They are my new obses­sion.  Who are the Sil­ver­sun Pick­ups?  It’s okay to ask.  I didn’t know either until about a month ago.  I mean, I had heard of them, but I hadn’t heard them.  They are a band.  My hus­band, Jason, has been lis­ten­ing to them for quite a while.  He had two of their albums (are they called albums?  cds?) on iTunes, and I remem­ber see­ing the group’s name, but I didn’t stop to see what they played.  Then, he bought their newest cd called Swoon.

I still wasn’t all that inter­ested.  Then, one night after a La Leche League meet­ing, Swoon was on the stereo, and I started lis­ten­ing.  I lis­tened to the first sev­eral songs.  I got stuck on a song called Grow­ing Old is Get­ting Old.  I am sure I lis­tened to that one at least 20 times.  I started lis­ten­ing to the cd when I was cook­ing, when I was read­ing, when I was play­ing stu­pid online games.  It was so good.

I became a Face­book fan.  I fol­low them on Twit­ter, and then, I saw them on David Let­ter­man!  They were great.  They sang Panic Switch which is one of their more pop­u­lar songs.  I thought they did a very nice job.  The mix of music and voice seemed a lit­tle off to me at the begin­ning, but I thought they fin­ished well.

I have been telling every­one I know about this new band I just dis­cov­ered (a year or so after my hus­band, whoops).  One ques­tion I haven’t really been able to answer is who do they sound like?  That may be one of my favorite things about them.  They don’t really sound like any­one.  They sound like them­selves.  On their Wikipedia page, there are a few bands listed as influ­ences, but none of them are bands I have lis­tened to with any reg­u­lar­ity.  Some I haven’t even heard of.

If you’re look­ing for a new group to fol­low, I would def­i­nitely sug­gest the Sil­ver­sun Pick­ups.  I’m not sure what it is about them.  There’s just some­thing about their music that keeps me lis­ten­ing over and over again.  I hope that they don’t wait three years before releas­ing another full length cd.

These days I go in spurts.  Some weeks, I plan meals down the snack, the drink, and the side dish.  Some weeks, I try to play it by ear and get rid of the extra stuff we accu­mu­lated in the fridge and the pantry.  Some­times, though, I pro­cras­ti­nate meal plan­ning because I can’t think of any­thing good to eat.  This week, I decided to try meals from the Meat­less Mon­day web­site.  Usu­ally, I am an All­recipes user, but this week, I thought I would change it up a little.

Here is what we are hav­ing this week­end and in the upcom­ing week:

Sat­ur­day:

Lunch:  Banana Crumb muffins, fruit, left­over But­ter Chick­pea Curry
Sup­per:  Lemon Aspara­gus Penne

Sun­day:

Lunch:  Left­overs
Sup­per:  Fall Veg­gies in Red Wine Sauce (Although I am not sure we can get all the ingre­di­ents for this one.  I have never seen porci­nis at the store)

Mon­day:

Lunch:  Left­overs
Sup­per:  Spaghetti Squash I

Tues­day:

Lunch:  Left­overs
Sup­per:  Veg­e­tar­ian Paella

Wednes­day:

Lunch:  Left­overs (sens­ing a pat­tern for our lunches?)
Sup­per:  Leftovers

Thurs­day:

Lunch:  Left­overs
Sup­per:  Cheesy Veg­etable Wrap

If any of my read­ers mealplan, I would love to get ideas from other peo­ple.  Jason used to always sug­gest we try some­thing new.  Now, I rarely make the same thing more than once or twice.  I am hav­ing a hard time keep­ing up with my need for new recipes.  If you have some great ones, let me know!

Ever since my hus­band set up this blog for me, I have got­ten a kick out of read­ing the searches that direct peo­ple to my blog.  I get a lot of searches about dairy free breast­feed­ing and donat­ing blood.  I also get a lot of searches about let­down and breast­feed­ing although I have writ­ten very lit­tle on that sub­ject (but plan to do more if it in the future).  The other day, I was look­ing at the search results and I found this one:  “What is the goal in breastfeeding?”

