I suppose we are officially out of baby jail now (though it doesn't really end until Tuesday).  That's the first 6 weeks when you are not supposed to take the baby out too much, as her immune system is nada.  Breastfeeding helps, especially against GI illness, but it is no substitute for your own antibodies and killer T cells and other cool checks against viral and bacterial invaders. 

But we took both children to Kohl's yesterday, and to the farmer's market today, so I suppose we are officially out and about.  

The farmer's market made me happy - we got to talk to the farmers, who set up the stand right across from their 3 acre farm in the neighboring town.  Talk about locally grown.  And it is inexpensive - compared to the subcription services where you fork out $600 for the season or $20 a week for a box (which you have to pick up anyway) - at the market yourself you pick what you want, and because we got there at the end of the hours, we got a free big bag of spinach picked this morning. 

All told we got fresh spinach, basil (our basil plant at home is dead or nearly so, and I've been too preoccupied to start some more seeds), garlic shoots (think scallions, but garlic-y), and kohlrabe (a veggie I've not heard of before) for $16.  Just the tomato plant would have been that much at Home Depot.  The spinach is amazingly tender, like the baby spinach you get at the store, in full grown, happy leafy dark spinach.  

I'm happy to try the kohlrabe tonight - maybe in a stir fry of some kind with the garlic shoots.  I've been meaning to try new veggies, but at the farmer's market you can talk about how to prepare it and what it is - that's not something you can get at the grocery store.  

It must be some sort of innate biological darwinian pleasure that can be gained from fresh-grown stuff, especially gardening, because I'm a little at a loss to explain how happy and pampered I feel eating these awesome veggies.  We have plenty of land, but so many critters around our house that gardening would require armed guards or an electric fence.  I'm still temped to try it, but we're starting out with containers on the back porch.  Well, one container, the tomato plant.  

Posted by bisous at 2:36 PM EDT

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The 5&1/2 week old baby actually slept through the night last night.  And no silly 5 hour definition of slept through the night.  She actually slept from 10pm to 5:30 am.  Then she woke up, slurped down some milk, and slept again until 8:30.  I'm actually well-rested!  The house is relatively clean!  I have crocheted a mama and baby penguin, and I've caught up with most of the TiVo'd programs.  If most babies are really like this, I no longer feel sorry for new parents.

(I'm still cheating a bit - she still sleeps next to me - I tried again to stick her in the bassinet with the miracle blanket and it devolved into a 2 hour scream fest two nights ago.  She is also sleeping on her side, not on her back.  She waves her arms a lot, and manages to move from her back to her side much of the time anyway.  The only fix for that is a swaddle, but if she's already sleeping pretty well...)

Posted by bisous at 2:43 PM EDT

Updated: Friday, 06/12/2009 2:46 PM EDT

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I haven't lost any weight in the last week.  This is not good, as my current weight is patently unacceptable.  As in, I go back to work in a few weeks and I have very few clothes that fit.  The pants aren't that much of a deal - the maternity work pants obviously still fit.  But shirts are a big problem.  I need shirts that button up or zip up (I have an array of zip-up sweaters, but that works for the fall, when I went back to work last time - this is summer, folks).  I need work-acceptable zip-up shirts.  That don't make me look like a member of the Sopranos.  And the milk bar, sadly, does not fit under XL button-up shirts.  Not yet.  Normally I am a large medium, a 34C, none of this triple gargantuan food repository craziness.  This can happen to you, folks!  Use birth control.

 And the milk bar is uncomfortable, because I have been pumping each morning but didn't get around to it this morning, so the milk bar is like, dude, I've got an extra 6-8 oz here and I've been waiting and waiting and no one will help me!  The newborn is not helpful - she had a growth spurt yesterday and ate constantly, which only worsens my issue today.  Today she has been waking up for brief spurts to nurse for a minute or two, then she falls asleep for another three hours.  Because she is growing growing growing, and soon will be the size of a moose.  

The is no way I will be doing bouncy exercises any time soon.  Bouncy exercises are my favorite kind, but you try bouncing around with two water baloons strapped to your chest.  It's NO FUN. 

Boy, I'm glad I got those complaints off my chest.

Posted by bisous at 1:03 PM EDT

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So last week I had one day of a halfway decent workout.  Got out the free weights and the Swiss ball and went walking twice.  I'm still not supposed to push it - you really should give it 6 weeks rest (other than walking and light stuff) after having a baby.  And I was punished for my excesses with pain, bleeding, and complete exhaustion. Today I might try it again, but without so much excess.  6 weeks is still over a week away.  But I hate to be a fat slob, too. This muffintop won't take care of itself.  Though my moose of a baby (still can't believe she is 12 pounds - that's the size of an average 3 month old baby) will take off some of it over time.

