Busy!

I got into graduate school!!!!
This of course means that I am super busy.  We need to get ready to move, we need to find jobs and a place to live, I'm still working and taking care of the baby.  Plus, it's summer, which means visits and trying to get some leisure in.
It's only going to get crazier!  I have decided to Camp NaNoWriMo next month.  Which may be a mistake, but I'm going to give it the good college try anyhow.  Before we get there, I'm going to try to write a few blog posts and schedule them for about once a week up through the middle of August.  I'll still be around; I've got lots to say.  But it'll be spotty.
Away!

Keeping it up

The motto for today is 'Rome wasn't built in a day.'  I have lost eleven pounds and sort of stalled out a little.  Possibly because I've had a terrible week.  It's been mega stressful on its own and my biology is out to get me.  I know I am a stress eater, so I've been trying to be mindful.  But, honestly, it is better for me to sacrifice some calories than to torture myself with resisting my sweet tooth.
I am trying to get back in the groove.  I just have to keep on the mantra.  Forward, forward, forward.  It'll take time.

Opting In

I want to be on What Not to Wear.  Occasionally I can be counted on to look presentable.  I am nothing if not a student, so I have tried to internalize the key points of the show.  However, this has a way of backfiring on me.  Namely, that I don't buy clothes because I talk myself out of them.
While I was pregnant, I needed to buy some clothes, but my biggest concern was simply whether it fit over my stomach and would see me to the end of my pregnancy.  But Lala's eight months old now, and I'm working on losing weight.  Soon I'll have to buy clothes.  At least, I hope I have to buy clothes soon.
I'm about ten pounds down and I'm not really noticing much of a difference in the way my clothes fit.  It's a little frustrating.  Keep on trucking.
Anyway, buying clothes has always been difficult for me.  I am pretty picky and I am very cheap when it comes to myself.  (Mostly.  I will spend money on bras, because I am not about to suffer to save ten bucks.)  On the other hand, I'm very interested in fashion.  I read fashion blogs, I watch fashion shows, I work with clothes everyday.
I dress like a schlub.  I need to figure out how to balance practical with fun.
In other, related news, I've finally tried Polyvore.  It's pretty fun but I have a tendency to get stuck on one item.  But I'm doing these theme outfits.  It's totally fun.  Like playing with paper dolls with an infinite amount of pieces.  And, if ever I am rich, I could make these dream outfits a reality.  Ha, ha.

Writing

I want to write again.

God, just writing that makes me nostalgic.  Sometimes I'll get in a good pattern, where I manage to read and blog and work out and spend time with my family and something is still missing.  I think that it's probably writing.  Or maybe roleplaying which serves a lot of the same functions in a slightly different format.
When I'm writing or gaming actively, I find myself less bored and overall in a better mood.  But it's a lot of time investment.  Time is something I simply don't have too much of these days.
But that's probably an excuse.  I don't feel so hot about my writing of late.  The characters floating around my head are all old, their story-lines largely forgotten or incomplete or both, their voices rusty and disused.  I feel awkward at the keyboard, only able to hash out the barest bits of a cliche before I'm too upset/disgusted to continue.
Perhaps I need to do something drastic.  Camp Nanowrimo starts up again in July.  If I get into grad school, that would be one hell of a balancing act.  Moving, momming, working out, eating alright, blogging, working. Mmmmm.  Maybe.

Nail cutting

The worst baby chore, even worse than changing poopy diapers, is nail cutting.  It is a nerve wracking experience that I can only compare disarming bombs in the movies.
You need to take a wriggling human being and cut the barest sliver of the thinnest substance right from the end of the wiggliest part of said human.  If you're not super careful, if there's one little slip, the baby is screaming and bleeding, and, worse, it's all your fault.  It is the worst psychic torment to heap upon a parent.  But if you don't cut the baby's nails they scratch themselves and everyone else around all to hell.
Some advice says to cut the baby's nails while they sleep, but Lala's not that deep of a sleeper.  It would make it much easier.  There are also baby nail files on the market.  I've never been that great at filing my own nails, but I bet it would be more painless.  The only downside is that you have to file every day.  I have to cut Lala's nails about once a week.
Oh, well.  It's done today.  No Mommy torture for a few more days, at least.

