Hitting a Wall

I am definitely hitting a wall. I am really having trouble staying the course with nursing Callie. I am just so over it. I am so over being pulled on, bit, scratched and everything in between. She practically pulls my shirt off when she is hungry, and that is just sooo nice in public.
Every now and then I glance at my body in the mirror and I sink just a little. I am covered with blood blisters from being pinched and grabbed. There are scratches all over my neck and face. My stretch marks haven't faded much and I just have an overwhelming feeling of wanting my body back. Its been 18 months since my body was really my own.
I know that breastfeeding is the best gift I can give Callie, but sometimes it just plain sucks. Everytime I go into buy buy baby or the grocery store I think about buying formula, but I never do. Guilt guilt guilt. I just can't win! Either I am totally exhausted by being a 24 hour buffet or I'm a lazy mom. Ugh. I know there are plenty of happy, healthy formula fed babies, Christ, both Bill and I were formula fed. But something just won't let me. I know it doesn't help that all she wants to do is nurse these days. I think we have a tooth coming. Which of course makes the nighttime rituals a little tougher as well.
In some ways, breastfeeding is very inhibitive. Bill is going to be going on a long weekend bachelor party (that is SOOO another blog post in itself!) in a couple of months and when he first brought it up, I thought to myself "When do I get to go away for a long weekend or even a night out with the girls or by myself? Then I immediately thought of what a giant pain in the ass it would be to pump enough milk to cover that kind of time. And went, oh forget it." In fact, the thought process went so fast, I didn't even verbalize any of it!
Just needed a rant...Maybe I will start pumping more and have Daddio feed her more. Cuz Mama is tired of being a piece of meat.
Mamas, how do you keep the faith?

No Regrets

This past weekend a good friend passed away very suddenly of a heart attack. Though I have yet to come to grips with it (not sure when that will happen...his memorial perhaps) this much I have come to realize. Don't put things off because the timing isn't perfect. Because you just never know what the future holds. So if you want to travel, do it. If you want to climb a ridiculously tall mountain, do it. If you want a family, do it. If you want to get married, do it. No regrets. That's the plan.
So it got me thinking, what do I still want to do? And its a tough question, because I've done a lot. I love to travel so I've done a lot of it the last few years.
I've been to Italy, France, Spain, Ireland, England and Scotland. I have a gorgeous daughter, who I've been gripping just a little bit tighter the last few days. Gives me comfort somehow. I've had a wonderful job as a teacher at an incredible school.
So what else do I want to do?
Most of the things I want to do involve travel, because I love it so much! It is so amazing to go to new places, meet new people, hear new languages, try new food.
I want to go to Lucca to see where my family came from and I want to take my daughter to show her. I want to go to Brazil. I want to kayak. I want to go to Thailand. I want to go to Australia and/or New Zealand. I want to go to Greece. I want to try my hand at bobsledding in the Alps. I want to ride in a hot air balloon over the Red Rocks in Arizona. I want to tell Callie about her Great Uncle Bill and take her on lots of carousel rides. I want to go to Egypt to see the pyramids. I want to go back to The Alhambra. It was one of my favorite stops on our honeymoon. I want to go to New Orleans.
I want to be a good mom. I want to be a patient mom. I want to be a good friend, daughter, wife, niece, etc. I want to read as many books as I can, especially classics that I have somehow missed. There are so many things. Maybe I won't do all of them, but I am sure going to try.

Verrry Belated Christmas Post

This is obviously very late! But it was a great christmas with the girl. I was afraid that the passing of Grandma Bunt was going to kind of sap the whole christmas spirit but I think it was actually the opposite. It was a reminder of how lucky we all are to be together. Although that is not to say that our first christmas was stress-free. It was definitely tough getting presents together and wrapped. I certainly couldn't do the whole canning thing, like I usually do. So I had to do most of my shopping online after Callie would go to sleep at night. All in all, I think the gifts went over well. I was able to sew a couple of blankets for Callie's new cousins Eva and Nyah as well as a sock monkey blanket for Grandma Tere. I tried to make each gift thoughtful and personalized. Thank god for etsy!

