D – Page 15 – Jocelyn Rau

April 26, 2011February 10, 2012

My thumb is turning green & a piece of family history

One thing you may not know about me is that I love gardening (or did I already tell you that?). I never would’ve thought it would be something that tickled my fancy, seeing how most things domestically-oriented don’t. But once we moved into our house and I started digging around in the existing gardens and transplanting things and planting new things and experimenting with what works and what looks good where, I found I really have a knack for it.

And I absolutely love seeing my gardens bloom each year and look pretty. I’m big on bulbs too, since they come up each year without me having to do any more work. 😉 I’m super excited about the new row of peonies this year that I mentioned before – I checked last night and all 6 are sprouting. Hooray!

This weekend my mom sent home some hosta plants for me, and last night I planted them around our lamppost in the front yard. A few years ago I dug up a little circle around the base of it to make room for some color in the yard, and I usually plant dahlias around there. But last year they didn’t do as well as they have in years past, and it never fails that they get nicked with the lawn mower at some point during the season.

I was thinking about putting daffodil bulbs in there this year because I love them and they’re one of the few spring flowers I don’t have anywhere, but then I got these hostas and figured it’d be just as easy to put them there instead. I’ve already filled a lot of space in our other gardens with hostas that I transplanted from under a bush in the back yard, so I was running out of spots for these new ones and I didn’t want them to go to waste. I think they turned out pretty well.

hostas1 — Lovely weather we're having.... AGAIN

I didn’t dig a super deep hole for these guys, so I really hope they thrive here. I’m hopeful, though, since they were already sprouting when my mom dug them up for me.

We received an awesome surprise on the doorstep yesterday, too. My great aunt J and my mom’s cousin J sent a beautiful quilt for D. That’s nice, but what’s so special about a quilt, you wonder? It was my great-great-grandmother D’s (so D’s great-great-great-grandmother D), and she was the one after whom our D was named.

I had no idea this quilt was coming, or even existed, so I was very excited to get such a wonderful heirloom. And it is even more special for D since it came from her namesake. The note with it said my great aunt J remembered seeing it in her grandma D’s house when she was younger, and it was probably made in the 1910s-1920s.

How cool! I had R take a picture of it on my phone this morning, but it turned out really blurry. I’ll take a better one tonight, but at least you can get the idea.

I absolutely love family tradition, so getting this quilt for D means a lot to me. It will be the perfect cover when she transitions to a big girl bed from her crib. Her great-great-great grandma D will be watching over her each night and blessing her with sweet, sweet dreams.

April 25, 2011April 25, 2011

I have a huge crush on three day weekends

One of my friends had that as her Facebook status last night, and I could not agree more. Too bad they always go so quickly and end way before they should.

It was great having a long weekend this week, though. We had a wonderful time at my mom’s, and D thoroughly enjoyed her first Easter. She helped Daddy hunt for Easter eggs, and the Easter Bunny brought her the most ridiculously fluffy, cute bunny coat ever. Doesn’t this just kill you?

Saturday morning I was sitting on the deck after a jog, cooling down and just quietly counting my blessings – 65 degrees, sun, warm breeze, blood pumping after some good exercise, beautiful baby girl napping peacefully upstairs, nothing else on the agenda for the entire day except looking forward to steaks on the grill for dinner, surrounded by loving family. It was such a fantastic time and very relaxing, just what the doctor ordered. I just wish it happened more often and lasted more than 3 days.

And now it’s Monday and back to the grind. Blllleeeecchh. Even after regular weekends Monday mornings are the worst, but at least they’re only a couple hours long. It’s funny, too, how it almost never fails that after some time off my attention always turns to planning the next day off or vacation. Hey, a girl can dream, can’t she? 😉

Did you all have nice holiday weekends?

p.s. Run stats for that jog mentioned above – 2.17 miles in 20:25. Little slower at a 9:25 pace, but there were lots of hills and I was intentionally going slowly since I hadn’t gotten out for a run in over a week. Another notch on the running belt.

