Survival

It’s been another busy week, as you may imagine. Luckily, Kira’s mother arrived earlier this week to offer her capable helping hands. At the same time, Hakan has had more good nights than bad nights this week, so the household is overall managing very well. He usually goes anywhere from 3 to 5 hours in between feedings at night, and has been good about sleeping in between as well (my sister suggested today that maybe we should have named him “Samuel” because he wakes up Eli several times a night [1 Samuel 3:4-9]). When he’s awake, he likes to check out his surroundings and fill his diaper. He tends to also have the hiccoughs fairly often. Here is a video of a particularly violent case: 

Kira and I were watching a hockey movie earlier in the week, and when the team plays Sweden, the announcer names one of the Swedish players, whose name happens to be Hakan. He pronounced it ho-kahn. That also explains why Kira’s relative by the same name was often referred to as Hogan when in the U.S. At the risk of insulting all Swedes, we will continue to pronounce our son’s name as “hay-kan,” but if he ever moves to Sweden some day we will have to prepare him for the shock of his life. 

The kids have been getting more used to their new sibling. Avey is learning about proper holding and soothing techniques. She discovered a day or so ago that she can use her clean finger as a substitute pacifier, and that she can make it a few minutes before her finger gets wrinkly and hurts.

Carver has not yet attempted to murder his new brother, so we figure they are getting along just fine. Actually, he is very kind and gentle with Hakan, but I suppose anyone would seem disinterested in the little guy when compared to Avey – she dotes on him all day every day, and shows no sign of stopping.

To complicate this week for us, Avey decided that she would finish Kindergarten. Naturally, we could not just pick her up from a pleasant last day of school and be done with it – we had to have a ceremony. Although I applaud the school for having the Kindergarten program at 8:00 a.m. in order to try and stay ahead of our record-breaking heat, that also meant that half of the audience was in direct sunlight because the source of shade was useless with the sun’s angle. I, for one, found it rather silly to hold a “graduation” ceremony, complete with cap and gown and phony diplomas for kindergartners, but Avey was excited and was at the top of her class, so I suppose this celebration won’t reward her for doing nothing. 

After the pomp and circumstance, I took Avey and Carver to a nearby fun park where the school was having an informal party. If it hadn’t been in the 100s, I probably would have enjoyed it more, but at least the kids had some fun, and it gave Kira a slightly less noisy home for a few hours. 

We are looking forward to the days when we have a yard and the temperatures are more tolerable, so that we can just herd the kiddos outside and let them have at it.

#Happenings