Memorial Day weekend

This weekend, we got a lot of things done around the house, and had a little fun in between.  Saturday, Todd and Mike went to brew beer, while Mike's wife Andrea and their two kids Annabel and Evan came over to play at our house for a while.  Then we went out to Panera for lunch.  It was a little chaotic, but was fun.  I don't know how, but I forgot to take pictures!  Grrr....

Sunday, Todd slept in, and Natalie, Grant and I went to Panera for some breakfast.  Aside from Grant screaming at the top of his lungs while I was trying to prepare his bottle, they were both so well behaved and we had so much fun!  Natalie ate an entire bagel with cream cheese.  She discovered on the Delta Shuttle flight from LGA-BOS (on our way back from Charleston a few weeks ago) that she really liked cream cheese.  So now, it goes on all things bagel.  AND, it was the Indy 500. One of my favorite days of the year.  It was a good race... the Tony Kanaan story was awesome.  I like Dario Franchitti too, so it was good that he won.  (He's married to Ashley Judd, in case you didn't know!)

PLUS... Rosie (Maureen's daughter) came over and babysat the kids Sunday evening, so Todd and I went to see Iron Man II.  It was SO good.  Robert Downey Jr. is so stinking funny.  And can I please be Scarlett Johannsen in my next life??  Sheesh.  Afterwards, we went to British Beer Company for a drink.  Ahhh, to be an adult again! :-)

On Monday, the morning started with a birthday party in the playroom.  Daddy, Suzy, Meredith, and Grant were all invited to Natalie's birthday party.  We are working really hard on Natalie's smile... and how to get her not to close/squint her eyes.  Not so successful with Natalie, but the look on Grant's face is hysterical! 

Then we went outside and did some yard work.  We have this huge tree outside and it is in a bed full of weeds.  So we got out there while Grant was napping and pulled some weeds.  We pulled the weeds and cleaned up around the tree bed, and bought some mulch.  But our landlord is going to come in later this week and plant some flowers in the area (annuals?  perennials?  Todd couldn't remember) and then we are going to mulch next weekend. 

This is actually an after shot of the tree bed. There are a few plants still in there but we left those. See little girl digging in the dirt.

See a close up of little girl. Yikes, that's a lot of dirt!

                                         

Later in the day, we went to Walmart and BJ's and at Walmart, Natalie picked out this green nail polish.  Grammi always paints her nails when she goes down to Plymouth.  But her nail polish was coming off (not surprising, given the amount of digging she does at the playground) and she wanted some more.  So here she is showing them off at dinner.  Up next, the toenails!

Cute Baby Alert, Part II

CUTE BABY ALERT!!!

Seriously, I want to eat him up. 

Weekend with the girls

A couple of times a year, I like to go to Atlanta and see my best girlfriends.  It's so hard, because I have so many friends down there and not enough time to see them all.  But I got to see most of the ZTA girls when I was there this past weekend.  Here is a picture of us girlies...

It's Melissa Ayala Holland, Kara McLaughlin, Kim Robinson Schaff, Kristin Bayless Hammersmith, Stacie Wright Dees, and yours truly.

We hung out with Stacki on Friday, and got to enjoy seeing the boys (her twin sons Gavin and Owen) getting off the bus on their LAST day of kindergarten.  All of the neighborhood parents bombarded the kids with water guns and water balloons.  There were popsicles and water balloon tosses afterwards.  The boys were sad that they had to leave their teachers (ah, enjoy the innocence now!), which was really cute.  Friday evening, Kara, Stacki and I met up with Stacie, Braxton, baby Nathan, and Ayala at Mellow Mushroom. YUM!  I stole a beer glass, which is one of my favorite pasttimes.  :-)  Mellow Mushroom is one of my favorite pizza places- so I definitely needed a pint glass from there!

Saturday, Kara, Stacie, Ayala and I went up to the North Georgia outlets and did a little shopping.  I got a few things with my Ann Taylor gift cards that I had from Christmas and a few things for the kids.  But my big purchase was a Kate Spade big work bag. I'm so in love with this bag!  It was orginally $255, on sale for $179, with another 30% off.  So I got it for $134.  Which was about $100 less than my Coach purse, and it's twice the size!  Thanks to Ayala and Kare Bear for convincing me to get it! :-)

Saturday evening, we had a cookout at Kara's house.  Bayless and Kimmy joined us for burgers, pasta salad, pretzel salad (which I would like the recipes to both, ladies!), cheesecake, wine, and Taboo! Later on in the evening, Cory and Brie also joined us!  What?  Don't they live in Charleston?  Why yes, they do!  They were using the Delta pass to go to Costa Rica on Sunday for their honeymoon, but the flights from Charleston to Atlanta were full Sunday morning, so they had to go to Atlanta Saturday evening.  They stayed at Kara's with me, and then Kara was nice enough to take us all to the airport early Sunday morning.  I'm happy to report that they got first class to Costa Rica, and are enjoying their honeymoon!

