Life With Canaan: 16 Weeks In

I’m going to shower you with baby photos and tell you alllllll about the last few weeks! Ready? 

Ok, I’m beginning to lose count in weeks because I have reverted to saying “3 and a half months” when people ask. But, we are hitting 16 weeks on Monday. These last few weeks have flown by in a crazy way, and we’ve learned just what it’s like to travel with an infant.

We have taken 3 big trips now: one 5 hour road trip to Northwest Arkansas, one 10 hour road trip to Chicago and one flight to Denver. Let me tell you, flying with an infant is SO much easier than driving.

Here’s what you don’t think about when you decide to travel with a baby: can you hold them as much as they like to be held? If the answer is no, then you’ll run into some unhappiness along the way, no avoiding it.

With road tripping, we found that he was able to sleep for the first few hours of each trip, but never for the whole thing (we didn’t expect him to). So after he woke up and realized that you couldn’t hold him, just hold his hand, he was pisssssedddd. So I spent the rest of each road trip in the back seat next to him with a huge smile plastered on my face. Needless to say, when we got to where we were going, my face hurt.

Not to mention I seem to have a baby that get’s way too distracted to eat well when we’re doing new things. So he became picky when we were driving and ended up leaving me in some major pain in the chestular area. Yikes.

BUT overall, he was really a good traveler. We didn’t have high expectations, and he certainly didn’t scream the whole time, so we were pleased.

Flying was totally not as bad as I thought it would be! Because you can hold your baby while flying, he was really pleased and his normal, cheery self the whole time. I was shocked and so relieved that he ended up sleeping through both flights after nursing during takeoff. High fives.

We walked around Denver with him in the Ergo and he was great the whole weekend! The weather swung from 30 and snowing to 75 and sunny, so we got pictures of him in his adorable snow suit [from The Gap] and winter hat, then had him stripped down in nothing but a onesie by the time we left. Travel tip: bring lots of plain onesies you don’t care about, because it’s easier to throw the blow-out ones away than carry them home in a nasty plastic bag!

So, during the last few weeks, Canaan has met and hung out with his grandparents on both of our sides, his GREAT grandparents (he’s met 5 so far!) and so many people that love him! I’ve had friends come stay and visit (Rachel, Jacki, Heather THANK YOU), and my mom come stay for awhile too, which has helped me more than they could ever know.

When you live near none of your family or old friends, you never realize how isolated you are until you are home all day with a baby and exhausted. Having someone here helps me mentally and physically. It’s not just help making dinner or sweeping my floors, but I truly miss having someone to watch a chick-flick with during the day or to take a walk with and just vent.

My man cub is just blowing my mind everyday. He loves to sit next to me in his pillow or lay on the floor on a blanket and just talk and talk and talk. Or make spitting noises with his lips and laugh. He truly is talking to me, looking me right in the eyes and babbling in conversational tones. It’s adorable.

He also loves giving me kisses! He shakes his open mouth around over my cheek then bursts into a grin because he’s so happy. I die.

And he’s still sleeping through the night…most nights. Every time I think we’ve got the 6am wakeup in the bag, he throws a fast one at me and decides to wake up at 3am just to make sure I’m there. I think he’s just ensuring that I’ll never make him sleep in his crib at night because I don’t want to run around the house at 3am (so he’s still sleeping in his bassinet next to our bed at night, but in his crib during the day).

Our next battle is bottles. I decided that maybe my husband and I might want to go on a date some day, so we need to get him used to drinking from a bottle every now and then. Well, easier said than done! I’m sure one day he’ll realize I’m not handing him a ticking time bomb, that it’s just a bottle and not worth screaming at, but for now, he seems terrified of it and so confused as to why he can’t be ripping my shirt off in that moment. It’s so weird, because people tend to terrify you with “if your baby isn’t good at breastfeeding…” but they never seem to mention “if your baby doesn’t want to ever take a bottle…” 

And besides that, at the moment I’m personally dealing with all of the postpartum hormone swings. It’s craziness. My hair is falling out by the handfuls, my skin isn’t looking so glow-y and clear anymore and I’m back to crying over feeling like a fluff ball. I am going to stroller bootcamps at least twice a week, doing yoga in my living room and walking a ton and eating my weight in bananas and oatmeal, so I guess patience is just the key here. I think all of my patience has been reserved for my kiddo. I seriously have so much patience for him (sure baby, talk to me for an hour, I’ll listen) but for me, I have none. Just another mental note of something to be conscious of.

And that’s about it! Well, not really, but that’s all I’m sure you’ll find remotely interesting at the moment. But feel free to ask me any questions in the comments if you can think of anything I left out! Also, for baby glimpses and all sorts of stuff, follow me on Snapchat, username mking3000!