Breastfeeding

Man, I did not realize what a snakes' nest it is feeding your baby.  Everyone has an opinion, and some people get super vocal/scary about it.  Breastfeeding is the only way!  Breastfeeding is an abomination   You feed formula!?  You ingest caffeine!?
It's exhausting, dudes.
So, mostly I try to avoid the mommy drama.  Especially on the internet!  I say, if you're doing what you can to make your baby the healthiest he or she can be, that's all anyone can ask.  No judgement here.
I decided, a long time ago, that I wanted to breastfeed.  I knew it was going to be tough, but I insisted to myself that it was the way.  I wouldn't take no for an answer.  After my experience having Lala, however, I was worried that I had been too steadfast about this particular thing.  That there was no way I could have what I wanted in this arena.  But I was wrong.  My steadfast insistence proved one of my greatest allies in my attempts to breastfeed.
That is the biggest piece of advice I can give: you have to WANT it.  There were times that it was harder than anything I'd ever done before.  Times when I was exhausted beyond belief, or just wanted a minute completely to myself, or suffering discomfort from too much nursing or not enough nursing.
Really, though, breastfeeding came easily to me.  That sounds like a brag but it's more like a wonder.  I did a fair amount of research online and in books but not as much as I thought I would.  Not nearly as much I researched anything else, and not near enough to realize that some days I would be spending close to five hours physically connected to another person.  I attribute my success mostly to Lala.  She's a good breastfeeder   Her latch is great, her focus is pretty reliable and she doesn't get too hungry before she asks (my words, haha).

Breastfeeding while laying on my side works the best for Lala and I.  It took me way too long to figure that one out.

This post comes towards what may be the end of my breastfeeding sojourn.  My initial goal was six months.  But here we are at eight, still doing alright.  I'm trying to make it to a year.  Lala wants more and more "people food" as she gets bigger and with her four teeth (top and bottom incisors), biting has become incredibly painful.  I'm trying to hold out.  I enjoy our time together so much.  It's so intimate and dreamy.  And, if I'm completely honest, the extra three hundred or so calories a day I get to eat is pretty nice.
So, here are my suggestions for successful breastfeeding, in list format, because that's how I roll.

• Get a support group.  If you have a partner, they can be a great asset.  When I was head-lolling tired, my mom and Bard supported me, helped me the best that they could.  With their support, I felt like I could continue even when all else felt lost.  I also had the number of a great lactation consultant.  You can usually get this through your hospital.  We didn't even have to ask.  There are also tons of great online resources.  But I was careful where I tread.  La Leche League International is a great resource but they stray into the political too much for my purposes (I'm a little conflict phobic, I think).
• Research.  A little.  Don't go crazy, but it's nice to have the general idea of what has worked for others in the past.  It gives you a little arsenal of things to try in the event (and it happened to me) that what your baby has been happily doing for months suddenly doesn't work.
• Trust your instincts.  Every baby and every mom are different.  What may work for someone else, or some other baby, may not work for you and that's cool.
• Balance research with your instincts and don't be afraid to play detective.  When Lala was still very new, she was having serious issues with gas.  You could hear her belly, and (gross alert!) her poops were explosive and green.  She was unhappy a lot of the time.  I had a doctor tell me that it was pretty normal, but I wasn't happy with that answer.  So I did some research and discovered that it might be a number of things with my breastfeeding technique.  So I made a number of changes and it really helped.  My favorite resource in this endeavor was http://www.breastfeeding-problems.com/.  A collection of really sound and simple advice.
• Invest in some good nursing foundations.  Especially if you go back to work.  Pumping in a regular bra  sucks!  Also, my favorite article of clothing right this moment is a mid-length nursing gown my mom bought me when I was in the hospital.  It's cool enough for summer, short enough to wear pants for winter, not terribly ugly and crazy convenient.
• Drink lots of water and try not to stress out too much.  Of all the things that supposedly impede milk production, these are the two that I have noticed pretty much kill it for me.
• Room in, at least at first.  Lala, I have told you, is a terrible sleeper.  I can only imagine trying to drag myself down the hall two or three (sometimes four!) times a night to feed her.  That she was at the foot of our bed in her cradle and then her crib was a godsend on those early late nights where she needed to be fed-NOW.
• If all else fails, formula won't kill them.  There are people who would argue this point with me.  Lala's had probably three formula feedings and it didn't inhibit her taste for breastmilk.  My production didn't flag any more than normal day-to-day fluctuations.  If you want to breastfeed almost exclusively, all you need to do is make sure it doesn't become a habit.

It is my hope that my meandering experience may do someone good.  And if it doesn't, that's okay too.  Maybe if/when I have another baby in four or five years, I'll be able to help myself.

