The Wee One just finished her three week growth spurt and I’m amazed at how much she has grown. She’s already too big for the sleeper she wore home from the hospital, and I notice the difference when I’m holding her for nursing. She’s more alert now, which is fun for the whole family, and she’s sleeping really well, usually for at least 4 or 5 hours at a stretch after she goes to “bed” at around 7 or 7:30pm. Pretty soon we’ll be moving her out of our room into her own room, which will mean three baby monitors creating static and popping noises in our room all night. As Mrs. Carl Sagan says, it’s kind of like sleeping at Norad.

I’m doing great too. Yesterday I drove for the first time and everything was fine, and today I walked all around the block with all three kids, on my own. I’ve been off of pain meds for more than a week and helping with the other kids, dinnertime, and cleanup pretty much like a normal person. I’m still avoiding going up and down the stairs when I can, but I can go up and down them now without too much trouble. Pretty much the final frontier is carrying around Gal Smiley, which she really can’t wait for.

Speaking of her, the transition to having a baby in the house has definitely been the hardest for the Gal. She gets cranky when I can’t play with her because I’m nursing the baby or holding the baby during naptimes (as Sir Monkeypants has already pointed out, the Wee One prefers to sleep in a lap, rather than her bassinet, during the day — a little annoying, but at least I’m almost all the way through Season 2 of So You Think You Can Dance now). Plus we are trying to toilet train Gal Smiley before she starts preschool in September, but she insists that she is a “baby” and wants to wear diapers, so that is causing a lot of butting of heads. I’m sure we will work it all out soon, and at least she doesn’t ever take out her frustration on the Wee One — on the contrary, she loves to help with changing her, bathing her, or “feeding” her (don’t ask).

The Captain is handling things in stride, but he’s always kind of enjoyed playing by himself, and he looooooves having his Dad at home, so it’s kind of like a big party for him, anyway. He is constantly coming up to the Wee One and giving her kisses and telling her that he loves her. Aw. On the other hand, she was really wailing today when I had to put her down for five minutes while I grabbed a pee break and a glass of water, and I returned to find him holding his hand over her mouth. Oops. Guess we will have a talk about that one!

And as for Sir Monkeypants…he is his usual totally awesome self. He’s really doing an incredible job around here, taking care of everyone and reorganizing the office and building new furniture for the Wee One’s room, all at the same time. Plus he remains relatively chipper about the toilet training process. All this on five hours of sleep a night! Amazing!

A couple of nights ago, I was trying to settle the Wee One down for bed, when she had an enormous poop that leaked all over. I brought her into the bathroom to clean up, and just then, Gal Smiley had a big poop, which Sir Monkeypants took the lead on, and then the Captain had to poo, so I talked him through the process of wiping his own bum while I cleaned up the baby. And everyone was stuffed in the bathroom, some were chattering and some were screaming, and in general there was chaos and a ton of noise, and you’d think I would find this situation really stressful. But instead, I felt total…joy. Because our house is now nutty and insane and loud, but it really feels like home. Our family feels complete, and we’re all in this together, and during the three-strikes-of-poo event, Sir Monkeypants and I were laughing, and the kids were all okay, and it was all good. And I was so happy to have such a great family.