A tummy without you just wouldn't be right

Miles' umbilical stump fell off this morning. He officially has a belly button!


That was the happy surprise this morning when I came down from the bedroom. The not-so happy surprise was that the refrigerator isn't working. I swear, we must have some kind of bad kitchen appliance ju-ju surrounding us in a cloud that follows us around the country. So now we have lots of quickly-growing-warm foodstuffs sitting out on the kitchen counter, along with the cooler and the insulated shopping bag out on the porch packed full of all the meat and dairy. Thank god the freezer is still working, what with my hard-earned four bags of pumped breastmilk in there, not to mention the freezer meals I cooked so we'd have some quick things to eat after KB's mom leaves next week.

*sigh*

But anyway. The good things, must focus on the good things.

"I Lost 30 Pounds in Two Weeks! Ask Me How!"

Yes, I've lost a good share of the pregnancy weight, thankfully. The swelling from all the IV fluids they pumped into me during the delivery is finally going down and my feet and hands have returned to a normal size. (My feet totally looked like this up until a few days ago.) Yesterday I peeled off the Steri-Strips that were holding my incision closed, and it looks pretty...okay. I guess. All the nurses who checked the incision in the hospital were like, "Oh, that's a great-looking incision! You'll be back in your bikini in no time!" and I was like, "Back?" It's itchy as all hell, but it's not swollen or infected or anything, so that's good.

Miles is still eating like a champ - we haven't had any of the latching-on problems like we did when Nolan was a newborn. He's been sleeping okay at night - not great, but not horrible, either. I'm typically getting one longer stretch of about 3 hours each night, and then the rest of the night is the same every hour and a half of feeding as it is during the day. So far KB is off the hook for feeding since we haven't introduced the bottle yet, but one day soon...

We go back to the pediatrician tomorrow to confirm that he's gaining weight and thriving, but I'm not too worried. I think I'm-



Argh. I think I'm going to cut this post short, seeing as how I started it two weeks ago and haven't worked on it since then. I can't even remember how I was going to finish that sentence.

Here, I know what you want:






There. That should hold you for awhile...

Thanks for reading.

Just as long as I'm in this world, I'll be, I'll be a light of this world

Well, here he is at last:


Mr. Miles Bradford Hoover, born at 10:57 pm on March 1st, 2009. He weighed 8 pounds, 11 ounces, and was 21.5 inches long. Big boy! Mommy had a C-section after 35 hours of labor, which was a major bummer, but I am choosing instead to focus on how lucky we are to have such a beautiful, healthy baby boy in our family. You will get a full gory play-by-play one of these days, I'm sure, but for now, let's just think positively, shall we?

He is a fairly relaxed and groovy little dude - he usually only cries when he's hungry, which is about every hour and a half at the moment. He took to breastfeeding like a champ and hasn't really given us any major problems so far. Maybe he's trying to make up for the harrowing delivery.

Nolan seems to be doing fine with his baby brother so far. He got to take pictures of Miles in to school for show and tell, and he likes to kiss and pat him on the head. (He also likes to "help" me nurse Miles by patting my boob to make the milk go down into Miles' mouth faster. Yeah.)

We can't get over how much Miles looks like Nolan when he was a newborn. (I guess most newborns look alike, don't they? - like angry, befuddled old men.) He is slowly starting to differentiate, but at first he was totally Nolan 2: Electric Boogaloo. With the exception of his fingers and toes, that is. He's got some craaaaazy long skinny fingers and enormous monkey toes. Check it out:
When he was first born his big toe was even farther away from the other toes. He looked like he had baboon feet, like he could use that big toe as an opposable thumb, almost. So I've been calling him Miles Monkeytoes.


Sweet baby.

More baby pix soon!

Thanks for reading.