Back to Work

Last week I went back to teaching for the first time since I was put on bedrest. I am teaching a natural birth series of 4 classes. Gotta admit I'm gonna have to fake advocating for unmedicated births a bit :-) My head can speak to it well but my body still remembers the intensity a little too well right now! The class is a good group and I am enjoying it. The Hubby seems to have fared fine being in charge of the 3 kiddos as well. I guess we can consider it a warm up for my return to Children's in 2 weeks. Huck did okay last week but last night he was fussy most of the time I was gone.



Speaking of Huck, he is doing well. I weighed him this week and he has gained 2 1/2 lbs in a month and is now 11.2 lbs. The expected weight gain at this age is 4-7 oz a week, so he exceeded that by gaining 10 oz a week! I can tell that he is nursing better, his latch is more consistent and I am much more comfortable. I don't want to jump out of my skin each time he latches on. I have been able to feed him several times a day without the suplimenter and am only pumping 1-2 times a day. I can finally see the end of the SNS in sight, although I'll save the celebration until it is retired for good. I have a love-hate relationship with the thing.



I hate the additional work, the difficulty of getting it placed correctly in his mouth, the cleaning... but I am grateful for it's existence because it allowed me to continue breastfeeding. For me, breastfeedingis about so much more than just feeding. Outside of the nutritional and health benifits, not to mention financially, it is about an emotional connection. I love that time when it is just the two of us- me stroking his soft hair, snuggling him close, kissing the top of his head... him reaching his hand up to my chest, grabbing onto my finger, looking up at me... With the other two I especially enjoyed coming home from work and cuddling up together to reconnect. So while nursing is going better, poor baby has had a cold this week. It started last weekend with lots of congestion and a cough. It is a deep, junky chest cough too. You just know it hurts hom sometimes. In the beginning he was so confussed by it all- the look on his face was so pitiful. He just wanted to be held all day. Now the congestion has improved some so I don't need to suction his nose as much and the cough is mostly at night. (By the way, he is sleeping pretty well- I'll usually get a 5-6 hour stretch between feedings at night.) I got the cold early this week. The two of us sound pretty pathetic at night! I'm pretty sure it came from a certain big sister who thinks she needs to be 2 inches away from his face when she speaks to him...

One of the things I love about preschoolers is their rapidly expanding vocabulary and the way they make things up if they don't have a word for what they want to say. The Duchess likes to change the part of speech to suite her needs- two of my favorites right now are: sharp (v) to sharpen a pencil. "Can you sharp this pencil for me?" and inside-out (v) to turn right-side out, "Can you inside-out my pants for me?" She is also know to use some mature sounding phrases. The other day her Dad asked her if it was cold outside and she answered "It is starting to warm up out there." She has just a few weeks left of school. I know she is going to miss her friends, Chloe, Kennedy and Bethel. The 4 girls have really bonded this year.



Bubba has had a fun month at school with feild trips. The older kids have done standardized testing so they have sent the Kindergartners out of the building. They went to the zoo, a farm and today they are walking to a nearby plant nursery. Coming up they also have a carnival, Buddy Fun Day, Splash Day and a last day of school party. Whew! It is pretty amazing to see how much he has learned this year. He is reading independently, writing sentences and doing math. We are so lucky that he had such a great teacher. Not because of the acedemic acheviements but because of the balanced approach she has to teaching. She really seems to understand what these 5-6 year-olds need- and it is NOT sitting at a desk for most of the day, it is NOT doing homework everyday, and it is NOT having perfect behavior all the time :-)



The Hubby got a new car yesterday! It is a Buick Enclave. It is pretty and fancy and is the first New Car he has ever had. The Caddilac was going to need more maintanence and it just wasn't worth putting more money into it. If I can figure out how to upload a picture from my phone to Blogger I will post it.



The other manager at his work quit so he has had more responsibility handed over to him. It is not a bad thing because the other girl didn't really do a very good job, but it does require more time from him.