You are currently browsing the monthly archive for October, 2008.
Happy Halloween!
Today our little pumpkin became a little sheep:
Sometimes sheep escape mid-picture:
This sheep LOVED the attention he got for being a sheep-for-a-day!
Happy Halloween from our family (drooling livestock included) to yours!
The other day we got Justin some stacking cups/barrels. Tonight I dumped them haphazardly in his lap for him to play with and went back to reading my book. 5 minutes later, this is what I found:
Now, it may just look like a bunch of cups at first glance, but take a closer look: he sorted them by color. Sorted them. Seriously. He’s 7 freakin’ months old!
Now before you get all, “All parents think their kid is brilliant”, consider this: after Matt took this picture, I shuffled up the cups again and Justin promptly grabbed one green cup in one hand and immediately sought the other green cup with the other. Maybe I missed something in my child development classes, but I thought this behavior pretty unusual for this age… what are the odds?!
After work today, we finally made it to the pumpkin patch! Yay!! We (as might be obvious from the above picture) went to Stoney Ridge Farm in Everson. We had a great time seeing animals of many sorts including ducks, geese, turkeys, chickens, peacocks, and an adorable miniature horse:
No, Justin isn’t kicking the horse, the horse is actually sniffing Justin and checking him out. Justin loved it! He liked the birds when they’d run – mostly, I think, because birds look ridiculous when they run. 
Next we moved on to pumpkins! There were pumpkins everywhere – we didn’t really even need to go to the actual pumpkin patch where they’re grown to find loads of them. Needless to say, Justin loved the over-sized, orange gourds, and a veritable cornucopia of pictures of Justin with his new “friends” was required:
Of course, after a while, silliness ensued:
Not a very intimidating scarecrow, but at least he has adorable going for him!
And before we left, we HAD to get a family picture (thanks anonymous guy!):
Our sweet baby is turning into a little boy! Now 7 months old, he’s very tall (most of his clothes are 12-18 months size), and VERY active. He started crawling a few weeks ago and never looked back. I can’t move about the house without having to watch out that I don’t step on him since he’s constantly under-foot or between my ankles. Let me tell you, this makes going to the bathroom REALLY interesting… Now he’s wanting to stand and pull himself up on EVERYTHING. Also, he’s developing a very funny sense of humor, and loves his daily walks with Daddy. Since he’s started flirting with the camera too, I think we’ll do our monthly birthday blog in pictures:
Peek-a-boo!
Hello everyone! It has been quite the exciting week: with the working long hours, the errands that kept us from getting to visit Stoney Ridge Farm last Saturday (instead we’re planning to go this Saturday), and the joyous welcoming of my new “friend” mastitis.
Yup. Mastitis. I’ve been breastfeeding for 7 months now, and I’ve had just about every other infection/issue one can have (yeast, a nipple-bacterial infection which actually smelled, milk blisters, major latch issues, nipple shield drama, blocked ducts that made it both look and feel like I had a golf ball lodged in my breast, etc). Alas, joy of joys, I finally got mastitis. For the last week or so I’ve been feeling really run down, exhausted, and vaguely nauseous on and off – even taking a day off from work last week to get some rest. I didn’t notice breast symptoms until Saturday, when I was really nauseous, had an awful headache, and my chest was getting really red and puffy. It took until Monday morning for me to figure out what it was. My Monday evening, I was so sick, very sore, very very red, and I was beginning to feel the swelling move up into my armpit. As a result, I was advised to head to the ER to get checked out. I was discharged around midnight with some really attractive marker lines on my breast (if the redness moved outside the line despite the antibiotics, I was to come straight back to the ER), a prescription for an antibiotic, and an order for bedrest (which I promptly disobeyed by attempting to go to work Tuesday morning). My suspicion is that I became susceptible to mastitis by not getting enough sleep, being stressed by being very busy at work, and Justin’s teething causing little cuts in my nipples as he learned to adjust his latch to compensate for his new little teeth.
Good times, my friends, good times. I made about 2.5 hours of work before one of my nurse friends turned me in to the boss for being at work sick. I was basically told to go home, which I did, and promptly slept for a good while. The upside is that I already feel much better. The redness and swelling have decreased dramatically.
