2002-12-18
Another new one here.
The latest with Clay:
- He still isn't walking though he has begun to stand unassisted. Just for a few seconds at a time, and he seems to do best when he doesn't realize he's standing.
- It's hard to identify, but he's becoming so much more of a person. He smiles and laughs and watches things so intently you can see the wheels turning. He seems to have an increasingly strong grasp of cause and effect. It's very compelling to observe.
- He's eating more. My father was in town for the weekend and we all went to a barbecue joint. Clay ate more pork bbq, coleslaw, and Brunswick stew than I would've thought possible. Last night he ate about a third of a cup of chili! Not especially mild, either. I think he's been indifferent to a lot of the things we've offered him because they are too bland. Is this because I've eaten lots of spicy foods while nursing? I can't help feeling sort of proud of him. He's clearly inherited my cast-iron stomach.
Speaking of nursing, my pumping days are winding down. Here's a message I sent to my mailing list of pumping mothers:
Clay is 11.5 months old and I'm getting close to the end of pumping. My routine was three times a day at work M-F, plus first thing in the morning and last thing at night seven days a week. Last week I dropped to twice a day at work and then over the weekend dropped the at-home pumps. This week I've been getting away with pumping just once at work, around noon.
It's kind of hard, after months of working to get and keep my supply up, to watch it dwindle. Even though it's bittersweet, I was getting weary of pumping and it's nice getting this time back to myself. I hope to be able to continue nursing when we're together, and I have enough in the freezer to keep sending milk to daycare for another month or two.
A note on the freezer situation. We had massive power outages a couple weeks back. As soon as the lights went out I thought of my freezer stash--about 500 oz. in the bottom of a chest freezer (with frozen food on top). Power went out at 5 a.m. Thursday. I kept the freezer closed and hoped for the best. By Saturday afternoon, with no idea when the power would be back, I looked in the yellow pages and found a dry ice vendor.
I opened the freezer once to see if the milk was still frozen--it was (I'm sure it helped that it was about 50 degrees in our house--no heat). So I picked up $30 worth of DI, which the vendor said would keep it for three days. Came home, put the DI on top of the milk, then packed the freezer with blankets. Had I known that the power was going to came on later that night, I probably could've gotten away with not using the DI.
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