…Starting with our big news for those of you who don’t know. Levi’s going to be a big brother. And no, we aren’t adopting another pet. Basically we defied certain aspects of nature and are now expecting kid #2 almost exactly one year after Levi’s original due date (2/18/08 vs. 2/21/07). It’s crazy, but we’re really excited nonetheless. We’re well on our way to those 4 kids after all. The second crib is already on its way, and we’re planning to shoe-horn #2 into the same nursery with #1. What a sad sign – we’ve already started referring to them by number.

I’m a little more tired and sickly this time around, but otherwise things seem to be good. I do think it’s true that you show earlier your second time around. I’m only a little over 2 months along and am already wearing maternity gear. Even last time I started showing early, but not quite like this.

This time they’re treating me as high risk because of our history, so that means I’m guaranteed lots of sonos and specialists. Bring it on – I’m all about it. Hopefully we won’t have any placenta previa, NICU, stroke, blood clotting disorders, apnea etc., although I’d be totally okay going into labor a little early again. That was kinda nice.

Next update: as I’ve lamented in previous blogs, bedtime seems to bring a myriad of ailments for Levi. I truly believed he didn’t feel well b/c he’s still experiencing various digestive difficulties that I probably shouldn’t describe in detail. Plus, we know he’s teething, which purportedly creates a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde effect on even the most placid young one. And at the end of the day, babies are tired and don’t have much fuse (especially when they’re poor nappers, like Levi). He’s not much of a fusser so it’s totally out of character for him to cry simply because he’s upset.

Well, one night about a week ago, it got really bad. We had already dosed the poor kid up with Mylicon, Tylenol, and were about to give him a chaser of infant Orajel when Brad finally made a breakthrough discovery. He could completely resolve all of Levi’s tumult by simply leaving the nursery. In the den or media room with us, Levi’s misery was completely and mysteriously eradicated. Upon returning to the nursery, apparent pain and suffering ensued. While holding Levi in perfect calm, Brad astutely observed, “You know what I think? I think he’s mad because he doesn’t want to go to bed.” Yep. Turns out that little booger has been taking us for a ride, for no telling how long.

As Brad later commented, Levi might be sophisticated enough to manipulate his parents like the saps that we are, but he isn’t cunning enough (yet) to fake it once he gets his way, to ensure we don’t catch on. The little guy couldn’t hide his elation and contentment at the fact that he “won.” Da ha. The tide has shifted, and the score went from Levi: 427, Parents:0 to Levi: 427, Parents: 1. How pathetic that a simple victory against an infant took so long, yet yields such a sense of pride. Let me tell you – this has officially spawned a new phase in the Birchfield bedtime routine. Our precious little almost-6-month-old got his first “stern talking-to,” which actually yielded a stop to his little tantrum, at least that night.

Things are getting a little better… slowly. We haven’t fully embraced any cry-it-out methods yet, but the no-cry recommendations (and/or the passing of time) seem to be helping a bit. Like a few nights ago – he fell asleep at 9 after 30 minutes of resistance, and slept until a 4 am feeding. Then, he awoke around 6-something (which is when we always move him to his swing…. I know, you don’t even have to tell me…), but after that he slept until 8:45! That’s been his best night yet. We’ll get there.

Last night I emailed a bunch of you the following request:

Okay – I’m entering Levi and myself into a photo contest for Similac. The instructions were to send a photo showing my favorite “mom job,” along with a brief caption that explains why it’s the one job you wouldn’t trade for anything. The deadline to enter is tomorrow, so please write me back ASAP if you want me to consider your vote.

So here’s the caption:

Our 4-month-old son had an intrauterine stroke, so my favorite and most important mom job is to feed his growing brain, whether by making his environment stimulating, reading and chatting with him, or feeding him lots of DHA and ARA. As you can see, he likes it too!

Now, please help me decide which photo to use. I’m trying to choose between the two that are attached. Trade-off: Levi’s cute smile vs. better angle of the nursery. Don’t worry – my original photos aren’t as blurry as these – I just shrunk them down pretty far for emailing to you.

Thanks to all of you for the great response! The results are in, and the winner is…… number one (with Levi smiling really big). So that’s the one I entered. Obviously the odds are slim that I will ever hear back from them, but if I do, you guys will be the first to know!

First of all, let me apologize for my lack of blogging lately. Many of you have asked what is up with Levi’s potential craniosynostosis. Thankfully, the x-rays came back normal, so everything looks great! No further tests, and best of all no surgery. Many other things have happened in the past few weeks that are worthy of at least a paragraph, but we have been SO busy! I will try to get back and cover some lost ground when I have time, but in the meantime, I’ll at least give scoop on recent events.

