Six Months Old

Today, my son is six months old. Half a year. It seems IMPOSSIBLE! We've made it this far and I am so proud of him and so proud of us. This was my first big breastfeeding goal, and we've made it. Six months of struggling with a low supply but persisting anyway, I am so glad that we have. It doesn't seem real that he is halfway to being a year old, it really doesn't. I thought it would take forever to get here, and instead I blinked and here we are. Just crazy! I am very glad my son is healthy and happy and we are going to set our next goal to 9 months, and see where we go from there. I am not quite 100% committed to breastfeeding to a year, but it is something that I think will benefit the boy and I am willing to do it if things continue to be as good as they are!

Savino has been a very good boy today, he let us sleep until 8:45 and that was BLISS. I needed the extra hour because he was up at 6am yesterday. I don't remember how he slept last night, which means it must not have been too bad. I think I just put him in bed with us when he did wake up and let him nurse, I can't remember. I know I didn't give him a bottle in the night, so it must have been alright.

My paranoia over him not breathing or stopping breathing in the night hasn't lessened any though. Tim keeps trying to reassure me that he's past the SIDS age, but it doesn't matter, it is something in my brain that I cannot control. Last night I woke Tim up when I was leaning over Savino in his crib checking to see if he was alright. I can't explain why I am so paranoid, but I can't shake it no matter what. I hope that it will get better as he gets older because I seriously stress myself out with the worry.

Haley is back at school today, no snow day for her again, though of course it started snowing at around 9am and now it is coming down pretty hard again. *sighs* This winter will never be over. My feet will be cold for the rest of my life. SOMEONE TURN THE SNOW OFF. I think tonight will be a good night to build a big fire in the fireplace and hopefully warm things up a little. Our gas bill this month was INSANE because of how cold it has been. I really won't miss that.

On that note, I suppose I ought to get started with my chores for the day. Fun.

Well, it was another day. I'm sooo tired, I should be in bed asleep right now. I'm headed there soon. It was a nice day really, Haley had another snow day so we just stayed indoors all day and she played and vegged and Savino and I did our thing. I actually managed a nap in the late afternoon because Savino refused to take a nap without my boob stuck in his mouth. It only lasted an hour, but I'll take what I can get. I was surprised to get sleepy laying down with him, I haven't been feeling tired in the afternoon very much lately.

I've come to the conclusion that I think Savino would be a very colicky even higher-needs baby like haley was if we weren't breastfeeding. I think that Haley would not have been so screamy and so pissed off at the world when she was his age if I had breastfed her longer. At least I can console Savino with my boobs at least 95% of the time, that other 5% of the time just SUCKS though, when he won't be consoled by anything.

I'm so done with the snow. Can it please just STOP snowing? It snowed enough last night that school was cancelled again, but then during the day the snow on the roads melted completely away. There is still like a foot of snow on the lawn and the back deck, but the roads are clear at least. Haley will definitely have school tomorrow. At least she got two snow days in the middle of the week, she loved that.

I ordered a bunch of prints today, it has been a few months since I had gotten any new ones. I ended up ordering 93 prints! And I discovered that I have a ton of credits in my Snapfish account, I don't know where they came from. I mean, I am not complaining, but I should probably use them rather than just letting them sit there. So this weekend I think I will set up Savino's room as my photoshoot room and try to take some portraits of Haley and the boy and maybe even con Tim into it. I am going to make some ghetto studio lighting and see if I can make a backdrop cloth out of some sheets or muslin or something. I have a Valentine's Day outfit for Savino that I want to dress him up in and get some pictures. I think I will even bust out the angle wings from Haley's Halloween costume and see if I can get him to wear them!

OK, I think I am going to give in and go to bed. It is calling me...

Dark Chocolate, Please?

This will have to be brief as Savino is starting to sqwuak in his bouncer seat at my feet and there is some downloading going on in his diaper I think. (I know, you really needed to know that, right?)

