Girls with Grandma Jean.

The lost photo...

...of Eleanor and Josephine fleeing Mommy's persecution.

Josephine in Pink...Again.

Looks like you may see a lot pictures of Josephine in pink. Much like yellow looks so beautiful on Eleanor (but what doesn't?), pink looks gorgeous on Baby Josephine! She is growing like a sweet little weed. We have a two month check up on Tuesday, and I can't wait to see what she weighs! She has changed so much in her short time here, but over the last week she went from scrawny, bleary eyed newborn to...

Big Nut Brown Hair.

Behold my dramatic change! (Actually, I think it's subtle and I love it!) After surprisingly little to no coercion, my mom agreed to do the cut. And, she applied the dye which cost next to nothing. My new style, plus a trip to Costco for an over-abundance of bread products, made the day!

Before:





After:

Why not?

It's http://www.mycharmingkids.net/.



I do not necessarily dislike MckMama. There are things, like J said, that I liked about her. And, there are things I still like about her. (Admittedly, the thing I like least about her is that I am so interested.)



I wrote a whole list of things I like and dislike about her. But, that seemed uncharitable (and pathetic). So, read yourself. And, please, let me know what you think. She is interesting.

Looks like Winter is keeping with it...

...So, in its honor, I am thinking of doing something a little "nutty" today. I am in the mood. I am hanging out with my mom today, and it would require her participation. If I do it, there will be an update later. Plus some much needed pictures of the lady loves.

Man, I blog a lot.

But, the whole pumping thing insures quite a bit of screen time. So, here are two thoughts.

1) Blogging has changed my life. I actually wrote about this in the personal essay of my graduate application. In the deepest, darkest parts of my life, writing to you was my hope and my outlet. My blog gave life to my sorrow, and allowed me to grieve fully - and move away from that grief. Also, when my nagging old enemy, self-doubt, comes to call, I can own it. If I write about it, even if the doubt exists, my ability to put it into words gives me something of which to be proud.

2) I have decided, even though I am not Catholic, on what I might give up for Lent. I am not 100% on this, but I am thinking of giving up reading that specific blog I mentioned in my previous posts. I just can't vibe with this woman's take on marriage. And, I think her cultish following is a little creepy. Don't get me wrong, I totally LOVE getting comments or hearing that people read this blog. But, I don't want complete strangers trying to jump in on my family vacations (let alone would I plan such a thing, as this blogger is doing (that totally gives her blog away, if you've read today's post)). Why do I read her blog in the first place? I think I am a little jealous, and that is a terrible reason to do anything. And, I've mentioned before that I am a bit of a voyeur (that also stings a bit to admit).

Anyway, that's all random, as my posts have been lately. I REALLY need to go to bed. Good night...until I inevitably post three hours from now.

3 years 3 months 3 weeks 3 days.

Well, I logged onto http://www.snugglepie.com/ to browse for tickers and counterboxes. And, I saw that I'd saved Sophie's counterbox. I knew this day was coming up. But, Sophie would be so very three right now.

I believed, until a few days ago and for reasons I may post about later, that my time for fantasizing about Sophie was over. But, now the daydreams are coming in much more interesting detail. I guess that never goes away.

It may be just a person's way of holding on to a life taken too soon. A life is thought to be made up of real world experiences, and when those experiences cease, it is as if we take on the job of creating a legacy. Some people who read this may be immediately able to think of a legacy they've created for loved ones whose lives should not have ended with their deaths. (I know that we walk in March of Dimes and have started our annual kids' Halloween party. My sweet friend, Mary, organizes a blood drive each year in Drew's name. I know there are countless more out there who celebrate with quiet smiles and respite, and sometimes just by treating ourselves and others well.)

In the best moments, we think "Sophie would have loved this - it has to be enough." Or, "Drew would be so proud - it has to be enough." Or your mother, or your sister, or your son, or your aunt, or your father. These legacies we leave in the names of our loves. But, sometimes a legacy just isn't enough. It is a token - it is something small that we create. And, it is beautiful. But, it is not enough.

