A bittersweet new beginning

Today is Linus' last day of daycare and it's a little bittersweet.  Tomorrow, the movers will come and pack all of our stuff up and haul it to our new life in California, but today is just a "normal" day.  And, by normal, I mean that nothing feels right at all!

My mom has been staying with us for the last month.  That has been awesome.  Today, she's headed back to Minnesota.  I already miss her and she probably hasn't even made it to the airport!  She's been just an amazing help as Jon has been in San Fran working, and as we've been prepping our house for the move.

And, today, I dropped Linus off for his last day at The Learning Nest with his awesome, compassionate, wonderful teacher Roxie.  I'm so glad we found such a fantastic home away from home for him.  The daycare is truly a wonderful place for him and he absolutely loves it there.  I'm going to miss Roxie, and Roxie will truly miss Linus.

Now, it's a rush to handle all the tiny tasks that need to be accomplished before I grab Linus from daycare.  And there are about a million tiny tasks!  Loads of laundry, sorting through closets, emptying garbage cans, sending stuff to Goodwill, trying to figure out where to recycle light bulbs, etc.

But here I am, finally letting it sink in that we're actually leaving.  And it took my mom leaving to remind me of that.  I'm going to miss the wonderful people I've met here.  This is the first place I've lived where EVERYONE I've met has been willing to give the shirt off their back since the minute I met them.  Olympia is a friendly town filled with absolutely compassionate people.

Among my best friends here are the ladies and babies in our play group.  The last 4 or 5 months have been so much easier since I met them.  Our Sunday hang out sessions have been so fun, and we've gotten to watch our little ones go from barely doing anything to stealing toys and army crawling around the house.

And, of course, my fabulous coworkers.  They made it easier to transition back to work after maternity leave, and they certainly brought joy to my working days.

And the lovely frisbee ladies I've met who took me in as one of their own.

Olympia, you've been wonderful to us.  We came here as a family of 2 humans (and 3 animals), and are leaving with one more joyful little human.  We've met wonderful people and had wonderful times.  Now we will wave a fond farewell to all we've encountered.  We've loved it here, but we have a new place to make our home now.

Nightmare on Easthill Pl

I had this horrible nightmare last night where I had befriended these two nurses (who seemed to be a hilarious gay couple, one white and one black and ready to have a sitcom about them), and I allowed them to move in with me.  Something happened to Linus where he got really sick and the nurses, who had apparently worked with Linus previously, muttered something about him having a condition.  The conversation went along and it turns out that Linus' doctors and nurses withheld from us the fact that he was genetically predisposed to a heart condition that would cause him to die during childhood, though they didn't know when.  They said the surgery to fix it was too risky.  I remember feeling so horribly sad.  Other things happened during the dream, and at one point, I couldn't find Linus and I thought he was dead.

This was the worst dream I've maybe ever had.

Now that I'm a parent, I realize that my whole life has shifted.  My worst fears in order are as follows:

1. That something will happen to Linus and he won't get to grow up and experience all of life's challenges and rewards.
2. That something will happen to me and Linus will have to grow up without his mama, whom he so desperately needs right now.
3. That something will happen to Jon and Linus will have to grow up without his papa, who has so many neat things to teach him and introduce him to, and so much love to give.
4. That something bad will happen in the life that surrounds Linus so that he will have to grow up while carrying around something dark.
5. Monsters, darkness, snakes, etc.  All the other bad things that I used to be afraid of.  

After I woke up from my horrible dream, I thought about some of the people I knew who died all too young.  Mike Langer is one who sticks out vividly -- when he was about 16, he died in an avalanche while on a snowboarding trip with his family.  He was the one who was going to check whether a path was ok for his group of friends to travel down, and he stepped and, bam, everything came down and brought him with it.  I can't even imagine what his mom felt.

