life in the raynor household

it's been a busy 2 weeks since joey was born and i haven't had a whole lot of time at the pc, so i plan on making up for lost time with this post. joey was born on a monday and we were home by lunchtime that wednesday. from wednesday through the weekend, we had many visitors come by the house to introduce themselves to joey. nancy flanigan, my brother, and a neighbor all brought us dinners that were delicious and because there were so many leftovers, we ate well for the last 2 weeks. my mother plans on getting in on the action this week by making us a scrumptious turkey/chicken meatloaf. once that is done, i guess we'll have to start making our own dinner again. ;)

before joey was born, kim decided she wanted to breast feed him. while at the hospital, joey took to breastfeeding very well. there were a couple instances where kim would need the help of one of the nurses to get joey eating, but everything was going along smoothly. there was a ton of pressure to breastfeed from many of the nurses and even kim's midwife, but i continued to let kim know that i was behind whatever decision she wanted to make regarding the nutrition of our baby. she wanted to continue to breastfeed until it was time to put him on a bottle. a day after we got home from the hospital, we ended breastfeeding and went to the bottle, and things were perfect. joey didn't want to have anything to do with breastfeeding once we got home and instead of going through the stress we went through with trying to breastfeed charlie, we switched over to the bottle. we also use room temperature water to make his bottles, which is a switch from when we would give charlie his bottles. charlie's bottles had to be warm, and that posed many logistical problems, so with joey, we went out and bought a case of water from costco and keep the water bottles on the counter at room temp. this makes it much easier to feed joey. he's a great sleeper, waking only 1 time a night to eat, and then falls right back to sleep when he's done. he goes to sleep around 10:30ish, wakes up about 3:00 in the morn to feed, and then is back to sleep until around 7:30. he rarely cries, except a couple times when he was starving, but we couldn't get to his bottle because we were in the car going someplace, and the one time when the tip of his finger got pinched in the shoulder strap clip of his car seat, which, by the way, will never be discussed again. charlie loves his little brother. he sings lullabies to him at night (using his own words) and is always giving him hugs and kisses. he helps us with diaper changing and anything else that he might be able to do for his little brother. it's a wonderful thing to watch and be a part of.

and since we're talking about charlie, here's a little story that i thought was very cute. every night, i put him in bed and tuck him in and we say our prayers - "now i lay me down to sleep, angels at my head and feet. in the morning when i wake, i pray the lord my hand to take." the other night, we got finished with our prayers, and charlie told me he didn't want the lord to take his hand because then he wouldn't be able to grab anything. i didn't know whether to laugh or cry, but i explained to him that he wasn't really going to take his hands, he was just going to make sure that he got through the day safe. apparently that explanation was satisfactory because he was asleep very soon after.

my brother, sister in law, and niece got me an awesome gift for my birthday in June - a flip video. if you haven't seen one of these yet, you need to go out and get one as soon as you can. they are fantastic. it's a digital video recorder the size of a cell phone that can records 60 minutes of video in color. it has a built in usb attachment that makes downloading these videos to your pc or laptop easy, and the quality is excellent. according to the flip video website, www.theflip.com, the price of the 60 minute flip ultra (my recorder) is $149.99. you can get them at target, walmart, best buy, sears, amazon, etc. they are really cool. i've posted a video of joey just a few minutes after he was born.

finally, now that kim is no longer pregnant, i will begin doing some wine reviews. for the most part, i held off on drinking wine while kim was pregnant, but now that she can join me for a glass or 2, i will post some reviews of some of the wines we like and dislike. look for the first review coming very soon!