The Weanening (Thar be boob talk ahead)

Baby led weaning at its finest

As Wren's first birthday rapidly approaches so does the expiration date on my boobs. My goal with her was to breastfeed for a year and it certainly looks like we will be succeeding there but after almost nine months of pumping three times a day at work I am so ready to be done with it. The pumping, I mean. For the time being I am still down with nursing Wren as long as she'll have me. Within reason.

I was all ready to enact a draw down plan with the pumping but my bout of mastitis in March kind of did that for me. Even though I took all the recommended steps to maintain supply, my boobs were all, "Meh" and have been seriously under performing as of late. I'm looking at you, Righty. I even went back on the fenugreek pills in all of their mapley glory. That has helped some but only enough to prevent the use of formula most of the time. Every time I come home from work to find that she had to have formula that day I feel guilty so I go in to work the next day and keep on plugging away three times a day and end up making myself feel even worse when the milk just isn't there like it used to be.

I could try pumping more at home to get the volume back up but Bruce's spring hockey has begun in full force so I find myself doing a lot of solo parenting lately. While Calder and Wren are both fairly well behaved and able to entertain themselves for period of time, my kids are not so good as to be left to their own devices for any stretch of time several times a day. After all, it's quite difficult to prevent a certain someone from flinging herself headlong off the couch  if I am currently across the room being tethered to the wall by my boobs.

I have also begin  to feel like the constant coming and going to pump is beginning to affect my professional life. The lengths of time it is taking to get any significant amounts are increasing and I feel like I am abandoning my work at ever longer intervals. Rightly or wrongly, I realize that this leaves people an opening to judge me. While my company is very accommodating to mothers, and parents in general, there is still a wide gap between policy and perception. In an ideal world, a person walking by my desk and seeing an empty chair would think, "How wonderful that she takes the time to do what's best for her child." But I don't work in such a feminist utopia, I work in the real world and when someone stops by my desk to go over something an I am once again absent, they are more likely to think, "She's not at her desk AGAIN. Suuuuper." My job is not my whole life but it is essential to it and to the continued happiness of my family. I have to make the decision which is the most important to me: I know that breast is best but health insurance is pretty awesome too.

Hence, this Monday is the official beginning of my Take Back the Ta-tas plan. Unofficially it started a few weeks ago when Wren decided she didn't need to eat when I got home from work but today I am starting for realsies.  First, drop a pumping session per day. Once she hits a year old, drop another. After that it's once a day until I run out of my current stock milk storage bags. It's kind of arbitrary but I am comforted by having a definitive but flexible timeline and I'd hate to waste money by throwing the unused bags away.

The thing is, Wren is such a good eater (she is seriously kicking baby led weaning's ass) that she doesn't rely on me for a great deal of her nutrition any more. Lately Wren seems to do more comfort nursing rather than doing it to feed. I mean, why would you want to lay still and eat when you could take it with you in a bottle and continue on your merry way of pulling cat tails and stealing your brother's toys? As to finally weening her, I will deal with it when the time comes but what I realized is that right now, I'm the one who needs to be weened from the feeling that "if I don't pump X oz a day, my baby will starve". Be cause she won't. She's a hoss. And I am staring to feel better already.

Wordless Wednesday: Body Art

Hey, Remember Easter?

You know, that holiday with disgusting marshmallow birds and zombie Jesus? I totally missed my chance to do a real post so here are a bunch of pictures. Let me just say that this Easter might have reached a new low for our little family. 

Digging through the loot

Hmm, how long before I get this put up on a high shelf?

Immediately after Easter baskets Bruce had to leave for hockey so I was left alone with one kid who was all juiced on chocolate and pissed that I wouldn't let him have more and another who was mad at me for insisting on taking all the Easter grass out of her mouth. In lieu of church I introduced Calder to the Veggie Tales oeuvre and let the TV indoctrinate him for three hours while I entertained Wren and/or went out back to hide eggs for the hunt that was supposed to take place when Bruce got home. I think it helped? I intermittently quizzed Calder and got such gems as "Who is Jesus?" "The son" "Who's son?" "Gog." Eh, better I guess.

