All the Sun For You

A mom, two boys, a husband, and a whole lot of adventure!

Monthly Archives: March 2012


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Four Generations

Today was a great day – we drove back to my hometown to see one of my mother’s greatest friends, and to stop in to see my grandpa.  I love my grandpa – he and I have always had a terrific relationship!  I can’t imagine going back to my hometown and not stopping in for a visit.  Grandpa loves, loves, loves babies so M’s visit with him today made Grandpa smile from ear to ear.  Heck, Grandpa’s probably still smiling right now!

My dad suggested we take a four generation photo.  I am so glad he did because we will treasure it forever!  We never did get one with my grandma, which makes me very sad.  She was always too sick for us to bring M by to see her before she passed away.  I need to let that go and just be thankful that I still can get photos with Grandpa  🙂


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Milestone

We hit a major milestone tonight.  We take M out to dinner on an almost nightly basis (remember, I cook for M but not for B – but that is going to change this week!) – and he sits through it like a trooper every night and eats his meal, plays with his toys, makes friends with strangers, etc.  He very rarely fusses and we are told quite regularly what a great, well-behaved baby he is out in public.  We could not agree more (and yes, we know we’re very lucky!). At lunch today, we were told that, “he’s a dandy!”  That tickled me!

We typically go to restaurants where you get one course and you’re out of there, just to play it safe and to not extend M past his limit.

Tonight?  Tonight we went out for a nice dinner.  B even got dressed up (and he looked terrific!).  We went out for a meal that consisted of three courses and M was his typical, normal, happy self.  All of this after very limited nap time today.  We arrived around 6:30 and left at 8:00.  Around 7:50, we had to take him out of his high chair so he could look around and flirt with more people – but he was not at all fussy.

I am so proud!  I have always wanted to have the kids who can sit through a meal and enjoy the family time.  I think we have one of those kids  🙂  I think it’s 50% luck (M is naturally very laid back) and 50% experience.  We’ve made this a priority since the day after he came home from the hospital, and I’m so glad we did!


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Complete

Our good friend, Denise, came by tonight to capture M’s bedtime routine.  It sure was fun!  He’s doing so many cute things between 6:00 and 8:00 at night.  He loves his bath, he’s trying new foods, he belly laughs at the cats playing together – it’s truly turned into the best time of the day.  We’ve learned from experience that just because he does something cute today, does not mean he’ll do it again tomorrow – or EVER again.  Therefore, we try to capture these things in photos and video right away in case he stops doing them.  Tonight was all about capturing his cuteness at bed time – and there was a lot of cuteness to capture!

Nights like these make me think about the future.  I think about having more kids, when we’ll have more kids, how that will affect M, how soon is too soon, etc.  I know I posted just last night about child spacing – but I am honest when I say this:  If this is it for us – if M is destined to be an only child – I am just fine with that.  He is such a dream come true, such a sweet baby who lights up every room he enters.  I surely want more kids for obvious reasons, but the main one is so M can be a big brother and have a sibling.

If another baby is not in the cards for us, that is OK – because we are complete with M!


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When We Hurt Our Babies

I wanted to write about this earlier today because I was so devastated about it, but I couldn’t post it yet because I hadn’t told my husband what had happened.

My worst mothering nightmare up until this point happened today.  M fell down the stairs.  It hurts just writing it.

I was playing with him on the floor while his breakfast was heating up in the microwave (amaranth and plum swirl – he loves it!).  He had spent the prior 10 minutes on his back playing quietly with his toys, so when the microwave timer sounded, I figured he’d stay put long enough for me to get his breakfast out to let it cool off just a bit.  I was wrong.  I heard two thuds and I felt sick to my stomach.

We have an open staircase to our basement with a landing after 6 steps.  When I heard the thuds, I gasped and looked around the corner to where he was supposed to be.  I was hoping the sound I heard came from a couple of arguing cats.  M was not there.  That’s when I heard the cry as I ran down the steps.  From the sounds of things, he surfed head first down the stairs on his belly because there were no rolling thuds.  THANK G0D!  He was on the landing with his head up against the trim.  The first thud was him hitting the landing.  The second was his head hitting the trim.

