Well THAT worked out well.

I'm not going to even address the fact that I absolutely haven't even thought about this blog since my last post. I'm not going to apologize for the lack of Jonah pictures since I deleted my facebook. I'm not even going to make excuses about how the holidays hit us like a freight train and that Jonah has been sick since Thanksgiving and that my little brother and sister have been living with us and that I quit my job and have been seriously trying to get a photography prop business going. So I'll just get right to it.

Jonah will be one--ONE--in 2 weeks. As in, a year old. As in, not a baby anymore. As in, quickly becoming toddler status. I can't even handle it. He took 2 steps today. He says dog, mama, dada, uh oh, and bapadadatetetet. I mean seriously, genius. Tonight I said, "Jonah, go read your dog book." He looked at me with this non-babyish very adult like expression and crawled over to his books saying, "dok. dok" and pulled out his dog book and looked at me with this silly little grin like he was so proud of himself. He clapped for the first time today as well. I've been trying to get him to clap since he was 6 months old. He's been a bit slow in the development area which I 100% attribute to the fact that he has been SO STINKING SICK since November. We've been to the doctor 3 or 4 times, the ER twice and finally, we took him a different doctor a few weeks ago and he took one look at Jonah and said, "Wow, buddy, you're really sick." Why don't doctors ever listen to mothers?  We got him on an antibiotic and he's been an angel child since then. (Except for the 2 day virus that struck my house and everyone but my brother was throwing up. A lot. At the same time. We have one toilet. It was not pretty.) He has four teeth coming in. FOUR. At the same time. His two top teeth have this adorable gap that I hope, for his sake, will close in when the rest of his teeth come in. I have the lifelong curse of not enough teeth and way too many gaps and I would never wish that on my kids--ever. Kids are mean and I hate my teeth.

So that's that. A short update for you. And here's what you're really here for --

Thanks for being patient with me. I'll genuinely try to be more consistent from now on. But don't hold me to it.

I made the plunge.

I am now officially off of facebook. Which means I'll be blogging a LOT more. I think I kind of let this thing go because most of the people reading it are friends with me on facebook and I pretty much post about the same stuff. But now I am officially temporarily done with facebook. Cause let's be honest. I don't think anyone can ever be totally done. But for now, I am. I had been debating about it for a couple of weeks because I'm just so frustrated with the lack of communication I have with my family and "close" friends because facebook does all the communicating for you. I can run into somebody I haven't seen in 4 years and not have anything to talk about because I already know EVERYTHING that's going on in their lives. I'm a nosy person already and facebook just doesn't help that character flaw. And then to seal the deal, as I was reading through my news feed, an EXTREMELY sexually graphic picture raped my eyes. You can't un-see that kind of stuff. So I announced my imminent departure. The next morning, I logged in and there was ANOTHER sexually graphic picture posted onto my wall where every one and their mom could see. I was embarrassed and angry. I deleted a few hours later.

I'm pretty excited about my non facebook life. I woke up this morning and didn't care about getting on the computer. I'm excited to start actually calling my friends and genuinely not know what's going on in their lives. I can't wait to actually catch up with someone! I haven't heard the backlash from my family yet, but I'm sure it's coming. Mine and Zach's family all live at least 8 hours away and facebook is their primary way of seeing Jonah's pictures and hearing the cute things that he does. Guess we're just going to have to call each other more, guys!

So that's that, I guess.

