In my house, I’m very vocal about choices.  “If you chose to…, I will…” is some­thing my kids hear a lot.  “If you choose to throw toys at me, I will put them away” or some­thing sim­i­lar to that.  I also try to refrain from say­ing things that either place blame, “You are mak­ing me frustrated/mad” or don’t accept respon­si­bil­ity for my role in things (although I can’t think of a great exam­ple right now).  I know all this.  I also know that no one can *make* me feel a cer­tain way.  I choose to allow myself to feel the way I do.  Sure, I might have an ini­tial reac­tion of anger, frus­tra­tion, sad­ness, hap­pi­ness, or what­ever the case may be.  After that, the way I con­tinue to feel and the feel­ings I act on are the ones I choose.  Right?

Well, I’m hav­ing a really hard time with that con­cept right now.  In June, we put our house on the mar­ket and sold it in order to move back into town.  It was closer, more con­ve­nient, and we were want­ing a house with a dif­fer­ent lay­out.  Well, instead of find­ing that house, we moved into an apart­ment.  Well, really, a condo.  It just looks, feels, and seems like an apart­ment.  The dif­fer­ence is most peo­ple in our build­ing own theirs.  We rent.  It’s a great place.  It’s 3 bed­rooms, 2 bath­rooms, and less than a quar­ter mile from a great park.  It’s also right on the bike path and about a mile from where Jason works.  What’s the prob­lem?  Some of the women who live in our build­ing are being mean to me.  (Feel free to insert slightly whiny voice or pathetic pout.)

Unfor­tu­nately, it seems as though we didn’t get the unwrit­ten rules before we signed our lease.  Chil­dren are allowed but not par­tic­u­larly wel­come here.  Now that we have moved almost every­thing we own (the rest is in a stor­age unit or dis­persed at friends’ and family’s homes) here and signed a lease and made a 2 year plan to stay here, I’m not feel­ing as great about it.

It started off a lit­tle less direct.  The woman who lives in the condo below us rode in the ele­va­tor with us one day.  After mak­ing some small talk, she said, “You must live in num­ber such-and-such.”  I said that yes we did, and she made a pass­ing com­ment about hav­ing heard the boys play­ing.  A few weeks later, we were in the ele­va­tor again, and this time we were going up and she was com­ing down.  K stood a lit­tle too close to the ele­va­tor and when it opened, she scolded him to move back and said, “It’s the Three Mus­ke­teers or what­ever they’re called” refer­ring to our boys and a friend’s son who was with us.  After that, we didn’t see her again for about another month.  Then, one day, I went to let some­one in at our front door, and she came out of our apart­ment just to watch us go up the stairs.  I smiled at her, but she didn’t smile back.  That night, I was at a La Leche League meet­ing, and Jason was home with the boys.  The next day, I was com­ing into the build­ing with my boys and 2 girls I watch a cou­ple days a week.  She stopped me and basi­cally told me that we were far too noisy.  She went on to tell me that we were using a tread­mill, and it was too loud.  I told her we own a tread­mill that is cur­rently in stor­age on the other end of town, and she con­tin­ued to insist that we were using a tread­mill.  I ended up invit­ing her up to see that we did not have one.  She didn’t come to look though.  That day at lunch, Jason said that he had been a lit­tle nois­ier than usual the night before.  He went down­stairs to apol­o­gize to her, but she didn’t answer her door.  He tried a cou­ple times, but she hasn’t answered.

Today, I was tak­ing the boys out of our apart­ment to the ele­va­tor, and when we were wait­ing, the boys were ask­ing about a woman who was out in the com­mon area between the two wings of the build­ing.  She was putting up a Christ­mas tree with some angels and other dec­o­ra­tions on it.  We talked about what she might be doing and said hi to her.  She didn’t respond.  She didn’t respond!  She didn’t even look at us.  Based on other inter­ac­tions with her, I don’t believe she has a hear­ing impair­ment.  I really do think she ignored us.  When we returned 45 min­utes later, we said hi again, and again she ignored us.