So, yes, it appears that I FUBAR'd my laptop after all. *sighs* I put it back together yesterday evening, and it wouldn't even start up. The lights come on and then the lights go off and nothing happens. Suck. I took it back apart on Tim's reccomendation and am leaving it to sit and dry for a few days and then we'll try again. In the meantime, Tim and I have to share a computer because my other laptop upstairs has decided to no longer sees the network, it refuses to connect wirelessly to the internet and I haven't contemplated moving it downstairs where I can plug the network cable directly into it yet. I might though.

Tim pressured me into purchasing the new laptop. If anyone needs a cheap laptop, Dell has them for $399 which is like UNHEARD OF. Even on eBay, New in the box laptops are not that cheap. I put in an extra $30 for a DVD burner so that I can back up my pictures onto DVD and not worry about having them be large files. Of course, the stupid thing won't even be shipped before March 3rd, so I must suffer another week without my own computer.

Um, yeah, maybe I am a little spoiled. I don't like sharing a computer with Tim because he has a million and a half applications on his that make the computer run SLOWLY.

Ok, the boy can't stand it anymore, I must take a break to deal with him.

Mmm, I had garlic shrimp with pasta and vegetables for lunch. It's this kit that you just dump in a pan with a tablespoon of water, cover, and heat through for 10 minutes. Mmmm good. I am like the only one who likes this though, it has too much vegetables in it for everyone else apparently. Whatever, more vegetables for me!

I need to stay away from eBay, I keep bidding on things and I am starting to have bidder's remorse, like I haven't even won it yet and I'm already wishing I hadn't bid on it. Just stuff like pants for the boy and a lot of 12-18 mo. sized onesies. He doesn't REALLY need clothes, but I was bored while I was working. I also bought more ink for our printer, but we did need that.

Tim got this GPS unit from his friend that connects via Bluetooth to his fancy computer-phone and figured out how to install the Tom Tom navigation system on his phone so now we have a GPS. He is very pleased with himself about this, he has been wrestling with it for about a week now and kept pressuring me to let him just buy a regular GPS but I kept saying, "What FOR?" It's not like we go anywhere that we don't know how to get to, and those suckers are EXPENSIVE. It would just be another toy for him to play with. So he perserved and made the GPS his friend gave him work and now we are all set to start geocaching when the weather gets nice. There are TON of caches in our area, and Tim's friend wants to do it with us apparently. Whatev, I don't care. I did note that the GPS will probably come in handy this summer in finding yard sales. Last summer it was ridiculous how hard it was to find these remote addresses when people didn't put up any signs, and y'all know me, I am a hard core yard/garage sale addict. So that is a good thing, I suppose.

Haley has another snow day today. Have I mentioned how sick I am of the snow? And the winter? I am done. Just done. THREE INCHES last night. First she had a 2 hr. delay and then this morning at 6am, school was cancelled. I am cringing to think of how many make up days they are going to have to do this year. She is, of course, ecstatic and has spent most of the day watching TV and vegging out hardcore. I did make her fold and put away her laundry and I will probably make her do some more chores and study her math this evening. I figure, what are snow days for if not to play outside in the snow and then veg out in front of the TV. I don't know, we never had snow days when I was in school.

Savino has started to refuse to nap in his swing, which is fine on one hand because I didn't want that to become a long term habit, but sucky on the other in that it means that I have to lay down with him and nurse him to sleep or put him in his crib and let him wear himself out. Yesterday after nursing, I laid him dwon in his crib and he just laid on his belly and put his head down and eventually drifted off. He only slept for 45 minutes though. He is WAY too young to be going on nap strikes, he needs that time asleep or he becomes The Crabbiest Baby In The World, but try telling him that. It's just tough when 5pm rolls around and he is crying and flailing around with his arms and inconsolable and just wants to sleep but it's way too early for him to go to bed. *sighs* Babies.

Spring, please come so I can take this kid outside and let him wear himself out in the grass and sunshine.

Well, the boy is inconsolable again so I will wrap this up. It's always something!

A Video

I'm tired, so here is a video of Savino from the day I took his 5 month pictures.

Yet More Pictures

It was so nice to be able to put the baby to bed tonight and jump on the treadmill and walk. I needed to get new running shoes, my old ones were just dead, so today I found a pair of Reebok's that I love. They feel very comfy. I love our treadmill, it's been the best gift we've gotten. Tim hasn't been using it, he is a bum. I have to coerce him into getting back on it. I use it though, sometimes I just do a quick 15 minutes while Savino is napping upstairs but more often at night after I put him to bed. It had been a week since I used it though, my feet were killing me after the last time I was on it because my shoes were so worn out.

