Solids

Given who reads this blog (you know who you are!) I feel like I shouldn't write that I'm somewhat frustrated with nursing. But I am. And I'd like help.

I came across this article about baby-led solids introduction and it made a bit of sense. Maybe I'll try giving John big pieces of food which he can bite pieces off of if he desires. The foods we've had the most success with are cheerios and the dissolve-in-your-mouth super-processed stars, which, of course, John feeds to himself. Maybe John would grow to like banana if he could feed it to himself?

Is there a way to let a one-year-old feed yogurt to himself without needing to hose him off afterwards?

When I started out on this journey, I thought it would be hard to get John to nurse for a long time. Dan's mom says Dan "weaned" himself at 7 months (right, Janet?) and I thought it would be a task to discourage John from doing the same. Yet, John is nearly one and eating, tops, 40 calories solids per day.

Why am I frustrated? Is it cultural? I try not to tell people about John's nursing habits unless I know them quite well and I skirt the question when people ask about solids. My "birth-pal" and close friend is in the process of totally weaning her son who is four days younger than John. Certainly, my frustration is partly cultural.

It certainly isn't economic! Nursing is probably about as economical as it gets!

It is health-related, to some extent. I wonder if my joint issues could be caused by breastfeeding hormones. Afterall, joints loosen during pregnancy. Maybe mine just haven't tightened up fully again?

We took a very hands-off approach to John's stiff neck, believing it would become stretched out as he grew up. Instead, it caused the deformation of his skull and John is now old enough to fight against neck stretches. Maybe if we had done neck stretches from the first weeks when we noticed it, we could have avoided the long term consequences. What I learned from that is to be more proactive about John's care.

Any encouragement for a somewhat discouraged nursing mama? Ah. Maybe I should have expected to EBF for a full year. Then this would just seem normal.

Paper, paper, paper

My doctor declared John will either be an academic or a logger!

I've been having joint issues since sometime last spring and have been tested for a whole slew of things (all of which have come back normal). I went back for more tests last week and the doctor (who is awesome, btw) tried to find things for John to play with. He dropped the red ball, keys, bells, and all other knick-knacks she could find.

"Well, John, I'm out of toys for you," said the doctor.

"Do you have a piece of paper?" I asked.

She did, and John played with it for the remainder of the appointment.

We let John play with paper during church last night (we have *long* services!) and when tired, he has been known to put himself to sleep by tearing a napkin to shreds. He likes opening and shutting folded paper and he often "reads" to himself a book for twenty or more minutes!

Who would have known??? Is this normal? Is paper really so exciting but I just take it for granted?

We're done with the band but we're moving onto... (drumroll please)

A TOT Collar!!!

Between exercises at home, which are awful because they cause John to scream a lot, and exercises with the PT, John has achieved a full range of motion in his neck muscles. HOWEVER, he refuses to use the range of motion so this is the next step. I've gotten the prescription from the doctor and we'll start this in the next few weeks.

John appears to not want to walk. He's very strong and has great balance, but won't stand up apart from holding onto my pants or the couch. His legs turn to Jell-O if you try to hold his hands but he can do twirls if he has one hand on a couch. I guess he doesn't have much motivation - our house is mostly carpeted and he can crawl with all sizes of toys in both hands. It is rather fun to watch because he needs to crawl so as not to get the toys stuck on top of each other.

In other news, I bought a dining room table at our local Crate and Barrel Outlet for about 70% off! We've got to figure out how to pick it up today.

Well, there's a "For Sale" sign in front of the house of which we rent half. Good motivation to keep the house clean, if you want to look on the bright side. :-)

Weddings

I've been thinking recently about the variety of weddings I've been to in the past 7 years.

If I remember correctly, I’ve been at 17 weddings in that time, including two in Germany and two on the East Coast. At least four involved someone of Latin American descent and one was of a Chinese couple.

There were also two others in New Jersey we would have gone to had there not been blizzards. (Two different blizzards, two different years.)

The weddings included all levels of extravagance.

The least extravagant was of a family friend, S, who had gotten engaged in November. They had planned on a July wedding but family circumstances made a December wedding imperative. S called the weekend beforehand and left a message, saying, “We planned to just have close family at the wedding, but I’d like to have your family there too!” We went and had a lovely time, in part because we were able to spend so much time with the bride and her family, being among the 30 or so people in attendance. S had had about two weeks to plan the wedding.

The most extravagant was of another family friend, K, whose family rented a grand ballroom for the reception. A brass quartet did the ceremony and appetizer music and a six-or eight-piece band did the dancing music after dinner. We went home (literally) with bouquets and bouquets of purple roses because we were among the last to leave and were told to take home the centerpieces. There were about three hundred people at that wedding. I was a pretty good swing dancer at the time and enjoyed dancing to the swing music.

One of the German weddings included an official hike; the other had an unofficial hour-long walk. For both, which had early afternoon ceremonies, the festivities continued past midnight and included a variety of games for the dinner crowd. (In Germany, it is common to invite a large (~100) number of people to the wedding and for cake and then take a break, after which a smaller number of people (~30) come back for dinner and festivities.)

In hindsight, thinking about Dan and my wedding, I would have cared less about the cake. I don’t even remember eating any of it! I’m glad we gave away the bridal bouquet to the couple married longest (thanks for the suggestion, Ellie) and I’m glad we took pictures pre-ceremony. I’m glad I let someone else plan what the food would be because of the load that took off of me.

If there were only one thing I could do differently, though, it would have been to never have looked at a bridal magazine or website in my life. What lies they sell!

Head is OK

John’s head is officially reshaped.

We went on a walk in Alexandria, VA yesterday and an older woman stopped me and said, “You must rotate your son’s head. He has such a beautiful head.”

Well, I didn’t rotate it. But I do agree that Cranial Tech’s device worked fairly well.

While we were in California over Christmas, we went to the Exploratorium and met a woman who told me her (now 8-year-old) son had had facial asymmetry similar to John’s but that at the time the only treatment option available was surgery. The surgery would have involved cutting open the skull for what was only cosmetic, so she declined. I saw her son as he played and could only notice the asymmetry because of my studied eyes, but she was upset that his head wasn’t quite “right”. It made me glad that we did the band but also confirmed my suspicions that long-term affects of asymmetry aren’t quite as dire as the Cranial Tech salespeople lead you to believe.

In other John-news, I’ve been trying to raise John not to be a sissy, as much as one can do that at his age. When he had his band on, he did not mind falling over because his band protected his head from getting banged up, and I fell into the pattern of responding to loud crashes with, “Be more careful next time, John,” which I’ve continued since the band removal.

It seems to be working fairly well (at making him “take it like a man” even while a baby). I just don’t want him to use pain to become the center of attention. I probably would have had a harder time doing this, though, had he not had the band and the ability to take some rough spills without getting hurt for a while.

The other day, he took a tumble (fairly normal) and whimpered a few cries as I said, “Be more careful next time, John.” When I picked him up twenty minutes later, I realized his lip had bled during the fall.

While I realize some might not value being able to take a hard fall with just a whimper, I do and am quite proud of my little boy.