December rain forest

We had an unexpectedly lovely time today.  Instead of hanging around the house in our pajamas until we turned on each other from boredom, we were dressed and out of the house by 10:35.  Unfortunately we only got as far as the Starbucks drive thru line before the kids started screaming that they were hungry. Instead of stuffing them full of chocolate milk and pastries, we got out of line and drove across the street to Jack's favorite restaurant in the world Panera.  Cooper slept the whole time, and Harry and Jack were reasonbly well behaved.  Coop woke up at the end of the meal, but he agreeably allowed himself to be loaded into the car, and we drove a cheery, XM-radio-Christmas-station-filled 20 minutes to the Holiday Express model train exhibit at the local botanical gardens.

We had heard good things about this exhibit, but we've never been.  I was surprised that it was just a tiny little room filled with bird houses, train tracks, and poinsettias with 2 model trains zooming around.  The boys, though, were thrilled and happily stood at the fence screaming joyously at the trains for half an hour.  Whatev.  Kids are weird.
 


 After the kids had their fill of yelling"Where's the train? Here comes the train!  Woot!" we wandered through the conservatory.  I have GOT to remember to go to that place this winter when I am sick of being so damn cold.  Our camera fogged up-- that's how deliciously muggy it was.

 The lady in the red shirt was a tour guide, and she helped us find a couple items on our scavenger hunt list-- the cacao tree which Harry knew all about.  She asked him how he knew so much, and he said, "Well, you know, I HAVE seen Dora."  Jack, by the way, was way disappointed in the chicle tree. It does not, in fact, look like a gumball.

3 Months!

Coop-a-doop is 3 months old today, and we took him to urgent care after a particularly fussy afternoon just to see if maybe he has an ear infection.  He does not.  He has also gained exactly a pound in the last month, weighing in at 13 and a half pounds.

The 4th trimester is over, meaning I should be thin and Coop should be starting to take reliable naps.  Neither of us got that memo, apparently. 

Cooper is still the most wonderful baby in the world, and I would tell you why, but it is 9:15 and I am going to bed as soon as I bag today's milk and wash my pump.   Coop has added a 1:30 feeding, and I miss the days when he slept until 4.  Sigh.  We moved him out of his Rock n Play and into his crib and with this move came another night feeding.  Blurgh.

Thanks

I have been drinking so much damn water that I got up to pee every 2 hours last night.  Now, though, we just have run-of-the-mill fussiness before bedtime and evening cluster feeding.  I had been trying to establish some more consistency with a nap routine, and it was working out well, but he was only sleeping for like 40 minutes at a time in his crib, and he was just too fussy to handle any sort of milk delay.  Yesterday and today, I wore him or Ben held him for all of his naps, and he was just generally more tolerant.

I think, as some of you mentioned, that at 3 months, my supply has regulated, and my breasts don't always feel full even though there is lots of milk.  I am definitely not used to that because I have been squirting all over the place for the past 90 days, but everything seems to be fine, I think. So, phew.

I got a hair cut today for the first time since mid august, and OMG, I look so much better.  I always want long hair, but when I get to the just-past-my-shoulders stage, I give up and cut it off.  I didn't want to do that this time, but I was carrying at least 5 inches of dead ends, and it was dragging my face down, you know?  The problem, though, is that I was also growing out a massive wall of bangs-- they were straight across and about as long as the tip of my nose, and they started at the middle of my damn head.  My stylist was like, "Okay, listen.  The only way for me to fix these right now is to make them side swept bangs, but they probably won't look great until next time you get your hair cut."  I am glad she was honest with me because they are not my favorite bangs.  She did, though, do a really nice job of taking most of the weight out of them, so they should look okay when I do my own hair-- always a bummer after a blowout. 

I also got this today:

The Nose Frida.  It's a snot sucker.  You put the red end in your mouth and rest the large blue tube against your baby's nostril and suck out all the snot.  DISGUSTING, right?  There's a filter thank God so the snot doesn't actually go in your mouth.  But still.  Way more effective than saline drops and also way more horrifying.  I love Cooper so much I'll literally suck the boogers right out of his nose.  Wow.

Halp!

Okay, her'es the deal:  something's rotten in the state of breastfeeding.  It's 11:49 am, and I have Cooper strapped to me in the Ergo FINALLY asleep.  I am dreading 1 hour and 11 minutes from now when he'll need to eat again because that is when the screaming will start.

