9 months, 3 weeks - walking

I'm calling it, Jeremy can walk. He's 9 months old.

2013 Dinners - January

I've decided to keep a record of what we eat for dinner in 2013, including whether or not Scott (and eventually Jeremy) ate it. My hope is to update this post every few days, and make a new post each month.

Jan 1 - Tacos (Eric). Scott LOVED the meat and cheese and also ate some orange bell peppers.
Jan 2 - Veggie stirfry (kale, parsnip, butternut squash, artichoke, leek, broccoli) over rice pasta with meatballs and red sauce (Laura). Scott ate the meatballs happily, had a couple of noodles, one piece of parsnip and more bell peppers.
Jan 3 - Fritatta with leftover veggies from the stirfry (Laura). Scott picked around the artichokes but generally ate the whole thing.
Jan 4 - Leftover Fritatta. Scott did a pretty good job again.
Jan 5 - Steak, Orzo with leeks and Peas, Salad. (Eric & Laura). Scott ate the steak after a lot of prodding. And then he ate some oranges.
Jan 6 - Bratwurst and bell pepper strips (Eric) - Scott ate a bratwurst and some peppers.
Jan 7 - Chicken Tikka Masala, Rice & Peas. (Eric) Scott grudgingly ate a few peas and when he ate any of the chicken he called it hot (it was spicy).
Jan 8 - Tacos (Eric). Scott ate his meat and cheese again (with somewhat less gusto than 1/1), some tortilla chips, some tomatoes and some bell peppers.
Jan 9 - Hot Dogs and Fruit Salad. (Laura) - Scott ate a hot dog with ketchup, some bun, and a bunch of fruit. He liked that much fruit at dinner.
Jan 10 - Lemon Pepper Cod over Spinach Salad. (Laura) - Scott ate snacks for dinner (raspberries, yogurt, cheese, etc). I tried to feed him spaghettios but he wouldn't even try them.
Jan 11 - Quesadilla (Eric). Scott ate his quesadilla with taco meat, cut up peppers and cheese happily.
Jan 12 - Costco whole pre-chooked Chicken, Cous-cous, Salad/Chicken Soup (Laura) - Scott ate the chicken and some tomatoes. He may have also had some bread. He never really ate much of the soup in subsequent lunches
Jan 13 - Beef and Eggplant Stew with Mashed Potatoes (Laura) - Scott ate some of the beef out of the stew but began a week of not eating much dinner tonight.
Jan 14 - Lemon Pepper Cod, Rice and Beans, Broccoli (Eric) - Scott surprised us by declaring Broccoli awesome and eating a ton of it. He ate about 1 bite of fish and about that much rice and bean mixture.
Jan 15 - Stew Leftovers - Scott ate some meat and bread again.
Jan 16 - No idea. It's been most of a week and I've totally forgotten what we ate. This is because we went off meal plan.
Jan 17- Chicken Leftovers - Scott ate the chicken, some sliced peppers and a few tomatoes.
Jan 18 -  Egg Scramble with Bacon, Pepper and cheese (Laura) - Scott ate some of it.
Jan 19 - Outback Steak and Sides (provided by Linda) - Scott ate none of it. His absolute worst night of dinner.
Jan 20 - Beet, Chicken, Goat Cheese Salad (Laura) - Scott surprised us and ate chicken, beets, goat cheese and spinach without too much force feeding (although we did steal his train and tell him he couldn't have it back until he ate a bite, repeatedly)
Jan 21 - Shepherd's Pie (Fresh and Easy) - Scott ate as much as we did, repeatedly asking for more! It was great.
Jan 22 - Tacos (Eric) -

Two, Three, Four, Five, Seben, Three...

Happy 2013!

I'm doing that thing where you document the first kid's developments really well and the second kid gets less documentation. It's not that Jeremy isn't just as amazing (he is, maybe more so), it's that I don't have 2 seconds to myself most of the time and when I do, I just zonk out.

But instead of whining about how hard it is to have two kids in diapers (it's hard), I'll just give you the long awaited update.

Jeremy is 9 months old. He is oh so close to walking. He takes steps, stands up without pulling up on anything, and walks/runs around while pushing anything that he can. He is also a climber, getting into and out of our little kid chairs, up on to boxes, climbing up the little slide we have... just being and adventurer. He is talking, but he's taking a break from learning anything new there while he masters walking. He'll be 10 months old next week and he'll almost certainly be walking by then.

I quite like having a little walker. He wants to practice and explore a lot of the time so it's gotten easier for me. But he's still content to ride along in the beco while we're out in the world, so I don't have to deal with him walking out in public just yet.

