Friday, March 25, 2011

My One-Year-Old

Although I've decided to relax on the weekly updates now that Krew is a year old, I still want to document some of his happenings and milestones.  So here is the latest. :)

On Wednesday March 16th, he started really walking, and I was oh so excited.  When I went to pick him up from daycare, Eileen joyfully announced, "We have a walker!!!"  At which point Krew stood up from her lap and walked about four steps over to me.  I was so proud I could have cried.  I immediately took him home and proudly plopped him on the floor to perform for his Uncle Aaron (who was visiting on his spring break).  Aaron was equally impressed, and also super excited that he got to share in one of Krew's milestones. :)  He's   been getting progressively stronger with his walking day by day, and for the last two days he has held my hand and walked to the mailbox with me.  He walks super stiff-legged like his legs don't bend, but it's oh so cute.

Last Friday the 18th, Krew got mad at me and tried to hit me.  It totally caught me off-guard, and at the same time impressed me because I realized how grown he is becoming - he knows he is an individual, and that he wants his way, and that he's mad if he doesn't get it.  As soon as he swung at me, I grabbed his hand and held it down and said in the lowest voice I could muster, "NO."  He smirked at me, but he didn't try it again (to my surprise).  We'll see how long until he takes his next swing. :)

Last Sunday the 20th, he said "Mamamamamama" in what seemed like a purposeful way for the first time.  I was SO excited!! I tried responding super positively every time he said it so that he'd get the hint that "Mama" is a GREAT word to have in his vocabulary.  It turned into "Nanananana" by the end of the evening, but I am hopeful that sometime soon he will learn that I am his Mama.

I'd been struggling ever since his first birthday to get him to switch to whole milk.  First of all, he wasn't a big fan of drinking milk out of a cup in the first place, even if it was frozen breast milk.   He'd rather it come straight from me. (This didn't seem to be an issue for Eileen at daycare, I assume because I wasn't around with the "good" stuff.) We started switching him to sippy cups of frozen breast milk during the day and nursing only in the morning and at night at around 11 months.  He was drinking so little milk during the days that I was home with him that I was practically following him around the house, shoving a sippy cup in his face any chance I had.  Things slowly got a little better, and once he started drinking it out of the sippy cup a bit more regularly and he turned a year old, I began adding whole milk to his cup.  I thought it was working well for a while, but we seemed to get stuck at the point where the milk was half whole.  If the ratio of whole milk to breast milk was even slightly in favor of whole milk, he'd spit it out immediately, drop the cup, and refuse another sip.  I tried it cold, I tried it warm, I tried it room temperature...and it was all a no-go unless the breast milk dominated the whole milk.  I was getting worried our frozen supply wasn't going to last long enough for the transition.  Then all of a sudden, just this past week, he switched.  Like seriously, overnight he went from refusing whole milk to guzzling it non-stop.  To the point where now I have to limit how much whole milk he gets to drink.  (More than 24 oz per day of milk can lead to anemia.)  Crazy, right?  But definitely a blessing.  The whole milk thing was stressing me out.  Now I'm just giving him a mix of breast milk and whole milk in the mornings and evenings until our frozen stash is gone, because I still believe the vitamins and antibodies in the breast milk are beneficial.

So what does this all mean?  Well, it means I'm not nursing anymore.  Which leads to my next topic...

Oh the DISCOMFORT!!!  I have now gone 72 hours without nursing.  I feel like I might burst, but I'm told it will get better.  And I'm praying soon.  I am not the least bit comfortable.  Krew doesn't seem to be missing it at all, which is a great relief.  He's gone down to bed all three nights without a problem, despite his nighttime nursing session being gone.  I'm so so thankful.  I would have felt terrible if he'd been reluctant to give it up.  But as it is, I'm the only one suffering.  A friend told me to try wrapping Ace bandages around myself.  It's a tempting idea. Any other suggestions??

Below are a few pictures from the past couple of weeks.  And yes I know I still need to post birthday party pictures...I promise they're coming soon!

Playing outside on St. Patty's Day.
(In a Fighting Irish outfit, because I found it most appropriate. :) Not to mention that Krew's Uncle Aaron was visiting, who is a huge Notre Dame fan, and it was Uncle Aaron's 19th birthday, so we had to show him our love.)

This is how he sits in the grass 90% of the time. With his right leg as high in the air as he can get it.  I assume he doesn't like how the grass feels on his feet?

Sunscreen hair!

Swinging at the park.

Hanging out with Uncle Aaron!

Snuggles with Daddy.


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