Rice Cereal Time

There is so much controversy surrounding when you should feed your baby solids for the first time.  The doctor says to wait until 5 or 6 months, friends say don't even try until 8 months because they are not ready, Grandma says 3 weeks.  I really think it's up to you because it's your baby and I doubt your baby will die from eating a little rice mixed with breast milk.  After all, they can die from SIDS, being shaken too hard, looked at with an evil eye, wearing too much clothing, tripping while walking, etc.  The world is a scary place!  One night I was reading in my "What to Expect the First Year" book and it gave some suggestions as to when your child may be ready to try solids.  I really liked this approach because it mentioned that doctors go off of research and studies and Grandma uses old time ways, but it showed ways in which your child gives you cues.  It said that your child should at least be a supported sitter, which she is.  They should show curiosity in food, and she totally stares while we eat.  It also said that their instinctual habit of thrusting things out of their mouth should be gone.  All these signs leaned towards Audrey being ready.  Forget the backlash from friends or family who think otherwise...we are Audrey's parents and what we say goes.   So, off we go to Target to buy some rice cereal.  Here's what we bought.

Totally organic and excludes all other additives that would give her boobies when she is 3.  We pump Audrey up and tell her she is getting big girl rice and it's going to be so exciting.  Here she is getting ready for her surprise!

She was really interested in the first couple of bites....then it went downhill from there!!  The pictures explain it all!

I have no idea what I'm in for!

What the heck?

This has a different texture than my boobie juice!

Okay Mom, I'm over it!

Whoa!

Dad...please help me!

No...I'm done...quit putting the spoon in my mouth!

The scary face begins!

Please, no more...torture!

Waaaahhhh!

I want to throw up all over the place.

And this is how her first rice cereal meal ended.  Tears and an empty belly.  We love you Audrey!

Tummy Troubles

At Audrey's 2 month check up the doctor does everything from checking her height and weight to checking her reflexes and if she has hit any monthly milestones.  Dr. Zipp says she is going to check how Audrey does on her tummy.  My insides become knots because I know this is my daughters week point.  Sure enough, just as she always does, as soon as she is on her belly her hands do not come up to her chest and tuck nicely underneath to hold her gigandor head up.  No, Audrey decides to play dead or pretend to be Jesus....you pick.  She lays there with her head tilted to the side and her arms straight out like she is getting ready to be nailed to the cross.  No attempts to lift her head up or even think about lifting her chest up.  Tummy time is for the birds.  So after Audrey's assessment is done, Dr. Zipp goes through her scores, including the ones we had filled out at home.  She asks, "Guess which area she scored the lowest in?"  She asks this almost with a giggle and I am quick to say, "Tummy time!"  This area is otherwise known as her gross motor skills.  My child has wonderful head control, so it's not a matter of can she get her head up, it's a fight of laziness and if I cry enough tummy time will be over!  I have tried to document her 12 second tummy time that she allows us to give her...here are some pictures of her first attempts at tummy time.  This is with the assistance of her friend, the boppy.

Hmmm...this isn't so bad.

  

                             Rrraaaarrr...I'm going to eat my hand because I am so mad!

   Arrrgggh it's pirate tummy time!

The pictures above are from her at roughly 2 weeks old.  I thought, wow, she has great head control...she's going to be lifting her head up from her tummy in no time flat.  Haha!  She fooled us!  Now here are some pictures of her at roughly a month old.  Boy was I proud when she lifted her head all by herself.  At this point she is still using her Boppy, making pirate eyes, and eating her hand.  These are all necessary things to be successful at tummy time, according to Audrey.

Now that we have mastered the art of tummy time with assistance from the boppy, we move into tummy time with no help.  This is where Audrey becomes an epic fail.  Poor thing. She told me it's because you can't see the world when you are looking at the carpet and peoples feet.    

                                                               Why Mom?  Why?

                 Thank you for putting my arms under me....I can see the TV much better from this angle.

 Mmmmm...hand.

She has yet to figure out how to stick her arms under her, so any time she has her hands there it's because we put them there before we had Ornery Rayne join us (this is her alter ego when she is throwing a fit).  Now these next one's are fairly recently and Zane thought he would motivate her by licking her.  She probably thought he was a monster and made her get on her tummy.

    I love you sister.

 Getting ready for tummy time means I should spit up on myself so I won't have to do it.  Notice the wet spot 

on the back of her shirt.  No, Audrey...you still have to practice on your tummy.

This is a great time for grunting and the ever so fun fart because she is pushing so hard.

   I wonder what this blanket tastes like.

                     I'm over it.  So is daddy and so is Bruno.  Tummy time is torture.  It's prison for babies.  Maybe Dr. Zipp won't notice at my next appointment.  I guess we'll have to wait and see!

