I’m Beautiful Like Me.

I’m still nursing! Technically, we’re at 1 year, 7 months and 3 days. Every day is still another victory.

I’m very ambivalent about weaning. We’re down to nursing 3-4 times per day: mornings, bedtime and during the night, with the very occasional lunchtime session. Since I started working several weeks ago, nap time nursing is more and more rare. I was off today, so Buddha got himself a rare treat. Mostly, I’m ready to reclaim my body, but I know that when it is over at long last, I will miss it. Short of a medical anomaly, he is to be my last child. And while he isn’t my only child, he is the only child I have successfully nursed for any length of time. I’m very proud that we have come this far.

He has been eating like a bottomless pit. He has inherited his Daddy’s hollow legs. He really loves fries and can identify them by their bag in the frozen food aisle (assuming he’s not too busy trying to chuck items out of the cart). He is so full of personality: his smile is beautiful and as contagious as his hearty laughs, he is increasingly inquisitive and has one helluva temper. He likes to look at pictures - he points us out and calls us by our respective names. He can identify his eyes, nose, ears, hair, chin, and knees. He insists on meowing at all animals, but I attribute that to his living with a cat. Like Daddy, he is very interested in electronics, particularly if they are the telephone (which he refers to as "hello" or "’lo"), the remote ("teedee"), flashlights, or anything that lights up, makes noise and he shouldn’t really be touching.

He doesn’t let a broken tibia or a casted leg slow him down. Speaking of which, tomorrow we return to the pediatric orthopedic office to X-ray (hell) and,  hopefully, cast removal. I dread it. Remembering how much he hated the previous X-rays, I’m anxious that he’ll spot the machine and start crying. And then - assuming  - the cast does come off, they are going to use that horrible vibrating tool-ma-jigger to remove it. God grant me strength…

The girl has been a handful. Since we lost power for 4 days during the time our meds needed refilling, she has been completely off-kilter. Hell, so have I. It takes weeks for us to both return to "normal," too. And since my lack of meds affects my memory, I’ve further screwed up a time or five in reminding her to take hers. Point is, she has been especially whiny and defiant. Husband and I are very frustrated with her. She is doing well in school per her teacher at the recent parent-teacher conference, just talks too much every single day and gets in trouble for it every single day. So, we’ve opted to extend her consequences for that at home. If she comes home with strikes for talking, she won’t be allowed to play outside. This method has worked for us in the past, we’re hoping it will work again.

If you recall the recent bad news, I managed to dodge that bullet with her. P’s daughter L ended up not coming by or speaking to Joy about what had happened, so I simply told Joy that L had lost a friend from her classroom to death and might be feeling sad for a while. I’m somewhat relieved, in all honesty. I’m very uncertain how Joy would’ve reacted to hearing all of this at this moment in time, since she has been such an emotional wreck from whacky med-schedules.

In other news, Husband and I have decided to start our own business. Husband surprised everyone by coming up with a wonderfully clever name for it. Meanwhile, I’m stuck in restaurant hell but looking forward to two job interviews very soon, including one with the state next Tuesday (the 21st). Please keep your fingers crossed! While it isn’t a gob of money, it is compared to what I’m doing now and seems to be quite secure in the otherwise nose-diving economy. The benefits are quite nice, too. Best of all, it’s a good way to get my foot into the door doing the kind of work I want to do.