He's Here!

After nine (ten!) months of preparation and anticipation, our little boy Adam Michael Herron arrived on March 14th. Labor and delivery went smoothly again (thankfully!), and we got to meet our baby boy a scant 50 minutes after arriving at the hospital. He weighed in at 7lbs, 5oz at birth, and measured 19.5 inches long.

Now four weeks old, Adam is growing seemingly right before our very eyes. He eats (and eats, and eats...) like a champ, and he weighed over 9lbs at our Dr.'s appointment last week! Big sister Emily is taking nicely to her new role as older sibling, and wants to hold and help feed and burp baby Adam, and even insisted that he be included in a family walk we took the other day ("Bring baby Adam too!" she exclaimed). Now that the excitement of the birth and the newness of the baby is wearing off a bit, we are all settling into being a family of four. It's amazing how fast they change and grow, and even more amazing how quickly you forget all that is involved in caring for a newborn! However, baby Adam is taking it fairly easy on us. He is generally only up once or twice a night to eat, and usually settles back into sleep upon finishing his meal. So far, he seems pretty laid back, and we're hoping that he has more than a little of Emily's temperment in him! Now, if I can only be as laid back as he is trying to manage being mommy of two! I've had a lot of help so far, Greg was able to take two weeks of paternity leave, and my mom and sister have been here quite a bit helping out with the kids so we've been able to ease into things slowly. So far, so good!

"Baby Boy...Come Out!"

I've been wondering exactly how much of this "new baby on the way" thing Emily has been picking up on. I had actually been thinking that she was not really aware that something is brewing, but I decided to test this theory out in the last few weeks, and our interaction went something like this -

Me: "Hey Emily, what's this?" (pointing to my belly)

Emily: "Baby!"

Me: "Yes, there's a baby in there!"

Emily: (after thinking for a moment) "Baby Boy, come out! Want to see him!"

Me: (laughing hysterically) "Yes sweetie, Mommy wants to see him too!"

Emily: "Da-da too!"

So, I guess she understands a bit more than I have been giving her credit for. Reflecting on this myself, I came to realize that, oh my gosh, Baby Boy IS going to come out, and in the not-so-distant future. This Lightbulb Moment has spurred several bouts of nesting in the Herron household...a portion of the basement has been cleaned, the former "guest room" has been cleared of nearly five years worth of crap to make way for Emily's new room, and this said room has been painted and is awaiting the application of wallpaper border so its new tenant can move in. Emily herself got to apply the first brush-strokes of "geen" (green!) paint to the walls of her "cool new room", and after the assembly of her "cool new bed" today, she is anxiously awaiting the time she can start playing and sleeping in there. So..."Baby Boy, Come Out!" (...but not for another six weeks or so, please!)

Merry Christmas

And what a Christmas it was for us, too. I went in to this holiday fully expecting my excitement to far overshadow the excitement exhibited by Emily. After all, she's only one and a half, and up until recently she has been just as thrilled about tupperware as she has been about anything else. So, even though we had some cool stuff for her, I was prepared for what I thought could be a big letdown when she decided to pass by the new toys for the box they came in. Well, I guess those days might be over, because she brought me a neatly wrapped present delivered by the neighbors on Christmas Eve and said "open, please!". She opened it almost all by herself, and was delighted with her new toy. She must have remembered this experience Christmas morning, because she shouted "Presents! Presents! Open, open!". She is old enough now to have some imagination in her play, and she was delighted by everything. She kept going strong until suddenly she was exhausted and overstimulated by all of the new things, and pleaded "no more!", and went down for a morning nap. Once she was refreshed by some sleep, she was ready to go back at it. While I received some wonderful gifts myself, seeing my little girl so excited by new and interesting things was by far the most priceless gift of all.

'Tis the Season

In the Herron household, generally we wait until Christmas is almost upon us to start decorating, celebrating, and generally getting into all things Christmas. In fact, I distinctly remember a Christmas not-so-past that we were putting up the Christmas tree on Christmas Eve. However, we (ok, I...) decided to kick off the Christmas season a little bit early this year. Emily and I joined Santa, Elves, and some friends from work at "Cookies and Milk with Santa" sponsored by Beaumont Hospice (yes, my office. Hey, it was convenient, and I personally know the santa :) We got to put together crafts of Christmas ornaments and holiday picture frames (ok, so I did the craft too...however Emily just loved making piles of the colored foam), chow down on almost every type of cookie you could imagine, (ok, so I did most of the cookie eating too...this is what you get for having a preggo around cookies at 10 o' clock in the morning having had no breakfast! Emily did however devour the largest sugar cookie I had ever seen), listen to Elves read Christmas stories, and meet the Jolly Bearded Man himself. I must say, I wasn't expecting Emily to react very well to Santa, given her stranger anxiety and all. But she was very, very curious about the Man in Red, even tentatively approaching him to accept a candy cane (I thought having her sit on his lap might just be asking a bit too much from her!). The candy cane was the greatest discovery, direct quote from Emily : "YUMMY!" Emily had the greatest time running around, staring in awe at the elves and other kids, and playing "peekaboo!" with the office ladies. I had a great time too, just watching my little girl have fun and remembering how cool Christmas was when you were a kid and you believed in Santa, Rudolph, and magic, and didn't have to put up and take down all the Christmas decorations yourself :) What a great way to kick off the Christmas season...bring on the holidays!