7-Month Update!

Yes, he does take a big whiff of his socks above...  Boys will be boys.  Created with Gifboom

Last Friday as I was marking up my Lansinoh Mother's Milk bag with the date, I realized it was Friday the 13th.  That lead me to realize it was also Mateo's 7-month mark.  Already!

What can I tell you about Mateo lately?  Well how about how awesome it is that he can now go forward in his walker?!  He finally switched gears from Reverse to Drive and off he went!  According to my dad, he can spend an hour in his walker now, but as soon as either my mom or I get home, he'll start crying and wanting to be held.  We need to do something about that!

I need him to spend more than ten minutes in his walker at MY house!  Crying babies are not conducive to cooking dinner, and I've been dealing with it for 7 months now.  

Matayto Potato has also been epicurious lately.  With his newfound mobility, he's been wheeling himself to one room in the house in particular: the kitchen.  There you can find him begging like a puppy (did he learn from Mokee and Qori?) for "scraps" while my mother is cooking.  It's a hilarious sight.  Yesterday he scored a red kidney bean.  He was all dimples....

I don't want to jinx anything, but on the sleeping front we've had a semi-success.  I've experienced a total of two nights where he's gone to sleep around 8:30 pm and not woken up until 5 am.  If he DOES wake up in the middle of the night, I have increased the bottle from 4 oz to 6 oz and that has helped him sleep longer.

Other Tater Tidbits:

• Now that he's more mobile, he doesn't sit still on laps anymore.  He's very fidgety and kind of annoying but if you sit him down next to you he starts to cry because he wants to be held. (It's yet again, like a dog.  Let me in, let me out, let me in....)
• He likes to hold his own bottle, but still needs a lot of help in understanding how the laws of gravity works with liquids in a bottle.
• While laying in his crib, he's been scooting up his body as he cries to the point where if I don't get to him fast enough, I will find the top of his head touching the crib railing and possibly hurting him.  This worries me, so I have fastened the crib bumper back onto the crib, despite SIDS-related recommendations not to use a crib bumper.
• He's intrigued by the tags on his stuffed toys. (He's become a label Nazi -- much like his brother at that age)
• He doesn't need his Boppy pillow when sitting anymore, but he does need soft flooring for the occasional goof-up.  And now that he's better at sitting, he doesn't need to be in his carrier when we go out anymore! Yeah!

Mama's 7-Month Tidbits

• I'm not sure why (hormones normalizing?) but my hair is suddenly less frizzy and therefore more manageable.  I'm LOVIN' it.  I feel like a normal person again.  (Despite all the baby hairs due to the hairloss)
• Milk supply went down since our vacation and I'm working on stimulating it back up.

Hope you had a good Friday the 13th! -Shirley

Mother's Room

Shirley's Workplace's Mother's Room:  My that's a lot of possessive apostrophes!

It's so eerie and yet like getting back on a bicycle after 5 months.  The early morning commute, the traffic, the old parking garage, forgetting which floor to press on the elevator, swiping my badge on the door to get to my desk.  I've done it a million times before and the day is turning out to be a day like any other.

Except it's not.

It's my first day back to work from maternity leave and there is a gut wrenching feeling of sadness and guilt as I leave my children to go to work today.  It seems that this gut-wrenching feeling gets stronger with each kid I have (thank goodness I'm stopping at two).

And on this day like any other, I'm trying something brand new.  I'm using the Mother's room that my workplace offers.  I must admit that with my first child, I intended to use this room and yet never did.  I even bought a portable pump to use in the mother's room, but I had an underlying weird feeling so I never pumped at work.  I only nursed my first son after work hours.  I think this is a major reason that he became a formula-only baby at 5-6 months of age.

I want to last longer this second time around, and I knew this meant I would need to get over my "weird" feeling and use the mother's room.   I went to the room today fully equipped with my pump, batteries, nursing cover, milk storage etc.  I'll tell you exactly what I was expecting to see when I opened the door (note that the only basis I had of a "mother's room" is the one that is available at my local Babies R Us).

I was expecting a conference-type room without any locks with a few chairs where multiple women could sit and semi-privately pump simultaneously.  Nothing else.  I thought I would need my nursing cover for extra privacy, I would need to wash the pump in the bathroom afterwards, and take my milk along with me and hide it in the freezer of the break room.  If you are laughing at me; go ahead.  I don't mind.  But it's true.  That's really what I thought.  I never bothered to actually SEE what the Mother's Room was all about at my workplace.

Instead what I found today was a room that I needed to reserve using our online calendar system, a numbered lock pad on the door, a pump provided by the company, one nice comfy chair, a sink and all the washing needs, permanent markers to label the milk, and even a fridge!  The other nursing mothers had comfortably left their washed pump parts drying on the counter (so they LEFT their stuff here?  A novel idea!).  I counted three other women, judging by the number of drying parts.  And they were using the pump provided by the company. 

I felt like such a newbie, dragging along all these unnecessary things I thought I would need.  To make things worse, when I tested the company pump I found it was much, much more quiet than my pump.  I embarrassingly wondered if folks could hear me in the halls with my clunky pump!  If they could, they were probably thinking, "We got another newbie today!"

The company pump is Medela, and one of my good friends just so happened to temporarily loan me her Medela Pump In Style pump months ago, so I have some of the parts already. I ashamedly have yet to even use it!  (I'm not sure what's wrong with me and why I procrastinate with anything related to pumping)  Day after day I've just been using my clunky old pump.  That ends today.  I cannot believe that I waited this long to use the Mother's room and Medela pump!  It seems that my goal of nursing longer this time around might be a little easier than I thought!

Moral of the story:  Check out your damn Mother's Room! - Shirley

Angry Nursing Fail!

Nursing evidence quickly drying out.

It was a week away until Diego's 2-year birthday, and I needed to haul a$$!  We got the theme down:  Angry Birds (well-chosen by my husband).  My little guy is OBSESSED with Angry Birds, so much that it strains our relationship every time he hogs my smart phone to play it, and he drains my battery until it's completely dead.

So Saturday morning, I threw on some sub-par makeup, dropped the kids off at grandma's house, and proceeded to hit the stores with a list of items for a low-budget, Angry Birds-themed party.  I spent a total of 4 hours out and made a lot of headway.  I was so proud of myself for being on top of things!  Then I got home, and looked at myself in the mirror.  How long had that wet, milk spot been there?!  Oh my God - Nursing fail.

I've been working on Angry Birds crafts this week for the little party.  Here's a sneak peek compliments of Qori.  I asked him which hat he wanted to wear.  He chose the golden one... duh!

Got milk?  Click below!