Well, she’s already a fairly proficient reader, and has been since she was 2. That’s the only good gene I brought to this marriage — early and enthusiastic reading. Even Owen is starting to recognize letters and words and wants me to read to him all the time.

Audrey enjoys workbooks, so that makes things easy. I’ve picked some up here and there for crazy cheap — you can almost always find them at thrift stores or in clearance bins. Every time she finishes a page, she likes it when we put a sticker on top, or write “100!” or draw a star on it. She’s loving her Singapore Earlybird Math — she’ll do a good 10 pages before she wants to move on to something else.

For “fun,” she loves the time4learning website. True to form, she cleared through all of the science lessons first, and then redid them. And redid them. And redid them. Then some more. But now she’s starting to explore the language arts lessons, too. She considers this her treat, not school. (Though I understand some people use it as a complete curriculum.)

I am, however, completely deficient in the arts and crafts department. So my mom got us the Winter Promise “I’m Ready to Learn” program which really focuses on the hands-on. We’re not doing it at all on the schedule, but picking and choosing what works best for us. And Audrey has her own ideas of what she wants to do with the art supplies. Humorously, her ideas are low-key enough for me to do with her. The other day, she said she wanted to cut out felt pieces to paste smiley faces on paper plates. Woohoo — I can do that! And so can Owen — he loved that one. Heck, we’ve even done it again.

And Owen? Give him a Thomas the Train coloring book and a bucket of crayons, and you don’t need to worry about him for a good 15 minutes. That’s about 4 years in toddler time, so I’m grateful.

So a little bit of workbooks (mostly math and “language arts”), a little online learning, a little hands-on arts and crafts. Then there are the read-alouds, which I’ll have to hit in another post. We usually work in about 15 minute segments, scattered throughout the day, but centered in the morning, after chores. And, when I’m lucky, they work independently at the kitchen table for a bit while I get my chores done. Works out nicely.

Thankfully, this is a problem that you can help — though not completely alleviate — by throwing money at it.

I’ve managed to scrounge up a neighborhood girl who can come by once or twice a week for 3 hours and for 5 dollars an hour, she’ll play with my 2 and a half year old while I tend to the newborn, or if by the grace of God he is sleeping, I can take a shower or do laundry or something, anything.

There are no other babysitters in our neighborhood that haven’t already turned me down for being too busy, so I also occasionally hire a post-partum doula 1-2x a week for 4 hour shifts on weeks that the babysitter can’t help, and she’ll handle one or both kids, or do housework for me. That’s 15 dollars an hour.

I usually end up having some sort of help twice a week. So it’s not cheap, that’s for sure. But I keep reminding myself that there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. And I just have to keep myself sane until we get there.

*** At least I can look to Audrey’s example to know that he’ll grow out of it. He’s already starting to, thank God.

Finance-wise, things have been uneventful. We haven’t yet received our portion of the bill for the birth, but it’ll be biggish, because our midwife is “out of network” [as if our insurance had "in network" midwives ... ] and it’s early enough in the year that we haven’t chipped much away yet on our yearly deductable. On the upside, we’ve been squirrelling money away into our HSA this year, so it’ll at least be paid in pre-tax dollars.

Unfortunately, like last time, I’m in the midst of post-partum depression, and I’m just hunkering down and waiting for it to pass.

The children are, of course, as beautiful and awesome as usual.

Sometimes I’ll sit and dither for a day or two, and by the time I call and wait for the day the appointment comes, by the time I get there, the thing has passed on its own. And then I feel like they’re making a little “Hypochondriac!” note in my chart.

But last night, it didn’t take a lot of wondering before we brought Audrey in. She started with a bit of an itchy rash for awhile, and by the time I took her in, she was one big head to toe red rashy welt. Poor girl. A lot of benadryl, a shot of adrenalin, and some oral steroids and she’s doing better now.

But why do these things never happen M-F during office hours? I can’t wait to see the bill. [And why do the bills always seem to come several months later?]

It can also be terribly difficult.

Unfortunately, that is the boat that we are in. Both of my children have been born with large overbites, with very short and physically traumatic labors. I have heard fairy tales of people who are able to put their newborns to the breast and they magically latch on, but that’s nothing like my experiences have been.