Shoveling chocolate in before I can take it away

Diddy!

Hmmmm, will you run away from me too?

When Wren wasn't napping or surreptitiously trying to ingest plastic she was warily eying her Easter gift, a small stuffed cat. I think she was expecting to to leap up off the table and scurry under the computer just like her real cat. Eventually she warmed to the thing and now carries it around in a manner that suggests I call Amazon and have them ship me the rest of their stock in bulk. I really didn't know what to get her for her upcoming birthday but now I do, a pallet of stuffed kitties.

Waiting patiently for the screaming to stop

Low hanging fruit

Lady of leisure

Of course since nothing ever goes as planned our attempt at an Easter Egg hunt went completely to shit before it even started. While Bruce and I wrestled Wren in and out of her fancy girl tights to change a nasty load, Calder took it upon himself to strip the yard of hidden eggs. When Bruce tried to take them away to rehide them so we could all play (and I could take pictures), Calder launched himself  into what can only be called a grand daddy of a wobbler. Mostly because he had found an egg with some change in it and was fearful that we were stealing his money.

Finally allowed to participate

Hey look, here it is! Again!

After a thirty minute cool down in his room, Calder was finally permitted to go searching for eggs in a photogenic manner. Not being content to only sort of disregard tradition, we all later settled down for a nice dinner of Easter fajitas. I had been whining about not having ham, so when Bruce got back from retrieving the skirt steak, he tossed me a packet of deli meat ends and said, "Here's your damn ham." It things like this that let me know he loves me. That and saving all the dusty bits from the bottom of the Mini-Wheats box so I can eat them later in a glorious sugary sludge.

 

The closest thing I got to a nice picture.

How to Tell is it's Maybe Time for You to Start Making Your Baby Sleep Through the Night on a Regular Basis

It's pretty easy. Basically, you find yourself sending emails to your husband that sound like this:

Can you confirm that the baby is still alive? I mean, yes right? Because she didn’t wake up last night at all and then I sent you a text message that you haven’t answered yet so now I am kind of worried that there is some sort of emergency so please juts  let me know that everyone is still fine. (sic everything)

For the record, everything is fine. Except for the fact that I am quite possible crazy and/or anxiety riddled from never, EVER getting enough sleep.

Wordless Wednesday: Flora and Fauna

Bruce's contribution to the art form of photography, courtesy of our backyard.

Caldernism

On Saturday Bruce took off to Starbucks to do some of his hockey stuff in relative peace and quiet. When Calder asked where he had gone I told him that Daddy had gone to do some work. Calder's response? "But daddies don't go to work. Only mommies go to work."

Yeah, kid. That's exactly how it is.

Members Night

While my mom was visiting we took her to the Field Museum to go look at dinosaur bones and taxidermied animals. While there, Bruce got us a family membership. We had one a few years ago but had let it lapse so I am super excited to have the ability to go as much as the kids I want again. The Field is, literally, my favorite place on "plannennerf" (tm Calder).

Taste the majesty

Last night we went to the annual Member's Night where you can roam the museum after hours, exploring things behind the scenes or getting a special look at the new exhibits. Of course, taking small children anywhere in the evening is a race against bedtime meltdowns so we knew we had to prioritize what we wanted to do. The behind the scenes stuff was the obvious choice. Let me just say this, I want to live/work/die in the bowels of the Field. On the upper floors we saw the machine shop/design department where all of the museum's amazing displays and structures are fabricated. We got to wander around the the hallways where the post docs all have their offices and do their research. If you've read The Time Traveler's Wife, let me just say that the book can't even begin to describe how massive and disorienting this building can be. Of course, I have no pictures of all this because Bruce forgot the camera and my phone battery was dead so you will have to take my work for how awesome it all was.

