Disaster Strikes

First of all, thanks for all your input on my previous post. The decision has been made, the original baby name stands. I appreciated all the considered replies, and think the winning point in its favor was made by Ashley (hi Ash! miss you!) who noted that since it's what I've been thinking of the baby as for all this time, it's going to be really, really hard to completely switch gears and think of him by another name. For better or worse, the baby has been named, so if there are 20 boys with the same name in his 5th grade class....he'll live. Like I said, there were numerous other Jennifers in mine, and I'm not scarred by the experience.

Speaking of the other Cox spawn in the house, I have come to a decision, and that is that never again will I let Owen go on an overnight trip without me until he has reached the age of reason. This past weekend my parents helpfully volunteered to take Owen up to their house for the weekend so we could get the house organized and some essential projects finished before baby comes. That is, it was helpful until he returned home and every stitch of sleep training we have done and all the progress we have made was promptly undone and Owen and I (but not Andy, who somehow has managed to excuse himself from parenting duties that occur between 10pm and 5am) were locked in a battle to the death last night pretty much every hour on the hour from midnight on. It doesn't help that both he and I have developed bad colds, which further disrupted sleep ability. It's no one's fault, but the fact is that Owen is a very, very sensitive kid to changes in his routine and he just can't handle the disruption of us being away from him. This happened when we went to Florida too (only much, much worse - he was a disaster for almost two weeks afterward) and it's just not worth it. This is going to make the having of baby 2 very tricky, as I think for all our sake's, Owen is going to need to stay with a parent. This may mean that Andy doesn't get the full hospital experience this time and instead goes home after the baby is born to stay with Owen. I think that might be the best way.