It doesn't help that breastfeeding fills you with relaxing, yawn-inducing feel-good hormones which make the couch and cookies seem like excellent places to hang out forever.  Mmmm. Cookies.

I did make banana bread this morning.  We actually have some excess bananas - which is not a usual occurance with a toddler in the house.  A major toddler fuel source is bananas.  When my mother was here, she ate tons of them too, and I think I kept buying enough for toddler, Mr. Bisous, and my mother.  And me, admittedly.  When I was working pregnant, my midmorning or mid-afternoon snack would involve a banana of some sort.  Now that I eat almost like a normal person, I don't HAVE to have a daily banana, apple, orange, etc.  In fact, I've skipped a real dinner the last two nights.  I just wasn't hungry.  I can't remember the last time I skipped a meal because I wasn't hungry.  

But here we went skipping off about food again, when I want to actually... skip.  Run.  Lift.  Kick-A.  I should get on my bike, but I am still hesitant ever since I broke by tailbone on my bike last year.  

One more week!  I bet I still won't be able to run.  Babies do a number on your insides and outsides, some of which it takes a few months to get right.  

Posted by bisous at 11:43 AM EDT

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Having an especially cute and personable 2 year-old girl must be just a little bit like being a movie star.  (*or living in the south).  Today at each stop along our errand way, a manager made a special effort to get me a cart, and we got stickers and special attention at check-out, not to mention all sorts of waves and smiles throughout the store.

Also, the twenty of you who read my blog must be real fans of nursing pads.  Ever since I plugged the Johnsons' variety here a few weeks ago, my Target has been clean out of them.  Nursing pads are vital pieces of equipment - one can't really leave the house without them.  However, this morning they had a few boxes, and I emptied the store, leaving other moms stuck with crappy lansinoh or gerber ones (they have mountains of those).

All right - off to enjoy the beautiful day!  As soon as it is not eating time or nap time for one of the two little buggers.  Or me.

Here's my ticket to good customer service:

Posted by bisous at 10:57 AM EDT

Updated: Sunday, 06/07/2009 9:17 PM EDT

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As a tiny baby, Bisousette ate pretty much all the time.  I remember a lot of sitting on the couch with the boppy and the baby (it didn't help that she was a light sleeper, even then, so once she fell asleep on you, half the time you didn't dare move so that she could get some adequate sleep).  The new one isn't like that - sure, a few times a day she might cluster feed a little, but for the most part, she eats every 2-3 hours during the day and 4-5 hours at night, rather like the books and advice say she is going to eat.  I find myself at a loss of what to do with the little one when she is quiet, awake and not hungry.  That was not a condition that existed for the Bisousette until she was sitting up on her own and could entertain herself a little.  The little one, at one month, does not do much on her own, though the skylights, ceiling fans, and the mirror mobile on her baby swing do offer some diversion.  

And now, nearing age 2, Bisousette still eats constantly.  I offer her 3 meals and at least two snacks a day, but she is always asking for more, and is always running around with her cheerio bowl or little goldfish or (more often) carrots, apples, oranges, grapes - I do try to keep it to whole food.  The cheerios are modified food starch-free "purely-os" and the goldfish are the whole grain version.  Goldfish don't have a lot of crazy ingredients, for processed food, they seem pretty wholesome.  She only drinks water and milk.  I'm not anti-juice per se, as long as it is 100%, but I don't see why she should drink juice when she can eat fruit.

With all this eating, Bisousette tops the charts at 90-100% in height.  But she manages to stay between 40-60% on the weight side of things, at least since she began to lean out a little after 6 months of age.  

If I ate like I feed the Bisousette, I would likely lose my pregnancy weight pretty quickly.

Posted by bisous at 3:04 PM EDT

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Seriously, the doctor's first comment:

"Your baby is one month old?"

Yeah, she's huge.  Enormous.  Gigantic.  12 pounds, 23.5 inches long. Good-tempered - allowed the doctor to listen to her without any issues.  I totally lied and said she was sleeping in her bassinet in our room, when actually she tends to sleep between us in the bed.  My goal had been to have her sleep in her bassinet at 4 weeks, but the littlest one sleeps so well that I don't have all the chances to try to put her in the bassinet that I did with the Bisousette.  Bisousette woke up 3-4 times a night for months and months - so I had her trained for the bassinet by putting her back in time after time after time.  This one generally wakes up once between 10:30 and 7am if she sleeps in bed with me, but always wakes up within about 15 minutes of putting her in the bassinet, day or night.  So in the day she sleeps on the boppy on the couch (which will have to end very soon, as she is getting more mobile), or in her swing.  But I might switch over to the miracle blanket at night for a better shot at bassinet sleeping, now that we don't have to change her diaper 20 times overnight.  Of course, she might not fit into the damn thing at this point.

