"Having 2 kids is not twice as hard..."

"... It is exponentially more difficult!" as quoted from my dear friend Jessalyn, proud mommy of two.

My handsome man! 

Jennie's little brother, Jacob William, was born 10 days early on Saturday, December 24th, at 1:06 am. Well, right off the bat I suppose he wanted to let us know that he was in charge, and had a plan of his own! 10 days early? Well, jokes on you little man - you're stuck with a Christmas Eve birthday forever now! Poor dude...

Sporting her "Big Sister" shirt and posing with her little bro

We brought Jacob home on Christmas afternoon. The next few days were full of chaos. Between trying to care for a newborn, deal with a super overtired and sick two year old big sister (Jennie was coming down with a nasty cough/cold starting on the 25th) and juggling Christmas, it was a bit of a blur. The volume of gifts pouring into the house from Santa and friends and relatives was a bit overwhelming. Everyone was so generous - its just unfortunate we didn't get a storage unit as one of our gifts, hehe. Thank goodness for my mom and mother-in-law for coming over in the following days and helping out! I was able to get the tree put away and sort through all the gifts and new items and trash in a reasonable amount of time. Taking care of a new baby and getting settled in is sooo much easier when your house doesn't look like a tornado hit it! Over all, we had a wonderful Christmas (with the best surprise gift ever!). However, I don't think we will ever be able to convince Jennie that Santa does not bring babies for Christmas.

In the next few weeks to come, we attempted to settle into a groove. Jennie started napping again, and she called off her food strike. That made things a bit easier! Jacob was a piece of cake - slept a lot (during the day) as all new babies do, and ate like a champ. By January 4th, he was already 6 lbs, 11 oz! I wasn't getting much sleep, but hey, that's expected. I didn't get much sleep in the last 3 months of my pregnancy either, so I was used to it by then. Jacob was 1 1/2 weeks old when he came down with Jennie's cold. We thought we were in the clear, but I guess some things are unavoidable. We tried so hard to keep the germs away. Little did we know that a cough and cold was the least of our worries for little Jacob's first month of life....

A tight squeeze for the whole fam in my Corolla!

I will say that getting out of the house with two kids is daunting when you aren't used to it. It was even more crazy trying to pack them up last minute by myself to go to Nana's for the day! Justin quite suddenly came down with a stomach bug before Jacob was 2 weeks old. So Jennie, Jacob and I evacuated for the day to let him recover and to escape the germs. It was madness getting out the door, but worth it. No one else caught the bug.

Resting up the night before surgery
and looking so tiny in the big hospital crib

Just as Jake was starting to recover from his cold, he started having increasing amounts of puking. We thought at first that his belly was upset from all the mucus draining out, but the amount of puking increased steadily each day. After two and a half days of lots of puke, he was getting dehydrated and I had to take him to the ER. We went to Children's Hospital (thank goodness!) where he was pretty quickly diagnosed with hypertrophic pyloric stenosis. It turns out his pyloric muscle between the stomach and small intestine was over developed and not letting food pass through to be digested. It is a problem babies are born with, but it takes about 2-6 weeks for the muscle to get strong enough to basically close up and cause vomiting. Luckily, it was caught early and the surgical fix is fairly noninvasive. Once healed, the problem goes away without future complications. But really, no one can really be prepared to hear that their newborn has to go into surgery! That was pretty tough to handle. My amazing in-laws had Jennie for the whole weekend and took great care of her. It was so helpful to have Justin at the hospital with me.

Snuggling with Daddy post-surgery,
all hooked up to the monitors

We finally got home from the hospital on Tuesday morning. Thankfully (again!) my mother and step-dad were at my house, and stayed through Thursday morning. The out pouring of support and  prayers from family and friends was truly amazing. We had dinners made for us and everything! I truly believe everyone's prayers helped Jacob get better - y'all are so great!

Unbelievably, I got sick on Tuesday night. I guess looking back, it wasn't all that unbelievable.... I hadn't slept more than 2 hours a night since Wednesday the week before (with Jacob puking all night, there wasn't much sleep - and sleeping at the hospital was impossible). Also, I was beyond stressed emotionally and physically. So, I felt like death for about 6 hours - no fever, just non-stop yacking...then woke up feeling totally fine! Not sure if I ate something bad, purely a stress reaction, or what, but it was short lived and again it was not passed to any one else.

All in all, I think it's safe to say we have not had a "typical" beginning as parents of two. The last three days have been "normal" and I am hoping for lots more boring days ahead. I just want to deal with typical mom-of-two problems like sibling jealousy and how to juggle bath time. I also hope and pray that it is "all down hill from here" for poor Jacob! He is recovering great - eating like crazy, and no vomiting. It is exhausting to have to feed him so often, but hey, he has some catching up to do - and I am more than happy to nourish my little man as often as he wants! Grow, Jacob, grow!

When Mom is busy, Jacob will settle for sucking on Daddy's nose! hahaha

I have no illusions that being a mom of two is going to be easy, but this "initiation" into motherhood-of-two has really been quite the adventure. I feel like I've been hazed, haha. I think that figuring out how to get both kids to the grocery store, and manage a newborn during Jennie's playgroup will be a breeze compared to the last few weeks - but who knows? I am sure these two love-bugs have loads more surprises for me. I am just hoping for a few more pleasant surprises and to catch a few breaks in the future weeks to come - I mean, come on, I've earned it, right? =) Whatever the future holds, I know for sure we'll make it just fine. After all, I have two beautiful, amazing children, a supportive, loving husband, and an amazing family and network of friends to help along the way.