I always understood that the whole mom-child love thing existed, but now that I'm experiencing it from the mom point of view, it knocks me off my feet.  I love my son so, so much.  At this age, he and I are almost dependent on each other.  Of course, I look forward to him becoming more and more independent when he's ready for it, but right now I nurse him and change his diaper and snuggle him to sleep, and without him next to me I feel like I'm missing something.

And then I thought about those little Syrian kids that ISIS just released after months and months of torture.  They were beaten and forced to watch videos of beheadings.  What kind of monsters do that to a group of children?  I want to wrap all of them up in my arms and take those months of pain away and promise them that they're safe and nothing bad will ever happen to them again.

And I thought about those 200 Nigerian schoolgirls who were kidnapped by Boko Haram.  Where are they and will they ever be released?  What have they undergone?  Rape?  Torture?  Murder?

The world is such a cruel place and I want nothing but to keep my son safe from the agonies it can bring.  

The thought of anything happening to my Linus just burns me down.

Nighttime diapering

We bed share.  That being said, it's especially important that our diapers don't have leaks in the middle of the night.  We've tried different disposable diaper brands, and different types of diapers in those brands and have found that none of them are great for 12-hours of leak protection.  The 12-hour thing is clutch for us because Linus is usually happy lounging around in bed for about that long, and he only wakes up about 2-3 times in that 12-hour period.

We've had all sorts of fun accidents in our bed, from just a little pee to a whooooooole lotta poo.  And, finally we found the solution.  It's quite simple, actually.  The answer is: cloth diapers.

There are two reasons that I trust cloth:

1. There is actual elastic that goes around the waist and legs.  I can adjust the fit to ensure that there's a tight seal so even the biggest messes stay contained, and
2. I can stuff it with whatever materials I choose.  More on that in a bit.

Now, even within the cloth diaper continuum, I've narrowed down 2 brands that I trust for overnight wear.  The brand I trust most is BumGenius, but I'll settle for Fuzzibunz if my BumGenius are dirty.  I'm sure there are a lot of other great brands, but of the brands that I own, those are the two that fit Linus the absolute best.

And, for anyone who is looking for a diaper to try, I highly suggest the BumGenius.  I'm pretty sure that every single cloth diapering mama and papa that I've talked to trust them the most for nighttime wear.  I haven't tried their AIO (Elemental or Freetime), but I hear they're fantastic.  I use their 4.0 diapers, which are pockets and are adjustable for newborns through toddlers (8-35 lbs).

The snap closure is great.  I hear that some kids eventually start taking off their diapers because they think it's HI-larious.  The snaps really don't allow that because they're tougher to get loose.

Okay, so I mentioned the bit about how I love pocket diapers at night because you can stuff them with whatever you want.  After doing some research, I found that stuffing with the microfiber insert that comes with the BumGenius PLUS a layer of hemp (I use the Thirsties hemp inserts) can easily keep my kid dry for 12-hours, no matter the pee or poo situation he encounters in the middle of the night.

The deal is this: keep the microfiber closer to the kid's bum (but never touching their skin directly) because its job is to act quickly to pull the moisture away from the kid's body, then keep the natural fiber (hemp or bamboo, etc.) underneath that because natural fibers are fantastic at holding the liquid.  So, we wick it away and then we have our holding tank.  Here's one person's comparison of a couple different inserts and how much liquid they can hold.  You can, of course, easily conduct that test on your own.

That's all the time I have.  I'm off to care for a crying baby!  Niiiiight.

Linus explores a new food

Up until now, Linus has only ever had breastmilk.  Honestly, I had planned on keeping that way until the AAP recommendation of 6 months.  But, he started daycare this month and, as you may have noticed in a previous post, Linus won't take a bottle.  So, at our 4-month pediatrician appointment, we got the go-ahead to introduce solids.  

Because of the issues with rice and arsenic, I opted to go against the usual first food of rice cereal for my li'l man.  Instead, he got sweet potatoes!  And he absolutely loved them.  

Later this week, we're going to try bananas!

