Today’s my debut post joining the others on Liberating Working Moms in the Working with Style meme.
I’m sharing my new nursing mom style. Lots of my old favorite pants have made it into rotation {now that they fit again!} with tanks & few new things mixed in. Hope you’ll join me over on LWM.
My parents came down this past weekend to help us decorate. Thank goodness! My mom loves decorating & loves Christmas {my whole family really does}, so by noon on Saturday, our house was Christmasified.
We’ve had good luck getting NC trees at our local Lowes, so we packed the babies up {in Christmas attire of course} & headed that way after they’d napped & nursed. We needed a fairly tall but skinny tree & found the perfect one!
Jason tied it to the roof of the van, while I got the babies back in.
Mom stopped & got hot dogs for Dad, Jason & herself & I snapped photos of my babies.
They slept on the few minute ride home then while we got the tree all set up inside {thank you babes!}.
They love the lights, & we have fun showing them different ornaments including the ones for them already given to them by their grandparents on both sides. It’s wonderful & completely awesome already to view Christmas from their eyes.
Over the summer, when the babies were fresh & new & I was living the life of a Walking Dead zombie {oh we love that show!}, I did a post on ‘a day in the life’. I’m so glad I did so that I can remember those crazy days.
I’ve seen others recently posting their schedule with their children. And then this morning, the five of us that share my work’s pumping room were talking about our wake up times. I think it’s so interesting how everyone does it differently & yet it works for them. All these conversations recently have made me think how our schedule has changed & settled down now that we have established a bit of a routine since working & daycare. I thought I’d share a typical weekday. Let’s start at midnight.
Midnight-2ish: All asleep in our own beds.
Somewhere between 230-330: Zach wakes up for night nursing. Bless him for nursing speedily & easily going back to sleep in his crib on his tummy with his faithful wubba close by.
230-430: Lucy might wake up during this time. Or she might continue to sleep. I never really know so I’ve stopped pumping after my Zach feed. If they’re both going to wake up, I like it best when they do it together so I can tandem feed & we can all go back to sleep within a relatively short amount of time.
430-7: Hopefully babies are sleeping & if so, so are we. If they do sleep through those early am wake ups, they’ll awake between 5-630. Sometimes Lucy or Zach won’t go back to sleep alone if they wake up closer to 4 to nurse. That’s when I nudge Jason to take over on the couch with the awake baby so sleeping kiddo & I can keep sleeping. We’ve also pulled awake baby into bed next to me a few times. Although this just leads to no one really getting additional sleep.
7: I’m up & showering & dressing. Make up doesn’t get done anymore {sorry coworkers}.
730: Babies are either waking up or we’re waking them up. I’ve been packing my lunch, making my breakfast & finalizing packing the bottles/diapers for daycare while holding one while Jason grabs whoever was the late sleeper. Typically I’m throwing food down my throat & holding Zach. Jason will dress Lucy, hand her to me to nurse {she eats longer so we start her first}, take Zach & dress him before handing him to me to join Sister on the boobs.
8ish: Burp babies, put on light jackets or blankets & get them into their car seats. Jason takes the diaper bag to his car. I grab my stuff & a baby. He comes back for the other baby & we load them in his car before we all leave at the same time. I head to work {hopefully almost on time} while he drops them off at daycare.
815: I’m supposed to be at work.
830: Babies arrive at daycare.
9-10: Jason’s back home, gets ready & leaves for work by 930 to be at his desk by 10.
1030-11: I’m pumping. The babies have usually gotten or are getting their first bottles by this time.
11-1: Babies taking naps at daycare. Zach is an awesome daycare napper. Lucy is afraid she gonna miss something {I think she’ll be our party girl}, so she takes cat naps.
1ish: Babies are getting second bottles.
245-310: I’m pumping again. Hoping to {& usually} getting around 10 oz each session since I need 24-28 oz for their 6 daycare bottles. Husband goes to lunch around this time.
4ish: Babies getting their third bottle. I like it when last bottle is gotten around 4 but sometimes it’s a little later if they’ve taken good afternoon naps.
5: I leave work & head up to daycare.
520-535: I’ve arrived at daycare. It typically takes me a few minutes to hug on the babies, chat with their teachers, pack up their stuff, load them into their car seats. One of the teachers or directors helps me take the babies to the van.
550-6: Arrive at home. Neighbors are either laughing or admiring the fact that I carry two car seats into the house at once. Then I rush back out to grab my purse, lunch bag, pump bag, diaper bag along with bottle bags & dirty wet bags attached.
6-630: If they’ve fallen asleep in the car & stayed asleep in the house, I’m running around: unloading bottles into dish water, unloading my pumped milk into the fridge, starting cloth diaper laundry. If they’re both awake, we play on the floor. A mix of boppies, tummy time, rolling, toys, rotating sitting in my lap & standing holding my hands.
630-7: Start the night routine. Diapers get changed & I typically tandem nurse them. Now that we’ve started solids, I’ll put them in bumbo seats after they nurse for their rice cereal. They still dislike it immensely, so more ends up on their bibs & outfits than their tummies. Depending on what they did at daycare that day {they get quite crafty} &/or how dirty they got eating, we do baths {typically every other night}. We bathe them separately with the one not being washed playing in the exersaucer.
