Just one baby!

It is pretty amazing all the ways that having one baby is different than having two. There's only one baby to feed, one baby to comfort, one baby to diaper, one baby to bathe, one baby to wake up for in the night, one baby to load into and out of the car, one baby to carry. It's also incredible to me the number of times I pick Reed up, like in the night, and immediately think, when will the other one wake up, and how will I comfort him too? And then I realize, there IS no other one! It's just this little baby, and I can devote all my attention to just him! I remember that I used to have dreams, when the twins were very tiny, that there were more and more babies who needed my help and that I had to get through to helping them all. Just one baby seems so much more manageable! I can always wear one baby in a carrier pretty easily and go about the rest of my day with the boys or doing things around the house. It does not involve connecting two tiny infants to carriers or trying to settle them in bouncers or swings. Reed does get held and carried a lot, probably a lot more than Theo and Beckett did, and it seems like he insists upon it more than they did. The most amazing thing is that when Reed falls asleep, and it's either a time during the day when I don't have the older boys just with me, or if it's at night, I can just GO TO SLEEP! The hardest thing about twin babies was that when one fell asleep, the clock started ticking on when that one would wake up again, and I would want to get the other one to go to sleep as soon as possible so that the window when they were both sleeping was long enough for me to get some sleep. Now, I get to just settle in wherever I am and go to sleep! Amazing!

Reed has had a couple of really grumpy times, but it seems like they have mostly preceded giant poops, so maybe it's his way of telling us he is uncomfortable and wants to get some poops out. It's honestly hard to remember any particular moments of Theo and Beckett's small babyhood, probably because we were exhausted and felt like all hands were on deck at all times. Reed doesn't tend to sleep much more than three hours at a time but he doesn't mind being put down right after eating and  getting a new diaper. Even if he grunts and settles in for a few moments while he's still awake, he will just close his eyes and go to sleep on his own, at least so far.