As for teeth, he still only has the two bottom teeth although I'd like to believe I feel bumps where the top ones are working on coming in. *shrug* I also got teeth late.

His first Christmas was almost unnoticed, but he was downright cute, even if he didn't care. He posed in cute hats, outfits, with his stocking, with his new chair, with his brother... he was adorable!

Scott loved Christmas this year, although he mostly enjoyed the cookies and the dollar store trains he got. Trains are his new favorite.

Developmentally Scott is finally learning to talk. He has hundreds of words now and he's getting much smarter. He's learned his colors, knows most of the numbers (although he always counts 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 3, 4.... I don't know what happened to 1 or 6). He is learning about animals and what sounds they make. He loves all vehicles and all things that move really. His favorite book these days is "Don't let the Pigeon Drive the Bus" and he can recite parts of it. My favorite is when he says "True Story!" because that's so cute.

The kids are starting to get along, although Scott is a bit of a bully right now. He will get frustrated if Jeremy gets in his space and he pushes him over regularly. But he will also share many things with his brother, both nice (toys) and not so nice (spinach). He'll do things in the car to make Jeremy laugh and that's wonderful. He always shows concern that the baby not get left behind.

Potty training still isn't in the sites yet, but we'll get there. However, having two kids that can play at the park is coming and that will be wonderful!

All in all, 2013 should be a lot of fun, and I'm SO excited to hit the point where I'm neither pregnant nor nursing and I can have my body back all to myself! No more checking out medications or worrying about a 2nd glass of wine! As for my body, I have lost all of the pregnancy weight, although as said by most women, I'm not back to my pre-pregnancy shape. My belly retains a lot of extra fat and that's frustrating. But I'm still working out and enjoying it, so the weight should continue to come off slowly.

And that's the news.

Merry Christmas 2012

90  second year in review (longer Christmas letter to come?):

Eric and Laura welcomed their 2nd (and last) child into the world! Jeremy Phillip was born on March 10th at 3:32am (Scott was born at 3:31am for those of you keeping track).

Lots of fabulous friends and family have come to visit both to see the new baby and to see us. I'd put everyone down, but well, I'm too tired to remember everyone and I don't want to leave anyone out. But if you came to visit, we LOVED having you here and appreciate that you came to us. If you didn't come visit in 2012, our guest room is wide open for 2013! Eric and I didn't do much travel ourselves in 2012, although we each went to one wedding (separately) that required a bit of travel.

This year has been all about finding a balance between staying sane with the lack of sleep and ever mounting housework, doing enriching things for the kids, and trying to have some fun ourselves.

Eric and Laura are at their same jobs. Laura hit 6 years over the summer and Eric has been with his for 2 years. Laura continues to enjoy her book club as her major ongoing "hobby". Eric has gotten into target shooting, although he doesn't get to practice much.

Scott is now 2 years old, celebrating his birthday with a fabulous Toy Story party where his friends and ours dressed up in costumes. He can walk, run, climb, jump, throw and do everything else the big people can. He's talking a lot more now, although we don't always understand what he's saying. He can put 2 or 3 words together, but we don't have sentences yet.

Jeremy is 9 months old and already walking with assistance. He will stand up using anything and if it's something he can push, he will take off across the room. Tables, chairs, toys... all of them get relocated. He has 2 teeth now. His major downfall as a person is his poor sleep, we are looking forward to him outgrowing this stage, but we aren't there yet.

2012 was a great year, and we hope 2013 will be even better.

I need words of encouragement

Every day is a challenge. 

Every day I think "This too shall pass".

Scott is very much 2. He has temper tantrums where he just screams "NO!" over and over again because he doesn't have a ton of language to explain his overly 2 year old emotions. He is getting smarter every day and he's also incredibly loving, but well, the "terrible twos" are a thing in our house. It's hard. It's hard to accomplish anything. It's hard to keep the baby safe and happy around his self-important older brother. 

And while Jeremy is wonderful, happy, playful, smart and inquisitive during his waking hours, he is a sleep terrorist and I haven't gotten more than 3 hours of sleep in a row (and those blocks are rare) in like 6 months. Most nights I get 1-2 hour blocks all night long. I am run down, frustrated...

and sick. Yeah, we are sick again. It sure seems like we spend half our lives sick. 

Kids. I sure hope you two end up BEST FRIENDS and appreciate how hard it was on your daddy and me when you were little. Having two kids this close together is incredibly difficult. I do not feel like a failure in any way, but I do feel like I did something stupid and now I just have to suck it up until... until I don't know when. I had someone tell me that when the younger one is 18 months old it gets better. So, we're half way there?

