blogging from the computer...

...allows me to do much more typing than I can handle from the phone or ipod.

We're now settling into a pattern that seems to be working for both Darren and the adults. Darren goes to sleep between 9.30 and 10, and Dennis and I go to bed around 11. This gives Dennis time to practice guitar uninterrupted and me time to do whatever I end up doing.

Darren now puts himself to sleep after each nighttime feeding and at the initial bedtime feeding each night. It's a great relief and really allows us to get all the sleep we need each night. Dennis had to walk him to sleep after each nighttime feeding for the first few weeks. Now, I get up to change and feed Darren each time he wakes up during the night; then I put him back in his bed and head back to bed myself. Dennis, the lucky guy, gets to sleep through the entire night, pretty much. He does often get up to change the diaper while I relax and prepare for feedings, but the option to sleep through it all exists.

Darren still fights all daytime naps. I'll take that any day over staying up all night, though.

We're past the 36-hour mark for cloth diapering, and it's going quite well. We've only done one mini-load in the washer so far, so I'm sure we'll have a better idea of what we're dealing with after the next laundry experience tomorrow mid-day. We scored 12 diaper covers and 5 all-in-one diapers through freecycle (freecycle.org) before Darren was born, and the covers already fit him, so it looks like we won't need to put out any additional initial cash for now. That's such a huge blessing - we are saving at least $200 from what we received from the fellow freecycler. She had put all 7 of her children through cloth diapers, so I'm sure she knew exactly how grateful we would end up being.

In a few weeks, I'll be returning to work at 3/4 time. This will make our family schedule interesting to say the least - I'll see Dennis at the afternoon handoff and when he returns from work each evening at 8:30. Hopefully he'll be able to get some practicing in during the day (that would require Darren's cooperation, of course!) so that he and I can spend some time together each evening after the baby goes to bed. If not, we'll at least have time together on Fridays and the weekends. One friend recently pointed out that things actually won't be much different than before baby - we'll just have an hour less to ourselves each evening as we put Darren to bed.

Darren's biggest development has been the huge smiles. We're trying very hard to capture them on camera. His timing just doesn't cooperate yet. They are full-face, eyes-scrunched, looks-like-he's-laughing smiles.

We'll keep the pictures coming daily!

Happy almost New Year!