As I’m writ­ing this, I am think­ing about how petty all of this sounds.  I know that, I really do.  The prob­lem is that I no longer feel com­fort­able in this apart­ment.  I’m con­stantly think­ing about how loud it might be down­stairs, if she’ll stop and scold me again, and dread­ing the upcom­ing win­ter when com­ing and going will be even tougher.  The other day, K was “help­ing” me sweep the kitchen floor.  Unfor­tu­nately, he also kept drop­ping the broom.  It was too big for him and very awk­ward.  I kept won­der­ing if we were going to get a knock on the door or a note slipped under it.  I won­dered if some­one would stop me again as I was com­ing or going with my kids.  I feel like I can’t relax here.

I feel really frus­trated about that, too.  I like our apart­ment.  It works pretty well for us.  I like the loca­tion.  I like our neigh­bor next to us.  Unfor­tu­nately, I don’t know how to deal with the con­flict (or per­ceived con­flict) that appears to be between me (us) and a cou­ple other peo­ple who live here.  I really do wish I could just move out in March or April like we had orig­i­nally hoped to do.

So, com­ing back to the title and begin­ning of my post, “you choose to feel that way,” I know I am choos­ing to let this be a big deal.  I real­ize that I could just (some­how) stop wor­ry­ing and stew­ing about it.  I know that I should just live and apol­o­gize if nec­es­sary.  I know all those things, but I really do care about other peo­ple.  I’m not the type of per­son who cares so much what oth­ers think that it really directs my life, but I do care about other peo­ple, and to have this unre­solved con­flict both­ers me.  A lot.

And yes, now that you ask, I did just eat a giant piece of birth­day cake from the freezer.  She made me do it.

I def­i­nitely did bet­ter this year than I did last year in my NaBloPoMo posts.  I think I stopped mid­way through the month last year.  I didn’t do quite as well as I did in 2007.  That is still the NaBloPoMo to which all oth­ers are com­pared at this point.    This year, I felt so busy in the month of Novem­ber.  I’m not sure if I was that busy or if I just felt like it.  I felt like every day was a chal­lenge to find time to blog.  A friend pointed out that nearly all my posts are pub­lished at 10:30 or later!  Whoops.

I have sev­eral posts in my draft folder.  I also have a few that are going pretty well.  Unfor­tu­nately, I’ve lacked either the words, the tone, or the time to get them to a point where they are ready to be pub­lished.  Hope­fully in Decem­ber with­out the pres­sure to pub­lish every day, I’ll be able to get some of those ready to publish.

How does every­one else feel about this?  Do you go through the writ­ing process with drafts, edit­ing, and pub­lish­ing?  Do you set aside time every day (or on cer­tain days) for writing?

I am back off sugar.  I had a few days of eat­ing with­out wor­ry­ing about sugar con­tent.  It was nice to not have to think about every­thing before I put it on my plate.  It was also nice to drink a latte and a mocha.  Yes, I did say *and*.  I had a latte and a mocha in my 2 days on sugar. 

Unfor­tu­nately, I felt (and still feel) pretty bad.  I felt more tired again.  I felt like I had a harder time get­ting my words to come out like I wanted them, and the yummy treats I had dreamed of hurt my stom­ach.  They also didn’t taste as good as I had remem­bered.  I have com­mit­ted to another 3.5 weeks with­out sugar (except for my Christ­mas party on the 11th, Nicki is bring­ing a world famous cheese­cake).  I decided that I needed to con­tinue elim­i­nat­ing sugar (par­tic­u­larly in between hol­i­days) until I no longer looked for­ward to the hol­i­day as an excuse to go all out.

I think the only thing I am really miss­ing is a good way to make my steel cut oats in the morn­ing.  Frozen fruit tends to be a lit­tle sour in there, and I need some­thing to give it a lit­tle bit of taste other than the oats taste.  Any thoughts?  Oh, and I don’t like bananas very well.

I’m about 10 min­utes late post­ing today’s (yesterday’s?) post.  I spent the evening cel­e­brat­ing the 30th birth­day of a great friend and just got home.  Happy Birth­day, Friend!