Despite the tears, frustration, and complications, I’m so incredibly grateful for the ability to breastfeed my son. It has most definitely not been an easy road. During some of the complications I mentioned above, there were times I resented my son’s need to eat, was painfully jealous of women who seemed to be able to nurse with no problems, and just plain thought I couldn’t do it. Thankfully, I have had the wonderful support of my husband, my parents, and my friends. After making it through that rough patch which peaked when Justin was about 8 weeks old, I realized that if I could keep breastfeeding through all that, I could do it for as long as we wanted. To be honest, as bad as the mastitis has been, it’s still nothing to that bad latch on cracked, peeled, infected, and often bleeding nipples even with a nipple shield. Since then, I’ve had to pump’n’serve for 3 weeks, then wean Justin back to the breast (via nipple shield), and then finally get him weaned off the nipple shield. I’m proud of myself, and I really enjoy breastfeeding now and wouldn’t trade it for anything. It makes me sad when I read sections of parenting books about weaning – I just think, “why? why would I want to wean my baby off of the best nutrition available? why would I want to cut off my ability to immediately soothe him when he bumps his head?” I don’t have to worry about packing anything other than diapers, wipes, and a spare outfit in the diaper bag – we can just go and not have to worry about how long we’ll be out. Emotionally, though, I think I’d be heartbroken to have to wean Justin early, and I can’t describe how grateful to God I am that I’m still able to nurse and make sure that Justin has milk when he’s home with Daddy.
As it stands, I’m planning to breastfeed until Justin is about 18 months old. I’m thinking that by about 12 months, I’ll move to mostly just nursing him at night before bed, and comfort nursing him when he gets owies. This isn’t final, but it’s what I’m thinking about for now. What do you think?
This past weekend, we packed up the minivan and headed for Seattle to visit our respective families. A plain ol’ regular boring trip you say? No, no. Not with a crawling, babbling, drooling, interested-in-his-auntie’s-cat baby boy!
Our first stop after dropping our things off at my parents’ house in Edmonds was to visit Matt’s mom, Rosalie in Kent. She took us to lunch at Red Robin (taking Justin to a restaurant is always an interesting experience) and it went really well. We enjoyed our time with Rosalie, and Justin spent pretty much the whole time sitting in the restaurant high chair banging his selection of toys on the table and squawking and squealing every time anyone looked at him. Though he also enjoyed little bites of momma’s hamburger bun.
After that, being in Kent/Seatac and all, we stopped by Babies r Us and used the last of our gift card to purchase “Lightning” (this is Matt’s name for Justin’s new lightweight, and very red, stroller). Oot! Oot! It’s awesome! It was time since Justin’s regular stroller was his old car seat on one of those stroller frames – awesome for when he was itty-bitty, but he’s just about grown out of the seat (it’s for up to 30lbs and 30 inches long – quite fortunately, he’s only 20lbs, but he’s at least 28 inches tall already), plus, Matt takes Justin for at least one if not two walks each day that I’m at work – the new stroller is a lot less cumbersome for those frequent trips.
We then returned home to my folks’ place for some r&r. 
The grown ups played some Scrabble, and Justin found his own toy upon spending a few minutes mastering the art of crawling on a very hard, slippery floor:
As I’m sure you can tell, Justin is much more excited about this relationship than George the cat is. It was a mere matter of seconds before George’s food was scattered across the floor and we were frantically picking it up before Justin attempted to eat it.
After a long night of trying to get Justin to sleep in an unfamiliar place we decided to skip Church and stay home and get a little rest. While out and about in Seattle on Saturday, we picked up some Noah’s Pumpkin Bagels. Yummm. I wait all year for those! We even gave a bit to Justin to gnaw on:
It took about 15 minutes for Justin to whittle down (with his whopping two teeth) his piece of bagel to gloppy bagel puree, but he enjoyed every gum-my bite.
Then it was off to University Village. Matt and I wanted to see the places we both worked while we lived in Seattle, and see how things had changed. Almost as importantly, we wanted to introduce Justin to the bronze cows there. Oh! And there was no question he loved them – especially considering the slightly unexpected kisses.
And yes, every time Justin leaned in to give the cows “kisses”, momma went “ack!” - a face that Justin finds hilarious and therefore not much of a deterrent. In the end, we had a great time buzzing around with Chrystal, Mady, Jacey, Poppa, and the Incredible-Shrinking-Nanna.
Oh, in other news, you may have noticed that Justin’s hair is filling in on the sides – straight out. Last week I started calling him my little marmoset as a result, can you see the resemblence?
Such a funny little boy!
Next on the agenda: Pumpkin Patching!
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