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    I have it pretty good

    February 9th, 2009

    I had a dentist appointment this morning. Nothing serious: just my regularly scheduled cleaning. I’ve been with this office ever since I moved up here from college. Although, after 2 moves, it now takes me 40 minutes to drive there (without traffic), I still go there because 1)  I really like the staff; and 2) given how rarely I need an appointment, I don’t mind the trek.

    This morning I dropped G off at day care at his regular 7am time and, anticipating traffic, headed towards my 9am appointment. I got there at 8, much to my surprise, and since I had an hour to kill I decided to keep my 8am pump session and pump in my car.

    That’s right folk – I pumped in public. Well… sorta!

    I drove around the parking lot to find myself the most remote and concealed spot possible. I found one right next to a utility enclosure surrounded by bushes. I though “Perfect!” My side would be completely covered and my only exposure would be if anyone decided to pull up on my right. I figured that it was a big parking lot though, I was far enough away from the building entrance and the average “lazy” person wouldn’t care to park next to me. Of course as soon as I lifted up my shirt someone decided that of ALL the empty spaces around, the one literally right next to me would be the most perfect one to choose. Yeah – lucky me!

    I don’t feel self-conscious nursing in the car anymore. I feel justified in it, but pumping is different. I felt exposed… and a little embarrassed.

    Either way, the driver (thankfully a woman) came and went without paying too much attention to the evil-science experiment my vehicle was begining to resemble. After she left, I re-settled myself and finished up my business without further disturbance. But once I was done, I realized I had another problem: “How do I clean up?”

    This is where I realized how spoiled I am, and how good I have it. At work my Mother’s Room has a cozy recliner, an electrical outlet, a sink and a fridge. It’s clean, and private and quiet, and these days ALL MINE!!!!! Here’s a crappy photo, but one I’m going to cherish going forward.

    My car had neither of these things: the seats are certainly no leather recliner, it wasn’t private and a sink was only as close as the nearest bathroom. I started to feel bad for all the women out there who don’t have all the conveniences that I’ve gotten used to and have grown to expect. I’m really starting to admire them for being committed to “breastfeeding” their little ones while back at work.

    So yeah, I have it pretty good.

    …I think I need to send HR and our Facilities teams a thank you!


    Movie Monday

    February 9th, 2009

    So S and G have this little game they like to play: The infamous balancing act. I say ‘infamous’ because it scares the crap out of me.

    S balances G on one hand as G is sitting up on it. The two of them enjoy it while I typically quiver, freak out and yell off the side. He’re some video. At least this time they did it over the bed.

    [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBtsla4gB0E]

    And, yes, G really does enjoy this. A minute before the video started he was cackling at S for the game they were playing.


    Yum! Cookies!!!!

    February 8th, 2009

    Thanx to my beer post, I got a lot of good suggestions for beer. Thank you for that!

    I also got a recipe for cookies that incorporate several ingredients also known for boosting supply. I made them last week-end, but read the recipe incorrectly and didn’t make them right. They were very tasty, mind you — but all the important ingredients were there in part, so they weren’t fully potent.

    So today, I made them the right way. Still taste yummy and I’m very pleased with myself.

    Ta-da!!!

    I changed the original recipe by adding nuts and white chocolates (in addition to the milk chocolate chips).

    For those that care, here’s the recipe:

    1 cup butter
    1 cup sugar
    1 cup brown sugar
    4 tbsp water
    2 tbsp flaxseed meal (no subs)
    2 large eggs
    1 tsp vanilla
    2 cup flour
    1 tsp baking soda
    1 tsp salt
    3 cup Thick cut oats
    1 cup chocolate chips
    1 cup white chocolate chips
    1 cup chopped nuts
    3 tbsp Brewers Yeast (no substitutions)

    Preheat oven at 375.
    Mix the flaxseed meal and water, set aside 3-5 minutes.
    Cream butter and sugar.
    Add eggs.
    Stir flaxseed mix into butter mix and add vanilla.
    Beat until well blended.
    Sift dry ingredients, except oats and choc chips.
    Add butter mix to dry ing.
    Stir in the oats, nuts and the choc chips.
    Drop on parchmant paper on baking sheet.
    Bake 8-12 minutes.


    Foto Friday

    February 7th, 2009

    Yeah, it’s a Saturday, but you get pictures 🙂

    Caption: What? You haven’t seen a monkey holding a monkey before?

    Caption: I wasn’t sleeping — just thinking really hard

    Caption: The glasses may be girlie, but I’m still too cool for school.

    And from our high-chair shopping trip:

    Caption: Does this chair make my head look big?

