Well there is nothing much to update about Cameron - he eats, sleeps, poops, and grunts! He has done really great at night this week - most nights he has slept 5- 6 hours straight and it has been awesome!
Brayden, on the other hand, is hilarious and I have to start writing down the things he says because I always forget them. So here are some "Brayden-isms" of this week:

Tuesday: I am tying his shoes and his backpack is hanging next to us. He kept saying, "Mommy my truck is in my pack pack - do you see it? Do you see it? It's right there, Mommy, do you see it?" I continued tying his shoes and just said "Sure" to get him to be quiet. He said "Oh, you see it? I can't see it. Do your glasses make you see it?" Yes, I have super-powers. My glasses give me x-ray vision.
Wednesday: I was messing with my shirt and Brayden saw my lovely stomach. He asked me "Mommy, what happened to your tummy?" "Oh nothing buddy, Cameron did that to me when he was in my tummy." "Oh, did he paint stripes on it?" Thanks.
Today: We made cupcakes, and he licked the bowl, very literally. His face was covered in chocolate and I told him to come over so I could wipe it off. He said "But I can just use my tongue to clean it!"

1 month

Cameron is a month old today! I can't believe it has already been a month - time has gone by pretty quickly. He is filling out and getting so much bigger, and he spends more and more time alert and awake during the day. He makes adorable little noises and smiles. And no, he does not sleep through the night - I seem to be asked that a lot. We are far from it... He is still having issues with gassiness and I'm trying to figure out the magic solution. We have tried different formula, bottles, and have just heard of gripe water so we are trying that now.
I am feeling a lot better, and I'm done "taking it easy". There is too much stuff that needs to get done and the longer I sit here and let it go, the more overwhelming it is going to be when I decide to finally tackle it. I am still extremely sleep deprived, which makes me kind of cranky most days, but there isn't much I can do about it. I am able to get back into 3 pair of jeans already, but shirts are a different story - I still have the flabby nasty tummy pooch and probably will for the rest of my life, but I'm going to try and make it smaller. I officially decided to start a diet today, and plan to start working out once the doc gives me the okay in 2 weeks. Until then, I still have an excuse...lol
Brayden started preschool today at the park district and he was so excited! He seemed to really enjoy it, and the teachers said that "he just needs to get used to the schedule" so we aren't sure what that means, but it doesn't surprise me at all. He likes to do what he wants when he wants and isn't used to being in a structured setting (he has been in a home daycare for the past year). This is part of the reason we put him in preschool so hopefully he'll adjust pretty quickly.

Big Brother Brayden

Tonight Brayden was upstairs watching TV and yelled downstairs for me to come up and talk to him. He told me "When I'm 4, I get to go back to BigDonalds (translation - McDonalds); when I'm 6, I get to go to Wal-Mart; when I'm 3, I get to go back home; and when I'm 5, maybe I can ride on a steam train." I have no idea what goes through that head of his, but he is hilarious...
I have been meaning to brag about how great he has been. I was terrified of how he was going to react to Cameron - I expected a ton of jealousy, him acting out for attention, and us to both go completely insane being here together all day since he is so used to being at daycare and playing with other kids all day. I have been pleasantly surprised...he has been awesome! I mean, he still has his moments, but he's still a 3 year old who has a ton of energy and is stuck inside b/c it's winter in Chicago. He has been an awesome big brother - he loves Cameron soooo much and wants to do everything with him. He has turned into a complete "momma's boy" and wants to hold my hand and "talk to me" and sit in my lap - and I'm loving it! I don't think I ever realized how much I was missing out on by working and not spending time with him. However, he is getting cabin fever and is going a little crazy not having someone to play with all of the time, so I have enrolled him in preschool and he starts next week so that should be good for all of us. We are really excited for him to get that social interaction and to start preparing for school, and it will be good for me to get a break and spend some 1:1 time with Cameron. I absolutely love my 2 (well, 3) boys and love being home and spending time with them!