Ewww

Let me start this post with a quote from Eric.

"If I'd anticipated this situation when suggesting we have kids this close together, I maybe would have put a little more space between them."

For the last couple of weeks we've been sick. It started with a head cold in our 7.5 month old. Nothing big, but started the disrupted sleep (waking up every 2 hours). Next, Eric got it. He was so sick he took a day off from work to tend to himself. Somewhere after that Scott got a little bit sick too, but nothing huge. At least, until last Thursday when Scott threw up in the middle of the night. Oh so gross. Eric and I both jumped up to tend to it and it took everything out of us. Friday Scott stayed home from daycare with Eric and then Eric decided Scott needed to go see the doc for potential pink eye. Scott did indeed have pink eye, and also an ear infection. So we started him on eye drops and heavy duty antibiotics. Scott was lethargic and not eating, so he wouldn't cooperate with us on Saturday and eat the yogurt he was highly recommended to have between the doses of antibiotics. So the diarrhea started. I'll get back to that.

Fast forward to Sunday night. By this point, Scott was getting better. So when Jeremy threw up in the middle of the night, we were thrown off. We changed the sheets and got him back to sleep, only to have Scott throw up in bed. We changed HIS sheets. Then Jeremy woke up again, and wanted to eat. I nursed him back to sleep in my bed as I tend to do, and Jeremy threw up in OUR bed. So we changed those sheets and just sat awake for a couple of hours. At about 2:30am I started to feel ill. But it was at roughly 5am that I started throwing up too. That makes 3 of us who were throwing up in the middle of the night, 3 beds that had had sheets changed and 3 loads of laundry after we went to bed at 11pm.

All of us stayed home on Monday to deal with the throwing up baby, the throwing up mommy and the toddler who had developed DIAPER RASH from all the diarrhea. Oh, and I forgot to mention that on Saturday Eric had also come down with pink eye. So for those of you keeping track, that marks 2 cases of pink eye, 2 cases of bronchitis (didn't even really mention this), 2 stomach flus, 2 head colds, 1 bad case of diaper rash, and 1 ear infection. It was a day of steam mopping/wet vacuuming up vomit, trying to hold down enough liquid myself that I could actually make breast milk, trying to get the baby to hold down breast milk long enough to not get deadly dehydrated and trying to keep in good enough spirits that we didn't hate each other at the end of it.

I have forgotten every part of this saga by now (Tuesday, god). We are past the worst of it. Monday night there was throwing up by both children immediately prior to going to bed, and throwing up by the youngest immediately upon waking in the morning, but none of that was in beds, so we all slept on the same sheets all night long. By now we are down to just the DIAPER RASH and the bronchitis. But we are also super worn out and kind of at wits end.

Moral of the story, I'm super happy to have a washing machine in my garage.

Increasing Breast Milk Supply

I had to stop nursing S when he was about 10 months old because I was pregnant again. I didn't want to go to formula, but I didn't have much of a choice, my supply was drying up, pumping wasn't yielding much and my flow was really low. So I gave in when he quit and just didn't look back.

But this time, J is my last kid. There will be no unexpected pregnancy that causes my milk to dry up. I will make it to a year and never give formula. At least, that's the plan. So when I started having an uneven supply of milk I got very concerned. I did a bunch of reading and decided to try various things to increase my supply.

First I drank Mother's Milk tea. I don't know how people manage 4-5 cups of something that takes 10 minutes to brew a day. So I drank it inconsistently, never more than 2x a day. I didn't see any change. So then I moved on to Fengreek. I'm taking 4 pills twice a day. I didn't really see much of an increase in my supply, but it stopped dropping SUPER low like it had been.*

*All talk of my milk supply only refers to my output when I pump at work. I work 3 days a week and pump twice on the days I work. I send 12-14oz of milk to daycare with J, so I need to get at least 12oz to consider it a good day and not dip into frozen milk. I had been pumping 15-16oz a day the first month I was back at work, so that's my baseline of what's possible. When I say "SUPER low" I mean, only pumping 9-10oz total over 2 sessions.

So, back to my experimenting. Next, I went on to chinese herbs (I have a great acupuncturist and herbalist that I work with). I started taking that and didn't see that much of an increase either. Keep in mind, I'm still drinking the tea sometimes and still taking the fengreek daily. I'm trippling up!

Then two weeks ago I gave up on finding something new recommended on one of the various reputable sites I'd been looking at and I thought to myself "Self, you can fix this." No, actually I did come up with an idea that was worth trying.