Ugh.

He did not wail, but he cried for about 10 seconds in my arms before calming down and then smiling at me.  I checked him over for physical harm and it appears that he only has the one scuff on his forehead.  I just cannot believe that it happened, but more importantly, I cannot believe we were so lucky that he’s so unharmed.

M happily ate his breakfast and played afterwards as though nothing had happened.  But I will never forget it.  I hurt my baby today, and that makes me cry.

I told B about it prior to dinner with a friend.  I didn’t want him to notice the scuff on M’s head and ask me in front of our friend what had happened, and I certainly couldn’t lie about it.  I arrived at dinner before our friend and said, “something happened today that you need to know.  M fell down the stairs.  He’s fine, thank G0d.  I’m sorry.”  I said it with tears in my eyes, on the verge of crying.  B handled it well.  He said that my own agony about the situation requires nothing else to be said.  He is right.  Nothing he could say (and he wouldn’t say anything hurtful to me about it, but I expected him to be upset) could possibly make me feel worse than the memory I’ll have about this for the rest of my life.  I will always know the sound of those two thuds.

M, when you read this entry when you’re older, please know how sorry I am!  And please don’t blame some future bad grades or something on this incident.  Please know that I’ll be doing plenty of that on me own  😉


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Resolution Coming in 2 Weeks

I took a big step today and made an appointment with our RE for March 13th to discuss when to start the process on Baby #2.  I meant to call back in January to set this appointment up for March, but I kept putting it off for some reason.  I don’t really know the reason – I just know that I wasn’t ready to commit to a discussion on the topic.

My dilemma is this – I’m still nursing M.  I only planned to nurse him for 6 months, but it’s gone so well (not to mention that I truly enjoy it!) that I just kept doing it.  I’ve been pumping all along because I figured I’d need to stop prior to his first birthday to do all the pre-testing for an FET if we wanted to space the kids two years apart.  So I have a deep freezer full of breast milk for when I stop nursing M.  The problem is that I don’t want to stop nursing him.  I enjoy it.  I love that I’m the only one who can provide this for him and that it affords me 4-6 long snuggles a day with my favorite little guy.  I will stop when he’s a year old because I want him to have the independence to be able to go on play dates and drink from sippy cups (and keep on playing while doing so) versus cozying up to dear old Mom when he’s thirsty or hungry.  I am emotionally ready to stop at one year.  I’m not emotionally ready to stop prior to one year.

I wasn’t too concerned about this because I figured our RE would want me to stop nursing for, say, one month before testing and then moving onto a cycle.  Stopping at one year would then put a cycle in August and that would be that – if it worked, the kids would be 22-23 months apart which would be great.  However, I saw on someone’s blog last night that their RE won’t do the testing until she’s been done nursing for 1-3 months.  That is what gave me pause.  That is what has me upset because if that’s the case, if I quit nursing at the end of June when M is 12 months old, I wouldn’t be able to test until he’s 13-15 months old and then cycle probably a month later (so between him being 14 and 16 months old).

All of this has then led me to think about child spacing and the fact that IF-ers don’t really have the opportunity to plan such things.  When you require IVF (or an FET), you only get 3, maybe 4, chances at conceiving in a given year.  If we cycled in August (which is my current plan) and it worked, then the kids would be 23 months apart.   Now, I’m no newbie to IVF so I don’t expect it to work the first time.  Then, you get pushed out to late November, which would put the kids 26 months apart (which would be good).  If that didn’t work, then we’d push out to March which would put them 29/30 months apart, and so on, and so on.  Very quickly, your child spacing plans could go to crap and you could easily end up with kids spaced way further apart than you had hoped.  Or – maybe it would work the first time and the rest would be history.

I just don’t know what to do.  This is why we’re meeting with our wonderful RE on the 13th.  I’m actually excited to see him – I like him a lot!

Until then, I’m just going to keep on nursing M and enjoying every minute of it (even the minutes that occur in the middle of the night because he’s not the best sleeper!).