I am ready for the weekend to be over. I know that sounds crazy, but we have been running around and spending money, and catching up on all the errands we have needed to run and I kinda missed my quiet weekday time when it's just me and the baby and our schedule is predictable and routine. I know Savino loves having Tim around on the weekends, but I think that he likes it when it's just us as well.

Speaking of the baby, he tried sweet potatoes tonight for the first time. I was braced for him to reject them as well, he really didn't seem to like the carrots, though I know it takes more than a few times for them to decide whether they really like it or not. He seemed to like them a lot better than the carrots though, so that was cool. We are still taking it really slow with the amount he has been eating, he just had maybe a teaspoon. He kept opening his mouth really wide each time the spoon came near his mouth, it was kinda funny! I am glad that he seems to be doing well with it, he is getting more and more shrill about grabbing at our food so I am sure that he is happy to be trying new things.

Tim was nice enough to take baby duty this morning, he got him dressed and took him downstairs and fed him breakfast and made breakfast for the rest of us so I could get dressed and take my time. It's nice to have that once or twice a week, so I take advantage of it on the days that Tim is home. Of course, Savino helpfully woke up and stayed awake at 6:30am thanks to Haley throwing a temper tantrum because Tim told her to read a book rather than go downstairs and watch TV. I woke up to baby crying, Tim yelling, Haley crying. Niiiice. Anyway, I also got to grab my camera and take some more pictures of the baby. He can't get away, so he is my unwilling victim! As if I didn't take enough pictures of him before! But, some turned out really nice. I am ordering prints this week!

I've discovered that resizing the files seems to make them more blurry, but the original files are way too big to post here, so you get the slightly blurry smaller files. Just trust me that most of these are not this blurry!

Looking out the window






I managed to catch him mid-sneeze hehe











Tim came up behind me and was making faces at Savino and he was cracking up












Calm again



<---- Other pictures

I could use some chocolate. *sighs*

Pictures

Tim had to go into work a few times today, so I occupied myself by taking pictures of my captive children. Some of them turned out really nice! I am digging my camera! I have only done minimal editing on them, so I am pretty impressed by the results!

The ones of Haley I messed around with using the Unsharp Mask and I am not totally pleased with the results. I think I might have done more damage than good. Oh well. You live and learn.

I am trying to avoid using the flash as much as possible, the results are kinda hit or miss with it. I like using the natural light as much as possible. The evening sunset light coming through the window was great, except Haley wouldn't stay full in it!




This one was blurry, but I liked it anyway. These were taken in the morning when the light was a little better






He turned his head away at the last moment, so I got a shot of his bald little head hehe, but I liked it anyway!



Taken with the flash, but it wasn't a horrible picture anyway



These last two are my favorite of the whole day



This one turned out the best, I think. I did the least amount of editing to this one.



We tried to go to The Olive Garden for lunch, well Tim wanted to at least. I tried to tell him "The wait will be INSANE for Saturday lunch". He wanted to try anyway. We got there (it's about a 10 minute drive away), and it was an HOUR wait to be seated. Um, no. We turned around and drove back to the Chinese place. Oh well, I tried to tell him! I had steamed vegetables and chicken too, so it wasn't like I cared where we ate, you can get boring healthy food just about anywhere.

Alright, Chantal just rolled in so I better get off here.

Notta Lot

My poor son. He just will not settle down to take a nap this afternoon, I have nursed him and rocked him and held him, but when he started smacking me in the face and arching his back and trying to twist around, I put him into his swing and sat on the floor in front of him folding clothes while he cried and "Phbbbtttt"'d at me until he wore himself completely out and calmed down enough to close his eyes. Of course, as soon as I stood up and went to leave the room he opened his eyes and started crying. I sat down in the hall and after a minute he stopped again but I don't thin he is all the way asleep, I think he is hovering. Hopefully he will go to sleep and take a good nap. Yesterday was a fight with the nap as well, I ended up having to lay down with him and nurse him to sleep.

