And a Month Passes By...

It seems when the week begins I dread the early mornings of school drop off and nap time fights, then I blink and it is Friday afternoon and a weight has been lifted from my mind...then I blink again and I am dreading the week's beginning again and before you know it a month passes by.

I remember my mom telling me that once you have children time seems to pass faster and I think that the more children you have increases that sensation exponentially!

Here is what has happened in the last month in the form of a list:

• Otis cut2 more teeth and now has 8 total. He is still sitting-ish, trying to crawl, but falling on his belly and spinning in a circle! It is very cute.
• Sam has made at least one drawing a day, if not more and can draw so well! I love being involved with him making art.
  
• Arlo is making it closer to being potty trained, though he still fights it most of the time. We've tried all tactics at this point and the next step is to simply stop using diapers. Cross your fingers for us.
• I read all 4 Twilight books in two weeks and started seeing vampires everywhere I looked. I really enjoyed the escape and it has started me on a reading binge, which is really, really nice!
• Matt tried to ride his bike to work one morning, only find that the pine squirrels in our garage had filled his saddle bag with munched nuts! HA! He proceeded to try to kill the squirrels, but failed.
• I set the yard on fire with the lawn mower trying to mow up the leaves. I am now banned from mowing when Matt is not around to help put out fires. No kidding.
• Our friend Nik shot two bucks in our back yard with his bow. One was a 7 year old, 9 point buck weighing 240 pounds dressed. We will have venison in our freezer soon.
• Otis woke with a nasty fever that kept rising until it spiked this afternoon at 104.5 degrees (rectal). Both Matt and I are still a little worried, but out pediatrician assures us we're doing all the right things and the ER is not necessary yet.
• We clebrated Halloween for the first time in our neighborhood. Sam was a knight, Arlo was Superman, and Otis was a lamb.
• Matt and I dressed as 70's disco studs and went to an adult Halloween party. It was a lot of fun!
• The leaves have all dropped here at our homestead. The chickens are ready for winter and the yard is mostly ready.
• This weekend was unseasonable warm so we spent it trying to finish up last minute "get-ready-for-winter" tasks including scraping and painting the front door frame. It looks nice now.
• My sister applied for a job transfer to East Lansing, had two rounds of interviews and will hear the final decision this week. We are on pins and needles wondering if she'll move here.
• Sam has a loose tooth.
• The cat killed a mouse in the basement and then put it in her empty food dish. She has a great sense of humor.
• We had 25 turkeys wander through our yard this afternoon. That is the most yet at one time. I was thinking about Thanksgiving when they walked by.
• I no longer have a cell phone for the first time in 7 years. We now have a home phone which Sam will answer if he can get to it first. If you don't have our number, email me and I will give it to you.
• I am still knitting a sock I started in June.
• I have been going to the YMCA 3 times a week and am beginning to notice a difference.
  
• We had mold removed from our basement and now I have an office space again.
  

Six Months...Now Seven

Otis turned six months old last month! I started this post then and here were are at seven months old!

Whether it be that he is the third baby or that I am more comfortable with nature taking it's course in the realm of health issues; Otis had his first pediatrician appointment right after he became six months old.

He weighed 20 pounds and was 27 inches long! He is wearing size 12 months strongly and last night I put him in and 18 month size footed sleeper. His feet filled the slippers!

He sits really well now and is making major signs of movement. Today he scooted about 2 feet across the carpet while I was sitting in the chair beside him reading my book.

He's nursing like a champ again and all the issues we were having have subsided! I took Fenugreek and pumped for a while and then he started nursing lots and now I don't even need the Fenugreek anymore. We've been working with him on putting himself to sleep and sleeping longer stretches at night and he seems to be responding with ease. I am so glad. We had a very rough month where I was getting less than 4 hours of sleep a night. My under eye concealer was becoming my best friend. Last night he went down for a nap at 4:30 pm and slept until 4:30 am, nursed, then slept until 7 am!! That is a bit unusual, but we are getting from 8 pm until about 3 or 4 am now without a waking. I can lay him down in his crib awake and he'll just babble himself to sleep. So sweet.

He giggles and laughs a lot and has lots of babbling words like "ba, ba, ba" and "da, da, da", and "bumpfff". It is fun to hear him talk.

He's becoming more aware of strangers and will sometimes cry when a particularly large man gets too close to him and he is definitely my little "cling-on" most of the time. I have a great back-carrying pod that I love and wear him in a lot.

Otis has five teeth (three on bottom and two one top) and the sixth tooth is getting ready to push through any day. The teeth sure do help him with his eating! He can feed himself cheerios and little finger foods of the like. He seems to be doing fine with dairy baked into foods and I hope he'll be ok with milk and yogurt in a few months. He LOVES meat and tonight ate a piece of venison 2 inches in diameter!

He really is a a very jolly baby and I am so thankful. Getting ready to crawl, he'll sit and then lean forward onto his arms, rock back and forth and eventually end up on his tummy. Everyday he is a bit closer though and I know my life will be very different once he's a mover. I am enjoying the "sit and play" days while I have them.

News on the big brother front: Sam has a loose tooth on top and Arlo is making major potty training progress, though not without a fight.
More in the big kids later....

Finding Comfort

Being married and having children at younger ages (wed at 22 and birthed at 26, 29, and 31), has forced me to age earlier. I don't mind it; in fact I am really excited about the transition in life I am about to make. I think my thirties and forties will be exciting years. I am going to get to watch my children grow and pursue some things for myself at the same time. I have found comfort in where we are in our lives.

