First days home

Life with a preschooler and a newborn is sort of crazy! Rafi has been an amazing big brother, giving Charlie lots of kisses and hugs. I try to give Raf a lot of kisses and hugs, as usual, and afterwards he tells me to kiss or hug Baby Charlie, too. He's already looking after his baby brother. When I remind Raf to be gentle or careful with Charlie, Raf said today, don't worry, Baby Charlie', and leaned over and gave him a fairly rigorous hug. This morning the first thing Raf did was jump out of bed and shout, 'mummy, where's baby Charlie?', and he jumped into bed and we had a nice morning cuddle. They're so sweet together!

We have had a really nice, yet sort of frenetic, first few days. Yesterday it was just me, Rafi, and Charlie for a few hours. Luckily my friend Kate came over for a visit and brought some train tracks for Raf and some lunch for us. That evening we had a 'Welcome home, Charlie' tea with lots of yummy cake. The boys were a bit overtired but we all enjoyed some great cake that we'd all helped to make the day before. Even Charlie got in on the act and oversaw the cake-making from his Moses basket.

We've been enjoying some lovely weather so we've managed to get outside a bit, too. On Sunday we took a little walk around the neighbourhood and introduced Charlie to some of our neighbours. One neighbour is newly pregnant and another neighbour has a baby, so Charlie and Rafi will have plenty of playmates down the road.

Today Raf was in school and this morning Charlie had his first Dr's appointment. He is a little bit jaundiced so we were glad to be going, especially as he spit up a bit of blood in his spit-up this morning. Mostly the first visit is to check on his weight. He was born 7 pounds 8.8 ounces and on release from hospital he was around 7 pounds 2 ounces... The nurse was a bit shocked to see that he was, 3 days later, 7 pounds 9 ounces! Raf gained weight very quickly, too, which I think isn't the usual course with breastfed babies. He also needed a blood test to check on the jaundiced, and except from a brief cry he did absolutely brilliantly and actually fell asleep as they were drawing the blood.

Charlie is actually the most laid-back and mellow baby I've ever met. We thought Rafi was 'easy' as a newborn but Charlie is phenomenally serene. He cries when he's having his nappy changed but stops immediately once it's come to an end, and I don't think he's really cried for more than a couple of minutes this entire week. He soothes really easily, and probably I'm tempting fate by writing all of this and next week I'll be reporting on a colicky baby who is turning us into wrecks. For now, though, I'm enjoying the easy nights and the better than expected sleep I'm getting.

This afternoon we took Charlie out for a walk. The wonderful Louisa sent me a Moby and I'm very excited that my lovely friend Julie and her mum are also making us another Moby, because Charlie loves being in one. As soon as he's nestled in he's asleep! The doggies enjoyed their walk, too.