The Week in Review

So where have I been all last week? Well, now that I'm on the mend and breastfeeding is going so much better, we've been enjoying all that summer has to offer.

One day last week, we headed downtown for Abby's first experience at the Heritage Fountain. Just as I suspected, she was a bit afraid of the shooting spouts water coming out of the cement, but she had a wonderful time watching all the other kids run around and once in awhile allowed me to get her close enough to get a little mist on her.

The fountain is circular, so there's a nice dry spot in the middle for parents (or kids that are a little scared) to stand in. If you look closely, you'll spot Abby sitting on Hannah's lap out in the middle in that dry spot.

Taking a break in the shade.

We also enjoyed a visit from my friend Shauna. Shauna had fun meeting baby Ben for the first time and Abby had a great time playing and interacting with Shauna. Shauna is great with kids and I'm excited that she's getting married next spring and will Lord-willing soon be having kids of her own.

Shauna and Abby working on naming body parts (here Abby is identifying "eyes").

On another hot day (okay, all the days have been hot recently!), my brother and his family came to visit for the afternoon while my brother had some business in town to take care of. My mom filled up her kiddie pool and Hannah, Solomon and Abby cooled off.

Solomon was not very interested in meeting his newest cousin and we eventually gave up trying to get him to show interest in Benjamin. But several hours later, my mom was holding Ben and Solomon non-chalantly walked up to her and said in all seriousness, "I want to see that cousin." He then made faces at Ben and much to his enjoyment Baby Ben smiled back over and over again.

On Friday, the three of us attempted a trip to the zoo with my mom and Hannah. I say "attempted" because when we got there we found out the zoo was closed. Yes, closed. We ended up picking the one day a year when they close the zoo in order to prepare it for their annual black-tie gala that evening. Thankfully, there's a park next to the zoo, so we ate our picnic lunch there, fed the ducks, and walked through the gardens. But that's not near as much fun as the zoo when you've packed up three children who had their hearts set on visiting all the animals (okay, so Ben wasn't too disappointed about not seeing the animals, but he was disappointed that he had to sit in the car for an hour there and almost two hours back just to go to a park - he cried for 55 minutes while we were stuck in traffic on the way home) .

Feeding the ducks.

Walking through the Japanese Garden.

For our final big outing of the week we went back downtown to the Lakefair Parade.

It was Abby's first parade and she enjoyed it a lot. Her favorite parts were the horses, the cheerleaders, and the rose she received. Each time she saw a group of horses, she would hold out her arms and say, "Come here! Come here!" One group of horses stopped right in front of us and did a routine in which the horses came right toward her, one after the other - she was ecstatic and giggled in excitement. When the next group of horses came, she again called, "Come here!" and was very sad that they didn't "listen" to her this time. =) Neither she nor Ben liked the loud noises like the corvettes that kept revving their engines. In fact, Ben cried quite a lot - poor little guy.

Ben was not very impressed. =)

Abby and me with our gorgeous roses that were passed out to all the females as a promotion for a local business (much better than getting candy at a parade like usual! =).

By the end of the parade, Abby was clapping away!

In addition to the several outings, Ben also began to sleep longer at nights! Yay! I am so happy! For the first two months, Ben's usual night went something like this: sleep three hours, up for one to nurse (or bottle feed), sleep for two hours, up for one to eat, sleep for one hour, up for one to eat, and then it was morning so even if he went back down Abby was soon to be up. When we were bottle-feeding, I'd also have to pump after he went to sleep, so I'd average about 4-5 hours of sleep a night. Since we've been back to breastfeeding the last two weeks, it's been nice to get one or two more hours, but I've still been pretty exhausted. So, these last four nights of more sleep (two nights his longest stretch was 5 hours, one night 4 1/2 hours, and one night 7!!! hours) have been such a relief and I pray there are more in store . It's amazing how different each child can be. From about 4 or 5 weeks, Abby started sleeping 5 hours at night which slowly lengthened each week until she was doing about 8 by time she was 11-weeks-old. Ben stayed steady at no more than 3 hours for the first 11 weeks with only two exceptions awhile back where he slept 4 hours. I was so scared he would never begin to sleep longer!

In addition to sleeping better, he is continuing to get better at nursing and I am so glad that I never gave up and that we were able to completely quit the bottle and pumping! We still do deal with some issues: his suction especially is very poor (I'm guessing from all the bottle-feeding), and my milk-flow is too fast for him which means that his preferred way to nurse is with me lying down (gravity slows the flow) - sometimes he will actually refuse to nurse until I lie down (I actually had to nurse him lying down on a beach towel at the park downtown - crazy!). But otherwise things are much better and, as you can tell from this post, being able to breastfeed again has brought much more freedom to our schedule and enables us to get out and have more fun.