In the last 6 weeks or so I have been having some trouble maintaining a sufficient milk supply for Otis. I never thought this would be an issue for me. I nursed Sam strongly for 2 years and Arlo for 16 months. Never once did I have more than a minor nursing issue.
It has been important to me to parent in such a way that I foster and nurture the attachment relationship with my children. I consider breastfeeding to be one of the core elements. This situation I am in is very foreign to me and I am not happy about it.
As my milk supply has decreased, Otis has been more and more reluctant to nurse. We've been supplementing with little bits of solid food, but rapidly he is wanting MORE! He loves it and has only encountered one foe so far: carrots!
In the last week he's been waking at night, wanting to nurse but becoming very frustrated with my lack of milk and extremely slow let-down (3 minutes or more) and just giving up and refusing the breast. It is not a good feeling to have your baby refuse your breast.
Those of you that know me well will know that when I write that I have been extremely reluctant to offer any other supplements, you know I mean it with valor.
However, after two particularly rough nights, we have started giving Otis some goats milk in a bottle. I offer him the breast first, but if he refuses I will give him a bottle.
He loves it.
Tonight he drank 4.5 ounces of goats milk, about a 1/3 cup of peaches with oatmeal cereal, nursed on both sides (based on my pumping experience, I'd guess it was about 5 ounces of breast milk) and he gummed a teething biscuit to death. Now he is sleeping soundly and should be with a tummy as full as he must have!
Becoming comfortable with this is very, very hard for me. Part of me feels like I am failing Otis; part of me is embarrassed; part of me is scared to tell some of my friends, as crazy as that sounds. Most of me knows this is all okay and is such a minor thing in the grand scheme of raising him; that there will be much harder challenges in the future. I just never thought I that I would find myself having to remember to grab a bottle of milk before I head upstairs to bed.
Tonight when I nursed Otis he fell asleep at my breast and he hasn't done that in months. It felt wonderful and easy. Nursing Otis up to this point has not been wonderful and easy and so I am now comforted just a little bit...

Visual Aids

Just a few snap shots of my world. I haven't done anything to these images. They are what they are...

Done.

A month or so ago I decided to make a list of all the reasons I know I am ready to be done having children. As the list grew it became a long list of negativity. I decided not to finish it and not to post what I wrote...
...instead here is a list of what I love about having my three boys in all of their stages...

I love it that/when...

...Sam still would rather be naked all day than wear clothes.
...Sam wants to cuddle every morning in bed.
...Arlo knows what a Zeppelin is.
...Arlo puts on his cape first thing in the morning and assumes "Super Arlo" duties all day.
...Otis plays with my hair while he nurses.
...I can fit all three boys on my lap when I read books.
...I can communicate with Otis pretty well even after only 6 months.
...I do have time for all three of them, one-on-one, at some point during the day.
...Sam wants to have serious "talks" with me when I tuck him in.
...Sam has freckles.
...Arlo has amazing blue eyes.
...Otis has chubby legs and two dimples.
...I can lay Otis down in his crib once he's fallen asleep and he'll stay AND I can sometimes lay him down while he is still awake and he'll put himself to sleep!
...Otis will still nurse to sleep sometimes.
...Arlo really wishes he could use a bottle still and some days wants to be the baby again.
...I love the way each of my boys smells.
...Sam is a great big brother.
...Arlo is a great big brother.
...Otis LOVES his two big brothers.

...I am really okay with being done having children. Now is the time to settle in and enjoy each of them as they grow. No more big changes for a while. We need to be still...to slow down.

Just Playin' Around

Matt bought me a sweet little gift to help me curb my appetite for drawing and painting while the kids are sleeping...a Bamboo Digital Pen and Tablet!
Here is a work in progress as I learn Corel Paint and how to use the pressure sensitive tool. So much fun and it opens such HUGE possibilities. You can apply masks of sorts to digital photos to make generic photo paintings, but you can also actually paint and draw with all sorts of media tools. I am enjoying it, but there is a lot to learn! This is a painting I am working on to learn the different brushes and get the hang of mixing colors on a palette. Using individual strokes is much more appealing to me...

Overdue

I am so very overdue for a post. I know. We've been living our lives so sweetly as summer has come upon us. Parties, visits from family, lazy days at home, chaotic days at home....the days just keep passing.

The kids are fantastic. All growing so fast. I will post some summer photos soon, but have been cleaning up my photographic archives and am not quite organized enough to find things I want.

I have been thinking a lot about herb gardens and growing herbs and gardening. It is a good feeling. I read a lot and talk herbs with friends.

Matt is getting busier with work as the Fall semester draws near. He'll be teaching in the beginning of September and he always has a lot of preparation to do. We're starting to think about Sam returning to school too...with only a little more than a month left to our summer break.

The weather is finally warming up and I think we might actually get some real summer activities in during the month of August. We'll actually be at home the whole with only visits from my sister, dad and grandma int he middle of the month. I am excited to see them.

Matt's mom and dad and Aunt Annie just came for a visit and it was wonderful...simply wonderful.

We are gearing up for a small road trip next week. We'll first drive to Maryland to see Matt's Aunt Meg and Uncle John. We'll also see Matt's cousin and her kids there. Matt will be in D.C. for a day meeting with some federal USDA folks. Then we'll drive south to Virginia to visit my Aunt Pat, Uncle Bill, cousins and their children. We'll make the 11 hour drive back to Michigan on August 4th and that will end our summer travels...whew!

Laundry to hang, dishes to put away and some cookies to bake...nap time is so nice.