Spring...

has spring! Now I am just waiting for the last great snow of the year.

Yesterday we went swimming as a family, since I had to work on Tuesday and missed his swim class. I love indoor pools!

Adventures in Babywearing

2010 Chicago Auto Show, 2009 Taste of Chicago, & Max first in his Maya Wrap April 2009.

Daddy on vacation

So Andy is on vacation this week and it could not come too soon. I need to clean the carpet from the back sliding door to the living room. But alas tomorrow we are going to Chicago and who knows what Tuesday holds. Wednesday is a holiday and we are going out on a "date". I am looking forward to trying to capture Emma nursing Alister later this week as well. Maybe a trip to IKEA in Bolingbrook, and throw in LLL Thursday night at Uptown Cafe. Whew we have a busy week!

I end up thinking of all kinds of things to write about when I finally get down time right before I fall asleep at night but come morning I never get the chance to type it all out. I just need to try a little harder on keeping up with my thoughts.

Such a geek!

I love this place!

http://blog.michellekaufmann.com/?cat=23

We have visited the Green House at the Museum of Science and Industry each year since it opened. Andy and I both wish more things were operational and you could go on a longer extended time tour. I would love if they offered a overnight or even a chance to stay there for a few hours after regular closing. But alas since there is no working toilet at all in the house I don't think many people would make it a very long time. We will be going back in the spring to tour it again. I hope when the house loses it's newness it is not torn down but maybe moved to somewhere locally and is turned into a real residence. Hopefully it will be at the MSI for at least a few years to come. I appreciate that each year that it is open they have changed up the furniture and colors. Makes me want to go back again and again.

Since we bought a Burley Bike trailer I need to get out our bikes we bought last summer. Max was too little to take last year using any type of bike support gear until late in the fall. He seems to like when I push around the Burley like a stroller. I am hoping we do get up to the lakefront in Chicago and go biking. When my mother in law moves down to Streeterville this summer, she will be very close to Navy Pier and the downtown parks. Now to be able to bike a few miles in Valpo before then to train. Please weather get warmer soon!

Nursing...One year and going strong.

It has been a interesting year since Max's birth. I wish we might have had a better birth experience so to get off to the best start we could but, we did the best we could given the circumstances. I ended up using a silicone nipple shield for over 6 months and pumped every morning for almost 10 months. I was able to pump on vacation last summer to keep feeding the Max as we drove to PA. I had a painful issue right around Halloween that lasted a few weeks. Sometimes I feel like I have been through it all now, even though Max is only just over 1 year old. I carry Max almost everywhere in my Maya Wrap. Sometimes we use the strollers we have. We just bought a Burley bike trailer so Max can enjoy going for bike rides this summer. I am finally letting Max sleep in his own room. Alright, tonight is the real first attempt. We will see how it goes. Usually he is in the pack n play in our room.

I regularly attend our La Leche League meetings. I just love to listen to the other mothers issues with their children. Some days I know exactly where there are and other days I will have to find out in a year or so or more. I look forward to having Max get bigger even though it is such a short time in his life that he is a baby. I hope we are able to have another baby some time in the future. I hope Max is a good big brother.

I look to enjoy doing everything that we can together as a family.

Daddy time

So after 12 months of it being all mommy almost all of the time it is finally getting to be daddy time. What I mean by it is, whenever the Max woke up in the night is has almost always (99 %) been me getting him back to sleep. This past weekend when I was sooooo sick, Andy was able to get Max back to sleep when he awoke to me yucking in the bathroom. Most nights Andy is so out when Max might awake I have been the primary soother. Even when that means I did or didn't nurse him back to sleep. We have been lucky though, Max is a pretty decent night sleeper. He might not sleep a ton during the day but we have never had too hard of a time getting him to sleep a good amount at night. Although he has a sleep time of his own. Which is really our time. Asleep by 10 p.m. awake at maybe 8 a.m. if I am lucky. I would love to figure out how to try to shift that to go to bed a bit earlier, but I am not going to try to force it upon him. So, finally, a torch is being passed not from me to Andy, but to Max for beginning to grow up. Whew that year went by fast!