Let’s start with the past few days, which have been a big weekend for our little man. What is it about holiday weekends that makes them even more busy than usual? It’s only one extra day, but for some reason we hear “long weekend” and think we can cram in four days’ worth of extra activities or something. I got half the day off on Friday, so my mom came up and we dragged Levi around on our errands all afternoon, capping off with his maiden voyage to Wal-Mart. He did great. He didn’t really take naps like I hoped he would, but he just sat there silently watching all the goings-on the whole time.

Saturday Levi officially turned four months old. To celebrate, we shoe-horned the whole gang (including both dogs, their crates, the pack & play, and about 15 bags of miscellaneous gear and supplies) into the van and took him on his first road trip to Cleburne, complete with Beatles background music. We were heading to the annual Birchfield family reunion, originally intended to be an outdoor event at Hulen Park. Since the previous days had brought a deluge of rain, they moved it to “the annex” of Brad’s hometown church as backup. Tragically, Marilyn walked into the annex that morning to discover that the roof had completely collapsed under the weight of all that rain. It literally looked like a tornado had hit it. So, we relocated to a family-owned restaurant in Godley instead, where we ate barbecue and did some serious Bingo-playing. I won some dominoes.

After the reunion, we went back to Nonna’s where Levi and his cousin Jordan (Brad’s sister’s daughter who’s 3 1/2) had some bonding time. Levi really loves her. He’s always fascinated when he sees someone his size, but he was especially interested in Jordan. He was smiling to beat the band and just having a good old time.

Saturday was Levi’s first time to spend the night at Nonna’s. She and our friend Lora watched him for awhile while his daddy and I went to a wedding (one of the Stewart family weddings, which are always fabulous). Apparently he was at the end of his rope. Not only was he wiped out, but he also had one of those awful tummy aches. Poor Nonna and Lora did a great job soothing him but apparently he made them really work for it. We came home just in time to give him a bath and put him down for the night.

Sunday was Levi’s first visit to Brad’s hometown church. By this point in the weekend, he was understandably tired and a little cranky, but he did pretty well overall. We always measure how well Levi does in terms of minutes he can stay in the auditorium. I’m proud to report he went for about 45 minutes – a rare feat! Lots of dear friends got to meet him for the first time after service let out. The finale was lunch at Buffet City followed by a visit to our friends the Browns (whose son Parker was 1 month old yesterday), after which we started packing and headed back home.

This morning, we went on a charity tour of homes in Frisco. Levi did great again – he watched intently as though he was every bit as interested in the homes as we were. We successfully avoided any rain – the day’s downpour started literally as we were driving off to leave in the van. So now, that leaves us with just enough time to get started on some long-overdue cleaning on our own abode.

First of all, Happy Mother’s Day to all you moms out there!

This has been a big weekend for us. Friday night, Brad finished his last final of the semester, thus also his second year of law school. It’s hard to believe he’s already 2/3 done! I hired somebody to mow the lawn, as congratulations for this milestone and so he wouldn’t have anything hanging over his head this weekend. He starts his first of two summer clerkships at Baker Botts tomorrow.

Yesterday, I hosted my annual tea party and luncheon for the family ladies, which was my first post-Levi event. It was a blast, as always. We sat around, ate like queens, shared family tales, laughed a lot, and everyone got a chance to coo over Levi (and Brad and I got a little break!). Plus I got to use my mother’s day gift, a cool new camera that fits perfectly in my purse.

My mom cleaned all the dishes for us (thanks Mom!) and then she and my dad took us to dinner to celebrate the ending of Brad’s second year of law school. It was great. And Levi slept the whole time, which is totally unlike him since he usually resists sleep for fear of missing one iota of fun.

Then today was my first mother’s day. It still hasn’t sunk in that the label “mother” applies to me. It probably won’t until I have at least a couple of ankle-biters who refer to me as “Mom.” Nonetheless, today was a very indulgent day, which my thoughtful husband made utterly ideal. Brad usually takes the lion’s share of middle of the night tasks anyway, but he took full duty last night so I could have an uninterrupted night of sleep. He got me a donut & sausage roll on the way to church this morning. Church was great. Levi behaved better than ever – we were in the auditorium for a full 20 minutes! Then as we always do, we went to the store on the way home from church. (It’s always best to take advantage of opportunities like that when Levi is already dressed, out of the house, and groggy.)

