Giving a Two Year Old a Big-Kid Room.

At Nathan's birthday party, my mom gave us the curtains made from the vintage cowboy material she found months ago. And they look AMAZING. I'm used to cheap IKEA curtains, and these blow those out of the water. Plus they're very heavy, so they do wonders at blocking out the light.



I'd been looking for the perfect set of bunkbeds with no luck for awhile, so I settled on the KURA bed from Ikea:



It's a fort bed at first, then it can flip over into a short loft bed like aboe and has the perfect space for a mattress on the floor underneath. This means the boys can use them as bunk beds at a younger age since it's easier to climb and not as tall as a regular set of bunk beds.

The blue paneling, however, was a huge turnoff. I remembered reading about how people painted those panels with chalkboard paint and hey, that's one thing I have in spades! So I did it up:



It was really easy, it only took about an hour in total, since the panels dried really quickly. Of course, putting the bed together was a two day long process especially because Nathan "helped" me, and by "help" I mean misplace half the screws. But he had such a fun time trying to help me out with the bed.



Here's the view from the hallway.



And a better view of the bed. I did buy the blue bed tent, and it's up now.

He really likes his new bed and new room, but was pretty pissed when we put the crib back up in his old room. Not such a big fan of sharing, that one. He got over it pretty quick when we redirected him back to FORT AWESOME BED. WITH DINOSAURS IN IT.

On Breastfeeding, or Not

I'm at a weird crossroads where I'm not sure if I'll continue nursing Evan, or just formula-feed him. Right now he's just about half and half. My supply went all crazy after staying in the hospital and being anesthetized twice in a week (meaning I had to pump and dump, but I was too tired and in pain to do so as often as I should, I only did it when I was about to shoot boobmilk high into the night sky).

Further complicating matters is that I'll be working part-time from 2-7PM Monday-Friday starting in a couple of weeks. It's a small company with nowhere to really pump, and I would normally consider doing it in my car except that I don't have an adapter and uh, there's people constantly walking through the parking lot because it's a transportation company.

And the thing is, those are far from insurmountable obstacles. I could find a way to make it work and continue breastfeeding if I really desired to. But here's the thing: I don't.

Right now, all the super-pro breastfeeding people just heard that from hundreds, thousands of miles away, and gasped and called me a terrible parent.

But I am tired. My back hurts from the position I have to contort myself into to get Evan to eat in the middle of the night. My surgery incisions hurt when I flip the other way to switch boobs, and the stent in my bile duct is still causing me pain. I just don't enjoy it anymore because of the pain and everything that's happened and already having fed Evan formula I can say that he honestly doesn't care what he's drinking. And you know what? There's no mythical bonding experience that exists solely between a breastfeeding mom and her kid that isn't there with formula feeding. I know this because I have now done both. Evan's got a lock on my face when I feed him a bottle just the same as when he's on my boob.



So I've given myself permission to give up, but I'm still not sure if I will or not. I guess time will tell.

The Hospital is Not a Place of Fun.

The last three weeks or so I had a few episodes of really bad stomach pain that radiated to my back. Friday morning, it was still terrible from an episode the night before so I headed off to the doctor. Five hours and an ultrasound later, I was in Beverly Hospital meeting with the surgeon. Turns out I had gallstones distending my entire gallbladder and a few in my common bile duct, affecting my liver. The next morning I was taken down to Beth Israel in Boston by ambulance (always kind of silly when one can walk on one's own). They sedated me and did a procedure where they went into my duct endoscopically (is that a word?) through my throat to get rid of the stones, and they also put a stent in so if other stones came out of the gallbladder, they would pass through and not get caught up like one of the 128 onramps during rush hour.

I felt extra bad because Saturday was Nathan's birthday and we had to cancel his party at the last minute. Poor kid. Good thing he's only two and has no idea what a birthday is.

Thankfully Sunday they let me go home, and Thursday I'll need surgery to remove my gallbladder. In a month, I'll have to go back to Beth Israel to get the stent taken out. Unfortunately, this is pretty painful, and I have spent a lot of time not breastfeeding because I'm on painkillers (still pumping and dumping the milk, however). I'm hoping I don't have to switch to formula permanently but only time will tell.

I haven't been able to eat much, and I especially haven't been able to eat the fatty foods I love. I just want cheesecake, and cheesy lasagna, and fried chicken... dangit!