Arbor Day(ish)

I have no idea when Arbor Day is.  I am starting to think different towns celebrate it on different days.  Our town had a little celebration at our favorite park on Saturday.  It had all the makings of a great morning.  It was free.  There were balloons.  There were bounce houses. There were tree adoptions, but best of all there was an impromptu play date.

These balloons are tied on to the tree I got for FREE just because the kids were playing long after everyone else left.  This was the left over.  I took it because it was FREE, but had no idea what I was going to do with it.   Something possessed me to offer it to Nanny, The Husband’s maternal grandmother.  Nanny lost her husband in December and when I offered the tree her eyes welled up with tears and she said, ” I am going to plant it on James’ grave.”  I am so glad it has found a good home.

The Son loves bounce houses.  He will spend hours on one, jumping, jumping, jumping.  I am fine with this because a bounce house always insures a good nap.

This is R.  She is the daughter of one of my LLL friends J.  I run into J and her kids all the time; I think it is because we have the same ideas on how to spend our time.  Free is good.  Trees are good.  Hey You and J will both be there.

J has gorgeous children.  Tonight, at LLL, J told me that R has “sassatude.”  Maybe, but she sure is a cool kid to be around.

It could be because she has such a cool mom.  J will be having gorgeous child number three any time now.

It was a nice morning.

The boys shed their shirts and played on a huge old tree stump, they had more fun there than on the bounce house.

It does look pretty cool.

It was full of compost because the stump had started to decay.

This is J’s second born G.  This was his second birthday.  J and I started at LLL at the same time when these boys were 4 and 2 months old.  Sigh.

They are growing up too fast!  But isn’t this child just spectacular?   He is sweet too.

I hope you enjoy pictures because this whole expecting words from me everyday is darn hard!  Sometimes I just have nothing to say.  I know, I didn’t believe it either.

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Not a post on their own, but if you smoosh them all together? YES!…The sequel

-We found a black widow and her egg nest underneath the seat of The Son’s pedal car today. Needless to say, I spent a good hour tonight googling pictures of black widow bites and their symptoms. Since he is seizure free and no limbs have fallen off, I think we are in the clear.

-Remember that tick I found on my breast? (Breast sounds so clinical, but I really don’t like boob, we usually call them Nur-Nurs around these parts.) I found ANOTHER ONE. I am pretty sure this means either a. My breasts spend to much time outside or b….. actually there is no b, a is the right answer. I have breastfed more than my fair share in the great-outdoors. I think only women who live in mud huts and wear sarongs everyday have me beat at this point.

-Every time I tell The Son that big boys drink from cups, not Nur-Nurs, he grabs my hand and says “Nap-nap, Mama. I sleepy.” Can you tell nap time is one of the three times a day he still gets to nurse?

-We went camping about ten minutes away from our house this weekend. We came home and watched The Incredibles, took Benadryl and had naps yesterday morning, and then resumed our regularly scheduled camping experience. Shoeshe went with us on Friday night, and you know what she negated to tell me before she said she wanted to come? She has NEVER BEEN CAMPING!! (that gets one more exclamation point because we live in a gorgeous state, perfect for doing outside stuff)! She also did not bring a sleeping bag. When I tried to give her one of ours she refused….she slept on the cold, hard ground with a wee little mat and a blanket. I am assuming she will run screaming the next time someone offers to take her camping.

-We sing songs around campfires. I know, I know that sounds corny….and it probably is, but I do not care, I love it. Friday night Shoeshe had her guitar and played, and The Son and my Grandpa sang Twinkle Twinkle Little Star together, and then my Grandpa sang You are My Sunshine to my Grandma. I hope I never, ever forget those moments. (Remind me to tell you sometime about when my other grandparents renewed their vows on their fiftieth anniversary.) Last night we were roasting marshmallows (smarmallohs to The Son), my mom started singing and The Son said, “No Grammy, onwe ((only)) Swoesee ((Shoeshe)) sing. I want Swoesee.” Aww. He loves her. (could be all the presents)

-Shoeshe left some guitar thingy and a book at the campsite. Whenever she comes to visit, The Husband and I play this little game called, “What will Shoshe leave us this time?” She just got back her camera and a bag of jewelry from the last visit. I am hoping next time she leaves that sweet (insert our Alma mater here) sweatshirt she was wearing.

