As I end my last week on maternity leave, I’d like to share just a few things I’ve learned so far as a new mom:

• A smile from my baby can literally turn my mood around. Sometimes, even the opposite of smiling can.
• Not all babies take a pacifier.
• Everyone warns about labor but no one talks about recovery.
• His little noises and finger-holding during feedings will be my favorite memories of these first few weeks.
• Babies get toe jam. Somehow.
• Thankful that I’m not doing this alone.
• Vacuuming can (and will) be put on hold. For weeks.
• My baby sleeping on my shoulder is one of the best feelings in the world.
• I worry about if my son will be teased in school, or worse, will be the teaser.
• Vomit, pee and feces ain’t no thang.

More photos can be found on my Flickr page or Miles’s Flickr page. More video can be found at our YouTube channel.

You can view the illustrator’s website here. Thanks for sharing, fellow Twitterer and LOST fan, abbybischoff!

The selection for boy colors in baby yarn is quite limited. There are a lot of pastels – and even “boy” colors in pastel still look quite girly. So I bought baby yarn in colors I liked, and then a couple I thought I could deal with for boys. (Turns out one is camo – I was hoping the dye would be in longer segments so it’d be more like shades of green…but it’s most definitely camo.)

I don’t know if any of the hats I made for friends’ babies will fit any of the babies, but I’m hoping they’re close. The parents can always re-gift or save it for a future baby if it’s too small, I guess! Albie helped out by modeling the hats – it sort of gives one a sense of size, too. Though I don’t have much sense of scale when it comes to babies who are 3 months old and babies who are almost a year old…

See the whole set here.

We wanted to re-watch all the seasons and journal our questions, but we didn’t think of it with enough time and realized we’d have to watch 6.5 episodes a day to accomplish it before the premiere – which just wasn’t feasible. So I went to Lostpedia and read the overview for each episode and developed my questions from there and memory. Each season progressively has more questions I want answers to. Some of these may be important questions, but most have probably passed their time of importance and I am the only one who still wants to know. In any case, you can read through them. It is not at all comprehensive. I know I’m missing major questions here, but they’re mine and you can have your own. I plan to cross them off as they get answered and see what’s left at the end of the series. After the fact, I found this article, which lists many unanswered questions (probably the important ones) and would saved me a little time (and hand cramps) with my list. Oh well. Maybe the island will reward me for my sacrifice.

I also have a page for season six, which will undoubtedly raise questions as it progresses.

Then we decided we were going to buy the crib this weekend too. And assemble it.

While we were at Target, we noted that the Pack n Play we were planning to purchase was in stock. So we bought that, too. And figured out how to set it up.

I had purchased a car seat earlier in the week, so we unboxed that.

All while rewatching season five of LOST.

Then last night we hung up the canvases I painted over my Christmas break.

You can see the whole set on Flickr. The only pictures that show the most accurate color for the wall are the ones with the canvases on the wall. The others look really bright. If I were to change anything on the paintings, it would be the triceratops. He looks goofy and has no neck. But, he looks the same on the bedding of which I was basing it off of, and I didn’t want them to not match. I guess we’ll just be teaching our son that even goofy looking people belong.