Lux et umbra vicissum…

light and shadow by turn…

Lux et umbra vicissum… header image 2

The New Normal

December 5th, 2005 · No Comments

We’re getting there. Joel finally went back to work today after working from home for a few months. So far I’ve survived. 🙂 The way we worked it out this morning, Joel worked for an hour from home, then drove Alexis to preschool and went on into work. That way I don’t have to get all three girls ready to get out the door in time to get Alexis to preschool, and Joel misses most of the rush hour traffic. It worked out pretty well, so I think we’ll be following that pattern for a while. Once the baby isn’t nursing so often it’ll be easier for me to manage things in the morning.

Charis already sleeps beautifully at night, so that’s a blessing. She slept from 10:30 last night to almost 6:00 this morning. My alarm was set for 6, so it was good timing. And she doesn’t even need a binky to fall asleep like Branwen used to. 🙂

Oh, and I think both of her tear ducts have opened up now, so it looks like we may be able to avoid that surgery for her. That’s very nice. It wasn’t the most pleasant experience we went through with Alexis.

Alexis is loving preschool. She’s learned to write all of her letters now, though she has a little trouble with some of them. (“M” looks like a couple of hills with a valley in the middle, and “Z” sometimes gets turned backwards and looks like an “S”.) She’s reading very well… she can read letters to me and has no trouble with pretty much any of the books on the kids’ bookshelf in our living room. She even started reading our Bible Study book to me one day. She had no idea what the author meant by some of the things he said, but she read the words anyway. 🙂 I’ve started teaching her to play the piano, too, and she’s loving it. She bounces up and down on the bench as I try to show her how to hold her hand, etc. She’s been reminding me that I need to let her practice every day.

Branwen wants to do everything Alexis does, and she gets upset when she can’t. She and Alexis both love baby Charis, but I think Branwen is suffering a bit from the fairly natural jealousy that comes with suddenly having your parents’ attention divided. At least she has Alexis to play with. She isn’t having as much trouble dealing with the situation as Alexis did when she was 2. Mostly she’s fussing more than usual. She’ll stand in front of me sometimes when I’m nursing the baby and cry. “I want my mommy!” she’ll say. Thank goodness she doesn’t do it every time I nurse!

Charis is giving us some beautiful smiles now, and she’s trying to coo though the noises she manages so far are usually pretty gutteral. She was strong from birth, and she already has very good head control. When it comes right down to it, she’s a fairly easy baby. We’ll see if she gets more difficult when she has more awake time during the day. 🙂

Time to go watch the snow with Alexis. She’s loves quality time with her parents and, what with the new baby needing attention fairly often, she doesn’t get it as much as she used to. I’m just thankful she’s a reasonably laid-back kid. In some ways at least. 🙂

Maybe I’ll be able to blog again occasionally now. I want to post an update about Vedat, too. Things are all lined up on this end, but we’re still trying to get his papers in order on the other side. More on that later…

Tags: Drivel