Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Reading with Daddy

This makes my heart swoon.


Seeing my husband, who hates reading, read books to our 2 kids! I love how involved his is with both of them!



Landyn is a huge book kid, most days he spends playing with cars or reading books! He sits on the floor next to Lilly now and shows her the pictures. Yay for reading!





They were all a bit annoyed with my camera if you couldn't tell! I love Landyn's face!

Monday, July 26, 2010

Half a year old

Lilly Kate you are 6 months old today!



What are you up to?

You weigh around 13 pounds (your 6 month appt is Wed morning)
You wear size 6 month clothing and are still in your size small cloth diapers!
You eat every 2-3 hours around the clock, which is made easier by bedsharing!
You are not interested in solids at all so we are going to wait a bit, your doing just fine on breastmilk alone!

You can roll/scoot around the living room now! Sometimes I even find you under the swing or playing with brother's toys!
You smile and coo most of the day, well except when someone else holds you :)
Your favorite toy is Sophie the Giraffe.



You take cat naps all day and are not really on a schedule which is fine with me!
You LOVE your big brother, anytime he is around you are laughing and smiling at him!
You also LOVE your dog Tucker although he doesn't seem to care either way!
When we are out and about you LOVE to be worn in one of mommy's many baby carriers!

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Myths about Breastfeeding

So now that I'd consider myself a fairly experienced breastfeeding mom I decided to make a list of myths about breastfeeding. Some of them are things I already knew, some are things I learned while breastfeeding Landyn and Lillyanna and a lot of them are things I've learned from our local LLL chapter!

1. Your breasts need time to fill up after feeding your baby: Totally false, your breasts are making milk 24/7, they never stop. Even if your baby ate an hour ago they are still going to get milk AND they are going to help your body make more milk! Supply and Demand baby!

2. You can't make enough milk to feed a big baby: again Supply and demand baby! there are a lot of women who feed mulitiples or tandem nurse (I tandem nursed my 2 kiddos)

3. If you are tired your husband can get up and feed the baby a bottle while you continue to sleep: This is a fast track to loosing your milk supply :( let's go back to supply and demand. If the baby is given a bottle you NEED to get up and pump! (which is a lot harder and takes longer than just feeding the baby) In the first month feeding the baby every 1-2 hours around the clock is normal and it's needed to build your supply (some women don't need to do this and just follow their babies cues which sometimes works out just fine)

4. Your overfeeding your baby: you cannot overfeed an exclusively breastfed infant, (meaning no bottles at all) Breastmilk takes 1.5 hours to digest so your baby very well might be hungry after an hour or so! NOTHING wrong with that! I have an almost 6 month old that still gets up MULTIPLE times per night to eat, yes I get no sleep at all.

5. I have a low milk supply: (i was this mom with Landyn) It's actually very rare for a mom to not be able to make enough milk for her child, it's usually something you are doing that is causing this! (for me it was supplementing with a bottle) 2questions you need to ask first: Is my baby have 4-6 wet and 2-3 BM's a day? and Is my baby gaining weight? If the answer is yes to both of those you DO NOT have a milk supply issue!!

6. I don't feel full: I personally never really feel full unless my daughter sleeps a 4 hour stretch at night (which has happened twice since we've been home) Not feeling full means your body has regulated for your babies needs at that time! Now it will change with growth spurts and if you add pumping but for the most part not feeling full is a good thing! It's uncomfortable and can cause clogged ducts or mastitis!

7. I am going to pump so we can see how much baby is eating: Your baby is much more efficiant than a pump! Some experts say that a baby gets double what you can pump so pumping is NOT an indicator of supply!! Look at baby's diapers and you can tell they are getting enough!

8. I only pump 1.5-3oz per session: this is actually totally normal! A breastfeed baby only needs to eat about 1.25oz per hour when getting a bottle. So if you are going to be gone, you should make 2-2.5oz bottles for every 2 hours you are going to be gone. If you are going back to work print out this link to give to your caregivers who will be feeding the baby to make sure they are not overfeeding your baby (yes it is possible to OVERFEED a breastfed baby brestmilk out of a bottle)

Okay so that's it for now, Lilly is hungry...again... yup she hate an hour ago but that doesn't mean anything! :)

Friday, July 9, 2010

Lilly's Baptism

On June 5th we had Lilly baptized into the Catholic Church. She LOVED Father Dave and kept grinning at him! Here are a few pictures of the Baptism and I'll put up another post of pictures after :)


It's hard to tell but she has a huge smile for Father Dave in this picture.

Holy Water

Stinky oil stuff! (yea i really have no idea what its called. i think The Oil of Cata something)If you look closely she's wearing a Bumgenius AIO :)

Gown that has been passed down generations in Ryan's family

Thursday, July 8, 2010

this is how....

This is how we eat Ramen Noodles in this house....





okay maybe this is how Landyn eats his Ramen Noodles... Ryan and I generally use a fork!

Wednesday, July 7, 2010

Thursday, July 1, 2010

Babywearing

If you know me in real life it's no suprise that we are a babywearing family, Lilly is usually strapped to my chest. If I'm out with the 2 kiddos by myself you can fine me walking around with Landyn on my back and Lilly on my front. I have a variety of carriers, an Ergo (gets used a lot!), 2 ring slings, a mei tai (not a huge fan, i want a new one with longer straps!), 1 woven wrap (really starting to love this one!) and a stretchy wrap (which I used daily until recently, I should get it back out before Lilly outgrows it!)

I'm just going to post some recent pictures we have with our carriers and then I'll take pictures of the rest of them and make another post!


Yes i realize this is a repeat but I wanted to show off my favorite stretchy wrap, The Sugar Sweet Baby Bamboo Wrap, it rocks! :)

Landyn and Daddy walking through Underwater World (Ergo)

Old school picture from last fall with Landyn in the ring sling! he loves that thing!

The 2 kids and I at the zoo (yes i know he's attacking her head, he was melting!) Lilly is in my newest carrier, a Sleeping Baby Productions Ring Sling

The 2 kids and I in front of the Giraffes at the zoo, Lilly is in the Ergo