Meanwhile, Todd and the kids went to Plymouth for the weekend.  Natalie got in some tricycle riding, and some time at the new heated indoor pool.  Also, Helen's birthday is coming up, so they had a nice dinner and cake on Sunday for her.  I won't say how old she is, but let's just say it's a big milestone! :-)  I'm sad that I missed it, but I got home Sunday afternoon and got several hours of cleaning and laundry in, which is so great.  Natalie was so cute when she got home, she said, "Mommy! I haven't seen you in a while!"  This is her new favorite phrase, because later in the evening, she said, "Let's read this book.  We haven't read it in a while."  

It was a fun, but exhausting weekend.  Now we are looking forward to our three day Memorial Day weekend!

Nursing No More

*DISCLAIMER*  This post is about breastfeeding.  If you don't want to read it, then stop now.

What is it about nursing your baby that is so unbelievably amazing???  I can think of 1,000 reasons why I don't want to nurse my son anymore, and only 1 reason why I want to.  Let's make a list... it really could get lengthy, but I'll try to keep it short.

Reasons why I want to stop nursing Grant, in no particular order

1. Pumping at work is distracting me from my job.  And pumping in a tiny 3x3 office is not fun.  Once I get heavily involved in a project, I have to drag myself to the pumping room and do my thang.  Then I try to come back to the project but inevitably end up with a "what was I doing again?" sort of feeling.
2. Makers Mark and Coke. Enough said.
3. Diet Coke.  Massively huge fountain sodas to pump caffeine through my veins so I'll stay awake when I am falling asleep at my desk after said baby feels like waking me up at 4 am.
4. Which brings me to probably the most important reason... SLEEP!  Daddy can give G bottles at night, which will allow me to get a full night sleep. 
5. Related, in order to not explode at 3 am, one must pump before bed.  I would like to pump at 7:30 or 8 pm, so I can get a decent nights sleep.  However, if I pump that early, I'm hurting by 3 am.  Of course, Grant is asleep, so I don't want to wake him before I go to bed OR at 3 am, but a woman's gotta have a release.  Because of this, I have to wait until closer to 9-9:30 to pump.  We NEVER wake the baby.  We let him wake us!
6. Traveling with my pump is difficult.  Good luck finding a place in the airport where you can go plug in the pump (aka: the beast) and get 'er done.  And TSA, for the longest time, would not let you go through security with breastmilk unless the baby was with you.  Ok, what do working moms do when they have to travel for work?  Brilliant, TSA.  Thankfully, they changed this rule.
7. Every single hour of every single day has to be thought of and planned for.  We're going to the park and then to lunch?  What time should I feed him?  In between the park and lunch?  At the restaurant?  At the park? What about the next feeding?  You don't want them spaced too far apart or together.  You are constantly thinking about the next feeding (and the next one, and the next one, and the next one...).  Logistics matter.
8. Several times I have gone to Red Sox games and had to hand pump in the bathroom at Fenway.  I had a couple of beers at Boston Beer Works before the game, so there went my liquid gold, down the drains in the Fenway ladies room.  (This was also the case at my work Christmas party).
9. Exhaustion.  Oh boy, the exhaustion.  I get that I am naturally exhausted from having a relatively new baby in the house, but he sleeps 9-10 hours at night, so the problem isn't fully him.  It's the breastfeeding.  It wipes you out.  It takes from me to give to him. 
10. I had D-MER.  Dysphoric Milk Ejection Reflex.  Here is a definition from http://www.d-mer.org/ :  "Dysphoric Milk Ejection Reflex is a newly recognized condition affecting lactating women that is characterized by an abrupt dysphoria, or negative emotions that occur just before milk release and continuing not more then a few minutes.
    The negative emotions, or dysphoria, that a mother with D-MER experiences often manifest "in the mother's stomach" - a hollow feeling, a feeling like there is something in the pit of the stomach, or an emotional churning in the stomach. Mothers report varying types of emotions with D-MER ranging from dread to anxiety to anger, these emotions fall on the D-MER spectrum which has three different levels. The common thread between these levels, is the wave of negative emotions or dysphoria, prior to letdown, when nursing, expressing and with spontaneous letdowns, that then lifts within another 30-90 seconds, and then usually repeats with each letdown."  It tends to be a little different with each woman.  Mine lasted about 30 seconds and I would get an overwhelming urge to sob hysterically.  I felt empty and strange, briefly ridden with anxiety.  And just as soon as it hits, it's gone.  Some people also claim they would get very thirsty.  That was me, EVERY time.
11. Maybe I should just stop here... I think you get the idea...

