Christmas and New Years

This year's Christmas was really exciting for me. Although Audrey is still too young to understand what it is all about, Santa, the presents, etc, it was drastically different from last year when she was only 3 months old and was oblivious to everything around her.

We visited the Santa at Columbia Mall with Joy, Ian, Gloria, Pete, and Cheryle. Audrey was in a bit of a cranky mood, so I thought she might cry, but instead she just seemed confused. She came close to crying once, and even stuck out her little lip to let us know she was not happy, but no yelling, screaming, or writhing as though in torture. I thought it'd be cute to get a picture like that,  but Audrey is just too chill. The pictures turned out pretty well, too!

We went and bought our Christmas tree one cold evening, and this is the one Audrey picked out. It ended up being the perfect height and width to fit nicely in the corner of our living room. The tree decorating was interesting. I only put breakable ornaments on the top half to keep Audrey from playing with them and breaking them. She did really well and wasn't as into the tree as I thought she might be. She did sneak behind the tree a few times and hide out, which is funny because I remember doing the same thing when I was little. I put some pinecones down low for her to look at and touch and she liked them. She would sometimes take them off to play with and then get this deer in the headlights look when she saw me looking at her, and then she'd shove it back into the tree. She's so silly.

We found a winner!

Hmm, I really want to touch this tree!

I think her favorite part of Christmas was unwrapping the presents. I caught her opening one a few nights before Christmas. It was like she just couldn't help it - a piece of wrapping paper had ripped in the mail so she could see a peek of the gift on the inside and she just HAD to get to it.  Every day leading up to Christmas she would sit down in front of the tree and look at me, asking if we could open the presents. She had fun ripping some open and then being so delicate with others.

She got soooo many cool presents. Santa brought her only boring things - socks, crayons, two pairs of new earrings, and a DJ spin machine (.....ok, clearly Josh picked that one out). But what Santa forgot, everyone else remembered! She got a little table and chairs from Maria that fit nicely in our living room. The chairs are still a little big for Audrey to (safely) climb into, but with help, she's been coloring and enjoying her snacks here. She also got a Scout and a Violet - they are programmable so that they can say Audrey's name, her favorite food, favorite animals, and sing her favorite songs. She loves them! She also got some trucks, books, clothes, a stool with her name, slippers, some Little People, a Dancing Puppy, a bunch of animals (her favorite!), a magnet animal set, bath toys, a new blanket, and so many more things that I can't even think of right now! She was certainly good this year to get all those gifts.

Enjoying her new DJ toy

Snacking at her table

The days after Christmas left us in a bit of a bind. What in the world do we do with all these toys??! Since Audrey got a fair amount of money for Christmas, we decided to take a trip down to Ikea and pick out a storage solution for her playroom. We found a nice one for a fair price, and I couldn't wait to get it home and set up! It was a great choice - the bins are nice and big so she can organize her toys, and still have easy access to them when she wants. We also picked up a long floating shelf and have installed it on one of the walls. I love it. It is low enough that she can see and touch everything. She already stands in front of the shelf and does her puzzles, so I know it was a great choice. I love how the playroom is coming together. It still has a long way to go, but its getting there. We hung the wire clips for her art work and although I like how it looks, I want to go back and get another one to place directly under this one. I want Audrey to be able to see it, but not low enough to touch it and pull and rip it off the wall (she would). Plus, I think it looks really uneven and off balance the way it is now.

Our New Years Eve was quiet this year (a lot like last year). We went to a First Birthday Party for little Ryley, and then went out to dinner with some friends in the evening. We went to Sweetwater like we did last year and we're looking forward to making it an annual New Years Eve tradition. Amy and Brett joined us, and Brett brought her little girl, Ellie. Ellie is 4 months older than Audrey and they had a great time together. They both enjoyed a host of activities including throwing food, knocking over drinks, dumping sugar, screaming, and flailing their bodies all over the place. Yes, we were THOSE people. It was a bit of a stressful dinner (especially since Audrey was on a hunger strike all weekend and refused to eat), but we had fun anyways and it was so nice to catch up with friends we don't see very often.

Overall, we had a busy but awesome Christmas and New Year's this year. It seemed to just sneak up on me and then fly by without really getting to enjoy it as much as I usually do. I already excited for next year when Audrey will be more into Santa and understand what is going on more.

