Funny, and yet not...

Someone just reminded me of this story, and I had to share it with y'all, because it made me laugh hard and shake my head at the same time.

So W is still a full time smoker. Of cigarettes. I quit smoking when I got preggo with L over 3 years ago. Although, between you and me, I still have one once in awhile - like if we go out for the night, or when we were at the cabin sitting by the bonfire at night, or once in awhile if it has just been an exceptionally stressful day at work. What can I say, I always did like to smoke. It's relaxing. But I have REALLY no desire to go back to it on a regular basis. I find I smell much better now. Not to mention the health benefits of NOT smoking. But anywho...

So anyway, W and his mom are sitting in L's playroom the other night, L is riding around on his little indoor trike (I was cleaning up the kitchen) and I hear Gramma tell L to ride to the store and get her some something or other. So, L rides out into the livingroom and back into the playroom and they must have done this a couple of times pretending he was getting different stuff, and all of a sudden I hear him say

'Here's yer 'mokes dad, I got you some 'mokes at da store!! Here Gramma, here's yer licorice!"

Funny! And yet so.NOT.funny...

Feeling like crap

I am feeling like crap today. Head cold. Continuously running nose, sneezing, sore throat, sinus pressure / headache, watery eyes.

It started 2 days ago, but today is decidedly worse. Hopefully this will be the worst day and it will get better from here. L and the baby both have a little cold too...L was coughing all night - at least he is big enough to use Vicks on him, which did help.

I don't think you should be allowed to get sick when you have kids. There should really just be a law against it.

I know it was a hell of a lot easier to deal with being sick before I had kids when I knew that at least if I made it through the day at work, that I could go home, tell W to cook for his damn self, plop on the couch and sleep for a good 12 hours before I had to get up and do it again.

Ahhh, 12 hours of uninterrupted sleep sounds like heaven!

Now, I have to look forward to going home and dealing with a toddler and an infant, and if I am lucky, getting to sleep by 9pm. I can't really tell them to cook for their damn selves. Although we are just having pizza, so W can handle that, and hopefully I can at least lounge on the couch and just nurse the baby.

And maybe I will just leave the office door closed after I finish pumping and sneak in a 20 minute nap...that would help a bit too.

Hard

This is when it's hard.

When I am here, in my office pumping. Thiss is when I cannot help but think of his little self. If I close my eyes, I can picture him down there suckling. I can smell him and I can feel his fuzzy little head cupped in my palm like it is when he nurses. His chubby little hands resting on my breast, or wrapped around my finger. his little jaw moving; suck-suck-swallow...

I can see his face when his belly is full and he pulls of, looks me in the eyes, sticks his tongue out and smiles and coos at me. So content and full and happy. His new thing is blowing raspberries when he finishes. He lays there looking up at me smiling and blowing raspberries.

Yeah. This is when it's hard.

What?!?

So, awhile back, when C was probably around 6 weeks old, my sister in law had asked me how things were going with him, and I happened to mention that things were good, except it didn't feel like we were really falling into a napping routine during the day as much as L seemed to have been by that point. She has 3 babies, her third being just 2 months older than baby C. She mentioned she wanted to borrow me a copy of a book to read that she felt would help me. The book was Baby Wise. I had heard of it, and was interested in checking it out.

So I took it, and started reading it but I didn't get very far - it really turned me off from the start. I dunno why, I guess it just felt preachy and superior. Like, they would say they didn't think the 'other' way was wrong, but really it felt like that's exactly what they were saying. Maybe I didn't give it enough of a chance, but I really just didn't think I liked where it was going.

She had asked me for it back the other day, so today I grabbed it and was heading over there. Before I headed out the door, I flipped through it quickly, thinking maybe I SHOULD have read it; maybe I would have gotten something useful out of it.

So I flipped to this one page, and it was talking basically about tending to your baby whenever it cries, and how if you give the baby attention right away every time it cries, then it will learn to expect immediate attention and they won't ever have any patience and will expect everything right away, etc etc. THEN it went on to correlate this idea to breast feeding, and that if a mother breast feeds 'on demand' whenever the baby wants to that the baby will learn to associate food with comfort, and that this could very well be a contributing factor to the obesity rate in our country!?!?!?!!??

WHAT?!!?

Ummm, yeah, pretty sure I personally was not going to find much useful information in THAT book. Not much that I could agree with anyway.

SERIOUSLY?! They honestly believe that nursing on demand is a contributing factor to childhood / adult obesity?! I find that absurd. I really do. Maybe I am wrong, maybe it is - I haven't done any research on it - but my gut instincts tell me that is absurd.

And I was reading something else the other day about babies that sleep through the night early on, but then start waking in the night to eat again, usually around 4 months. One camp is of the opinion that the mother should NOT give in to the baby and feed them in the night, because they obviously CAN go for 8, 10, 12 hours without eating, as they have been doing it previously, and so the baby (a 3 or 4 month old baby, mind you) is MANIPULATING the mother.

WHAT?!!?

SERIOUSLY?! A 3 month old? Manipulating? Really? I mean, the baby couldn't possibly be HUNGRY, right!?

I don't buy it. Nope. Not drinking that Kool-aid.

C has woken up the last 2 nights at right around 3AM to nurse, even though he has been sleeping from about 7:30pm until anywhere from 6-8am for 7 weeks now. And I am sorry, but you cannot convince me that he all of a sudden decided that he was going to *manipulate* me by making me nurse him just for kicks in the middle of the night. That baby is H-U-N-G-R-Y! He burns through both breasts and then lays back down and falls back to sleep.