This baby will also sometimes get to sleep when she is put down "drowsy but awake."  I always thought it was dipshit advice to put a baby down drowsy but awake so she will learn to sleep on her own - that kind of thing NEVER worked for the Bisousette.  But it might work for the little one.  Hey, she might actually "sleep through the night" by 3 months.  I thought that was a myth, and parents who said their young baby sleeped through the night were lying.  Really.

(I'm kind of figuring out that Bisousette was basically a tough, cranky, fussy, sleep-depriving baby - it's a good thing we had her first when I didn't know any better.  My husband always said his first daughter, who is now 13, was a quiet, amenable, happy baby who wasn't fussy and slept well and blah blah blah.  I thought he was lying about her too :)

But 12 pounds at one month.  No wonder I'm worn out.  

Posted by bisous at 2:51 PM EDT

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My nursing tanks are in transit and out for delivery!  Whee!  I love internet shopping - it's like you get the pleasure of shopping twice - one time selecting the stuff, the second time opening the packages when they arrive. 

The littlest one had a rough beginning of the week - lots of gas and crying and  unhappiness.  However, I changed the way I fed her, and now she is doing quite well.  Sleeping 2-3 hours at a stretch during the day and two 4 hour stretches at night.  I have oversupply, and so changing the feeding so that she only nurses from one side at a feeding, not both, really helped to decrease her irritability and unhappiness.  With the Bisousette, who was generally irritable for no particular reason, nothing really helped.  But with the littlest one, it was 100% clear her distress was related to unhappy tummy (poor thing would cry, grunt, pas gas or poop, then visibly relax and be her happy self again.)  With oversupply, if you feed from both sides, you can sometimes get a "foremilk imbalance" with the first milk being low in fat and high in lactose.  The baby will not get enough fat, eat more often, sleep less, and be more irritable, and be more gassy with mucousy poop (ew).  Once I changed the way I fed her, she was instantly back to the happy little one she had been the first three weeks, before the oversupply issue became such an issue.

Amazing how sometimes the advice you glean will work for parenting, and sometimes not at all. 

My littlest one will be one month old tomorrow.  And the Bisousette is so very close to two years.  Amazing how time flies when you aren't working...

Posted by bisous at 11:56 AM EDT

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I'm making a crochet penguin mama and baby for the toddler, and taking care of the brood at the same time.  And I'm losing weight, which mostly consists of worrying, being okay with a little hunger (but not too much), and fretting about how I can't really exercise yet (frankly, the milk bar is too heavy for any jumping, and I'm still two weeks away from being allowed to do serious core work).  I've lost, I think, around 37 pounds in 29 days.  Which is a lot, when you look at it.  But on the other hand, I'm still quite overweight, distressingly so, and I'm nowhere near fitting into my clothes.  So.  Hopefully we will keep on going.  I really need to fit into my clothes, more or less, in a month when I go back to work.

I'm reading some books when I get a moment - the first one "In Defense of Food" by Michael Pollan (basically - stop fretting about protein and carbs and vitamins blah blah blah - none of that will make you healthier.  Eat Food.  Real, whole, food.  Cook for yourself.)  After that I'll read "The End of Overeating"  Kessler  (Skwigg's latest entries in her blog rave about that book, and I saw the interview on either the Daily Show or Colbert Report, and Kessler seems like a sensible fellow).  Hopefully they will get me in the mood.  It is hard to cook, though, with a baby on one arm and a toddler yanking on your shirt from the back.  But it can be done!  

Posted by bisous at 11:17 AM EDT

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Seriously.  The sister-in-law came over on Sunday and used a tumbler for wine and we have none left!  Okay, so we only had about half a bottle at that point.  But this is Massachusetts - you have to go to an actual liquor store to get more wine, for some odd reason you can't pick it up at the grocery store.  And it used to be you couldn't get it on Sunday, but we're only a 15 minute drive from another WHOLE STATE so screw you, Massachusetts weird laws.  But anyway, I refuse to drive to another state for the sole purpose of wine.  I'm pretty sure that would make me positive for one of the CAGE questions. (okay, I did that once, but we were having a Sunday dinner party!  Really!) And I hate liquor stores.  Maybe because I am ALWAYS carded even though I am of advanced maternal age.  So I guess we'll go without.  That's fine.  The couple of bottles we had were actually leftover from before I got pregnant in the first place.  

Enough about wine.  As I said, the cupboard is dry, so I took out the credit card and went to Glamourmom.com to buy some nursing tanks.  I like the tanks for every day wear - that way you can have a zip up or button up shirt over it, and then you can nurse the little one without flashing a bunch of flabby belly.  I bought a bunch of nursing tanks last time around, but the only ones worth a damn were the glamourmom ones.  So it is worth a little expense to have some comfort.  And you have to wear something 24/7, so it better be comfrotable.

Hey, look, sleeping baby!

Posted by bisous at 10:33 AM EDT

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