vacation?

so i'm not going to do a "march" review because most of it would be a lot of "noel goes to the doctor again for a progress check" and "chris wants a vacation from work still" and "noel walked around a lot," and none of that stuff is very interesting. since we all know when the baby was born, i'm just going to sum up the last week of march, because that's when the interesting stuff happened.

so the couple days following nora's birthday, both of us were in the hospital. i wanted to go home THE DAY after she was born, but instead i was detained for 2 days, because my little girl couldn't figure out how to eat (you'd think that was innate, right? apparently NOT, and that's why lactation consultants have jobs). my doctor wanted to make sure that my baby wasn't going to starve to death when she got home, and so i stayed the extra day even though i SO did not want to. i didn't sleep very much at the hospital- maybe a grand total of 2 hours the whole time i was there- and by the time i was discharged i was so sleep-deprived i was delerious. chris was ok though, because he went home at night. as jealous as i was of his nightly reprieve, it made no sense to have both of us strung out to our wit's end when that was only requisite of one of us. and so, when i got home i passed out for a few hours while chris took care of the baby.

the following few days were a blur for me because i was still so low on sleep. i was so so happy to have chris with me at home- he did a good job of dealing with his wreck of a wife for that time. it was a week of learning for all of us: nora was still learning how to feed, chris was learning how to change diapers, and i was learning how to relax with an infant in the house, which is apparently something that i generally fail at (it's a lot harder to do than one would think, for reals).

chris's goal for his vacation was for us to successfully watch all of the lord of the ring's trilogy, from start to finish. he'd been planning on that for months. therefore, every night from around 9 to 11 we sat in front of the TV while nora slept right next to us. funny thing about those movies- the ring wraiths sound just like nora. once she woke up during a scene with screeching nazgul, and i didn't recognize that my own daughter was screeching along with them until after the scene changed (yes, our daughter is a loud screamer. the nurses at the hospital said she had "personality"). in any case, chris's goal was met, and we now have that epic series freshly emblazoned into the forefront of our memories.

by the end of chris's 9 day vacation he was ready to return to work. chris's coworkers had prompted him to take a full 2 to 3 weeks of vacation with the baby, but i know my husband better than to think that he would remain sane without working for that long. therefore, i urged him to take a shorter amount of time off, although i would have loved to have him at home longer. i suppose taking off from work to take care of a newborn isn't really a vacation at all. chris jokingly said: "man, i'm going to have to go back to work in order to get a vacation from this baby!" and so we affectionately refer to nora as our "new boss". which is actually pretty accurate, all things considered.

boss lady. 6 days into it.

also: this was taken in the middle of the night, because what better of a time to be completely wide awake?