want to do is play nintendo)

Spent a bit of the evening setting up a new wireless network in our house. Wireless so now we can stream movies on... you guessed it... the Wii!

Over the last two nights, Jen and I watched Coal Miner's Daughter, which was an okay movie, but it's made the voice in my head say everything that I read or write in a Kaintuck Holler accent.

Jen and I stayed up way too late playing super mario wii, so it was a wii-tastic day.

Sabrina is getting used to life outside. She puked all over me this evening, but other than that, we get along fine. Her umbilical cord fell off last night, so I guess she's offically here.