Dear Jonah,

   You are an 8 month old. I have to say that this by far is my favorite stage. You starting pulling yourself up about a month ago... before you could even crawl. And now you are a crawling machine so you're pulling yourself up on EVERYTHING. You even try to push yourself up to standing when there's nothing to climb, but you're not quite there yet. You love playing on the couch. You crawl across it, pull yourself up, throw yourself down, dig in between the cracks, chew on the remotes. You're a beast.
   Your personality is coming out a lot more lately. At home, you're so talkative and playful and whiny. When you meet a new person, you get kind of shy for a few minutes and just stare at them. When you are in a crowd of people, you come ALIVE. You jump up and down, blow raspberries, talk, laugh...it's so funny. When we go out to eat you'll be sitting in your high chair and you will look around the room until you see someone staring at you and then you scream this back of the throat, gutteral scream that gets everyone around laughing because you think you're so funny. When whoever was looking at you stops, you scream until they look at you again. You seem to think that you're the cutest thing on the earth and that everyone wants a piece of you. You would be correct. But sometimes, your attention getting mechanisms are inappropriate. FOR EXAMPLE :
    Last night, at our church annual  business meeting, Pastor Blair was giving a mini sermon at the end of worship. We were sitting in the second row. You chose a serene, quiet pause in his talk to blow raspberries at him. Every one laughed, I blushed, Pastor lost his train of thought, your Dad and I hung our heads in sarcastic shame. You really gotta stop doing that. But really, going to church with you is so fun. In the past couple of weeks, you've started "dancing" while everyone is singing. You'll kick your legs and wave your hands and if I hold your hands and let you stand up, you'll jump up and down. It's awesome. The cuteness is probably immensely distracting for all the worshippers. But honestly, what better way to draw attention to our Creator then a happy, dancing, smiling baby boy?
      You keep your daddy in I laughing. Speaking of your daddy, you're spending a lot more time with him lately. Now that you're not nursing that much anymore I can finally leave the house without you! You hang out with him in the mornings when I'm at work and then it's just me and you all afternoon. I love the way it's working out. Now you're on an awesome schedule, you sleep through the night and you nap like a  champ. Our life is finally starting to get organized. And in spite of all the stuff we have going on right now... we still have time for swim lessons!


I love you, little man!

Mom

So...We're Done Breastfeeding Now.

WOW. Ok. SOOOO it's been a while. I guess I have been a neglectful blogger as of late. I haven't really been trying that hard to get readers and frankly...I've had a hard time coming up with stuff to write about. Maybe the blogging world is just not for me. We'll see.

Anyway. We've pretty much stopped breastfeeding. I'm sad and relieved and guilt-ridden all at the same time. One day, about a month ago, Jonah refused to breast feed. Like, he'd start to eat and scream, start again, scream. And the kid has had one bottle when he was first born so it wasn't like that's what he was wanting. He just didn't want to nurse. I refused to give him a bottle and just dealt with an upset baby all day. He would eat solids when he was calmed down, but when it was time to nurse...NADA. This lasted for 2 or 3 days. I tried so hard to pump. I have never been able to let down for the pump so as hard as I tried, it just didn't happen. I started to get really frustrated, but I refused to let Jonah starve any longer and gave him a bottle. INSTANT. RELIEF. Jonah was calm, happy, he didn't scream when he was in the car seat...it was GLORIOUS. After that, he started taking a bottle during the day until he was just nursing in the morning and at night. Within a couple of weeks he was only nursing in the morning. Which is where we're still at right now, but as I was nursing him this morning, I realized that he's not getting as much milk as he used to and it may be time to stop that feeding as well.

So with all that being said, I am tired of feeling guilty and ashamed that I am now formula feeding my son. I don't need to justify my choice to anyone. I am well aware of the fact that breastfeeding is the absolute best and formula is no close second. I planned on breastfeeding Jonah for a year or more. It just didn't happen that way. And I have to say, I'm pretty stinking proud of myself. I went back to work when Jonah was 3 weeks old. I work 18 hours a week as a church secretary and spend the rest of my time working in our youth ministry. I go to youth group twice a week, teach series, do all of our church design work, plan and take students to events, all while keeping our house somewhat clean and cooking dinner almost every night and somehow maintaining to exclusively breastfeed my son for 7 months. Am I awesome? Yes, I think so. And every woman who manages to breastfeed their child at all is deserving of some kind of super hero award because it can be really hard work.

