Ok, this very thing that I am doing right now is utterly ridiculous. It is 2:21 a.m., I have a sleeping newborn, and I am on the computer. Because the house is quiet! Do you know when that happens? Not very often. Also, though I've done pretty well a few nights in a row, tonight I can't fall back asleep.

Brian and I are learning some things right now. Want to hear what they are?

1. REM sleep: we get ours at different times of the night, and we have figured out when that is. We can both function best when we sleep during strategic hours. Me, I need to sleep between 10 pm and 2 am, or I never went to sleep at all. Brian needs the early hours of the morning, or he feels like a zombie. So he stays up late and feeds Silas in the midnight hours, while I wake up in the early morning for that feeding. This way, we both get around 6 hours of important sleep, not just dozing. And a person can function on six hours. It's the 1-2 hours at a time that will make life seem interminable.

2. Iced tea is my comfort food. I can live without (much) sugar, I can pass on french fries any day. But when I was in the hospital, all I wanted to drink was iced tea. And as soon as we got home, I made tea. I have been nauseated during recovery (residual effects of pre-eclampsia, I'm told), and whenever I feel sick, I want - yep - tea. It's a product of being raised in Alabama. There's a sign in a local deli that says, "Put some more iced tea in my sippee cup!" and it would be comical if it wasn't true.

3. I understand this is not the time to be worrying about such things, and we have specifically decided not to make a permanent decision right now. But I'm not sure how many times I can sign up to have a baby surgically removed from my body. This recovery has been much easier than the first (look at that, my doctor was right. Labor and attempted delivery followed by surgery is more difficult than surgery alone), but I can't pick up Asher. Asher and I are tight, friends, and we miss one another. The hospital stay and first week of recovery have led to one anxious toddler and one guilt-ridden mother. Brian and I agree that we absolutely love babies and love being parents, and are drawn to larger (than two) families. We don't feel as though our family is complete, but the process - the whole thing, with the threat of miscarriage (or actual miscarriage), demands of pregnancy, then recovering from surgery - well, there are limits to how many times I can do that. We'll just take it one baby at a time.

Speaking of, Silas is a breeze. Also, I LOVE having a newborn the second time around. If it were possible to combine the time you have with a first baby with the level of comfort you feel with a second, being a parent of a newborn would be the best thing ever. He's a very calm baby, and he has much calmer parents than Asher did, to be sure. His favorite thing is to be curled up on my chest, which makes him like every other newborn in the world. Basically he eats and sleeps in his bouncy seat during the day, then eats and sleeps in his bassinet at night. So far so good.

Quiet time is over. Happy Saturday everyone.