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I have pinpointed 11 houses in my neighborhood to make an extra effort to friendship. 

Step 1:  Cookies with a short intro and contact info

I haven’t figured out a step 2 yet, maybe inviting some of them to dinner, one family at a time.

If you read the comments on my last weaning post, you’d know that I gave in the next morning and nursed her.  It’s not a complete loss.  I have scaled back to nursing her no more than 4 times a day.

I don’t know if it had anything to do with this attempt to wean her, but she is starting to try more foods now.  She ate her first piece of cinnamon toast this week and really liked it.  She still won’t even try most of the things I offer her, but she has shocked me a few times by reaching towards something I’m eating and then being willing to taste it.

Zach brought home a bunch of unusual snacks from Uwajimaya (our local Asian grocery store).  Ila absolutely loved the Snow Pea Crisps.  They were the only thing she’d eat for dinner tonight.  She wouldn’t touch anything on her tray and just reached towards the pantry.  She eagerly asked for more each time she finished one and was sad whens she finished the last one in the bag.  So when I went out to get some groceries after bedtime, I stopped at Uwajimaya to pick up another bag—this time I got the family size.  On a side note, I wished I had my camera in the store, it was like walking into a completely different country.  I didn’t know what most of the things on the shelves were and the labels were not in English.  Here’s what the snow pea crisps look like;

At least they’re vegetable-like, unlike the chocolate goldfish she liked so much.  I don’t know that anyone would call them healthy, but the first ingredient is green peas and they are baked, not fried.

I stole this picture from my cousin Brittany’s blog this week and I loved it so much that I had to share.  These are my maternal grandparents Ila and Wendell O’Bryant:

Weaning Ila is going both good and bad.  I haven’t nursed her since Monday morning, but about 12 hours into weening her she started to develop cold symptoms.  I almost gave up then and nursed her and part of me is not sure if I made the right choice, but I held strong.

Monday night I started developing cold symptoms as well.  On Tuesday I felt miserable.  All I wanted to do was go to bed and sleep the cold away.  I was felt tired and weak and it was really hard to keep going.  Ila cried much of the day, I think mostly because she wanted to nurse.  She ate oatmeal and crackers and other such things.  She continued to refuse milk (both cows milk and my milk), but drank water and Gatorade.  I would feel a lot less guilty if she’d drink some milk.  I don’t think my other kids tasted anything but milk till they were about 2.

Today I felt a little better–at least I had a little more energy, but still had a headache most of the day and cold symptoms.  Ila was miserable.  She had red cheeks and a red nose and was sleepy and clingy most of the day.  She wanted to be held every minute that she was awake.  She didn’t eat much today.  I wish I knew if it was just her cold or if some of it was a result of cutting her off.  I offered her every food I could think of and she finally ate chocolate goldfish crackers.  Although I was relieved to see her eat something, I felt incredibly guilty to see my little baby eat nothing but chocolate goldfish crackers and water.

So here I am, several days into weening Ila and not sure that I made the right choice.  I am afraid that if I gave up and nursed her (which would be the easy thing to do right now), that it would be so much harder to wean her later.  I also feel like this is a step that has to happen.  My doctor has told me that babies don’t need mother’s milk past one.  Ila has become dependent on nursing to such an extent that she doesn’t seem to want to bother with eating sometimes.  She has tried to regress to primarily nursing and she needs more than what I can offer her nutritionally (although it’s hard to make that case right now when she’s eating chocolate crackers and water).I’m starting to fret that this little experiment will end in me taking her to the hospital to have a feeding tube inserted so she doesn’t become malnourished.  I hope I’m just being over dramatic; I have a strong sense of mommy guilt right now.

It’s not that I hate nursing, because I don’t.  It’s just taking over my entire life.  She wants to nurse all the time and refuses any other fluid.  She prefers it to eating solids too.  I often find that I’m nursing her as often as a newborn and it regularly hampers my ability to fully help my other kids.

Anyway, I hope it goes better than last time.  Here are some pictures of the funny face she makes when she sees me get out my camera:

I really need to get back to blogging, but I just keep finding myself too tired at the end of the day to want to get started.  So instead of the text heavy things I need to document, I thought I’d just throw up some recent pictures with a sentence or two here or there.