I just don't get some people's mentalities when it comes to young babies. I have witnessed a mom letting a 3 month old 'cry it out' at nap time, and I just don't get it. Don't get me wrong - we resorted to some modified 'cry it out' stuff with Logan, but not until he was older, and I KNEW he was indeed old enough to try and 'manipulate', if you will, to get his way. But this was a THREE month old. And I could see that it was killing the mother to be there, listening to her baby cry and cry and cry in the other room, and not going in to comfort her. And it hurt ME to watch the entire scene. I know she was trying to 'train' the baby, because some book told her if she didn't 'nip it in the butt' now, that her baby would run her life forever, but I just don't get that. Not with a 3 month old.

Don't get me wrong. I *DO* believe that it is our job as parents to create healthy habits in our children, and I do know that it doesn't take long for a baby to get into the 'habit' of something, but I don't know. Those types of methods just seem so cold and UN-NATURAL to me.

Not comforting a baby when it cries seems wrong and unnatural to me.

Not feeding a baby when they are hungry, because some book or some person along the way said they should only need to eat every three hours seems wrong and unnatural to me.

Making a baby cry himself to sleep in an effort to train him to comfort himself seems wrong and unnatural to me.

I don't know - to each their own I guess, but all that crap just doesn't feel right in my heart and in my gut, and I am thinking I am glad I didn't waste my time reading that book. There are just so many books out there saying 'do this' and don't do that' and for every book that says one thing is the 'right way', there are 3 that say the exact opposite.

And, ya know, I am such an anxious, type A, Capricorn person and I am always worried that how I am raising the kids and what I am doing is going to 'screw them up' that sometimes, SOMETIMES, I think maybe those people are right. Maybe they are right even though my heart tells me it's not so, and maybe I AM going to screw my kids up by loving them and coddling them and not making them wait when they cry and nursing them when they want to nurse, and so I worry.

But I know, I KNOW what I really need to do is just listen to my heart...

November 2009

For Kori :-)

Click here to view these pictures larger

Day three...

Third day back at work, and things are okay. Only okay. But that is better than terrible!

Evenings are 10X more hectic with two than they were with just the one, and the hardest part is that baby C is extremely worn out, a bit cranky, and sleeping within an hour and a half to two hours of me picking him up from daycare. BEYOND FUCKING SUCKY. I have hardly seen his coo-ing, smiley, happy personality at all this week. And I know it will get better; he will get more used to all the stimulation and will adjust and won't be so tired in the evenings, L went through the same thing. But for now it really sucks. SO I have been letting him fall asleep on the boob and just holding his sleeping little self for a bit before laying him down in his crib.

This morning was a bad drop off...Baby C was crying, L was whining, I was running late. I tried to comfort the baby while helping L get his shoes off, but ended up having to turn the baby over still crying, and in all the commotion I didn't even get my hug and kiss from L and didn't get to tell him I love him and to have a good day. Not a good way to start my day.

On top of it all, today is 10 years since my friend Paul shot himself. I do not mourn him any longer; in fact I think I have stated before that I think things are better for many people, him included, the way things are, but it is still a tough memory. I still remember the day like it was yesterday, of course.

So yeah, today is another tough day. Soon I will stop posting crappy, sad, whiny posts, but that's all I got for today.

Back to work

Tomorrow, I go back to work.

It is really making me sick to my stomach, and so sad.

I know it gets easier, but it is SOO hard at first, and right now, I REALLY don't want to do it. Today cannot go slow enough. The boys and I have been playing playing playing all morning, and right now, the younger is taking a little nap, and the elder is having a bit of lunch, and I am wishing the day would drag on forever and ever.

If shit wasn't all messed up at work it wouldn't be quite as bad. Last time I was on leave, that place was toxic when I left, but things had changed while I was out, and I returned to an altogether different place. BETTER different. This time, it was decent when I left, but is almost more toxic now than it was the last time. I really have no desire to go back to that. I am keeping my eyes open and looking for something else, but there just isn't much of anything around here in my line of work...

I have always said I didn't think that I want to be a full time stay at home mom, but this time, I don't know. If we could afford it, I probably wouldn't go back to work. It just feels different this time. I know FOR SURE I could go for only working 3 or 4 days a week - that would be a perfect balance. I could still work outside the home, which I DO honestly enjoy doing, but also get ample time at home with the boys...

I have been holding baby C as much as I possibly could for the last week or so. I honestly don't care if it causes him to get used to being held and causes issues for my daycare lady; he will adjust. I have just needed to keep him as close to me as possible these last few days of our undivided time together. I have even been keeping him in bed with me when he wakes up for his 5 or 6 am feeding; nursing him laying down, both of us falling back to sleep together when he is done. I NEVER did this with Logan, but I can see the draw of co-sleeping - how wonderful to snuggle next to my little one. To hear the measure of his breathing and feel his breath on my chest. The smell of him while I sleep. To wake up to his rooting around and grunting and to see him smile when my face is the first thing he sees upon waking. *SIGH*

So yeah. Tomorrow is going to suck big ass. As will probably the next 2 weeks, until I can get back into the routine. At least Thanksgiving Holiday is coming up fast, and in only a couple of weeks I will get 4 straight days with them again.

Wish me luck.

The elder is done eating, so we are gonna play some puzzles before his nap, and then I am gonna snuggle the younger and hope the afternoon and evening drag on.