Mina’s First Week at Home

We’ve been working the last few weeks to prepare Linus for Mina’s arrival. It was all very abstract to him, of course, but we think he understood on some level. When I went to the hospital, he was very upset: suddenly Mommy and Cha were gone for two whole days. Yen came back to visit each day, but it just wasn’t the same. Still, once we came home, he seemed to adjust to the new addition fairly quickly. In fact, he’s really stepped up his help around the house. He’s always enjoyed sweeping, for instance, but now he seems to have assigned it to himself as a daily task!

Of course we still take a lot of time out to play with him individually so he doesn’t feel that absolutely everything has changed with Mina’s arrival. In the evenings in particular, Yen makes sure to spend at least half an hour playing trains with him.

Linus always admires balloons – at the store, on TV, and in books. So when Mina first came home, Yen took Linus to the store for a private little field trip, and then let him pick out a balloon for her.

Here she is! Settled in quite nicely, as you can see. This lady has been so easy (so far). She sleeps for long chunks, gets up and eats ferociously, and then looks around blinking for a while until she fades back out.

Meanwhile, Linus is overjoyed to have us both home on leave. Yen gets a total of three weeks, so we’re all just devoting every second to playing with these babies. How could we do anything else?!

Linus is so curious about his little sister, particularly her strange eating habits. He cracks up every time he sees my nipple enter her mouth, and then he stands next to me poking my breast and chuckling.

Here’s Linus testing out his old play mat to make sure it still works.

Another day, another sweeping session! He’s actually quite  good at it.

Yen is happy to spend an hour just talking with Mina. I think her cheeks have some kind of gravitational pull that sucks him in.

A few people who have daughters have told me that their girls didn’t really enjoy being swaddled. Mina certainly doesn’t mind it, and I think it’s the key to her long nighttime stretches. But during the day, she is happy to sleep all spread out like a much older baby.

Look at this adorable chubbo!

I spend an awful lot of time feeding Mina in the evening – she’s a cluster feeder. But I make a point to read him a story or play trains with him every hour. He seems less and less thrown off by Mina’s presence every day.

Here he’s peering over the side of her crib to watch her sleep.

In the middle of all of this, we got our first real snow of the season. Linus put on his new snow suit to  check it out.

He loves his suit! But he refuses to wear the boots I got to go with it. Luckily his shoes held up pretty well. We’ll keep working on the boots.

Also not a huge fan of mittens!

Linus is really excited to help whenever Mina needs a diaper change. When he sees us heading toward the changing table, he runs to push a chair over and screams until someone picks him up.

Here we all are early in the morning! You can see I’m looking a little worn, and you may be wondering about the giant bowl of fruit next to me. Sunday night I had some very heavy, sudden bleeding, and Yen had to take me to the emergency room. It was so scary! I lost a lot of blood, and some of the doctors wanted to do a transfusion. Luckily the obstetrician on duty talked them out of it, and I got to go home about six hours later. I had to take medication all the next day that made me feel really dizzy and light-headed. But the next day, I nearly felt normal again. No need to worry! But it goes to show that you have to take care of yourself and watch for little warning signs. So happy we live ten minutes from a very good emergency room.

Linus has started to make fun of me when I blow my nose by pretending to blow his. It’s too cute.

Advanced sweeping maneuver: using the dustpan too!

She’s wearing one of Linus’s old outfits. I’m so glad I saved it for her. Linus loves it when she wears it. He points to all of the animals on it, and makes a sound for each.

Meanwhile… Yen saw a video of Wayne Gretzky playing hockey with his little one-year-old grandson, and immediately ran out to buy a set of sticks for Linus to try out. Linus loves them! He just thinks the end of it is actually the handle. He’ll get there, I’m sure.

Whenever I nurse Mina, Linus brings toys over – sometimes as a kind of offering for her, and sometimes so he can play near us.

This picture really gets me. He looks like Puss-in-Boots from Shrek – all eyes and able to get anything he wants.

So, we’re all hanging in there. We’re making adjustments to our days. We’ve put Linus on an eating schedule now (instead of just letting him graze all day), and that’s helped a lot. The days slip by so quickly, I get sick thinking how quickly my time at home will end. Enjoying it now just as much as I possibly can.