Audrey didn’t eat at all for almost the first 72 hours after her birth because she could not latch. Thankfully, I already had a really great pump and my milk was already starting to come in. At first we fed her with drops of milk on our fingers, then we used a plastic syringe, and then finally we graduated to the small bottles that come with the aforementioned Medela pump. We then worked with Barbara Wilson Clay, a nationally renowned lacation consultant/expert who thankfully happens to be local, and she was able to get Audrey to occasionally latch with the help of a nipple shield. But it was still a matter of pumping every two hours around the clock for those first three months until one day, magically, she was able to latch on her own.

After the proverbial “10 fingers, 10 toes” wishes I had for Owen, the next was “Please oh please, let him latch.” But it wasn’t to be. On the other hand, it hasn’t seemed as bad this time around. Perhaps because we’ve been through it before and I know there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, or perhaps because the situation is not quite as bleak this time around — after the first few days, I’ve been able to get him to latch about once a day, when the circumstances are exactly perfect. Audrey was so frustrated by latching that she would cry whenever I held her. Those were dark days. Owen doesn’t do that. With his rare latch, plus Audrey’s continued nursing, I only have to pump every 4 hours or so, which makes a huge difference. Plus, with Audrey’s help, I’ve so far been able to avoid engorgement and mastitis, both of which plagued me when she was the little one.

I am a terribly, terribly stubborn person and it’s funny how the same trait that made me a pain in the rear as a child and in the majority of relationships in my life has been such a great boon to me as a mother. Not only can I unflappably outlast any tantrum/meltdown, but I see the prospect of another three months of pumping as a challenge I know I can beat.

For those who are curious and appreciate a good birth war story [heh], it turns out that we had “velamentous insertion of the umbilical cord.” This is apparently a fancy pants term meaning that the cord was loosely attached to the placenta. We were very, very blessed that it did not detach from the placenta at any moment in time before the one that it did — he came out with the cord around his neck, and as the CNM was removing the cord from his neck, it detached from the placenta. Had it happened before then, it would have been an almost certain death situation. As it was, he was a bit blue when he came out, but she gave him mouth to mouth and he bounced right back. Unfortunately, we could no longer get the placenta out by tugging on the cord, so it had to be removed manually. That wasn’t a lot of fun, but thankfully it worked and I didn’t have to run to the ER to get it out.

We are also having the same breastfeeding latch issues with Owen that we did with Audrey, but I’m going to make that a whole post of its own later.

And, for the cherry on top, our blog hosting provider totally went casters up last week, and almost all of Andrew’s really nifty blog formatting and whatnot got totally hosed. Hopefully we’ll get that straightened out soon, but it’s a little lower on the priority list than it would usually be right now. Heh.

All of our photos are up at our Flickr page, but these are some of my favorites:

Owen, waking up from his nappy this afternoon
Audrey, what do you think of your new baby brother?
Dada and nakedbaby Owen, out getting his sunlight for his jaundice.
Gratuitous cute Audrey photo
Okay, one more gratuitous cute Audrey photo
Mama and Owen
Audrey looks dubious

This birth was definitely rougher than our previous one, and has left us a bit shaken.

Photos, details, etc., to soon follow!

I’ve been on the lookout for good deals on diapers [I decided not to switch to cloth for this guy, though I kicked it around for awhile], so I’ve got a bit of a stash already. All other diaper changing gear [wipes, cream, rags, etc], we already have plenty of since Audrey is still in pull-ups.

I haven’t ordered a Medela parts kit for my old pump yet, and I need to do that. That’s about 25 bucks. I know you can reuse the parts with yourself, but I gave my pump a thorough thrashing before Audrey could finally attach at three months, and looking at the old thing … it just doesn’t feel like even a thorough boiling and sterilization procedure is going to make it feel clean again. Oh, and I’m going to need new milk freezer bags, too. That’ll be about 17 bucks. Again, I’m paying more than I have to here, there are cheaper varieties, but these will hold up for 6 months in our deep freezer. So if we don’t need them in that time, I can donate them to the Mother’s Milk Bank, like last time.

I picked up a handful of “new” outfits for Little Guy at the thrift store in MN, practically brand new stuff for about a dollar a piece. Didn’t feel bad about that, though I’m sure I could have made do with Audrey’s unisex hand-me-downs.