A few book reviews

So, I just finished reading Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America by Barbara Ehrenreich.  Writer Barbara Ehrenreich and her editor conceive of a sociological experiment wherein Barbara tries to earn a living wage working in minimum wage situations.
It made me super grateful for the advantages I've had and the changes that have come down since she wrote it in 2001.  But it also left sort of a bad taste in my mouth.  I can't tell whether I think that she's a wimp (although some of the jobs she does sound like absolute hell) or it's that I agree with her.  It's a complicated feeling.  She's very pro-Union, which doesn't bother me most of the time and annoys me the rest of the time.  I am ambivalent.
At the same time I was reading Nickel and Dimed, I was reading The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner's Semester at America's Holiest University by Kevin Roose.  Kevin Roose is a student at Brown.  While working for journalist A.J. Jacobs (whose excellent book A Year of Living Biblically actually pointed me to The Unlikely Disciple), Roose gets the idea to spend a semester at Liberty University, an evagelical Christian school founded by televangelist Jerry Falwell.
Overall, I enjoyed the book but it felt a little like Roose didn't know what he wanted to include or leave out.  There are some threads that he picks up and that don't really go anywhere.  A certain number of those are bound to end up in a project like this, but one can't help but wondering if they shouldn't have been edited out.  For example, the story he starts the book with doesn't really ever resolve.  But it's a solid read for anyone who is interested in how evangelical christians are socialized in an institutional setting.
This book did depress me, though, and for no reason actually related to the text.  Roose talks about the Virginia Tech in his semester and it made me realize we are the same age.  Didn't I want to be a writer at some point?  But I don't have a book and this guy does.  Damn it all.  I better get off my butt.
In side news, the house is still wet, and sort of is getting a musty smell.  We're doing what we can, but it is much slower going than we would like.

What a frickin' day

Mom, my brother and I spent the morning putting in the garden.  Lala was reasonably interested and behaved alright.  She started kicking off a little after lunch.  Between allergies kicking my ass, how uncertain everything's been and how unsettled my day off was shaping up to be, I was pretty annoyed.  I decided to throw another load of laundry in and try to nurse her to sleep.
I stepped into Bard and I's bedroom into a standing puddle of water on the carpet.  It was spreading slowly, running like a tiny creek throughout the room.  I freaked out.  I burst into hysterical tears.  It was just too much.  The mess of clothes, papers, electronics (!) that were all across the floor waiting to be tidied later today were sitting on top of an inch of water.
So Bard and Mom and my brother jumped into action while I freaked out in the living room for a little bit.  The water was in Mom's room and the bathroom as well.  The landlord came, as did my stepdad, and everyone began the tedious task of unburying the source of the problem and cleaning up the ridiculous mess. Somewhere in the line between the bedroom and the hose on the side of the house, a pipe had cracked.  So when we turned on the hose to water the garden, water essentially gushed in the house.
I took the baby out of the house, since our things and shop vacs were suddenly taking over all the space in our little house.  We wandered around Big Box for a while, visiting with the old ladies until we could go home.  The house needed time to dry out so Bard and I ended up taking Lala out into the world for a while.  When we got back, it still wasn't dry but moreso, so we took a really long walk around the neighborhood.
By the time we got home, I was totally done.  I just wanted to go and be in my room for a little while.  But everything was still pretty wet.
All in all, a pretty crappy day.  I'm just grateful nothing too valuable was totally destroyed and that it's a mess we can clean up in time.  Bleeeeehhh.

Dragging

Lala has decided that she doesn't want to sleep for the second day in a row.  I'm really starting to feel the effects of not getting any sleep.
Not that she was a great sleeper in the first place.  Most sleep advice out there is aimed at parents of newborns or involves the cry it out method.  I just can't do that right now.  Part of it is that it hurts me too bad.  I can't stand to listen to her cry and not do anything about it.  I have trouble thinking of soothing my baby as indulgent.  I have trouble with the thought that even though she's shaking and blotchy and red from crying that she didn't need me in the first place.  But an even bigger obstacle to cry it out is that she lives in our room.  Her crib is at the foot of our bed.  How cruel would it be to be within her sight and not respond to her?  How much sleep would we get if she was crying away in the same room?  No thanks.
She hasn't been a terrible sleeper in the past couple of months.  She got into a good pattern where she only woke up a handful of time throughout the night to nurse (and usually I'm the only one that she woke and not for long) and would sleep, consistently, until about nine-thirty or ten.
But about a week ago that all fell apart.
A lot of parenting advice warned me that this shift in sleep was coming-but it wasn't supposed to be for another month or so.  She does things on her own schedule.  She's cutting teeth, which is uncomfortable and makes her feel icky, causing her to wake screaming bloody murder in the wee hours of the morning.  But otherwise, it just seems that there's been a shift in her sleep.  She stays up later (which is ridiculous because in my opinion she already stayed up way too late.  A part of me is grateful since I'm stuck working nights at Big Box; it's nice to be able to see her and snuggle her.) and she gets up earlier.  But she's not in any sort of pattern yet.
I sort of wish I could stick to a schedule with her.  She needs her rest and I definitely need  my rest.  But with Big Box randomness it is currently sort of impossible.
It's probably not helping that I've been feeling an adrenaline rush since I started this graduate school process.  The crazies have set in, filling up my notebook with list after list of things I need to do, plan, get, etc.
What I wouldn't give for a decent night of sleep.

New Look!

Hey, just a quick note.  I'm starting a new blog.  It's going to be focused on my professional development and reading and my graduate studies work. (If you're interested: http://teachreadwritelive.blogspot.com/)  I feel a little like I'll be tempted to bog it down here, and I'm not so into that.  So I gave this blog a little template change so they're sufficiently different.  That's all.  Love!