To note, I hate sweet potatoes.  And I smelled like them all day after I fed them to him.  So, I regret my decision to feed him sweet potatoes at least a little bit.

Salmon Run

We did some hanging out around town today.

Today was Linus' first salmon run.  The salmon are returning from the Pacific Ocean to their birthplace in order to do their own mating.  There weren't too many salmon ready to hop through Capitol Lake today, but I expect that when we go back in a week or so, there will be a gazillion.

After checking for salmon, we walked MaxDog around the lake.  It was 90 degrees, so we found a patch of shade to hang out eventually, and took some adorable photos.

Here's Linus with the capitol building behind him.

 And here are a couple of others of the family:

Things I wish I would have known: Bottle-feeding

If you're exclusively breastfeeding, introduce a bottle to your kid at 4-6 weeks of age.  No sooner.  No later.

When I was pregnant, my husband and I attended our regular birth classes and also an additional class on breastfeeding that was phenomenal.  In that class, the lactation consultant discussed the benefits of breastfeeding and things like how to achieve a proper latch.  She also mentioned briefly that we should introduce a bottle between 4 and 6 weeks.  Any sooner than that and what is called "nipple confusion" may occur.  That's when a kid realizes that getting milk from a bottle is a whole lot easier than sucking for a while to let down their mom's milk, then finally being able to get milk, but still having to work really hard to get it.

I didn't blatantly ignore the advice on when to introduce a bottle, but I didn't take it.  I waited.  And waited...

Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, breast pumps are now covered by insurance, and I got mine when my son was a few weeks old.  I kept saying, "I need to figure out how to use this thing," so I left it on the dining room table so I wouldn't forget about it.  Finally, around 6 weeks after my son was born, I took out the instructions on how to clean the thing.  It seemed like a daunting task, so I did what any good procrastinator does: I put it off.  Then, a few weeks later, I said to myself, "Self: why is this thing taking up the dining room table when you haven't done anything with it?  You should probably move it out of the way somewhere!"  So I put it in a closet.

I should also mention that I got 4 months of (unpaid) maternity leave from my work.  This is awesome because it allowed me to really take time to watch my son grow and learn.  But, it meant that things like pumping and finding a daycare were on the back-burner because I had plenty of time!

So, finally, when my son was almost 3 months old, I found the ol' breast pump, followed the instructions for cleaning, and gave it a shot.  My friends had warned me not to expect too much from the pump the first few times I used it, but I combined each day's worth of pumping at first, and put it in my nice glass bottles (our LC told us to use glass because even those BPA-free plastic bottles still do have a lot of crazy chemicals in them).  Then I tried to feed those bottles to my son.  "HA!" he said, "I don't think so, Mom.  I know where the real stuff comes from!"

Okay, so me feeding a bottle to my son wasn't going to work, because I'm the one with the boobs.  So, fine, maybe it'll work for my husband.  Nope.  We tried so many things.  I'd leave the house about a half hour before my son would be hungry and Jon would try to give it to him, only for my son to refuse and prefer spending large chunks of time crying at the top of his lungs.  I had my mom try a bunch.  I had my mother-in-law try.  Nothing.  We tried sugar water, and super watered down juice to try to entice him.  I tried bottles that are "breast-shaped" and other fancy nipples.  No.  All we could do was get him to play with the darn bottle.

So, after a good solid 4-6 weeks of trying to get Linus to take a bottle every single day, we sent him to his first day of daycare.  The daycare woman called me and said, "You need to come in and breastfeed your son because he's not taking a bottle."  That woman, bless her soul, has so much patience.  It's only been his first few days of daycare now, but he's not going to take a bottle.  I know that.  My son certainly knows that.

So, take it from me, and introduce that bottle during the 4-6 week window or you'll end up having a kid who just never really wants it because he knows how to tap into the source.  It's kind of like.... I don't really like dark beers.  But, I went to Ireland and drank a whole lot of Guinness because it was just so much better there.  It's the real stuff.  And so are my boobs.