    Caption: Uh-humn: can you please pass the Grey Pouppon?

    Caption: I can make some fine messes on this one!


    Take that you stubborn pound

    February 7th, 2009

    I’ve been within 2-3lbs of my pre-pregnancy weight for a couple of months now, but it wasn’t until today that I can happily report that I’m back to pre-pregnancy weight (a little under actually). That last one has stubbornly been hanging on since Christmas.

    But it’s gone. Ha! Take that you stubborn pound!!!

    … now, if only the extra skin (also known as pouch belly) could also get the hint and pack it’s bags…

    Oh, and just ‘cuz I’m a nerd and I like graphs here’s a pretty chart of my progress over the pregnancy. Now stop laughing!


    One stuffy nose = one sleepless night

    February 5th, 2009

    G has a stuffy nose. It’s not the first time in his life (a stuffy nose was one of the first souveniers he brought home from daycare),  but today’s was the first night there’s been any impact from it.

    My normally ‘sleeps like a log’ kid was up every hour or so last night because he couldn’t breathe.

    I learned that my natural instinct is apparently to comfort, not solve problems. It wasn’t until my third sleep-zombie walk to G’s crying bedside that I realized that just rocking my kid back to sleep wasn’t cutting it.

    I sprayed saline drops in his nose and busted out the bulb syringe:  both considered to be torture devices in G’s mind. He got pissed off for being brought out from his already weaning slumber, only to be tormented, and proceeded to express his ‘appreciation’ by screaming. But I got the job done and then cuddled my little guy. In the end I ended up putting him in his swing. I realize it’s not the most ergonomically proper way to sleep, but it’s the biggest incline I can have him sleep in, so that his nose drains out.

    He slept soundly (or I guess as soundly as can be with a stuffy head) after that.

    Today the vaporizer comes out of the box. I was another wake-up away
    from setting it up last night, but I got lucky enough with the swing to buy myself a few more hours of sleep.

    God, I hope this doesn’t turn out to be a full blown cold. I know he’s bound to get one, and is probably overdue for one, but I’m still hoping that his first cold can wait until he can take some basic direction… Things like ‘blow’ or ‘swallow’; ‘snort’ or ‘don’t move’.

    Ugh! Hate sickness. The only othet thing I can think of to do is to spent a ton of time holding him so that I can get his germs, make antibodies, and then pass them back to him through feeding. A bath in a steamy room, maybe?

    What else am I missing?

    If that wasn’t enough, the poop-supreme I talked about the other day produced a diaper rash not yet seen in our home. We’re still dealing with it. I think G will be spending some quality nakie time this week-end at home if it doesn’t get any better by then.

    Stuffy nose & rashy bottom. Poor kiddo! At least he’s still in good spirits and generally a happy little guy.


    G hits the motherload

    February 2nd, 2009

    … of poop that is.

    If you have no desire to observe me marvel at the solid waste production value by my child this am, please skip this entry. However, if you want to take the train-wreck approach…. read on!

    This morning after I finished feeding G (and got myself dressed), I headed into the nursery to get G changed and situated in his car seat for the drive to care. As I put him on the changing table I saw a poopie stain on his clothes. I think “Oh, goodie!” I peel off Mr. Froggie from him and notice that even the toy has poop slathered on it. This stuff leaked so bad it sent through his clothes onto his toys. Now I’m checking my clothes (the one day I decide to get dressed before him) to see if I myself need a change. After I confirmed I was poop-free, I proceeded to reveal the diaper.

    Dear lord, it was a sight to behold! (Ok, fine — not really)

    There was no holding back from this kid. I think he was saving 2 days worth of poops to deliver in one go. I was trying to maneuver his legs up in the air, the wipes, the old diaper while trying to minimize the mess. What was G doing? Looking very content. Yes, we are happy to see him “go” as it illustrates he’s eating well, but that smug smile on his face as I was bewildered on what to do first was walking a fine line.

    All I have to say is that I am glad this happened in a disposable diaper (since he sleeps through the night, we put a ‘sposie on for the duration).  S should be happy too that he’s not rinsing that out tonight.

    … now back to non-poop scheduled programing. You hope.


    Practicing eating… the big boy way

    February 1st, 2009

    After 5 months of eating off the mom G is ready for some variety in his diet. That’s right folks, solids are right around the corner and since I want to ease him into the experience we began “practicing”.

    What does practicing for solids entail? Essentially me feeding plain breast milk to G out of a spoon and his little dish while he’s sitting in his high-chair. I wanted him to start associating his chair, the spoon and the colorful dishes we got him with food time, and I also wanted him to start food-time with something I guaranteed he’d eat. I really didn’t want to start the process with a food he might dislike and then associate our setup with something yucky coming.

