Gametes In Love

The other day I was on the phone, sitting on the ground, while watching G play with our shoes. Yeah, it’s not quite a kid-friendly activity, but he likes rearranging them, and I was supervising him. I was on a work call and he was keeping quiet.

Well, when G decided he had had enough of the shoes he decided to crawl over to me and climb into my lap. Cute, right? Yeah, until I saw his true motive: to lift up my shirt and start poking me in the belly. It took everything I had not to laugh, but at the same time it was a little strange to be poked in my fatty bits. I pulled down my shirt, only for him to do it again. Hmnnn.

Then today he runs off with the remote control and manages to change the channel. To FitTV of all things! 900 TV channels and he gives me FitTV. Thanx kid! Trying to tell me something?

Ooops, almost forgot today was Friday. These long week-end make me all screwey 🙂

The day he wore this shirt, he fulfilled it’s promise. Twice.

Guess which one poured out faster

“Here, Mama! Have a shoe.”

A card from G:

Oh, and there’s a little poem inside too:

I made a little turkey
For Thanksgiving Day
To wish you lots of love
In a heartfelt way.

This funny little turkey
Is made of many parts.
Then I added lots of love
Straight from my heart!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Makes you tear up a tad, huh?

10.27.2009 : Footie ghosts

11.25.2009 : Our new place-mat (it’s laminated)

G has progressively gotten harder and harder to change out of his dirty diapes. Morning, mid-day or evening, he just doesn’t want to be changed. I thought at first it might have been the diaper-table, and that he had “outgrown” it, so I started changing him on the floor. It worked all of 3 times, only to go back to the same squealing, squirmy kid… or worse… one that flips over and runs away. There’s nothing more fun than chasing a naked, dirty baby bum around the room, lemme tell ya’. And G crawls fast! He sees you coming and picks up speed and those little legs cover a lot more distance then they deceptively let you think. Arg!

Well, I now have a solution, at least to the morning part of changing: a bottle of milk. I remembered a friend telling us that she just let her daughter suck down her morning bottle while she changed her, so I decided to try it. Well, what do you know? It worked! G’s far more interested in getting his morning milk on, than trying to twist or run away from a clean diaper.

It also makes my morning routine even shorter. I can typically change a diaper, put on socks and pants on before G’s done drinking. I now feel like I’m competing for a personal record. I haven’t managed to get shoes on yet in that timeframe, but I’ve got that goal in my sights. It’s like training for the Kid Dressing Olympics.

I don’t have solutions yet for the diaper changes for the rest of the day, but at least the important morning one is somewhat resolved. I’m open to ideas for the others 🙂

P.S. Ah, yes, we have given him multiple objects to hold an marvel at. They’ve extended from the “permissible” rattle toy, to the “marginal” diaper creme tube, even the bulb syringe. Yeah, can’t get close to him w/ a bulb syringe when it’s time to suck his nose, but he enjoys playing with it on the table. Alas it’s only temporary and gets chucked. I can tell you that my son has an amazing arm and can cover quite a bit of distance throwing stuff when he wants to. I also learned to read the instructions on items I hand to him. For example, G’s grammie gave him/us the little snow globe with a little snowman inside. Super cute. I gave it to G. It occupied him for about two days, until he tossed it, it hit the edge of the dresser and broke. Now I had a naked baby, glitter all over the room (did you know they used glitter for the snow?), water and broken glass all over the floor. Oh and we were running late for the day too, so it’s not like I had a ton of time to fix it all. As I was picking up the broken glass, the back of the snow-globe read “Not for children under 8. Contains glass”. Yeah, well, I learned this the hard way.

My mother used to say that whenever I was quiet (as a kid) she knew to worry, because nothing good came out of my silence. Silence for her spelled trouble. Trouble I was getting into. I think I’m getting prepared to find out what she means.

Yesterday was Neko’s annual check-up. As part of my routine, I get his carrier out early. I’ve learned with him that the moment he sees it, he bolts. As such I bring it out that morning and let it hang out for a few hours, while Neko regains a false sense of comfort. We also got him a new hard-sided carrier recently too, so I had that going for me as well.

About 8 o’clock G and I are hanging out in the living room after breakfast. I get busy on my computer, but watch a little blue-jammy ball of fuzz shuffle around from the corner of my eye jabbering along the way. Well, all of a sudden I noticed that the room got quiet, and G was no-where to be found. I peeked over my screen to see two blue feet sticking out of Neko’s carrier. That’s right — G had crawled inside. I didn’t know if I should laugh, call S over or grab the camera. Well, I think you know what won out 🙂

Don’t worry — the proper child was taken to the vet that day. He got an excellent bill of health too! S meanwhile is contemplating new baby-sitting solutions.