April 19, 2011April 19, 2011

D-licious

Yesterday the new umbrella stroller we ordered arrived, so I put it together and gave D a few spins around the house to test it out. She loved it.

D stroller2 — Yep, I can still eat my toes in here, so I'm happy

I wanted to get some cleaning done last night too, so while R napped in the living room I toted D around in the bedrooms with me. After almost scooting off our bed backwards while we were in there, I figured the confinement of her crib would be a better spot for her when we moved into her room. That way she couldn’t scoot out the door and escape on me either. 😉 She is rarely in her crib besides to sleep, so she was having a ball scooting around and playing with her toys and blankets in there. Look what she discovered she can do now, too:

D crib3 — Oo, what do we have here? Remotes are my favorite!

D crib4 — Now that I got the remote I'll just move down here to my soap...

She is becoming one very busy little girl, as you can tell by the blur factor in some of the pictures, and is thisclose to figuring out how to crawl instead of scoot. Then we will be in trouuuuuble. Look out house, I’m comin’ through!

April 18, 2011June 24, 2011

The end of an era

Well, we reached a milestone over the weekend. And it’s kind of funny, since I’ve been thinking about this so much lately and ended up not even being the one to decide how it was going to happen after all. D has stopped nursing. Wait, what, already? I thought I was going to tell her when we stopped, not the other way around.

Everything was going fine as usual Friday morning when I fed her before daycare, then R came in the room to get to his closet and she got distracted by Daddy. This always happens, so she stopped eating after just a little bit. But then when I tried to feed her when we got home from daycare Friday afternoon she refused, which was odd. Even if she’s not really hungry she’d never flat out refused to nurse before. Ok, no big deal, we’ll just try again later. Her cold was kicking in again, and we’re afraid her ear infection is back too (greeeat, gotta call the doctor again today to try to get it cleared up one more time), so I didn’t think it was totally bizarre that she wasn’t hungry. What I did find more strange, though, was when she refused to nurse before bed that night. She had eaten dinner at her normal time around 6:30, but she had no milk at all that afternoon or night, just some water from her bottle shortly before bed. I was convinced this wouldn’t cut the mustard and she’d be up at least once in the middle of the night, but I was wrong (not complaining on that error of judgment, mind you, just surprised). She slept through ’til her normal wakeup time of 6:30 Saturday morning, but then refused the boob once more. Now I was kind of perplexed – 3 times in a row of no Mommy eating? What’d I do wrong? She happily gulped down a bottle though, so at least it wasn’t that she had no appetite.

So, my friends, it appears my days as a milkin’ mama are drawing to a close. It’s pretty bittersweet too, surprisingly. I’ve become very ready to be done nursing lately, or at least be done pumping, I should say. Which is silly, since I planned on continuing to pump for a while even after D stopped nursing, just to make sure we had enough stockpiled in the freezer to last her to the one year mark on breast milk. She gets distracted so easily now too, sometimes nursing was almost a chore. Getting her to pay attention to eating without chewing on my necklace instead, or watching R as he walked by, or listening to R if he started talking, or looking up at me if I said something, was becoming a little tiresome, and I knew it would probably just get more so the bigger and squirmier she got.

But now I actually kind of miss it. That really is a special bond between mom and baby, something no one else but me will ever get to experience or know. Gazing down at my precious little angel, just a few inches from my face, knowing I’m the one providing for her. Even when she was a newborn and it happened all hours of the day and night, sometimes to the point where I was convinced there was no way she’d be able to get another drop out of there since it seemed like she had just eaten, yet always did. And now it’s gone. Just like that. I didn’t get that one last nursing that I expected to have and remember when I wanted to stop, it just came out of the blue. I thought maybe I’d still get the occasional nursing in if she woke up during the night, or possibly at bedtime if she was really hungry/overtired and the bottle just wasn’t cutting it. But she woke up last night and refused me again, wanting the bottle instead. *Tear*

