Counting down the days
Last Sunday two amazing things happened – we started defrosting milk and we switched over to cloth diapers.
As you know from the ongoing freezer saga, defrosting milk is like winning the lottery in our house. Would you believe me if I told you we actually have grownup food in our freezer now? I wouldn’t either, but it’s true! The milk is still winning, but we may actually pull ahead one of these days. How did we do it? I finally threw in the towel and started weaning the pump (which my hairdresser says is why I’m shedding even more long blonde hair than usual). Of course, now that Nathan is nursing I need to actually have milk available on demand, which means getting my supply back up, which means more pumping (but not more blogging, see below) and so it might be a while before we get anyone else’s’ freezer emptied (sorry Mom, Mama B, Nana, Becca, Amy & Leah) BUT, we’re making progress. Now that he’s seen the turning of the tide, my dad is telling me to give up on trying to give the milk away and just keep it all for Nathan because “you’ll use it eventually”. It’s great to have a dad who’s interested in the details of nursing and committed to the benefits of breast milk, but I don’t think he’s consulted the other freezer owners.
Cloth diapering has been a great switch too. Of course we went through ALL THIRTY of them in the first 36 hours which had me convince that we were not meant to be using cloth diapers, but maybe it was just baptism by fire. Now when a diaper leaks in the carseat all the way down to the actually seat of the car and you can’t just throw the whole mess away it’s not such a big deal. And now we have a reason to blog about poop, so really, how can we complain? We’re still figuring out our system, but I think we made the right choice.
Nathan’s been working on new skills this week too. (For the record, napping is not one of these skills. Since pumping time is now also baby playing time, blogging time has had to move to nap time, which doesn’t really exist.)
I wish we’d noted when it actually began, but Nathan now sticks his tongue out. If you know the game, you’ll do it back, and then the two of you can have a tongue sticking out exchange. He’s also begun copying faces, so occasionally you can get him to stick his tongue out by doing it first. I realize that at some point sticking out your tongue moves from cute to cheeky, but for the moment we’re enjoying it. Smiling is finally a skill too. Maybe that was last week’s achievement, but it’s no longer just a party trick to pull out when it’s time to show off – he’s smiling all the time. It’s pretty cute. And he’s started exploring things by putting them in his mouth (when he can get them there) which has lead to soggy ears and chomped on noses for many stuffed critters and his mama.
Nathan’s new favorite stuffed animal is his yellow lamb (we think it’s a lamb… maybe a short necked giraffe?) from Great Grandma Booth. Earlier this week as we were playing with the lamb Nathan stuck his tongue out at it. Nothing happened. Nathan stuck his tongue out again. Nothing happened. Nathan stuck his tongue out for a third time, but the lamb still refused to respond. So Nathan tried to chomp on its nose like he does with his giraffe and elephant (stuffed animals that have pacifiers attached to their noses) but there was no pacifier to chomp and the nose wasn’t actually all that close to his mouth. In frustration he grabbed a chunk of my hair, pulled my head towards him (I did kinda let him since I was curious about what would happen next) and chomped my nose instead. I guess it’s good to know my nose isn’t so huge that it can’t fit in my son’s mouth…
And that’s how we’ve been spending our final week home together before I start back at work. Defrosting milk, smiling and playing, chomping on noses, line drying cloth diapers. I’m feeling ready to get back to work, but I know I’ll miss the days of forgoing folding laundry to just lie on the floor with my baby. How are we going to navigate nursing / pumping / childcare / sleeping? NO IDEA. We have a plan and parts of it might even work. I guess you’ll just have to keep reading (I hope we keep blogging!) to find out.