Happiness is...

A great deal of my happiness seems to depend on other people's bowel movements and sleep and eating habits. 

After "FlowerFest 2009" (the term "Flowers" in leiu of "Diarrhea" has been shamelessly stollen from AndreAnna) in which one or the other and sometimes both of my children had Flowers from February to the end of June, it now appears that everyone is now regular. THANK GOODNESS!

Max is now drinking whole cow's milk.  He was officially weaned and hasn't had any boob for 2 weeks.  My boobs are finally done making milk and have shiveled up.  You'd think having done such a bang up job feeding my children, they'd be a little happier about it, but they are looking mighty sad indeed.  I don't remember the girls feeling so empty and droopy after weaning Alex.  In fact, I remember feeling that I got lucky that they didn't appear to change much from my pre-child days.  This time, not so much.  I now have breasts that very much look as though they've fed two children for almost two years.  I suspect it's because Max really had his way with them.  He nursed every two hours (day AND night) for nearly 13 months.  Apparently that will change things.  I am already formulating plans to have them fixed.  I'm not even embarassed about this.  I see it as repair work.  Ideally I wouldn't want to have implants, I would hope I've got enough tissue left to just put them back where they belong.  Even if I have to loose a cup size or two (that sound you heard was my husband weeping at the loss of a cup size).  I want to loose weight first and maintain my goal weight for at least a year before I do anything.  Really that's the only way I can remain optimistic about the state of my boobs.  Thinking that I can someday have them fixed.

Alex is still on an eating streak.  In fact last night he ate two personal sized frozen cheese pizzas!  Overall, his eating habits have gotten better. Basically he's eating like a normal 3 1/2 year old and he's starting to look like a normal 3 1/2 year old now instead of a skeleton.

The sleep situation at our house seems to be getting better and better every day.  Since Max's tubes were put in, he immediately stopped getting up all through the night and settled for a nightly routine of getting up once at 2AM.  Depending on who got up with him seemed to determine how the 2AM wake up would go.  If it's John, he'd wimper a little, John would rub his back and he'd fall asleep until 6.  If it was me, he'd scream and scream and claw at my shirt for boob and scream some more for about an hour, sometimes longer, then he'd go back to sleep until 6.  Even though this was better than the every 2 hour routine, it was still sucking the life out of me.  So yesterday I put a new plan into action.  I allowed him to take his normal mid-morning nap and then kept him up until bedtime at 8:00.  He's always taken a late afternoon nap, and was very, VERY grumpy for the few hours he'd normally be napping, but we got through it with the help of a swim diaper and backyard sprinkler fun.  He fell asleep easily at 8:30 and we didn't hear a peep out of him until 6:30 this morning!  I'm trying not to feel overconfident about this.  It could very well have been a fluke, but we'll do it again today and hope for the best.

As for Alex, he's going to bed around 8 or 8:30 (depending on what's going on that evening, if we have guests or if we're out, I let him stay up an extra 30 min), he gets a bath, I'll read a book of his choice, hugs, kisses and he's to stay in his bed.  Some days he'll fight and cry that he doesn't want to go to bed, but once he's in bed, he's really good about staying there.  He's usually out in 5-10 minutes.  This new 8:00 bedtime has changed our lives.  We usually get the baby to sleep shortly after Alex is in bed and John and I have all this time to ourselves! Let the debauchery begin! Debauchery of course being watching Star Trek Enterprise on DVD.

All in all, things are going pretty well these days.