The times, they are a changing (part II)

What I intended to write about in part I, is how my relationship with Hannah has changed since I started staying home with her. My wife and I work opposite each other; she works 8AM-1PM, and I work 2PM-late. We started this schedule about three weeks ago, before which Heidi was on maternity leave, so I usually had Heidi to fall back on when Hannah wasn't happy. And I did that more often than not. "She's crying. What does she want? Can you do it?" or just "She's crying. Take her." That's not to say that I didn't do anything, she was just fussy in the evenings because of cluster feeding and I lack the appropriate equipment.

Or at least I used to. Three weeks ago I got new breasts, in the form of adiri bottles. We highly recommend them. Hannah wasn't a fan of bottles, and she didn't take these right away, but she did take them. I still don't enjoy getting bottles ready and suffer from the occasional bout of booby envy when holding a screaming baby waiting for milk to warm up. Did not see that one coming.

Once we reached an understanding as to what is required for her not to starve in my care, we started to get to know each other better. I know her cries, her tired look, her about to be hungry look, her poop face. She knows me. She knows it's ok with Dad, even when Mom isn't around. She knows that when I sing she can stop screaming. And fall asleep. The down side of this is that I have sung Bogoroditse Devo at least ten times a day for the past three weeks. I need a new song.

I also have a new item on my list of favorite things. As I mentioned in a previous post, Hannah loves diaper-changing time, and as a result, we don't mind it so much either. Most of our pictures of her prior to three months are on a changing pad, just after getting her dressed. While diaper changes aren't quite my favorite yet, it is this time right after that I cherish. Hannah is happy and smiling and we get some good face to face time. We change her on pads on the floor, so it is a good time to give her raspberries and kisses. And then the new favorite thing: brushing my nose across her cheek while she half closes her eyes, grabs my face and says "A-goooooooooo!". That is not something that I would have guessed would be on the list a couple of years ago; if only I had known that there was something this amazing in store.