Let's Play Catch-Up...

Shall We?

** side note: I once read a book wherein a good portion of the communication was portrayed through e-mails. Said e-mails were titled with a sentence, and then the body was a continuation of the thought from the title. I loved that format. It really tickled me.**

SO! Toward my goal of re-finding the joy in my motherhood days, I have allowed a LOT to slide... (great. Now that I have typed "a lot", I now have to go read the "alot" post from hyperbole and a half. I'll be back in a minute - after I stop snorting with laughter... o.k., I'm back.) as in, I stopped keeping up with the dishes and the laundry :-/ As it turns out, those things still have to be done. Apparently, ignoring them just causes large-scale messes that must be dealt with when you are at your most exhausted and emotional. Lame. I was kind-of hoping that the droppings in the garage were from a house elf and not just the suspected mice. They were not from a house elf. So now I have mice AND huge piles of responsibility. Whatever.

While letting things slide, we managed to have big fun. Wanna see? Well too bad. This is my blog.

Sister Girl introduced Brother Bear to acrylic paints!

We did some exploring at the botanical center. There are currently kid-size birdhouses made by architects and designers all over the grounds:

Our daughter is exploring her limits with brash, adventurous leaps. Sometimes she falls, but she is finally learning the joy of trying until you conquer your fear and achieving something that takes real courage and effort. I am so proud of her! Also, I have started carrying antibiotic ointment and band-aids.

Our poor garden took a beating during a surprise spring hail storm last week. The plants survived, but seem very confused and a bit bedraggled.

*sigh* I really think that we are going to have a much lower yield this year than we did the first year. This weird weather and the continued growth of the neighbor's giant oak tree (it now shades a majority of the garden for the majority of each day) combined with my general lack of true garden knowledge mean that everything just seems a bit *meh* back there. I may be wrong. It may just be early days yet...

Back to my adventures in motherhood... I surprised Lily Ruth with a visit to the splash beach at the zoo - Alec is surprised every time that we leave the house, so he doesn't count. I snuck a bag with their swimsuits and a few towels into the stroller, and we had a ball :-) Alec may learn to walk solely in order to better navigate the shallow water and deep, coarse sand.

So there you have it. Trying to stay on track with the love and the joy. Finding new times for chores. Finding that this means less time for personal hygiene :-O Oh well.

Lily Ruth-isms

I know I talk a lot (alot! :-P) about how ridiculously verbal my Angel is... this post is no exception. Her vocabulary and comprehension astound me. She not only says funny things, but she says them on purpose. She still uses the occasional 'baby word' that's so cute you just want to die ('b-puter' for computer and 'hoca-pontas' for Pocahontas), but then there are the stories...

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We pulled into the driveway at the same time that Daddy pulled up. Very exciting stuff.

"I need to run to Daddy!"

"O.k."

"Run like Tom Cruise!!!" (arms and legs pumping full speed in her carseat)

- 'run like Tom Cruise' is from an episode of Cougar Town. According to them, running like Tom Cruise is the fastest way to run. We've adopted it as our own family style of locomotion... obviously...

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Recently, Lily Ruth picked up a bag, loaded it with a few essentials, grabbed her 'cell phone' and announced: "I need to go to work. I have a deposition" as she trundled off toward the front of the house.

I responded with "excuse me?" so she stopped, looked me dead in the eye and repeated slowly (and loudly): "A DEPO-SITION."

Apparently, Daddy has been doing a lot of that lately, and the word has become impressed upon her growing brain... She's brought it up several times since then!

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I wasn't there, but here's how Don swears that it went down:

"Lily Ruth, what should we get Mama for Mother's Day?"
"We need to get mommy a cat."
"No, we're not going to mommy a cat. What else could we get her?"
"A dog. Named Butch."
"We already have a dog. What else could we get for Mommy?"
"A pretend dog. Named Butch."

He let the conversation trail off there.

That was a few days before Mother's Day. ON Mother's Day, they went shopping. In the car, he asked again:

"Lily Ruth, what do you think we should get for Mama?"
"Butch."
"What?"
"The pretend dog - Butch."

