I got an, "oh, cool!" For lunch today.
Simply worked with the items on hand. Sometimes it's all in stripey rows, or an alien face, when I make it just a little bit fun more "happy plates" there are when lunch is over.
Go milk yourself! Possibly an insult to anyone other than a lactating female—there is a great relief associated with emptying an engorged breast. Baby E has finally gotten a handle on the firehose-like nature of my let-down reflex. Though, rather than bigger gulps as her sister did, she pops off my breast to take a break which has led to many a milk shower for her and anyone nearby.
I feel more secure with a freezer full of breastmilk, and I tend toward a compulsion of replacing bags thawed for bottle feeding. There's a certain udder pride with production of a full bottle (or more) of milk. It pains me to waste my milk. I winced when I had to pour "expired" breastmilk down the drain t'other day. Once, when F was ~10 months, I almost started sobbing in the airport as a gentleman told me I couldn't take the milk I'd pumped all weekend onto the plane. I was saved the tearful scene, as a Papa himself he understood and found a way to make it work, I reached home with milk in hand. Making milk is hard work! It is indeed a superpower of sorts. All the energy into making milk that sustains and nourishes a new person, it's amazing. Magically the babyweight disappears and I begin to feel more and more like myself.
This baby girl burps herself. The First Born took some effort to burp, but this new one—if I let her rest a bit before sitting her upright—she'll burp upon reaching a vertical position. She's really more of a belcher, I could hardly call these gaseous pops the typical baby burps. On one occasion she was beside herself with discomfort, I took initiative to frustrate her more with a burping mid-nursing session, she cried-urped-cried-urped until all the gas was gone, then finished her meal with much more comfort. There have been multiple incidents of blubbery flutter-blasts of the breast (a.k.a. rasberries or zerburts) as she has burped while nursing. Both girls have been noisey nursers, imagine the gobbling panting gulping eating noises interspersed with "BLAUT-TWAUT-twuttwuttytwut"—but not the other end as a mama might expect! To which I giggle and she re-latches and keeps right on going.
The Epic of Gilgamilk seems a bit obscure, maybe Mantra of Milk Monster, or "Here's milk in yer eye!" Just call me Wonder Wo-Mom.
Pregnancy is an endurance challenge. We're just outside the 2 month countdown, and I'm feeling as if it's the last mile or so of a race. I didn't think I'd be so ready so soon, suppose I'll just be more than ready when baby finally decides to make his/her appearance.
Maternity clothes suck. I've been trying to get creative with what I can wear lately. While before it was, "Oh, look, she's pregnant and can still fit in her regular gym clothes, how cute." Now it's bordering on ridiculous. The belly begins to hang out the bottom of shirts. This is an honest assessment, not a negative one. At some point, in every pregnancy, I wager that every woman begins to feel ridiculous. At the consignment shop, with those dastardly full length mirrors, I can only LAUGH and laugh, my profile is just so...clownish to my mind. It's for good reason, all this stretching and comically oversized proportion—there's a person in there. Today, this person, has found much entertainment value knocking my innards around, and baby is only going to get bigger. As of last week, Doc said I was measuring almost a full week larger than what 'the math' says.As the wardrobe wanes, the prospect of making do with what I have, for over 2 months, is daunting.
C = {((AvMW + NF)Ex)SA}/S+R+H
Where comfort (C) can be translated as enjoyment of pregnancy, AvMW is available maternity wear, Ex is exercise, NF is nutritional food, SA is spousal attention, S is sugar, and R is rest or sleep. Of course this is adaptable per the gestating lady's personal preference. I used Exercise as a multiplier 'cause I find that the more consistent I am (just as pre-pregnancy) the bigger an effect it can have on Comfort. Nutritional Food is, of course, paramount to almost everything else—but let's be fair, food in general is paramount to anything where a pregnant woman is concerned. I know I've said it before, and I'll say it again, if you want to really engage a gestating female, talk about food. Spousal attention (SA) might be assigned a whole number value, i.e. 1 for minimal attention leaving the base equation unchanged, a higher number increasing the feminine confidence doubly so—as pregnancy is an incredibly powerful thing. Sugar (S), minimally applied for the day, i.e. another value of 1 can also leave the base comfort level unchanged, where a 10 or more might cause an ultimate crash, completely undermining all value in the numerator. Rest (R) can have a cumulative effect, some mommies choose to leave it out all together as it's such a big variable, and applying a whole number value to it might prove impossible. Although I suppose that using a whole number value as to the quality of rest, 1 for good quality and 10 for poor quality, could apply properly. And finally there's the dreaded Hormone (H), a whole number integer assigned might be as great as the thousands, and could completely decimate the entire equation, some might say it should be imaginary, never know if, when, or how, hormones might affect the equation…I'd rather it was exponential, but couldn't find the superscript. ;)
I just caught her licking the bottom of her snow boot. Really. Why do these small people do what they do? I've no idea. "Hey, I wonder what the bottom of my boot feels like on my tongue…"
Just, wow.
She writes her name. No, for really real. On leftover night this past week, there on the table next to her plate, a pencil and paper. As I'm in and out of the kitchen prepping the our adult plates (she eats first 'cause she's sooo slow eating), Miss Monkey says, "Mamma, I wrote my name!" She hands me the paper. I gave the chicken scratch a cursory glance, "oh? Nice, well done…" or some positive parenting remark. Then I looked again. Really and truly, fairly legible, laboriously written, exaggerated preschool lettering, there it is, her full name with last letter barely hanging on the end. "OH MY GOODNESS! You're right, you really DID WRITE YOUR NAME!" This exclamation prompts The Exhausted Man off the couch to come see. We express appropriate pride and encouragement and hung the paper (to be gilded later) on the ever-more-crowded fridge. Aside: What we really need is a wall of cork-board for what I foresee as the plethora of artwork and visualizations we'll be posting about. J
Again, a following evening, during a floor pad coloring session, a GIANT name appeared in purple of course, then hands and feet on the back, dated and coveted by yours truly. I don't think I've mentioned how ridiculously excited I was to see her first creature drawings. She was pretending to "study" her little diorama sea creatures in Papa's office. I mentioned to her that "studying" meant taking notes on what the creatures were doing, and drawing them. A little while later when I checked on her, there were little drawings of blobs with eyes, nose, mouth, fins, teeth, whiskers, flippers & toes. Too too neato for words!
When she proudly decided to write her name in pencil on the carpet, I had to draw the line. Her eyes wide surprise, her newest skill though pride inducing, wouldn't be tolerated on just every surface in this house. Aside: We'll also have some chalkboard wainscot(s) in our house someday. "Let's keep it on paper, okay?" a slightly disappointed, "O-Kaaay" response.
I glanced outside our kitchen window and see this outer-Denver squirrel working over a small item out on the deck railing. Not a nut, it was taking too long for Squirrely to munch....