-The Son has had a black eye this week (it came from an overly enthusiastic hug from a stick wielding, almost two year old buddy). Today before we put him in the tub to wash away the woodsmoke/bug spray/marshmallow odors and the playground dirt held on with pancake syrup and layered over dried leaf bits held on by more marshmallows he looked ready to pose for a neglected child poster. He even had on a droopy pull up and one sock. I did not take a picture, and it was only cute because he has never looked like that before.

-An extremely heavily edited version of this was published here. They left out the parts about The Husband, and I hate that because he should get every accolade possible heaped upon him for his superb daddy skills. It is still super cool to have something I wrote published in a real live magazine. They sent me several copies, so if anyone wants one, let me know and I will mail it to ya…..it is a real magazine, but they don’t exactly sell it at Wal-mart.

-We are going away (I know, are we EVER at home anymore?) at the end of this week with the elder (edited: but not old) Huckablogs, so this and maybe only one or two more posts will be all you get this week. How about you do this to keep yourself occupied, and email the results (heyyou at thehuckablog dot com) for a future post.

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The only thing these places have in common is they both empty wallets.

The Son had his two year old well child check up this morning. He is perfectly perfect. His weight is in the 60th percentile and his height is in the 20th, the same percentages as he has had since he was three months old. I expect he will stay around there since he has shortish, chubbyish, parents. He decided to show off his verbal skills for both the nurse and the doctor ( “Pwease nurse? The Son have a Thomas Sticker, Pwease?”, “My ears not hurt. You no look in dem.”), and they told me what I already know, his speech is way ahead of the curve. What did we get a big fat FAIL on? His sleeping habits.

The kid STILL wakes up at least once a night, walks into our room, climbs into our bed, and latches on to the first breast he can find. Sometimes The Husband or I will put him back in his bed when he falls asleep in ours……or not. Often he will just stay in our bed for the rest of the night nursing at the all night Mama buffet. This, according to my pediatrician any way, is completely unacceptable for a two year old. Now I know that I have LLL friends and MDC friends who would say the Pediatrician has been brainwashed by cold science and that children have been co-sleeping and night nursing for millennia…and while I agree it is okay for some families…it is becoming a problem for us. I want to go to sleep and stay asleep. I do not want little fingers poking me in the eye at three AM or little teeth scraping my nipple as he loses his latch in the middle of the night. While I seriously doubt I will go against all of my AP philosphies, we are getting ready to stop night nursing–cold turkey. THERE WILL BE NO NURSING FROM 9 PM TO 6AM. There I proclaimed it to the internet, so now we have to stick with it.

After I got chewed out for my hippie ways, The Son had to get a Hep-A booster. (see? I get him vaccinated! He is circumcised too! And we used Pampers! I am not that crunchy!—Oh wait. Hippie friends? Do you still love me? I still use my sling! I try to avoid all food dyes. We only use positive reinforcement. He is still nursing at two for crying out loud! Obviously I do not fit in with either camp of the mommy wars. Oh, well.) Where was I? Oh yeah. The Son got a shot. He did not want to sit on my lap, so he just sat in a chair and I held his hands while the nurse jabbed him. He was more pissed off and surprised than hurt. He did not cry for more than a second, but when the nurse left and then came back to hand me a packet on “healthy sleep habits” he shouted when she was in the doorway, pointing at her he said. “NO! YOU STAY!” “NOOOO! STAY!”. I asked him if anything would make him feel better (expecting him to want to nurse), and he said, “I need Pancakecakes, Mama. Pwease?” We went to IHOP of course.

After his pancake with yogurt on top (um, ewww.) and a reaaaally long nap, we did what everyone else does on a perfect early fall evening. Another fall night, another county fair. This time it was in our own hometown. I am a member of a philanthropic organization that gets partial proceeds from the paid parking…if I go risk my life by standing amongst all of the compensating for something big trucks and breathing the second hand smoke wafting from open car windows as people hand me their three dollars that have been who knows where. Things I have learned? Teeth are rarer than I once thought in our lovely community, and certain people have different standards of child car seat safety than I do. I do not find letting your toddler balance on your twelve pack of Coors in the front seat of your pickup to be particularly safe, but they pay me three bucks to point to a vacant lot with a flashlight, not gesticulate on the security of their children.

