equinox mamas & babes sept/oct 2003 august thread - Page 7

[anabean]

WOW! congrats, FRM!! that's just amazing to me. that you'd be ready to have another little one come... very admirable!

[polka123]

FRM -
woohoo !!
how wonderful !!

[cobluegirl]

WB Amywillo. We have been changing threads every month instead of pages....we lose too many people the other way and is too confusing.

Wow our babies are getting so big.....

We haven't discussed birthday's yet...we had a big family party when my first turned 1 and he cryed the whole time. I think we had a smaller one with dd#1 but just not sure what we are going to do with dd#2...lol We will be out of town...

Beatgirl...I can't believe all your kids are in the same week..wow how overwhelming. I guess you know when you are really fertile...lol

[Icequeen_in_ak]

We have more . She just cut one of her top ones this morning, the other is right under the surface. Should be within the next few days.

MAJOR PROBLEM though.... she bites me constantly. Anybody have any advise? I've tried the "ouch" really loudly, no effect. She does it again and smiles at me. I've tried "no biting" and taking the breast away. She again, just smiles and then cries because she wants to nurse again, only to bite me again.

My breasts look like hamburger and I'm running out of options. Any suggestions????

[cobluegirl]

We have another tooth too on top but not the center ones...so she now has three but is teething them out of order on top..just like my other dd....hehe..

as for biting.. I have no advice..you could just trying taking off the boob and placing her on the floor when she does that...

[guest9969]

We have no teeth at all yet so I can't speak from personal experience. I have heard that you should put her down when she bites you. Give her a couple minutes and try again. Seems like it will take awhile but eventually she should get that biting = no nursing. I've never heard of a more immediate solution. Sorry!

[mamaley]

icequeen--dd has 8 teeth now, and there was a time a few months ago when she constantly bit me. i had 3 cuts on my nipple. here's what i did:

1) i'd say "no bite" very firmly, and no more breast for her. i have no idea if that's age appropriate, but i was in pain and did not care.

2) i'd pay super close attention to her sucking pattern. she'd always do the same thing before she bit...kind of stop for a little bit...i can't remember the details. but if i thought she was going to bite, i'd unlatch her.

3)put some aloe vera on those nipples.

sorry that's all i have. good luck

[mamaley]

free range mama, CONGRATS!!!! is anyone else here pregnant too?

after i had isabel, i thought for sure that we were done. now, i'm not so sure

this age is so much fun! what are you doing for first birthday parties? or has this already been discussed?

[Organique Gal]

I'm so far behind on the posts it's not even funny... I tried skimming through, but I'm sure I've missed more than I've read...

As for the biting, we're dealing with Micah's biting too. He has bit my arm hard enough to leave welts twice now. The first time I yelled (in pain!) and said NO BITE! and he thought it was funny and tried to bite me again. The second time he came up behind me when I was sitting on the floor and bit me on the back of my arm. It REALLY hurt and I yelped so loud that I scared him and he started crying... funny enough, he hasn't tried again since. I doubt that cured him or anything, but something else I was doing was when he would try to bite me, I would re-direct him to something that he was allowed to chew like a soft toy. I don't know if he is making the coorelation or not, but I guess I figure it's worth a try. Sometimes I feel like I'm training a puppy! LOL

Freerangemama - CONGRATS! Kudos to you... I'm sure not ready to be pregnant again yet. Our "plan" is to start TTC in May 2006. My brother and I are almost 3 years apart, and I'd like to space my kids about that far apart if I can manage it.

I'm so excited about Micah's first birthday party. I'm planning it for the Saturday before the actual day, and having my MIL, FIL, SIL, BIL, and two of Micah's young cousins over for a BBQ and bday party. I'm also thinking of having a small party for a couple close friends of mine on the actual day which would include 3 other kids. I'm going to go to a party store this weekend and try and find train theme decorations. My husband is really into electric trains, and has a set his dad bought him when he was a boy. His grandpa was a conductor, which is really special to him... Anyways, we've decided to start buying pieces to a train set and eventually miniature village each birthday until he's old enough to play with it responsibly. We'd like it to be both something he enjoys playing with, and an investment for him. Something he can pass onto his own children someday. I haven't really started doing any research on what brand or anything, but I'm excited to start this for him. My husband is thrilled with this idea cause he's SO into model trains... I think it'll be a neat thing for them to do together. A hobby they can share. Hopefully Micah's as into it as I hope he'll be. Otherwise my DH will just have a really cool train to play with... hahahaha

