i don’t know how three years have already flown by. it’s been an amazing journey and has taught me so much about God’s love for us. i am so honored that i was chosen to be the turkey’s mom. he’s a very special little boy and i couldn’t be more proud of him.

at three years old, the turkey is fully conversational. he can read about 100 sight words and can sound out even four-syllable phonetic words. his favorite books are his assortment of children’s bibles. he can count to one hundred singly or by tens. he can count to ten in french and german. he can count to twenty in spanish. he knows the alphabet in french and spanish. he’s learning more and more spansish daily, including all of the colors and many animals. he can do simple addition and subtraction. he loves singing and can sing the fifty states. he is a wonderful, loving big brother and is caring and compassionate to everyone. he is joyful and spreads smiles wherever he goes.

this morning, i asked him if he felt older. his response: “a little, mommy. <raising arm> do you see a hair?” i nearly fell on the floor laughing.

the sequel celebrated turning ten months old by taking his first steps today! this momma is so not ready to have two kiddos running around here!!!

since we’ve tried literally everything under the sun to correct the sequel’s digestive issues, i figured it was time to look at my milk supply. what i’ve found this week has depressed me beyond belief. i started with three days of supplemental pumping. since i feed the sequel every four hours, i just added a pumping between feedings so that i was expressing every two hours. for three days, i went from my usual five feeds to NINE “milkings”. i really felt like that alone would leave me floating in milk. when i didn’t see any results from that (actually, it seemed like i was getting negative results… i went from a yield of 1 oz per pump the first day to less than an oz, as little as .25 oz, by the third day), i begged my baker friend to make lactation cookies for me. she graciously did so and also gave me her supply of flax and brewer’s yeast so that i could make more on my own. for the last couple of days, i’ve been eating about 5 cookies a day and drinking oat/pb/flax/brewer’s yeast smoothies. today, i went back to regular feeding schedule but i replaced all nursing with pumping so that i could really determine what i’m producing. for the main four feedings, from wake to bed, i produced less than 12 oz. from everything i see online, that’s less than 1/2 of what he should be getting in a day! i feel like a complete and utter failure and i don’t know what to do. everything i read says i should be able to rebuild my supply but despite all of the extra stimulation and nutritional supplements, i’m not even producing half of my baby’s needs. which begs the question… was i actually producing even less before all these efforts or are they just not working at all???

hubby has been doing a great job of keeping up with flash cards for the turkey the last few months. today, we saw the payoff. the turkey successfully read a page of “green eggs and ham” with no assistance. he also started sounding out “big words” today. i’m so proud of my little turkey.

while practicing waving tonight, the sequel said “bye-bye” plain as day. and then, of course, he continued to say it for the next hour. i was just remarking yesterday that he had kind of stopped jabbering these last few weeks. he growls and screeches plenty but it’s been a while since he’s done any real “da-da” or anything like that. so to hear him pop up with a real word, in context, today was a happy thing. and, really, i do consider it to be his first word. he’s made sounds before (ma-ma, ga-ga, da-da) but nothing that was really in context of a word.

the turkey made my day at dinner when i gave him his “salad” (spinach/okra puree) and he said “this is so good. thank you, mommy, for making me a salad!”

and then there was the bedtime debacle where he wouldn’t settle down and i ended up taking both lovies away but then hubby made me feel bad so i went in and laid with him (like it wasn’t already tugging my heartstrings to hear him shouting “momma, come snuggle with me!”). i spent an hour snuggling him. he finally fell asleep but as soon as i started to get up, he croaked out a measly “don’t leave me, momma.” i laid down for another two songs, got up, and he must have woken up as soon as i left the room because suddenly he was having a total meltdown. mind, it’s now 21:00 and i’ve been in there and hour so i’m ticked that he’s not sleeping and that he’s crying and pitching a fit when he’s been such a good solo sleep all his life. i tried to sooth him and then i threatened to spank and then i had to deliver. now i’m just fuming at always having to be the bad guy and all i want to do is go back in there and snuggle my baby boy for the rest of the night because i know there’ll come a day when he won’t ask that anymore. i try my best not to be crazy stringent about schedule and rules but i don’t want him to be dependent on us to go to sleep either. when we wake him up in the morning or from nap, we always snuggle and that’s great but the snuggling to sleep thing is a very different thing. *sigh*

