The law of nature dictates that bringing home a new baby will literally turn a first child’s world upside down. Now imagine adopting a child and not having a few months to allow your first-born to experience the baby growing in mommy’s belly.
So Thursday Nolin’s day started as follows:
– Eat breakfast and watch Cailliou
– Daddy asking you random questions like “Do you think you would be a good big brother”, “Are you excited to meet your new sister Baby Grace”, and “Do you think you could teach Baby Grace everything you’ve learned and look after her”
– Going to school
– Being picked up by Grammy
– Meeting Baby Grace and realizing she wasn’t leaving…
With his 6 hour notice that his world was about to be turned upside down, Nolin answered “yes” to all my questions. He even started chanting “yeah Baby Grace” on our way to school. To be fair, I don’t think he really knew what he was committing to.
When Grace arrived at home he was instantly intrigued. He went right up to her and gave her a kiss and starting rubbing her head gently. I was dumbfounded. This was going to be easy.
Then he noticed her pacifier (of which he is now 3 weeks clean)…oh no, this is the test. He picked up the pacifier and we all sat on edge. He then tried to offer it to Grace, but she was sleeping. Then he began examining the pacifier further and shouted “No, that’s mine!” and took off. That is more like what I was expecting.
This also happened with her bottles of formula. In fact at one point he ran off with the bottle of formula and took a sip. He began spitting and saying “ewwww that’s gross”. No more formula.
The rest of the night he was very gentle and loving towards Grace, but he also ran around like a wild man trying to make sure he was the center of attention. I instantly realized that This is going to be exhausting.
But it couldn’t be too bad because Grace is so mellow and laid back, heck she slept all day, which could only mean one thing…I wanna rock & roll all night.
I forgot that part. Good news…Grace is easily comforted, just pick her up and she stops crying. Bad news…Grace is easily comforted which means that as soon as you put her down, she was no longer happy. Five minutes of sleep, Twenty Five minutes up…and repeat.
Jenn & I took turns sleeping, but just like Nolin we were running on excitement and nerves, so even when it wasn’t your turn you didn’t sleep. Finally at about 5:30 I put Grace on my chest and we all fell asleep. Until I had to get up for work at 7:15 and Nolin woke up at 7:30.
It instantly became clear that this wasn’t going to be a random freak occurrence of sleeplessness, this is our new forever. It also became instantly clear, that I am getting old.
Nolin woke up and wanted to know where Grace was. He began telling me how he loved her and how she is sooo cute. There was one problem, she sleeps all day and won’t play trains with him.
On Saturday morning (after a significantly better night of sleep) Nolin, Grace and I were up (we let mommy sleep in) and I brought her into the playroom while Nolin and I played trains and she opened her eyes and made contact with Nolin. He leaned over and gave her a kiss and then said…Yeah it’s not sleeping.
His excitement was short-lived when he realized she still wasn’t going to play trains with him…at least not in the immediate future.
Well for the immediate future (hopefully it is a quick immediate future) we all may be Not Sleeping too much, but I think I can safely say that we are ecstatic to welcome Grace into Our Modern Family and we wouldn’t have it any other way.
Our Modern Family 