And just like that...

Ben has officially stopped nursing.

About a month ago, Ben always asked for milk before bed.

About 2 or 3 weeks ago, Ben had a choice before he went to bed: milk or books. He usually chose milk, so I nursed him. I could tell he was getting ready to wean because he would spend about 10 minutes "nursing" while smacking me in the face and frog kicking the arm of the rocking chair and trying to talk to me. He didn't always nurse on both sides either. After nursing, Kevin read him books and he went to bed.

Then about a week and a half ago I just asked him if he wanted to read books with me. He nodded his head yes, and didn't ask for milk. We read books, then Kevin read him books, and that was that.

I thought I'd still be producing enough to make things a little uncomfortable, but nope! Our weaning process was so gradual there haven't been any moments of discomfort.

I am so happy that I was able to let Ben decide when to stop. I don't have to feel guilty for cutting him off, because it ended on his own terms.

I'm grateful for all of those hours we spent so close together. In time, he won't remember ever nursing, but I believe the bond we created will last a lifetime.

Ben: 15 months

Holy moly. The biggest "new" thing that Ben does is communicate more. You've seen my lists. I love documenting first words/signs. It's fun to see what's most important in a little life. Like...

Words: Mama, Didi (daddy), mopmopmop (mop), ball,  there/this/that, uh oh, hello, hi, and "baa" = what a sheep says.
Signs: nodding head for yes, shaking head for no, waving goodbye, milk, daddy,
"please"

"water"

He gets into a bit of mischief, too. He's always opening the refrigerator and getting clementines, pears, hot dogs...whatever he can find. He knows how to get the step stool and set it next to the couch to climb up on it, he climbs on it and turns the light switches on and off, and tries to reach things he shouldn't be reaching. It's tough keeping up with him. :)

Benny is drinking out of one of the Tupperware cups with the sippy spout really well. He also has is own Camelbak for water just like big brother. He's working on his last 1 year molar. The others came through the last few weeks.

Ben LOVES to color.

 

and brush is hair 

 teeth.

He weighs 32.4 lbs, so he hasn't gained weight in a few months. He has a pediatrician appointment next Friday.

Ben is still nursing. Mostly in the morning when he wakes up, and before he goes to bed, sometimes when we get home from daycare, and sometimes once at night too. When he nurses he signs "milk please" over and over. :) I do refuse to nurse him at times now and distract him instead. He's usually okay with that. I love nursing, and I want to follow his lead to wean, but I would also like to be done by May or June.

Please forgive me for future posts that document more words. :)

Ben: 14 months

Happy monthday Benny!

Ben is getting to be more like a little boy now. His personality shines through more and more every day. Here's what he's up to these days:

Words:
Ben can sign: "more" and "milk," and we've caught glimpses of "all done." Actually, the "milk" and "more" signs he uses universally when he wants something. We're working on "help" now.

Ben can say: "Mama," "Hiiiii," often says "baba" (brother?) when talking about Colin, "da" (there/this/that), and "uh oh." He mimics a few other sounds like for "woof"...he says "f" and for "buzz" he says "sss."

Other smart tricks:
Sometimes when I ask him where his belly is, he lifts his shirt up. When I ask him where his nose is, he puts his hand to his nose and blows (sometimes when he does this, he blows snot all over his hand and then wipes it all over his face, which is disgusting). When I ask him where his hands are, he claps them.

Favorite things:
His blankie that Auntie Stephie made him
Opening the refrigerator and taking something out of the door (usually salad dressing).
Playing/lying on Colin's bed
Reading books (Ten Little Ladybugs is a favorite)
Playing outside, even though he falls down quite frequently in his winter gear.
Playing with cleaning objects--brooms, vacuums, mops, shovels. Adult-sized, please. No small versions allowed.
Food! Anything, really. He ate 2 clementines yesterday. He still likes meat a lot, but he also likes veggies and fruit. He wants to eat fresh pears, apples, and carrots so badly but they're usually too hard for him so he gets upset when I tell him he can't have them.
Being chased around the basement with the corn popper toy
Climbing on top of things
Tackling other people
Coloring
Dumping multiple puzzles all over the floor at a time (ugh)
Throwing balls

Things I love:
When we're cleaning up toys, Ben helps too! He'll even put his clothes down the laundry chute.

When it's his bedtime, I tell him to give Daddy and big brother hugs, and he gives them the sweetest, most genuine hugs.

When I pick him up from daycare, he runs to me, arms open, says "Hiiiii" with the biggest smile, wraps his arms around my legs and squeezes them with his hands a couple of times.

Other hapbenings:
Ben still nurses, but it's usually only before/after nap/bedtime. He goes down for a nap without me or a bottle just fine, though. In fact, he hasn't had a bottle since before Christmas. I packed them away. I'm done pumping at work, too. So now I'm just taking his cues on when he wants to be done with nursing. I have a feeling he'll drop the "wake up" morning nursing session soon, because he's okay not nursing when he wakes up from his nap.