The freezer is already full, but mostly with meal “parts” rather than completed meals. I’ll want to change that ratio a bit before he arrives, because I won’t want to be doing any cooking for awhile.

I think that’s really all that’s left to purchase. [I'm not counting the actual cost of the birth, etc.] Lots to do, but not lots to buy. That’s a plus.

Most of our grocery bill goes to produce — fresh, frozen, or dried. Our kids will be homeschooled, so it’s an obvious project for them to help with. Our backyard is about a half acre, fenced, and there’s not a whole lot going on back there once you get past the decks and the playscape.

So why don’t I have a garden?

Odocoileus virginianus, the dreaded white-tailed deer.

Our house is on the deer superhighway right between two wooded, wild areas. There are some mornings when I’ll look out and see two dozen of them in our front or back yard. Unfortunately, our 8-10 [?] foot tall privacy fence only extends about halfway back into our backyard, it’s a 3 footer for the remaining, and they jump over that with ease.

So I can’t just slap together a nice little Square Foot Gardening square and call it a day with a little quickie experiment. Unless, of course, I want fatter and happier deer.

I don’t relish the idea of building a tall fence to enclose a garden, like all my neighbors have had to do. And I’m not sure how big I’d want to make it — I certainly don’t want to ever have to expand it once it’s up. I have too many memories of spending summers at my grandparent’s house, expanding the deer fence every year. Heh.

And then there’s the whole new-child-being-born-in-two-months thingy. I think I’ll be waiting until next year. Heh.

A few obligatory disclaimers: this is what worked for us, your mileage may vary, and my list is way, way shorter than most you will read elsewhere. On the other hand, I’m not trying to sell you anything. [Though for full disclosure, I do have Amazon Associates links in this post, so decide for yourself whether I'm trying to sell you anything. Heh heh.]

With that out of the way, here’s what I learned from our experience, in rough order of importance:

• A car seat: Get a good car seat, be smart but not too cheap, if you know what I mean. It’s worth it to buy new. There are two routes you can go here at the beginning. You can get one of those detachable rear-facing guys for a hundred bucks or so that you use for about the first year, or you could get a more expensive [200-300, usually] convertible type that’ll last you until the wee one is about 5 years old. We ended up choosing the detachable one — a Graco SnugRide, I believe — and then got a Britax when she was reading to go forward facing. This is a more expensive route to go, HOWEVER — when you are dealing with the youngest of the youngins, they are always going to be falling asleep in the car on you. It is a very, very good thing to be able to just detach the seat and go rather than having to unhook them and take them out of the seat and probably wake them up. [Terri's #2 Rule of Parenting: Never ever wake a sleeping baby unless you really, really have to. A baby's sleep is your very best friend. Heh.]
• Diapers: Disposable or Cloth, I have no dog in that fight. Choose whatever works best for you, I’m not going to judge you, and please feel free to ignore anyone else who tries to. *** But whichever route you go, make sure you have about 2 weeks worth on hand at the beginning so you don’t have to worry about having to restock during those early whirlwind days. Don’t buy too many at the outset, because you don’t want to get stuck with a bunch of really small newborn diapers that your 10lb kid grew out of in a week! Etc. To stave off diaper rash, this is what worked for us: remove diaper, clean up with wipes, pat dry with a washcloth, apply some generic A&D style ointment, then replace with clean diaper.
• Baby Clothes: Hand me downs or garage sales are totally the way to go. Again, it’s real easy — especially in the hormone flush of pregnancy — to get all emotionally attached to that adorable 20 dollar outfit. But your kid will likely only wear it for a few months, and you don’t even want to know what all sorts of substances are going to stain and soak that thing almost immediately after you put it on him/her. Since this is your first kid, go the green/yellow/orange route so you can use them with all your succeeding kids and don’t have to do the whole “How old is your son?” “Er, she was born 2 weeks ago” dance with strangers because she’s in a blue jumpsuit, or vice versa.

  Additionally, plain clothes with no frills, ruffles or other weird things are the way to go. A nice soft cotton footie pyjama style jumper, preferably with snaps all the way down both legs will make your life easier during diaper changes. You don’t need too many, depending on how often you do laundry, though it’s better to have too many than too few if you end up having a 5-diaper-blowout day. Heh. And a nice little hat for the first few weeks is also recommended, and should be cheap and easy to find.