"How are we going to do that?"
"You'll see."

Then they made it into the store. He swears that in less than 1 minute, she stopped, pointed and said "There's Butch. Told you."

They came home with a stuffed dog 'for me'. That lasted about 5 minutes before Lily Ruth freaked out and claimed Butch as her own.


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We use Time Out as a discipline method. Usually, all I have to do is say 'time out for _____. Go.' and she goes to her room to calm down. Unless she has committed a serious infraction requiring the use of the timer, she is allowed to calm herself down and emerge when she's ready. Upon rejoining the group, she must look whoever she's apologizing to in the eye and apologize for the offense. The apology has to be specific.

In this case, she had been sent to time out for 'not being a good listener' (very common) and 'not following directions'. Here's what happened when she came out:

"You need to say sorry daddy."
"Sorry, Daddy."
"For?"
"Acting like a jerk."

:-O

- um, Mommy needs to cool it on the 'J' word. :-/

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She recently took my face in both hands and said: "You the perfect mama for me. I love you." I almost died. I'm keeping that one in the front of my brain to compensate for the "I not do ANYTHING for you any MORE!" moments... *sigh*

She's worth it.

Nursing in Public

So, this week is Nursing Freedom's Carnival of Nursing in Public.

Here's the deal, friends. I am a nursing mother. I am still nursing my one year old. The majority of her food comes directly from my body. This will continue until she is ready to be weaned (and communicates that to me), or I am seriously ready to be done nursing - whichever comes first. The fact that I have found myself practicing 'extended breast feeding' (nursing past the first year... or even past 6 months these days...) brings me under some pretty opinionated scrutiny. Some are curious as to how we made it this far. Some are 'weirded out' by nursing (and almost exclusively nursing) this long (or at all). Some don't care what I do at all :-)

What has also happened, is that I have become a bit defensive about my decision. I am ready to stand tall and say it loud. 'I BREAST FEED. I DO IT ALL OF THE TIME.' - like that. Even if nobody challenges me. I have to be careful that I don't start lecturing from a soapbox that nobody's looking at. There's no need to be a pompous jerk about what I'm doing - it just happens to be a choice that I've made. I have had to work hard to make it this far, but that does not make me a better mother than anybody else. It just makes me ME.

Since I am a stay at home mother (THANK YOU, hubby!!!!), Lily Ruth and I have been able to create our routine in our own manner. We do what we like, when we like. If we want to be out, we're out. If it's time to go home, we go home. As a result, I have done very little nursing in public. I do not have a problem with nursing in public. I do it if I need to. I do not mind if any other woman chooses/needs to nurse in public. I DO, however, have body issues of my own (*ahem* - nipples - *cough*), and I have an alert, squirmy, social baby who does not stay put under a blanket or nursing cover. She also will not settle into nursing if there is a lot (alot :-P) of activity around her, so if she's hungry, I usually seclude us for our session so as to avoid public nudity.

Since you stuck with me this long, I guess I'll get to a point. I DO have a problem with strident public nursers. Example: We went to the Children's Museum this week. At one point, we were watching a friend and his son on one of the 'rides'. I turned my head as another parent came into view. She pushed her stroller around a corner into the area where we were standing. She pulled out a nursing cover. She freed a tiny baby from the stroller. She proceeded to nurse her infant while STANDING in a walkway. A WALKWAY, people. One that led to the building's ONLY elevator. She coupled the awkward placement with a hostile 'you wanna make something of it?' demeanor. I was irritated. This is a children's museum. You are allowed to sit on EVERYTHING in there. There was no need to stand where everyone else needs to pass. There was also no call for the glaring. She just seemed determined to shove everybody's nose into her business in the hopes that she could have a fight about her right to be there.

Of course, I'm not her. I have no idea what her reasoning was. Maybe she came around that corner expecting privacy, and simply couldn't wait another moment to get that infant latched on. Maybe she wasn't hostile, just awkward and embarrassed. I shouldn't judge - at all. It just struck a nerve for me.