Is it just me, or any of you other SAHMs with just one kid feeling rather bored lately? I find I've been watching WAY too much TV these days. Doesn't help that we upgraded our cable to over 200 channels... LOL I've been meeting a couple friends at the mall two mornings a week to walk, I keep the house pretty durn clean, but I don't really have much else to do. I can only sit on the floor and roll a ball to Micah, or read him his Barney Farm book so many times before I feel like I'm going stark raving mad. Doesn't help that it's either 100 degrees outside or hurricaning around here during the summer... Sorry... guess i'm just a bit shack whacky today. :

[Icequeen_in_ak]

Oh April.... what ever is your secret??? I WISH I was bored at this point. I feel like I spend my entire days chasing after Emma, nursing her, feeding her foods, cleaning up her messes, washing diapers, washing dishes, cooking and all the while, trying to do it all without making much noise (dh sleeps during the day... works graves) I'm never caught up on my cleaning.,.. Emma doesn't allow for that. She's still very much a velcro baby (and I do cherish it...I know those days will be gone soon) but like I said, I find myself feeling like a failure in the grand scheme of SAHMness. DH has said I set my expectations too high, that Emma is my job and the house is a second job and that I can't expect to handle both seamlessly... but still.... lots of women do.. with more kids than me

[polka123]

Originally Posted by mamaley

free range mama, CONGRATS!!!! is anyone else here pregnant too?

I WISH I was PG

[Organique Gal]

Karen, I certainly can relate to what you're saying about not being able to keep up... Most of the last 11 months has been like for me... you know how it is... you feel like you won a gold medal if you manage to get a shower some days in between cleaning up poop explosions, consoling an incessantly whiny child, breast feeding, rocking babies to sleep, washing dishes, doing laundry and on and on. I guess I'm just feeling the relief of stress now that Micah's non-stop teething of the last month finally let up some. He got 6 teeth in 4 weeks, and I have to say it was incredibly stressful. Not a lot of sleep and LOTS of crying... I guess he really spoiled me the first 8 months, he is such a happy baby... now that he's back to his normal self I'm finding it easier to cope. Sort of like the story of the woman who wanted a bigger house, so she went to a wise man, and he told her to bring the cows in to the house to live with them... then the next week it was the goats, then the next week all the chickens and on till the entire farm yard was living in the house with her... then he told her to get rid of them and VOILA! Bigger house... in reality it was the same little house, but once she got rid of all the farm animals and wasn't slopping around in animal pooh, she could better appreciate what she had.

[cllovato]

Congrats FRM :

I didn't think I'd be ready for another any time soon, but just this week I've gotten the bug. I don't know why- it would be loony for us to have one now- but you can't argue with the feelings right!!!!

Icequeen- your days sound like mine- only I don't have to worry about being quiet!!! I know the feeling about the house- this is my second child, but the first I got to SAH with and I never get the house taken care of. I finally got the downstairs cleaned last Friday, and that had to be the first time for a real cleaning in probably 2 months! :LOL

Marisol has been major clingy baby this week- I think she is working out another tooth- but I can't see anything yet.

[ShellyK]

I'm right with you all on the biting! Julie's has been making mincemeat of my boobies lately. I felt so superior and smug back when she was new and all the idiots told me I'd wean as soon as she got teeth. Well, we're not planning to wean, but I can see how someone would want to. I've had my moments. I do my best not to react when she does bite because when I have reacted, it makes her want to bite again. What I have noticed is that she mostly only does it when I'm offering her boob and she's either done or wants something else (like a diaper change). A lot of times, even when she's not trying to bite me, she'll leave tooth marks when she's done nursing...but I think that she's getting better at being gentle now that they're grown all or most of the way in. I hope.

April, I don't know how you do it either. I'm constantly wishing I had more free time! I do a lot of knitting and some knitwear design and class planning, I cook most of Julie's food myself, and I am NEVER caught up with the housework. Also, I've spent some time on and off organizing Julie's pictures both on her web page and in her scrapbook.

I have to admit, there are days when I don't really want to read the "Doggies" book one more time, and I really just want her to go down for her nap so I can do "me" stuff. Today she slept for an hour. One hour. All day. But she is getting a lot better at amusing herself and letting me have a few minutes to do something in the kitchen or read an e-mail.

I have made a point to work it out so that we have something outside the house to do pretty much every day. Monday morning is my knitting group at a coffee shop. I don't actually get to knit most times, but I take my current project with me to show off, and I get to see what everyone else is doing and have our little chat about the world. Tuesday, I have a casual agreement with a girlfriend that we usually meet to go for a walk around the lake. When it's hot, we go early in the morning before it's really hot. Wednesday, there is a playgroup at a local park. They're not all AP mammas, but most of them are really nice and supportive of my parenting style. Thursday is our free day - it used to be the day we went to an AP playgroup in town, but the mammas in that group were really clique-ish and I hate to say this but too flaky for my taste. There is a big difference between gentle discipline and no disclipline! I got tired of watching their kids steal Julie's and other kids' toys and never bring them back...but I digress...Now we relish Thursday as our day to do something different every week. Maybe meet a friend for lunch, maybe run errands, maybe stay around the house and do some cleaning. And Friday is another playgroup of moms and kids we met in our ECFE class. And the point of me telling you all this is that having all those interactions really keeps me sane. I get to compare notes with everyone else, watch how they interact with their kids and get ideas of things to do with Julie, play with toys we don't have, and just generally have more fun. I think Julie really enjoys it too.

