jack's first flight

the original plan was to take jack's first flight as a family for our mostly annual trip with the pullens to visit the taltons in north carolina. unfortunately ku had other plans and scheduled the opening of their new freestanding psych unit on the same weekend. so long story short, donald had to stay home. never one to pass up an adventure, i decided i was up for tackling the flight with jack solo.

we arrived at kci as prepared as we could be and hoping for the best. i was already slightly concerned about getting through the dallas airport and making our connecting flight with a pretty short layover, then our flight out of kc was delayed due to a bird strike. that was a new one for me. it ultimately ended up that everything was delayed out of dfw as well, so it all worked out in the end. on our first flight we unexpectedly ran into the parents of some college friends, which was a fun surprise. and we also completed our first in-flight airplane bathroom diaper change, so i imagine my merit badge should be arriving soon.

jack was a great little traveler and made a lot of new friends [i haven't interacted with this many strangers in an airport since i flew with the harry potter books]. our long weekend in nc was delightful as usual. lots of good conversation, london broil, low country boil, and of course more than a few games of wizard. jacob and i also kicked it old school with an impromptu audio adrenaline sing-a-long, which is now officially one of the highlights of our friendship.

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life with jack

after a few months in survival mode and an insane amount of pumping and supplemental bottles [which in hindsight were probably largely unnecessary] we've settled into a good routine. jack typically wakes up for first breakfast after sleeping eight or nine hours, a feat which mom and dad are both incredibly thankful for. soon after he and i both head back to bed for a bit because the love of sleep is one of our core family values. jack does his sleeping in a bassinet by our bed partly because he is "supposed to" and partly because his room isn't ready, but he's a pretty great roommate so we don't mind one bit.

our days mostly consist of a repetitive cycle of eating, playing, and sleeping, along with a healthy dose of spitting up, which seems to be jack's favorite activity. we have dyer dinner every thursday and church and lakeland lunch on sunday. we do our best to get out of the house a few other times each week and get ourselves to a pool as often as possible.

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the baby blur

no matter how much you try to prepare for bringing your first baby home, there's just no way to really understand what it will be like until you're in the thick of it. your friends try to warn you, the books and blogs give you advice, but ultimately you just have to jump in and hang on. looking back i can see how the days and weeks unfolded, but at the time it was all a blur.

that first month was literally all about survival. i heard this a lot when i was pregnant, but it's hard to comprehend just how true it is until you're in it. aside from my obvious new job of taking care of jack, i had exactly four priorities and the number one priority was sleep. this was by far the most important thing to me and i'd say the pursuit of sleep consumed at least 80% of my thoughts that first month. i was constantly calculating how long it would be until i could sleep again and how long i'd be able to stay in bed once i got there. numbers two and three sometimes switched out of necessity, but generally priority number two was eating and number three was going to the bathroom. while both of these things did obviously happen, they would easily get the boot if sleep was an option. coming in at a distant fourth was taking a shower, and we only made it that far down the list on a few rare occasions.

in the second month small glimpses of normal life started to appear. don't get me wrong, sleep was still very much the number one priority, but i would occasionally have the capacity to think about other things. we made it to church. we'd do something wild and crazy like go out to eat, visit a park, or walk around target. embarking on one of these adventures usually necessitated a day or two of recovery after, but we were beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

we're now in month three and i'd say we're figuring out our new normal. we've emerged from the blur and i usually have enough mental capacity to think about more than just sleeping, eating and pooping. we're making plans to leave the house to see friends and family instead of them having to come to us, and i've even started working on a few house projects. the progress on these projects is slower than slow, but progress is still progress, and life is good.

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