7 posts tagged “daughter”

My summer project is to potty train my two-year-old girl and three-year-old boy. The latest idea I've had is to have them sit on their little potties while I let them watch some TV. This is special treat for them, because I've become pretty particular about not watching TV during the day. I don't turn it off for any noble-I-think-it-rots-your-brain kind of reason, I just don't like the tone of the house with the TV on all day. It make me edgy to have it on all day (but I think I can make the sacrifice if the end result is potty trained little children!).

So, this is either genius or completely insane. I guess we'll find out soon enough.

Pottytime

Whoa, I can barely stay awake and it's only 7:30 p.m. here. This is what I feel like:

Lazyboy

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My family celebrates Thanksgiving on a different day from the rest of America. Their Thanksgiving will be Saturday. I'll get back to you about that on Saturday. Today was Thanksgiving at my in-law's. The spread was beautiful and delicious, the house looked great, and my mother-in-law did a wonderful job as hostess. Now, I consider myself a good parent to my children and I believe I am talented in many ways, but in many of the traditional homemaker skills I am sorely lacking. I always get all inadequate feeling around food and decorating holidays. The more important food and decorating is to the holiday, the more I tend to clam up at gatherings. I'm working on ways to get past this, but for now, it is what it is. So, as wonderful as this holiday is and should be for me, I never come home feeling that way.

It didn't help that this year the baby (the little baby) woke up with a fever and so she was cranky most of the day. The other baby (the big baby--no, not my husband) did his usual stunt routine and proceeded to trip and fall and wail the whole time. This routine is very jarring for people not around him often. And my three-year-old? Well, he's three. He is pushing every boundary out there.

I wanted to write a thankfulness post today, but I'm just not feeling it right now. And I know that should be all the more reason to write about my thankfulness, but I just gotta purge a little frustration first. I'm thankful that I have a place to do that. :)

This year has really blown by for me. I know tomorrow is Thanksgiving, but I still can't believe that tomorrow's Thanksgiving. Then there's Christmas, and then on to a new year. I keep trying to cherish and remember those little moments with my children, but it all seems to be rushing by so fast. Emma is not a newborn anymore. While I'm thrilled that she is progressing well, I will miss the little bundle of cuddle that you only get from a newborn. Micah is marching headstrong out of babyhood into full fledged toddler-hood. He wants so badly to play with the big boys. My big boy Joel is learning so many new things so fast lately that I worry I'm not keeping up with the pace. It's an awesome thing to see a child grow to better understand the world around him, to watch as things he was once obliviously ignorant towards suddenly bloom with meaning. It goes fast.  

Emma by Jane Austen

My husband is a high school language arts teacher. For whatever reason he has never taught the book Emma by Jane Austen. This year he's getting a chance teach the book. In fact, his students choose for this book to be the next reading for the class. I've never read Emma and I'm planning on reading the book right along with his class. I'm kind of excited about it. I mean, the book shares the same name as my daughter. I gotta read it, right? Now, I have seen some of the Emma movies and have read other books by Jane Austen, so I've got an idea what to expect, but there's always something fun about actually reading the book. I think I'm also going to participate in some of the reader response activities that the students will be assigned. That will definitely give me fodder to keep all the NoBloPoMo-ness of it all going.

It's official, I've got an Amazon Baby. She's over 90th percentile on everything.

It's funny my first born, who weighed the same as her at birth, was always right at the 50th percentile. My second, who only weighed five ounces less at birth, was always at the lower end, around 25th percentile.

I went to a restaurant last night* and astonished a lady when I told her the baby was only six weeks old. Before this happened I would have thought I would be offended by her reaction (it was a big reaction), but when it actually happened I loved it. I just smiled and thought "yep, that's my fat, breastfed baby!" That's the thing, I think it would have freaked me out if she were formula fed. I've had varying degrees of success at breastfeeding with my other two children and both of them were eventually formula fed. If I'd been formula feeding her (and didn't already have the experience of two other kids to lean on) I'd have worries of overfeeding her, but you can't overfeed a breastfed baby. She just eats what she eats and that's the right amount for her.

*I hate going to restaurants lately. I have a three-year-old, a one-year-old and a newborn. It's not that my kids are terrors in the restaurant. They are actually pretty well behaved, but that still means telling my three-year-old to sit down and eat his food a few times, wrestle my one-year-old back into his high chair a few times (those stupid, futile buckles never hold him in) and make sure he has a never ending supply of finger foods while also consoling and nursing the baby. She always wants to cluster feed between 7 p.m. and 10 p.m. When do you think we go to restaurants? She's also a little fussy during that time. I never get to eat in the restaurant. I always take a box home. Great, cold (reheated) expensive food. This was a good idea?

I've had a crazy whirlwind of a first six weeks postpartum.

• My husband and I are the registrars for a summer camp. Every Sunday afternoon while the camp is in session we are out at camp to check kids in for registration. This year Emma went with me. She's visited the camp every week of her life since she's was born. Two of those six weeks were almost entirely spent out at camp. This will be her first entire week away from camp.
• I was never much of a baby wearer with my other two kids, but out of necessity I've been wearing Emma a lot and now I'm loving it!
• For someone that was never much of a baby wearer I have a surprisingly sizable number of baby wearing devices. I have Baby Björn (I also had a Infantino baby carrier, but I gave it away), a Maya Wrap style ring sling, a Moby Wrap and three Slinglings pouch slings.
  
• Lately I'm loving the pouch slings.
  
• Breastfeeding is thankfully going well. And because of camp, I've had a lot of practice nursing in public. It's more nerve wrecking than it should be. Thanks America!
  
• I love Belly Huggers! Turn any shirt into a nursing shirt.
• I've had a few baby blues and crazy hormonal moments, but thankfully so far nothing that looks like postpartum depression.
  
• Our family took a mini vacation to the Lipscomb Lectureships (now known as the "Summer Celebration"). It was a bittersweet experience. The campus is beautiful, the people are very friendly, staying in the dorms (for super cheap) was fun, the organizational flow of the classes and keynote speakers was great, the children's programs were wonderful... So many reasons why I would love to participate in an event like this every year, but the teachings in the classes were saddening to hear. In spite of what people tell you, you still think it can't be as bad as it's made out to be, but I was really saddened by the teachings I heard.
  
• My postpartum healing has gone very well and pretty quick this time around.
  
• Movable Type 4 will be coming out soon and I'm incredibly excited! I'm hoping the beta testing will be finished up before the new school year starts so I can install the new version for the student blogs. Seriously, I get all giddy thinking about all the stuff I'm going to be able to do with the new version. I'm a complete and hopeless geek. I can't deny it.
• And last, but not least, a gratutious baby photo:

Emma 6 Weeks

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