3 Weeks

Well week 3 was pretty uneventful. My mom came back up and stayed the week to help me with the kids since I was told to take it easy (and couldn't drive). We pretty much stayed home and relaxed. Cam's umbilical cord finally fell off this week and he took his first real bath. I was afraid he would scream the entire time, but he loved it! He is still a great baby, but has been having some tummy problems this week. He constantly grunts and moans and groans and seems really uncomfortable - he seems to have the type of discomfort that would make most babies scream and cry all of the time, but he doesn't. We are experimenting with different bottles and I just switched him to the "gentle ease" formula for gassy babies so hopefully that will help. Poor little guy...

2 weeks (almost 3 at this point)

Well, my plan was to update my blog weekly for at least the first few weeks/months of Cameron's life. I don't have a baby book for him (not that I would write in it if I did - Brayden's is pretty much empty), so I am going to try and document fun new things on here. He turned 2 weeks old on Monday, and we took him to the dr for another check up. He is doing great - very healthy and had gained a pound from what he weighed when he left the hospital. He has clogged tear ducts, so they get kind of gross at times, but they don't seem to bother him at all. I missed 3 days of the week with him b/c of me being in the hospital and it seemed like he got bigger in that small amount of time. It was really hard to not be with him, and it was definitely much earlier than I had planned on letting him sleep over anywhere else, but it's not like I really had any control over anything. Although I missed him, I wasn't in any condition to be able to take care of him either. It was so great to be able to hold him when I got home on Sunday night - I love snuggling with him!

I am blessed...

I finally got to come home from the hospital late this afternoon, and for the first time in 3 days my headache is gone. I feel a lot better, but still am very weak and have no appetite at all. I've eaten some pringles and fruit roll-ups today and that's about all I can get down. Hopefully I can keep this headache under control and will feel a little better tomorrow.
I am truly blessed to have a family that loves and takes care of me. On Friday it took an army of people to watch the boys since everything happened so fast - I think there were 5 different people in shifts throughout the day. Rubin's mom watched both boys all weekend which was a huge help. When I got home today, Rubin's step-mom and her sister had cleaned my house, and my mom is flying back up here to spend another week with me to help me take care of the kids. Rubin HAS to go back to work - he just went back on Tuesday and already had to miss Friday so he can't afford to take any more time of to stay home and help me.
Things should get better each day from here on out. It will take me a while to regain my strength and replenish my blood supply. I don't really have any medications to take - they just said to continue with the prenatal vitamins and that I probably should take an iron supplement. They also told me I shouldn't drive for 2 weeks b/c of the blood loss so that should be interesting - I think I might go crazy.

The latest Chrisman health saga...

So we can't seem to catch a break in our house. Yesterday morning I woke up bleeding pretty badly. I called the doctor at 5 am and he said that it was probably nothing to worry about - he said to lay down for a couple of hours and if it didn't seem to stop that I might want to go to the ER. He made it sound like it wasn't a big deal, so I sent Rubin to work. Shortly after he left, I decided I needed to go to the ER, so I got up to change clothes and felt a huge blood clot coming out of me. I went to the bathroom and took off my pants in the bathtub and a clot about the size of a volleyball fell out. I managed to crawl into the bedroom to get my phone and called Rubin, who called 911 and headed back home. He got there about the same time as the ambulance and I was barely conscious by the time they got there. I have never been so scared in my entire life - I seriously thought I was dying, and I don't think I was overreacting. The EMTs were all pretty freaked out by the amount of blood I had lost, and I pretty much had no blood pressure when I got into the ambulance. At the hospital they did an ultrasound and found pieces of the placenta still inside my uterus, so I had surgery (a DNC) yesterday to remove it, and while I was in surgery they also gave me a unit of blood. Things are looking much better now - I still feel like I got hit by a truck, but I'm off of the IVs and able to get up and move around. Please pray that everything continues to heal correctly, b/c if the bleeding doesn't stop from what they have done so far, the next step would be to do a hysterectomy. The doctor is pretty confident that I'll be fine and I should be able to go home tomorrow.
Oh, and I dropped my phone in the bathtub full of blood, so it no longer works, so if you have tried to call or text in the past couple of days I didn't get the message. I have a new phone now but don't have any of my contacts so I haven't been able to really keep everyone updated.