I didn't have any help breastfeeding at the hospital where Jonah was born. All of my nurses were like...17 and just stared at me while I tried to nurse. They looked at me with these stupid little smirks on their faces like, "let's all stare at this young mother trying to nurse her baby for no reason. Doesn't she know there's formula?" And they would say things like, "He hasn't pooped yet. If you can't get him to poop in the next 2 hours, we have to give him formula." GET HIM TO POOP? Really? What was I supposed to do? "Hey Jonah, I know you're barely even self aware right now, but if you could just push out the tiny amount of waste that's inside of you, mommy will be so happy." Luckily, I had an amazing friend who wasn't afraid of boobs to help me figure it all out. But those first few days in the hospital were crucial to building up my milk supply and they just didn't help me. (Not to mention the whole "you're baby is jaundiced and if you breast feed him he'll be brain damaged" situation)

So anyway. I somewhat felt like I needed to explain myself to all of the breast feeding snobs out there. And I know you're out there, because I can be one too. I was telling Zach the other day that every time I give Jonah a bottle in public I want to scream out, "I BREASTFED WHILE SIMULTANEOUSLY WORKING FOR 7 MONTHS!" because I don't want people to judge me. And he said, "Seriously? I'm pretty sure no one is judging you." To which I replied, "Um. Yes they are. I know. Because I judge them too." So this has been a big humbling experience for me. I look at women who don't even try to breastfeed and think how sad that is and can't figure out why any mother wouldn't want to breastfeed their child for at least 6 weeks? But it's not my business and it's not my place to judge. Every one has a different situation and a different child and a different story. I am not better than any one because I breastfed my son and I'm not a worse mother than anyone else because I stopped. I worked hard. I tried everything I could to keep breastfeeding. It was just time. Please withhold your judgmental thoughts about how you would never stop breastfeeding no matter what and thinking things like, "well what would she have done 70 years ago when formula didn't exist?" or thinking that you're a better mom because you breastfed your kid for ... however long you breastfed.

My son in happy. I am happy. Zach is happy. I love being able to let Zach help out with feeding Jonah. He's such an awesome dad and it's so much help to me. I can finally go to work without Jonah and it's such a better situation for him. He doesn't have to sit in my fluorescently awful office bored and unhappy. He can stay home with dad and play and crawl and listen to The Strokes. I am totally happy with where we are at right now. I am done feeling guilty and will not try and explain myself to anyone anymore.

Why does breastfeeding have so much guilt attached to it!? So silly. And honestly, walking in and seeing things like this...well, this just warms my guilty heart. :)

I am GOING CRAZY!!!!!

Seriously about to lose my mind.

He's not a colicky baby.
He's not sick.
He's barely teething.
His diaper is changed.
His hair is washed.
His belly is full.
He doesn't have gas.

WHAT IS WRONG WITH MY CHILD AND WHY WON'T HE STOP COMPLAINING??

that is all.

Can someone please give me my content to look at the ceiling all day baby?? In the past 2 days he has turned into a shrieking, unsatisfied, up all day, up all night MONSTER. [don't judge me for calling my kid a monster.] UGH. I'm so tired. So annoyed. SO STRESSED. Tonight, he fell asleep and I was like, "SWEET. I can cook me some dinner." So I cut up some chicken, put on some rice, got ready to fry me up some Asian goodness...and then the cry started. And didn't end. I put him in his swing in front of the TV thus breaking my own rules about no TV...I was THAT desperate and am now seriously reconsidering my previous ideology. That kept him occupied long enough for my meal to finish cooking, except for the egg which I scrambled one handed. Do you think I was able to sit down and eat my delectable fried rice? HECK NO. He complained when I sat, he wouldn't nurse, he screamed in the bath, he screamed on the floor, he screamed in the swing. Seriously, kid? You want to know when he stopped screaming? About 5 minutes before his dad came home early from a talent show because I sent him a text begging him to return to me.

When dad pulled up, he was all smiles. I had him sitting on my lap on the steps outside when Zach, my little brother and our friend Wes pulled up. Wes got out of the car and said, "What's up, kid?" I was like, "Jonah if you smile at him I'm going to scream."Yea. All smiles. I handed him to my husband took his keys and his money and went to Coldstone and treated myself to a birthday cake remix which I totally didn't finish because who can ever finish that ice cream anyway? So my treat turned into our treat. Eh.

