Down, and not the dooby down type.

I feel down. Elizabeth is 6 months and 6 days old, and we have not conquered the breastfeeding thing. Never in my life have I experienced such pain. I thought the breast infection I had when I was 18 was bad, I thought the galbladder attacks were bad, I thought the labor might get bad, I knew that breastfeeding would not be easy, but in the words of Coldplay "no body said it'd be easy, but no one ever said it would be this hard." I don't know what to do. I don't know if it is me or her, or a combination. I don't know if it is the latch, or some medical problem-thrush maybe, I don't know. People may wonder why did you go this long. Well, I just kept thinking it would get better. It hasn't. I have a call into the lactation people. I cried last night as I fed her, and I want to cry right now just thinking about the whole thing. I don't want to give up. I want it to work, I want it to be that joyous thing that it is supposed to be, but right now it is not, and it really hasn't ever been. I feel down. Jacob says I can call it quits if I want to. I don't want to. And I do want to, but I don't want to even more. I want to give her all the benefits that I am supposed to. They say the average woman stops after 6 months. I don't want to be the average woman. I want to be the one they look at funny and wonder to themselves if my daughter wasn't a bit too old to be breastfeeding. I guess I will wait and see what the lactation people say. I feel down.

Amazing Grace and Flying cats...

This might be long winded...

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It was almost a very dark first Mother's day in the younger Lloyd household...Actually let me go further back than that. We used to have two cats, Soren and Sofie. Due to bad habits of Sofie's part, she was taken down to my parents to adapt and become a barn cat last summer. She has not been seen since-very much to my detriment and sadness-even though she made it so it had to be. We were left with one cat-Soren, who is a remarkably good cat, a little over weight, and sometimes annoying, but overall good. He did not really like the little life form we brought home last December, but slowly has grown to tolerate her (who know what will happen when she starts to walk and chase him, he he). Anyways, he hasn't really been receiving as much attention lately, which only made the events of this weekend worse.

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Soren likes to go out onto our deck. He has been there a million times in his 2 3/4 years in our apartment. When it starts to get cold, we let him out and shut the door, when he scratches and we let him back in. We have never forgotten him there long term, until Saturday night. Jake let him out onto the deck somewhere between 7 and 8 pm. When it started to get cold, Jake closed the door and left the light on so that he would remember to check before he went to bed.

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The weekend before last we purchased some flowers and Jake had been out there planting. We have 4 flower boxes along the edge of the wall. When Jake was heading to bed, he looked out onto the back deck, no Soren. He also noted that there was only 3 flower boxes, but figured he had put it on the ground when planting, he also figured either he couldn't remember letting Soren in or I had done it.

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Sunday morning Jake got picked up early for church. I thought the night had been unusually quiet (we had been having to throw Soren out of the pack and play on a fairly consistent basis at night). But I didn't take too much note of it, I was trying to get Elizabeth and myself ready, by myself. (I told Jake when I got to church that he couldn't leave me because I am not cut out to be a single Mom. I don't know how anyone could do it.) After church we went out to Jake's parents for the day returning at 9:45 pm.

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Elizabeth was hungry and tired, so was I-well the tired part. I started looking around, usually Soren greets us at the door, but no he hadn't. We looked in all the usual places...then the unusual places...when I saw it. No flower box, I thought maybe Jake put it on the ground. No flower box on the ground. I asked Jake...he got a fearful look on his face and said that he was pretty sure he had let Soren in the night before.

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I went over to the edge and looked over, there three floors below, was the flower box. Panic began to set in. Soren was most assuredly not in the apartment. Jake went down to find him, he couldn't (at least he survived the drop). I went down, nothing, but it was dark. Hope faded, but we would go down at first light and see what we could see.

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5:45am, Jake went down to look. A couple of minutes later I hear him on the stairs, in he came with a dirty, wet, hungry, sore, tired, mobile, scared, poor baby Soren-Alive.

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All that to say, that Soren took a flying fall off our third story balcony, and lived, with only some sore muscles-nothing broken. Amazing Grace, and Thanks to God. He is home sleeping it off and needless to say we will be paying more attention to him here after.

97%?????

