Top10 things I've learned in the past 6 weeks

1.  Having two kids is.....HARD.  Seriously.  It's hard.  Jack is at the wonderful (and I'm not being sarcastic here) age of 2.  I love him being 2!  He's adorable, curious, sweet, mischievous, helpful, naughty and just straight up hilarious.  Mix that up with an uber needy newborn battling reflux (which is of the devil) and you've got one heck of a chaotic household.  There are days where I'm pretty sure I'm not going to make it.  And that is WITH all of the help of Jeff and our parents!  On days when Jack 's at Grammy or Nana's all I can think of, the whole time he's gone is....having one kids is easy!!!  I don't know how people do it alone.

2.  Whoever named the store Buy Buy Baby was a genius.  I have spent more money on pacifiers, bottles, bottle nipples, formula....all to just find something that works!  My pantry and closet is full of half used formula cans....formula with soy, formula with rice cereal, advanced formula....and pacifiers.....Avent pacis (the ones Jack loves and I was sure Owen would, too), Soothies, Nuks, Mam's.....and bottles....Avent bottles that Jack used, every size of bottle nipple under the sun.  We have finally settled on the Playtex Drop-Ins and using the large nipples due to needing to mixing in  rice cereal in Owen's bottles to help with reflux.  FINALLY!!

3.  Two children are never the same.  At all.  From the paci's to the bottles, to the swing, these boys have been complete opposites.  Owen's reflux has been a beast and I think it is what has made the biggest difference between the two boys as newborns.  It's made him really difficult to soothe and over all not happy.  I read in my babycenter email this week that he could be smiling by now.  Ha.  Haha.  Hahaha.  That would mean he'd have to be awake without screaming, right?  We're getting there...finally settling on a bottle/formula/cereal/nipple combo that seems to work, and after trying Prevacid (which didn't work) and starting Zantac (I keep wanting to say Xanax, which is maybe a Freudian slip of what I need these days!), I think we're on the upswing of all of this.  I can't wait to have a happy baby....

4.  Jack is all kinds of able to entertain himself...if he wants to.  His new favorite toy is...wait for it...his stool.  Now, he has several stools.  One brown stool (which is probably his favorite), my nursing stool (which weighs a ton but he totes it around anyways), a pillow that he calls his "soft stool" which gives him about a 2 inch lift but somehow makes it into the stool rotation, and his learning tower that we keep in the kitchen.  Jack's stool toting has gotten him into all kinds of "fun"!  One afternoon, we were sitting on the couch and Jack runs in and says "Tylenol fall out!  Tylenol fall out!"  One of the other ways Jack entertains himself is to put Monk to bed in Vincent's bed in Owen's room.  He puts him in bed, covers him up, says, "Sweet dreams!" and shuts the door.  Precious!!!  Anyways, he decided Monk needed Tylenol before he went to sleep.  Naturally.  So he dragged his stool into his room where we keep the Tylenol and took it into Monk.  Well, the cap wasn't on and you can guess what happened next.  A whole new bottle of liquid Tylenol everywhere!!!  I mean, all you can do is laugh!  One other stool story....I walked in the den the other day and Jack was snacking on a big bag of pretzels.  I thought it odd Jeff would give him the whole bag, but whatever.  We're still in survival mode around here.  Jeff walked in the room and come to find out, he didn't give him the bag of pretzels!  Jack got them himself, off the counter.  Obviously he's being neglected and about to die of hunger!  Not likely.  :)

5.  The best part of having 2 kids is the sweet interaction between them.  Now, I won't say that Jack's ennamored by him, but he does love him.  Already!  He loves it when Owen's laying for a brief non shreiking moment on the playmat and he rushes over to lay with him.

Every time Owen cries, Jack urgently informs me that, "Baby Owen's sad!"  He loves when people ask him about his baby brother.  It's sweet, and I love seeing them together.

I'd planned to do a Top 10, but it's 7:50 and I'm exhausted.  So, Top 5 is all I can muster for the moment....the life of a mom of 2!

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