You can't choose your family...

This has been a thorn in my side for the past 10 days...and I apologize in advance, but I'm going to be a little blue in my language today.

My parents drove 1100 miles to see their new granddaughter and help us take care of Peanut while Juice was in the hospital. My mom took time away from her business, and my dad, well, he took time away from fishing, but still, they drove down from Illinois.

Juice's father and middle brother came to visit while she was in the hospital, but her younger brother didn't visit until after we got home, and we had to take Peach to see her oldest brother at work.

We have yet to see any of our nieces/nephews or sisters in law.

At least Juice's immediate family is trying, but those guys, well, they just married them some bitches now.

One sister in law has no excuse...she doesn't work, she doesn't do jack shit, but she can't bring her offspring and her happy ass to come see us?

The other sister in law, the one whose family we are most close with, has not so much as called because of something Juice said offhand about her acting like a bitch when she came for Peanut's birthday party. She came to our house, sat here like she was mad at the world, didn't say crap to anyone, and Juice called her on it.

We're heading up to Illinois in about a week, and I'll bet money that relatives who live a thousand miles from us will see her before some of her family that lives in town.

And that's just fucked up.

In which I talk about sleep deprivation

Juice and I were so fortunate with Peanut. She was such a good baby, and when we realized that the whole getting up every three hours to feed her was just some fucked up thing people who have crabby babies came up with to torture those of us who have non-crabby babies, we were fine. That happened when she was two weeks old, and throughout her first few months, we were very happy. She slept through the night right away once we figured out the scam, and we went on with our lives.

I am now a firm believer in babies being on a schedule. We've seen literature recently that says to just let them eat when they want to eat, and do what they want to do, and if they want to steal your car when they're three months old, and smoke crack, then you should just let them do that because if you try to control you kids' lives in any way, they'll turn into responsible, productive citizens of society, and we can't have any of THAT happening.

And if you can't tell from my random babbling, I'm running on not a whole lot of sleep this week.

Yesterday, Peach woke up at 3 AM, which has been typical since we got her home, but then once she had eaten, decided it was party time. Juice let me sleep in since I'd been up with her the night before, but when she came in at 7:30 still trying to get Peach to settle down (and crying herself), I had to step in.

Juice has been really good about breastfeeding Peach. With Peanut, she really struggled to produce enough milk, and we ended up supplementing with formula a lot, which I think helped Peanut sleep through the night. Right now, we have a regular dairy farm in our refrigerator. Juice has enough excess milk for 2-3 days of feedings, but instead of using the excess at night, she's been breastfeeding, which takes longer, and since breast milk is thinner than formula, babies need to be fed more often.

Yesterday, we decided two things: 1) we needed to keep Peach awake in the evening after we ate dinner, and not let her sleep too long and 2) we were going to bottle feed her at night, and supplement her with a little bit of formula right before we went to bed.

The result (and God, I hope I'm not jinxing this by putting it in writing): 6 glorious hours of uninterrupted sleep last night. We went to bed before Letterman was done, and woke up as Good Morning San Antonio was starting.

We've been supplementing ourselves by napping when the kids are napping during the day, so we're not going stark raving mad, but I hope that this overnight thing keeps up, especially since I start back to work next week. It's only for a week, then I'm off again for two weeks, but it's going to be hard to adjust for both of us.

Just Peachy

Meet our new little girl.



Peach, 7 lbs, 1 oz, 19 3/4 inches.

Today is the day

Juice and I are in the hospital awaiting the arrival of Peach in a couple of hours. And the hospital has free wireless! Score!

One week

Today is our four year anniversary.

One month ago, Peanut turned 3.

One week from today will be the birth of our second child.

Five years ago this month, we moved back to Texas.

Why in the hell we decide to do everything during the hottest part of the year is beyond me.

Everything is coming together this week. We went to a carpet store and found in stock carpet which is being installed as I type this. Peanut is moved into her new room, and Peach's room has been painted. We'll go get her a new crib this weekend, thanks to a crib recall. We'll also be getting Peanut a new bed later today or tomorrow.

My parents arrive next week, and will take care of Peanut for us while Juice is in the hospital. It will be a much different experience than last time. We'll go in at 10:30 Thursday morning and will have a child in our arms by 1 PM. With Peanut, Juice was in labor over 12 hours before they decided to do a c-section on her.

I will be done with work on Wednesday and will have a few weeks to spend at home with my wife and new baby. We're very excited to meet her, but a little nervous about how Peanut is going to take all of this.

Still kickin'

Whoa...forgot about this for a while.

Things have been a little busy around work. I've taken on a new position, and it's become all-consuming over the past couple of weeks. That, combined with working a summer schedule consisting of 10-hour work days, four days a week, has taken it's toll on my posting.

To be quite honest, it's taken a toll on everything in my online life. I used to be vigilant about checking Google Reader on a daily basis to catch up on my fun blogs and all of the professional ones I keep track of, and I haven't opened that up in more than a week.

My twitter account has remained silent until today, when I decided to see what everyone was up to and was promptly reminded that everyone who's anyone in the Ed. Tech. world is in Washington DC this week at the National Educational Computing Conference. I grew tired very quickly of reading about all of the sessions and things that everyone is learning, so I closed it down and spent my afternoon working again at my new job.

Now I find myself on the brink of a long weekend. I have the day off tomorrow, giving me a 4-day weekend, but it's fixing to be very busy, too. We still need to get the "spare" bedroom cleaned up and Peanut moved into it. That means taking out a queen sized bed and a 32" TV and putting them somewhere. The bed will go to storage, but who knows where that TV is going. We also want to get carpet picked out for the bedrooms, but we've resigned ourselves to the fact that we've waited too long and it won't be installed until our new little Peach arrives.

And with that, I think I've finally come up with her super blog name. Peach. And Peanut. And Juice...I wonder why I've chosen food as the names for everyone close in my life?

Here's a little picture of what we did last weekend...and this, by the way, is how I would love to spend every single evening during the summer, but it would require us moving and me having a much larger income.



Ya'll have a safe Independence Day.