I am kind of depressed today. Just typical post-partum stuff...feeling overwhelmed and fat and disconnected from Julian, who is acting out lately. Sleep-deprived too, of course. And it's raining and cold, which doesn't help.

It's all temporary, I know. I'll feel better soon. But today I just feel sorta shitty.

I'm glad that Julian is in preschool, I need a break. He has been very challenging lately, saying "no" to most things we ask him to do, melting down, or just plain ignoring us. He's been spending a lot of time in his room calming down, let's put it that way. Sigh.

I took Adrian to bed in his room last night, because he has been waking up fussy in the middle of the night and I don't want to have Julian awake as well.

This morning Adrian woke up at 6:00am fussy, hungry, snuffling (I still don't know what that's about. Reflux? Congestion?). I fed him, walked him around a little bit...he still didn't calm down, was still congested and breathing fast.

Julian came in to Adrian's room and climbed into bed with us at 7:00am, right when I had just gotten Adrian relaxed and sleeping on my shoulder. I patted the bed next to me and asked him to come and cuddle with me. Lately he wants to kiss his brother endlessly, but doesn't want to cuddle or kiss me at all.

He crawled in and snuggled up to me, and reached over to touch Adrian's hand. It was nice cuddling with both boys. I asked J if he was mad at me, and he nodded. I asked him why and he didn't answer. I asked him if he was mad because his baby brother was here now and taking up a lot of Mama's time and attention. He didn't answer, he just said, "He's out now, he's not in your belly anymore".

I said that was true, and it was OK for him to feel mad sometimes. If he ever wanted to cuddle with me, or wanted attention from me, he could just tell me and I would do my best to give him cuddling and attention. But crying and hitting were not good ways to get cuddling and attention, because then Mama and Daddy get mad.

At that point he grabbed Adrian's hand and started pulling it towards him. I asked him to stop, but he kept pulling, so I disengaged him. He was mad, but he grabbed his motorcycle and started playing with it. Adrian started to fuss from having his hand pulled while he was peacefully sleeping. I tried to comfort him while still keeping my attention on Julian, playing with the motorcycle, making a ramp out of my free arm, etc.

He kept reaching over to drive the motorcycle over Adrian's arm and getting it way too close to his sleeping face. Of course I asked him to stop and blocked him from making contact. He kept it up though, at which point I started getting mad. Finally he bonked Adrian on the head a little bit, not too hard, but hard enough. Then he whacked my arm with the motorcycle. I took it and threw it off the bed, then he lunged at me and I gave him a hard push to get him away from Adrian.

He started bawling and ran out of the room, apparently to go tell Dan that I had hit him. So much for my attempt at reconnection! I guess I just need to keep trying, but it's certainly not easy when you're being hit, and fending off potentially rough contact from your new infant.

Sigh....I'm so sad that it's like this with Julian right now. I guess it's pretty natural to have a lot of conflict when a new baby comes along, but it still sucks. I need to get back to reading "Siblings without Rivalry" and pick up some pointers.

It's odd because it's not like overt rivalry. He says all the time how much he loves his baby brother. He always wants to pet and kiss him, but sometimes the petting and kissing gets a little out of hand. Then he doesn't stop and he freaks out when I *make* him stop. It's more like he's mad at ME for the whole situation, which I guess is natural too. But I don't know how to get around it.

Adrian doesn' t want to be put down, and he doesn't want to be held by anyone else right now. So unless he's sleeping, I don't have much one-on-one time with Julian, and Julian is sort of avoiding me anyway. I tried to cuddle him yesterday while Adrian was sleeping, but he slipped off my lap and ran away.

Maybe it's like when you and your boyfriend/husband have a fight and he wants to make love to smooth things over, but you can't because you're still mad at him (even if it's just a little bit) and therefore not even remotely in the mood yet.

Ya think?

Maybe I could try to do more activities with Julian. It has been hard while I'm recovering, but now that I'm starting to feel better...I'm going to try to go for an easy hike next week. Maybe he can help me cook, we were doing that a lot before Adrian was born. Except that I'm still not cooking, just mostly reheating stuff from the freezer, or food that friends bring over. Maybe we can make cookies? Except that I'm feeling so FAT, that's probably not a good idea.

The fat thing is silly, I know I'm only a month post-partum and of course I'm going to be fat and flabby for a while still. But I have lost patience all of a sudden. I am so sick and tired of wearing huge maternity clothing, or too-tight regular clothing.

Last night Dan was holding Adrian while I did some stretching and some "Lose Your Mummy Tummy" exercises. I was doing a forward fold at one point and felt my belly skin fold over itself several times. Gross! I just kept saying to myself, "It will all go back into place with time." But still...

It also didn't help that Adrian was screaming in Dan's arms almost the entire time I was trying to relax and stretch. YOU try relaxing with a screaming baby 4 feet away. Jesus Christ. No amount of deep breathing can chill you out with that going on. I'd have to be some kind of super yogi to stay calm and centered. Especially since he's MY screaming infant.

My abs feel a little bit sore today near my incision, even though I only did the very mildest of contraction exercises. Just basically sucking it in and holding it there. I did plank pose a few times as part of my sun salutations. But maybe plank is too much? Aaaargh. I'm a goddamn INVALID.

Well, Adrian just massively pooped AND spit up, so gotta run. Cleanup duties required....