But, I will take the fitful nap issues because last night he slept for SEVEN HOURS uninterrupted!!! !!!!!! YES!! I was so happy. I don't know what did it, whether it was the carrots at dinner (which I doubt because he had maybe a teaspoon full), or what, but he slept from 8pm to 3am, woke up, nursed and took half of a bottle, fell back asleep until 5am, had the rest of the bottle, fell back asleep until 7am, and then I put him in bed with me and nursed him for the next hour and a half while we both dozed. We both woke all the way up at 8:30 and were both feeling good. It was so incredibly awesome to have a full nights sleep, I can't even tell you. I could get used to that, but I better not until he does it more than once a week. It was just awesome. SEVEN HOURS!!! I really hope that he does it again tonight.

The carrots, well, they really did not go over so well last night. The first few spoonfulls he just got this intensely weirded out look on his face, just making these awful faces. Then he was just totally over it and started spitting it out and gagging, I don't know if it was just the total alien-ness of the taste, or the texture, or what. He was not amused. He was much happier when we switched back to the cereal and he ate all of that happily. He did not want his bottle, again. Up until bedtime he had only had maybe 4 oz. of formula, but he had another 3 oz. when I was putting him to bed and then 4 oz. in the middle of the night.

He was a little more accepting of the carrots again at lunch today, he had another teaspoon and while he still made faces, there was no gagging or spitting it out and he opened his mouth to let me feed him more. We are taking it slowly, but he seems to be alright with them. It's not like it's a main source of nutrition.

Haley has another snow day today. We got three inches of snow and then a bunch of freezing rain so we got the call this morning at 6am that school was cancelled. Haley was so happy this morning to hear that. She has been vegging out hardcore, but she also did a few things to help me and Savino out, so I am tolerant.

My keyboard is acting funky, I think it needs cleaned. I need to get a can of that compressed air stuff and clean it out.

I think I am going to look into getting a new laptop. I need one, I've worn off half the letters on the keyboard of this one and I can write it off as a business expense on taxes next year.

Poor Tim still doesn't feel good today but he had to work because he has admissions coming in. He was going to come home early but one of his admissions is very late and it looks like he will be stuck there until the regular time waiting on them to get there. Poor guy.

I have been trying to decide whether I want to do another week of the Mother's Milk tea. It seems to have helped a little bit, it brought my supply back up to where it was when the boy was nursing every hour and a half, but it hasn't done anything spectacular. It tastes, well, bad. I just keep thinking "This is medicine" and chug back the whole cup all at once. I've been taking it 3-4x a day and I have maybe another day's worth of tea bags left. It's not terribly expensive but I just don't know if it is doing enough to keep torturing myself by drinking it.

I reeeaally need to go grocery shopping, we are out of cereal, oatmeal, cheese, basically anything easy to eat with one hand while a baby is screaming. Being on a diet suuucks, but it is even worse when you don't have anything that you can just grab to eat on the run, and lately it feels like I am always on the run.

At least it's Friday! I leave you with pictures...

In the bath with Haley



I loved how his crazy hair caught the light



Passed out for a (brief) nap

Milestone!

I shouldn't be surprised because after having so many babies up in my house, I should know by now, sometimes a milestone just happens, with nothing leading up to it.

Hm, what is going on in this picture?





There is something missing....





"Um, Mom, what are you doing over there?"

Tonight, all at once, my son figured out how to sit by himself without any help! It's like something clicked in his head balance-wise and he just got it. I sat him up, let go.. and that was that! He falls to the side if he lunges for something out of his reach (which is why he is playing with the baby wipes hehe, he kept lunging for it when I was trying to take his picture), but other than that, he is pretty good! The next step of course is him being able to push himself up into a sitting position.

I still can't believe it! We were getting ready for bed (well, I was getting HIM ready for bed) and part of our bedtime routine is belly time, sitting up practice, just working out the last of the energy and practicing skills. I sat him up on the bed, and he tipped over almost right away, but I thought maybe he would have more incentive to sit up longer if I put him on his mattress with his toys and once I did that, he was fine, like an old pro at sitting up. Haley was brushing her teeth in her bathroom and I called her in to see and she lavished the praise on him and ran to get Tim so he could come in and exclaim over it as well. I got a few little videos of him sitting up too.