I know my situation may be different. I know I have so few memories to work with. I have no memories of warm laughter, good food, kinds words, strong hugs. If I did, I know they would be some of the best moments of my life, as I am sure they are for you, good friends. I would replay them over and over in my mind. But, instead, I guess I make them up. I remember the things I can, but there is a gap the size of a lifetime I have to make up for. So, I fantasize and I create. I pick up where I left off. When the fantasies become incompatible with the life I have now, I leave them behind and begin elsewhere. The dreams come and they go, and more often than not I am content to set them down. And, then, for reasons I cannot understand, they return to me. Sophie returns for a few moments now and then. And, I savor those times when I can think about her. I am glad in my heart those times aren't gone for good.

(Mary, and Llewellyns, I hope you don't mind my including a bit of Drew's/your story here. Let me know if you'd like me to take this down. I would understand completely.)

I'll start by saying that the girls are doing great...

...and follow up with a laundry list of gripes.

I feel down right now, even though I felt "up" mere hours ago.

I am irritable and emotional.

I am exhausted.

My breasts hurt.

I am unhappy today with decisions I felt good about just yesterday.

I am discouraged by my mess of a house.

I am overwhelmed by filling small people's needs.

This is what it is to be post-partum.

PS - To my mom (who will text to make sure I am ok) and my mother-in-law (who will email to encourage me), I am fine. Haha, I will feel better in a snap!

I don't mind being a little poor because...

...I love the way Eleanor gets so excited about a new box of Crayola brand crayons. (Update: Eleanor is SO excited that she is throwing the crayons behind the bed. She doesn't understand that they are now gone forever and I am cringing because they are out of our budget - haha.)
...in these hard economic times, lactation makes me feel like I'm growing my own victory garden. ...store brand tuna is way better than Chicken of the Sea.

Wiling away the hours.

I decided, when I was up from 1 to 2 last night, to give my blog a makeover. (Inspired, for some reason, by muse, J.) As you can see, I didn't get far. To get a new, special template, I needed to upload a new browser. That would have sent Old Toshiba into a tailspin. So, I just used blogger's blog upgrade feature. And, that deleted my tickers and some of my friends' links. And, my resident blog expert, Lora, is on "maternity leave" with beautiful new baby Colin. :o) So, I will have to deal with it for now. Just FYI.

A bunch of random musings.

1) Josephine is a good baby. She actually takes "naps." As in, I swaddle her, I put her in bed, she smiles at me, she goes to sleep.

2) Eleanor is a freaking genius. I think she says 1,000 words. And, over the last week, she has become a climbing fool.

3) I am SICK of winter.

4) It's amazing how on just any old ordinary day for me, people's lives are changing momentously in different ways all around me. Some are experiencing the deepest heartaches and others, the greatest joys.

5) I am doing March of Dimes again this year - although I've yet to announce that elsewhere, or do anything about it. It is at the end of April. More to come on Team Sophie.

6) Eleanor (and Josephine!) took their first real bubble bath today - in Aura Cacia bubble bath! Great stuff, they loved it, and Eleanor became hysterical when I took her away from the "bubbas"!

7) Josephine has now been given (by me) the nickname Fat Joe. And, it is NOT for her mediocre ability to rap.

8) Bill and I have the most exciting night planned - two on-demand episodes of The Office, followed by filing our taxes! I am not sure if I could be more pumped.

9) I just got a Green-to-Grow bottle as a gift from the health food store where I used to work. It's my "goin' out fancy" bottle.

10) My smoke alarm has been going off randomly, for different lengths of time. (And, no, it's not the batteries.)

My Product of the Day.

So, for anyone out there who is lactating or planning on it, I may have the product for you. I have had a more than adequate supply to feed Josephine and put milk aside. But, of course, I've experienced plateaus and dips in my supply.

