Fussy Baby, Cleaning Lady, Flowers Maybe?

Last night Zach, mom, Donovan and I went to Bob and Aruna's for dinner. It went fairly well and we had a lovely time, even if I spent the latter part of the evening with Donovan in my arms and my pinkie in his mouth to keep him happy. He's been a bit more, um, demanding the past few days, which could probably be attributed to many things-- babies apparently get fussier at 3 weeks, he appears to be going through a growth spurt, and yesterday was a long day and could've been a bit much for him (aside from the nighttime outing we also had a cleaning lady come yesterday afternoon for the first time). Swaddling seems to help calm him down at times, and I may be breaking out the sling and introducing a pacifier before too long (especially once Mom leaves in a week). He did give me a very nice break by sleeping for 6 hours last night, and he's been nursing fabulously the past several feedings. Yay!

So yes, we now have a cleaning lady. We kinda made a deal a long time ago that when we had a kid we'd break down and pay someone else to clean house. See, Zach and I both kinda hate cleaning. We're just not good at it, and will resort to doing it when the house is a wreck. We figured that while we were child-free we couldn't quite justify paying someone else to clean for us, but now that Donovan's around we have less free time and that free time we'd much rather spend with him (or each other). So Zach found this woman through someone he met in French class and she came yesterday and spent 3 hours here and my lord do our bathrooms look nice now. She'll be coming twice a month, and at the approximate cost of a dinner out in Geneva for each visit, we're happy to stay in and cook for the trade-off (I doubt we'll be going out to eat much these days anyway).

By the way, I can't remember if I've mentioned this here recently but we are going to still visit the US this summer. We're figuring out dates still, but sometime in May or June looks likely, and hopefully spending a week each in Texas and CA. Gotta go home and show off the little guy. =P

I just looked outside and noticed hat look like the shoots of the flowers we had growing in the yard last spring. They're some kind of bulb (narcissus maybe?) and I haven't done anything at all with them so I had no idea if they'd grow and bloom again this year, but I see their leaves coming up which is very very exciting b/c they were really beautiful. =)