Upon returning home, Brad sent me to bed for a nap (which I didn’t resist) while he cooked us a lunch of steak & lobster tail – yum! Afterward, we had chocolate-covered strawberries for dessert, and I got to take ANOTHER nap!!! What a wonderful day. I can’t imagine how it could’ve possibly been any better. Thanks for the royal treatment, Babe!

Sorry folks… I know I’ve fallen off the blogging wagon for the past week or so. There has been a flurry of activity here in the barnyard lately, which has precluded many other activities including this. Work’s been busy, I’ve been trying to get our new nanny up to speed (I’ll tell you about that later), I’ve been getting ready to host my first official post-Levi bash on Saturday (my annual family brunch and tea party – so fun) and Brad has been going through finals (his last one is tomorrow night, and then he’ll officially be 2/3 done with law school!!! YAY!).

Although I have many, many things to update you guys on, such as Levi’s newly acquired rolling over skills and the results of his last neurologist appointment, I think I should probably choose to sleep tonight instead. But, I will leave you with a funny story that was sent to me by my friend Amanda. She said she could envision this happening in our household sometime down the road. Obviously she knows our many hooligans very well!

The Ellen Show was on and she read this submission to a contest from a viewer:

So, we had this great 10 year old cat named Jack who just recently died. Jack was a great cat and the kids would carry him around and sit on him and nothing ever bothered him. He used to hang out and nap all day long on this mat in our bathroom.

Well, we have 3 kids and at the time of this story they were 4 years old, 3 years old and 1 year old. The middle one is Eli. Eli really loves chapstick. LOVES IT. He kept asking to use my chapstick and then losing it. So finally one day I showed him where in the bathroom I keep my chapstick and how he could use it whenever he wanted to but he needed to put it right back in the drawer when he was done.

Last year on Mother’s Day, we were having the typical rush around and try to get ready for Church with everyone crying and carrying on. My two boys are fighting over the toy in the cereal box. I am trying to nurse my little one at the same time I am putting on my make-up. Everything is a mess and everyone has long forgotten that this is a wonderful day to honor me and the amazing job that is motherhood.

We finally have the older one and the baby loaded in the car and I am looking for Eli. I have searched everywhere and I finally round the corner to go into the bathroom. And there was Eli. He was applying my chapstick very carefully to Jack’s . . . rear end. Eli looked right into my eyes and said “chapped.” Now if you have a cat, you know that he is right–their little butts do look pretty chapped. And, frankly, Jack didn’t seem to mind.

And the only question to really ask at that point was whether it was the FIRST time Eli had done that to the cat’s behind or the hundredth.

And THAT is my favorite Mother’s Day moment ever because it reminds us that no matter how hard we try to civilize these glorious little creatures, there will always be that day when you realize they’ve been using your chapstick on the cat’s butt.

We found our current pediatrician from our insurance website about an hour before we had to put a name on Levi’s NICU discharge form. Perhaps we should’ve taken referrals or spent a bit more time researching who would be our son’s primary caregiver for the next 18 years.

Don’t get me wrong – our pediatrician isn’t bad. He’s very nice and funny. He always gives us plenty of time to ask any questions. He always asks about things like how Levi’s sleeping and how the breastfeeding is going. He takes good notes and keeps up with all our specialists. He’s pretty open to our opinions and gut instincts on certain things. For Levi’s shots, he granted our request to use two nurses so as to get it over with twice as fast. He’s very encouraging to us and says we’re doing a great job, which goes a long way.

BUT…

He’s been saying Levi should’ve been able to sleep in 4-5 hour stretches since the boy was two weeks old, and to let him cry it out (not sure I agree with all that). He presses really hard on Levi’s tummy during exams; so much so that Levi spits up even if it’s been hours since his previous meal. At our last appointment, they had a scheduling glitch and we barely got to see the doctor (after we had managed to get all three of ourselves out of the house, on time and even fully clothed! Quite a feat.). When we called in a couple weeks ago b/c of Levi’s abnormal diapers issue, they dismissed his symptoms as normal, even though we knew otherwise. A five-second search on Google revealed thousands of pages describing a definite problem with a list of two potential causes. When I called in last week to ask about safely breastfeeding with a couple medications I had taken, it took multiple calls, took longer than expected, and I still don’t think the nurse ever understood the situation. This is the same nurse who couldn’t explain to us a reasonably intuitive milestone test that she administered to Levi. I hate to penalize a doctor because of his nursing staff, but realistically they’re at least as important as the doc, if not more.

I’m not totally sure that we’re going to switch. Brad thinks these issues are just par for the course, and I’m being one of those moms. But, if there is a good pedi in or near Presby Plano that somebody would highly recommend, then I’d at least like to look into it. So if you know of one, please let me know!