My milk is not letting down.  At all.  Okay, a little bit, but only after about 10 minutes of sucking.  Understandably, Cooper does not have the patience to suck this long without freaking out.  Once it lets down, he only eats for 3 or 4 minutes and when we try the other side, the screaming begins again.

The only totally easy feedings we have are the one in the middle of the night and the first one of the morning (although he screamed through that one this morning, now that I think about it.  Hmm, maybe we only have 1 easy feeding).

I have been googling organic formula in BPA-free cans all morning.

Mid-hunt for the nonexistent let down, I have been trying to feed him pumped milk to take the edge off, but he won't freaking eat anything out of a freaking bottle no matter what temperature it is. 

He is peeing and pooping like normal and still sleeping 8 hours at night.  WTF is going on, and WTF can I do about it?  I have googled slow let down and am trying to implement some suggestions from kelly mom, but THIS SUCKS.  Advice?

Odds, ends

Sometimes I am pretty sure that I gave birth to puppies.

Or maybe monkeys.

And the new one?  Look at him staring at the big boys:

I gave up trying to maintain any sort of order and decided to eat the baby instead

He's delicious.

Cooper and I had a nurse-in today compete with some pretty gross Mother's Milk tea from Whole Foods (which?  was out of all of my favorite salsas, so I got taco dip instead, which was heavenly but is not a good sub for salsa from a nutrition standpoint, you know?).  We still had 2 times when it seemed like he wanted more milk than I I had available (at noon and at 4:30), but a better day for sure.

I am going to have to be more diligent about wearing him during the day because he sleeps so well he's getting a bit of a flat spot on the back of his head.  He's like baby Harry and only wants to sleep perfectly flat-- I have started sneaking in to move his head before I go to sleep.

Our nurse-a-palooza made me nostalgic for the newborn days when I logged so many couch hours I actually bot bored of daytime TV.  Ah, memories.

Chrismukkah-tastic

We knocked holiday cheer OUT OF THE PARK on Saturday with a family photo shoot for our Christmas cards, a trip to see Santa at the mall, and a stop by the tree farm for not one but 2 trees.  Phew!

Cooper was underwhelmed

No baby carriers allowed in the breakable shop, so we waited while Ben bought the trees, a stand, and some ironicaly unbreakable ornaments

Cooper was wearing the most ridiculous elf outfit-- this picture does not do it justice

I think if we built this house in the winter, we'd have a fireplace with a mantle to hang our stockings.  Because we built the house in the summer, Ben had to move a couple pictures to make room for these.

The upstairs tree-- all of the breakable ornaments are on this one.

Downstairs tree, home of all of our plastic, wood, and handmade ornaments.  Also, damn there's a lot of blinds in this corner.

 I am fairly annoyed because there are no pictures of me at all from yesterday (except our family pictures of course), and I had on a cute shirt that hid my fat donut and cute hair.  I was too preoccupied to pose because we experienced our first breastfeeding hurdle yesterday, and I did not handle it well at all.  Long story short:  I chewed a shitload of spearmint gum (like 10 packs in the last 3 days), and it screwed up my milk supply BIG TIME.  I didn't realize that would happen until yesterday when Cooper was screaming at the breast after trying and trying and trying to get a let down.  I fuh-reaked out especially because he hates drinking bottles.  He managed to choke down enough pumped milk here and there to take the edge off his hunger so he could stand to put the effort into nursing longer.  He had tons of wet and dirty diapers and 8 nursing sessions, so it wasn't the crisis I made it out to be, but it still freaked me out.  Without knowing that spearmint was bad, Ben and I started talking about things I added to my decaf-coffee and graham crackers diet, and we wondered if the gum was making my milk taste funny, so I had already stopped chewing it by the time I turned to the Google today to see what the hell was going on.  For a few (terrifying) minutes, I wondered if I might be pregnant, but then I read about herbs that affect milk.  Cooper was also really fussy at the breast in the days after we made our Thanksgiving a home, and I thought maybe the awesome cranberry-oatmeal-walnut cookies I made from HyVee cookie dough were to blame because nuts can bother babies.  But then I read that sage can screw with milk supply, and I had bought a whole bunch of fresh sage and rubbed it on the entire freaking meal.  Ooops.  So, in conclusion, I am going to grab some Mother's Milk Tea tomorrow after a breakfast of oatmeal, and tonight, I am devoting my evening to drinking dark beer because I am a giver.  I *think* the gum was the culprit, although tonight, 24 hours after I stopped chewing it, I still have a really slow let down.  This is the first time in almost 3 months that I have had to think twice about breastfeeding.  Coop gained weight in the hospital, and we never looked back.  Ah, Cooper.  He is a baby who is so awesome he makes you want to have more babies.  I am going to feel really bad if my obsessive gum habit keeps him from his beloved milk.

