6 Weeks - Feeling like me

Today Clara turns 6 weeks old and all of a sudden I feel a lot more like me.  This morning Clara woke up at 6 something to nurse.  I nursed her and put her back down, I then showered, dried my hair (that is a big deal), and even put on some cover stick to try to cover the lovely dark circles under my eyes.  I then had some me time to check email and whatnot before Gray woke up.  I am pretty sure I am at the point where I don't really remember what it was like to only have 1 child.  Of course, I do remember being able to get places easier and things like that, but I don't really remember what it felt like.  To further explain my difficulty getting places let me tell you about this morning.  When Gray woke up I made him breakfast and while he was eating and Clara was still asleep I decided I would get dressed, brush my teeth, etc to get myself ready to go to our playdate.  I was all dressed when Clara woke up.  Gray was still eating breakfast (he is a REALLY slow eater) so I got Clara up and was getting her changed for the day and she decided to spit up all over herself and my leg.  While I was trying to get her spit up clothes off of her she spit up again, this time on my shirt.  So much for me getting myself dressed ahead of time.  By this time Gray is wanting to get out of his high chair, I have Clara mostly undressed and am walking around with spit up on my leg and my shoulder.  Once I had Clara where I could lay her down to find her new clothes I decided to go ahead and get Gray out of his high chair and dressed and my clothes changed.  I then went back to Clara to finish getting her dressed.  At this point Gray grabbed his big bag of blocks.  I told him we were about to leave and so not to pour those out, of course he immediately poured them out.  This lead to 30 minutes of me telling him we were not going until he picked up the blocks because he needed to listen to mama when she said not to pour them out.  Eventually he picked them up and we went to our play date.  We got there close to 10 when I had planned to get there closer to 9, but at least we made it :). 

How each of the little loves is doing:
Clara - She had her 2nd orthopedic doctor appointment Wednesday, December 15.  The doctor seemed to think that her hip was improving nicely.  He said we needed to continue to keep her brace on her 23 out of 24 hours a day until the first of the year.  At that point we can slowly start weaning her off of it.  She should be completely out of it by mid February when we have another doctor appointment with him.  At that point, if he likes how she is doing she will be done with the brace.  He will most likely still have to see her at about 6 months and 1 year, but only to check her hip.  I pray that in February everything will be fixed.  I really don't like her having to wear that brace, but I know it is best since it should keep her from having to have surgery. 
Clara has grown a good bit already.  She is now wearing 0-3 month clothes.  This makes me kinda sad because she has a lot of really cute newborn clothes that she barely wore.  I guess we will have to have another girl so she can get some use out of them :) hehe
Clara is also becoming less and less gassy.  This is an answer to several prayers.  She seems to only been complaining about her belly hurting in the evenings now.  And if I undo her brace for her hour of free time then she is able to wiggle her legs around enough to work the gas out.  I haven't even had to give her any gas medicine in the last several days.  I sure hope that continues.

Gray - He is really an adorable little boy and I love him dearly, but he is also very stubborn sometimes (I have no idea where he gets that from ...hehe).  If he doesn't fall asleep soon then this will be the 3rd day in a row where he fought sleep for more than 2 hours before falling asleep.  This is NOT because he is not tired, it is because he will do whatever it takes to not fall asleep.  Two days ago I go in there when he starts screaming like he is in pain and he has flipped his shirt over his head or something and it is now wrapped tightly around his arm.  Another day he bit (yes I said bit) his own finger to stay awake.  Most of the time he just sings/ wiggles/ yells to stay awake, but the ones that cause him pain are just ridiculous. 
He is now 24 1/2 pounds.  This amazes me.  I am not sure when he got to be so big.  I think it must have been when I was in the hospital having Clara.  He just had his hair cut for the 5th or 6th time since his 1st birthday (less than 11 months ago). 
As always, Gray has been constantly learning new things.  He can count to 11 pretty reliably.  He can identify numbers 0-9.  He can identify some of his capital letters.  He just started being able to spell his name, but this is by no means something he does every time I ask. (Remember he is stubborn).  He has also continued to learn sign language.  His signing vocabulary is huge at this point.  I keep meaning to get a count of how many words he can sign, but so far haven't.  I will do my best to get that soon though.  I hope to start a very Gray friendly version of school in January.  I am tailoring it to his abilities and his attention span.  We will see how that goes.  We are going to be working on things like letters, writing (he is getting some big pencils in his stocking), numbers 1-20, reviewing colors, and shapes.  We will be doing a good many fine motor and art activities.  We will also be working on pre-reading skills.  This includes things like same/different, smaller/bigger, long/short, belongs/does not belong, up/down, etc.  I will be posting about how that is going as we get into it.  Oh and I hope to get a hold of the Muzzy Spanish set.  This is a highly rated language teaching program for children.  I really really want it for him.  So if anyone wants to buy it for him then by all means do :) hehehe.  I wish I had thought of this before everyone had decided what they were getting him for Christmas. 


I can not think of anything else to add at this time.  Here are some pictures from the last couple of weeks.

My beautiful little girl!

Jax loves her

Too busy to look at the camera

Kisses!

Saying cheese

More cheesing

His introduction to Nutella

All swaddled up

With Aunt Jenny

Wearing her hat from Amy

Pretty sure Gray is going to be a builder when he grows up!

My little ham

With her Daddy

Mr. Jealous needed his picture taken also