Soccer Daze

Reading the comments from my last post brought a smile to my face. Thank you so much for your encouraging words about pumping! I am so glad that we've made it this far, and to be honest, I'd love it if she would just start nursing one day, but unfortunately she just has a very poor sucking ability and no latching ability anymore. So it'll be bottle feeding for us :-) It's not very convenient, but it's not as difficult as it was during the early weeks.

On to another first for Aiden:

From the time I first saw the pink line on the pregnancy test, I've been looking forward to going to sporting events and cheering for my kids. To me, that's what motherhood is about--being my kids' biggest cheerleader, no matter what they want to do. I love just standing back and marveling at the people that God is growing them into. Today was Aiden's first soccer game and it was an absolute blast!

I anticipated being the mom of the kid who was doing cartwheels at one end of the field while everyone else played soccer at the other end. Instead Aiden took to the game like a fish in water--although there was one child on the team who was spinning around in the backfield totally oblivious to the ball--and his mom's desperate attempts to get him to join the game. He scored three goals today. Two for his team and one for the other team--he wasn't the only child to score on the wrong goal--which is what makes it so fun to watch. It's like one great comedy routine. I love this age! I keep telling him I'm going to put bricks on his head so he stops growing, but he doesn't like that idea. In fact, the other day he started crying and saying that he didn't want bricks on his head, so I think I need to stop joking with him about that :-) Poor kid!

As for Jocelyn's first sporting event, she chowed down on a bottle and napped in the Baby Bjorn carrier. What a trooper!

I'll try to get some pictures up later--I don't know how to get them off of Mike's camera...

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...