Smiling Through the Rain

We are leaving tomorrow morning for Playa del Carmen!!!  Paisley is going along with us, and is bringing her grandma to help out.  :) My suitcase is stuffed full of both my stuff and hers.  Diapers take a lot of room and we have to have both regular and swim diapers.  Luckily, her teensy-tiny clothes don't take up much space at all.  And I only wear bikinis and sundresses while there.  Still, it weighs in at 49.5 pounds.  YIKES! I am so excited to let her see the sand and the ocean, since the beach is my favorite place in the world!!!  And since she loves swimming, I'm assuming she'll love the ocean too.  So, I get to have my 3 favorite people at my very favorite place.  Pretty sure life doesn't get any better. ..

Lack of menstrual cycles has been a big part of who I am, so imagine my surprise today when I started my period.  This was totally unexpected considering I just quit nursing 3 weeks ago and wouldn't have put my money on menstruation if I were a betting woman.   Which luckily I am not, since I obviously would have lost. Sitting in her highchair at the vet clinic Aaron and I have talked casually about whether we'd want a second baby since the day we had Paisley.  But in the back of my mind, I never really thought that it would happen again for us.  We just couldn't get that lucky twice.  Right?    But now I wonder if maybe, just maybe , my body really is "fixed" since my ovarian drilling.  Who in the world ever decided that drilling holes through both of a woman's malfunctioning ovaries would reset the whole hormonal mess and allow her to have babies???   It sure shows how desperate I was at that point in the infertility journey t...

On Monday night, Paisley took her first steps!  The first couple of tries she would let go of whatever she was holding onto and pretty much just face-plant into the floor.  I guess she decided this method was not so successful and wouldn't be great for getting around. So, she then steadied herself a little better and took 2 steps before crashing to the ground.  And then laughing at herself!  It was the cutest thing she's done so far and Aaron and I were lucky enough to both witness it.  We stared amazed at her for hours before realizing that it was really late (after 11 pm) and we needed to get her to bed...  :) I realize everyone says that life is over now, but I love every single time she becomes more mobile.  It makes her happier and she actually is playing so much better on her own now.  The whole house is a playground which is hilarious because she doesn't play with any of her toys right now.  She mainly just wants us to wa...

Is it just me or is everyone having trouble with blogspot lately?  I used to go to blogspot.com and it would bring up my dashboard so I could see everyone's updates, but now it says link broken.  So I have to go through my own blog to get to it.  Plus, I can't comment on anyone's blog.  And maybe it's because I've been ridiculously boring lately, but my comments are less than usual.  So, am I the only one having issues?

Since Paisley was born, I have been trying to figure out how to manage all of my different roles in life.  A mom, wife, physician assistant, office manager, daughter, friend.  I've tried to figure out how to get in enough sleep, find time to exercise, and squeeze in some relaxation.  There hasn't been enough time in the day for housework, chores, errands.  And I usually fall into bed, exhausted and frustrated that I couldn't find just a little more time in the day... But I think it's finally coming together for me.  I know some of you are thinking, "wow, it took you 9 MONTHS to figure this out."  And others are probably still looking for the balance.  I can't promise it will last forever, but it sure is much better right now. Part of the change is that Paisley is now sleeping 10 or so hours straight at night.  Which some of you may take for granted if your child has been doing this for a while, but it is such a blessing!  It allows me sev...

Let's all start knocking on wood throughout this post, so I don't jinx a really good thing.  Paisley has now slept through the night (8-11 hours) for the past 7 nights!!!  It has been the most amazing gift she could've ever given me.  And the past couple nights, I've fallen into a really deep sleep that I've been incapable of since giving birth to my sleep interrupter.  In fact, Aaron had to wake me up for work the past two mornings after I unconciously turned off my alarm. There are no words to describe uninterrupted sleep. (UPDATE: The milk factory is almost completely shut down.  That one desperate pumping session was just the ticket to get me through and since then, pain has been gone and things are almost over.  Sadly, my breast size has decreased dramatically!)

I stopped nursing a week ago today and it went fine.  Paisley took really well to her sippy cups (still hates bottles) and will drink my thawed breastmilk wonderfully from them.  She doesn't even try to nurse on me anymore and didn't seem to miss it much.  And my nipples are no longer in the path of danger from her teeth! My ta-tas were a bit sore and swollen, but after 3-4 days I thought weaning was about to be a breeze.  Until day 5 hit, and they got even more engorged and painful .  I've been taking high-dose ibuprofen for the past 2 days and wrapping them up tight in a sports bra that wouldn't fit a 5th grader and icing them down until Aaron worried I'd given them frostbite.  (They were very purple and ice cold afterwards...) Today I just couldn't take it anymore. My breasts are HUGE, painful and lumpy. It hurts when Paisley even grazes them. So I dug the pump out of the closet where I hid it so that I couldn't easily hook up to ...