Fractured Sleep and Other Observations

Everyone knows that parents of newborns are supposed to be exhausted. One of the attorneys at Chicago Firm put it this way, "You know the first two months are going to be miserable right?". Several of his close friends had all just had their first child, so I don't think he was trying to be overly negative, he was just relating what he'd been hearing from them.

So far the sleep thing hasn't really been that bad. Yes, the eight hours of uninterrupted time in dreamland is gone, but if you add together our chunks of sleep it totals at least seven and that's more than adequate. We trade off who gets up at night: JP does the last feeding at 10:30pm after Landon's bath, I do the next one, usually at around 2:30am, and then he does the morning one at 6:30 before he goes to work. I go to sleep after Landon's bath time and then sleep in after JP goes to work because Landon doesn't wake up again until about 10am. These times are very approximate- sometimes he sleeps for closer to three hours rather than four and then last night he surprised us by sleeping a solid five, but in general, as long as we alternate, we manage to keep the dark bags under our eyes at bay. And hopefully by the time school starts on Sept. 24th he'll be sleeping 6+ hour stretches at night.

In general having a newborn has been lots of fun. He's still sleeping most of the time- after all, he was supposed to be in my belly for another 8 days- and when he's awake he's so adorable! We spend a lot of time just holding him, smiling at him, and exclaiming over every cute thing he does (and we find pretty much everything he does cute). So far he seems pretty good natured. I walked by his room this morning and saw that he was awake, so I was expecting to hear him cry any minute. Thirty minutes later I walked by again, thinking maybe he'd fallen back to sleep, but I saw that he was still awake and just hanging out looking at his mobile. He contentedly tolerates diaper changes, clothing changes, and my dragging him to Walgreens every other day to by formula and pick up more pictures I've taken of him. I do wonder what I'll do with him when he's awake more- so far we've hung out in the infant-to-toddler rocker, play gym, and spent lots of time looking in the mirror, but how long will those be entertaining?
I did catch myself looking wistfully at my Securities Regulation casebook. I love being with Landon, but I miss using my brain and interacting with adults. Our fall course schedule was finally posted (UC does everything late) and I got all excited about picking out law classes. Being home with a baby has made me appreciate school more, and I know that once school starts I'll appreciate my time with Landon even more.