8.5 months is pretty good though, so I can’t be too upset. And like I said, I was pretty much ready for this. I just didn’t think it was going to happen right.now. I was planning on nursing her through the end of next month, with just a few more pumping sessions after that so I was done with the boob milk factory by summer. I guess D had different plans. I’m still going to try to pump twice a day to keep adding to our reserves for that next month, but I can tell that only expressing once every 12 hours has already started to reduce my supply over just these past couple days. Hopefully my body is just getting used to a reduced schedule and I’ll still be able to produce enough to keep that going for a couple more weeks, because I really didn’t want to be completely finished with it all quite yet. That one year mark is a big psychological barrier for me – I’ve always heard before then babies aren’t supposed to transition to cow’s milk, so I really really want to get her there with my milk if at all possible. I counted up how many bags we have frozen, and right now we’re sitting on 57. I’ll have to do a little math to see how long this will last us if my supply does dwindle before I’d hoped. And hopefully as D starts eating more and more solids and drinking more water between meals instead of milk, she won’t need as much Mommy’s milk and we’ll make it through the summer for her.

I can’t help but wonder – why did she decide to stop? Was it something I did? I thought maybe my little “Stop biting!” shout Thursday morning scared her away from me, that she started associating nursing with me getting upset, but she did nurse fine Thursday night and Friday morning. I sure hope that wasn’t the reason why. I’d feel so horrible if I scared my baby away from eating from me because I tried to make her eat when she wasn’t hungry and then startled her when I got bitten, which was totally my fault. Ugh. Did she start sensing my increasing anxiety of a nibble with each feeding? That I was scared that as she sprouted more teeth the likelihood that I was going to get bitten when I fed her increased exponentially? I did notice when I tried to feed her Friday afternoon/evening that she looked like she was going in more for a nibble than a suckling, so I kind of shied away each time. I don’t know. Maybe she’s just ready to be done. I seriously do hope, though, that it wasn’t something I did that made her want to stop. Fortunately she’s happy as a clam when she takes the bottles still, so she does continue to get the great nutritional value of my milk.

8.5 months and she’s already asserting some independence. Aww, my baby is growing up so fast… *sniff, sniff*

I must admit, though, it was nice to not bring the pump to work today for the first time since I’ve come back. And I don’t have to wear nursing bras anymore, or worry about nursing pads for said bras. And I won’t have to tote the pump along everywhere we go if we’re gone for more than a few hours anymore. Maybe I’ll be ok after all.

April 15, 2011February 10, 2012

Now I know how different a parent’s worry really is

“Stop worrying about me.”

Or, “Don’t worry so much.”

How many times have you said that to your mom over the years? Probably about eleventy billion. And how often did she reply, “I can’t”? I’m guessing about 100% of the time.

Now I know why.

Even though she’s only 8.5 months old, not a day goes by that I don’t worry about D.

And I don’t mean your run-of-the-mill piddly little worries that would make me a wildly stressed-out, obsessive, over-protective mom (which is pretty surprising, actually, since i really like to be in control of certain situations. i’ve turned out to be pretty laid back about this whole child-rearing thing after all. who’da thunk it?). Like I don’t get all worked up if D tips over and bumps her head (obviously as long as it’s not a life-threatening gash) or starts chewing on a piece of paper and accidentally swallows some. Eh, no big deal.

I’m talking big lifetime worries. Like how do I know if I’m raising her well? Will I be able to instill in her the values that I think she’ll need to be a good person? Will we be good enough parents to raise her to be a strong, smart, independent woman, with a good head on her shoulders? How do I make sure she has a solid foundation off which to grow the rest of her life? How do I keep from turning her into one of the specimens you see on Intervention or COPS or Girls Gone Wild?Will I be able to prevent her from being one of those snotty, bratty, disrespectful, obnoxious kids you see constantly fighting with their parents in public and who you just want to slap silly? Do I have the strength to not screw up royally along the way somewhere and break my child (emotionally and mentally, not physically. i’m pretty sure i would never crack a bone in her body)?

