Ahhh, to be the product of high school in the late 90’s…it means that hearing CAKE songs on car commercials (“he’s going for speed…“) and referencing power ballad’s by Areosmith in a blog post (or is it “wanna” in the lyric?) are not only likely occurrences but also entertaining ones (for me, obviously).

But really – I couldn’t pass up the sentiment here because three weeks in to Life with Truman and I find myself feeling the need to write a list of things I don’t want to forget from this time – from the newborn stage – because, what if we never travel this road again?

Update: three weeks in is still not the time to make that decision, and I promise I will not update you each time we go back and forth on the fifth, but I will admit this: part of keeping that window open feels like taking pressure off of the present moment; I don’t have to drink it all in, in case this is our last baby, because we might have another. But what if this is our last baby?! I still don’t want to force myself to remember/document/sing from the mountains every single moment, but crap, I don’t want to forget either (and so the crazy-making cycle of what-do-we-do continues…), and so here I am. Rambling and posting. You’re so very welcome (or perhaps I mean thank you for reading along and putting up with said rambling).

So here it is: a list of some rather random observations about life with a new Little, and yes, some are things I had already, somehow, forgotten from our previous babies, hence the need for the list!

• The hands! The teeny tiny, peel-y, sometimes scratchy thanks to errant fingernails, curled up little “starfish” (thanks, S; still love that description so much) hands. Even when they sometimes get clammy or a little musty, I love them so – almost as much as newborn feet (and toes, which of course on one of our babies means LONG).
• The noises! The squeaks and squaks. The labored sleep breathing (which is usually accompanied by the – sometimes creepy – dreaming eyes). The stretching sounds. The sighs. The toots (sorry – the big kids find these terribly entertaining, so I’d be failing them by failing to mention them here). The nursing sounds – which in Truman’s case are very varied and very loud! Before we had even left the L&D room at the hospital, I had already made the comment to Ben that TJ sounds “like one of ours.”
• Sleep weight = the moment when the baby drifts off for such a solid snooze that you can instantly feel them gain 10-15 more lbs.; we’ve been trying to take advantage of this at night, choosing the moment of sleep weight to wrap him up and crawl into bed ourselves, too.
• The micro-expressions! Grumpy Old Man face. Wrinkled forehead. Smush face. The glimpses of smiles (HD loves these!). The wide eyes taking in, well, not much, I know, but still – they’re trying! And the hands by the face…Truman came out as our Thinker and Thinker poses he continues to strike.
• The look/feel/smell of him! Truman’s color is so beautiful – so glowing and healthy, and I love feeling his skin next to mine (minus the fingernails on my chest, thanks). His forehead gets a smooch before pretty much every feeding because I can’t help myself, and then I get a big whiff of baby which is, um, the best thing ever?!
• And last but not least – the exhaustion! In the last week, since Ben has gone back to school, I feel like I have lived an entire lifetime (and that’s with having help getting HD & RL to/from school!). It’s not to say that anything was horribly bad, but I am existing in a fog most mornings and cannot believe how quickly the days are piling up or how long each one seems to drag on. Would you call that the paradox of parenthood? My brain cells and vocabulary are also a little foggy these days.

So whether or not this is our last first few weeks, we are clearly enjoying our time getting to know Truman, even if there have been some growing pains (what can I say? I am a child of the 80s, as well) as we adjust to our new normal as Life as Six.