14 Months of Breastfeeding

Just shy of 14 months, actually.

Since I use this space as my personal journal, I'm just going to lay it all out here. I loved breastfeeding and years from now I want to have a written account of what it was like for me. This is that account. Sorry if you don't like boobs. You probably shouldn't read this.

When I was pregnant I never questioned whether or not I would breastfeed. I didn't really give it much thought, just assumed I would. Josh was on board and supportive from the start, and I never doubted that I could do it, or that I'd make enough milk, or anything else. It was just assumed that its what we would do - infant formula didn't exist as far as we were concerned. Maybe this is why breastfeeding was pretty easy for me. Up until she was 8 weeks old, I didn't pay attention to the clock, I didn't give her a pacifier, I didn't make her wait three hours, I didn't encourage her to sleep through the night, I didn't allow anyone to bottle feed her. It was all me, and I think many of these things contribute to my success in nursing. My supply was astounding. Not only early on, but the entire time I was nursing. I had some struggles in the beginning with latch problems, but that was solved with the help of my lactation consultant. We also had a bit of trouble figuring out comfortable nursing positions for the first 9 weeks that Audrey was in her Pavlik harness, but figured that one out by taking the stupid thing off when she ate.  (**Side note - sometimes I forget that Audrey ever had hip displaysia. Isn't that strange? I guess it is true what they say about the bad fading away and only the good things staying in our minds).

When Audrey was around 12 weeks old, she had some blood in her stool that the doctor attributed to a dairy allergy. I cut out all dairy for a few months, only to discover a while later that it was likely not a dairy allergy, but an oversupply issue. Too much milk apparently can be a bad thing! She was getting way too much foremilk and not enough thick hindmilk, and that was causing digestive problems. This ended up not being a big deal anyways, because once I returned to work my supply evened out and became more normal. I added dairy back into my diet when she was about 7 months old and we didn't have any problems, and never have since. That was a relief because I am not prepared to figure out how to avoid dairy forever.

Me, topless of course, trying to wake her to eat

I started to think about weaning shortly before Audrey's first birthday. I wanted to do it gradually and try to make the transition easy, so I started thinking about it a couple months before I wanted to be done. I knew I wouldn't continue pumping at work after she turned one, so we began the transition to whole milk starting around 11 months (and I actually had so much milk in the freezer that I stopped pumping a couple of weeks before she turned one). Once I stopped pumping three times a day at work, I saw a huge drop in my supply (less demand = less supply). I was only nursing her two or three times each day - in the morning before we got out of bed, in the evenings before bed, and sometimes right after work as a way to relax and have some quiet time together. On weekends, I continued giving her whole milk rather than nursing her during the day even though we were together.

At 12.5 months, we decided to night wean her. Well, I guess I decided. Josh wanted me to keep nursing her "as long as possible". I told him that when he grew breasts and began lactating then he could nurse her as long as he'd like, but I was done. We co-sleep and have done so full time since Audrey was around 6 months old. The whole time I nursed, Audrey woke up 2 or 3 times (or more some nights) to nurse and I was fine with that because all I had to do was roll over and she'd latch on and we'd both go back to sleep. I wasn't losing any sleep in this situation, neither was Josh.  I'm not sure what motivated me to night wean. I don't think there was any real motivation, it just felt like it was the right time. I wanted my boobs and my body and my space back and I felt that at 13 months she was old enough to understand that night time is for sleeping and not eating. Audrey could have gone much longer before weaning, but I decided to do it myself. Some might say that is selfish to not let the Audrey wean herself. Maybe it is. I don't know.

My chubby little girl

The night weaning process was difficult. Audrey did not want to give up her night drinks. We did it over the course of a week and it was miserable for everyone involved. Audrey would wake up and try to nurse and I wouldn't let her. That was infuriating to her! She would scream and cry and Josh and I would lay there with her, cuddling her, kissing her, rubbing her back, talking to her. This did make me feel like a big a-hole mom for denying her something that she so badly wanted, but I never got uneasy feelings or feelings that what I was doing was wrong, so we kept on with it. Within 5 nights, she was sleeping 7pm-5am without waking for milk, and when she would wake around 5 or 6am, I'd nurse her and then go back to sleep (or get up for work). I continued this for a couple more weeks, and was nursing her before bed and in the early morning before work, and then she dropped the 5 am feeding on her own. One night we went up to bed and I nursed her to sleep and that was it. I told Josh that for the next few weeks, he'd have to be the one to put Audrey to sleep and he agreed. Surprisingly, she did not protest that at all. In fact, it was much easier for him to put her to bed and it took him half the time (she has a tendency to climb all over me and laugh and play and be would up when I do bedtime with her).

