Back to School

The summer is over. Usually this makes me sad, but this year it was a lot to handle with Jocelyn's arrival on June 19--3 weeks early and Aiden's subsequent cabin fever which lasted the whole summer.

Now that school is back in session (he goes 2 days a week) and Bible study has resumed (which also has a children's program for Aiden), he is a happier camper and so is mommy. It doesn't hurt that Jocelyn's feeding issues are getting figured out.

We had trouble with nursing, so after many emotional days, two visits to the best lactation consultant in the area, and the discovery that formula (even the hypoallergenic kind) made her very fussy, we decided to pump and bottlefeed exclusively. Not an easy task with a 4 year-old wondering out of the house, torturing the dog, and getting into every kind of trouble that he can think of just to get some attention from a very busy mommy. And we won't even mention the baby that would scream in the bouncy seat as I was stuck on the pumps for 15-20 minutes every 2-3 hours. But she is worth it.


I couldn't have done it without Mike's help. He gets up with me at night to feed Jocelyn bottles while I spend my 20 minutes (and sometimes more) pumping. Many times I wanted to give up. Many times I decided to give up. Each time I just didn't feel like it was the right decision--especially with Jocelyn's reaction to the formula bottles that she had. So we stuck with it. I'm going on 5 weeks of straight breastmilk. I'm very proud of that. It has been a long, long road.

So fall is in the air and I couldn't be happier. Life is easing into a comfortable routine. Feed Jocelyn, pump, put Jocelyn back to bed for her morning nap, get Aiden's breakfast ready before his alarm goes off.

No, he isn't asleep until the alarm goes off at 7:30, but he does have to stay in his room until it goes off (his "energy" tells him to wake up well before 7 each morning). Aiden's interpretation of this rule is that he scrambles back to his room when he sees me come down the hall--or, more recently, tries to creep quietly up the stairs after he realizes that mommy is now downstairs and he isn't supposed to be in the playroom yet. In fact, this latest incident is what made me realize that he truly doesn't know how to tip toe. I wondered prior to this if he stomped around the house on his tip toes because he was TRYING to wake the baby, or if it was truly that he was incapable of being quiet. So I guess he's actually incapable because if he could've avoided my wrath the other morning, he would've.



More to come...