Test...
The blog is dead!
Long live the blog!
For some reason my
old blogging software suddenly stopped working a few days ago. Of course I'd been
away for a while and it may have just been feeling neglected. But I couldn't coax
the damn thing back to life. So I backed up all my old archives and will make them
available at some undefined time in the future. But for now, welcome to the new
blog. Second verse, same as the first. But This will likely have some bugs in it
for a while.
Well, here's a little
bit of what's been going on while I've been away from my computer.
Paula is now walking
around and getting much more interested in communicating with Joel and I. She has
started making up signs for things she doesn't know a sign for - like hand-washing,
a new favorite activity - and using signs that I teach her, like the sign for pain
when something hurts.
We started her watching
a DVD called "Your
Baby Can Read," which shows words, says them and shows what they mean.
It's got music, video of kids demonstrating the words, animals, a poem. Paula loves
it and since she started watching it has learned to find and say "eye,"
find her mouth, nose and toes, and a few other things like to raise her arms when
we say "arms up!"
I turn the volume on high and sit cuddled up with her on the sofa, repeating each
of the words, singing the songs and talking about the images. She has always been
very visual and this seems to cater directly to that preference. (Also see the
Infant Learning Company)
In search of other
media to stimulate her mind and soul, we bought a DVD that contains little excerpts
from BBC arts productions (It's called Opus
Arte Taste of the Arts, if you're interested). It's basically a bunch of teasers
from full DVDs you can order.
The first excerpt
is that famous aria from The
Magic Flute, the one sung
by the Queen of the Night with all the insane high notes. Well, confirming
my suspicion that opera has both the high notes and the high drama that appeal to
Paula, she has gotten completely hooked on that one song. She
leans her head towards me the way the Q of N leans in towards her hapless daughter
and whisper-sings "ha! ha! ha!" with her eyes open wide as saucers.
Actually today we
discovered that the disk got scratched. Oh well. I guess we'll have to order the
full
DVD of The Magic Flute. There's no getting around it.
I'm also still working
on weaning Paula during the day. It's a hell of a lot of work! We get up, dressed,
fed and out of the house before nine so she won't ask for the nine-ish-o'clock I'm-bored
nursing. Then return home around midday to nurse to sleep. Then out again in the
afternoon, home for dinner and get out to the back yard after dinner. Basically
she rarely asks to nurse if we're outside.
Pretty soon I'll
start working on getting her to take her naps without nursing. This is going to
mean long and well-timed car rides or lengthy walks with her in the stroller or
on my back. Probably more walks, since gas is so freaking expensive these days.
It's bound to be an exercise program for me as well as a weaning process for her.
A couple of weeks
ago in a fit of desperation I decided to night wean Paula cold turkey. Nursing had
become very painful due to a thrush
infection I got from Paula just after Father's Day. At night it was intolerable.
I did what I had
to do for about a week. But I found that nursing was much less painful as my cycle
progressed: pre-ovulation was bearable, pre-menstrual was hell. So I started nursing
Paula at night again. After a few nights she started to get freaked out about not
being able to nurse, and I fear she couldn't hear me explain that it hurt. I had
gotten up with her, held her, rocked her, tried to comfort her in every way, but
when she started with that sad, angry crying, I decided it was better to go ahead
and nurse her.
Weaning is definitely
one of the hardest things I've done in a while. It's funny how the challenges just
keep getting steeper as I go along. This is certainly not "natural," or
at least it doesn't feel natural to me. But I can't escape the knowledge that extended
nursing will likely damage my health.
So it's incredibly
stressful to put my needs before Paula's and deprive my daughter of something I
know she depends on - even though the process has been pretty painless for her so
far. Thank goodness Joel has been available to help out in numerous ways: doing
laundry and dishes I have less time for because I have to be out of the house so
much, and comforting me when I feel like I'm falling apart.
Julie Walker said,
"Self-sacrifice is only one virtue out of an infinity of virtues you could
choose to cultivate. Why focus exclusively on that one?" It's a point she made
to me years ago. So now it appears I'm cultivating some kind of mix of self-discipline
and pragmatism. Somehow it doesn't come as easy.
by Me
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