Down in the basement we go to peek into the world of specimen storage. The reptile area had jar upon jar stuffed to the gills with preserved animals. Just endless rows of shelves filled with dead lizards. Think the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark but better organized and with glass jars instead of boxes. And snakes instead of religious relics. Though I suppose it's totally possible the Field has those stashed somewhere too. We did miss a floor. Other things we got to look at: A preserved Coelacanth, flesh-eating beetles in action, multitudes of artifacts from the anthropology department that rarely see the light of day. Oh, and all those taxidermied animals? We got a good long look at how those displays come to be. We swung by the mammal preparation lab and got to watch four museum staffers go about their business skinning a variety of animals for future use. Being relieved of their fur was a fisher, a bobcat, possibly a second bobcat and my absolute favorite, a beaver, which inspired me so greatly I had to use the last few seconds of my phone battery life to tweet about it. In fact, I feel so strongly about the poetry of it all that I think variations on the phrase "to skin a beaver" should be incorporated into the popular lexicon immediately. It's just that versatile in its awesomeness.

• Displeasure - That really skinned my beaver.
• Ennui - I've seen that beaver skinned before.
• Perfection - Only one right way to skin a beaver.
• Success - Way to skin that beaver!
• Cursing - Son of a beaver skinner!
• Permanence - You just can't unskin a beaver.
• Comparison - It's OK but it's no skinning a beaver.
• Disbelief - Well skin my beaver!

Erm. Perhaps I know why no one wants to hang out with me anymore and it's not because I have two kids and live in the 'burbs.

Anyways. Calder's favorite part of the night was getting some tattoos airbrushed on to his arms, a skull and crossbones on one side and a bumble bee on the other. Bruce, Wren and I also got decorated but only Calder kept lifting up his shirt to strangers to show them the others he had affixed to his stomach earlier in the day. His other favorite part was charming the pants off some lady bug nerds at the insect display and seeing but refusing to touch a live tarantula. Again. Wren's favorite portion of the night was either interacting with a person wearing a cheetah puppet or listening to the sound of her own noisy chirps echoing through the hallways as she toddled around the upstairs. Unfortunately precious artifacts that rarely come out of storage are a little too delicate for baby interaction so there wasn't much else to hold her attention. Perhaps when she is older which is alright because we will definitely go again next year. According to the map in the program, the floor we missed included the oversized object area. I bet they got whole Easter Island heads down there.

Bird-Day Party Planning

Seeing as how there is less than a month until Wren's first birthday I should probably get on that whole party planning thing. So far I have decided on a tentative theme (birds but that could change to woodland creatures, kitties or dinosaurs) and started a pinboard based on that theme. The next step is fantasizing about ways to convince the Navy to station Suzanne's husband at the Great Lakes Naval Base starting immediately so they have to move here in the next month and she can do all the planning for me. Because she is awesome at it.

Barring that, yeah, I got nothing. No date and time (hockey tournaments can go suck it), no guests to invite (I have no friends and neither do my children), no family to attend (millions of miles away) and no presents (my kids have way too much shit already). It's pretty much going to be me, Bruce and Calder going "Yay! Mom will finally let you eat some cake, here's a box of random stuff from Gramma!" How very depressing.

No kid ever remembers their first birthday party anyways, right?

Wordless Wednesday: Siblings

In honor of yesterday's National Sibling's Day, here are some pictures of a couple of siblings that get along way better than I could have ever dreamed.

Eleven Months

Can it be? Only one month until my baby is no longer a baby? It's insane, really. Sometimes I sit at my desk at work, staring off into space and feeling like I just got back from my maternity leave. I mean how can Wren almost be one? She doesn't even sleep through the night with any kind of regularity yet. Unless you consider 4 am to be the end of night. Which I don't. But despite my near constant state of sleep deprivation, it's impossible not to see that she is well on her way to becoming quite the little person.

Physically, Wren is off the charts developmentally. Now an old pro at walking, she has moved on to running, dancing and climbing. Also problem solving. The other night she successfully dragged a package of toilet paper into my room and used it as a step to get up on my bed in pursuit of the cat. If she turns out to be even half as smart as Calder, Bruce and I are well and truly screwed. I wish I had the writing ability to capture what a hoot she is with her tiny personality. When she is in a good mood, she is just ON. Everyone gets hugs and kisses! Cats on TV are the best thing ever! Hey look there's a bird outside! Have you tasted this dirt, it's amazing! Look at me, I got pants on my head and a hockey medal around my neck!

