Trade-Awful

So I'm finally doing it, I'm weaning. It feels more like I'm weaning myself than the baby. She is eating less milk now that she's eating solids, but really we can still give her formula. But I am pumping less and less and I'm not sore all the time, which is really a relief. Unfortunately, this means my hormone levels are changing, and I should have realized this: hormone levels changing means major headaches. Not that I haven't been having headaches almost every day anyway. But these are worse. So I'm trying to just deal as best I can. Take the Percoset, don't drive anywhere, hope Lily will want naps so I can zonk out. Stay calm, be quiet. Get through it. So if I'm supposed to be writing you or sending you something and I'm late, please cut me some slack. Thanks.

End of Day

Oh so snuggly, and holding her little handmade dollie from Art Auntie Kathy C. Life is good.

Green Bean Grin

It's smiles like this that melt my crabby heart. So what if this is the 2nd bib and 3rd burp cloth for this meal and Cocoa is drooling on the clean spot on my pants trying to get my attention to let her outside for the fifth time in the last hour? Lily is smiling and it's all good.

Oh, and she doesn't like green beans much more than peas, at least for eating. But they make good face paint.

Baby Sleeps Through Disco

So here's John and Lily at the Baby Loves Disco event that we got tix for. I didn't end up going because I was too sick with my 2nd winter cold. But John saw Carrie and Kieran there and they had a fun time, although he said it was a little too dark (see top pic) and a little too loud. Of course, Lily has no problem sleeping through noise...maybe we'll wait 'til she's a little older to take her again.

I'd Rather Eat the Spoon

Notice how full the container is still. We only got a few bites in there. After that, each bite was summarily refused with a closed mouth or oozed back out the lips in a gross manner.

I Don't Wanna Eat Peas!

Peas, the first green vegetable we've tried, were not a bit hit. Carrots are still the favorite, and the most staining. Coincidence? I think not.

The Moment Before Peas Were Flung Back Out of the Mouth

I do not like peas, not in a box, not with a fox, not with a mouse, not in a house!

Swing High, Swing Low

Today was a much better day. Lily slept until 8:30am, and then noodled around in the bassinet while I pumped, so I was able to finish and then feed her. Then we played a lot today, on her mats and rolling around the house in her little umbrella stroller. I make up commentary for her, like where we are (this is the downtown, and there's the toy factory, ooh, low bridge! etc.) and make zooming noises and stuff, it feels very immature and fun. And I sing songs to her as they occur to me, like the Zoom song today. Evidently it was so exciting that Cocoa got a bit riled up and started jumping on me and giving me big licks. Lily thought this was hilarious and started giggling, which is worth a whole day of rice globs in my hair. I just love that giggle.

I'm trying to stop and pay attention to Cocoa and slow down and pet her in between doing things for Lily. I know she's just jealous and needs more attention and that's why she went Cujo yesterday. And actually she's been mostly very good since the incident yesterday. But it's like having two kids, I swear. I'm hoping tomorrow we can get her to day care (the dog, not the baby) so she has a whole day to get her ya-ya's out with other doggies.

Not The Best Day, Kind of Like Alexandar's

And if you have to ask me who Alexandar is, I'm too crabby to explain it. He famously also had a very bad day. Even horrible.

First of all, I had to go to a doctor's appt in the frigid cold (-25 wind chill) and so had to dress up baby in her Yeti suit to bring her with me. When I get home, Cocoa has gotten into trouble, trashing several things, and so I tell her she's bad and naughty and she goes off to sulk and look guilty. I haven't pumped since 4am and it's now 11am, so I really need to. So I put Lily on the floor and hook up, hoping I can entertain her and get this done at the same time. Then Cocoa comes back, wanting me to forgive her, and will not get out of my face and keeps stepping right next to Lily. I try and try to get her out of the way and she finally lies down, partly on the blanket right next to Lily, which I don't want. I try to move her but she won't budge. Lily wants to pet Cocoa and reaches out. Cocoa growls and I tell her no and I grab Lily's hand but Cocoa still won't budge and finally Lily gets a hold of some fur and Cocoa turns around and snaps at Lily.

This is very bad. So I pop Cocoa on the nose. And then Cocoa growls at me! So I pop her on the nose again and tell her bad dog. Then she bites me!! GREAT!! Super. So I have to unplug, drag the dog into another room, put the baby in the crib while I have a talk with Cocoa. Now the baby is crying because she doesn't want to be in the crib.