I approve of nursing in public. I agree that as nursing mothers we must support each other and bring awareness to the fact that we have a legal right to nurse in public. I believe very strongly that nursing is natural, healthy, and WHAT BOOBS WERE MADE FOR. I am angered by all of the recent celebrity 'tweets' about how disgusting public nursing is. In a culture that has developed an almost slavish devotion to celebrity (yuck), I find this infuriating.

What I don't approve of is forcing your point of view on others. I don't like it in ANY group of people be they mothers, religious fanatics, politicians, cult leaders... whoever.

The truth is that exposed breasts make people very nervous in our culture. Even the possibility of an exposed breast or (*gasp*) nipple sends people into a frenzy - and not a good one. That is simply a current fact. I am not convinced that the way to change the way society views public nursing (or nursing at all) is to FORCE people to watch you nurse. What if we were to go about it in a way that is less aggressive. Just behave as if we were feeding an infant a bottle or even just holding our little darling close... especially since that's how I nurse when I'm NOT in public. I do not believe that if I want to support public nursing that I have to 'whip out' a boob in my favorite restaurant.

Well, it has happened again, I've run out of steam. I started out all 'hey, I've got a point!' and now I'm all 'oh, I am soooo tired'. Stupid Mastitis. I'll be so glad when I feel better and can complete a thought!!!! ooof. Oh well. At least I made more of a point than usual.

To sum up quickly (and poorly), Ya'll can expect to hear more nursing talk from me, but don't expect and gratuitous frontal nudity in public. I MAY however be feeding my daughter, and you may not even notice ;-) unless she plants one of her tiny feet in the center of my chest and starts twirling my hair... then it gets a bit more obvious...

It's Official.

I'm exactly as sick as I thought that I was. Either that, or the nice man purporting to be a 'doctor' at the AH 'Doc-in-a-Box' was just humoring me.

Stupid Sinusitis - AGAIN. I had it in January/February (6 weeks, people!!!), and left it untreated because I felt bad about giving 6-month-old Lily Ruth all the antibiotics. I couldn't let it go this time. I feel like hammered dog poop. Every part of my body hurts a LOT*. The 'doctor' (I kid - he seemed very qualified and was exceedingly nice to Lily Ruth and I) didn't want me to breastfeed at all while on my z-pack & inhaled steroid (to make the z-pack more effective), but we compromised on nursing 1/2 of the time. I got the feeling that he thought I should be weaning her already. I stood my ground... for once. I happen to have a donation of milk all ready for the milk bank, so it will just have to stay in-house :-( I will nurse my angel in the overnight half of the day, and use stored milk and the old 'pump & dump' for the daylight half. I am so bummed to have to keep the donation, yet so thrilled to have it on hand. THANK GOODNESS I ran out of energy on Friday, and did not drop it off as planned!

Oh, here's something that freaked me out AND pissed me off - my prescription total was $175 for TWO ITEMS! My dad picked them up for me, and we both wigged out. Now, the clinic gave me a 'gift card' looking thing that will refund around $105 - hopefully - but they did not explain that I had to activate the damn card first, so we had to pony-up up front, and I will - again, hopefully - get the refund tomorrow. After I go through a ridiculous on-line process for a drug I will use for the next 5 days. Have you heard the This American Life report on prescription drugs? No? Click on the link to This American Life over in my side bar, and get yourself some knowledge. Apparently, my co-pay on this sucker will drop to 'as low as $11', but my insurance company will potentially be shelling out HUNDREDS of dollars. No wonder they screw us on everything else that they can... Don't even get me STARTED on the hearing test given to Lily Ruth in the hospital that I thought was mandatory, and we are now being charged almost $300 for!...

Enough for today. I have to do snort steroids into my nose then rescue my husband from baby-rocking purgatory (he's been in there a looooooong time!). I know. You totally wish that you were me.

here's how I feel :-(


*because of Allie over at Hyperbole and a Half (check my 'blogs I follow' window), I cannot type 'a lot' without thinking of her mythical creature called 'ALOT'. She did that on purpose.