I was unloading the dishwasher and when I turned back around after putting a dish away, I found one more thing to unload.

Charlotte and Nicole are good friends most of the time.  They are enjoying being roommates.  As they lay in their beds at night, I often hear Nicole call over to Charlotte and say “I lub Charlotte so much.”

We’re just 3 miles from IKEA.  Also, my girls love their new rain boots.  Nicole puts them on her feet multiple times a day.  Charlotte asks if it’s raining before putting hers on then looks for puddles to splash in.

Ok, now I’m off to bed.

Isaac loves to read our scripture stories books.  Most Sundays he will read a book of scripture stories throughout the entire sacrament meeting.  It’s neat because he retains a lot of what he has read and can recall it in family home evening and other times.  We were having a family home evening lesson on Moses and the brass serpent and I was surprised to hear Isaac remembering details of the story.  This week we were watching UP in which the main character is an old man who doesn’t have any children.  Isaac asked me if he was going to have kids and I told him that he was too old to have kids.  Then Isaac told me about a miracle he had read about where there were people who had a kid when they were very old.  His primary teachers have been astounded both at his reading skill and his knowledge of gospel topics. 

Scripture story books are $7.00 each and can be purchased here

Another thing I love for sacrament meeting is the gospel art book which is a spiral bound book of all the gospel art pictures.  I like to use them for my little ones who are old enough not to destroy paper books, but too young to read and I encourage them to look at it during the administration of the sacrament.  
Gospel art books cost only $3.50 and can be purchased here:

My third recommendation is not for sacrament meeting, but I thought I’d include it here anyway.  They make a gospel art kit with all the pictures that are in the gospel art book.  It’s perfect for family home evening with little kids.  Each picture has the story associated with the picture on the back in two forms.  One extended version with full scripture references and an abbreviated version.  I also love to use these pictures when my kids have primary talks.  I couldn’t find it in the church’s online store so I’m a little worried that they have stopped carrying it.

Whenever I have a grapefruit, Nicole comes over and wants her own.  She is also a little obsessed with sodas lately.  They’re a rare treat at home.  She has a sixth sense for locating them.  One day she carried around an unopened can of soda for half a day and when she dropped it, she picked it up and hugged it and asked if it was “ok.”  Isaac and Charlotte have been the best of friends and played together almost continuously since we arrived.  I’m glad they have each other, it makes leaving their other friends behind not as hard.  Also, they have enjoyed running around at the YMCA everyday.

Ila squints her eyes and smiles when she sees a camera.  Sometimes it makes it hard to take a candid shot.Isaac used to make the same face when he saw a camera at her age:

As you may have noticed, I’m doing some catch-up posts.  The month of December was so crazy and hectic, that it was hard to justify taking the time to sit down and write.  Here is an overview of our packing/Christmas holiday.

Zach’s new job offered to pay moving expenses in the form of a bonus on his first paycheck which basically means whatever we didn’t spend we get to keep.  While we were initially excited about this, we soon discovered that doing things the less expensive way means basically doing them all on our own.  From the day Zach accepted the offer until our last moments in Tennessee, I spent every spare moment working on packing and preparing to move.  It was a very stressful time.

We started trying to sell or give away things we didn’t want to pay to move.  We sold our entertainment center and gave away our TV.  We sold our kitchen table and chairs and a variety of other small things.  Selling the kitchen table and chairs meant that we no longer had a place for all of us to eat together.  We improvised with a folding table and moved the kid’s table and stools into the kitchen.

We gradually packed things as I found a moment here or there and occasionally with some help.  On Christmas Eve, we had the Elders come over and help us pack.  We packed all of the kid’s toys and much of our kitchen.  I left out one pan to cook with. 

After they left, I made my first meal with a limited kitchen.  It was a strange thing to have your Christmas eve dinner on paper plates in a makeshift kitchen composed of leftovers cooked one at a time in my only pan.

After cleaning the kitchen we had the kids put on their PJs and then dressed them in costumes for a Nativity.  We let them have a movie night instead of stories and they watched The Polar Express.

I stayed up until 1:30 AM working on my talk for Sunday as I hadn’t had much time to work on it before then.

