fun stuff

you have to check this out: overdrawn

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we've been under quarantine.

well, this has been quite a crazy week. kieran has been home sick since tuesday. he's had a fever for four days which is unusual for him & a snotty nose. it has been challenging to be up at night with both a sick kid & an infant. between diaper changes, feedings, burping & rocking & wiping noses, rubbing backs, dosinfg medicine, trips to the bathroom, aaron & i are both pretty tired. i'm lucky if i can get a shower in during the day, it's been really hard finding a minute to go pump when the kids are all content, & aaron has been busy busy busy with work & being self employed makes it hard to just take a day off whenever. i've been trying to get to target all week & while i have no problem taking the baby with me, i can't drag kieran all over to run errands....ugh. i'm starting to wish i was working somewhere full time. at least i wouldn't have to bring an infant seat into the bathroom with me.

oh, and the last thing i'll whine about is that aaron took kieran to the doctor yesterday & it was assumed that he just had a bad cold, but today they got test results back & turns out it's the flu. we went to go get the flu medicine that they said would shorten the duration of it--it was $130. i laughed, said that was ridiculous, & did not get it. after four days of being sick i think kieran's starting to get a little better, that kind of money is outrageous for something that i can't even be sure of will really help.

oh yeah, & really this is the last last thing i'll whine about: madyn seems to have a cold. we're trying to hard to keep her from getting what kieran has but she already has a runny nose & is snorty & congested. i hate when tiny babies are sick, it's so sad.

on the bright side, i did manage to get a couple decent kid pictures for our holiday card! being absolutely insane, i decided the other morning that even though i was completely overwhelmed & still hadn't showered in two days, it would be a good idea to photograph the children for our holiday card. i only threw a few tantrums during the photo shoot--it's incredibly difficult to direct three kids, one being sick, one being a three year old spaz, & one without control of her head. but i was actually surprised with the pictures at the end of it, quite successful after all. thank goodness for a few victories.

in conclusion, thank god it's friday :)

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feeding kids is hard

so, things are going relatively well, as i mentioned in the last post-especially considering we're juggling three kids now. & when i'm out with madyn people will admire her (everyone LOVES a newborn! you're like a celebrity when you hold one, i'm telling you!) & they frequently ask, "oh, is this your first?" and when you tell them it's your third it somehow almost sounds like you're saying, "no, it's my sixth." they always seem surprised. i don't know why, i'll take it to mean, "really? wow, because you look much too young to have three children!" i'm sure that's what they mean...

anyway, we have experienced one small glitch though in these past two weeks. madyn is quite the hungry girl, is has seemed. from her first minutes out in the world she was opening her mouth & angeling it toward people's chests, ready to nurse. she wanted to nurse constantly. now, i don't want to scare any of you young, childless women who hope to procreate someday but........nursing is really hard. & ever since i had kieran i feel even more compelled to at least mention it as no one told me this. i went to the breastfeeding class at the hospital & confidently told people, "oh yeah, i'm going to nurse." why wouldn't i? and it sounded so natural--i didn't even understand why there were books devoted to nursing & it's instruction. well, then the baby arrives & it's not like what they taught in the class--"when the baby opens his mouth, you just POP him right on!" nope, it was nothing like that. the pop never happened. kieran & i would try to hook up for 1/2 an hour at times. he never seemed to open his mouth wide enough & they failed to mention that if they don't open wide enough & your latch isn't right, it can KILL! sensitive parts of your body can suffer! things get raw, things ache, they can even bleed! it was so hard. we would get assistance from a lactation consultant whenever possible but after a week of nursing (& let me tell you, when you're nursing round the clock, a week of feeding a baby can equal 50+ feedings) we introduced some formula. with kieran, i returned to work at 6 weeks & it was nearly impossible to pump enough milk so he was doing mostly formula & then nursing when i was home with him but only for 2-3 months. with andie i armed myself with all those nursing books i had scoffed at, reading up throughout the pregnancy, i purchased the best nursing pillow on the market, i was determined to make nursing work & felt at least prepared for the challenge. well, it wasn't that challenging. nursing andie was much less painful & relatively easy.

