Together Again in Heaven: Emma's 5 Months!

Emma is a week into her fifth month, and I am just getting a chance to sit down and type up this post. With Will back at work, my free moments are even fewer and farther between than before. There are definitely more times than not where I feel like I am having an outer body experience, watching and listening to the craziness unfold around me. I call it my Happy Place, where I am able to watch myself simultaneously yell "Lucy Anne!" as she squirts a juice box all over the floor, grab the pot off the burner as the oatmeal is burning and bounce Emma up and down on my hip while holding the pacifier in her mouth and chanting "it's okay Emma, it's okay..." In this Happy Place, I am amazed that people all around the world and from the beginning of time have had more than one child. Really, this fact alone is enough to create awe and wonder in me. Maybe I'm crazy, or maybe my Happy Place is the last place I can go before I really do hit Crazy Town, but it's like I have to remove myself from the chaos around me so that I can see the humor in it. Will claims at times like this that I get a distant, glassy look in my eye, and that I do not hear a word he is saying. The fact of the matter is - I hear him, I am just unable to respond because, well, I am in my Happy Place!

With that being said, this seems like it has been a crazy month. Emma has new frustrations about being stuck in one place and I think this has added to our household's stress. She isn't content anymore to sit in her bouncer or lay on her play mat while I get stuff done. Trying to go anywhere in the mornings is like trying to round up a three ring circus that speaks a different language than you do. It is a good morning if we have all eaten breakfast by 9:30 a.m., and an even better morning if I have showered before breakfast too. It is the best morning ever if I've slipped in a workout on the elliptical and remembered to put on face moisturizer and deodorant after my shower. The brochure on Motherhood was definitely lacking some very important details when I signed up for this gig! But the craziest part about my experience with Motherhood so far, is that I wouldn't go back to my days of free time for the world. I love being Luke, Lucy and Emma's mom and the truly awe inspiring thing is that even with all the chaos, I still find moments throughout the day to have a different outer body experience - when I look at my two beautiful girls who are happy and content (for the moment) and think, wow, how did I get so lucky to be their mom? Then I remind myself to soak it in, as in the next minute or so, someone will be crying and the craziness will start all over again.

Emma continues to get stronger and doesn't understand that she is still unable to move on her own. Most times when we hold her now, she will throw her body towards the ground or an object that looks interesting, full expecting to be able to propel her body without our support. When she realizes she cannot in fact walk, crawl or support herself for more than a minute on her own she gets frustrated and starts crying. Poor girl - one of these days she will be able to do all of these things, but until then, it is as if she is trapped inside a body that just doesn't do what her mind is telling it to do. Here Emma is below trying to crawl and getting mad.

Emma sits on her own now, which does help her frustration a little bit. She can also easily roll from her tummy to her back this month too, which somewhat helps her move to what she wants.

Because of her uncanny ability to throw her body in the direction she wants to go, we are wondering if her days in the bouncer are limited. As we were getting ready to sit down to dinner the other night, we found Emma helping herself to the mustard. Maybe she will like mustard as much as Lucy.

I continue to fall deeper in love with this little girl, and as I mentioned earlier, cannot imagine my life without her in it. She is such a joy to be around when all her needs have been met! Here she is below, getting her need for attention met as we went for a walk downtown a couple of weeks ago.

She rarely stays long in the expensive double stroller we invested in. It kind of makes me a bit regretful to think what we spent on this stroller when 80% of the time only one child is in it. But on the occasions both girls are content to sit in it, it does make for some glorious walks! Lately, Lucy lets Emma play with her toes which does buy us some time.

Speaking of Lucy and Emma. The other day we were packing the kids up in the car when Lucy kept ranting "Where's my sticker?" over and over again. I told her in so many words or less, "For the love of God - get in your car seat and stop ping-ponging around the backseat of the car!" Finally, she settled down and got in her car seat. No sooner was the car backed out of the garage when Emma started seriously choking. I jumped out, opened Emma's door, got her out of her car seat and thumped her on the back. She recovered quickly, but I never did find out what caused her to choke like that. Until the next day when I was changing Emma's diaper. There, slightly larger than a quarter was a completely intact sticker of a fairy. I called Lucy in and showed her the contents of the diaper. Her response? "My sticker!" I had to swat her hand away as she reached for it. How that sticker made it through completely intact can only be the working of a fairy - or as we are now calling it, the poop fairy. We then had a nice little chat about what we can and cannot feed to Emma.

Up until this past month, we have been swaddling Emma with her arms wrapped up and putting her to sleep on her back. The other day she woke up crying which was unlike her. She usually wakes up and happily chats to herself for a couple of minutes before the crying begins. So I ran upstairs to her room and found her face smashed into her pacifier laying on her stomach. She must have rolled over and then was unable to roll back as she didn't have use of her arms being wrapped up like a burrito. The fact that she was able to roll from her back to her stomach without the use of her arms to begin with was surprising, but for fear of night time suffocation, we have been swaddling her with arms free now. She hasn't been sleeping as good because her arms sometimes startle her awake, but at least I don't have to worry about her suffocating. The good news is that she is able to put her pacifier back in her mouth when it falls out, now that her arms are free so that evens out the startling I guess.