My Life

I started Sidney on solid foods on the Friday before she started crawling. It was only one meal a day of rice cereal mixed with my milk. She is now on three meals a day and on the 11th I started her on green beans for three days, followed by three days of butternut squash, and we have been doing carrots for two days. She has also had some grape juice in her sippy. I started using her sippy when I was giving her cereal. She was mainly just chewing on it when she started but by the 14th she was drinking out of it really well and not just letting the water run down her chin.

I am so not ready for her to be on solid foods. I miss her old non-stinky dirty diapers. Now they sometimes smell worse than Allison's and are the same color as the food was when it went in. Basically just gross. The first time I fed her green beans was the day after she started crawling and between every bite she would just start buzzing her lips like you would do when giving someone a raspberry or playing the trumpet, that and the way she would wrinkle up her face was hilarious. She really likes carrots and squash though. She gets really excited now when I walk back into the room with her bowl of food.

I am enjoying the breastfeeding. I know people think that its a lot of work, but now it's really not. In the beginning it was because it felt like that was all that I was doing all the time. It was every two hours. The hard part was getting started. For the first couple of days she was having a hard time staying attached. I know the hardest thing for me was refusing to give her a bottle. The first day we brought her home she slept from 5:30 in the morning until three in the afternoon. She didn't want to wake up. We tried everything, the cold washcloth, changing her diaper, making her naked. Nothing worked. I was worried because she wasn't eating so I pumped her some milk and put it into a medicine syringe and fed her that way and she didn't really stay awake for that. That night we went to Chrissy and Joey's so they could see her for the first time and she woke up around 7 and she latched on really well for the first time. I was so excited so after she was done I told Chrissy and Terry. She understood though because she breastfed too. I then called Danielle when we were on our way home and told her too. After those first couple of days my milk came in and when it did I was overflowing it felt like. I had to change both pads at every feeding and sometimes I would have to put multiple pads on the side I wasn't nursing on to stay dry. I hated it. I had to carry tons of pads with me. I used the Avent brand which are pretty thick and for the first few weeks I was going through 150 pads a week. Then once she was about 8 weeks old or so it dropped down to about 100 pads a week. So I had to carry with me all the diapers I needed for Sidney and Allison, baby wipes, a towel to place under Sidney's chin to catch the leaky milk, pads, breast pads, pacifiers, diaper rash cream,blankets for Sidney, nursing cover, and all the stuff I carried in my purse. I felt like I was packing to go on a trip every time I left the house. Now I am down to diapers for Sidney and Allison, my nursing cover, and baby wipes. It feels a whole lot different. I don't have to worry about what I forgot at the house as much now that I don't use as much out of the diaper bag as I used to. I don't leak any more either so I don't have to carry the breast pads at all. It feels so much better.

Allison has gone since Friday maybe having one accident a day in her pull up. Which is awesome. She is even making an effort to make it to the potty to poop. I can't wait until she is in underwear all the time. She had her first bike wreck yesterday. She was riding the bicycle she got when she turned one down the ramp at our back door and she landed between the post at the end of the ramp and the shovel that was about a foot away. She was okay though she scraped one elbow pretty good. Terry called it road rash. Everything else was just the little red scratches on her skin. Nothing major. She is really enjoying it being warm enough to be outside without a coat. She still thinks she needs one though before she goes outside and I tell her "No it's warm enough that you don't need a coat." She says, "Why?" I say,"Because it is." She says,"Why?" I say," Because it just is." She says,"Why?" and this can go on for forever before I get her convinced to go out the door. I think it's really funny and cute. It can get aggravating at times though. I keep thinking to myself that one day she will be a teenager and she won't be this way then. I know there will come a day when I will miss Dora the Explorer, The Wonderpets, and The VeggieTales.

I really dread going back to school in the fall, I wish I could just stay home with them and not have to worry about it. I wish we had enough money that we could afford the bills that we have and be able to buy a bigger house that I had always dreamed of having when I had kids. One day it will happen. I will trust God and even if it doesn't it will be okay, I am hoping that I will have learned to love the house I am in now as small as it is, but a bathtub and closets would be nice.

Allison stayed the night with Grandma tonight. I was happy to be allowed that little break. My parents fuss because she stays away from home so much. I think it's good for her though. I think it will help when she is older in adjusting to staying away from home. Maybe she won't panic as much as others do. I am ready for her to get over her cold. It started last Monday and she still has a runny nose. I was thinking about how much she has changed in the last few months and I realized that she has already replaced "meemo" with Elmo. She started calling him that when she was around 18 months old and she stopped calling him that about three months ago I guess. I just now realized it though. She also is still announcing wherever we go that "Sidney is here." It doesn't matter if they know that or not she still tells them and she will also tell them if she is awake or asleep. I think it's really cute. I hope she still feels the same way about her when she is older. I hope my girls have a friendship with their sister that I never had with mine.