this time, i hadn't really given nursing a thought one way or the other & knew i wanted to nurse but wasn't going to obsess about it. unfortunately, we've hit a slight snag. as i mentioned, madyn is a hungry girl & was constantly wanted to nurse, even though it took several days for my milk to come in. by the time it did, i was already sore. & then it just didn't get better. so at five days old i took her to the breasfeeding clinic at the hospital & we weighed her before a feeding & then the lactation consultant helped me to get her latched on correctly & i nursed her. we weighed her. no weight gain. very odd. nursed her on the other side. no weight gain. fractions of an ounce, not even an ounce. very odd, especially because i know i produce several ounces on each side......so i still had to give her formula before we returned home, she was just screaming because she was hungry. the next visit a few days later the same thing happened. finally, after the third occassion of this the lactation consultant realized madyn was chewing & chomping. she was clamping the milk off & not getting anything. apparently, she's a biter & while biting the bottle nipple will give her milk, biting on me doesn't. i worried that by giving her a bottle we had "trained" her to do this, or at least reinforced it, but she assured me that that had nothing to do with it. she was born doing this & we have an evaluation set up for monday with a speech pathologist who specializes in infant feeding issues. she might also need to see an occupational therapist if she has weak muscles that need to be strengthened.

so, in the meantime i'm pumping milk for bottles (seriously the most not fun thing ever, nothing like the closeness, bonding experience of nursing) & we're doing formula. pumping makes things challenging in that you have to constantly be close to home & it's time consuming & it feels like you're twice as busy with feedings--the pumpings + the bottle feedings. it's like a full time job! but it's worth it for a happy, healthy baby :)

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so as of yesterday, madyn is two weeks old. so far so good. we're definitely still adjusting, i foresee the adjustment lasting.....oh, about a year. well, that's really far off--there are so many changed throughout the first year & everytime you think your kid is on some kind of schedule, things change on you.

in any case, madyn is awesome really. so far (knock on wood of course) she seems like a really easy-going baby. she is just starting to have periods of alertness & it's so nice to see her eyes wide open & she holds her head up for a bit. otherwise she's a big eater & a great sleeper. the big question about newborns is always, "how does she sleep at night?" some kids wake up every hour throughout the night for weeks, if not months, it just seems like a crap shoot. but for these two weeks, madyn has been sleeping for four hour blocks at night--yee haw! i can handle that. she eats around 8pm, sleeps, wakes at 12 to eat, sleeps til 4, wakes to eat, sleeps til 7:30/8am.

if you don't have kids, you really can't explain what it's like to have constant interruptions in your sleep to feed or change a baby. it's not like pulling all-nighters in college, it's not like merely staying up late & only getting three hours of sleep. it's being jolted out of deep, REM sleep over & over. you are just drained. & usually to feed an infant at night isn't just a minute or two, it can take 20 minutes to an hour.

to be honest, there's just no way to prepare for a new baby. sure this third time around i know more of what to expect, i know how just getting out of the house can take 45 minutes (that's just me & the baby, you add kieran & andie into that, tack on another 1/2 hour). but still, each baby is different & you have no idea how things are going to go until he/she is here. madyn reminds us a lot of kieran as a baby. kieran was easy-going, wanted to eat all the time, good napper. but andie, man, that was a different story. from day 1 she was active: she held her head up in the hospital & also tried to sit upright in her infant seat when we put her in it to go home, she was so determined. she "cruised" around furniture at 6 months, walked just before 9 months. she was always on the go. sure she had a brother to keep up with, but it was also just who she was & she was just really active. she also never wanted to nap. i remember writing, "andie hasn't taken a nap in three days--how can she not sleep at all as a newborn??" and she really never did nap. she would fall asleep for 5-10 minutes & then refuse to sleep anymore. one time she cried for almost two hours in her crib before i surrendered & decided to end the "torture" of a consistent nap schedule. so this time around, having another girl, i was actually kind of nervous. we knew that we could handle it-we had survived a high maintnance baby, we were capable to doing it.....if we had to. but madyn seems really mellow & loves to sleep, yay! we can't wait to see more of her personality as she grows :)

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conversations with andie

last week i picked andie up from school with her friend maddie. as soon as she got into the car she tells me seriously, "ezra ate a bug. "

"ezra ate a bug?"

"yep. he ate a bug. and then he died."

and maddie is nodding & corroborating andie's story.

"what? he didn't die!" i said to them.

"NO! he did die!" andie was quite insistent about this bizarre story. later at home i have andie tell aaron the story again & she was able to clarify for us that ezra did eat a bug, but he was okay, but it was the bug that was dead. hmmmm.

so today when i picked the girls up from school, as an afterthought i figured maybe the teacher could fill me in. "andie was telling me a story last week about ezra......eating a bug......." & i wish i hadn't even said the last part,".......and then he died...." yeah, the teacher laughed & pretty much thought i was crazy. she had no knowledge of ezra eating a bug, no bells rang when i told her any of this. so i felt kind of dumb. and ezra was there, he seemed absolutely fine. i just don't know where kids get this stuff.

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:)