On Christmas morning the kids were excited to see what Santa had brought.  Unfortunately, he had filled their stockings with all the kinds of things that they usually only get in small supervised quantities.  The kids enjoyed a festival of candy, chips, and beef sticks in the living room!  When I could take the gourging on candy no more, I made them a breakfast of eggs and sausage.  They didn’t eat much breakfast, but at least I tried right? After breakfast we were able to distract them from their stockings full of treats long enough to open some presents.  We took the morning slowly, allowing them to open the present all the way and play with it for a little while without rushing on to the next gift.Each of the kids received a can of SPAM in his or her stocking so lunch was SPAM fried in the only pan I hadn’t packed.  Luckily I had made several meals ahead of time so we were able to just warm them and use my only pan for cooking vegetables to go with each meal for our remaining days at home.Sunday morning the weather was bad, but we left extra early for church since we were both speaking.  When we got there, only a few people were there.  It ended up that the rest of the stake cancelled their meetings, but since we were there we decided to proceed with those who showed up.  We started off with about 20 people, but by the end of the meeting we had about 50.  We didn’t sing an opening, sacrament, or intermediate hymn because our numbers were so low.  Zach and I both spoke and the meeting seemed to turn into a farewell for us.  I felt gratitude for our experience in Tennessee and was glad that we were able to have this farewell meeting.  The Bishop decided that it felt appropriate to sing a closing hymn and choose “God be with you till we meet again.”

That meeting was the last great experience in Tennessee.  The next few days were filled with worry, fear, stress, and packing.  We set up a movie room in the back bedroom for the kids and tried to keep them back there as much as possible while friends from the ward helped us move all of our belongings into our moving truck.  Our last night was spent sleeping on the floors in our rooms.By the time we were ready to leave, we were worn out emotionally and physically.  Luckily the three older kids were able to spend their last time in Tennessee at my cousin’s house instead of locked in a room while we cleaned.  Ila, was not so lucky and she cried miserably when I couldn’t hold her while I cleaned toilets and other such things.

We picked up the kids and headed for Ohio at the end of a really long day of packing and drove through the night.  We arrived safely at my parent’s house at 4:30 AM.

It’s going to be a year to remember. . . We spent most of the day getting ready for our big move, packing and cleaning.  We even packed all of the kid’s toys. 

After a hastily made Christmas Eve dinner using the only pan I didn’t pack and eating on paper plates, we gathered the children for a Christmas nativity.  Some of them were a little grumpy after a long day and smarties were required.  Unfortunately, parts of the narration are hard to hear over the sound of the cranky baby (Ila) I’m holding as I recorded our Nativity.

Hopefully our future Nativities will run more smoothly as I never expect to be packing up my house on Christmas eve again.

I tried to wean Ila this week from nursing and I failed miserably.  I have been offering her sippy cups with every meal for over a month and she refuses to even try them.  I’ve tried a variety of different kinds of cups with a variety of different contents (milk, formula, mother’s milk, water).

My Doctor suggested going cold turkey and just stop allowing her to nurse and he said she’d get thirsty enough to try some milk.  I wanted to pick a day where I could stay home all day so I started Thursday a little before noon.  I would have started earlier in the day, but people were going to come and help me pack and I thought I couldn’t deal well with both.  We both survived the rest of Thursday ok.  Ila didn’t even take a sip of milk, but she didn’t cry too long at the times I knew she just wanted to nurse.  After putting her to bed, I expressed some milk to give her in the morning.

Friday morning was a different story.  She woke up at 4:30 AM and I brought her into the living room, but when I offered her a sippy cup instead of the option to nurse, she started to scream.  She screamed and screamed.  I tried to give her some solid food and she refused to even take a bite.  I made the sippy cup pour some milk into her mouth and she swallowed as she cried and continued to cry and push the cup away.  By 7:30 AM she hadn’t taken a single sip and she was absolutely miserable.  She was even starting to look dehydrated.  She had no more tears, although she continued to scream and her mouth seemed dry.  At this point I was imagining myself taking a severely dehydrated baby girl into the hospital to be re-hydrated and explaining how I was just tired of nursing.  I wasn’t really trying to ween her because of being tired of nursing, but I felt like my reasons seemed rather selfish.  Anyway, I threw in the towel and nursed her.  I have given up trying to get her to drink from a cup, although I will still put one on her tray with every meal, just in case.