When the first such dip came, I called my lactation consultant in a frenzy. I told her I was planning on going to the health food store to get fenugreek (in addition to nursing/pumping more), which had worked for me with Eleanor. She told me she had a better suggestion. But, I thought she was trying to take me for a ride (despite appearing like the kindly old woman-living-in-shoe, she is shrewd and has a thriving consulting business).

She said that better than fenugreek was a tincture called More Milk Special Blend by Motherlove (with fenugreek, but also goat's rue, blessed thistle, nettle leaf, fennel, water, and vegetable glycerin). Hmmph, I thought. We'll see. And, I bet you have a bottle for sale right there. Lo, she did. For $24. But, always the sucker, I bought the thing.

That night, I began (at her suggestion) taking a half dose. I only needed two days of that to see a noticeable leap in my supply! So, I stopped taking the herbal concoction and my supply remained plentiful. Yesterday, I began to worry about a drop in supply, so today, I've taken the drops as indicated and ALREADY I am seeing an improvement.

Anyway, my point - this stuff rocks my socks. I can't recommend it enough. But, I'll try! I am told they sell it at most health food stores, but also on Amazon.

My "Skinny" Pregnancy.

Man, for all my bragging about my svelteness when pregnant with Josephine, I can't wait to get out walking. Between the heaviness from the pregnancy, the incredible flap of stomach from being pregnant three times in under four years, and the curvy-ness from the nursing, I am feeling pret-ty lardy.

Call me the Pied Piper...

...because I have a follower! I'm not sure how I like saying that, but it feels good to know someone is interested. Well, so my (admittedly large) egomaniacal side has a question. What must someone reading this think of me when they happen upon this blog? (Don't answer that, but it just comes from something I've been thinking about blogging about for a while.) I read some blogs, obsessively even. I'm not talking about any of you reading this - I mean "those blogs" that are super "in" and have about 5 million hits. No offense to the bloggers reading this - I read your blogs too, but I genuinely like you and your lives. These other blogs - sometimes I find myself so very at odds with them. There is one particular blog I can't seem to stop reading. She gets about 300 comments a day - it is wild. And, I can't help but feel a little bad reading it, because I am not sure I like her and her values. She is very conservative (unlike myself), and that can be hard for me to stomach, and yet I read. She also seems a little pompous (which maybe I can be, possibly). I guess the very nature of blogging can be pompous - as in, "Here are my thoughts for the world to read," as if the world cares. Anyway, so I wondered if I would, if I happened upon my blog, have a love/hate relationship with me.

And, my voyeuristic side (also sizable) is very fond of my one follower - I think she is mysterious and fascinating.

Finally, J, I agree totally about the captchas that look like words. Like, if it says "forder," I get so excited. But, "ghtry" sucks.

A question.

Your six-week old, exclusively breast(milk) fed baby urinates all over your pajama bottoms - is that the same as peeing your own pants?

Eleanor Lately.

This face pretty much sums up her 'tude these days. She's been having a bit of a hard time, with the shifting around of time and energy here, but she'll make it through.

Sleepy Josephine in Pink.

My Valentines.

The Malting.

There is a woman in my town. I see her at the supermarket. She pushes a cart full of children - two boys and a girl. The children are nondescript. Not terribly behaved, so I take little note of them. The mother is who I watch. I see her at the library, gathering books and movies, but mostly staring blankly at the shelves, as if she is remembering something. Like she is somewhere else.

I saw her today at the park, nursing her smallest - a baby in a pajama suit spotted with red and blue trains. As the baby clung to her mid-section and the older kids played in the near distance, the woman seemed swept away again. I could look at her from my perch and observe without her ever taking notice.

Her hair is long, and uncut, bluntly falling down to the middle of her back. It is dull in color, but looks as if it might once have shone some shade of cinnamon. Her clothes are of no particular style or fit, amorphous much like her body. A long sleeved shirt - brown and soiled by the wiping of children's mouths and noses. Jeans, medium wash, no holes. She is not yet at the age where pleated jeans are appropriate, but they are more the tight-fitting boot cut jeans of her college years. Her shoes are indistinguishable from slippers.

