Hellobee

When I was 30-something weeks pregnant, I sat in a classroom at the hospital where I would soon make my grand entrance into motherhood.  I was there for a class called “Breastfeeding: The Best Beginning.”  I had already read all sorts of articles online, followed blogs of attachment parenting enthusiasts, and was excited to learn more about the mystery that was breastfeeding.

I sat, I listened and I watched.  I heard mantras and buzzwords like “breast is best” and “liquid gold.”  I held a baby doll in the cradle, cross-cradle and football positions, daydreaming about Little C’s upcoming arrival and how peacefully we would bond as we learned this new skill together.

Fast forward a dozen weeks.  Little C arrived, and I was over-the-moon.  I couldn’t wait to begin my breastfeeding journey.  I watched in awe as he tried to latch at my breast while the doctor stitched me up, and I patiently spent the next two days with a rotating staff of nurses and a lactation consultant at the hospital re-position him, guide me, shift an angle here, rearrange his wiggly arms there.

In a fog with a baby who was labeled “Small for Gestational Age,” I fed him and fed him to make sure his sugar levels didn’t dip too low (which would have required a NICU visit).  Together, we just eked by, with a tiny bit of temporary help from an SNS feeding system.  Little C thrived through my struggles, but the casualty in this early marathon of fumbled feedings?  My nipples.

I came home from the hospital with raw, bloody nipples and continued determination not to give up on my goal of breastfeeding exclusively for a minimum of six months, if not a year or beyond.  I am as stubborn as stubborn gets, and I forged ahead through a painful engorgement, weeks of cracked bleeding nipples (eventually repaired with Lansinoh Soothies and Newman’s Nipple Cream), and painful plugged ducts.  Three weeks postpartum, I came down with mastitis, facing flu-like symptoms that actually turned out to be just that: rotovirus.  I sobbed as I nursed Little C perched on the toilet, unable to digest food, and for over a week, I ate nearly nothing , lost every ounce of my baby weight and continued nursing.

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We live in a very, very small city house. We have no front or backyard, no garage, and a very small living room. But because we live incredibly close to a great park within a fantastic neighborhood, the limitations of our living space usually doesn’t bother us. Kind of like when you go on vacation to a fabulous place, you don’t worry about booking a fancy hotel room because you plan on being out exploring your surroundings. But as Miss H is getting bigger and more active, we know that keeping her happy and engaged in different activites is important. And sometimes she just gets bored in the house, especially when the weather doesn’t cooporate and we can’t get outside.

Which brings me to our porch. The space is just big enough that we can keep a table and a few other things out there. But up until recently the porch was just a holding place for a whole lot of stuff that didn’t belong anywhere else. It was basically our junk room!

So a couple of weeks ago we cleaned the porch out completely. I ordered an outdoor rug to bring some bright color into the space. I opted for one that is basically a plastic mat; I wanted something that would be easy to clean off if needed and I wanted something fairly inexpensive so I wouldn’t have to stress if it got ruined. I found this one from Overstock that works perfectly for us. We set up Miss H’s water and sand play table and her table and chair set. We also planted some flowers and herbs and have them on a small table that is right at Miss H’s height – perfect for her to learn about watering plants and seeing them grow! She loves flowers and is always so nervous to touch them.

As you can see, it’s not a big porch, but just perfect for a toddler.

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Engaging my children with paper and colors has saved me numerous times. It’s a quiet activity for church or wedding service, to fill time in the waiting area of a doctor’s office or an afternoon of a rainy day. There have even been instances when I’ve handed them a post-it pad and pen just so I could finish a phone conversation. But I love the doodling activity beyond the captivation. I love the freedom that blank paper gives. And, while for the wee ones, masterpieces are probably not being made, the process of it all is wiring the brain for greater things to come. That brain stuff gets me so excited!

The issue that I run into is managing all the paper. A neat stack of paper soon becomes disordered and, it’s happened before, someone takes it upon themselves to ‘make it rain’ paper. But I have a way to keep things orderly and it’s very, very easy.

This book-built-to-fall-apart has so many good parts. Pages can easily be removed and replaced whenever it’s needed using the same elastic and stick. It’s a paper pad that has no end! It lays flat which, as a doodler myself, is ideal. It doesn’t need to be fancy or decorated and the paper stays where it should.

Here’s how to make one.

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We’ve basically been living out of our diaper bag these days! Here’s what’s in there:

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Think about the last time your child did something you felt required some sort of “disciplining.” What did you do? Did you give a time out? Did you talk it through, discussing what happened and what your child could do differently next time? Did you give a swat on the hand, or on the bottom? Employ a ‘natural consequence’? Now imagine that you are the parent of a challenging child and that these instances happen many, many times each day. How much energy and attention do you suppose you’d be giving to negative behaviors?

I always thought that I would be a natural consequences and discussion type of parent. Ellie doesn’t want to wear her jacket? She’ll be cold. Ellie doesn’t want to put her bike in the garage when she’s done playing with it? It might get backed over by a tractor. Depending on what her behavior is, we might also do some role playing or talk about ways to handle it: “I saw how frustrated you were when Tommy took the toy you were playing with! What do you think you could do next time instead of hitting?”

With Ellie, these methods seemed to backfire. Natural consequences? They were almost so novel to her that she would deliberately do things to see what would happen next. Talking? Holy cow did that ever just piss her off royally and add fuel to the fire. The more we would talk and try to calm her down by being understanding and empathetic, the more angry and hysterical she would become. It certainly didn’t seem to encourage her to employ any of the strategies we were so carefully trying to instill. We switched to time outs. She discovered really quick that there was nothing to keep her in the chair, and we decided that any method that relied on physical power-plays was dangerous; it would only work as long as she was physically small enough for us to dominate her, and it showed that the bigger person won simply by virtue of having larger muscles. We thought that was the wrong message to send. We moved to 123 Magic. Same result.

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In my previous post about preparing for a sibling, reader Sparkles mentioned how she set up a basket of things for her older daughter to play with while she was nursing.  It never occurred to me that I had a toddler who would need to be occupied during this time, and I really liked this idea.

When I had Drake we lived in a one level condo and I preferred nursing in the bedroom on the bed.  I could stretch my feet out and have the TV running to keep me entertained (Drake would nurse for hours sometimes), as well as have the option of shutting the door to keep the pets out if I didn’t want them coming so close to the baby. In our current home, our bedroom is upstairs and Drake’s playroom is downstairs in the family room.  Since I think I would still prefer the option of laying on the bed to nurse as well as keeping the pets out, I would need to keep Drake in the room with me so I could still supervise him and nurse Chocolate baby.

After reading Sparkles’ suggestions I have started creating my own nursing basket of things kept in our bedroom solely for the purpose of occupying Drake when we are there. I plan on telling him that these toys stay only in mommy and daddy’s room and that they are special for when mommy feeds the baby. Sparkles recommends quiet toys which makes sense, and for the most part I have stuck with that idea. Here are the things I have set aside for now:

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I was inspired by Caroline’s post to create a DIY gift for my husband for Father’s Day. I thought a keychain was the perfect idea because it wouldn’t clutter up our house (as DIYs often do!) and it is sufficiently masculine.  I wanted, however, for the baby to get involved and unfortunately he’s too little to do any detail work!

I had seen air-dry clay thumbprint pendants floating around on Pinterest, but I wanted something sturdier since keys tend to get tossed around, and something that looked a little more finished and professional since my husband would carry it with him all the time. I came up with a polymer clay pendant nestled inside a bezel.  I loved the result, and my husband loved his handmade present (pun intended!). You could use this same DIY to make a necklace, a fob, or a holiday or window ornament.

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