Of course Wren has her off moments too. This recent cold (her first real one) has rocked her world and she's been a drippy, snotty miserable mess at all hours of the day and night. Lately it's all, "Oh Mama, I so sad what with this sad baby stuffy nose. Hold me some more and feed me. No wait, don't feed me because I can't breathe so how 'bout I just whimper into your chest, wiping snot all over your boobs and HOW DARE YOU TRY TO SUCK OUT MY BOOGERS, MOM. I WAS USING THOSE TO STICK MY HAIR DOWN TO MY EYELIDS SO I CAN CLAW AT MY FACE SOME MORE. RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGE. Oh, hi Daddy, did we wake you? 3 am you say? Huuuuuug." She will also get angry when Calder isn't playing nice, swiping her toys and knocking her down with his total lack of coordination and self awareness. Or if the cat refuses to submit to her love and hides under the bed. These displeasures are usually expressed with high pitched mini baby tantrums that sound like "EEEEEEEEEEEeeeeeeee...." They could go on a lot longer than I think they do but at that point only the dog can hear her so whatever.

If you really want to bring the Wrath of Wren down upon yourself, try not sharing whatever it is you're eating or drinking. It does not matter if she has her own food. It does not matter if her food is just smaller pieces of the same stuff you're eating. If you have food in front of you, you best be prepared to either share the spoils or to vigorously defend your position.

Likes: Eating, Molson and Chief, playing in the yard, bath time, pretending to wear everything as a scarf, hugging her real kitty and hugging her new stuffed kitty, stealing her brother's sippy cups, animals on TV, dancing, baby food in pouches.

Dislikes: People who don't share, being sick, getting her boogs wiped, drinking breast milk out of cups though water and juice is OK, stairs and waiting to be fed.

We're gonna have to watch this one.

Mastered Skills (most kids can do):

Says "mama" or "dada" to the correct parent - Yes! Finally! Bruce is Dadadada and I am Mamamamahh. But so is Molson? I think she is aiming for Momo, one of his many nicknames or perhaps meow-meow? Or she loves him more than me and wishes he was her Mommy because he is around more. All of these things are possible.
Plays patty-cake and peek-a-boo - Loooves peeek-a-boo. Wren will entertain herself for long stretches of time (in the baby sense) by playing with whatever is lying around. Sometimes she'll throw a cloth over her head and walk around like that and it's all fun and games until she smacks into the side of the couch. Then is just funny. Does not seem to "get" patty-cake.
Stands alone for a couple of seconds - Snerk
Cruises- Double Snerk

Emerging Skills (half of kids can do):

Understands "no" and simple instructions - Understands no exactly well enough to laugh and ignore me. She can follow simple directions like "Pet the kitty nice" or "Give Calder a hug." If you say "Thank you" she'll either spit out whatever contraband she's got in her mouth into your hand or give you the expensive piece of electronics she is currently trying to abscond with. Except when she fakes handing it to you and then runs away to stick your ipod in the dog water again while laughing maniacally.
Puts objects into a container - Sure why not.

Advanced Skills (a few kids can do):
Says one word besides "mama" or "dada" - It's possible. I think baba means bottle. Or it could be boobs? Or brother? Or ball?
Stoops from standing position - Whatever Babycenter, girl can practically moonwalk. OK, maybe not but she has developed the amusing habit of leading with her butt and walking backwards towards whatever it is she wants to sit on at the moment.

Happy Easter from the Easter Boxer!

Easter Flashback Linky!

Once again Suzanne and Amy have teamed up to host a holiday themed link up. Thankfully, a few years ago my mom scanned a few scrapbook pages of Easters past for me and so I have some truly awful adorable images of me and my family in our bowl cuttiest finery to share. I am just going to assume I have their permission to do this.

Clockwise from top left: 1982, 1984, 1982

Easter almost always meant frilly dresses and the occasional matching hat, church, and then being paraded up to my Grandparents' house for Easter dinner and an egg hunt. If I recall correctly the egg hunts were always run democratically, with each child only be allowed to collect a certain number of eggs to ensure fairness for the younger/slower/dumber ones. Unless of course the egg hiders got a little too creative and no one, not even the hiders themselves, could locate them. I distinctly remember one year, lists were instituted to make sure that all eggs could be found before nightfall.