MOTY

I am trying to pinpoint the moment when my night turned to total shit.  At first I thought it was when the conference call I listened to on my headphones with my phone on mute to drown out the increasingly fussy baby strapped to my chest went right up to the exact second when I needed to start Jack's bath.  Then I thought things probably went south before that-- right after our extremely half assed dinner of mini-pizzas from Whole Foods served with carrots and bleu cheese dressing when I tried to feed Cooper in advance of my call and he did that thing he does at night sometimes when he's getting fussy, that thing where he refuses to eat but acts like he really wants to and screams a little.  Or maybe it was when I wrapped my Moby kind of precariously but shoved Cooper in it anyway. Or it could have been when I retrieved new California Baby wash and shampoo from the upstairs bathroom because Harry poured all of the downstairs supply out yesterday making potions and  was about to go wash Jack, who had been playing happily in the tub while Harry and I cleaned up a day's worth of toys from the family room and playroom with Cooper slumping to the left and fussing in earnest, and Harry chose that exact moment to declare that he had to poop and only wanted to do it in the downstairs bathroom and I decided I could not bear to be inches away from Harry on the toilet while leaning over the side of the tub balancing my crying baby and washing my preschooler, so I vacuumed while he took care of business.  It was around that time that Cooper began screaming, not fussing, and I decided that I had to make that noise go away from my face (remember he was strapped to my chest the whole time) as quickly as possible and desperately recalculated our bedtime routine.  I decided to get Jack out quick and put him to bed.  Then I would feed Cooper, swaddle and pacify him.  Only then could I give Harry a bath and read his new library book.  This is not, you understand, how it usually works.  Usually,I put Cooper to bed while Ben bathes Jack, reads to him while Harry is in the tub, and then reads to Harry.  Usually, I have what you might call a sweet deal.  Ben has had class the last two night, though, so I have been solo.  Last night, we had an impromptu playdate after school that tired out the big kids, and Cooper took a freakishly wonderful nap from 4:36-6:03, so he kept his baby shit together for once during the witching hour.  When I am on my own, I stick to the same basic format: Jack bath and bed, Harry bath and bed, Cooper bed (he's the one we don't wash, remember?).  Sometimes, I do Harry's bath then let him watch TV while I put Cooper to bed and put Harry to bed last, but tonight, asking Harry to wait until after Cooper and Jack went to sleep to even take his bath messed with his sense of order. He started whining and flapping, and I told him not very nicely to knock it off because the last thing I needed was another kid with noise coming out of his cryhole.  Harry said, "When you yell at me it makes me feel like a bad kid."  (The school social worker has been giving Harry's class some very effective talks about assertiveness).  I paused for a second and said, "You're a good kid."  Then I snapped back to the hellish situation at hand and added, "But you are going upstairs in two minutes.  Two minutes that I used to wash Jack, help him out of the tub with one hand because I needed the other to hold the baby in the Moby because it was becoming looser and looser and riding up my back, knock the brand new CA Baby into the water, ask Jack to climb back in and grab it for me, assist him back out of the tub even more awkwardly, grab his arm as he plunged to the ground in a slimy puddle, realize he still had shampoo in his hair and dump cooling bath water all the hell over all 3 of us trying to rinse it out (Cooper LOVED that part, let me tell you).  Instead of snuggling on the guest room bed, looking at old picture albums and reading the book of Jack's choosing as is his custom, I stood next to his bed and read him Dora's Christmas, the first book I found in the basket on his dresser, over Cooper's increasingly shrill screams, and I skipped most of the words, going instead for shouted descriptions of the pictures and the occasional hola!  Cooper ugly cried the whole time I changed his diaper and crammed him in his jammies (and I noticed that one of his thighs was all read, and I think his jeans were bunched up in the wrap poor little guy), then he ate both sides and sucked on his pacifier, staring at me with red, accusing eyes.  I left him in his crib drowsy but awake, and he went to sleep by the time Harry was out of the tub.  Thank goodness.  I noticed when I was dressing Jack that he had a rash on his elbows and felt really dry, so I sneaked in after he was asleep and put lotion on his arms.  I just checked on him a few minutes ago, and the lotion appears to have given him hives.  Gah.