I don't get back to pumping for a couple of hours longer and I'm in great pain by then. And have a couple plugged ducts. More pain. Then there's lots of fussing and crying the rest of the day because Lily is teething, and she's crying a lot, and hasn't been sleeping through the night the last week or so.

Sucky day. Very sucky. I'm feeling emotionally overwhelmed as well as exhausted from being bitten by my own dog, scratched, hair yanked, clothes barfed on, etc. by my baby, and sick with my second winter cold. Then I get my period.

Don't give me any damn advice. Just have some sympathy for Mommy today. It was a hard day.

Darling Piddies

The other day I had to change her outfit to a footie-less piece just because I wanted to play with her toes. Because they are just so darn cute!!! Here she is rollin' around on the floor in her room.

Would You Like Some Jam With Those?

Look, I can chew on my toes!! It's fun! And very gymnastical. Flex-o-baby. Of course, this is not a problem right now when her toes are kept clean in footsied fleece all day in the cold of winter. In the summer it could be a problem, there may be actual dirt on those toes. But for now, have at it.

With a Teething Bug Chaser for Dessert

This Week's New "Solid" Food: Squish Squash I Was Taking a Bath!

I know the bottom picture is blurry but I had to include it because it's so happy and funny. She's got squash in her eyebrow and up her nose and quite pleased about it. It's funny how fast it dries and gets crusty and hard to get off. She doesn't like it when we try to wipe off the mess while she's still eating, but I try to tell her this is what mommies do.

So we're currenlty introducing one new "solid" food a week, and we're up to four now: Rice cereal (which looks like mashed potato flakes), oatmeal, carrots, and squash. We read to hold off on the applesauce and other sweet foods so that they won't get stuck on only sweets right away. So we're doing vegetables before fruits, and yellow vegetables before green. I can't wait to see the green poo when we start her on peas.

We've started feeding her the solid foods in this snazzy high chair from Jack and Mary and it's a lot easier than in the lap. But we still give her the bottle of milk in our laps. They say (the expert-y baby books) to start feeding baby during your mealtimes, but we're not ready for that yet. Crikey, for so long we've been trying to do just the opposite, get our own dinners before it's time to feed the baby so that we get to eat at all.

Neato Feeto!

Lily has decided that Daddy's naked feet are very entertaining, especially when they wiggle around. I suppose this should be no surprise. Every time we have to change her diaper and take her feet out of the footies, they go straight into her hands, and sometimes a toe or two makes it into the mouth! But baby will not be munching on Daddy's toes. I draw the line there.

Hey, What Are Those Things?

Stealth Pooper: Warning! Potty Talk

Lily has suddenly become a stealth pooper! Used to be we could hear it and tell right away, poop alert, man the changing table! To your battle stations, load the wipes! And we could tell the difference between her little motorbutt farts and the juicy sound of baby poo. Alas, times have changed. With the introduction of solid foods in the last month, her poop has changed. Of course, there's the lovely orange color from the carrots. But now it's silent poo. And sometimes we don't know it's just sittin' in there. Which is not fun, you don't want your baby sittin' in poo! So we have to do (doo?) more frequent poop checks now. This is where you unzip one leg of the footie, and pull the elastic away from one little cheek and take a peek. And she's been fooling us lately. We think we're so smart, we know our baby so well, she'll make this particular type of farty noise and we're like "Oh, yeah, that's poo." But (butt?) the poo check reveals a false alarm! Amazing, these babies, how they grow and change and you have to keep relearning them.

Hoodoo!

This is one of my favorite Cary Grant movie moments, I always remember this bit. I don't know why I thought of it, I guess I just needed some nonsense. I made plans to do two things today but they both fell through because of either me feeling sick or me concerned Lily was getting a cold. So no gettin' out. I have been having a LOT of migraines lately and it sucks. I'm trying to look ahead to maybe Lily's 9 month mark and then start quitting the pumping breast milk. Once I'm off that gig, I can start trying migraine preventive medications, which could improve my daily life dramatically. Meanwhile, I try to keep up my spirits with goofiness like this. Go on, play it, it's fun. It's from The Bachelor and the Bobby Soxer, with Shirley Temple.

Steppin'

Here's Daddy showing Lily how to step. She's wearing a new pants and jacket combo I got at Once Upon a Child, which is a really nice resale shop. I'm definitely going back there, maybe even for a crib. They don't have any crappy stuff, it's all nice, and the price is right. This set was only $6.50.