About a week after our last bedtime nursing session, I got super engorged and my left  boob was looking like a bowling ball and I ended up with a clogged duct. It was truly the most painful thing I've experienced with breastfeeding - worse than cracked and bleeding nipples. It was like a fire hot pain radiating out from my breast and every step I took or movement I made I could feel it. I couldn't take it any longer so one night I woke her up around 3 am and nursed her while I massaged the duct and it released. Best feeling ever. I thought that was our last nursing session...until a week later and the same thing happened AGAIN. So again, I woke her up in the middle of the night and nursed her and released the pain and haven't had any issues since. That was 7 weeks ago.

I had some worries about weaning. I was afraid I might experience some sadness or slight depression, as I've read and heard that this is common for women when they wean. While I did have conflicting emotions about it, I didn't actually get too down about it or feel depressed. Again, I think it was because the time was right for us. It felt like the best thing and I never questioned my decision. I also worried about weight gain after weaning. While I nursed, I had an insatiable appetite and never seemed to put on any pounds. In fact, I maintained my weight at 5lbs less than I was pre-pregnancy. I was (and am) afraid that all that weight would catch up to me once I stopped and my metabolism and hormones all settled back down. So far I have noticed a slight gain (I don't have a scale and haven't been to the doctor so this is only based on how my clothes fit), but nothing too dramatic.

I felt like my breastfeeding relationship with Audrey was perfect. I loved coming home from work and cuddling up with her and reconnecting after being apart all day. It relaxed me, and it relaxed her. Breastfeeding, for me, was never a source of stress, but was more a source of comfort. I'm proud that I accomplished (almost) 14 months of breastfeeding. Sometimes I wonder if it will be easier or harder with future babies. I think back to the first month of nursing when I would actually take my shirt off every time I had to feed her because I couldn't figure out how to do it with a shirt on. Haha. My poor friends and family had to sit there will I sat in only a bra on the couch, sweating and with all that post-partum fat hanging out. Luckily they still love me, and adore Audrey (Thank Goodness). I remember how Josh and I would stare at her eating and we'd laugh because, really, we were staring at my boobs, but to us it was so amazing how it all worked and how naturally it came to Audrey and to me. I nursed everywhere, anywhere. I wonder if next time I'll be more reserved and shy about it? I guess when the time came to feed Audrey, I just did it, I never really thought about it. I wonder how many people I made uncomfortable by nursing in public. Oh well! I enjoyed my breastfeeding journey and I'm looking forward to nursing any future babies as well!

Peek a boo

Video Update: Audrey is cute as hell. You already knew that, though.

Here she is playing peek a boo at dinner the other night. She's been doing this for a while but this is the first time I've gotten a good video of it. I love how she feeds off our encouragement, she just eats up the attention!

I am working on uploading a new batch of videos to youtube so if you get bored, watch Audrey being cute!
http://www.youtube.com/user/Earnold14/videos

xo

Favorite Toys at 14 Months

As Audrey gets more and more into specific toys, she has started to gravitate towards a few favorites. This is kind of a new thing, because she used to just play with whatever was there. I think its really interesting to notice which are her favorites and speculate why she likes them.

1. Her favorite thing is still books. She loves them. They are the first thing she goes for when she walks into the playroom. She usually starts by taking them off of the bookshelf and digging around for the books she loves. She has a few favorites that she would be happy reading over and over again, mostly books with pictures of other babies or real life animals. I love watching her while she "reads" them. She brings books to me to read to her, but we only get about halfway through it before she is off again looking for a different book.

2. My BarnYard Friends - This was a gift from a friend, and Audrey actually has two of them. One has farm animals and one has pet animals. We keep one in the diaper bag and one in the house and they are her absolute favorite toys. She loves opening the house up and putting all of the animals in and taking them out or dumping them all out together. Each animal makes sounds if you squeeze them and we try to imitate the sounds together. She likes to take each animal and hand it to me to name, then I line them all up one by one and she just keeps picking them up and handing them to me. She waits for me to say what it is. So cute. Lately she has figured out how to line them up herself, too.

