So Much Fun!

I just got home from my weekend getaway a couple of hours ago. It was so much fun! Every time I have the opportunity to spend some time with my oldest friend, Lara, I remember why our friendship has lasted so long. She's such an amazing girl! I love her. : )
I am grateful today for old friends and new adventures. And especially for my friend Lara. Thanks for your generosity, your hospitality and understanding. I'm incredibly lucky that I count you among my closest friends!

Still Figuring Things Out

Being married is hard. It is hard to get along with someone who necessarily has different ideas, different priorities, different emotional responses... someone who just isn't you, no matter how similar or well-suited you may be for each other. The thing is, I'm starting to think that it isn't one of those things that you eventually have all figured out. I'm starting to think that being married is just one of those things that you will always have to work at for ever and ever (or at least as long as you wish to stay married).
My parents are a shining example of how you have to keep working at staying married. My mom and dad were married in September of 1967, nearly 42 years ago. Sometimes I wonder what made them think they should get married to each other, they are that different in nearly every way imaginable, but they did and they have made it work. Despite different tastes in everything from entertainment, to travel, to religion, and so on, their marriage has endured. They made it work through raising 7 kids, several of whom were particularly difficult to raise. They made it work through being apart for extended periods of time (since my dad was a traveling salesman for over 35 years). They made it work through difficult financial times. And they are making it work through raising a pair of their grandchildren. I have often thought that maybe they have had to work harder at staying married than other people who seem to be more similar, but the longer I'm married, the more I think it's hard work for everyone.
Landon and I are pretty opposite from my parents in terms of similarities. Although we have plenty of differences, Landon and I are pretty similar and, I think anyway, very well suited for each other. However, even after nearly 11 years of being together, we are still figuring things out . . . still making adjustments and still working hard at staying married. We still sometimes have fights. We still sometimes fail to anticipate how our words or actions might affect the other and end up with hurt feelings and damaged egos. And while we have less of these unpleasant times than we used to, I don't know that we are ever going to stop them completely.
So, in an effort today to mend some hurt feelings and repair our damaged egos, I want to express my sincere and deep gratitude for my husband. It's healing for both of us.
I appreciate Landon for everything he is. I am grateful for his great intelligence and how it helps guide me in making decisions and figuring out the world around me. I am grateful for his tender heart and how it helps me see people around me with greater understanding and sympathy. I am grateful for his selflessness and how it helps me to be a better mother, a better friend, a better daughter and a better person. I am grateful for his thoughtfulness and how it helps me to feel loved. I am grateful for his commitment to our family and how it helps me endure even the most difficult parts of being a mom and raising a family. I am grateful for his sense of humor and how it helps me to enjoy life and take things just a little less seriously. I am grateful for his confidence and how it helps me to continue working on being a better woman, wife, mother. Most of all, I am grateful that Landon loves me for me, even though I often make that a rather difficult task.
Thank you, Landon. I love you. IEU.

The End of an Era

In preparation for my impending weekend getaway to Seattle in a few days, I have been weaning the girl for about a month now. Since she turned one, I have made many starts on this road, only to be thwarted by yet another illness . . . ear infection here, flu there, etc. So, there we were at 16 months still nursing 4-6 times a day. You wanna know a little secret? I love it and don't really want to stop.
Back when the Rissa was still a newborn, she had the flux. She had a mean, nasty flux that was apparently triggered by everything I ate. After a few weeks of sleep being completely replaced with screaming/vomiting baby, I decided to go on an elimination diet. I printed a list of the most common reflux-triggering foods and cut them all from my diet. It was a very, very long list of foods that I pretty much ate every day, including apples, citrus, tomatoes, dairy, green vegetables generally, etc. So, these items were banned and Marissa was happy(er) for a few days. She was still pretty fussy, but we both were able to sleep. Then I started trying to introduce items, one at a time, back into my diet. Literally every item I tried caused another bout of the flux, which was equivalent to a baby who cried for 6+ hours a day. After item 5 or 6 yielded the same results as all others before it, I decided I preferred sleeping to having variety in my diet.
Now, I am a woman who enjoys food. I am happy to spend generous amounts of our budget on good food, and I LOVE baking. This diet was hard on me. I felt really deprived and missed eating the foods I love to eat tremendously, especially considering that I had already been on a very modified diet during my pregnancy because I had really high blood pressure and later preeclampsia. I was stressed out and struggling with my commitment to breastfeed, but I did lose the baby weight in a hurry. Anyhow, after reading a lot about the flux in babies, I determined that what I was doing was really the best option for my baby and myself, and decided to commit to six months of breastfeeding. If at six months, I still couldn't eat anything in order to continue nursing, I would instead put her on formula and go back to eating normally. So, at five months, I started trying some of the items previously banned from my diet. She responded beautifully, and we both finally started enjoying breastfeeding without any constraints. Whew!
Then suddenly, around 9 months, Marissa decided that biting my nipples was awesome and really, really fun. I didn't really know what to do about it... Mason had bit me once; I yelled, "OUCH!" which made him cry, and he never bit me again. That particular action yielded a very different response in my daughter, however. When I yelled, "OUCH!" this time, she laughed and laughed. In my mind, it seemed almost to be a demonic little laugh. I asked around for advice, and none of it worked. I even got so desperate that I once bit her back (gently, on her finger), which again yielded laughter out of this baby who, by this time, I was certain was the devil's spawn. Again, I found myself really struggling with breastfeeding this baby. I wanted to continue until she was at least a year old, like doctors recommend, but the injuries to my nipples were becoming bigger and more painful. I felt really conflicted about the idea of quitting at that point particularly because I had enjoyed breastfeeding Mason so much. The fact that Marissa and I just couldn't seem to get it right together made me feel really sad. I decided to keep at it, partially from guilt and partially from determination, and decided to just keep pulling her from the breast and firmly telling her, "No biting!" when ever she bit me. After about a week of this consistent response, she stopped laughing and started crying when ever this exchange occurred. Eventually, she stopped biting me. We were happily nursing again. Yay!
So fast forward to the present... I am due this week to finish weaning my baby, and I just can't get myself to feel good about it. My logical mind is looking at all the benefits of Marissa and I not being tied together by my breasts, but I just feel sad about being finished. I've put so much effort, including my own blood, made so many sacrifices to get this right. Now it's coming to an end. Marissa and I figured it all out and really found our groove; we have really enjoyed our time together. Once we're finished, it really feels like the end of an era for me as a mother. The complete dependence on me and only me in this one small area will be finished and my baby will be a little less of a baby and a little more of a big girl. And that makes me feel a little sorrowful.
I don't know. Maybe it's because I know there are no more babies in my future. No more breastfeeding and the indescribable closeness it brings for a mother and her baby. The feelings of peace and love. The time to be quiet and reflect. The time to watch your baby be nourished by the miracle of your body producing a tailor-made food just for your unique child. The time, for the first time in my life, to be really amazed and impressed with the things my body is capable of doing.
So, even though it makes me really sad and I am crying while I type this, I choose today to be grateful for the fact that I was able to breastfeed my babies. I am grateful that I was able to give them a boost in their health, their development, and their intelligence with something as simple as feeding them at my breast while they were little. I am grateful for the many benefits, some of which I am sure are still unknown or otherwise not fully understood, that breastfeeding has given to me and my children. I am grateful for the time it gave us together, to bond and grow our love and appreciation for each other. I am grateful that even though it took a lot of work to figure it out with both babies, I had the support of my husband and doctors and family to get it right. I am grateful that I made the commitment and stuck to it even though it was difficult and sometimes even a little painful. I will always remember the time I spent nursing my two children with incredible fondness and memories filled with love.