davis : the early days

I'm hoping I can make some more time for blogging these days. I have loved looking back on my updates with Beau and I want to remember these days while they are still little! 

We've been home for a little over a week now and it's been pretty good so far. 

We weren't sure how Beau was going to react to having a sibling. We had talked about it and it was easier to illustrate the change to him once we had the nursery put together but we still had no idea how much he actually grasped. To my surprise, he knew that the baby I was holding when he came to the hospital was his brother, or as he says, "bubba". 

He wasn't super interested in his brother during the first couple of days but who could blame him? He was spending those few nights with my parents and my sister and got to spend time playing with new toys and his cousins. There was way too much going on to think about his brother. 

A few days in, though, he started asking to hold Davis and of course, we let him. His face is the greatest thing when he holds his brother. It lights up and has this momentary shock/awe look to it. He has a frozen smile on his face and either stares at us or down at his brother. It's like he is bursting with pride! He is doing a pretty good job of being gentle and will always lay his head down on Davis to hug him or will plant a kiss on him, unprompted! One of his favorite things to do is to tickle Davis' feet. We've done it with dada and mama before but I never knew he was so fond of it! He'll gently tickle his little feet and say "tickle, tickle" and then break out into giggles. It's sweet and hilarious and a little bit terrifying all at once! hahaha

One day last week, my sister brought Beau home from staying with my parents and I was nursing Davis under a cover. I was sitting by the moses basket that he has been laying in and Beau walked in and peeked into the empty basket. Upon seeing it empty, he then lifted up a muslin blanket that was laying at the bottom to check if Davis was under there. It was precious!

Several times a day, Beau will come hold his hands out (wrists together) and ask to hold Davis by saying "hol?". Once, we were situating him to hold him and told him to put his hands out. He then stuck his arms straight up in the air as if we asked him to put his hands UP. He now does it every time! 

Beau has surprised me by being rather helpful (at times). I've been nursing or pumping and I've asked him to bring me Davis' paci or a bottle from across the room and he has followed direction and helped me without any issue. He loves to push the buttons on my pump while I'm pumping (I only let him push the light button!) and always asks for a drink of milk after I explain that I'm making Davis' milk...haha! He's always trying to push a paci on Davis but it's just so sweet and he ends up with 3 or 4 pacis wherever he's laying. 

Now, to Davis and me. Davis was born with a tongue tie (his frenulum, or little connector thing, came all the way up to the tip of his tongue, making it impossible for him to stick his tongue out past his lips) which made breastfeeding a little tricky. At first, I thought the pain was just normal early breastfeeding pain, but it turns out the tie was prohibiting him from latching correctly. Luckily, we had that addressed when he was 8 days old. We took him to an ENT and they did a quick procedure to clip his tie. It took 2 seconds and he barely made a peep and it didn't bleed. Phew! Now, however, the breastfeeding pain hasn't changed (it's only been a day) and I'm looking into meeting with a lactation consultant. I'm pretty sure he is clamping down and not latching/sucking properly. It's uncomfortable, y'all. I've read that they kind of grow out of it but there are also some tricks I can do to teach him how to correct it, so we are working on that. I just hope we get it worked out soon! Because ouch. 

So other than that, we are just navigating the waters of two under two and daddy being back at work. I'm so thankful that I'm actually feeling pretty good, considering we are only a week and a half out from delivery. It took me much longer to recover with Beau so I'm glad I'm having an easier time now that I have more responsibilities! We are having fun dressing Davis in the tiny things that Beau only wore once (or not at all) since he is so much smaller and I've had fun adding to that collection a little bit too, since he'll be in smaller sizes for longer. 

Life is good! I'll try to do regular updates on how it's going.