Situation: i am working two days a week, toting the milk pump back and forth every time, washing it in between, scalding all the milk so it doesn't go all lipasey. Breastfeeding all the rest of the time, except when you get Real Food, like bananas or applesauce or rye bread or baguette or ostrich. (Um, because nobody is allergic to ostrich, right? And there it was at the store looking all steaky and delicous. And then when we grilled it, it was yums. And seriously, nobody is allergic to ostrich.) Feeding you Real Food now, not every day, but more often than not; usually about a third of a little jar of baby food, or an inch-square fistful of baguette, or about an eighth of a banana. We handed you a broccoly stalk and you held it by the stalky part and ate all the florets off the end like a lollipop. (That was cute: we may have to do that again. Plus you liked it.) The pediatrician said we could feed you Real Food, so we've been doing it. And you've been enjoying it (though somehow you seem to like vegetables more than fruits? Carrots and sweet potatoes you willingly eat a lot more of than you do applesauce. Not sure why, but i think it's uncommon for a baby to prefer veggies to fruit, and having tasted all your baby food, i don't quite understand your palate, either, but whatever). Anyway. Seven months, starting to eat Real Food, breastfeeding, working, pumping.

And apparently (in my very informal word-of-blog-and-message-board surveying) yes, it is not an easy thing to do, pump and work, even just two days a week. But anyway we got you to five and a half months with exclusive breastfeeding (because pumped milk counts), but the ped said it was okay to give you Real Food so i'm all conflicted about not having exclusively breastfed you to six months actual, as hoped for by the CDC.

Looking at those charts is a bad idea because the last time Momma looked at charts like that were all those tests in grade school and by God i was in the ninety-ninth percentile ALL THE TIME and whatever i do, there is a value judgement on it, whatever i tell myself, however i encourage other people who can't or aren't breastfeeding for whatever reason, i can't get it out of my head that breastmilk is better. Can't. (Also, in which, having googled breastfeeding rates, i came across Britain's, and they are abysmal.) And i know you were and are and will continue to be ready for solids and i don't think we were wrong to introduce them and yet there's this table suggesting we did something very, very bad. There is this ugly little voice in my head (i imagine it sounds sort of strident and annoying, like Jiminy Cricket, and it eats enough fiber and rinses and recycles the plastic wrap from pork chops and never takes the tram for just one stop) that says i have to Do Everything Right and Be The Best and Really, Is It That Hard. (Condescending little prat.)

And now you're not enjoying bottles so much at the tagesmutter's so she's feeding you Real Food as well and this happens at the same time as suddenly (and, again, apparently this happens to everybody a whole lot, so why am i surprised by it?) i'm having issues getting enough milk pumped, 'enough' meaning something completely arbitrary, plus i'm having to cut out the morning pump session (one of only three, mind you) because you will. not. sit. still. and. eat so that i can feed you and pump at the same time, and if i had to do them seperately then my morning routine would grow by forty-five minutes and you're hard enough to nurse in the mornings already and this squirming, it does not make things easy for Momma. i have to remember to get more of that mutter-freund tea, as i'm almost out. But you're not liking bottles and are more interested in Real Food and less interested in the previously all-powerful boob and the pump has never been all that efficient at getting out every last drop, and i know you're ready and i know you'll grow up at some time or other and really, for that matter, i know you've had next to no formula, as far as that goes. And if i keep two pumping sessions it'll almost certainly be enough (though not up to Arbitrary Par) to keep you in milk, especially seeing as how i have still more than a month and a half's worth of freezer stash, and especially especially now that you're drinking less of it anyway.

Come on, liz, can't i forgive myself for feeding you real food? It's a hard idea to wrap my head around - that breastmilk isn't the end-all and be-all any more. You're still so little. (And so big.) Letting go of this is going to be hard. It's such an obvious thing that i can do for you, it's been so easy, and it's such a loaded topic, and i know it'll be gradual and i hope you'll be breastfeeding for ages yet, but what they say about weaning starts when you eat anything else? Yeah, that's true. And i know you're ready. But i'm not.

Labels: breastfeeding, food, mamadom

And we're home again, finally. And what they say is true, that going to the States is easy, jet-lag-wise, but coming from the States is hard. It is hard. You have not been going to sleep at normal times, and here it is with your third nap, going on maybe an hour, but it's seven-thirty and i'm wondering if i should wake you. Probably. Pretty sure, really, now that i think about it: you've been napping so much better recently. More than an hour at a time.