The Son got to have another fabulous fair experience, this time with his other grandparents (his Grammy and Grandpa. Not the ones in their eighties, they only take him on the super fun Buick ride–that is a joke–the Buick ride with Grandma is the scariest one of all ((Lord, please do not let them be reading my blog. Amen.)). This time The Son rode the huge Ferris Wheel (he is definitely NOT afraid of heights), a firetruck, a race car, the dragon coaster, the flying lizards, the wiggle worm, a carousel, and the spin-till-you-regurgitate apples. My mom and I rode that one with him, and it was basically Disney teacups, only enclosed in a fiberglass apple. I guess to keep vomit from hitting other patrons? All of us managed to keep down our meatloaf, but we were pretty wobbly as we stepped onto the rickety stairs.

The last ride of the night was a return trip to the rotating firetrucks, and while all of the seat belts I strapped on The Son seemed to be in pretty good shape, when the overly cheerful Carney handed The Son back to me, I could smell the liquor halo around him. I guess now we know why Mr. Carney was so friendly, Everclear! Is it considered drunk driving if all you have to do is pull a lever? The Son was the one behind the wheel after all.

That pretty much ended our rides for the evening, we sauntered over to the fishing hole (side note: Hey JHJ, were we EVER allowed to play these games? I don’t think so. My theory is because the prizes are so horrific and Mom and Dad only enjoy paying for The Son to play because they know those prizes are coming to my house.), The Son caught a rubber shark that had been dyed blue because of all the food coloring in the water. His prize “catch” earned him (at least I think, the lady carney running the booth spoke zero English, she kinda gestured at us so we grabbed a prize and left. Maybe we stole it?) a plastic trumpet. (HOOOONNKKASQUUUEEEEAK!) Oh let me tell you the joy I felt about that. On the way home, I shoved a piece of cotton candy in the end (google says it is called the bell) to keep it quiet, but all that did was earn me a piece of damp cotton candy in my hair when he blew really hard. (PhffffffftSPLATSQUEEEEEAKAHOONK!)

I guess it was pay back for telling him he can’t nurse at night anymore.

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Hupdates: the excuses post.

Thanks for hanging with me through my light posting this past week, ready for a secret? I am slowly weaning myself off of Lexapro. I have been on it for 15 months now, and most of the things that were causing my anxiety have passed. I hate taking drugs, and they do have some side effects that I could live without, so I am going to come of off Lexapro over a two month period. I hope to be fully drug free by The Son’s 2nd birthday.

Since I have now had two separate episodes of serious depression/anxiety ( the other was when I was in Grad school when we lost three relatives in a four month period), according to my doctors I will probably have another one at some point. If I do, then they will recommend that I am on some kind of SSRI for the rest of my life. I will just cross that bridge when I come to it. If I come to it.

You want to know what some of the super cool side effects of coming off of this drug is? Sure you do. No? Well I am telling you anyway.

• General malaise
• Chronic lethargy
• Crying spells
• Dizziness accompanied with “electric brain zaps”. (By far, the most persistent symptom for me)
• Irritability and unreasonable aggression
• stomach upset

It is pretty hard to look at the computer when the room is spinning. I hope that my body will adjust quickly, but it may be a rough couple of months. If you are a praying kind of person, then feel free to add me somewhere towards…oh, let’s say the middle of your list.

Also, The Son and I have crammed in as many hours with my Ma (maternal Grandma) and cousin Gabby as possible while they were visiting this week from KY (the state, not the jelly). Gabs, The Husband and I took The Son to a water park on Wednesday, and had so much fun. I brought my camera and never even took it out of my bag. I tried my hardest not to think about all of the germs running around rampant, or that we were walking barefoot in a puddle of candida infested sludge in the locker area. In the land of a thousand tears (aka the Toddler Zone) I turned a blind eye to the sagging swim diapers of thirty rude children. The Son loved it, and was having a grand ole time til his daddy scooped him up and stomped off after having watched our baby get shoved for about the twelfth time. He cried, but a float in the Lazy Cesspool cured him. Half way around he decided he needed to Nur-Nur. I tried to assuage him, but he would not be pacified. So I popped out a breast and nursed floating by dozens of teenagers. The Husband was mortified. I was….kinda proud of myself, and kinda wishing he was weaned. I do not think any one noticed, but they could have.

On the fourth we went to my parents house (all the way down the street) and were joined by my grandparents, Ma and Gabs, and MMiL and FFiL! We feasted on baby back ribs, fresh corn, baked beans, seven layer salad, fresh bread, home-made ice cream, blackberry cobbler, fresh peach shortcake and gallons of sweet tea. We then all rolled ourselves up the hill to the country club to watch fireworks, and see the people behind us sit in a sprinkler zone! All in all, a lovely day. All that was missing were our baby brothers. The Husband and I agree that sometimes it sucks to be the oldest.