See what I mean?

She is so pure and innocent and beautiful and happy and full of wonder and curiosity right now. Every time I look at her or watch her playing with R or listen to her talking to her toys, my heart just swells with love and pride that we actually made that ridiculously awesome little person.

My absolute worst nightmare is that I do something that extinguishes that amazing little spirit in her and she turns out to be a lost, mad, unhappy person who hates her mom. I really don’t know what I would do to cause such a transformation, and I hope and pray every day that I never find out. But knowing that I am now fully responsible for molding this little person and shaping her future fills me with worries like this that I’m pretty certain will never subside.

And I’ve realized that I just can’t help it. I don’t sit and stew over these things every waking minute, mind you, but such thoughts do dance in and out of my mind a couple times a day.

And maybe that’s a good thing? Maybe it would be bad if I didn’t worry about her like this. Maybe it’s just showing how much I love her and want to always protect her and be there for her however she needs. Maybe.

And these worries are SO much different than any others I’ve ever had, no matter how important I thought those were at the time. Like what college am I going to go to, what kind of career path do I want to take, where do I want to live? Granted those are all pretty big life decisions, but raising a kid? Trumps them all, hands down.

Just last night, D was scooting around the house following me (which is super freaking hilarious, btw), and she got to our bedroom doorway. Just inside that doorway is the door to our laundry chute (well it’s not really a chute, more just a hole that opens straight to the basement and laundry basket below), which currently has no door on it since it was ripped off to redo the room and has yet to be replaced. She didn’t go near it, but I instantly thought oh my god, what if she fell head-first through that hole and splatted on the hard concrete basement floor?? I’d die.

That last one falls more in the head-bumping or paper-eating category than the screwing-her-up-for-life category, but you feel me. A mother’s worry truly is never-ending. But you know what? I wouldn’t trade this for anything in the world.

April 14, 2011June 24, 2011

Back in business

Damn, it feels good to be a gangsta. No, not really. But I was going to put “Ahh, it feels good to be back” to start this post, and then the Geto Boys lyrics popped into my head instead. 🙂

It does feel good, though, to have my new theme all sorted out. Kind of like being *home*. My old one just felt too sparse and blah, so I love the splashes of color and little extras I can do with this one. I am pretty proud of myself for figuring out how to manipulate the website code to change things, too. Last night when I was showing R the header I created and how I’d taught myself to change icons and stuff, he kept saying, “Oh that’s easy.” Well, yeah, duh, when you’re a web/computer genius, but to us laypeople looking at code is like looking at Mandarin Chinese – a whole bunch of random letters and symbols that don’t make any sense whatsoever. So I’ll just continue to pat myself on the back thankyouverymuch. 🙂

So this post is just gonna be about a whole bunch of random things, because all the stuff I have floating around in my head this morning doesn’t really have much connection. (see, that sentence right there didn’t even make a whole lot of sense) For starters, I feel like I look like a total frump. Since Winter has decided to come back, I have on a gray sweater, black pants (which would be great if they were a little truer black. they’re more like a black khaki, so i keep worrying that people are thinking they look too much like faded black jeans, which are disgusting), and a pair of hiking sneakers. Blech. These pants are new, and are the exact same style as a couple other pairs I have for work and absolutely love, but like I said the color is just a little meh. And since I’ve never worn them before, I realized this morning that I don’t really have any shoes to go with them. They’re not dressy enough to wear my cute black faux-patent leather flats, and I apparently have no other casual black shoes. So sneakers it was. Gross. *I’m open to all suggestions for good casual black shoes. The comfier and cuter the better.*

And since we’re back in the 40s today from the gorgeous sun and 60s yesterday, I had to get another jog in last night to take advantage. I decided my new rule is I’m not running unless it’s at least 50 degrees outside, because I hate running in cold weather. And I don’t see 50s in the forecast again until next week, so I made my butt get in gear last night. I changed up my route again – went 2.11 miles in 18:56, which is 8:57 pace. Woo wee! I’m very surprised I broke the 9:00 pace, because it certainly felt like my slowest run yet. I was expecting to get slower from when I started before I get faster though, seeing as my body has to get back into shape after the weirdest, probably most traumatic thing it’s ever been through. So that’s pretty encouraging. I could feel it in my left knee and ankle by the time I got done, though, so a couple days off may be a good thing right now.