Been reading Pantley's no-cry sleep solution. She says you needed more sleep, so now you are getting more sleep, and i put you down early today and you got delicious wonderful naptime in, but then i had german class and you come with me to that and so that should have been naptime, but wasn't, because you woke up as soon as we got there and i couldn't walk you back to sleep. It's a gradual thing, i guess, but i'll work one day tomorrow and then there will be four days to do nothing but help you sleep when you need to sleep. We weren't doing anything about your sleeping and napping patterns before we left for the Great Grandparent Tour '08, but now it is time. If Pantley doesn't work we also acquired Ferber. I like having both ends of the spectrum to reference - i feel like it makes me more level-headed. Ferber is, of course, the cry-it-out, rules-for-all-situations guru, and Pantley is the attatchment parenting, mushy, spare-the-rod type.

You are now quite the old pro at the whole sitting up thing: you almost never bonk yourself on the floor. Except if you're tired. And everyone says that babies either work on talking or on moving but it sure as hell seems like you're working on both: you roll over more every week, you've been up on your hands and knees and rocking, though not moving, and Daddy got you to pull up on a chair; but you chatter and chatter and chatter, and i think i have heard the following consonants: b, d, g, h, k, l, m, n, p (p is really cute), and r. In German class today you were horribly disruptive, but then, i was the only person there for a good bit of it, so i'm going to keep taking you. So clearly if you are working on talking and walking you are already a genius. (That fish oil is great!)

Everything is going in your mouth. You like to grab the dog with both hands and bury your face in her fur. You missed the dog while we were gone, and you missed being home: when we got back on Friday, all you did was smile and look and smile and look and smile. (Although that three hour nap we all took in that gorgeous happy wonderful Nasa-foam bed, the bed that M and i missed so terribly, that probably didn't help with your jet lag status.)

As you now have two teeth (bottom front), we have started a bedtime routine (as recommended by Pantley). Your bedtime routine is: (1)Diaper, (2)Pajamas, (3)Sleepsack, (4)Brush teeth with your very own toothbrush, while the Parents also brush their teeth, which you enjoy so very very much because it's something that's supposed to go in your mouth, and it has a texture unlike anything else, i think, (5)Read a book with Daddy, (6)Nurse and cuddle off to sleep. With the (7)Transfer from Momma's arms to crib, a step you decidedly don't approve of yet, still in the works.

After three weeks of plastic diapering, cloth is a little bit hard to return to. Not really hard, but a little bit of a pain. Nights particularly, because the sheer volume of cloth diaper is kind of a hassle to work with. Enough to make someone consider getting more of those extra-fancy ones with the velcro, rather than the chinese prefolds we use the rest of the time ... We currently have several dozen chinese prefolds, two velcro one-size-fits-all fitteds, three diaper covers with snaps, one wool pull-up cover, and one fleece pull-up cover. I think if i wanted to keep you in fitteds every night i'd only need two more. I think. The one-size-fits-all-ness makes it tempting; it seems like some of the prefolds are getting too small. Of course, the prefolds are also on their third baby now, i think, so they're also some of them getting a little raggedy looking and we try to throw them away when they start leaving lint on your bum.

Your favorite thing for the last little while has been eating, or pretending to eat, or trying to grab Momma and Daddy's food, or borrowing our spoons, or having tea parties with empty red Austrian Airlines coffee cups. The red Austrian Airlines coffee cups are particularly nice to play with, seeing as how they're red, and unbreakably plastic, and make satisfying noises when you hit something with them, and you can pick them up and put them in your mouth from all sorts of angles. We "borrowed" two. So there is always one for you to play with and one for us to model coffee-drinking with, and then we switch, because you want the one Momma or Daddy has, and so you reach for it and drop the one you have, and we give ours to you and pick up the other one and you're happy for thirty seconds and then you want to switch again. Your Nagymama gave you a little plastic baby spoon with a loopdy handle so you could theoretically feed yourself, but i don't think you can feed yourself without needing a bath immediately afterwards, and also without needing a floor mop and/or whatever-else-is-nearby wipedown immediately afterwards, so we give you a bite of applesauce on the spoon and after you eat it you get to play with the spoon for a while, and then we take the spoon and give you another bite, and eating is good for an hour of entertainment. The funniest part is when you get so! excited! about having the other coffee cup or the spoon or whichever that you flap your arms and bounce up and down and you're not quite coordinated enough to grab and flap and bounce at the same time.

