we're moving!

I have renamed the blog and we're now there instead of here...
http://www.holycrapiamamom.blogspot.com/

SOON I will move it all to wordpress too!

XOsonya

whoops!

Oh man. Where have I been? My last post was 10/18 - over 3 months ago! It's been a little busy to say the least. I work in the music business and one of my bands debuted with a #1 record last week, so I'll blame that. Angus is 1 year old now! As of just a few days ago, and his birthday party is tomorrow. He is eating whatever we give him - not really jarred stuff anymore, but mostly whatever we eat, along with extra veggies and whatnot. He is WALKING! Just in the last few days his few steps turned into full walking, and he is using that a little more than crawling. In otherwords, time has gone by SO fast. I've been a bad blogger. I plan on writing blogs on my phone and sending it to post via email. I think that is easier to do during my travels, than finding time to sit in front of the computer and get something up. Evenings are spent putting Angus to sleep, answering work emails, eating dinner and going to bed. If i'm lucky, a little TV. Weekends are all Angus all the time - except now, as he is napping. Oh, and I am still breastfeeding! I only pump 2X a day at work and not at all at home. He is drinking about 5-6oz per day when I am at work. He sleeps from about 8pm-4:30am, then has some milk and sleeps until ideally 7 or so. Not bad, huh? Things have progressed nicely albeit with a few hiccups along the way, especially in the sleep department. OK. Hopefully I will be able to post more often!

sloth

I've been feeling really unhealthy lately. I've been eating kind of badly. Not so much during the day at work, but when I get home. I have no time to grocery shop, therefore we have no food, therefore we order in. No matter how often you order in, it feels like a treat for some reason. Maybe that's left over from childhood, when 98% of my meals were at the kitchen table with my family. I need to feel better. I am thinking about doing a 3 day juice cleanse to get started, but I need to check to make sure it's ok with breastfeeding. I'm sure it is...oh, and it's really crazily expensive. But as a friend who is also considering the same cleanse said, "maybe the high cost incentivises" you to do it! Still, I have better things to spend my money on, like groceries! Haha.

I am going to take some steps to feel better. I'm going to grocery shop more. When I shop, I'm also going to buy ingredients to make at least 2 meals at home. That doesn't count easy things like spaghetti. These would be a few more detailed meals with say 5 ingredients or so. Maybe something I can put in the freezer. Oh, and salads. Johnny and I used to eat salads all the time and we stopped. Honestly I think we stopped because I don't like washing lettuce. I also don't like the chemical taste from cut up salad in a bag. I think I will buy romaine leaves and then just wash and cut enough for 2 days worth of salads. Another thing I will do is walk a little further for my lunch. I go about a block, 2 at the most. I'm going to go further. It's good exercise mainly, but it's good to clear your head and get fresh air. Angus is SO mobile and before I know it he's going to be running into traffic, so I need to get in shape and feel good so I cam keep up with him!

food

Angus is eating 3 non-breast milk meals a day. Jarred food - I use Earth's Best. I feel mildly guilty about the fact that I fully intended to cook some of his food - but have yet to do so. I bought the damn baby cubes and everything. I think I will make it a goal this week to at least cook SOMETHING for him. The jarred stuff is just so eeeeeeeeeeeasy, and the Earth's Best has no added junk. I do have some slight mistrust of them though. They falsified some info with their formula a while back, and I wonder about their jarred food. I do like the flavors though, and so does Angus - as long as those flavors aren't green. Ha! I am a little stressed out about 10 days from now when he's going to start getting finger food. Actually I'm more stressed out about after that, and for the next 18 or so years when I am the one responsible for feeding him balanced meals. I can barely feed myself a balanced meal. It's going to kind of suck to think about food groups and iron and protein and all that stuff. That seems like a full-time job to me! I think I'm going to have to spend some quality time reading up and learning more about this so I can not worry about it and have some meals in place. I guess that's still a ways away> in the meantime, I look forward to giving him tiny tiny pieces of food! Kiwi, Watermelon, cantalopue, cheese, fun times!

catching up

I feel like I'm always so behind on blogging and that every time I blog I apologize for not doing it often enough. I hope that's a given. Anyway.....Angus is almost 8 months old and he's changed SO much! 1) He's crawling! 2) He has 5 teeth and a 6th arriving any day! He is SO much fun. It's just amazing to let him crawl and decide where he wants to go and what he wants to do. He has his own little mind and personality. It keeps us on our toes - it's a while new ballgame! Gone are the days of us putting him somewhere and having him stay there! He is constantly on the go. We're going to have to get in shape and do a lot of working out in order to keep up with him.