D has decided to be a little stinker lately and not take her afternoon naps at daycare. Hence, she’s tired and cranky when we get home and has to take an evening nap, which I was hoping she was starting to drop. Tuesday we were supposed to go to swimming, but she was so tired she fell asleep when I fed her when we got home and I didn’t have the heart to wake her – she ended up sleeping for an hour and a half. I figured she needed that more than being dunked by Mommy. 😉 When she doesn’t nap well she doesn’t sleep as well at night either. She’s awoken a couple nights this week, with last night’s wake up coming at 4:00. Fabulous. And since she ate then, I had a sneaking suspicion she wasn’t going to be hungry when she woke up for good this morning. I was right. I tried to feed her anyway, and paid the price. She bit me! Numerous times in a row! I know she obviously doesn’t do it on purpose – she’s not hungry but has something in her mouth, so it becomes a chew toy instead – but goddamn, does that hurt! And I’m afraid I scared her this morning too, because when she did it for like the 4th time in a row I pulled back and said, “Stop biting!” She looked up at me with these huge eyes and a tiny little frowny face and almost instantly started crying, big tears and all. I felt so terrible. I should have learned from the first nibble that she wasn’t hungry, but I kept trying. Poor little thing. Why is Mommy shouting at me? I’m just lying here looking up at her with my gorgeous gray eyes. 🙁 Oh man, I felt so mean. That beautiful little face was so sad; I don’t think I’ve seen her cry from fear before. Needless to say, she got lots more hugs before we left for daycare. Unfortunately, her lack of eating leaves me in the ever-so-lovely lopsided state. Bleh.

She loves playing in her playpen now too. How adorable is this??

April 11, 2011April 11, 2011

Was it Summer yesterday?

Because it sure felt like it. 80+ degrees, sunny skies, hot breeze blowing, it was great! It was actually almost a little too hot for this early in the season, but I am certainly not complaining. I started off the day in jeans and a 3/4-sleeved shirt, then quickly changed into shorts, then again into a tank top. R grilled up some delicious homemade green pepper and Colby Jack burgers for lunch, then D and I sat outside for a good hour yesterday afternoon enjoying the fresh air and listening to the Brewers on the radio. Talk about the perfect way to spend a Sunday.

I did a garden survey too, and am happy to report that all plants appear to have survived the harsh winter again and are coming up nicely. I’m especially excited for one garden in particular this year – I created a new one in our backyard last fall and wasn’t sure how well it was going to fare. I dug up and tilled a row along our neighbors’ garage and planted 6 peony plants that one of my grandmas sent for D, then covered the whole thing with mulch. This was in October and the peonies were just roots, so I was afraid they were going to be destroyed over the winter. Fortunately I saw a couple of them starting to peek through yesterday, so I’m very hopeful that they’ve all made it and will be a beautiful addition to the scene. Peonies are one of my absolute favorites, and I planted these right next to one mature white peony bush that we already have in the back corner of our yard. I can’t wait to see these all in bloom together.

Oh, and the anniversary present turned out splendidly! I rented a limo to take us to dinner Saturday night and then out on the town afterwards, and R was completely surprised. He was so excited and we had a blast. I still have to get the pictures uploaded, so I’ll share those tomorrow.

Until then, here are a couple from our lazy, almost-summer afternoon yesterday. I can’t wait until the real thing is here to stay!