Noah is now 1 week old! We've been enjoying him immensely and our only complaint is that he's not awake enough during the day! At least he's also sleeping well at night. Last night I fed him at about 11 p.m., he slept until I woke him up at 3 a.m., and then slept again until 8 a.m. Although I'm still tired from being up in the middle of the night, I feel pretty good and am happy with how things are going.
Weston, Grace and Elsie love to hold the baby and talk to him throughout the day. I was a little worried that Elsie would be jealous as she's pretty attached to Mommy. She hasn't shown any jealousy and loves to hold her brother and rub his head. My only concern is that she would try to pick the baby up by herself and drop him. We're pretty careful to not set him where she can step on him or pull him down.
We've also discovered that Noah likes to pee-pee when his diaper is off. He's "sprinkled" us almost every day! I've now learned to always have him on the plastic changing mat and try to keep him covered at all times. It can be challenging to try to wipe him, get a fresh diaper on him, and keep him covered all while he wiggles around. He also managed to do his #2 on me the other day. He's pretty talented for only 1 week old!
Mike has been off work since Noah was born and will also take a few days next week. I haven't even left the house since coming home from the hospital and we've all been enjoying some good family time. We've been blessed with meals from our church family,
Household of Faith Community Church, almost every day which has been awesome! I'm so glad our church has been bringing meals as I heal from my c-section. My husband has many talents, but cooking is not one of them! I did get permission to share this funny story from this week. The other day I asked Mike if he would be willing to make some banana bread as we had some ripe bananas sitting on the counter. I teased him that I didn't know if he could do that without messing it up (he has a history of recipe blunders). He very proudly told me he could make banana bread without messing it up and he didn't even need my help. After the kids were in bed he set to work on the recipe. He seemed to be doing great and was obviously being very careful about following the recipe precisely. At one point he asked me where the cloves were and I told him they were on the spice rack with the black lid. Once the bread was in the oven it started to make our house smell soooo good. When it was done Mike cut a couple of big pieces and dug in. He started to say how it was good but that he must have gotten a pocket of cloves that weren't stirred in. He continued to eat for a few minutes before he realized something was very wrong. He went into the kitchen and held up the bottle of WHOLE cloves and asked me if this was what he was supposed to put in. I do have to give him credit that the whole cloves were on the spice rack with a black lid just as the GROUND cloves were. I was laughing so hysterically that my incision starting hurting pretty bad! Mike had to drink a bunch of milk and eat some cottage cheese to cut the burn from all the whole cloves he ate. It was so sad to throw those 2 beautiful loaves of banana bread into the garbage, but it did give us both a good laugh. :)
Here's a few photos from this week. I'll try to do another post soon with the meaning of Noah's name and why we chose it.
Here's Noah as our dinner-table centerpiece. We got the idea to put the baby on the table during meals from our friends, the Chupps, who used to put their baby, Selah, on the table while they ate. It's a good way to include him in the family even though he can't sit up yet.
Grace loving her brother.
Here's Noah at about 7 weeks. The first thing people say when they see him is, "Well, we can tell he isn't starving!" It's been so fun to see him start to smile and coo. He's a pretty happy baby and seems to be fairly laid back so far. We've amazed how much he looks like Weston as a baby. We didn't realize it until we came across some of Weston's baby pictures. The only differences in their baby photos are Noah's dark complexion and more turned up nose. 
Grace loves to hold the baby every day. One day she sat and held him for over an hour! She was happy and he was happy so I just let them be.
Big sister holding again. I like this photo as Noah was so awake and alert. 
Elsie's getting in on the action. She likes to hold the baby too. Her limit is about 3 minutes :)
Noah in the tummy a few hours before he's born :)