The other funniest part is that, in finding that you are allergic to something, you sneezed a lot. So we took pictures of you sneezing. And, little, i love you, but even thinking about those pictures will make me laugh for five minutes solid. That fancy new camera-toy we got? Worth a million bucks of antidepressants.

Labels: baby, milestones

(backdated, cheating for travelling)

You might be allergic to some combination of dust, mold, pollen, or New York. I'm allergic to Pennsylvania, so it can happen. And we know someone allergic to Ohio, so it's not even just our family.

Travelling still a pain. Everything was okay until that unscheduled night in Chicago. Somehow i think it was you, Momma's delicious little bargaining chip, that charmed the United Airlines guy at the counter into giving us a hotel (a ghetto, ghetto, ghetto hotel, not quite so ghetto as that one in Virginia, but quite the shady spot nonetheless) when he really had no business whatsoever giving us a hotel, seeing as how everything was due to weather, and you were so cute and everyone said you were the most patient person in the entire airport. Which was true. Best baby ever.

Labels: milestones

Toughie. We started with a six month old and an eleven hour flight, direct. And with many toys and a continuous line of people waiting for the bathroom to make friends with we didn't get much sleep, any of us, but we arrived in relatively stable condition and promptly fell asleep in the car, in the new-to-us car seat, except that when poor E woke up and saw her Mimi instead of anyone she immediately recognized she screamed her little head off. (Whoops.) And then so we met: Mimi and Gramps in Chicago, followed by Grams and H, and eventually uncle A, and K and M and S and D and H and G, and M and C, and N, and J and J and A and L, and S and O, and C, as well as at least six slightly more removed relatives and family friends (incl. J, T, S, I, and J). And H and G and L and E all played on the floor together with K and it was adorable and there are pictures around somewhere (to follow once we get home. Ahem). And then we went to the next bit and met C and five people from tea group and maybe eight or nine from bridge club. And then we went to the next bit and met Nana and Papa and S and O and B and Gramma W and three more people, and then we went to the next bit and met our college friends I and M and N and B and J and L and L and C and M and R. And now we are in the last bit and have met Nagymama and whatever Dad wants to be called and uncle R, with plans to meet M and C and C and A and W and H and J and A and probably J and O. I'm counting. And that is seventy-three plus the people in the planes and the people in the airport and the people in the various hotels, because we have slept in seven places in two weeks and tonight is number eight and when you fly a hell of a lot and then Armageddon happens right over O'hare then you meet a lot of people in the airport, like the nice Czech lady (i think) who we handed E to for a moment (well, we did kind of have German in common) and it wasn't as random as all that, but that's seventy-three, and she's cuddly and sweet. And decent on airplanes, but not always. However E hates the car seat sometimes, particularly when it is in a car, like when the car is moving, and she's awake. But we have the best travel baby ever. And when the last flight to anywhere near where we are now out of O'hare yesterday was canceled then she was an absolute professional about the whole thing. (Slightly better than her mama. Or not slightly. I get grouchy when Armageddon happens and my flights are canceled.)

Labels: baby, family, festivities

L has so much hair, i can't even tell you. There are photos of it - one moment - okay, here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/thebazil (maybe, scroll down a bit).

Also she's showing E up and rolling over plenty often. And she smiles at you and god, i love it when babies smile at you. And she has the cutest crinkly little smile and she peeks up at you and it's just absolute perfection. And you know you look at the pictures and you think she's cute, but then you meet her and she's so much cuter. (I totally meant to get a million pictures but then i got there and was too busy being awed. I have come to the realization that i am in love with baby noses. So small! So nuzzly!) So we got to their house (because they are so talented with the direction giving, those Seattle folk) and we all traded babies and cuddled for a bit and L is so zen that M could go off to an appointment (well, leaving us with OtherM still home, but bust) and we got to completely monopolize all the babies - both L and OtherL (who is shockingly running around awfully well at not even one yet, making one think about babyproofing very very soon and up to at least three feet), plus E - which was a little chaotic, but fun - and L could just cuddle us two strangers and be perfectly happy. Wow. And then M came home and we had more musical babies and cuddling, and then we went for a walk because their neighborhood has a nice park and a lake and whatnot (albeit at the bottom of a very large hill) with us two and our matching Ergos. Heart. (Tie dyed baby clothes. More heart.) And then - then! M is a hero.

