Thursday, September 3, 2009

This Should Have Been Posted On Wednesday...

It was a banner day here at house of the long haul... The Boy actually made a poop in the potty. At school. The fact that he managed to poop in the potty at all is cause for celebration, but he even did it at school? Well, that just rules. And in addition to that his teachers told me today that from now on they are leaving him in his big boy pants during nap time because for the past week and a half his pull up has been dry when he has gotten up. So today he slept in his big boy pants and woke up dry. It was a good potty training day over here. But as I have learned, we have good days and then we have some not so good days. But today? Today was a keeper.

Also adding to my cherub-like demeanor today? It is Wednesday. And on Wednesdays The Boy goes to school, but The Girl stays home with me. It is literally the only time that I get alone with her. For an entire day. Every other time that I am with my daughter my son is around. Don't get me wrong, I adore my boy, but he is challenging right now. He is exhausting. And he takes a lot of effort. Plus, he's older so he knows how to say, "Mommy! I need you!...Mommy! Over here...Mommy! Come look at my spider..." And when that happens the cute little well-tempered baby gets set aside while I go and deal with her brother (positive reinforcement and attention and all of that...). You know the old saying about the squeaky wheel getting the grease? Let's just say that The Boy gets all the grease and The Girl gets the shaft a lot in this house. There is only one of me and two of them so usually the louder one wins.

But Wednesdays are all for my daughter. I get to spend the entire day with just her. It reminds me of when The Boy was little and he was just the center of my world. I spent hours and hours just holding him and talking to him and cooing at him and making faces at him... I would lay with him on the ground and try and entice him into rolling over; I would stand him on my legs and let him practice his balance; I would cuddle him up in my arms and rock him to sleep... I get to do all of this with The Girl on Wednesdays. Granted I am also working from home, but she does take a couple of decent naps so that allows me to bust out a bunch of work when she's sleeping. But I don't have to resort to the evil pump. I can breast feed her all day long. I can just focus on her and enjoy her and drink her in. I soak up that baby-ness because I know it ends all too soon. I love Wednesdays.

So I appear to be obsessing on the amount of food my daughter is getting from me. For some reason over the past few days I am convinced that my supply has gone to shit. I don't ever feel full anymore. Plus, when she eats she used to lay there peacefully and drink and milk used to dribble out of her mouth. Now she is chomping around and moving her body and checking things out all around her. And I never see milk. I am convinced it is because she isn't getting enough milk so she is literally trying to chew it out of me. Plus, I asked the people at her daycare how many ounces of milk she is drinking a day when with them. They told me around 15. FIFTEEN?!?!?!?! Are they serious? On a good day I only pump about 12 ounces while she is gone. Lately it has only been 8 or 10. And she is drinking 15? No way. That's insane. So now I am freaked out that I am going to have to supplement her. I know that's not the end of the world, but I was SO enjoying the whole breast feeding thing. I really want to exclusively breast feed her until a year. Now I am paranoid that I am not going to be able to make that happen.

I should note that when she is home with me I have never once had to give her a bottle of pumped milk as a supplement. She appears to get enough food with what she eats with me. Plus, she is sleeping at least 9 to 10 hours at night and she wouldn't be doing that if she were hungry, right? And in terms of milk for daycare, right now there are 120 frozen ounces of milk at my mom's house waiting to go to daycare. So even though she is drinking more than I am pumping right now, I probably shouldn't freak out until I am actually close to running out of milk, right? So why am I freaking out? I really don't know, but I sure wish I could chill. I guess I will see how things go, but man, I am spending WAY too much time worrying about this.

Finally, let's talk about baby hair. My daughter had a good amount of hair when she was born. Of course it has done that attractive thing that babies hair does and fallen out all around where she lays on it. So she has a very fancy mohawk all along the top. And she has some long hair on the sides and back underneath where she lays. Then there is the hair that is growing in underneath all the newborn hair that is cute and fuzzy but WAY shorter than all the craziness elsewhere on her head. What's a girl to do? If you remember WAY back when I was talking about the possibility of having a daughter, doing her hair properly was one of the things I was having anxiety about. I don't know how to do hair. I can blow dry my own hair and run a flat iron through it only because my gay hair dresser taught me how to. But pig tails, or braids or anything else? Not so much. I realize that she is not anywhere near the point of pig tails or braids, but if I can't even handle the standards, how am I supposed to come up with something to do with this in-between hair style? So I present to you what I have come up with. I put all the crap on top up in a little clip-like thing that makes a little pompadour on top of her head. I don't know about you all, but I think she looks cute. Any suggestions would be wonderful.
This next picture is to remind myself that (hopefully) I am not starving my daughter. I mean look at her. Check out the rolls on this child. She can't be starving, right? Although I am only convinced that I have started to starve her over the last few days so it wouldn't be showing yet... But I need to relax, right? She looks hearty, doesn't she?

3 comments:

After Hours said...

She ain't starvin'. She looks real good...plump and juicy...just like she's supposed to be:)

cmay said...

Your boobs are doing a GREAT job. Look at all those rolls on her. I just want to eat her up!
Short term reassurance...is she peeing enough? If so, then you know she is getting plenty of breast milk. Add to that her loooong sleeping hours and you can rest quite assured.

AuntFancy said...

Hooray for The Boy! And I'm partial to the Girl's curly mohawk. It reminds me of a wave in the ocean. Either way, she's damn cute, and I don't think she's starving!