She looks as if, in the frenzy of the morning, she has forgotten herself. But, it is not as if, with all the jam hands and dirty diapers, she is no where to be found. She is very much a mother - central and surrounded by heavy layers of family. She laughs as a small girl, her daughter, runs up with a story to tell. Or tends to a scrape on her young son's knee. And, she herself cries as she realizes she's misplaced the favorite stuffed rhinoceros of the smallest child. It is only the in rarest moments that she has the luxury of going elsewhere in her mind.

I see a woman on my street who runs. I suppose she is a "runner." Her head is shaved. Nearly to the scalp, but not quite. Just a sheath of dark hair remains. In place of a shirt, she wears only the tightest fitting sports bra. I sometimes wonder if there are any breasts at all beneath the fabric. Her shorts graze just her upper thigh; they are barely there. Her sneakers are state-of-the-art. The best on the market for pounding pavement. For getting somewhere fast - or for a quick escape. She is not terribly thin, but simply-built and vaguely muscular. She was created for speed. She never seems to look behind her or to the sides - as if she knows her place in relation to the world around her, even as the landscape changes. I watch her as she strides by. Feet, slapping rhythmically; she is stretched long, lean, free across the sidewalk. Each time I look out my bedroom window, there she seems to be.

Suddenly, I am jerked back to consciousness. The doorbell rings around mail time, and upon hearing it my young son startles awake in my arms. He has fallen asleep on my soft, unshapely chest again. I whip on my brown shirt, drizzled with breast milk and yogurt, and crusty with residue about the sleeves. I set him down and hear over the monitors that the postman has woken the other children - they are already crying out for me. I am heavy and weary of holding small, needy bodies. So, I leave them to their tears. I walk to the door, where the postman holds two packages for which I must sign. The first has been shipped by a toy company - a small, purple rhinoceros waits inside the cardboard box. The second is an electric razor.

Super genius baby!

Josephine is sitting up! Haha, sike. But, she is definitely sitting up against my pillow smiling the morning away. Sitting is the only position that soothes her tummy. And, alone time with mommy and being so big make her feel like smiling.

I should be napping...

...but I am searching the internet. If you are anything like me, you link from blog to blog, moving further from your comfort zone with each click. And, you follow the lives of many people whom you've never met. Their stories are often sad and, even though I've had my own sad story and my own blog, sometimes they take my breath away. I am lucky to have two healthy girls today and I will consider myself the luckiest woman on Earth if they stay that way.

Breastfeeding. Or something like it.

I've been struggling so deeply (surely more than necessary) with nursing vs. pumping for my sweet Mouse. I won't go into how difficult it has been attempting to nurse efficiently, because I think we've discussed ad nauseum the host of problems that make it time-consuming and painful. (And, it does make me feel better that Bill has seen how hard I've worked and the tears I've cried. He says he is certain I couldn't be trying harder.) But, then there is the psychological hurdle that I may end up finding insurmountable - I know there is an alternative.

We all know breast milk is superior nutrition for babies. And, I am completely committed to giving Josephine my own milk. No matter what the outcome of my turmoil, I consider myself so lucky that that process is going so extremely well and that Josephine is entirely breastfed. But, I guess I have to admit, I've bought the hype. For every person who tells me I am a "good mom," regardless of my decisions, I feel the presence of 10 more who would look at me like an abusive parent for nourishing Josephine from a bottle. And, in my heart, I know that every mom that I respect makes the best decisions for her family. For some, that is exclusive breastfeeding, some formula feeding, some pumping, and some all three. I respect moms who are caring, involved, and - most importantly - loving. And, exclusive pumping certainly requires all of those characteristics.

