iiit's a scrotum.

last night, little man woke up for a 1am feeding. husband had taken a nap earlier in the day, so feeling fairly well rested he volunteered to take care of the diapering & swaddling for me before i had to feed him. so as he was doing his daddy duty, i sat up in bed waiting for luke. i had my shirt up & was inspecting my poor, ravaged belly once again. i'd started a skin-firming lotion ritual earlier that day, and my skin was already feeling smoother. as i sat there, staring at the wreckage, i saw something move in there. my belly button & surrounding area - was seriously, moving. on it's own! it looked like....something was crawling around just under my skin!

i told husband to stop what he was doing and watch, just to make sure it wasn't sleep-deprivation that was causing me to see this. he thought i was crazy at first, and he said something smart-assy like, "did we leave a baby in there?". i assured him, something was moving. so he sat down on the edge of the bed and stared. a few seconds later he exclaimed, "EW! It IS moving! It's moving like my balls!".

and really, with the wrinkly texture of my skin now, that's not so far off base. so there you have it. i now have a giant scrotum for a stomach.





seriously though. what the hell is moving in there?

hey, i had a baby!

yeah, so i'm the world's worst blogspot blogger in history, so what. life got....well, a little busy! since i last wrote, my body ballooned to epic proportions. (see picture) my co-workers began calling me spaulding. ya know, like the sports ball manufacturer. they asked me constantly if i'd shoplifted a sporting goods store. ha-ha.

though i was enormous, my body escaped the dreaded stretch mark demon. until the last couple weeks. it was like my skin cooperated as long as it possibly could, and when the end was near it got a skin-version of senioritis and in "aw, the hell with it" fashion, made up for lost time. my belly & hips look.......well, i don't even want to think about it. nor the fact that the stretch marks on my hips got deeper & more plentiful AFTER my sasquatch of a baby was delivered. what gives, hip skin? and then there's my belly button, who decided it was no longer a part of a caucasion body but an african american body and promptly turned the darkest shades of brown and black i've ever seen. mix it's new coloring along with my over-used, elephant-like in texture skin, and i now have a belly burnt marshmallow instead of a button.

oh how late pregnancy loathed me.

the birth was an experience, that's for sure. i know i'm being lame by not detailing it at all here, but the truth is i've already done it elsewhere and i don't have the time (ya know, infant and all) to re-tell it. it was scary, and thrilling, and emotional - and well, let's just say i hope i don't have to do it more than 1 or 2 more times. if i didn't love the crap out of babies, i'd probably say...i'm all set. don't get me wrong - the thrill of meeting my little guy and seeing his pudgy little face for the first time is probably THE BEST moment of my life. but the anxiety, and the pain that settles in that first night.......gah. not enjoyable. birth = pretty gay. and i didn't even have to do the whole labor bit, so i can only imagine how much that blows.

so, my little man made his appearance on january 15, 2009 at 8:49am. he weighed 9lbs 50z (yes, he was huuuge), and was 20.5" long. he is, the best looking infant in history (maybe i'm a little biased). he looks a lot like his daddy. his mouth looks like his dad's, but i see my sister in it, too. his nose is allll daddy's, as well as his forehead. the shape of his eyes are mine, but the color isn't. he still has those, white baby, grey-blue eyes so the color is really yet to be determined. but, mine are about as dark brown as they come, and were since birth, so i know that's not what he'll have.

here he is, shortly after birth. my little lukas james!

and because i'm just way too lazy, fast forward four weeks and here's one of him from the other day. his eyes look weird, but he's slowly starting to for-real smile this week (as in, socially smile, rather than "i'm going to fart on you, and my mouth does something that sort of resembles a smile", smile) - and this picture is one of the first examples i have of this.

and my last visual aid, might cause you to erupt from the cuteness so prepare yourselves. this is, the loves of my life from yesterday morning. they were all snuggled up in bed together, looking ridiculously alike and adorable.



so far, mommyhood is fantastic. i love my lukey to absolute pieces. breastfeeding is...well, it's going, but i can't say i love it. i do love giving my baby the best nutrition i possibly can. i love seeing his bright anxious eyes and little nose peeking over my boob as he fills his belly. i do love the anti-in-law feature it provides. a simple, "okay, he needs to eat now!" is the simple sanity-saving phrase needed to get my baby back in my arms and out of theirs. they can't argue that, and i don't have to share feeding time. but, that's also a problem. while i can give husband the luxury of sleeping through his night-time wakings, he cannot do the same for me. i have the boobs, thus i have to get up every time. but mostly, it's the nipple soreness from his non-stop eating, and the stress of my supply dropping off once in a while. it's frustrating, and takes a lot more will power to keep at than i imagined it would take.

but, overall, i'm loving being his mommy. i think my banner needs an update.