He has 8 teeth and he's working on his molars. His gums are so swollen, and you can see a white bump under his gums in at least 2 places where future molars will be. Poor guy. Hopefully they'll poke through soon.

He's usually tired at about 7:15, so he nurses and goes to sleep. Right now he's waking up once a night for a quick application of orajel. Sometimes he wakes up a little later and I nurse him for a few minutes (because I feel bad about his poor teeth) and he goes back to sleep. We wake him up for the day at 6:30. On weekends he sleeps until 7:00.

Ben can climb up and down stairs too!

Kevin asked me today when Colin started talking. I told him that 18 months is usually the month that words start coming from every direction. It's unbelievable that we're only 4 months away from that!

Oh Benny, how I love watching you become a little boy every day.

Ben: 6 months

Can you believe the little guy is halfway to a year already?

Ben has been rolling around like crazy. He can roll all the way across the room, and he rolls towards Colin's toys he sees on the floor.

He is also beginning to sit up, although we stay pretty close to him because he topples over eventually.

Ben is on a reverse cycle schedule, and has been since I went back to work in March. He doesn't drink much milk all day at daycare, and nurses here and there when he's around me, and then gets up about 2 times a night. This is much different than when I was on maternity leave and he'd sleep all night long some nights. Add in the slow teething process (we know they're in there somewhere!) and it has been exhausting. But never fear! I'm done with work now for the summer and I'm trying to reverse his reverse cycle. My game plan is to try to nurse him every 2 hours during the day so hopefully he gets all the calories he needs during waking hours and won't need them at night. We may need to add in a little middle-of-the-night Ferber if filling him up during the day doesn't work. I'm a fan of Ferber's results, but I hate the process. Luckily he usually goes down for the night pretty easily.

Speaking of calories, we started Ben on solids about a week and a half ago. We're doing the baby lead weaning approach (aka baby self feeding). So instead of rice cereal and purees, we give him the real stuff in big chunks. He started with a banana. I cut a 2-3" chunk off a banana, and then split it into the thirds bananas naturally break into. This gives Ben 3 "banana sticks" to gnaw on. It depends on the day and his hunger and interest, but some days he'll eat just a few bites while others he eats almost all of it! We also gave him some avocado. Avocado is pretty mushy on its own and hard to grab, even for an adept adult. Ben's first experience with it wasn't so awesome. As evidenced by this face:

So I put it in a mesh feeder and Ben loves it that way! He puts the mesh bag in his mouth, and pulls it out while squeezing avocado out the little holes with his gums.

We're going to give him avocados and bananas a few more days, and then we'll add sweet potatoes into the mix.

Just yesterday Ben got his first swimming experience in our friends' pool and loved it! Whenever I'd stop moving him around, he'd yell at me to keep moving. He also got to float a little bit.

I expect that there will be a lot more swimming this summer so I'm glad Ben likes the water so much!

His personality is still easygoing. He goes with the flow for the most part, and if he gets fussy, he's easy to make happy again. He likes Colin, swinging outside, baths, stroller rides, Sophie the Giraffe, laughing, and hearing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star when he's tired.

Another month down, another month ahead to learn and grow! I'm just so happy that I can spend more time with Ben for his 6th month. It's the best part of my job.

Got milk?

Because I'm running low. On purpose. I'm down to nursing Colin just once in the morning now. I'm going to let him decide when he's ready to drop that session. Unless:
a) I dry up which I will be okay with.
b) It gets weird.
c) He's still doing it at 18 months. That's my absolute stopping point.

I'm so happy to say that I haven't pumped in 2 weeks. While I loved being able to provide Colin's nutrition for a year, I'm so glad I'm done pumping. Now I can actually spend those 20 minutes with my sweet boy instead of being milked by a machine.

I still have about 200 oz. of milk in the freezer, and we're using it up slowly. I thought about donating it, but I'm lazy and don't want to look up how to do that. So we're mixing the milk painstakingly slowly:
Week 1: 4 oz of organic whole cows milk with 16 oz of frozen breastmilk.
Week 2: 8 oz. owcm with 12 oz fb.
Week 3 and 4: 10 oz owcm with 10 oz fb.
Future weeks may look like this:
Week 5 and 6: 12 oz owcm with 8 oz fb
Week 7 to whenever it's gone: a bag of fb (4ish oz) with however much owcm is needed to make 20 oz.

I may end up donating some of it if I get sick of this mixing stuff. We'll see.

We've had no problems with the milk transition. He drinks it cold, he drinks it warm. He drinks it from a sippy cup, and he drinks it from a bottle before his bath at night. He drinks it in a box, he drinks it with a fox.

If you didn't see my post from Thursday, go check it out. There are pictures and a video :)

Well hello there!

Whew! What a busy week it has been. It all boils down to this:
Thursday afternoon, I left work as soon as the kids were out of the building because I was not feeling well. I spent the rest of the afternoon and evening in bed...and running back and forth to/from the bathroom with the flu. By the time I was feeling somewhat functional around 11 pm, Kevin was down for the count, so I took the overnight baby shift.