And hey, it worked! What's the idea? WATER. Breast Milk is something like 98% water, so it follows that if I can get my body totally saturated in water, I would be able to output more milk.

Now I drink 30-40oz before I pump at 10am and I get 10-11 oz in that pumping alone. I drink another 30-40oz before the 3pm pumping and I get an additional 5-6oz. This isn't totally reliable, but I haven't had a single day below 13oz since I started doing this. And I've gone as high as 17oz. Water intake is VERY important to breast milk, at least for me. Now, I'm still taking fengreek, and the herbs, and drinking the tea sometimes, but the water was the big factor.

One of those "duh" things, but I figured I'd share, incase anyone else is having the same issues I was.

Teeth

Why does teething disrupt life SO much?

I think I got sleep in 90 minute increments or less last night. There were at least 5 middle of the night feedings where usually there are 1-2.

I'm tired.

Jeremy still has no teeth, but I think cutting is happening and that 2 teeth will break through in the next week, I hope in the next 48 hours.

Can't put two words together

Scott is a smart little boy... mostly.

He's a little stunted when it comes to language. I do not believe he has anything like a learning disorder, I think he's just behind in language because he's choosing to focus on other things. He knows stuff, and every so often he busts out with some concept that surprises the heck out of me, but he's still saying single words.

Now, to be fair, he's got some great words. He says please if he wants something, will sign thank you when given things, and is generally only into talking when he wants something or he's excited about something. He's certainly not a chatterbox. I'm thankful for all of these things. But I'd REALLY like two words put together. I'd like to hear "Hi mama!" or "More milk please". He can say all of these things, but if you ask him to say "More milk" he'll either say more, or milk, but not both. He usually repeats the last word said.

Then again, yesterday I was home from work and the kids and I were hanging out in the master bedroom watching TV and reading (I was reading, Jeremy was playing with my arm and Scott was watching TV). We resumed an episode of Little Bear that he had started earlier, and when that was over I started the next one. A few minutes into the episode Scott turned around and very clearly said "Scarecrow". I asked him to repeate it and he said it again clearly. I looked at the TV and realized that I had started the same episode over again and we had just reached the part where it was repeating itself. Scott let me know by telling me the scarecrow was on the TV again. Smart kid who really can pick up new words when it's important and not just because I want him to.

He is also good with the concept of "One". If he wants something, like cashews, and I tell him no, not right now, he'll look at me and say "One"... and if I consent, he's then ok with only receiving one! It's amazing. He's also gotten the idea of "Do this, and then you can have/do that". Like, "Eat this last bite of food and you can be done with dinner and go play". It's awesome.

So, not really talking yet, but learning!

A Mommy Update

Today Jeremy is 5 months old. This is pretty much what every parent says at every stage, but "It's hard to believe so much time has passed already." Scott is very nearly 22 months old.

But this post isn't about them! It's about me. (I know, that's nothing new, they mostly all are).

I'm 5 months post-partum and I have lost all but 5 lbs of my pregnancy weight. I am the same weight and size I was when I got pregnant with Scott (I got pregnant with Jeremy at a lower weight). My body is a little different. I'm carrying much more weight in my mid-section, and my limbs are much more toned. I dare say I have nice legs for the first time in my adult life and my arms are fabulous just like Michelle Obama.

How you ask? I do kettlebells. Not super often, just once a week (going on 8ish weeks of it). I also walk/hike a 5K once a week or so. But mostly it's kettlebells. I've lost 10 lbs in the last 2 months!

I did something stupid and I cut my hair last November. It was short (you know, chin length) and chic, and super fun! If I did it. If I didn't, oh gosh, it looked like an unevenly wavy fuzz ball. I'm growing my hair out, and struggling regularly with "I have kids, no time to do my hair, little hands that pull it out of however I've put it up, and I look gross". My hair is wavy/curly which was much easier to deal with when it was long and I could just braid it and go if I had no time. Live and learn I guess.

I'm starting to be able to wear some of my pre-pregnancy clothes again (mostly the pants). It feels great! I still have another 3-4 lbs to lose before they are really comfortable again, and if I can lose another 10-12 lbs, then they'll be too big and I can move into the next smaller size (the smallest I have really).

I'm loving my boys a lot, but I struggle with how hard it is to do anything substantial with them. I really want to do activities with my older son, but I have to tend to the younger one often too. Also, 22 months old isn't really old enough to use glue, or scissors, or anything breakable, and he throws stuff and draws on everything... so I'm just biding my time until he can play with things. This weekend I'm going to play with felt and see if I can do something like make him faces to play with. At least if he throws felt at me/the baby it won't hurt.

Um, life goes on I guess.