3. Shape Sorter - This was a gift from Lexi for Audrey's birthday. Audrey doesn't yet even attempt to put the blocks through the holes, she just entertains herself by putting them in the top and dumping them out. I follow her around picking them all up and putting them back into the box, then she immediately runs over and dumps them out again. Fun?!

4. Picnic Basket - This was another birthday gift and I was really surprised when Audrey started playing with it. She doesn't really play with her other electronic toys much very much so I guess I expected the same from this one. Like the two toys I already mentioned, her favorite thing to do is put them in and take them out. She also pretends to eat the food and drink from the cup. She prefers to do this one alone, though (odd?) and usually walks away if I try to join her for a picnic. Whatever, fickle little thing.

5. Bath Stacking Cups - I pulled these out when we moved into the new house and I didn't think Audrey would be interested. Maybe I thought it was too simple? Of course she surprised me and every time we go into the bathroom now she goes right for the stacking cups. These toys came in handy at the perfect time, too. She had been fighting bath time for a couple of weeks and would cry and try to climb out of the tub. Now she plays quietly and works intently on fitting the cups into each other. Always surprising me!

She is just now starting to get in to the puzzles she got for her birthday. Her favorite is the colors and shapes one - I assume because it has big knobs and the shapes are easier to identify. She gets so proud every time she successfully gets a piece into the puzzle!

But even with all of these toys, Audrey's absolute favorite thing in the world is:

Sticks. And rocks. And leaves. And dirt. Thus, we spend a lot of time outside. Hey, free entertainment right?!

The Playroom

Our next big project is just about complete! This was a big one.

Josh has been laboring away working on Audrey's playroom. This is the smaller of the downstairs bedrooms. It is next to the bathroom, in the back corner of the house. We chose this room because we can see directly into the room from the living room. Perfect since Audrey is old enough to play independently now and we can continue doing what we want, but are still able to watch over her from a distance. The room was in pretty bad shape when we moved in. Like the other rooms, the carpeting in here was disgusting and was immediately removed when we took ownership. There was some ugly brown vinyl flooring under the carpet that wasn't too bad, and we could have cleaned it well enough, but we decided it had to go, too. In addition to the furniture and other random junk the previous owners left in here, there were also a bunch of random wires hanging out of the wall that seemed very questionable.

I can't remember if I have mentioned this before on here, but when our inspector did his inspection on the house, he was checking out the roof and his foot fell through it. There was a corner of the roof that wasn't installed properly and had rotted out. So when his foot fell through obviously it left a big hole and the owners weren't about to fix it, so the hole just sat wide open for the next month until we closed on the house and got our roofer out here to fix it. We had lots of rain in that month and the rain poured through the hole and into the walls on the back of the house. Once we got the roof fixed we tore down the drywall on the back walls (because they were visibly wet) and discovered that there was mold growing. Luckily these beams hadn't rotted yet so all we had to do was treat the mold so it wouldn't return. That left us with bare open walls and ceilings though! Good thing Josh is super handy.

This room actually sat destroyed and in ruins for about a month and a half while we worked on other things - while the bathroom was being built, while we were settling in, while we were doing Audrey's birthday stuff, etc. Josh didn't have the time to devote to it, but when we decided to host Thanksgiving at our house, we made finishing this room a priority.

He hung the drywall on 3 walls and the ceiling in here, then together we mudded it up, sanded, mudded, sanded, then finally painted (ok, Josh did most of that, I pretended to help but mostly walked around complaining about getting dirty). Once the painting was done, Josh put up the crown molding and installed the laminate floors. We had all of this done by Thanksgiving. Actually, he finished it Thanksgiving morning. He's amazing. He did the baseboards Saturday morning. We still have to find a new door (we are thinking of getting a half door), get new windows, new light fixture, paint the closet, decorate, get some functional shelving, and possibly put up trim around the windows and doors. The issue there is that the window and door frames are metal and can't be nailed, so we're looking into finding a way around that. But for now - Audrey has a playroom!! Her toys are not in the living room! I'll be honest - even though I wanted a playroom, I thought for sure that she would just go in there and drag a toy out to the living room and that eventually they'd all be sitting in the living room like they were before. Or that she'd play in there for a minute and then realize she couldn't see us and come running out whining right away. But this is not the case so far! She actually goes in there and plays quietly with her stuff and occasionally comes out with a book for us to read together. She's so sweet. She loves her playroom, and we love the space we now have in our living area.