Christmas Eve

We did Christmas Eve with my family and it was lovely. We ordered tamales and I made bread pudding. Presents were totally hilarious! Callie is in love with bows and of course tissue paper.

No more kisses, mom!



Apparently, tissue paper looks much better than it tastes!
Weeeeee!
Christmas Day
We spent Christmas Day with Bill's family. It was the first Christmas with all three babies! Bill's cousin, Layna had twins a month (to the day!) after Callie was born. It was a total blast! They were into everything!


Hangin with the Grand Dude


More bows?! Hooray!

Great Grandpa and the girls





That's my girl! None of that Bushmills crap!

Uncle Danny takes the wagon for a spin

And so it begins...the binky war of 2010!



Related? Mmhmm. I think so.

Callie at 8 Months

Haven't done one of these in a while!
Callie is all about moving! She is crawling pretty well. When she first started she was doing a funky hybrid crawl/slide kind of thing, but she has it down now! And she is getting fast! She even crawls in the bathtub, so we keep the water level pretty low.
She is totally obsessed with the dog's water bowl for some reason. When she gets hold of it and tips it over she gets all upset because she gets wet! Its pretty funny.
She is also getting really good at pulling herself up to standing. Sometimes she can even balance without any help. She is also using the furniture to cruise around. She loves going after power cords, which is a little troubling!
She loves dismantling her play mat and waving the pieces around.
She waves at everyone and as a result, makes friends EVERYWHERE we go!
She is all over the solid food. We are up to 2 meals of 1/2 a cup each per day. We do cereal with applesauce in the morning and some kind of vegetable (eggplant or yams or carrots, lately) for dinner. She gets so excited when she sees her spoons!
She is also still currently obsessed with ripping magazines ( especially Time Magazine) into little shreds.

Sleep Log I

Sleep continues to be a struggle around here. So I'm going to start logging her sleep adventures, because that is what it is like around here, a wild crazy adventure! We never know what the night is going to hold. Luckily we use an iphone app called Total Baby that keeps a running list of sleep, feedings, diaper changes, etc.

Wednesday January 5th
Went to sleep at 9:45 and woke up at 2am.
4 hours

Thursday January 6th
Went to sleep at 10 and woke up around 6am. 2 hours later she took a 1 hour nap.
8 hours

Friday January 7th
Naps
7-9am, 11:30-12:30pm, 3-4pm
Went to sleep at 9:40 and slept until 8am! Of course wasn't in much of a mood for a morning nap after such a long sleep!
10 hours

Saturday January 8th
Went to sleep at 11:30 and slept until 5:30am.
6 hours

Sunday January 9th
Naps
6-8am, 8:30-11am

Went to sleep (way too late!) at 11:23 but she didn't wake up during the night. She slept until 7:30am.
8 hours


Monday January 10th
Naps
7:30-9:30am , 12-12:25pm, 4-6pm

Put her down at 10pm woke up at 2am verrry wet. Changed her diaper and put her back down.
Slept again from 2:20am to 7am or so. Thinking about maybe chucking the cloth diapers at night and looking into night time (more absorbent) disposable diapers. Not wild about the idea, but might help. She was soaked and so cold!
4 hours, 5 hours


Our goal has been putting her down between 9 and 10pm and sometimes it takes and sometimes it doesn't. We are keeping the same routine: solid food around 7, bath at 8, pajamas, storytime, nursing and bed. Sometimes she falls asleep while nursing.
I am also going to try to keep better track of her naps throughout the day and see if that is the problem. Stay tuned! And let me know if any of you have any ideas!

