I haven't slept in a month.

Calvin is one month old today! We celebrated with a day-long sleepless crying fest. Oh, it's been fun!

After a trip to the grocery store (and to Sonic, where I drowned my sorrows in limeaid and tater tots - a surefire pick-me-up), he is now sleeping soundly in his car seat. Which is where he will stay, because every attempt I've made to put him down today has resulted in a total meltdown. The only thing that made him stop crying was holding him while I bounced back and forth. Sadly, I'm not in good enough shape to do that for eight hours. Or even one hour. I pretty much max out at 10 minutes.

It's been a long day.

However, despite the many moments of frustration I've felt today (and during the past month), I am nothing but thankful for this beautiful baby boy of mine. It is an absolute joy to be his mom, and I wouldn't trade it for anything.

Except maybe a good night's sleep.

(Kidding! Kind of.)

I have ankles!

That's the phrase I've been uttering over and over again the past three days. Seriously, I have never been so excited about weight loss in a random part of my body. After months of walking around on puffy, swollen cankles, my now normal-sized ankles seem ridiculously skinny and wonderful. It really doesn't take much to delight me in my new role as an exhausted mother.

I'm not going to lie: it's been a rough week. And an enlightening one. I had no idea what having a baby was going to entail. Never mind the whole labor and delivery part — that was a piece of cake, in hindsight. No amount of warning from books and friends could have given me a realistic sense of how tired I'd be, how often I'd break down sobbing over nothing, and how frustrating it can be to get a baby to just latch on already.

Luckily, babies are cute. This was a strategic move on the part of someone, because every time I start to think it might be okay if the past week never happened, this squishy-faced little angel of mine looks up at me with his big blue (ish) eyes and I can't think of anything I'd rather do than be his mom. He's amazing, and Nate and I are so thankful to be his parents.

Here are some pictures from his first week with us. More to follow soon!