The Nation Family

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Planes!

The air show was in town last weekend and since Savannah is obsessed with pointing out planes and thinks every noise she hears outside is a plane, we thought it would be fun for her to get a little closer look. Since the idea of sitting in traffic for 45 minutes to get on the Navy base didn't sound fun we decided just to watch from the Target parking lot next to the base. Great view, none of the traffic!

We were concerned that the noise might be scary for her but she had a blast and just laughed and laughed when the planes flew right over our heads, she spent most of the time we were there just sitting in James' lap taking it all in.

From SGN - 16th Month

Pumpkin Patch

We visited the pumpkin patch - well, not so much a patch as a church with a large quantity of pumpkins for sale, but it's the best you're going to get around here - a couple weekends ago. We, that would be James and I, were SO excited to take Savannah. We had visions of her running around amazed at all the pumpkins, trying to pick them up and going nuts over the little Savannah sized pumpkins. Yeah, not so much. She was much more intersted in the other kids there and trying to get into their family photos rather than have her picture taken. Thankfully we had an emergency stash of Goldfish crackers in the diaper bag that held her attention for a few minutes.

From SGN - 16th Month

Friday, October 8, 2010

Savannahese

If only we knew what she was trying to say, it is probably the solution to all the problems in the world.

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Something I meant to blog about in depth, but didn’t…

Nursing

Savannah was exclusively on breastmilk for over a year (nursing and pumping) and I’m pretty dang proud of myself. In the process I turned into something I never thought I’d be – a lactivist (aka a breastfeeding advocate), pretty surprising to me since for MANY years I never even considering breastfeeding to be something I would ever do. Now I was never on the verge of staging a nurse-in and I never felt the need to stand up for nursing mothers rights but then again I only had one instance of NIP (nursing in public) where someone gave me a dirty look…

Cracker Barrel in the middle of Georgia. I was sitting in a corner thoroughly covered, as always, and for the first time in my life I accurately read someone’s lips to make out, “She’s feeding that baby, she needs to do that in the bathroom.” I know for sure that’s what she said because she had to repeat herself (her dining partner was probably as dumbstruck as I was) and I was able to read her lips again. Lucky for her they were done eating or I might have sat down at her table to finish up nursing or suggested she take her breakfast to the bathroom.

And I nursed EVERYWHERE – church, restaurants, the homes of family and friends, Starbucks, parking lots/garages, even while on the interstate once (Don’t call DCF, James was driving, Savannah was strapped in her car seat and I was bent over her, I’m sure it was quite a sight.) and the list goes on and on, it would be easier to name a place where I didn’t feed my baby. I'm sure this surprised quite a few people and it certainly surprised me, I'm quite modest but when it came to feeding her I wasn't the least bit shy. I don't know if my fellow churchgoers, coffee drinkers, etc. were comfortable with my doing so but no one ever mentioned it or even gave it a second glance.

I fear I am somewhat crazy as I have found myself cornering the mother-to-be at baby showers inquiring about her plans for feeding her baby and offering to answer a 3 a.m. phone call with nary a mean thought to answer a breastfeeding question (I am so thrilled when I actually get taken up on my offer). I know from experience with friends and family that despite your best efforts, sometimes breastfeeding just doesn’t work so I’m not some crazy lady screaming “breast is best” at the top of my lungs at every chance I get. But today, I found myself aghast when a childhood friend posted on Facebook that she was going to switch to formula this week because nursing hurt too much. You mean its working and you’re going to stop because of a little pain? WHAT?! I have a ridiculously low pain threshhold so I'm not trying to make myself out to be a hero here, but I had excruciating pain while nursing for 6 weeks while all the books say it shouldn’t last more than 2-4 weeks. But you know what, I kept on keepin’ on and by golly, it got better. Besides, labor was the worst pain I’ve ever felt, pre-epidural that is, and this was nothing compared to that.