Otherwise - we're doing well - I'm still managing to exclusively breastfeed (he's eating baby food of course). I pump 3X a day at work and my supply has been pretty consistent and I haven't had to unfreeze any bags in a while.

Angus had his first night without me or Johnny last night. Johnny went to Toronto for the film festival and I had to be at a wedding in Vermont, so I dropped him off with the in-laws on Saturday morning. It was very lonely without the both of them and while I enjoyed the thought of sleeping in, and uninterrupted sleep, I was uncomfortable for some reason and I woke bright and early anyway. It was a quiet trip. Driving alone up and down to VT was nice and peaceful. Pre-baby, I spent a fair amount of time alone - walking in the city, or just vegging out. It was nice to have a little taste of that, but the niceness didn't make he miss the boys any less. Angus survived his stay and was happy to see me and seems unscathed! We did have to use a bunch of my frozen milk stash, and that is what's it's for. I still have a few bags left in the freezer, and I pumped a ton this weekend - probably about 6 bottles worth. I actually ran out of medela bottles to put the milk in, so I emptied out an unopened water bottle. It was so funny to see that bottle half full of milk - my milk that I made! I travelled with a big cooler and cooling supplies so that I could pump on the way. I pumped milk on the highway! I was really dreading leaving him with the in-laws, but I am glad it went well and I knew they would take great care of him, but of course I'm going to worry. I'm glad it's over!

SLEEP Part Two

So...sleep training week. We started on a Tuesday - kinda...it was "lite" sleep training. My goal was to fix the problem of Angus being put to bed whilst deeply asleep. He never learnt to go to sleep! So...I merely fed him until he was almost asleep, and then brought him his crib, making sure he was aware and that his eyes were open. He fussed the first couple of nights a little, but that was the start of the training. He still woke up, but not as often, but I did pick him up and bring him back to our bed when he woke up around 2am or so. On Thursday we had a doctor's appt for him, and his pediatrician's office is known for being big advocates of sleep training. Normally I don't think this is a doctor's place, but given that we were trying to figure it out, I gladly listened to their advice.

The advice, was pretty much what we already had read/researched ourselves - 1) no swaddle, just pj's 2) put him down awake but drowsy 3) if he cries, allow him to cry for 5 minutes, then go in for 1-2 minutes max and talk to him, and soothe him, but do NOT pick him up 4) if he's still crying, wait 10 minutes beore returning 5) if he STILL cries, wait another 15 before going in 6) cap it off at 15 minutes, so keep letting him cry in blocks of 15 minutes max.

The first official night of this, probably at the 25 minute mark, he went to sleep. He then woke up at 3am and 5am and we repeated the above process. Around 6 I allowed him to be up. The next night was easier all around. It hardly took him any time to fall asleep, and he only woke up at 5 and then went back to sleep. It's been pretty smooth since then! He went to be tonight quite awake, and he just hung out and fiddled around in his crib for 5-10 minutes and then lay on his side and went to sleep. Last night same thing...no tears at all, and he slept until about 5, when he woke up probably 3X for about 2 minutes each time and put himself back to sleep. I picked him up at 6:30. Magic I tell you! I was SO surprised that this was so easy, and that it wasn't complete torture. He thankfully didn't cry for very long at any point, so it could have been a lot worse. It's also working for naps too! I have noticed that he's a happier baby - less cranky and fussy - not that he was much of either of those things at all, but I am VERY thankful that we did this when we did. I was turning into a zombie! YAY ANGUS!!!

SLEEP Part One

So...I've written here previously that Angus stopped his marathon sleeping sessions a couple of months back. He went from sleeping 10 hours straight, to waking up once, to waking up numerous times. Initially I would just feed him and put him back in his crib. Then I would just bring him to bed with me and let him nurse all he wanted. I would sleep on my side, he would sleep facing me with constant access to the boob. I guess it would be like sleeping on a buffet table! Needless to say, we weren't progressing well. I loved him sleeping next to me all snuggled up and cosy. My husband however, retreated to the couch at the height of this.

We also suffered from a few other problems. #1 - I did what I dubbed "boob to sleep" ie: I would breastfeed him to complete deep sleep and then transfer him to his crib. He would get 30 minutes on one boob, then a burp and a swaddle and singing of twinkle twinkle, then switch to the other boob until he pulled himself off and was in a deep slumber. This was a big problem since he never learned to put himself to sleep. The other issue I believe, is that we were still swaddling him - so it was hard for him to self-soothe using his hands should he so desire. And of course at this point, he should know how to do all those things, plus he no longer requires a nighttime feeding.

So - for some reason this week became sleep-training week!

To be continued....