It's these little milestones that make my throat swell up a little and I get a little teary because it's just one more step away from babyhood and this is it, my last baby, the moments are slipping by so quickly! I am holding onto every last second, because they are so incredibly precious.

So, onto crawling I suppose lol.

"I'm Through With Making Sense"

Well, we'll see how far I get on this entry. I have started and stopped entries (and ended up just deleting them) THREE times over the past three days. Life, it got busy! It didn't help that Tim took yesterday off (at my urging though, so I blame myself) and we spent an extra day running around doing things.

My camera is supposed to ship today! Woohoo! It is coming from NY so we will see how long it takes to get here, I am hoping it arrives no later than Friday. I am So. Excited. I have even been dreaming about taking pictures!

Speaking of dreams, I had another crazy Little House dream. Since we moved, when I dream of the Little House they are always really Crazy dreams. Last night I dreamt that one of Chantal's sisters gave birth on our bed at the Little House, that I was in the bathroom with the door between the two rooms open and I turned around and she was catching her baby. It was one of those really real dreams too, I woke up and was very disoriented.

Savino is teasing me, I know it, with this sleep thing. Saturday night he went down after a bath and nursing and a bottle and slept until almost midnight, he woke up around midnight, nursed again and took another bottle, and went back to sleep... and slept until 5AM!! Without waking up! He was in the exact same spot at 5am when he started squawking that he was when I laid him down at midnight! I sat up, nursed him and laid him back down and after a minute of fussing, he went back to sleep and slept until almost 7:30am when I w as actually awake enough to get up without trying to get him to play own his own for a few minutes so I could rise to consciousness. It was BLISS. I got almost 7 hours of sleep UNINTERRUPTED except to nurse him back to sleep at 5am. I felt so refreshed and rested, it was amazing. Sunday night wasn't quite as good, he woke up around 4am and I was still half asleep so I just put him next to me in the bed out of habit, but he went back to sleep after nursing and we slept pretty good until around 6am when I moved him to his crib and he slept for an hour alone. Last night was pretty good too, he slept until around 4:45am when I brought him into bed again. I think really the key is me being awake enough to sit up and nurse him and then lay him back down rather than just rolling him over into bed next to me and going back to sleep while he nurses. That is a difficult one, I get so sleep deprived that sometimes I just don't even wake up enough to think, "Oh, I ought to sit up and nurse him so I can put him back down in his bed". I think that he is reaching that age where he can sleep on his own, albeit still within arms reach, and I can finally sleep as well.

Anyway, it was a MAJOR success for him and me, I still feel like I am running on recharged batteries for all the sleep! I could get even more if I could manage to get myself into bed before 11pm. I am just embracing my freedom now that he will actually sleep for 4 hours from bedtime to that midnight feeding.

In other Savino news, he is working hard on learning to crawl or scoot. He can scoot himself about 25% of the time on his belly, and he has completely lost all interest in rolling onto his back from his stomach. He can roll onto his stomach from his back, no problem. Still nothing in the other direction though, unless it is completely unintentional, like reaching for a toy that is sort of behind him and rolling over on accident. Sometimes he rolls in his sleep too, but that is also entirely unintentional. But I think that crawling is in his near future, I think he is just going to figure it out soon.

Haley enjoyed her 4 day weekend after her one day at school last week. She was so reluctant to go back to school today, though she looked very cute dressed up in a new sweater and shirt. She needs a haircut, it's getting back below her shoulders again and she wants it trimmed. If I blink, she will be a teenager, it's scary.