Bowl cuts all around! 1986

This is probably the last year my older sister was taller than me and the last your my younger sister and brother could touch without trying to kill each other.

It's also quite possible that it was an Easter that I prevented my grandparents house from burning down by noticing the light switch plate appeared to be burning hot. I could also just be making that up.

Me and Keira and some egg-decorating fun. 1983

If you've ever seen me in real life then you'd probably know that I am the least frilly-dress wearing person ever.  When I was little it was cool but as I got older and more... me-ish, the yearly dress up became somewhat of a chore. A very funny-looking, awkwardly-fitting chore.

The late 80s, also known as my protracted awkward stage. Top: 1988, bottom: 1987

Easters around here aren't that big of a deal since Bruce and I are non-church goers these days. Yet I still feel the need to fill a basket for the kids and talk about the Easter Bunny and Jesus (in that order if I hope to keep Calder's attention) in an attempt to pretend that this all isn't some sort of legitimized candy grab. Every so often I feel bad about losing the meaning of the holiday and contemplate maybe joining a church. Thankfully that passes pretty quickly and I can get back to planning this year's backyard egg hunt. With strict collection limits and a comprehensive list of where each on is hidden, of course.

Now go look at everyone else's Easter fashion finest. They are ten times cuter and probably way less heathen-y.

Wordless Wednesday: Skokie Exploratorium

Zoo Day

As soon as I started feeling the tiniest bit better I insisted that we go out and do something with my mom. When she visited last spring we had literally just moved and didn't even have a couch yet much less time to stop unpacking and go have fun. Seeing as how Chicago's weather was being friggin' beeyooteeful, the best bet seemed to be going to the Lincoln Park Zoo which had the benefit of being in a part of Chicago she had never seen before. Oh and it's free.

Family portrait

We had a lot of fun at the zoo. Calder loves to look at all the animals and Wren seems to be of a similar bent although it was harder for her to see everything from the stroller. I would have worn her but being only one day post meds, I didn't have the energy to carry her all day. Especially not in the 80 degree weather.

Camel gazing

Dangling the baby over the lion enclosure. I plan on receiving my Mom of the Year plaque any minute now.

Since the zoo itself was free and my mom had offered to cover parking I felt the need to indulge myself and the family and we had a nice lunch at the central cafe. Calder begged for some yogurt drink in a brightly colored pouch thinking it was going to be something much more sugary and then promptly gave up on it after two or three slurps. Luckily Wren was on hand to take care of the rest because she is a tiny garbage disposal.

Wren made a new BFF at the zoo, yogurt in a pouch

Fish! Hey, fish!!! Acknowledge me, fish!

Calder declared the polar bear and the pygmy hippo to be his favorite animals and while she couldn't really tell us, I'm pretty sure Wren liked the Meerkats the best. She was very unhappy when we made her leave them.

I could have abandoned the baby at the Meerkats and she would not have complained one bit.

Showoff polar bear is show-offy

As soon as we had entered the zoo, Calder spied the Carousel and spent the whole rest of our time there asking to go for a ride. Due to it's location adjacent the exit, my mom and I decided it made an excellent bribe to coerce some listening out of the boy while we went around looking at everything else. Shockingly, the delayed gratification worked. Calder was pretty decently behaved considering we went to see the animals we wanted to see in the order we chose and put off lunch by a good two hours. So how'd he like his reward? As soon as the carousel started to move, Calder started crying. Like, "STOPTHISTHINGGETMEOFFHERERIGHTNOW" crying. The spinning around combined with the up and down terrified him despite the fact that my mom was right there next to him. Personally, from my vantage point on a bench next to a sleeping Wren, I found the angry faces combined with the dopplar "aaarrgGGHHHHhhhhaaaRRRRGGGhhhh-ing" to be hilarious. I guess that's a $2.75 we can keep in our pockets next time we visit the zoo. Either that or more yogurt for Wren

Too late to change your mind, kid.