Instead of try­ing to think of some­thing super inter­est­ing to post tonight, I thought I would post links to some char­i­ties that we believe in and have sup­ported over the years:

Com­pas­sion International

Heifer Inter­na­tional

Samaritan’s Purse

Show Hope

I hope you have a great hol­i­day with lots of friends, fam­ily, football, and food!  I’ll have to blog about my first veg­e­tar­ian Thanks­giv­ing some time this week or next.  I hope you all had a great day.

I have heard adults talk­ing to each other and to kids many times about the dif­fer­ence between tat­tling and telling.  These same adults often say, “Kids need to learn to work it out on their own.”  For those who don’t know, the dif­fer­ence between tat­tling and telling is that telling hap­pens when some­one is in dan­ger or hurt.  Tat­tling is the other stuff.  I used to say this to kids when I was teach­ing, too.

Now that I have my own chil­dren, I’m ques­tion­ing the wis­dom in this phi­los­o­phy.  First, are we really ask­ing kids to know and judge in advance some­thing that might be harm­ful or dan­ger­ous?  My kids are 2 and 4, and fairly reg­u­larly my 4 year old does some­thing which I would con­sider to be unsafe.  I don’t think he’s pur­posely out there look­ing for things to do that might hurt him, his brother or his friend, but he is still find­ing them.  The other (main) prob­lem I have with this phi­los­o­phy is the idea that kids will learn to work things out on their own.

It has been my expe­ri­ence that unless kids are taught these behav­iors and words,  and they are mod­eled and used repeat­edly, the big­ger, more aggres­sive, or older child will often get his or her way.  This doesn’t often seem to hap­pen with a calm exchange of words.  More often than not, it is done in a way which I would con­sider to be unkind or unde­sir­able (as far as social norms go).

So, as much as it is frus­trat­ing and at times annoy­ing to stop what I’m doing each time my kids have an instance which leaves one or both upset, I think it is very much worth my time to go to them, model the words they can use (or help them come up with their own words), and help them work towards a res­o­lu­tion, I think it is worth it.  We don’t expect adults to have the skills to work things out on their own when a sit­u­a­tion becomes very intense or heated.  I know many adults who have sought coun­sel­ing either indi­vid­u­ally or as a couple/group for sit­u­a­tions which were not eas­ily resolved.  Why is it we expect chil­dren to be able to iden­tify these sit­u­a­tions and work on them with­out our input?

Zrecs is an amaz­ing web­site!  They have reviews and infor­ma­tion on tons of kids prod­ucts and issues relat­ing to chil­dren.  This hol­i­day sea­son, they are post­ing a Hol­i­day Gift Guide.  The Best Soft Toys were too cute not to share!  If any­one was ask­ing, I like the Organic Sleepy Bear the best.

Wel­come to the Novem­ber Breast­feed­ing Carnival!

Dur­ing my first preg­nancy, I knew right away I wanted to breast­feed.  I don’t know why.  I just did.  It seemed nat­ural (and inex­pen­sive).  As my due date grew closer, I started to get ner­vous.  I started to ques­tion my deci­sion and think things like ‘maybe I’ll breast­feed if it works’ or ‘I’ll see how it goes.’  As I became more and more anx­ious about it, I decided to take con­trol of my anx­i­ety and instead of only fret­ting, I fret­ted and read.  I read books (which I would not rec­om­mend so I won’t link to them).  I read web­sites.  I sought out mes­sage boards.  I asked my mom about nurs­ing.  I had known she had nursed me to about 18 months and my brother until he was almost 3.  She encour­aged me to find a La Leche League group close to me, but I hes­i­tated.  That seemed like a lit­tle too much.  Why would I go when I didn’t even have a baby?  I also took my hospital’s breast­feed­ing class.

The class was a review of every­thing I already knew.

• Some women have a hard time get­ting started but it’s worth it.
• If some babies don’t latch in one posi­tion, try another.
• Be care­ful intro­duc­ing bot­tles.  They can cause nip­ple confusion.
• Buy some nurs­ing bras.
• If you have trou­ble, ask for a lac­ta­tion consultant.