i’m so glad that we decided to call it quits at two. as much as i would love to be pregnant again and have an itty bitty in my arms again, i just know that i’m not mom enough for three. days like today, i’m pretty sure i’m not mom enough for the two i’ve got. the turkey spent the whole day telling me how much he’d rather be doing things with daddy than with me. like he couldn’t stand the thought of spending time with momma. and i get it. as far as he can see, i’ve all but abandoned him to his daddy’s care over the last 8.5 months. add to that the fact that dad is the fun one who does nothing but play with him… why would he want to spend time with me? all the time that i spend taking care of the family doesn’t matter to him. all he sees is that i’m not playing with him. the fact that i spend entirely too much time in the kitchen cooking nutritious family meals because i love them and want them to eat well even though i hate cooking… who cares, i’m not playing with him. it’s so hard being the responsible one that keeps everything moving when none of that really matters to the ones you’re working so hard for. and that’s just what being a mom is. you have to do it all and get none of the credit and nobody really even cares but you know that it’s your job even though it means you’ll never get to be the fun one. and it sucks some days and i just want to cry when he looks me in the eye and asks me if he can please go play with daddy instead and i just have to suck it up and take it because he doesn’t mean it to be a personal affront to me and i have no right to let him see my insecurity. i love my two little boys. there’s no way i could possibly handle being mom to three.

the sequel signed “milk” for the first time tonight. and then, he turned around and made his first sentence by signing “milk please”. i am so proud of my sweet baby boy. he’s really starting to come out of his shell. he’s “talking” more and he mimics laughter. he’s crawling all over the house, pulling up on everything within reach, and even turning loose to try to stand on his own.

the turkey didn’t want to put a diaper back on when he got up and got dressed this morning so we decided to let him do n3kk!d time. he wound up spending the entire morning diaperless and didn’t have any real accidents. the only issue we ran into was a reluctance to p00p in the potty, which i didn’t fully understand since he’s done that a few times in the past but he just wasn’t having it this morning. this meant that he needed to go but when he realized he had to sit on the potty for it, he’d sit there and read books and hold it. naturally, when he got a diaper on for nap time, he wasn’t laying down 15 minutes before he was calling us to come change him. all in all, though, i felt like it was a wildly successful half day of pre-potty training… especially since we’ve really never tried to push the topic at all.

…is the lack of sick days. seriously, where’s the union rep when you need them?

hubby and i took turns being sick all night last night. i wasn’t able to keep anything down from 21:00 last night until about 16:30 this afternoon.

and do you know that these kids still expected us to take care of them all day?!

so, yeh, nursing a baby while being unable to hold down water equals complete dehydration. i’ve never in my life been that dehydrated… when i pinched the back of my hand, the skin stood straight up and stayed until i flexed my hand again. i barely had the energy to walk through the house; i definitely couldn’t pick the sequel up and carry him. i ended up nursing him on the floor in front of his crib all day. the turkey did great, all things considered. he was thrilled to be dumped in front of the tv all morning. that’s a huge treat for him and it bought us a couple of hours of quiet. tomorrow has to be a better day. now i’m just praying that the boys are able to miraculously avoid catching this horribly, nasty little bug.

Our nightly routine is to pray together as a family and then we split the boys to their respective rooms for bedtime stories and songs. Sometimes I say the prayer but usually it’s hubby. Tonight, as we gathered together, the turkey started in on a prayer of his own for the first time. “Jesus, please watch over the sequel, the turkey, mommy, and daddy. I love you Jesus. Amen.” And just like that, an exhausting and stressful day turned into a beautiful and uplifting evening.

We finally found someone to come in and help out with the kids a few hours a day while we’re working. It’s been about a month and she’s been wonderful. This morning, however, the turkey ripped my heart out with a wooden spoon when he said “my other mommy is miss nanny.” I nearly cried. Maybe I need to quit my job after all 🙁

The sequel sat up by himself today. I missed it in the 30 seconds I had walked out of the room but he was quick to oblige with an immediate encore for the camera. I am constantly amazed and saddened by just how fast he’s growing. I guess it’s a second child thing where he’s just in a huge rush to catch up with his brother. 

Tonight, he woke up after his dream feed which is pretty rare. I kept trying to lay his head back down on my shoulder but he kept getting right in my face. It took me a couple minutes to realize he was trying to line himself up to breathe in my breath. I know the turkey used to relax when something smelled like me but I don’t remember him doing that. It was incredibly sweet and I had a tough time putting him back down and leaving his room.

Every time i realize i won’t ever have these “baby” moments again, my heart hurts.

i thought it only happened with tequila but, apparently, it starts much earlier. the sequel was finally getting the whole eating and swallowing thing down but i must have let him overeat. a few hours later, he was projectile vomiting all over the place. yesterday, he refused to eat any more avocado. today, i tried peas out on him to see if he could deal with that any better. he made it very clear that he no longer has any interest in eating food. poor little guy. i ruined his budding appetite by indulging gluttony.