And here are the reasons why I felt I should continue nursing Grant

1. I love him.

That's just it. I love the little dude.  Plain and simple. But in the end, I gave him 6 months of my body and my life, just as I gave his sister. I wish I could have given him more, but it was far too difficult and I am far too exhausted to continue on. So as he finishes up the last of Mommy's Milk, I can finally say au revoir to this period in our lives and look forward to my little man growing up.  I truly look forward to having my body back, and having my favorite adult beverage again!

ADIOS SUCKERS!!!!

Grant gobbling up peas

So far, Grant has had rice cereal (we decided he didn't like it, even though we are still giving it to him!), Earth's Best sweet potatoes (liked it better than rice cereal but did not like them cold) and Earth's Best peas. I think of the three, he likes the peas the best! He actually opened his mouth for more this time.  I don't know if that's because he liked them more, or if he is just getting used to the process and idea of eating real people food.

Fun at the Farmer's Market

We got up early (around 7-7:30, which is pretty early for our kids) on Saturday and went down to Bakery on the Common for some breakfast and then across the street to the town square and the Farmer's Market. We got some of our favorite black bean salsa and some salstina (made of peas, parmesan cheese, olive oil, lemon juice, garlic and spices made into a paste to put on crackers or bread). There weren't any fruit/veggie stands - this was the first weekend for the farmer's market - so we were a bit disappointed in that. We put Grant in the Jeep Carrier for the first time, and he really liked it.

Then we came home and did some planting.  I planted a few plants that Carole gave me for Mother's Day along with our Topsy Turvy strawberries.  We also repotted a basil that we bought at the Farmer's Market in the morning.  They said the bigger the pot you put it in, the bigger it will grow.  GOOD!  We love basil.  Then we had some playtime on the floor with Grant. He's very into this mirror (which was Natalie's) and laughs every time he sees himself. 

Natalie tried to give her brother some lovin' last evening and I happened to snap a cute picture, even though Grant looks terrified.

This, however, is what it escalated to.

Natalie in her big girl bed

Natalie has been in her big girl bed for over a month now, but I finally got around to taking a picture of her.  She has a convertible crib bed.  This is phase 2 - the toddler "big girl" bed.  She can get in and out with ease, and only fell out once, and that was on the first night.  We bought a rail specifically designed for convertible beds for it, but it didn't fit (none will fit because of white piece that holds the mattress in is too high.  For rails to fit, the white wood piece should be a little lower). Next, in another year or two, it will convert to a full bed. 

Grants first real food - Sweet Potatoes

Grant had some sweet potatoes last night.  He gets grumpy about 10 bites into the rice cereal and Maureen seems to think he just doesn't like it.  He seemed to tolerate the sweet potatoes a little better.  I mixed it in with rice cereal.  Since Todd wasn't here, I let Natalie have the honor of giving Grant his first bite of real people food.  Naturally, he blinked when I took the picture.

This is what he looked like at the end. Mommy likes to keep things tidy, and this was the best I could do.  You can kind of see his two little teeth just above his lower lip.  He is gnawing on things with even more fierceness in the past few days and I felt in around the top teeth and he has a hard lump there, along with a bit of broken gum.  Any day now, he'll have his third tooth!  (Meanwhile, has he bothered to roll over or sit up?  Nope!)

Single Parents

Todd is down in Charlottesville, VA for some procurement fraud training (sounds so exciting, huh!?!) so that leaves Mommy home alone with the kids.  So far, things are going pretty well.  Both kids were well behaved last evening, and I didn't have any problems getting them fed and to bed last evening.  Of course, Natalie and I ate waffles for dinner, since I am a nightmare in the kitchen!  Tonight it's chicken and rice, because it's kind of hard to screw that up.

Grant is doing okay with the rice cereal.  He can't quite figure out what he's supposed to do with it once it's in his mouth... should he chew it?  He just kind of spits it out with his tongue.  After about a half a bowl, he gets grumpy and starts crying.  Maureen said once we start mixing in something with flavor, he will probably enjoy it more.  Let's hope!  He is officially done nursing, and there's only a few days left of the BM reserves.  I'm sad, but I'm REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY looking forward to going to Atlanta next weekend and having some fun with my girlfriends!  No need to worry about pumping anymore, and I'm getting so much more done at work.

I've been thinking ahead to the weekend, and this is the first weekend of the Natick Farmer's Market.  We love to go and get fresh veggies for salads and fresh fruit for Natalie.  I can't wait until August when it's peach season.  The best peaches I've ever had came from the Natick Farmer's Market.  Bakery On the Common is there too, and we like to stop in for some breakfast.  I can't wait!