We are doing our part to stimulate the local economy by getting a few new things for the house.
At Sears this weekend, I found a plain white china set for 6 on sale for 9.99. Um, Hell yeah! I was so excited, I have wanted a set of plain white dishes for so long and am always too tight fisted to part with the money when I see one that I like. This set is very nice and at that price even I couldn't complain! I also totally caved and let Tim buy a new acoustic guitar on Saturday. Yeah, I am a SUCKER. Oh well, it makes him happy. I find it hard to deny him happiness even when it is totally and completely ridiculous that he should want yet another guitar. We also got a new TV, our old one is some strange offbrand which about four years ago started to clip off the edges of the picture, including the menus on the digital channel guide, so you had to play "fill in the letter" when trying to figure out the names of shows or movies. Yeah. Suck. The new one is super nice, but I don't really watch much TV during the day unless Savino is having one of his nurse-a-thons and there is nothing else to do but sit and be.

Ok, Savino is falling asleep sitting up, I must tend to the baby.

Ok, got him situated in his swing upstairs (thank you new batteries), and hopefully he will take a long nap because his morning nap was like, maybe, 30 minutes? Not long enough.

I am drinking my Mother's Milk tea in an attempt to boost my supply, again. I blame a weekend of running errands and not being home enough, I don't think that Savino nursed quite enough and I was getting worried that my milk was going to start drying up. I don't know if the tea is helping yet or not, but it tastes gross, so I certainly hope it does SOMETHING.

I am trying to resist the lure of Ben and Jerry's in the freezer. I do. not. need. But I want!

We had lunch on Sunday with my sister-in-law and her fiancee. They have been together for a few years now, but she was sporting a huge rock for the first time on Sunday, apparently her fiancee proposed to her (again, I think) in front of their whole church in the middle of the service. I was totally amused by all of that, especially because my sister-in-law, Dawn, only joined the church because that is where her fiancee, Steve, goes to church. She's one of THOSE women, she changes to match her mate, like a chameleon. Anyway, I thought it was cute and sweet, and funny. They've been living together for awhile now, but her divorce from her psycho ex is just now finalized, so I guess he re-proposed to her and gave her a huge rock to cement it. They had plans to get married last year, but Dawn's psycho ex has been dragging their divorce out for like five years, and it STILL wasn't finalized at that point so they had to postpone it. They had purchased a cruise to Jamaica and Mexico and everything for their honeymoon. The trip was nonrefundable, so they went anyway, but the wedding had to wait. They still haven't set a date, but Dawn was flushed with pleasure to have her ring.

It started snowing AGAIN after it had warmed up enough to melt the almost four inches of snow that we had last week. I am so done with winter. I hate the snow. I hate the ice. I hate the cold. HATEHATEHATE. The warmer weather cannot come quickly enough for me. Poor Savino, I am waiting to switch him into the bigger carseat out of his infant seat until the weather warms up because I can bundle him up in his infant seat and zip up his bunting over him and carry the whole seat into the stores without getting him out so he stays warm. I think that he HATES that seat though, and is ready for a bigger carseat, so hopefully it will thaw out for good soon.

We've decided to try and go somewhere on vacation with the rebate checks that will be coming closer to summer. We have no idea where yet. I would like to go back to Florida, but the logistics kind of scare me. I am terrified of trying to fly with Savino and being THOSE parents who have the screaming kid on the plane, though a direct flight to Orlando is only two hours. And the prospect of driving down is even worse, so I don't know. I long for the beaches and the sun and there is so much there that the kids would enjoy, at least, that Haley would enjoy. We are definitely taking the kids to Disney, but probably when Savino is a few years older so that he can appreciate it as well. There are several amusement parks within a few hours driving distance of us though, so maybe we can do something like that. One place I was looking at as a possibility is this big lodge that is on the grounds of a water park and within shouting distance of another amusement park. I don't know if Haley is up for roller coasters yet, at least the big ones, but she gets all crazy and hyper at the suggestion of going on vacation. I'd like to DO something with the money anyway, rather than just spend it on stuff. I'm all into making some fun memories for us. We look back on our other vacations that we've taken with a lot of happiness, so I think we ought to keep the ball rolling.

Ok, I better take advantage of the sleeping baby and get some work done, or some cleaning, or SOMETHING productive!

Under Construction

I am still trying to figure things out here. My pictures weren't displaying correctly with the template I was using and they dont display right with the custom templates I was trying out, so I don't know what is going on here. I will have to hammer at it when I am not so tired. It's midnight, I'm old, and I have a 5 mo. old so I am allowed to be tired. Or something. Anyway.