    It went well.

    He got the hang of the spoon pretty quickly, although he needed to learn the hard way that a spoon won’t fit in the mouth if a hand is already in there (and vise-versa). He’s really into putting his fingers in his mouth right now, and couldn’t wait to follow each spoonful of milk with a little thumb chaser.

    I had to learn (also the hard way) that feeding a baby is a little like racing a car through an obstacle course. You see, a colorful spoon is very interesting to a kid that likes to wave his arms about. You have to duck the spoon and get it back on track while arms are moving all about. Food flinging is not a sport I want to participate in right now (and to be honest, probably never).

    Here are some pics of our eventful day:

    Adorable, right? The little drool down his chin, just cracked me up. I was very impressed with how little spilled. We only did an ounce of milk and almost all of it went in his tummy.

    We’ll keep at this milk-only routine for the next few weeks. President’s Day week-end will be our first experience with rice cerial. Ooooh! It will be so thin, it will flow like milk, but we’ll see how he takes to it.

    I had hoped that we could wait to do solids as close to 6 months as possible, but the 3 day week-end feels like a convenient time to start and the kid is really starting to devour more than I can produce. I  send about 22oz of milk per day to day care with him and he’s apparently asking for more. Those 22oz require me to pump 6 times during the day, and wakeup at 2am on top of it, so I’m maxing out my capability here. We tried giving him formula to supplement anything over that and although it was acceptable to him on a few occasions in the past, he turns it down now. So… I’m trying not to rush to solids too much, but I’m starting to reach my limit of what I can provide to him personally.

    Our plan of attack is that he’ll still do all of his meals at day care from a bottle. After school he’ll get his ‘momma-direct’ meal and then follow up with a solid. “New” solids we’ll introduce only week-end mornings. This way all his bowl & spoon eats will be with us until he starts having more than one meal a day be a solid one.

    He’s growing up fast, huh?


    I want a do-over

    January 31st, 2009

    G is now 5 months old. Amazing how time flies, huh? He is such a sweet little guy.

    In honor of this milestone, I’ve decided that I want a do-over! I want to re-live the first 4 months all over-again. I’m not talking about having another child, I want to do-over of my time with G.

    I just feel that we know so much more now, about him, about ourselves that I just know we could do it better if we had the chance. And we’ll have more fun.

    What would I change?

    1. Enforced nap-time.  G’s a great night-time sleeper, but still fights day-time naps. I could have trained him to fall asleep, but didn’t know how to.

    2. Recognized his crying as being hungry, or tired. It took me awhile to start recognizing hunger as a possibility for him being upset. And fatigue never even crossed my mind. Looking back, there are so many days when he’s get fussy, when all it really meant was that he needed some Z’s.

    3. I would have started pumping right away. In the hospital even. If there was any way I could have promoted my body to produce more than it is, I should have done it.

    4. Recognized and accepted the reflux earlier. There was a period of time I lived in denial. It would have saved us all so much grief. Above all, my little guy wouldn’t have been in pain for as long as he was.

    5. Started tummy time earlier… and stuck to it. G’s getting better, but still not a big fan. If I was dedicated to it more, and let him cry a bit more, maybe he’d be better now.

    All in all, I don’t think I’m a bad mom. I wouldn’t trade this experience for the world, but I just feel like it could have gone better and we could have enjoyed each other so much more.

    So… anyone got a time-machine I could borrow?


    Yes, I’m “that” mom

    January 30th, 2009

    As it turns out I’m the creepy mom from the book “I love you forever” (PS. That book, by the way, made me “Aw!”, then cry, then creeped me out, then made me cry again).

    Why is that? Because if you’ll observe the timestamp of this entry (3:01am, thank you very much), you’ll see that I’m up.

    G is asleep. Has been since we put him down last night, but I’m awake. I’m awake and I just went into his room to check in on him. When I do, I put my hand on his tummy, lightly, and just feel him breathe. To be clear, as crazy as I may seem, I do value my sanity somewhat, so I don’t pick him up to rock him (ala ILUF mom) for fear of waking him, but I do stand by his side and just watch him.

    We have a room monitor, but he sleeps so soundly that many nights he doesn’t even make a peep. It’s nights like this that I wonder if a video monitor will help… but even then he doesn’t move much, so unless the monitor has thermo-heat setting (can you say military-issue and expen$$$$$ive?), I’ll probably still be getting up. We also tried the Angelcare monitor only to get rid of it faster than the time it took us to get it setup. Obviously the low-tech, little-sleep approach is most effective in this family.

    So yeah…. can you say “neurotic”?