Making Decisions

So I've been going round and round trying to figure out what to do about next year. I've been searching for day cares that offer half/partial day rates, low teacher to child ratios, and letting us send our choice of food with her. I was hoping to find a montessori day care/preschool that Callie could stay at all the way until going to kindergarten but it became clear that just wasn't really going to happen. I found one place I liked in Almaden. It had reasonable rates and it seemed just about perfect. Then I got their food list (and they don't allow you to send your own food). Here is their list: fish sticks, chicken nuggets, pizza, mac and cheese, quesadillas. Ugh. So I thought, why am I busting my butt to give Callie healthy, unprocessed food only to have it undone once she turns 18 months?
I thought about it for a few days. I had a plan in my mind that went like this "If Bill drops her off after 8:30 she can't have breakfast there and if I pick her up before noon she can't eat lunch there." The longer I thought these thoughts, it just seemed stupid. So I decided it was a deal breaker.
I went back to another Montessori school. It was MUCH more expensive, almost $1400 a month for partial day. They let me just take Callie into the infant room and just hang out. It was awesome! The teacher's name is Esperanza and she was fabulous. She has been working there for 15 years and just loves babies. I had all of my questions answered, but I sat there watching Callie play with toys and other kids and I thought to myself: "What am I doing?" " Do I really need to put her here?" I was of two minds: I don't want to leave her here for too long, yet I would want to get my money's worth. And well, that just seems dumb. I thought to myself, "I should only put her here if we really HAVE to."
So I thought I would talk to my principal at school to find out my options. I said "I want to talk to you about next year." And she knew immediately. She said " Are you thinking about taking another year?" And I heard myself say "Ya, I think so." April has always been incredibly supportive of me and I consider her to be a treasured friend. She told me that I could extend my leave a year if I wanted to. I started thinking and saying "Would I wake up 5 years from now wishing I had gone back to work earlier? Hmm. Probably not. Don't get me wrong I love my job, but would I wake up in 5 years and wish I had taken another year with my daughter? Hmmm. Probably yes."
Bill and I talked about the feasability of it in terms of financials. And sometimes, decisions seem to make themselves. Someone once told me "advice is what you ask for when you already know the answer." And I think I do. I don't want to look back and regret how fast Callie grew up and I was stressing out about parent emails and student essays rather than enjoying her first steps and first words. We are so incredibly lucky that this is even an option for us, especially in this valley! I am watching Callie crawl around on the floor and turn around and flash me the most beautiful smile I have ever seen in my life. Those are the moments I will have forever. And that I will never regret. I have the rest of my life to grade essays, help students and make money, but this will only happen once. I'm sure I will have days when I think "Oh good lord. Get me out of here and let me go to work!" But I am hopeful that those days won't outnumber the ones where I look at Callie and laugh. Like right this second, Callie is standing up against the ottoman and smacking it with her hand and squealing with delight. And so am I.

Reprogramming

We are once again in a sleep wasteland. We have been trying to get Callie to go to sleep earlier, in preparation for when I go back to work (if that does indeed come to fruition). As it is, she has been going to bed around 11pm. She usually sleeps 8 hours straight, but lately its been erratic. 6 hours one night, 7 hours another. So I figured it was time to try to move her bedtime back, since I knew I couldn't be going to bed at 11 during the school year and get up at 5 and still function in any kind of meaningful way.
I read through Healthy Sleep Habits Happy Child was fairly unimpressed. If you are interested in the science of sleep than the book is for you, if you are looking for an easy to implement system, its best you look elsewhere, in my opinion.
The first night she took a late nap, around 7 for a whopping 20 minutes. Like I've mentioned before, homegirl does not like to nap! Then we had some solid food, gave her a bath, read a couple of stories and off to bed. It took about an hour for her to go to sleep. Her screaming was excruciating. It was just like when we did sleep training the first time. Same drill. Let her cry for 15 minutes or so, go in a settle her down and repeat. Once she finally went to sleep she slept for 10 1/2 hours! Finally she was approaching the amount of sleep she was supposed to be getting. I thought "Ok! We got this!"
Last night we tried to do the same but she only slept 8 hours and is a mess today.
We will keep trying but it always feels like we are doing this part "wrong." I know she needs 10-12 hours of sleep at night and she just isn't getting it at night. It would be a different story if she would nap during the day, but she just doesn't.