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!

Chalkboard-Painted Clementine Boxes

For the last month or so I've been HOUSING Clementines, with the help of a certain 3 foot tall member of the family. My friend Christa has some empty Clementine boxes in her kitchen to hold various sundry objects, so I figured I really needed to stop throwing them out.



Nathan's toys are all over the place, so I figured they could be useful under the TV. I coated the front panel in the chalkboard paint leftover from the kitchen cabinets, and used chalk to denote what goes in them. Not like Nathan reads. Or puts his toys away. But it looks good, damnit!



I like the way it came out. Also, you will note from the above picture that an IKEA entertainment center made of MDF is not to be trusted, as it's all warped from use.

He Didn't Even Throw Him On The Floor. Bonus.

Now I Can Never Leave

Our older neighbors next door snowblowed the end of our driveway today - the guy next door has always been really nice, and they knew we had a new baby and Mike had surgery, so he's done it a few times for us. I'm currently baking up some pumpkin spice muffins to give them as a thank-you, hopefully it won't be too awkward to knock on their door.

Anyway a few weeks ago my brother came up with one of his construction buddies to take care of the last few major projects in the house - fixing our downstairs bathroom where our dog, Bob, ripped out some drywall, and putting in a subway tile kitchen backsplash, finally getting rid of the terrible 1960's wallpaper that was not even vintage cool, just terrible.



Sure, I *could* have moved the PB&J out of the way, but you try doing anything with a toddler and an infant. I dare you.



This used to be a piece of cut stainless steel sheet behind here. Looks SO MUCH BETTER now.



The kitchen will never be magazine-perfect, but it's small and for 4 people and it's lived in and dangit, I can write recipes on any of the cabinets. Like pizza dough. Good to have pizza dough.

Anyway now that the house looks pretty much awesome, I don't really ever want to leave, even with the distance to Boston or anywhere that isn't the Atlantic ocean, and the sometimes crappy neighborhood. Sure, I'd like to live on some kind of hobby farm selling eggs to people, but that's a lot of work.

Parenting's kind of only as expensive as you want it to be.

Now that I'm back into the swing of parenting a newborn, I've noticed a bunch of articles, blog posts, or whatever on "Baby Cost Calculators!", "Can You Afford A Baby?", or any variation on "What to Buy for Babies!"

I realize from experience that when you're first expecting, you have an urge to buy new stuff, and possibly roll around in the floor all over the cute tiny infant outfits. Those $1000 bedroom sets sell like hotcakes. I'm vaguely aware of some phenomenon known as a "diaper cake" that gets presented at baby showers.

But honestly? Unless you live in the woods and no one likes you because you smell, people will buy you things, and hand you bags of clothes. And even if people buy you nothing, you can get SO MUCH secondhand for a fraction of the new cost. Nathan's crib was $35 on Craigslist, and his dresser is a hand-me-down (but his big-boy dresser was also on Craigslist for $30). I prefer the antique, beat-up, not matchy look anyway. Consignment shops have a litany of outfits, shoes, strollers, and assorted baby gear. Of course, the one caveat is to be careful to make sure you don't get something that's been recalled - or talk to the shop owner to see if you can return the item if you get home and look it up and find out it is recalled.

I even got car seats and bases from a trusted friend - sure, you could buy those on Craigslist, and I even gave an extra away on Freecycle, but I'm the kind of mom who won't take the very, very minute risk that they've been in an accident or thrown across a room or expired or otherwise unsafe for my pwecious cargo. And the big convertible car seats that come after the babybuckets? The Cosco Scenera is something like $60-80 on Amazon, it's well-rated, and also one of the slimmest carseats on the market.

And then there's cloth diapering. I've dropped maybe $300 on diapers for the two kids, and an additional $50 or so on disposables for emergencies, vacations, etc. It's work, and the extra water for another 2 washes a week isn't free, but diapers for a kid from infanthood through potty-training can be thousands of dollars. And then double that for the second kid. It's not the easiest thing in the world, but it's not especially hard - and I'd rather put an emergency load in the washer than run out to a store during a snowstorm for disposables. It really wasn't too much of a burden even when I was in school full-time. And I do all the washing.

Of course, pontificating about how cheap it *can* be ignores the whole childcare issue, and some people can't breastfeed and pump at work easily - adding thousands more in formula costs. I know that's the dealbreaker for a lot of people because it's horribly expensive, and I'm lucky for not having to go that route. We will once I graduate and go back to the work force. I'd worked out a schedule with my former employer where Mike and I would each be able to take days off to care for Nathan, but that plan blew up when I got laid off instead. I assume that when I work, I'll be going back full time and Mike will only be part-time, but there's no use planning for the unplannable at this point.

Anyway, Craigslist is your friend. So are consignment shops. Save that cash for your kid's college fund. Or for a vacation for yourself once your kids are old enough.

Let's Play a Rousing Game of 'Which Baby is This?'

HINT: They are not the same baby.

Baby crying? I can fix that.

In which we have another baby.

I know I don't update much anymore, but I'm finally done with my first full-time semester (3.94 GPA! In yo face!), and I just got home from the hospital with Evan.

I went in for an induction two days before Christmas. My blood pressure was creeping up just like with Nathan, and this time I really didn't want to be as sick as I was while/after having him. However, even with crazy amounts of Pitocin, my contractions really didn't do anything. So they sent me home that night.

I managed to not go into labor during the huge monstrous blizzard we had Sunday, but Monday, the day I was scheduled to go back, they called me to move me because it was so busy. I went back on Tuesday, we did the Pitocin thing again, and they said this time they'd break my water to make sure I really did give birth. So I just sat in bed and internetted until like 2:30, they broke my water, and like last time the contractions started getting WICKED ROUGH GUY right after that. Judge me if you will, but it was epidural time. So at 3ish I asked for one, and it was in by 3:30. Then I almost immediately felt I needed to poop. YOU CAN SEE WHERE THIS IS GOING. I kind of held off and was going to wait for my nurse to pop back in and my mom's like "UH NO YOU SHOULD CALL HER NOW", and then I remember at 3:45 texting Mike, who had taken Nathan to the cafeteria, saying "Come back NOW its babytime."

Thankfully, Mike was already entering the maternity ward when I texted him or he would've missed the grand finale. We had just enough time to send a cranky Nathan home with my sister, I pushed for like 4 minutes, and Evan was born. I pushed with Nathan for a grueling 2+ hours, so this time I was like "wait, that's IT? That was easy." And he was 8 lbs, 7 oz. I thought he'd be smaller than that.



So then we had a baby, and because the whole thing happened so dang fast I felt awesome and was up walking around a few hours later. He looks like Nathan did as a baby, for sure.

Now we have to move from 2-on-1 to man-to-man defense, which will be an adjustment. Nathan likes the baby, but is still too young to know the definition of "gentle, seriously, be gentle".

I kinda like him, though.