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.
Getting stuck in an elevator and other adventures
Each Monday and Friday since the beginning of the month I think to myself, another week in the office, I really should get around to sharing this… and then it doesn’t happen. And then today I got stuck in the outside handicap elevator. Clearly a sign that it’s time to get writing. I mean, who gets stuck in an elevator? and while her son is asleep in her office? I must be a terrible mother.
So here we are. I’ve been back at work since July 5th and Nathan has been joining me on Tuesdays and Thursdays. It’s been two weeks of Tim offering us a ride into Boston so that he could help me get baby, baby bag, mommy bag, pump and stroller into the building, and two weeks of me being afraid one or more of these items will go flying down Newbury street as I tried to haul it all out the door at the end of the day to go home – time to figure out a better system. The office is technically handicap accessible, so it shouldn’t have been that hard. Ha!
With Nathan asleep in my office, I headed down with Lori, the keeper of the master key, to figure out how to use the handicap elevator and it’s funny key system before having to do it with a grumpy baby and all our stuff. And yes, I did first stick me head in the office next door so that someone would know I was going to be away from my perfectly happy, sleeping baby for all of two seconds. No different than when I leave a sleeping Nathan to go brush my teeth or something while at home. That is, until we got stuck in the elevator.
The key opened the elevator door just fine. We got in, closed the door, put the key in its little activation slot, pushed the up button, and nothing happened. We pushed it again. Nothing. Then we tried to open the door to give up and go back inside. And nothing happened. Maybe the elevator thought it was on the upper level and thus wouldn’t open the lower door? So we pushed the down button and then tried to open the door. Still nothing. Murphy’s Law says that if you leave your baby sleeping happily in your office and then get stuck in an elevator, he’s going to wake up with an exploding diaper or thinking he’s dying of hunger. Knowing this to be true I wanted to call and warn Lauren in the office next to mine that there might be a fussy baby any minute and I was really sorry, but I wasn’t going to be there to solve it. At least he’s not that loud? But she didn’t answer her office phone or cell phone – she was already comforting an awake, super mad baby. Next we called our colleagues in Facilities. Alan, on his way to lunch, was luckily not yet out the door, and came over with his set of keys to rescue us. Except that his key didn’t work either. In the end, Alan took the roof off the elevator, lowered in a step ladder, and we climbed out.
Needless to say, Nathan and I will not be using the elevator Thursday morning.
In other news, yesterday we defrosted the last of the milk in our freezer (victory!) so have begun finally implementing first in, first out with the remaining milk supply. Feb milk is slowly making it’s way back to us from Lexington (we could probably take all of it, but I refuse to give up my entire freezer again). Hopefully this week we’ll figure out our defrosting needs and be able to come up with an actual plan for using up the 7 remaining freezers full / getting the majority of it back into our house. Oh, and remember the milk bank? (I know – I don’t either, that was like months ago.) They JUST sent me a kit to go get a blood test so they can decide if they really truly do want any of the milk. I’m not sure I even have the time to tell them I’ve moved on – moved on to things like tracking down less than $80 a bottle infant multivitamins, finally buying a stroller and praying, praying I do not get stuck in another elevator.