I went to school on Friday, not feeling awesome, but needing to go because we had our first grade program. I muddled through the day, glad it was the end of the week.

On Saturday, the three of us checked out the daycare we *really* wanted. It's an in-home place, and Sandy was really nice. Two of my co-workers have used Sandy for their children, and loved her so much. We're so glad she has an opening in the fall for Colin (as long as unforeseen circumstances don't happen between then and now). She has a very structured day with plenty of outside time, activities, etc. She has a tiny toilet, low sinks, and a kitchenette right there in the basement.

My parents came up on Saturday, too, and hung out with us. I made some cinnamon swirl bread and some lactation cookies. My supply had dropped after being dehydrated from the flu and I was worried. I thought it was the end of breastfeeding because when I pumped, I was only producing 1 oz. at best.

On Sunday, my parents left in the afternoon and we continued to lay low. Kevin and I felt like we were hungover.

Back to work on Monday, and after downing some lactation cookies and drinking plenty of high-calorie Vitamin Water, and finally getting my appetite back (I woke up with a growling stomach!), I was so happy to find that my supply returned.

Colin's cutting the other bottom front tooth. If sleeping poorly means he wakes up every 2 hrs, and sleeping well means he wakes up every 4 hrs, he's sleeping semi-poorly. Last night, after being rocked, nursed, Tylenoled, and Orajeled, we started letting him cry it out again. It sucked. But then he slept for 4 hours. I hate letting him cry, but for the past few weeks, because of his teeth, we've been catering to him (as we should). But we're exhausted, and getting up every 2 hours isn't helping any of us.

It's another busy few weeks at school. The 100th day of school is tomorrow. I don't remember EVER celebrating it when I was in school, but it's a big deal now. Then the Science Museum of MN is coming to our school next week to talk to the kids about Antarctica, and we're going to see a small-town theater production play next Friday. The week after next is conferences. The only part I look forward to is having them done and not having to think about them again until next year :D

We found out last week that Kevin's grandma has a brain tumor. I'm not sure whether it's cancerous or not, but she does have to have it removed and she'll probably need chemo as well. Keep her in your thoughts if you get a chance.

Mommy's night out and a Food Misson for Readers

Yesterday, I met up with a group of 4 of my fabulous friends. Every year for Christmas, we forgo gifts and pick a Saturday to hang out together and sleep over night. We rotate homes in alphabetical order. This year it was Laura's turn.

We had some fun shopping at the mall. I can't remember the last time I went shopping without Colin in tow. It's a totally different experience because I could actually try on clothes! I really wanted to spend some of my birthday and Christmas money on some new work pants. It seemed like an easy task: walk into Express, pick up some Editors, try them on, marvel at their wonder, purchase, and walk out. Alas, I didn't find anything there or at 2 other stores that looked decent. I used to wear a size 6 or 8 pants. You're going to hate me for saying this, but a size 2 fit well, but didn't hung all baggy-like in the rear. So they were a no go. A size 2. I haven't fit into size 2s since...middle school? 9th grade? Somewhere around there. Thank you breastfeeding? I think. All I know is the 6s in my closet are falling off. And I need a little more junk in my trunk, and if I have to make brownies every weekend to get it back, maybe I will. But then I think...it will all catch up to me once breastfeeding is over, so I don't and just deal. Am I ridiculous for worrying? I should embrace it, right? ::sigh::

Then we went to Laura's house and made some fabulous homemade pizza (we all buy an ingredient for dinner to spread out cost), drank some wine (I had a small glass, then switched to sparkling apple cider), played Apples to Apples and sat around and chatted. This morning, I woke up at 7:30 (oh...and also 3:00 wondering if I should pump, and 5:15 to actually pump), hung out for a little while longer while my car warmed up, and left at about 8:00 am.

I had a lot of fun, and it was good to take a break from family life for a day. This was my first overnight without Colin. I survived better than expected. Don't get me wrong. I missed Colin (and Kevin!) like crazy, and there were times when I'd think to myself, "I wonder what they're doing," or "Colin's probably eating supper," or "I hope Colin sleeps well tonight."

And Kevin survived too. Colin had a typical night where he wakes up multiple times for who knows what reason. Good thing we're used to that, I guess.

In other news, I'm on this freezer meal kick. A few weeks ago, I made 2 pans of Cheesy Ham Macaroni and 2 pans of Pizza Pasta Casserole. We've decided that if I do this--make 4 freezer meals--a month, and cook them on either Mondays or Tuesdays--which are piano lesson nights, which means we don't eat until late b/c lessons are done at 6 pm--we'd get a decent meal to start off our week. Then we can eat the leftovers for part of the week instead of buying lunch food. So I'm looking for your favorite freezer meals. Post them in the comments section so that all of the readers can partake if they'd like.

Now I'm off to go scour the interwebz for recipes for my stash.