I have switched the ads so that they have to be approved by me before they are published on the site, hopefully that will get rid of the mail order wife ads.  I am sorry if you were hoping to find an Asian subservient bride here, you will just have to try somewhere else.

One last update. It is in regards to my son’s toilet habits, so if that kind of thing does not interest you, then move along. He has used the potty 100 times! He received a special truck (instead of a car) sticker, and then got a Hot Wheels truck thingy (the name painted on the side of the truck? Big Dump. Make your own joke). The three of us shouted and clapped and danced around the five square foot bathroom. Being a parent rocks. Who needs Lexapro.

Filed under Boy is my face red, Breastfeeding, Family-blame the DNA, lexapro lexplains it | Comments (3)

All the best things

I have assisted several new moms recently with some common breastfeeding difficulties. Something that I have heard numerous times of late is, “But it was so EASY for you and The Son.” Since apparently several of these new moms have been lurking here, I thought you might need a little story. NURSING HAS NOT ALWAYS BEEN EASY FOR ME US! End of story. Just kidding, I will give you the slightly longer version.

My mom did not BF my brother or me. I have no friends who have breast fed very long at all (well, before I had The Son, I have lots now!). I do not have a sister, or cousin, or aunt to ask questions or reassure me. I knew when I was pregnant I wanted to BF The Son. I assumed it would be very hard because I had not seen anyone be successful. This scared me, so I sought out a BFing class at our local hospital. It was taught by a very old nurse who gave us stacks of pros on BFing, told us that the lactation consultant was there to help us after we gave birth. She showed us a mildly pornographic video produced in the seventies, and sent us on our way with the final thought, only 15% of us would make it to that CDC and AAP recommended minimum of a year. Yeah. Um, thanks.

I stocked up on nursing pads and lanolin, and refused to let any formula in the house before he was born, despite the cans already being sent by the chemical companies. I was stubborn; I refused to acknowledge the fact maybe I would not be able to BF. As my due date loomed near, and the ultrasounds showed The Son’s ginormous head growing bigger and bigger, I accepted the fact I would probably be having a c-section, and my resoluteness on BFing did waver slightly. On the day of my induction I told the nurses not to give him any pacifiers or formula under any circumstances.

He was born at 3:14 pm (Pi!)

and I was not able to hold him until about 6:30, I was still drugged, and the epidural was firmly in place. I sent all of my family, except for The Husband, away and asked for the lactation consultant to help with my first time BFing. “She is sick.” Um, whaaa? Sick LC was not written in my birth plan, not even the revised C-sec one. The nurse on duty showed me how to latch this sleeping little bundle on and left. L-E-F-T.

He actually did pretty well that first day, but by the next day all of the drugs had worn off and my poor nipples were a blistered, bleeding mess. The Son cried constantly, and my milk had yet to arrive. I was miserable, I was so conflicted, and confused and was thinking that we may be looking at formula after all. My stubbornness won out. I let my tiny baby starve, rejected any pacis, or bottles, and listened to him scream. Milk was still nowhere to be seen. His birth weight was falling rapidly. They released us four days later. No milk. Five days later. No milk! His lips were getting parched and I just knew that this supposed colostrum was not doing squat. He would suck and suck, and my nipples bled and bled, and we both cried and cried. Without a doubt the hardest, least fun or magical days of my life. The second day we were home I told the husband that if my milk was not in by that evening we were going to high tail it to Wal-Mart and buy some Similac. I took a nap and felt like such a failure, wondered if I would suck at all of motherhood as much as I did this. I fell asleep in tears, and could hear The Son crying in his Daddy’s arms.

When I woke up my milk had come in! Whether it had arrived on the last train from Clarksville, or the Mammary Fairy had visited in my sleep, I had huge, engorged, useful breasts. And The Son would not latch on! At all! All he wanted to do was sleep. And he weighed almost a full pound less than when he was born. I sent The Husband out to Wal-mart, at eleven, for one of those manual pumps to ease the unbearable pain. It was worse than my still throbbing c-section incision. I could not even figure out how to work the damn thing. I cried as I held my breast with both hands and The Husband held The Son and tried to coax his little mouth onto my nipple. We did this every two hours for a week before we all got the hang of nursing. His weight slowly but surely crept up. I had to wake us all up to nurse every two hours. A nursing session would last 45 minutes from start to finish, and then we would try to sleep for an hour and fifteen minutes. It sucked. There may be moms out there that tell you that those first few weeks are magical and wonderful and nursing only added to that. I was depressed, in pain, and weeping from exhaustion.