So Elizabeth had her 4 month check-up on Friday. She is officially a chuncker. She weighed in at 17 pounds 9 ounces, putting her in the 97th percentile for her age. That means that only 3 percent of children her age are bigger than her. It also means that she is as big if not bigger than other children older than her (proven by the fact that she is bigger than the other babies at church born last year, some as many as 5 months older than she is.) Good Golly! She is also 26 inches long, 95%, and her head is in the 75%. The head thing I am glad for, I don't want her to end up with a huge head, the fat she will get rid of, but there is no guarantee that she would grow into an overly large head.

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This weekend was beautiful! 85 degrees on Sat, and if it were not for my cold it would have been a perfect weekend. Although my coughing did make E laugh a lot. We went to the Tualatin Valley Nature Park, it is really cool. We also hung out with our friends Ben and Suzi, which is always a lot of fun. Anyways, now it is back to the grind stone for another week. At least the weather today isn't making me want to be elsewhere...too bad. =)

Hmmm...

I've decided I am not so good at this blogging thing. I don't think I have anything worth writing. Even what I do have to say, doesn't end up taking long to say. Oh, well.

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Elizabeth rolled over for the first time this last week. She was on her stomach, and rolled to her back, with much effort. She kept almost getting it, but would fall back to her stomach. This went on for such a while that I had time to get the video camera, so I have her first successful roll on video. That is pretty cool.

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She is getting really good at the laughter thing. More and more things are becoming funny. Jake took her to the park the other day, and while they were there they met a woman and her two children. One wanted to see the baby, so the woman picked her up to show her, then the other wanted to see too. So she picked him up too. Apparently a woman holding two small children is reason to have a belly laugh (her first real hearty laugh). She likes peek-a-boo, flying, raspberries (she is getting pretty good at those herself).

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She is also able to bear weight on her legs. She will stand against the couch for about 5 seconds before she buckles, but she is getting there on the standing thing too. When she is on her stomach, she is getting the motions for crawling, raising on her hands and knees. She just needs to get it all coordinated and she will go.

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She has her 4 month check up on Friday, exciting because we will get to see how much bigger our little hippo has gotten. She is in 6 month clothing currently. We took her to work today, and weighed her on a big scale there, and she weighed in at 18 pounds, ahhh! Friday will let us know whether that scale is off or not. If it is true, she will soon move out of 6 month clothing, which seems to be the case by the way she wears them now. My goodness she's doubled in size since she was born.

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Okay, I guess I had more to say than I thought. I should stop now. Tschuess. (Is that how you spell it?)

The Nursing Diet/Jeans Friday

Oh what a happy day! Friday is jeans day at work, yay! But what makes this Friday even better is that I was getting dressed and thought my outfit would be better with a nicer pair of jeans. My 2 pair that I wear all the time I have had for a couple of years at least, so they are faded and have the cuff-fray issue as all jeans do. So I thought, "what the heck, I will try them, and be disappointed, but what if...". So I went to the drawer of "maybe someday I will fit into these clothes again" and pulled out my jeans, which are in better shape and look nicer, but I haven't been able to wear for at least 2 years. LAAAAAA!!!!! They fit! Ahhh!!! Nursing works, best diet ever! And I still get to eat whatever I want!

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Sad thing about jeans day, Elizabeth was up this morning before I left for work, and was quite bubbly and smiley. It was a hard having to go to work morning. = (

Back to work...

So I am back to work. Today is my third day back, and it is going well. I chose to come back on a Thursday so that I wouldn't go into shock. I figured I could handle 2 days at work before I got a weekend, and then I didn't have to worry about having a full week ahead of me right from the start. It was a good thing I did. I went through some withdrawals, and I don't think that it would have been good on Jake to have to go a whole week either. I think they had more challenges at home than I did at work. But we have survived.

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Also, in bigger and better news, Elizabeth is trying really really hard to laugh. I think she did on Saturday, but where we were was so loud that I am not 100% sure. I am so excited for laughter. She is ticklish on like all of her body, but currently doesn't know what to do with it, so she squirms, soon she will laugh, oh the fun we will have!

She begins to smile!

This little child of mine is so amazing! She is sweet and adorable, I didn't think that it could get much better, but then she began to smile. Not the I've got gas smiles, but the I like you smiles. I finally got one on camera...