Routines: some old, some new.

As we begin to get into a routine with little Solly we are noticing how careful we are to keep some of our old practices while others are discarded quickly like outgrown clothes. We discovered that we could pretty well handle being woken up twice a night, but that three times was too much. So now we take an evening nap at 7 or 8 PM, getting up to have dessert or a glass of wine, and to nurse Solly fully. "Tank him up" Rachel calls it. This way we can go down at 11 or so for 2-3 hours, up for an hour to nurse, change him, and put him back down, get 2-3 more hours of sleep and do it again before we get up at 7 or 8.

We are trying to keep our habit of eating healthy home cooked meals. This is made so much easier by the kind delivery of dinners from friends and family. My new hobby is getting creative with leftovers, how to pair Puerto Rican food with fresh garden veggies was the latest challenge depicted here - not much of a challenge fortunately. Yes that is a glass of wine in the picture, a glass a night is healthy and promotes sanity (or so I'm told). Two glasses is not good when you only get 2 hours of sleep at a time. Harder than making and enjoying meals is cleaning up from them. Yesterday we had every dish in the dishwasher only to find that we were out of detergent! We called in a favor to have detergent picked up for us - such a community!


A new practice that we are working to adopt is the use of cloth diapers. Folks who know that I (Mike) am an energy geek will know that I have spent many a conversation discussing the energy and resource merits of disposable vs. cloth diapers. To tip the scale in favor of reusable diapers I've attempted to dry the diapers on the clothesline - creating a clear sign to all around us that we have a baby in the house. The blue garment in the picture is no diaper, its a handy binding devise marketed as the "miracle blanket" as in, "...its a miracle that he didn't break free of that swaddle overnight!"
Next they need to offer a miracle blanket for adults - "its a miracle I slept through the night!"