• Swaddling Blankets: These are awesome. We had one of those kids that needed swaddling to soothe, and unfortunately you don’t know if you’ve got one of those until they’re here, so it’s worth having them on hand just in case. And if it turns out they’re not the swaddling type, you’ll end up finding a dozen other uses for them, so it’s not a total wash. Again, the hand-me-down or garage sale route is the best way to go. Get a handful of the smaller size — around 2′ by 2′ — and a few of the larger size — around 3′ by 3′ — because they’ll outgrow the smaller swaddling blankets fairly quickly.
• Teeny Tiny Nail Clippers: Those nails grow quick, and they are razor sharp! You’ll want to get 2-3 of these to start with because if you’re anything like me, you’ll constantly be misplacing them.
• Breast Pump, Freezer Bags, Etc: If we’re going the frugal route, formula is definitely not the way to go. But, you still need to prepare for the possibility of not always being able to breastfeed when your baby is hungry. If at all possible, I’d get one before your child is born, for a few reasons. First, you might end up in a position like us when Audrey couldn’t latch at all after birth and had to be syringe and finger fed pumped breast milk and then had bottled breast milk or fed on a breast shield until she was 3 months old. I had to pump every 2 hours around the clock in those days and counted my blessings that we had a good pump. But even if your child latches like a champ from the get go, you still want to keep some spare milk in the freezer “just in case.” Go with what you can afford, but it is sort of a “you get what you pay for” market. The Medelas are worth the price, if you can swing it.
• Sling: Mine was worth its 100 times its weight in gold. [Hey, they're light!] Being able to “hold” your baby but have both hands free … I cannot overemphasize what a huge difference this makes. Cheaper and easier and more versatile than a stroller. Plus, once you get used to it you can learn how to discreetly nurse in public while they’re in the sling, and that makes your life even that much easier.
• Nursing Tops: Speaking of nursing in public … with practice, you will learn how to discreetly nurse in any old loose-fitting top, but at the very beginning until you’re confident, a nursing top or two is helpful. But if you practice at home, you’ll figure it out quickly.
• UPDATED TO ADD: I just remembered: a rectal thermometer and some vaseline will also be handy if you suspect a fever. But nothing else is coming to me off the top of my head.

Honestly, everything else is gravy. You don’t need a changing table, you don’t need a crib — though if anyone in your bed is a heavy sleeper, you’ll want to look into getting a Snuggle Nest for peace of mind in the first few months. You don’t need mobiles, you don’t need a Diaper Genie — how hard is it to put a diaper in a plastic grocery bag and bring it out to the garbage? Plus, if you’re breastfeeding, baby poop doesn’t smell bad until they start eating other stuff. It smells kind of like sour milk. You don’t need a pack-n-play, you don’t need a high chair, you don’t need a swing. You don’t need a baby bath tub, wash them in the sink with a folded towel on the bottom like our grandparents did. Heck, you don’t even need soap for several weeks! You don’t need toys, you don’t need a special “diaper bag” — a cheap backpack from a thrift store will do you fine to hold an extra outfit or two, a swaddle blanket and some diaper changing gear when you go out.

More important than any equipment is human support. Your mom, your sister, your friend, your neighbor — a friendly looking new mom that you spy in public! — reach out! Do it! I am an extremely introverted, solo homebody in my normal life, but this transition period after your first child is born is very very rough while you adjust, and I don’t believe mothers were ever meant to go it alone. Unfortunately, with the rise of geographically-scattered extended families and the like, many new moms are isolated and life is much, much harder than it should be at first. Especially if you are a stay at home mom who’s alone with the baby 8-10 or more hours a day.

*** My #1 Rule of Parenting is to trust yourself. You are going to find that many people are both insecure and very emotionally attached to the choices that they make/made as a parent and thus see people who are making different choices as indirectly criticizing their own choices. But parenting is NOT black and white — keep an open mind, use whatever works for you and almost always, what your gut and instinct tells you will be right. Just nod and smile at the complete strangers who will come up to you and tell you that what you’re currently doing is all wrong. Why normally sane and polite people do this completely mystifies me [though I am sure it is at least partially related to what I wrote above].