P.S. No toddlers or fur-balls were harmed in the making of this post.

We got three new pieces from Master G.

I feel like I should give you some background on the themes here. What G’s teachers do is hang all the most recent work on the walls, and then the stuff they take down comes home. The date I assign to each painting is the date we bring it home (since I don’t really know the actual day it was created). They’re accurate within a week or two though.

Here are some pieces that adorned G’s classroom over the last couple of weeks. The ones that are currently up are super rad (Mom you’ll like them a lot!) and I can’t wait to show you. Meanwhile, here’s the latest:

10.28.2009 : Cloudy with a Chance of Eye-balls (found out just recently this is supposed to be a Witch. Huh!)

11.19.2009 : Boo!

10.13.2009: I think this is an outline of G’s pants. I think…

We had a very lazy Sunday last week. We hung out in our PJs and stayed home awhile. S and G curled up on the couch and read a story. G’s not really into being read to, so this was a big deal. The two of them looked so sweet, they were the definition of a Kodak moment.

G needs a hair cut.

This is my opinion anyway. S, unfortunately, is not in agreement. While our little guy is as cute as can be, he’s growing a baby mullet on the back of his head. I’m ready for his locks to be trimmed, but S isn’t and until he gives the final OK, I’m patiently waiting.

For S, it comes down to a control thing: having no hair of his own to manipulate, he’s chosen G’s locks to control. I think my husband is damn hot in how he looks, but if he needs a head of hair to feel in charge of, fine!

I am, however, not taking this battle sitting down. My weaponry of choice? Hair clips! That’s right. Hair clips! If G’ll have the long girlie strands, I’ll take the girlie approach to hair management. I was a little saddened when the tech at our big u/s announced we were having a boy, ONLY in that I would never get to braid his hair, but hey, turns out I had nothing to feel saddened over. I’m on my way to getting my braiding dream. Here’s G sporting one of my clips to school today.

Doesn’t he look pretty (pardon the yogurt all over his mouth)? Where I put one on, S takes it off behind my back. It’s a passive aggressive battle, but kind of fun. (Little does S know I’ve got only about 2 dozen floating around the house and and least 4 in my purse.)

I am also not above the pink-bow head-bands (anyone got one they can lend me?) or doing pig and pony tails.

S, can I win yet? Please????

This morning marked the end of my nursing relationship with G. As much as a part of me wishes we can go on, it’s our time. My body is continuing to decrease the amount of milk I’m producing (and my current period sure isn’t helping that any) to a point where he’s really not getting anything out of me. I produced a whole whopping 2 ounces in the span of 6 hours yesterday, so I know that our morning and evening nursing sessions are now more of a routine than a nutritional experience.

I’m a bit sad, but also content. I started off this experience worried that I wouldn’t be able to breastfeed at all; then hoping I could make it to 6 months, and then a year. Well at 14.5 months, I’ve accomplished my goal and thrilled to know that I could battle a family history of, as well as my own body’s poor supply and win. I have no regrets of what it took to get here. The Fenugreek that made me smell like maple syrup, the Reglan, the Domperidone, the lactation cookies, the obscene amounts of water I’ve been drinking daily? They were all worth it.

I will miss my morning/evening snuggles with my boy, but I’ll tell you what I’m looking forward to:

1. Going back to regular bras. There’s a few lacy numbers S and I need to get re-acquainted with.
2. Sleeping in on the week-ends. Yeah, now S will be just as capable of getting up at 6 am on a Saturday and get G his breakfast. Oh, week-end sleep-in, how have I missed thee!
3. Not having to take a pump to/from work each day. Each morning, packing up my car for the day, between my bags and G’s bags, you’d swear I’m moving out or something.
4. Getting out of the house faster in the morning. It takes me 20 minutes to nurse. In contrast, G can suck down a bottle in about 5 minutes. Have you any idea what I can do with those extra 15 minutes?
   1. Sleep, for starters. I can snooze my alarm. Twice!!!
   2. Shower. Oh, morning shower, I’ve missed thee too!
5. Reclaiming my freezer space (we’ve had to result to a second freezer, borrowed from our neighbor, to store the overflow of frozen milk)

So there it is. The end. It’s bittersweet.

P.S. The water thing though… I’m kind of addicted, so I think I’ll continue drinking it as I have.