[cllovato]

Marisol isn't too bad with the biting- she only does it once in a while. But this last time I thought she bit my nipple off- it hurt so much to nurse on that side the rest of the day and part of the next! I couldn't help but react, but I did take her off for a minute or so and she didn't do it again. It's different every time though!

T ShellyK- I was wondering if you could help me out on a couple of knitting pattern directions- I just started knitting, and I know the terms, but I don't understand what they are telling me to do on this one set of directions.
"WS, inc 8 sts across by *P1, inc1; repeat from * to last st, end P1- 17 sts. work on the 17 sts in St st for 22 more rows, ending with a WS row." If you can help, that would be awesome!

[Icequeen_in_ak]

April,
It's good to know that I've got a light at the end of the rainbow to look forward to. Since Emma is one of the younger babies here, I suspect she's right about where you described with the teething, etc. Maybe by the time she nears 11 months life will be good

It's good to know that all of the harder times are merely part of the path of mommyhood!!

[FreeRangeMama]

Thanks everyone for the congrats. I am excited, but nervous. I won't relax until I test again and get a big fat line. Then I won't relax till 12 weeks

MamaP, our 3 year olds are a couple of months apart, and our little ones are a couple of months apart, so it stands to reason that you will be pg again soon :

It will be busy with 3 babes within 4 years, but we live in chaos now so why not add to it :LOL Dh is taking 2 years off from school, and since we know from experience how schoolwork and a newborn don't mix we figured now was a good time. Besides, we are just loving life with 2 so we are really excited about 3!!

I do wish I had some free time. We go out 2 or 3 times a day, plus since dh is working 2 jobs right now I am doing ALL the housework and yardwork. On top of that ds1 is allergic to corn (which is in EVERYTHING) so I make almost everything from scratch.

In order to keep my sanity I need to do something creative every day. Today I finished fixing up an old lawn chair by weaving old tshirts into a new seat. Next I am going to sand and refinish a big old wooden rocker. Plus I am knitting some longies for Deshi, sewing bum sweaters and longies out of felted sweaters, and making some new slippers for Akira. Plus I need to read a little every day to keep my brain working I would rather sleep less and have the time for myself instead of being well rested and going to bed "early". After 3 years of NO sleep with ds1 even 5 or 6 hours feel like luxury

What does every one else do for themselves?

[ShellyK]

Originally Posted by cllovato

T ShellyK- I was wondering if you could help me out on a couple of knitting pattern directions- I just started knitting, and I know the terms, but I don't understand what they are telling me to do on this one set of directions.
"WS, inc 8 sts across by *P1, inc1; repeat from * to last st, end P1- 17 sts. work on the 17 sts in St st for 22 more rows, ending with a WS row." If you can help, that would be awesome!

I'm doing this publicly in case anyone else is just dying from the suspense....

WS= wrong side. So, you should do this next row right after you've finished a knit row and you're ready to purl.

inc= increase - they want you to increase, or make 8 new stitches evenly across the work in this row. The way to do that is P1, inc1 or purl 1, increase 1 and repeat that all the way across, ending with a purl st. After you finish this row, you should have 17 stitches on your needles. Continue working back and forth in St st (stockinette stitch, which is alternating knit and purl rows) for 22 more rows, ending with a purl row.

Hope that helps! And, by the way, watcha makin' ?

[cllovato]

Hope that helps! And, by the way, watcha makin' ?

Yep- that sure does help- thanks a ton!
I am making a teddy bear each for my niece and nephew. Their birthday party is on the 21st (so I better get cranking on them :LOL) My niece will be three and my nephew will be one. He is almost exactly one month older than Marisol.
This is only my second project, so I may have to ask more questions My first was a little pair of booties I made for my cousins first baby. They turned out pretty good (IMO) so I hope these do too! I'll get a pic up when I'm done


FRM- that's a tough allergy- boy I am surprised you have any free time
sending you to make it through the first 12 weeks happy and healthy!

[Icequeen_in_ak]

Shelly, thanks for posting the answer publically. I'm now convinced more than ever that I'm never going to take up knitting : My head was spinning!!! All I want to do is learn to make soakers, but I just don't see that happening!!