Days 2-4

Life got in the way of blogging my latest pictures, but here are a few more days.

Day 2 is a picture of these pretty pink and yellow snapdragons in a neighbor's garden. The overcast evening actually made for some pretty and soft light here.

Day 3 is this pretty sky right before sunset. The sun is already "oranging-up" the houses, the low hanging clouds from the front moving out appear purple leaving the sky this amazing electric blue. I couldn't capture it with my little camera, but the way the sky was laid out, it made everything on ground level look absolutely tiny like when you're in an airplane looking down on all the toy-model-looking houses and roads. Kind of strange having the sensation of feeling like a little bug with this giant sky!

And day 4. I had a tough time finding something I think is pretty, so I decided to approach it from another angle. It may just spark a new project! The large field near our house is covered in weeds, and normally we kind of complain about how rough and often sharp they are when we're throwing frisbee to the dogs. But I found if I got my camera close enough to them, these "ugly" plants are actually quit beautiful. The leaves on this plant are only about an inch tall but pack in a ton of color with their lime-green bodies and crimson-red tips.

7-Day Challenge, Take 2. Day 1

Sometimes we all need to whine. I wrote a long post about how I am currently feeling overwhelmed, but after writing it, venting it, and getting it out of my brain, I feel much better. And less whiny. Especially now that my little one is sleeping peacefully and I can go take a shower. I am doing another 7 Day Challenge like I did 2 years ago (funnily enough when Oliver was Ian's age, and at the end of February/beginning of March, go figure). My favorite pictures from then are this one and this one. Here's the picture from today - a tree in full pink bloom today, another overcast day.

In case you're wondering what on earth the 7-Day Challenge is, it's a photography challenge I give myself when I'm feeling "off" with the world for a long time. I drive around until I find something of beauty that challenges my foul mood and view on things, take a picture, and post it. It is really therapeutic (for me anyway), and then I have proof everyday for a week of how wonderful this life and this world is. This is certainly a good one to start with, and is in a grouping of trees I drive by on the way to Oliver's school just 10 minutes away.

Deep thoughts...

I want to share mine.

A mine. of sorts:

Very DEEP hole in South Africa, good for mining diamonds which are created in the Earth's mantle.

The tallest mountain range is underwater...this is not it, this is a vent. Very DEEP under the ocean.

DEEP and anxiety-producing thought.

Woah, that's DEEP, dude. And tasty.

Top of a volcano, very DEEP hole into the Earth

Very deep, very dangerous hole.

Because we all have DEEP thoughts...and occasional bad gas. Either way.

Because too many people take themselves WAY too seriously. (No, I never have.)
That is all.
;)

At the Playground

In my attempt to have more pictures of my kiddos, here are more pictures of my kiddos! We went to the park today with some friends.

My sweet Mr. O

 Oliver and Brielle, or "The Mommy and The Daddy" driving

You will notice the matching clothing here. Upon Oliver's insistence. I have to admit, it IS kind of cute and it likely won't last long.

Cutie patootie, Ian, 15 1/2 months old!

Such a gorgeous day in March! I wish it would stay like this until next winter. Wishing big here!

Weaned, sniff

It's official. Ian is done nursing. He's done, done DONE I say! Like most things I'm finding about motherhood, it didn't match the experience in my head.