K’s Hos­pi­tal Stay
My first sur­prise in breast­feed­ing came when K, my son, came 4 weeks early.  When he was born, he had no desire to suck, and he had a small mouth.  I did as I had read.  When I had trou­ble, I asked for a Lac­ta­tion Con­sul­tant (LC).  Unfor­tu­nately, in my hos­pi­tal, LCs are also NICU nurses.  Unfor­tu­nately, there was a mom preg­nant with twins in pre­ma­ture labor, and the LC was needed to help her keep from deliv­er­ing those pre­cious babies at 31 weeks.  This meant that I didn’t have a LC to help me.  What I had was a baby who was jaun­diced and didn’t want to eat.  He seemed to have no suck­ing reflex, and he was extremely sleepy.  After about a day of pump­ing my colostrum and get­ting very lit­tle, a nurse told me, “He’s gotta eat some­thing, and his suck is worse than pathetic.”  She took him and fed him his first bot­tle of for­mula as I cried about how I had just ruined my chances of suc­cess­ful breast­feed­ing.  My hus­band tried to com­fort me, but he was as upset as I was.  Nei­ther of us had dis­cussed a pas­sion­ate desire to breast­feed, but once I had my lit­tle guy in my arms, I knew I *had* to breast­feed him.  That night, Jason and I got up every 3 hours.  I attempted to nurse K for 15 min­utes.  K refused the breast.  I pumped and Jason fed K my colostrum with a med­i­cine drop­per and fol­lowed it up with an ounce of for­mula.  By the time we had fin­ished that and washed the pump parts, we had about an hour to sleep before it was time to start wak­ing K again.  To say we were feel­ing dis­cour­aged is a major understatement.

The next day, the lac­ta­tion con­sul­tant came to my room.  She watched K attempt to nurse, and she gave me a nip­ple shield.  Not know­ing any­thing about the con­tro­versy that sur­rounds their use, I popped it on.  It was almost instantly suc­cess­ful for me.  K latched and started nurs­ing and nurs­ing and nurs­ing and nurs­ing.  I was ecsta­tic think­ing that I had man­aged to find a way to con­tinue our nurs­ing rela­tion­ship!  We ended up stay­ing another day in the hos­pi­tal in pedi­atrics so his weight could be mon­i­tored, but we didn’t have any other issues there.  Peo­ple who have read my blog know that K just turned 4 and is still nurs­ing, so I would say that despite our rocky begin­ning, we have expe­ri­enced much suc­cess in our relationship!

A’s Hos­pi­tal Stay
Fast for­ward about 20 months, and I found myself back in the hos­pi­tal with a new baby.  I was pretty con­fi­dent that #2 was going to be a much bet­ter nurser than my first had been.  I was an expert!  I was still nurs­ing K, and we had been through quite a few dif­fi­cul­ties.  When A was born, I knew that I was going to nurse him on demand.  Even though K had been sleepy and nursed every 3 hours, I knew that it was likely that A would have a dif­fer­ent sched­ule.  And, I was right!  From the time A was born, he nursed often and very quickly.  He nursed about every hour to hour and fif­teen min­utes, but unlike K who nursed for 45 min­utes at a time, A was done in 5 min­utes.  I didn’t have any prob­lems or con­cerns about his sched­ule.  I fig­ured that as long as I was offer­ing fre­quently and he was nurs­ing, we were fine.  Unfor­tu­nately, I wasn’t pre­pared for a big (9 pounds 12 ounces), over­due (3 days past due date) baby who had trou­ble latch­ing!  Unlike K, A seemed to like to suck.  He seemed to be suck­ing on his own tongue, and he had a hard time chang­ing that suck in order to latch when it was time for nurs­ing.  When the LC came to visit me, I told her about my obser­va­tions and asked her for advice.  She said that I should just keep try­ing, and she was so excited I was an expe­ri­enced nurser.  Look­ing back, I think she was prob­a­bly very busy and pulled in sev­eral direc­tions with all of her respon­si­bil­ties.  At the time, I was so dis­mayed that I was hav­ing these dif­fi­cul­ties I had not antic­i­pated that I couldn’t even express my need for help.