I Iz Soooooo Kewt!

Eating "Solid" Food!

"Solid" is really a misleading description. "Mushy" would be more accurate. But she's doing great at it! We started about a week ago with Rice cereal, which looks like mashed potato flakes. You add breast milk to it, so it's not a whole lot different than just milk. And not toooo messy. And she likes eating it. And wants to hold the spoon herself. Carrots, on the other hand (actually, on all the hands, baby's and parents'), are way messy. Look at the orange explosion! And this is with two parents helping with the feeding. Now imagine me alone trying to feed her this stuff. I usually use two spoons, so that she can hold onto one while I load up the second one, and we just keep trading. Otherwise, she'll hold the one spoon for about 5 minutes before I can get it back. She doesn't understand that I have to reload it, that it doesn't keep giving like the bottle. But it's so entertaining feeding her. She makes these big smacking noises, it's so cute.

Sandwich Boy Dispenses Parenting Advice

The other day I went to Breugger's on my way to Carrie K.'s for a visit. I had Lily with me in her car seat (also known as the torture device that kills my back and lengthens my arms to orangutan-like proportions). So Mr. Chatty Sandwich Boy (manager, I could just tell) asks me how old Baby is, and when I tell him he says she should be sleeping thru the night now. Ok, Dr.Spock, I'll go with that. I tell him she is starting to, yes. Then he says with his first (child), they kept him up until midnight at 3 weeks old so he would sleep until 4am, which he seemed to think counted as sleeping thru the night. I didn't want spit in my sandwich, so I didn't point out how stupid this was, but just smiled and said "Mmmm."

Then he went on, "My advice: no nook." Well, I felt it necessary to tell him that she (Lily--he never asked her name, guess he didn't need any personal information for his one-size-fits-all advice) needed a nook (this is a pacifier, for those who don't know) to learn to suck because she was a preemie and they gave her one in the hospital (you know, where doctors and nurses and other qualified medical personnel work?). So he glosses right over that and says, "Then my advice: At one year, no nook. The first few days are hard, but it's worth it." Again, I wanted my my food in an edible state, so I smiled and nodded.

But what the hell? It galled me, the way he kept saying "My Advice:" not as a question or even a recommendation that he'd heard from several other parents as a workable solution for something I asked about. Just "My Advice:" And, hey, I mean, this is not a fair situation. I am a captive audience at the mercy of the service he is giving me (well, that I am paying for), so I'm not going to have a real conversation with him and tell him what I really think. So he gets to listen to me tacitly agree with him, which strokes his authoritarian ego, which makes me ill. Someone needs to tell him to shut up. If I was having a real conversation with him, I would tell him I totally disagree with his Nazi parenting style, and that there are good reasons for pacifiers. And I wanted to ask, "Taking the pacifier away is worth what?" Why must you deprive your child of his little happy comfort device? I mean, I know there are medical reasons to stop using a pacifier--orthodontics, etc,--but there are also good reasons for using them. But he didn't care about my particular situation, about me personally, which is what he was no doubt trying to come across as, a friendly caring service person. But it backfired. Instead he showed himself to be not thoughtful, a bad listener, and someone who thought he was always right. Gee, I don't want to know you. Just give me my damn sandwich.

And what is it with people giving out unsolicited parenting advice? Just like when I was trying to get pregnant, just like when I was pregnant, they all had the answers. I guess it's an insecurity people have, and they think if they've found a solution to their particular problem, they must spread the word, evangelize. But having experienced several medical mysteries in my life, including unexplained infertility and migraines, I know one size rarely fits all, and I get very cranky when people insist they know the answer, if I would just listen to them. And it annoys me even more in a sandwich boy situation, where I can't say what I really think (even politely), beause I risk that service person taking my dissent as an affront and messing with the service they're giving me.

There's an NPR show called Wait Wait Don't Tell Me in which they have a segment that plays upon this situation, just for fun. It's called "Not My Job," in which guests are intentionally asked questions way out of their field. I think it's humbling for the guests, and a reminder to listeners that you can't know everything. So shut up and listen more. At least that's my take on it. And I have a headache right now so I'm probably overanalyzing this because I'm cranky. But I'm still right. So there.

5 days old to 7 months old

John thought it would be fun to compare these pics to show much our lil' punkin' has grown and changed since she was born. I can hardly believe she used to be so teency! How amazingly blessed we are.