Thank you DD!!!

It’s been 1 week and 2 days since Paul was born and I am just now beginning to come out of my “fog” of pain, pain killers and sleeplessness. I think the “fog” is lifting mostly because I’m running out of pain killers and have started conserving them for the night time when the pain seems to be at its worst. The fog certainly isn’t lifting because I’m getting sleep (that’s not happening) or because the pain is gone (it’s definitely better but certainly not gone!). My mom wasn’t in town for the birth (she was away on business in India and returned yesterday with some awesome gifts – more on that later); so my sister came down from Albany to watch Peter while I was in the hospital delivering Paul. That’s mostly what this post is about…A gigantic thank you to my sister for watching over a 2 year old, when she has never (to my knowledge) ever babysat any aged child in her life! I’d wager cutting your teeth on a 2 year old prepares you for any aged child! Peter, who all will agree, under normal circumstances is really a great, easy going kid. Mark and I have been lucky in that he’s not rambunctious or unwieldy. However, when both your parents disappear for 3 days and leave you in the care of an Aunt you’ve met only once when you were 3 months old doesn’t sit well at this age and causes some out of the norm behavior! There were inexplicable screaming fits, refusals to go to sleep and because I failed to tell my sister that even though Peter loves prunes not to let him eat the whole box there were giant poop diapers that exploded down his leg and all over the couch (…poor Andrea!). So unprepared was I for Andrea taking over that I didn’t explain there were certain words you avoid in order to avoid a screaming fit; words like playground, zoo, bye-bye, car, outside, popsicle…these are words you can not utter in Peter’s presence unless you plan to give him these things immediately!

But I will say it wasn’t all bad stuff, at least not from Peter’s perspective. What Peter got from his Auntie AJ was an enormously fun playmate, with way more energy than his Mom has had in the past 2 months, he got to go out everyday and do something, he played in his toy room in the basement with Andrea with such shrieks of laughter that it made me a little jealous (but oh so happy for him) that I hadn’t gotten that kind of laughter out of him lately...again, because I was so immobile. Peter also has developed his own knick name for Auntie AJ, mostly out of the inability to actually pronounce “Auntie AJ”; what comes out in the attempt to pronounce her name is “DD” – I couldn’t have made up a cuter knick name! So went the baby sitting while I was in the hospital.

When I got out of the hospital, so out of it was I after the surgery that we did not capture one single photograph of my sister with Peter or Paul…this, even now, makes me want to cry and chokes me up every time I think of it. I wish I could fix that somehow! Fly her back down tomorrow just for a photo shoot…it just hurts my heart! Andrea actually left earlier than planned and I think maybe that’s why we didn’t get around to it…I was still pretty out of it on pain killers to think of photographs. I don’t know why it was worse this time around, I had a c-section with Peter too – but wasn’t in nearly as much pain or nearly as out of it! That’s another Thank You I owe my sister! If she hadn’t taken the pictures she took we would hardly have any photos of Paul those first few days at all!!! I have some of the sweetest pictures of Peter with Paul thanks to my sis!

So: Thank You DD!! You’re the best and we’ll definitely be up soon to visit you and rectify our photo issues!!!