Alexander will be 3 months old next week. He has made it this far and has only been bitten once, his leg tugged on pretty hard once and a few little pats to the face. I'd say, so far so good. Aubrey is beginning to settle into the idea of having him around. She has realized that she still has our attention and honestly, it's probably better than having a tired, pregnant mommy all of the time. I've gotten my footing with having both of them at the same time and have learned to prioritize their needs in an instant. If Alexander is vomiting everywhere and at the same time Aubrey is having a freak out and biting herself, it's easy enough for me to decide which one actually needs immediate attention and not feel like I'm a neglectful mother. Situations like that did take me a few weeks to get control of though. When Seth first went back to work, I thought that this situation was going to be impossible. I was completely on edge and pretty much thought I'd gotten in over my head. Now, twelve weeks in and I'm finding time to make phone calls and cook dinner again.
I still don't have the mix of work and baby quite figured out, but that's my next goal. Liz has been so flexible and we've even pulled an overnight from 7pm - 8 am to get stuff done while Seth and my mom could be home with the kids. Alexander does have a nice little setup in the office but he's too curious to relax and sleep there so it's impossible to work while he's there with me, so I've been winging it and doing a little bit here and there to try to keep up.
My biggest concern was always how the nights would go when Seth is on nights. We have found a pretty simple solution... let Aubrey take our bed. There seems to be something very comforting to her about sleeping in our room, instead of hers. I've taken up quarters in her room almost exclusively. When Seth is home, he just sleeps in our room with her. Probably not an ideal situation, but it is working for now and keeps Aubrey from being up all hours of the night. Being up with a baby during the night is hard, being up with an autistic 8 year during the night is hard, doing both at the same time, chaos.
I've been trying to get Aubrey to engage in some playful activities with Alexander and she will participate a little. She seems to realize that we are doing it to entertain him, but I don't think she'll be too interested in that until he gives her some sort of responses like laughing or asking for it again. That will all come soon enough though.
Aubrey has an appointment to see her neurologist in Minneapolis on March 5, so that will be our first trip with both of them. It's about a 10 hour drive, that should get fairly interesting after about 30 minutes in the car. Hopefully, we aren't ready to stop by the time we get to Minot and catch a flight instead. haha.