Did y'all get that? M is a hero.

Because only a very extraordinary person could make many pans of lasagna, enough to serve, what, a dozen people, even sending some of them home with more lasagna and still having leftovers, while having a three month old. (Especially a three month old this cute, who you just want to cuddle and cuddle and cuddle.)

Let me also mention the insanity that is having lots of kids close in age all in one room: you realize exactly how short this all is. That, sure, we're carefully combing through The No-Cry Sleep Solution right now, but when she's eight or nineteen she almost certainly won't still be waking up at two and wanting to nurse. That OtherL is able to do all these things, walk, run, terrorize the dogs, show motive and decisiveness, throw things across the room, and we're more than halfway there with E, agewise, and L is more than halfway to E's chattery wigglebutt stage. And while they are people now, they are very rapidly growing and becoming and turning into toddlers and real kids. This is all so vastly different from a year ago - back then none of us knew what was coming. Quite honestly i don't think we know what's coming now, either, but you get these daddies and they look at their babies and smile because everything is completely different, now, and i always say everything is like the sun coming out but it's like the sun coming out. And you never knew there was a sun. And M is glowing with it (official MILF inauguration, right there) and I is pretty glowy himself - whenever L is near either of them they get that goofy, unaware grin. Did i say yet that they were great parents? Great parents, and great lasagna-makers, i should point that out.

I just have to marvel again (because i have a new space for it, whee: i tricked them into letting me on their blog! king me! captured! Borg wins! ahahaha, everything is my blog!) that people have been feeling this way about their daughters since the beginning of time, right? They must have. And people said we'd love our kids, but noone mentioned that we'd feel like this. And people said everything would change, but nobody told us everything would change. And someone might have said how nothing else would matter, but nobody commented on the crashing irrelevance of all that had gone before. Um, Other People? Where are your communication skills?

Love from Vienna,
Liz, M, and Tiny-But-Now-Slightly-Larger E

Labels: baby, blogging, people

Travelling is stressful.

Meeting all your relatives is great, but.

That is all.

Labels: milestones

and i can say that you have two teeth, because on the morning of your six-month birthday the second one broke through.

You were angelic on the plane and whenever you were well rested you were friendly and cheerful and let all sorts of people hold you - though you do make some funny faces. Your great-grandma had you laughing and laughing and laughing because she was making funny faces back. Honey, i'm so glad they all got to meet you - you've got three more great-grandparents coming up next week, too, and then all of my side of the fam after that.

And i cannot believe that you are six months old. That is half a year. Which is significantly longer than about ten minutes, which is what it feels like sometimes. Also, interestingly, i'm not ever going to be able to blame you for getting fat, because the other day a total stranger (well, friend-of-a-friend, so it wasn't totally inappropriate) called me thin, in the context of damn, she skinny, but she can eat. Nobody has ever called me skinny before. I think it is all the baby-lifting (and walking, and not having a car, and also the extra gazillion calories a day called breastfeeding). But you really like to eat proper food - one of the ways we were entertaining you on the plane was giving you an empty plastic cup to drink out of, just like Momma. And Momma would take a sip, and you would, and you would take another just to be sure, and then Momma would have another one, and that was the most fun game EVER. Except we left the little perfect-sized empty plastic red coffee cup on the plane so you have been practicing with other ones. Maybe on the way back we will smuggle one off with us because i think red is your favorite color. You always try to chew on red things.

But now you are making sleepy noises and i need to go help Grandpa put on the Ergo. You two have gone for a walk almost every day - all you have to do is look at him sideways and he'll get you anything you want. Anything. Just like nobody else we know, right?

Labels: baby, milestones

*not very factual on motorcycles either

:anmut: :annika: :chin: :dooce: :ewok mama: :food: :little frog school: :lj: :longform: :low odysseys: :natalya: :rich: :salon: :slate: :this is how: :unique yn:



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