When The Son was about four weeks old my mom spent the night and I pumped enough with my new electric double barreled blessing from above to sleep for more than an hour at a time. I got two sections of four hours in a row. The Husband slept for nine hours straight. We all three woke up renewed. My nipples healed. The nursing continued, and got so much better, it did become magical and wondrous, a gift I felt I had earned.

There have been a few more bumps along the road, but overall, after that first month it was all easy coasting. So as I said, it was not easy for me, and it very well may not be easy for you, but it is worth it. Some people say that no one likes me on my soapbox, but you know what? This is my soapbox because I think if more people told the truth about the first days of motherhood we would have better breast feeding success rates, less postpartum depression, and happier, healthier babies. So, yes I do have a soapbox, but I paid my dues for it, just like all moms, BFing or FFing do. And I really believe all the best things in this life are the ones that you work for the hardest.

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Friday’s Read it or Rant: Mothering your nursing toddler

Mothering Your Nursing Toddler by Norma Jane Bumgarner

I very well may be the only one interested in this one, but ya know what? My Blog! I get to choose what to review, but it will be short. This is about Mothering! Mothering your toddler! Mothering your nursing toddler! Wow, that was a really good title for it, huh. It was pretty good, it did answer a few questions I had, such as why does The Son switch sides every thirty seconds? Answer, he likes a fast flow. Books like this are always good to read when you are having a bad nursing week, or feeling frustrated, or just in general wondering if you are a freak for still nursing. This book was a huge rah-rah yeah extended nursing, and to be honest…I like that. It may insult your intelligence sometimes, or Hey You may just know more about nursing than the average bear. There were a few things I did not care for, for example I really felt that it pushed reeeeaaaally extended nursing a little hard. Like if I do not nurse until he is four or five I quit too soon. Really? Wow, whatever. Also, it does not give much advice for nighttime non-co-sleeping nursing (my baby sleeps in his crib, in his room, with the door shut 87% of the time). This was a hard core AP parenting book (check out this for an intro to Attachment Parenting, so good it is on my favorites list.), so if you are not AP then this is not the book for you (and chances are you are not really nursing still anyway.)

The chapters on fathering the nursing toddler and marriage with a nursing toddler were excellent. This book really acknowledges how much of a family commitment breastfeeding is. I got this book out of our LLL book trunk, and it fits the LLL standards and beliefs perfectly, so a great read for my fellow LLLers. So in other words, if you plan on extended breastfeeding read this book BEFORE you have toddler so you know what to expect. If you disagree with Attachment Parenting and are Ferberizing your kids already, or formula feeding, then this is so not the book for you.

next up? Irresistible Forces by Danielle Steele.

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Not a post on its own. But if you smoosh them all together? YES!

- The Son just bumped his truck into my breast and said “truck Nur-Nur?” Maybe he is thinking about alternative fuel sources?

- Just found half a mushed up banana under the couch. I think I discovered the source of all these ANTS!

-Things that suck….. literally…..TICKS! I just found one on my BOOB! YEEAACK! GETITOFFMEBEFOREITOTALLYLOSEMYSHIT!! Whoosh, The Husband and tweezers to the rescue. Is that a bullseye rash? OMFG! I HAVE LYME DISEASE!! WHAH! Oh, no, wait. Oops, that is just my aerola.

-If you cut down really old rose bushes planted by really old ladies you will get really dirty looks. Especially if you tell them you are putting up a stripper pole in its place. Geesh. A JOKE! It was joke! (At my baby shower, which all of the youth I taught bible study to attended, my friend Amber introduced herself as, “I’m Amber. I have known Hey You for four years. We met while we were both working at the same strip club.)

-It is Friday and I have not finished the Read it or Rant. In fact, I just remembered it right now. Good thing I am not being paid to do it, because right now I am going to take a nap instead of any more blogging! If I can make it to my room. So tired……**smack** head hits desk**Honk-shoooooooo**

Filed under Boy is my face red, Breastfeeding, Family-blame the DNA, Parenting for Dummies | Comments (3)