My timeline is a little fuzzy but I think I've got all the dates right and this is really more for me and my own reference than anything else. Thankfully I had a nice stash of frozen milk so I started pumping only once per day at work at the beginning of June and stopped pumping completely 2 weeks before Savannah's first birthday. Very shortly after her birthday we introduced cows milk in a sippy cup, never putting it in a bottle (ok ok, maybe we did once or twice in a desperate moment). We continued nursing in the morning and at night for another week, I dropped the morning session while we were visiting family over the 4th of July weekend and we dropped the evening session on July 9, I had planned to go one more day but she was fussy and I could tell she just wasn't getting enough. We started just giving her a sippy cup from the freezer stash after that night and ran out on July 14. We had intended for the next day to be the last day of frozen milk but while thawing it we realized that bag had about 6 holes in it so it had to be thrown out...you can bet a complaint was promptly submitted on the manufacturers website and someone, that would be me, had some high value coupons in her hot little hands not soon after and we love our free sippy cups!

I found nursing to be quite natural and not at all difficult (once we got the hang of things) and SO convenient, I did have to give up milk and sour cream for a while but we never had to make sure that we had bottles with us or make a late night trip to the store for more formula. Not to mention the money we saved, especially since we would have needed soy formula, and the benefits to me - a quick return to my pre-pregnancy clothes and a decreased risk of getting several types of cancers.

Sunday, October 3, 2010

Newest Game

We're not sure where she picked this up or why she enjoys it so much but we've spent a lot of time laughing with her over this lately...

Dancing Queen

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

I can’t believe it has been so long since I’ve blogged, I feel sure that I will regret this later.

Savannah will be 15 months old next week; she gets more adorable and more hilarious by the day. In the last week she has started giving kisses, she will either lean in towards your lips with her mouth closed or with it wide open – it’s a surprise every time! Sometimes when I’m rocking her before bed I’ll think she’s asleep and all of a sudden she’ll lift her head off my shoulder, turn her face towards mine, lean in for a kiss and put her head back on my shoulder. Melts. My. Heart.

She also loves to give hugs, one of my favorite times of day is first thing in the morning when I go into her room and she’s sitting up in her crib with a big smile on her face reaching out for me to pick her up. Once I do, she wraps her arms and legs around me and we just snuggle for a minute or so. Then we always open the blinds and go to let the doggies out, she knows where we’re going so when we get halfway across the house and she just starts giggling at the thought of seeing the dogs.
She is very friendly, always talking to whoever we pass while we’re out and about. She’s also quite the flirt, she’ll great familiar faces and all females with a, “Hi!” while most males get a, “Heeeeey…” Ridiculously funny. She also waves bye to EVERYONE, although not always when prompted.

She knows where her toes and her belly button are and she won’t just point to her belly button, she will lift up her shirt or dress, bend her head down to see it and poke at it with her cute little fingers until she’s really sure you’ve seen it. I’m sure we’ll regret this later too.

She loves to point and ask, “What’s that?” Although it usually sounds more like, “wa saaa”, we know what she’s trying to say. Her favorite things to point at are airplanes; from the backyard she assumes anything that makes a noise when it goes by is an airplane. FedEx truck driving by, airplane. Moving van, airplane. Motorcycle, airplane.

She is 25% tantrums and 75% hilarious. When she isn’t throwing herself on the ground and flailing her arms and legs (oh yes, those kinds of tantrums), we are constantly laughing with her. Just last week James discovered that if he jumps over her while she’s standing she’ll crack up, which cracks us up. So there’s been a lot of jumping in our house lately. I noticed this weekend that she’s really started to mimic us, we had some chips and salsa out on Saturday and she grabbed a chip out of the bowl and promptly dipped it into the salsa.

She LOVES being outside, unfortunately the mosquitos love her sweetness and they bite her and those bites turn into big welts. As much as those welts bother us, thankfully those welts don’t seem to bother her. We’ve got a big bottle of Off near the door to ward them well, off. Works great but smells awful, I'd bathe her 12 times a day if it meant not seeing these.

From SGN 15th Month

This little mischevious grin is present more than it's not. On an unrelated note, how cute is she in her strawberry muumuu (aka nightgown)?

From SGN 15th Month

One of her new favorite things is to "make cookies" which is basically just stirring around air or whatever else she throws in the bowl such as a ball.