Life with Jag

Life has been different since Jag's arrival to say the least. This little boy sure is a handful. He is funny, mischievous (yes, our newborn is a trouble maker), opinionated, and stubborn...I guess he really is our kid! When we have little chats with him in the morning he smiles and coos and arches his eyebrows in response. He likes to smile and squawk when Craig says funny things about me. He yells and bats his hand at my face when he wants eye contact and my attention is somewhere else. 

This little guy may be all smiles in the morning (he gets that from Craig-I'm pretty much evil in the morning), but he has plenty of what we refer to as "Jag Rage"...and let me tell you this kid can scream!

 Along with the screaming comes some pretty funny faces...

and some really sweet moments...

and of course some fun!

See those gloves on his mitts? Those are our only line of defense against his Freddy Krueger  hands! There is no clipping or filing his nails and when he gets angry and starts flailing no one is safe from those things (not even himself)! As hard as this past month has been, I am already dreading having to go back to work in the fall.  I love being this little man's momma and I don't want to miss a moment! I mean he is only six weeks old and he is already trying to roll over (he can quite figure out how to get the shoulders over yet), I can't even begin to imagine how much he is going to learn in the next 11 months! 

Thar She Blows! AKA: The Rise of the Jagger-naught.

The past three weeks have been crazy! Let me start at the beginning...on May 17th at 3 am I started feeling contractions. I didn't get too concerned about them because I was scheduled for an induction at 8 am anyway. Craig and I woke up that morning and I made breakfast and we were on our way to the hospital!

We arrived at the hospital to find out that I didn't need to be induced at all because I was already well into my labor. I was progressing fast and we were all sure that our little boy would make his appearance by lunchtime...we would soon find out that this just isn't our boy's style. 

After fourteen hours of labor ( four of which were spent pushing) , our doctor decided that we needed an emergency c section. I won't go into details because I want to keep this post about the happiness that is our little one, but I will say that it wasn't the best experience of my life, and certainly not the beautiful labor and delivery I had imagined and hoped for. At nearly 10 pm our little Jagger came into this world and was quickly whisked away to the NICU. I didn't get to see him until the next morning and while I was happy he was stable and thought he was amazing-it was also not the meeting that I had imagined happening between me and my sweet boy.

I was discharged on Friday, but we had to leave Jag in the NICU. It was the hardest goodbye I have ever experienced and I never want to relive it. Fortunately, our little guy is strong and got well incredibly quickly! He was off oxygen, IV, and eating real food within a couple of days and we were basically just waiting on him to finish his run of antibiotics. He came home with us the next Tuesday at the ripe old age of one week. Here he is all ready for his first car ride!

I have to say that Jag took it easy on us the first couple of days, but all of that soon changed. This guy has attitude! However, he is also super sweet and has the most entertaining facial expressions! He locks onto things and just stares as he considers them. There have been so many new experiences over the two weeks we have had him home that I have been trying to write them down so that I can remember and tell Jag about them some day. He is already changing so much! I am also taking daily pictures of him so that I can commemorate his first year of life. One of the things I am most sad about is that there aren't more pictures of my childhood. I don't want that to happen with Jag. Here are some of my favorite photos so far.

As we speak he is being a little angel and sleeping on my lap while holding on to my thumb. It is these moments that I look forward to everyday and which get me through the not so fun Jag moments-and in the past two days there have been a few of these moments...