I loved that ques­tion, because I think it is such an open ended ques­tion.  One thing I would sug­gest to the per­son who typed it in is that she (?) ask her­self “What is MY goal in breast­feed­ing?” Breast­feed­ing is a method of feed­ing a baby, but it is also a very per­sonal expe­ri­ence.  It is a rela­tion­ship between a mom and a baby.  There is def­i­nitely a place for a sup­port par­ent (mom or dad) in the breast­feed­ing rela­tion­ship, but the pri­mary rela­tion­ship exists between mom and baby.

There are many rea­sons peo­ple choose to breast­feed.  Here are a few:

• Money sav­ings (even if you sub­tract the cost of a pump)
• Just because I always knew I wanted to
• Breast­feed­ing can help some moms lose weight
• In some stud­ies, breast­milk has been linked to lower rates of SIDS, fewer ear infec­tions, fewer aller­gies, lower rates of dia­betes, lower rates of obe­sity, and lower rates of cer­tain can­cers
• Breast­milk changes in com­po­si­tion over time, so as baby grows, the milk becomes just what he or she needs at that age.  New­born milk is dif­fer­ent than 6 month old baby milk or 1 year old milk or tod­dler milk
• Breast­fed babies’ dia­pers sink less.  Lets face it, poop is poop.  Some is just less nasty
• Palate for­ma­tion
• Less envi­ron­men­tal waste (no for­mula pack­ag­ing or pro­cess­ing, no trans­porta­tion, no energy used to heat)
• It is a way to be with baby and pro­vide for baby when a mom is at work or away for other reasons
• Breast­milk is the stan­dard that for­mula strives to equal.  There are no health ben­e­fits for formula.

If you search for rea­sons to breast­feed, there are lists and lists of rea­sons out there on the inter­net.  Some rea­sons may rea­sonate with you more (Breast­feed­ing decreases both a mother’s risk and the breast­fed daughter’s risk of devel­op­ing breast can­cer) than oth­ers (That’s what breasts are for).  Both rea­sons are true, but I find some rea­sons to be a lot more per­son­ally rel­e­vant than oth­ers.  I am con­cerned about aller­gies, asthma, eczema, and can­cer.  To me, these things are some of the rea­sons I keep on going on some of the tough days.

I also joined the Jan­u­ary Breast­feed­ing Car­ni­val and wrote a post on my own goals for nurs­ing.  These were goals spe­cific to my sit­u­a­tion at the time.  I had a 3 year old tan­dem nurs­ing with a 1.5 year old.  My goals may be dif­fer­ent than yours.  These weren’t always my goals, but they are now at this time at this place in my rela­tion­ship with my boys.

So, I would sug­gest to the per­son who was search­ing for that answer to do her research.  Dig into the research that sur­rounds breast­milk.  Talk to friends and fam­ily who have breast­fed.  Con­sider your own sit­u­a­tion.  The goals that were right for oth­ers are not nec­es­sar­ily right for you.  That is the amaz­ing part about par­ent­ing.  You and your baby work together in a part­ner­ship.  You learn about each other. You respond to each other.  You form a mom/baby pair unlike any other.  Then, you change.  You keep on chang­ing as each of you grows and matures and devel­ops new desires and needs.

Think­ing back to the time before K was born, I can share with you my goals for breast­feed­ing.  Please, God, please let me make it to six weeks.  That was my first goal.  I read some­where that a mom should keep on breast­feed­ing through the first six weeks, because those are the hard­est days.  After that, things seem to set­tle down and it becomes more rou­tine and more man­age­able.  I am so glad that I heeded that advice.  My first six weeks with K were hard.  Once I reached that point, I was able to set a new goal, and I decided that I would nurse him until at least 3 months, then 6 months, and a year.  After that point, my goals became less time based and more behav­iorally based.  Be there for him.  Breast­feed on demand.  Be pos­i­tive even when I didn’t feel positive.

I know I have said it over and over again, but breast­feed­ing is a rela­tion­ship.  When baby is young, the baby’s needs take prece­dence much of the time.  As baby gets older, it becomes an ever chang­ing rela­tion­ship that can be molded and formed to meet the needs of both parties.

So, what is the goal of breast­feed­ing?  To me, it is to meet the needs of my chil­dren in the moment that we are expe­ri­enc­ing. What is it to you?