Because of A’s fast labor and deliv­ery, he had some health prob­lems after birth.  He and I were sep­a­rated for hours at a time while he was in NICU for obser­va­tion both nights we were in the L&D room.  Dur­ing the days, he con­tin­ued to strug­gle with nurs­ing.  It took me at least 10 or 15 min­utes to get him to latch.  He often cried through the process.  He would then latch and nurse for 5 min­utes on one side only!

A and I con­tin­ued our nurs­ing rela­tion­ship.  I con­tin­ued work­ing with him through the strug­gles, and he and I have also been quite suc­cess­ful in our rela­tion­ship.  He is nurs­ing on demand dur­ing the day and occa­sion­ally at night.

Look­ing back, I real­ize that dur­ing those days in the hos­pi­tal, I was tired.  I was a new mom.  I was emo­tional.  I was upset and frus­trated that the beau­ti­ful rela­tion­ship hadn’t turned out as I had envi­sioned.  I do think that there are sig­nif­i­cant ben­e­fits to moms, babies, and hos­pi­tals if breast­feed­ing sup­port is avail­able for moms when they want and need it.  How­ever, I think that while hos­pi­tals *should* have good sup­port, the real­ity is that not all of them do.  There are doc­tors who don’t have an opin­ion one way or the other on nurs­ing.  There are nurses who pre­fer that a mom choose for­mula because it is eas­ier when the nurse already has so many patients to care for.  There are both doc­tors and nurses who have never nursed a child nor have they received any infor­ma­tion or train­ing in sup­port­ing a breast­feed­ing mom.  Those are the real­i­ties.  While we can con­tinue to work to change that sit­u­a­tion, until then I think it’s impor­tant that moms are aware of the sit­u­a­tions they might encounter in the hos­pi­tals.  If I could pass on one piece of advice to a mom-to-be, it would be to take the num­ber of a friend who has worked through nurs­ing trou­bles.  Call her.  Talk with her.  She might not know the answers to your ques­tions or your prob­lems, but she might know how to help you find them.  She might not know what you’re going through, but she might know how you’re feel­ing.  She might not be able to help you get your baby to nurse with­out trou­bles, but she can be the friend to come beside you and walk with you dur­ing a time that is already so full of new expe­ri­ences an old friend will be all the more important!

Here are the other par­tic­i­pants in the Novem­ber Breast­feed­ing Car­ni­val (list will be updated through­out the day):

Angela @ Breast­feed­ing 1–2-3

Christina @ The Milk Mama

Rebekah @ Mama’s Angel

Lau­ren @ Hobo Mama

Whozat @ Whozatshrike

Tanya @ Moth­er­wear Blog

Sinead @ Breast­feed­ing Mums

I can­not find a good recipe!  If any­one has a great (veg­e­tar­ian) lentil soup recipe, please let me know.  Tonight, I made Deb­o­rah Madison’s Hearty Lentil Soup, and it was alright, but it wasn’t great.  I have made a cou­ple other recipes in the past, and I find it is miss­ing a depth in taste.  Any leads, sug­ges­tions, or ideas are appreciated.

Why is it that if I can do some­thing, I leave many projects unfin­ished and books unread?  If I can­not do some­thing, I want to keep try­ing.  Right now, I can’t get my mind of run­ning.  I am not a run­ner.  I do not run fast nor am I very good at it.  I have some sort of exer­cised induced asthma, and I can­not seem to get myself past two miles.  Yet, I keep find­ing myself want­ing to try again.

I ran (and walked) a 5K in May.  I started the Couch to 5k plan a few times.  I have never fin­ished it.  I started run­ning again this sum­mer.  I ran/walked around our block (about 1 mile per lap) twice.  I felt great after I fin­ished, but the next morn­ing I woke up with heels that were so sore I could barely walk.  I was sore and lim­ited in my exer­cise and even walk­ing for about the next 4 or 5 *weeks*!  After that, I took another hia­tus.  I can­not get run­ning out of my mind.  I never thought I would be a run­ner.  I have never thought of myself as a run­ner, but for some rea­son I want to become what I have never been.