But, I also know that, even though I feel that way, I have a lot of self-doubt. Especially about the way I feed my baby. If you've ever given your baby a bottle in public, you may know how I feel. You feel like all eyes are on you - "that" mom forcing your baby to drink from something other than your own breast. Who knows who could be around judging and believing you a lesser mom. Maybe I am contriving this feeling, but I would guess I am not. And, I know I can not be the only one. (And, I don't doubt that nursing moms feel anxious about nursing in public - it can be terrifying I am sure.)

So, there are three feelings there. The first is self-loathing. I am a bad mom. I did not try hard enough. I am not good enough. You know you've felt it about something, be it feeding, behavior, reading, nap times, working out of the home, birth plans, or potty training.

The second is quiet acceptance. I am doing my very best. Every mom does what she believes is best for her family. We are all doing our best.

The third is silent indignation. I worked so hard for this. Every drop of this milk is hard won. There is no easy moment. Each bottle I give this little girl is bought with time, pain, and self-doubt. Sometimes, I want to emblazon my bottles with BREAST MILK ONLY. Or, I want someone to tell me I am a bad mom, so I can deliver an invective unmatched. I want to tear someone apart for thinking this isn't enough. And, while no one may say anything, I know some people judge, because I've judged.

It's easy to judge when you do something well. I am a good speller. It may take a little work and I may make mistakes, but inherently I am good. I judge bad spelling. That is something of which I should be embarrassed. It makes me a lesser person, far worse than someone who tries in vain to spell. I am not a good nurser. I try. We try. And, it falls apart every time. Typically, I don't do things I am not good at. Few things are worth it to me. But, this one is. That is why I nurse, I pump, I nurse, and I pump again. And, when I can't pump one more minute, I pump.

That is why I am taking this opportunity to learn and pass on two lessons.

One, it is mean spirited to judge other moms who are doing their very best. You simply can't look at a mother and baby and know the circumstances that dictate their every action. You can't know their lives or their bodies.

Two, as long as I am doing that very best, I take heart. I am a good mom. I do know my life, my body, and my heart, and I am a good mom who does her best.

(This does not mean you won't find me in the mother's room at Nordstrom sheepishly bottle feeding Josephine and alternating between wanting to cry and awkwardly discussing pumping just so people think that I am a "good mom." It is a cycle of judgment, and it stings, and it is hard to break.

Also, all this being said, I believe breastfeeding is nature's perfect and most beautiful way for a mother to feed her baby. And, while many of us try and fall short, there are great reasons to strive to get there.)

Things I remember.

Now, with another newborn in the house, I am remembering all the things that are sweet about a baby this small. I'd like to make a list, so that when my newborn days are over, I never forget.

1) The way, when you are burping a newborn on your shoulder, she turns toward you, nuzzles into your neck, and makes those very sweet, contented breathing noises.
2) The way she spontaneously shoots one arm up seemingly in a demonstration of power.
3) The way her fingers and toes twine into the holes of a knit blanket.
4) The way her hair feels as I rub my cheek against it.
5) The way her cheek is so soft that I am not even sure I am touching it.
6) The way when she stretches with her arms straight up, her little fists only reach the top of her head.
7) The way she holds my hand, and even when I need my hand for something else, I can't bear to pull it away.
8) The way she changes every single day (more wakeful, more smiley, chubbier thighs, longer eye lashes, etc.).
9) The way she needs me.
10) The way she looks at everything with wonder and her "Oohh" face.

Sister Sunshine.

These were taken less than one hour ago!

This is not the first time...

...I've walked in to see this.

Snow day!

Eleanor LOVED playing in the snow on our deck while Josephine slept the afternoon away! In fact, Eleanor dug it so much that she wore the snowpants indoors for days to follow! (Don't know what's up with the last picture, but I can't seem to flip it.)

Winter Woolies!

(These awesome hats were made by the girls' great Aunt Loretta. (Is that relationship right?) Either way, the hats are fantastic!)

Purple Morning - Eleanor's Joy.

Purple Morning - Sisters.