Thanksgiving and catching up

I haven't posted much family stuff or Audrey stuff on here recently. Lets change that!

Two weeks ago Audrey and I headed down south to Virginia Beach for my cousin's son's 2nd birthday. Zach is such a sweet heart and Sarah put on a great party for him! The theme was trains and Sarah made these awesome conductor party favors for the little ones. Audrey had fun and was being generally cute along with the other little ones (they were each a year apart!). She loved all of the food that Sarah made, and the cake was so delicious that she even insisted on stealing the birthday boy's last bite right off his plate! Rude! Luckily I had a small piece that I quickly dropped on his plate to avoid catastrophe.

Our Thanksgiving this year was rather interesting. We decided about a month ago that we would host our families and cook and the whole nine yards. I even bought fancy tablecloths and cloth napkins (that never even got ironed). I bought a ton of food and found the yummiest recipes. And then Audrey started coughing. The cough started about a week before Thanksgiving and we didn't think much of it until she got a low-grade fever Monday night.  We gave her some Tylenol and the fever came down and we all went about our days, but that cough kept getting worse. Wednesday I decided to see the doctor and was very surprised to discover that she had RSV, bronchiolitis, and a double ear infection. Apparently RSV is pretty serious so I felt terrible for not having taken her in sooner, but of course my happy girl never acted sick once! She is always so energetic and generally even tempered so I know that if she is overly fussy or whiny then something is probably wrong. Of course, she WAS fussy and whiny all weekend, but I attributed that (and the fever, and the coughing, and the runny nose) to the fact that she has two molars and two eye teeth cutting through right now and those are her usual symptoms for teething.

We left the doctor's office with a nebulizer and a prescription for her ear infections. The doctor says that this ear infection was likely caused by the other infections going on in her body and therefore it does not count towards her total number for the year (we are tallying to keep track when/if we decide to get tubes). Audrey really fought me the first two times we did the nebulizer, but she calmed down for Josh and took it well. We went back on Friday for a follow up and she is done with the nebulizer and her ear infection meds now.

Thanksgiving day was particularly interesting. Wednesday night I called everyone to inform them that Audrey was sick and although it wasn't serious for older kids or adults, it was an issue with Cristina due to her being prone to respiratory infections. We didn't want to get anyone sick, so we all agreed that we would cook the food at our house and then send it back to Dad's where everyone could eat together. So Wednesday night I kind of gave up on Thanksgiving and didn't do all the things I was supposed to do (clean, iron, prepare the food). Josh and I got up Thursday morning and puttered around the house in no real hurry. He finished working on Audrey's playroom and I dealt with Audrey and tried to get started on some food. Dad came over around 11 am and I informed him that I hadn't started ANYTHING. How's that for time management? Then Josh went out to fire up the turkey frier, only to discover that it had a hole in it. Uh-oh. How will we cook a 20 lb turkey for people in 3 hours? Well, luckily these two men happen to be stars in the kitchen and they got it done! They cooked an entire Thanksgiving dinner in 3 hours! Turkey, mashed potatoes, sweet potato casserole, stuffing, gravy, green bean casserole. Yum! Most of the family came by for a little while just to see the house and say hello while they were still cooking. After everyone left, the three of us sat down and enjoyed some Thanksgiving dinner and rested for the rest of the day. It was a crazy day, but fun. Definitely an interesting story for our first Thanksgiving.

We have been spending so much time outside lately with all this beautiful weather we've had. We love our house, but I think we love our yard more. We inherited a wood stove with the house and Josh and Dad set it up out back to be a make shift (redneck) fire pit. It is actually pretty nice and we have enjoyed sitting out there in the evenings and chatting. Josh has taken well to the yard duties, Josie gets a ton of exercise, and Audrey's favorite activity is being outside finding rocks and leaves. I love all three of those things!

 

More updates to come soon!