Language

It's exciting -- Meg is putting words together and almost meaning some of what she says. We were at Ikea and she was trying to climb into a baby crib. After a few minutes, I pulled her off and started toward where we were going. She protested harder than usual, crying out, "Sho! Shew!" Something like that. I walked faster and tried to distract her. When I caught up with Bjorn, turns out, she was missing a shoe. It had gotten wedged on the crib rail and I'd pulled it off when I picked her up. I know! She's brilliant!

Of course, as I type this she is busy taking her dinner, noodles, and dropping them on the floor. Then she's examining them and eating some. Tasty.

Bye bye breastmilk

I apologize for the terrible formatting below. I can't figure out how to make it look normal.

Meg eats like a horse. I really love it and love how big she's getting (although I'm dreading in advance all the rude comments from people saying how fat she is. Fat isn't nice to say about adults so why say it about a baby?) I also firmly believe that full baby usually equals happy baby. And I have hope that every ounce she consumes makes us that much closer to a good night's rest.

I have been breastfeeding this whole time. Not exclusively, but if there are 12 feedings in a day, 11 come from me. Last week, there was a day that she was fussy all day long. I kept nursing her and nursing her and that didn't put her into that happy food coma. Instead, she kept being cranky. I took her on a long walk in the brisk air. She napped in the car seat and popped right back awake when we got home. Finally, exhausted, at about 9 p.m., I offered her some formula. Just two ounces to test if that's what was bugging her. She drank all of it as if she'd been starved for days. I made another two ounces and she took that, too. And then passed out.

This trend has been going for the past week so I think this is the beginning of the end of breastfeeding. It's sort of circular in that the less I feed her, the less milk I'll produce so it's a downward spiral since as she gets bigger, she'll eat more and I'll have less to offer.

On the one hand, I'm relieved. I'm totally okay with formula and more bottles means that my tender chest will no longer be main source of snackfood. It means I don't have to whip out my boob at McDonald's to feed a screaming baby. I'm no La Leche League person who believes in breastfeeding until the child goes off to college. I actually believe society now puts all this pressure on women about breastfeeding so that when new mothers can't do it, it puts undue stress on their delicate psyche.

That said, I'm surprised by how much it bothers me that it's not working out. When Andy was a couple weeks old, his pediatrician wasn't happy with his weight gain and recommended supplementing. I was secretly relieved. I wasn't digging the process, I didn't know what I was doing and the whole business intimidated me (how would I ever go out? I could never breastfeed in public!) I liked to have an excuse for not having to nurse. But now, I'm much more confident. She and I have mastered the latch and I'm not afraid to drape myself in a blanket and feed her if that's what I need to do. Sigh.

Meanwhile, here's a great post I read recently about the peaks and valleys of having a newborn with a toddler in the house that really resonated with me (and is way better written than I could do).

Girly parts

After three years of changing diapers on a boy, I must admit that looking at a little girl naked looks very strange. Boy parts are just so obvious somehow - nothing hidden, it's all out there. With Meg, it has taken me a little while to get used to her diaper because I hate to, you know, invade her privacy. Somehow it seemed natural to invade the privacy of a boy, but you know how girls are. God, the gender stereotyping starts at hour one. I did ask my pediatrician about what to clean, just to make sure. Her answer (if you're curious) was just to clean the poop and leave the girl parts alone unless there is poop there. Makes sense.

What is also startling about changing a girl is when she pees on the table. Penises just shoot at you so it has taken me by surprise several times when she has peed on the table. "Hey, that's weird. What's all that water? Hey..." She's done this every couple of days since birth and it STILL surprises me.

Speaking of girl parts, Andy is fascinated with my "bleasts." When I'm nursing Meg or pumping, he really wants to come and stare at my chest. I am trying to play it cool and use real terms in the hopes he'll leave me alone, but I'll admit, as natural as it is, I do find it a little creepy.

The one where "throw-up" enters the lexicon

Andy threw up last night. It was an impressive move really, he was sitting in my lap in the dining room as I tried to get him to eat some apple sauce while he complained that his tummy hurt. Then he let loose. All over my leg, all over himself and the floor (thankfully, we'd taken the rug up in the dining room last year). Andy hasn't thrown up in a long time, probably a year, so he didn't really know what was happening.

"It came out my face!" he said, somewhat proudly after we all calmed down and cleaned up. The one shot seemed to improve him quite a bit. He was cheerful and playful almost immediately afterwards, which was good since we had reservations to go out for our anniversary (nine years!) and Mark was already lined up to babysit. Fortunately, Bjorn talked me out of immediately calling to cancel our reservation because within minutes Andy was seemingly back to normal. The cause, we decided, was that Bjorn only fed him gummi bears earlier in the day at Mark's football game and by the time they got home, Andy was tired and cranky so he just put him down for a nap without anything better to eat so when he did eat something, it didn't sit well. Lovely. The good part was he was fine the rest of the evening for Mark and we did end up getting out for our anniversary dinner.

The funny thing, though, is he keeps talking about how he threw up "yesterday last night." He also has discovered that we jump through hoops when he tells us his tummy hurts so he's been saying that a lot today whenever he wants anything. The kid's not stupid, that's for sure.

Tomorrow is Veteran's Day. I've never worked for a company that has the day off, but Andy's school is closed so I'm taking it off anyway. If I were smart, I might get a jump on Christmas shopping. Or better yet, a jump on cleaning up the computer room in preparation for the big computer move in 10 days. I have a feeling neither is going to happen.

That not pizza, Mommy

Bjorn's out of town right now. He's flown to Kings Bay, Georgia, to the Naval Submarine Base where he's going to watch one of his friends take command of a submarine. Big stuff. I thought about going, but we don't really have a good set up for someone to watch Andy overnight and it didn't make sense to drag him 10 hours to be cranky.

When Bjorn's out of town, I like to do something fun with Andy to make it our special time. I asked on the way home what he wanted for dinner and over and over again, he said he wanted pizza. I was game for that so we stopped by the friendly Pizza Hut over in Twinbrook Shopping Center. I can't say I'd ever been there before, but hey, having a kid means I visit lots of these family dining establishments that I've been driving past and ignoring all these years.

We ordered the two person special that comes with two drinks, a medium pizza, bread sticks and two salads. Andy is clearly my son - he loved the croutons on the salad. He liked the bread sticks okay, but then the pizza came and the whole thing confused him. He kept asking where the pizza was and seemed confused that we already had the pizza. Granted, he don't eat a lot of pizza in our house, but he's certainly had it before so I wonder what in the world he thinks pizza is if it's not that?

Meanwhile, the dirt king continues to come from school dirtier and dirtier every day. Today, he had dirt all in his hairline, eyes and face. Apparently he'd been in the log cabin on the playground enjoying pouring gravel on his head. He sounded pretty happy about it actually.