I'm so done right now. I want to go back on vacation. I want to be around grandmothers again. I want to have my husband with me all day every day to help me with the babe. I want daycare to not be so expensive so it wouldn't be financially pointless to be working just to pay for daycare. I want my mom or my mother in law or my sister in law to live within driving distance so they can give me a brain break every now and then.

I'm sorry. I don't intend on complaining when I begin a post. I'll try to be more positive in future posts. But only if this child of mine stops being so ANNOYING!!!

P.S. It's only because he's so delicious that I'm able to make it to the next day.

VACATION.

This week we've been on vacation. We still have 2 days left so why am I blogging right now?? I have no idea. But here's the thing. I have the easiest most content baby on the face of the planet. Except in the car. He seriously hits the ceiling ... code red .... FREAKS OUT in the car. He'll be fine for a minute. And then he just complains, cries, whatever he can do that's not being my happy son. It drives me nuts. I miss sitting in the front seat with my husband. No obnoxious toy can distract him long enough so that I don't have to keep leaning over the seats to give him a toy, binky, cover his car seat with a blanket, anything to make him SHUT UP. So many of my friends are like, "Just let him cry. He's not hungry. He's not hurt. He's fine. Let him cry till he calms himself down." All this is true and I assure you, I'm not concerned for my son's safety or immediate needs. It's my own stinking peace of my mind that I'm worried about. I CAN'T STAND IT!! Maybe it's just cause Jonah has this grunt shriek thing that he thinks is a cry. He doesn't do the typical "Wahhhhh Wahhhhh" thing that most babies do. It just gets under my skin like nothing else. Anyway.

We planned our whole trip based around his lack of car manners. We left last Wednesday night/Thursday morning at 1am so that we'd be driving during the hours he sleeps the most. I say "sleeps the most" because my terrific sleeper has now turned nocturnal. He wakes up 2-3 times a night now and I'm at my wits end with the whole thing. Yesterday I was laying next to my husband and I said, "you look high. Your eyes are blood shot." He said, "YOUR eyes are bloodshot!" And then we sat there trying to figure out why our eyes were bloodshot. Oh yea. We haven't slept in 6 weeks. I refuse to do the cry it out thing. It's traumatizing for me and for Jonah and I just can't do it. I'm going to read the No Cry Sleep Solution and see if that gives me any magic tricks to keeping the bat asleep all night.

Other than the not sleeping and the car shrieking, this trip has been amazing. Jonah hasn't fussed or cried (outside of the car) at all. It's amazing. When I take him to work with me, he fusses the whole time. But since we've been at the beach, around our family, going and doing fun things, he's been wonderful. It makes me so thrilled and a little sad at the same time. I wish I could find a way to balance work and spending time with my son so that he's always the happy and content baby he's been the last week. Zach and I (and a wonderful friend of ours) were talking about how we can never get this time back with Jonah. EVER. Spending most of his life at work is getting kind of draining. I'm not going to lie. It's hard. I only work 18 hours a week as a secretary, but then the rest of the time is spent being a youth pastor. The youth pastor part is so ingrained into who we are and is as much a part of or lives as Jonah is. It's hard to separate. It's hard to know when I'm just Kristen or just Mom or just wife. I need to find balance. I need to make decisions. I need to spend some time with Jesus.


So that's life. This trip has been awesome. It's the first time Zach and I have taken an actual vacation. We get 2 weeks every year, but this is the first time we haven't spent it at one of our parent's house for Christmas or Thanksgiving. We keep saying to each other, "Why haven't we done this yet!?" We spent 3 days at his family's beach cottage in Point O' Woods Connecticut, one day at Narragansett Beach in Rhode Island, one day visiting friends in Rhode Island and Massachusetts, 2 days in Stockbridge Mass visiting the Norman Rockwell Museum and hiking in the Berkshires, and now we're finishing up our trip in Springfield Mass (Zach's home town) before heading home. Here's some beach pics to make you go "AWWWW"