Jan. 30th - Feb. 15th in Pictures

Jan 30th

Walking baby!

Jan 31st

Maddy using the Kindle

Feb 1st

Side laying nursing: my favorite nursing position

Feb 2nd

Maddy had her first salon hair cut

Feb 3rd

Chicken coop building has begun!

The scraps make great blocks

 Our friends from Australia came for a visit

Feb 4th

The picture was taken on the 5th but I made this on the 4th. Loom knitting is my newest hobby.

Feb 5th

Self portrait: tried out contacts but ended deciding on staying with glasses.

Feb 6th

Sean got glasses!!

Spencer enjoyed dinner:

Feb 7th

This is the only picture I took on the 7th. I still don't have a clue how this bulb broke.

Feb 8th

Hungry babies

Feb 9th

Em wanted to go to dance with Maddy.

My first time cross nursing.

Feb 10th

Chicken coop progress

Feb 11th

The difference I'm seeing in Sean since he got his glasses is amazing. Here he's sounding out words to write his first sentence by himself. 

Feb 12th

I threw together a temporary run so the girls can have some outside time.

Feb 13th

Nap time buddies

Feb 14th

Pioneer woman's apple dumplings. They are amazing!!

Feb 15th 

Dinner with friends.

Our friends

We only have one more week with them here and I'm sure it'll fly by!

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Week in Review: Week 13 - 15

I'm a few weeks behind on Week in Review so I'll just combine them. Our weeks haven't been all that busy. We started week 13 with the first batch of my milk going to it's new home. I love that I'm able to do this again! Later in the week, Emily turned 3 months and had her ENT appointment.

Green smoothies and glow sticks in the bathtub!

(click to enlarge pictures) 

Week 14 started with Maddy's 3rd birthday. She's very excited to be "3 old"! We had a special breakfast and then that afternoon, an art party. They'll be a separate post on that later! Middle of that week, I got a much needed new phone. My blackberry had died just about a week and a half before I was eligible for an upgrade. I used an old phone that seemed to be a phone from the stone age until I got my new phone: a Motorola Photon. I love it!! Though, I'm now hooked in Angry Birds and Draw Something. Also that week, we lost our pet rat, Rizzo. Rizzo had started rooming with Sean a while back and Sean got very attached, more than I had realized. When we lost the other rat last year, Sean was completely fine. Not this time. He cried...a lot. Seeing him like that was really difficult. Especially when, after we buried Rizzo, Sean asks, "When he's done being dead, can we go get him?". The next morning he asked if Rizzo was in Heaven yet and seemed ok after I told him yes. We ended the week by picking up 5 baby chicks. Unfortunately, they are not ours to keep. Our city has something against chickens. What we're doing is participating in the Rent A Chick program at a local farm. We got 5 2 day old chicks and all the supplies to raise them for two weeks. Then we have to return them to the farm. I so wish we could keep them!! I'll have a separate post on that too. That afternoon we had an Easter egg hunt at hubby's parents' house and then had Easter dinner with them.

Chickies!

 Easter Bunny came and silly kids after an Easter egg hunt

Last Sunday was Easter. The Easter Bunny came, we did an Easter egg hunt and had a family dinner with my family. We then started out the work week with adopting 2 baby rats. Sean insisted that Rizzo's cage needed more rats. Cookie and Crumbster (Sean picked the names) were 5 1/2 weeks when they came to live with us. They are adorable and oh so playful! I assumed the rest of the week would be a normal, non-eventful week. But then hubby hurt his arm at work and spent the rest of the week home with us. Since I still had daycare kids, I put him to work entertaining and feeding kids. ;) This weekend's plan is to work on the garden!

Cookie and Crumbster: 

Cookie is white and beige and Crumbster is grey and white

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Milk Donation

About 2 and a half years ago I found myself producing more than enough milk for my five month old and my almost two year old nurslings. I would pump the extra but neither of my children would drink what I pumped. They preferred it straight from the tap I guess. I couldn't bring myself to toss it so I looked around for other options. First was milk banks. Milk banks are great. Especially for hospitalized babies. But many families can't afford the $4-$5 an ounce that banks charge. That was only one of the reasons I chose not to go that route. I was also treating postpartum depression. I was on a breastfeeding safe antidepressant but I had read that banks won't take your milk if you regularly take meds.


So, I went the informal route and found a mom of a little girl named Emerson. Emerson's mom would send me a cooler and milk storage bags. I'd fill it up and the UPS man to take it to Emerson. I donated 800+oz to baby Emerson and she was able to make it to her first birthday completely on breastmilk. I'm extremely happy to say that I was one of the milk donors that made it possible. To the right is the cooler I filled a couple of times for her.


Not long after Emily was born I realized that I, once again, had oversupply. Over active letdown accompanied it and was making things difficult for Em. She would choke and pull off at let down. She'd also end up eating more than she needed and silent reflux began to show up. I could tell she was in pain. After nursing she'd gag and the look on her face told me it was coming back up in her poor little throat. I had to do something to help her out so I started pumping just to slow down the flow, hoping I wasn't making things worse. It worked. Then Em got an ear infection and had a hard time nursing off one side. That took care of the over supply on that side but since she was doing most of her nursing on the other, that side's supply increased. I'm now pumping again to make it comfortable for her and am easily getting 5 oz a day. She will not take a bottle but even if she would, she'd never drink the 81oz I have stashed in the freezer. I posted on facebook that I was ready to just embrace my oversupply and pump to donate. A friend commented saying that she had a friend that could use my milk. That was perfect because I wanted to find someone local this time. She put us in contact and now the milk in my freezer is for little baby London. I'm really excited to be able to do this again. Pumping when it was just to remove the extra milk to make breastfeeding easier was sometimes a pain. It's all changed now that I'm pumping to give the milk to a child that needs it. I'm more than happy to pump for London.

Do you have extra milk? Here's a few links for banks and informal donation groups:

Human Milk Banking Association of North America

Milk Share (where I found Emerson's mom)

Human Milk 4 Human babies

Eats on Feets

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