Last weekend my dear friend Annie came to visit. I have known her my whole life and I have many fond memories from when we were little girls, in college and now as adults. We enjoyed a lot of time doing pretty much nothing - just sitting around with the kids. The two of us had a nice dinner out together and did some shopping. We exposed her to some of our favorite carry out restaurants, and one of our favorite grilled salmon recipes from kitchen Gunden Kauffman (mostly Kauffman). We baked and frosted cookies with Norah, and we went on a walk and to the park.
Norah ADORED Aunt Annie. Every morning the first thing she asked is whether she was up yet. For a while she kept referring to her as my friend, but we got "Aunt Annie"grilled into her head during the weekend.
Otherwise we have been keeping busy with our jobs and our three-year old. Norah turned 3 on a Saturday (in mid-October), and the following Monday we did not recognize our child. Most of that week she had hysterical fits almost every morning and evening. It continued to be pretty bad for about two weeks, and has since improved a bit overall (in terms of fewer meltdowns).
But these meltdowns...they are AWFUL. She screams so hard she is sometimes hoarse the next day. We quickly learned the warning signs, but haven't really figured out how to keep it from escalating. We are also still working on the best way to calm her down and help her out of them. She is a persistent little girl, and that isn't the first time I have used that word to describe her.
We take it situation by situation, but overall are attempting to ignore the behavior as much as possible and follow the "no talk, no emotion" rule. (Side note...I 100% did not follow that rule tonight. I definitely talked, and I most definitely showed emotion. My excuse is that I am sick. And. Just Tired.)
Back to parenting that I can be more proud of, we generally feel we are seeing improvement and would like to think it is because (usually) we are not adding fuel to the fire. Obviously we (mostly I) have some work to do, but we're working on it.
As for "Macy Cakes," as Aunt Annie calls her, she continues to be a poor sleeper at daycare. 18 minutes here, 25 minutes there. I joke with her teachers that they even record it in the nap section of her daily report. With that and the time change, she very often cries most of our commute home. As soon as we get in the house I feed her and put her to bed as soon as possible. And she is out. She has been getting up once to eat between 4:00 and 6:00am. So we still cannot complain about her stretches, but her inconsistency is a little challenging in terms of workout and pumping plans.
My production has been going down a bit, and my assumption is that it is due to my body not responding as well to the pump (now that I have been back to work as long as I have) as it does to Macy. I am on 12 fenugreek a day, which is helping. My doctor, who happens to be a recognized breastfeeding advocate and expert, said the first thing she always recommends is to make sure you are pumping/feeding 8 times a day with no more than 6 hours in between any two sessions. I was at more like 6, maybe 7. So I'm trying to get at least 7, but 8 is tough if I want a decent stretch of sleep at night.
Speaking of, I need to go to bed. I realize this will not go down in history as my most coherent entry ("rambling" may be a better way to describe it), but so be it. There won't be much action from me over the next 4 days since Macy and I are off to cousin Matt's wedding. But we'll be on vacation all next week, so hopefully I'll have more time then.
Cheers!
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