730: Jason arrives home & jumps in to help. Either helping finish up baths, dressing the clean baby in pjs & night-time diaper, or starting our dinner.
8: I typically end up topping off one or both babies with a little more nursing. Jason usually puts Lucy to sleep in the nursery by rocking her in our big brown chair. Zach tends to hang out with me for a book reading before I put him in his crib.
830-9: Babies are {fingers & toes crossed} asleep. Now the real fun begins.
9: Hopefully we’re eating dinner by now. Usually sometime easy & quick to cook & we eat super fast.
915-11: Jason’s washing that day’s bottles while I’m preparing the next day’s bottles. We’re switching washed diapers into the dryer, folding clothes washed the night before, then folding & stuffing diapers for the next day. We also try to watch at least one TV show during this time so our DVR doesn’t blow up. Oh & I pump {while eating dessert} during the last 30 minutes of the show.
1115-1130: The household is hopefully quiet & we’re all in bed asleep.
The evenings flow a little more smoothly when I have a helper stop by {typically my aunt comes once or twice a week}. It’s fun {but a little crazy} when we have something to do after daycare pick up like our grocery store run Monday night or book club this Wednesday.
Things are quiet on the ole blog this week. Not because things aren’t happening in our household but maybe because they are.
The last couple weeks have happily been busy ones. Ones filled with our first big family trip for Thanksgiving with my extended family {for which there’s a post in draft waiting for me to have time to download then upload the photos}. Then getting used to going back to work & no longer being able to sleep in, & then my husband’s family came up this past weekend for a visit. Last weekend, we took the babies to meet Santa for the first time. Again, when I get those pictures online, I’ll post them because it’s hilariously too cute.
This week, I’m taking photos of my outfits to get ready to host Working with Style on Liberating Working Moms next Monday. Join me in taking photos where you can {office bathroom FTW!} & link up Monday!
My parents are coming down this weekend to help get our house decorated for Christmas. I tried to decorate a little on my own last Saturday but instead just dumped a box full of candles & snowmen on a table before I ran out of the house to tacky Christmas sweater party instead. I’ll take a ton of photos I’m sure as we pick out the babies’ first tree & I’ll try to post those soon too.
Also stick around for a couple of reviews & giveaways to come in the next couple of weeks! Much like life now, Suz’s Treats won’t be quiet for long.
This is a follow up to both my six month Z & L updates & my overwhelmed post from earlier this week. Stick around to the end for some funny photos!
Here’s their official stats for 6 months. Lucy weighed 15 lb 7 oz & was 25.5 inches long. She’s between the 25-50 percentile in both categories.
Zach weighed 13lb 3 oz & was 25 inches long. Zach’s caught up to Lucy in length for the first time & is in the 25 percentile there. He’s most definitely still our skinny guy though at still under the 1 percentile in weight. He’s following his own growth curve well, so for now the doctor isn’t concerned.
The doctor felt they were doing great or even above where she’d think they’d be for six month but really 4.5 months when you adjust for them being 6 weeks early. She thought they’d be up & cruising & crawling by the time she sees them next at 9 months.
They did great for their standard & flu shots, crying less than before & recovering well in our arms. Only disappointment was they got denied from getting the RSV vaccine. They were deemed too healthy of preemies {this is clearly a good/bad thing}.
The pediatrician at their six month appointment Tuesday said for us to go ahead & start solids. Starting with rice cereal for a couple weeks before incorporating veggies & fruits. I was excited to have a plan.
Since I was already late into work due to their appointment & Tuesday are now my long lunch days for December, I went ahead & checked off grocery shopping off my to-do list at that time too. I hit up Whole Foods {it’s called Whole Paycheck for a reason, people, but it’s damn delicious} for a few items for quick lunches & dinners. I also wanted to buy organic rice cereal there. They had Earth’s Best oatmeal & rice/oatmeal/fruit combo but the doctor had said stick with just rice cereal at the beginning.
I went to Harris Teeter next where they had Earth’s Best rice cereal on sale for $2.50 a box. I bought two boxes as well as the best sub I’ve had for a while & enough food for us for breakfast, lunch & dinner for the week. Plus cupcakes because duh, you don’t pass up on sale cupcakes. I think I’ll plan to grocery shop while my in laws are in town this weekend then go with all the suggestions for curbside grocery pickup!
We tried rice cereal with them Tuesday night. As per the doctor & box’s instructions, we mixed 1 tsp rice cereal to 5 tsp of warmed breast milk. We made that amount for each. We’ll split that amount between the two of them going forward.
Zach was way interested in the spoon & would be okay with Jason putting it in his mouth before he quickly stuck his tongue out & let the cereal fall out. There was definitely more on his Christmas bib than in his mouth. Once we let him hold another spoon, he was better at taking {a tiny} amount. Wednesday night, I think he was still kinda hungry from not nursing so well. He had a little rice cereal before he was crying enough that I grabbed him & solo nursed him til he was full & calm.
Here’s the procession of Lucy’s first experience of rice cereal in photos.
Lucy took offense to me feeding her anything other than her beloved boob. She spit it out & more was on the bumbo & blanket than ever got into her mouth. She was pissed. And continued to be upset until I set the cereal down, picked her up & nursed her. First time was quite a fail for her, but I have to say she handled it much better Wednesday night. She still stuck her tongue out {& with it lots most of the cereal}, but she did eat some.