Milk Bonanza

Long ago...long before Audrey was even a thought I said to myself, "No way would I want to breast feed...that is so gross and your boobs get disgusting."  I still thought about what I wanted to do as far as feeding my child when me and Elijah started thinking about having kids.  Fast forward to the pregnancy and I decided that breastfeeding was a good option.  Elijah was really against formula feeding and it really is more cost efficient if your child breast feeds.  If for some reason we tried and it didn't work out...I wasn't producing enough or she didn't like it, or whatever, then we would switch to formula.  There is absolutely nothing wrong with formula and it was made for a reason!  Audrey didn't take very well to breastfeeding and I had no idea what I was doing.  I actually had to use this thing called a nipple shield just to get her to feed.  Audrey is also known as a "grazer."  This means that she will sit and eat for 3 hours, if not longer.  Suck, suck, sleep.  Pull her off...cry.  Put back on. Suck, suck...nap time.  This would go on forever.  I thought babies just liked to eat a bunch in like 20 minutes and be done.  This is not the case, at least with my baby.  I started feeling trapped as I watched my husband wander around the house and go on the computer while I was stuck on the couch with my little cow grazing on her pasture of boob.  Then I thought, hey I have a pump...I'm going to use it so someone else can feed this kid.  I sort of felt guilty that I was giving up feeding her because you hear all about the bonding and time with your baby.  I am one of those people who is "go, go, go" and does not enjoy just sitting for hours on end.  She is still getting breast milk, just in a different way, and the upside is, I know exactly how much she is taking in.  So here starts the journey of pumping.  I did still breast feed her, but then she got smart and preferred the bottle because it didn't require work from her end.  So, it made us both happy (even though pumping can be painful!).  I pump every 3-4 hours, like clock work.  I have scheduled pumping into my work day, which does stink at times because you are immobile for a 15 minute period of time and can't really get anything done, but I wouldn't change it for the world.  Now here's the dilemma.  I am a milk machine.  I can push out anywhere from 5-15 ounces in one sitting.  Those 15 ounces have just started happening when I pump at 9:30 and then wait until 5:30am to pump again.  But overall, I average about 7-10 ounces in 15 minutes.  I bag it all and when I am home I set aside a fresh bottle for the little one.  Because I pump so much our deep freezer became full....fast!!  My dad was kind enough to buy us another deep freezer to house all the "boobie juice" for his dear Granddaughter.  Before we got this freezer, the side by side in the house was slowly being consumed by that weeks milk.  It couldn't have come fast enough.  Here is a picture to show you just how tall these 2 freezers are!

As you can see we spend a great amount of time organizing the milk so the oldest bags are on top and the newest on the bottom.  Elijah even constructed nifty boxes that we can flip over to put the newest on the bottom without taking all the bags out!  Here he is making a new smaller box for the new freezer.

As we look at all the milk I have produced in the last 3 months, you would think that I had been saving for a good 7-8 months.  Now I wonder how we are going to calculate when I can stop pumping and get her to a year of breast milk ONLY.  I guess we will just have to add up how many ounces we have and how many she will eventually eat and take an educated guesstimation.  By the looks of things I may be able to stop pumping here in the next couple of months.

So the freezers are organized by size so it's easy to get out what you need.  Remember that these freezers go up to the top of my legs, which are long...and I am 5'7".  And to think that I never wanted to breast feed way back when.  I am now, officially, Bessie the Cow and produce enough milk for Audrey to have until her 16th birthday, plus a few friends, dogs, cats, and people along the way!!

Family pictures!

We were talking about taking some family pictures and got a lot of great advice on where to go.   I wanted to do the Christmas greeting cards with a photo on them and decided on Portrait Innovations because they have great prices and you can get your pictures the same day.  They did a really good job and let you do an outfit change.  Although all of us were feeling under the weather or just getting over being sick, I think the pictures came out pretty darn good!  It made me laugh because the family shots make Audrey look so serious.  I think she was just taking it all in!  We started with our Christmas shots and then changed into black with pink accents!  Poor Audrey decided to scratch her nose the day before, but you can hardly tell.  I think she looks so cute and I wouldn't be surprised if they used one of her pictures as a sample.   (I'm not just saying this because I'm her mommy either!!)  It was a great time to take pictures too, because we got the Christmas card out of the way, but we also get to cherish pictures celebrating Audrey being 3 months old.  I would like to take pictures of her every 3 months just to see the changes she makes during her first year of life!  I am so excited to get our pictures up in frames to decorate our hallway!! Hope you enjoy!

Body After Baby

So it has been 11 weeks as of tomorrow that I have given birth and I need to get my body back.  Okay, not like losing weight, but the measly muscle I once had.  I am a very odd person with the metabolism of some foreign alien.  I lost all the baby weight in about 4 days (gained 25 in all).  I now weigh less than what I did before I got pregnant.  Now most of you are thinking that's amazing, but for me, I'm already a stick, so now I can't even qualify as being a stick.  I'm a toothpick.  What's weird though is that I can't fit into some of my jeans I used to because my hips are wider.  I thought, yay, I can wear all my old clothes.  Wrong.  About 95% of my work pants look horrid on me.  Reason being:  my butt no longer defies gravity.  It has rapidly drooped to almost knee level.  The days of a cute little bubble butt are no more and the days of a flat and flabby butt is upon us.  I have been complaining about this since I went back to work in mid October.  Today was the day that Elijah started me on my goal to gain the butt back!  I am sick and congested so I can't do anything strenuous (oh no!) because I might have to be rushed to the hospital with asthma problems!  Everyday we are going to work on lunges and squats and eventually these military jumping jack squat things that I will do once this sickness is gone.  I blame Audrey for my butt sagging so I forced her to watch me as I lunged and squatted.  For my counts I wanted to make it educational for her (hey, I am a teacher after all!!).  As I squatted I would call out a letter in her name.  So here I was at 9 tonight with my hubby motivating me to get my butt back up (literally) and me staring at my beautiful daughter yelling, "A", squat, "U", squat, "D", squat and so one until I spelt her first and middle name.  She found this quite amusing.  Hopefully I'll get my butt back soon and be able to wear my pants without them sagging in the behind!!  I am including a picture of what I looked like 1 day after giving birth and the other of Audrey watching me as I worked on my butt that she gave me!