Update of sorts
I've been reading LJ but not posting anything of much substance. It's been a tiring week.
We went to Ann Arbor on Tuesday to visit my labs and show off Ben to everyone. He was such a sweetheart and slept the whole time we were there, which means that he was ravenously hungry on the ride home and had a big poo-splosion in the car which required us to get off the highway to change and nurse him.
My sister came to visit on Weds (my birthday-I'm officially a quarter-century old) and Ben started what we now realize was a growth spurt and was fussy/cranky/hungry/gassy/screaming-pants boy for 2 days. The entire time Karen was here. She thinks he doesn't like her because every time we've talked with her on the phone or webcamed or when she visited he mostly screamed. ;-( Poor Karen. She left on Friday to move to Milwaukee for at least a year and to start her real world job at GE. She and Jake had fun while I was nursing Ben going over all her health care benefit paperwork and pension plan/401K retirement stuff. Jake is super interested in that sort of thing and was givign her all sorts of advice. They worked out a monthly budget for her, those crazy kids.
On Friday, after Karen left, Ben ended his fussy pants routine and slept a lot. That is to say, he woke up every 3 hours to nurse and then fell back asleep. He did this yesterday as well when we went to visit Jake's co-worker and then Bernie and her husband came to visit. Nurse, sleep 3 hours, nurse, repeat. Until 6 pm that is, when he was up and alert and cranky and had tons of farts until 12 when he finally fell asleep. We really try to burp him after each feeding but sometimes he just falls asleep and we can pat his back til the cows come home but nothing is going to come out. He's being better about it today and we're trying to be even more proactive to save our sanity. He just had about 90 minutes of awake time with Daddy and is now asleep in his bassinet while Jake showers.
I'm planning to pump a little when Jake gets out of the shower to add to my freezer stash of breastmilk for when I return to work. I try to space my pumping out between feedings so that I'm not depriving Ben of anything and to make sure I don't get super engorged. Generally I can get about an ounce between both breasts and I'll add those together for 4-5 days to make a full 'meal's worth of milk. It's so weird to think about and to pump-- I feel like a cow sometimes.
We harvested our lavender a couple weeks ago and let it air dry in the office bedroom until today. I went in and separated the stalks into bunches of 20 or so and tied them up with butcher's twine. I'd like to get some small sachets or something to put the bundles in so I won't have crushed lavender buds in my sock drawer. It smells so delicious in that bedroom-- I love lavender. I love that we just planted a few small twigs last year and this year had bushes overflowing with flowers.
All around our house are flowers and our garden is doing fantastically well. So well, in fact, that we are completely sick of spinach and are trying to find crafty ways to hide it in our food or give it away so we can stop eating spinach salad. I think the next bunch we pick I'll wash and freeze for the middle of winter. (Lots of lettuce too!) We should have peas soon, as there were blossoms coming up earlier this week. Our pumpkin plants are humongous and have blossoms as well so soon we'll have little pumpkin buds. I'm a little concerned about our tomato plants as the deer have been gnawing at the tips a little. We'll have to work on that. I don't think we're going to have much broccoli as the deer got those plants early as well but our carrots and scallions are growing well. We have tons of parsley and sage but the basil and oregano didn't come up.
I haven't been able to work on my manuscript revisions at all this week. It's hard to do much more than nurse the baby, eat, and get myself clean every day. Add onto that the laundry that seems to appear out of nowhere every morning and it doesn't leave time for anything. I'm hoping Ben starts to space out his feedings a little more at night because we could all use a few more hours of sleep.
Karen said when she was here "There is no better form of birth control than being around a new baby". I wouldn't trade a second of the time I've spent with Ben but I am realizing that I had NO IDEA how much work being a parent was. I don't think anything anyone said or could have said to me would have adequately prepared me for this. It's wonderful and exciting and new but at the same time exhausting and repetitive and frustrating.
We went to Ann Arbor on Tuesday to visit my labs and show off Ben to everyone. He was such a sweetheart and slept the whole time we were there, which means that he was ravenously hungry on the ride home and had a big poo-splosion in the car which required us to get off the highway to change and nurse him.
My sister came to visit on Weds (my birthday-I'm officially a quarter-century old) and Ben started what we now realize was a growth spurt and was fussy/cranky/hungry/gassy/screaming-pants boy for 2 days. The entire time Karen was here. She thinks he doesn't like her because every time we've talked with her on the phone or webcamed or when she visited he mostly screamed. ;-( Poor Karen. She left on Friday to move to Milwaukee for at least a year and to start her real world job at GE. She and Jake had fun while I was nursing Ben going over all her health care benefit paperwork and pension plan/401K retirement stuff. Jake is super interested in that sort of thing and was givign her all sorts of advice. They worked out a monthly budget for her, those crazy kids.
On Friday, after Karen left, Ben ended his fussy pants routine and slept a lot. That is to say, he woke up every 3 hours to nurse and then fell back asleep. He did this yesterday as well when we went to visit Jake's co-worker and then Bernie and her husband came to visit. Nurse, sleep 3 hours, nurse, repeat. Until 6 pm that is, when he was up and alert and cranky and had tons of farts until 12 when he finally fell asleep. We really try to burp him after each feeding but sometimes he just falls asleep and we can pat his back til the cows come home but nothing is going to come out. He's being better about it today and we're trying to be even more proactive to save our sanity. He just had about 90 minutes of awake time with Daddy and is now asleep in his bassinet while Jake showers.
I'm planning to pump a little when Jake gets out of the shower to add to my freezer stash of breastmilk for when I return to work. I try to space my pumping out between feedings so that I'm not depriving Ben of anything and to make sure I don't get super engorged. Generally I can get about an ounce between both breasts and I'll add those together for 4-5 days to make a full 'meal's worth of milk. It's so weird to think about and to pump-- I feel like a cow sometimes.
We harvested our lavender a couple weeks ago and let it air dry in the office bedroom until today. I went in and separated the stalks into bunches of 20 or so and tied them up with butcher's twine. I'd like to get some small sachets or something to put the bundles in so I won't have crushed lavender buds in my sock drawer. It smells so delicious in that bedroom-- I love lavender. I love that we just planted a few small twigs last year and this year had bushes overflowing with flowers.
All around our house are flowers and our garden is doing fantastically well. So well, in fact, that we are completely sick of spinach and are trying to find crafty ways to hide it in our food or give it away so we can stop eating spinach salad. I think the next bunch we pick I'll wash and freeze for the middle of winter. (Lots of lettuce too!) We should have peas soon, as there were blossoms coming up earlier this week. Our pumpkin plants are humongous and have blossoms as well so soon we'll have little pumpkin buds. I'm a little concerned about our tomato plants as the deer have been gnawing at the tips a little. We'll have to work on that. I don't think we're going to have much broccoli as the deer got those plants early as well but our carrots and scallions are growing well. We have tons of parsley and sage but the basil and oregano didn't come up.
I haven't been able to work on my manuscript revisions at all this week. It's hard to do much more than nurse the baby, eat, and get myself clean every day. Add onto that the laundry that seems to appear out of nowhere every morning and it doesn't leave time for anything. I'm hoping Ben starts to space out his feedings a little more at night because we could all use a few more hours of sleep.
Karen said when she was here "There is no better form of birth control than being around a new baby". I wouldn't trade a second of the time I've spent with Ben but I am realizing that I had NO IDEA how much work being a parent was. I don't think anything anyone said or could have said to me would have adequately prepared me for this. It's wonderful and exciting and new but at the same time exhausting and repetitive and frustrating.