Oliver didn't nurse. He was tube-fed, then bottle-fed both formula and breastmilk while in the NICU the four days after he was born. We tried nursing...and failed at nursing. He did it ONE time while I had a team of lactation specialists with me. But he only drank from one side, and totally satisfied, left me in horrible pain on the other engorged side. When we got home, we tried and tried for a week, which doesn't sound long, but when every attempt ended in tears for both of us, and me feeling like an utter failure as a mother and a woman turning to my pump that took an hour to extract just a few ounces, I decided to formula-feed exclusively. Everything you hear about women feeling completely inadequate and "less-than" when they have real difficulty nursing totally applied to me. Part of being a mother was to nurse your baby, and if you couldn't, then you weren't "really" a mother. I didn't hold this standard for other women, just myself...I found out. My thought was, "I might as well be the babysitter since I'm doing the same job. I can't even feed him." My husband and mother tried comforting me by talking about the long history of nurse-maids, and how this was probably a common-enough problem to have a word for a surrogate "nurser" (is that even a word?) in every language. While tough, and going from 100% milk production to 0% overnight, it was also incredibly painful. I appreciated Nich being able to get up with Oliver at night to feed him, and that we could leave him with family for over an hour and not have to rush home to feed. I didn't REALLY understand that until I had Ian.

Baby Oliver with his feeding tubes and monitors just a few days old

Ian nursed. He was an immediate CHAMP. A natural. From hours after he was born and for months after, he was fast, clean, and super easy. With him, I figured I'd try to nurse and expected it not to work. When it did, and worked REALLY well, I was left with a quandry - to nurse or not nurse? It was weird to be the only one waking up with him at night, and weird that I was the only one who could feed him. So weird. I was suddenly tied to him more closely for his pure survival, and I suddenly realized this pressure. I worked so hard to rid myself of the wonderful ideas I had about nursing when I had Oliver, and now I saw the benefit of being able to bottle-feed anywhere, know if he was getting enough, and not worry if I was there or not when he got hungry (not that it mattered since I was always there anyway). During his first two weeks of life (while it was still a little painful) I toyed with the idea of trying both nursing and formula feeding. But he was so happy while nursing, playing with his little ears, that it was too hard to resist. It was so fast, so clean, and no pesky bottles. And he was such a good sleeper from the start, I only had to wake twice a night to feed him, and I could stay in bed and the natural hormones released allowed me to drift off right after he was back in his little cradle. So EASY. I decided I'd do it for six months.

Then he turned a year old...still nursing once or twice a day - at night and sometimes in the mornings too. I got greedy. While he was tiny, I started to enjoy the quiet, peaceful moments just he and I shared in the middle of the night, and our cuddle time in the mornings while we both sleepily woke up to start the day. By a year old, it was such a calming, connecting time before bedtime to fill his belly with a little snack and covering him with kisses. Bedtime is one of the few times I am guaranteed one-on-one time with each of my boys, and I covet those moments.

Now he's 15 months old, and he has weaned himself. He eats all solid foods, never made the transition to formula or a bottle - straight to sippy cups at 6 months old. He's oddly independent and already wants to try everything and do everything Oliver does. In the mornings, Ian is ready for fruit and waffles, not milk. Ok, we still had bedtime. Well now he just stares at me and giggles in anticipation of the bedtime ritual of songs and kisses and wants nothing to do with nursing anymore. What I first worried was going to be a difficult and possibly intrusive task, turned into this amazing connection and special time together, with a bond only he and I shared. I think I finally found the happy medium between nursing be EVERYTHING and nursing being scary. And now I miss it. I so miss it. Even though I was probably producing barely an ounce a day that last month or so, I miss it. My baby is officially not a baby anymore. Sigh.

picture update

I realized I don't have many recent pictures of my boys, and by recent I mean in the past three months or so. For a 15 month old, that's a lot of lifetime :)

I snapped a few pictures of these guys playing around

My baby is starting to look like a real KID now. Well, without the hair. I am so glad he has my hair growth so I know he'll look like my baby for at least another year!

And someone please tell me when Oliver started looking 12? I feel like he looks so much older in these photographs than he does in real life. Perhaps I'm kidding myself. If that's the case, I'm happy to kid away! I'm not ready for these two to get old, can you tell?

These two like doing EVERYTHING together, and Oliver often insists that they dress alike. They have several matching shirts and pants, and I try to get some that are SIMILAR but not totally matching...I don't want to be the crazy mom who thinks she should have had twins. I promise, it's Oliver, ha ha ha!!