I can understand why people stop breastfeeding. Its incredibly challenging. Arwen is doing well, she’s only getting a bottle of formula at night, but she totally drains me during the day. Of course there are times when I’m ready for her to eat and she’s sleeping, so that adds to the challenge and I end up having to pump the milk, then she’ll wake up 10 minutes later and be fussy because she has to work harder to get milk from me even though I still have plenty of milk for her even after I pump.
I have to remember to make small goals for myself with the nursing. The first was to get through 6 days and now I just want to get through the first 6 weeks, then we’ll work towards 6 months. Around 10 months though I’m going to start weaning her so we can be finished by the time she’s a year old. Its easier breastfeeding this time because I know more of what to do, but its still draining. You have to be completely selfless when it comes to nursing because sometimes Arwen will literally be attached to me for an hour or more. Which limits what I can get done during the day, but I’m getting there. My apologies to the men who read my blog for the breastfeeding post…
In other news…
So far it hasn’t been a lot different but this week will be my first time getting out with both girls by myself because Arwen has to get her PKU test done. No fun for her because her little foot will be pricked again. Then, we are going to try and make it by Brickyard to pick up some fresh chicken. Luckily, both of these places are easy to get to and shouldn’t be too hard. It will be a good test for me though.
Also, for all my local friends they are closing the KB Toys in the Decatur mall and everything is 50 to 70 percent off and they still have a decent selection. A lot of boy toys like Batman and Cars. And for girls they still have lots of games, Barbies, and dress up stuff. They have lots of other things too but this was the stuff I remembered! We got Anya a cowgirl hat for $1.69 and a set of Horse toys for $1.79 and a beanie baby for $1.16. You can’t beat that!
We ventured up to the Decatur mall yesterday to take Anya to ride the carousel and just get out a little. Arwen slept the whole way there and while we were in the mall. She was all covered up and everything so no one got to see her and the mall was practically empty so it made it nice all the way around for us. I didn’t have to worry about germs and dodging lots of people with the stroller but it also helped Anya to get out of the house and me too. We’d been getting pretty stir crazy from being in the house so much and not being able to even go outside because of all the rain. We were going to eat dinner out last night too, but of course once we got to the place we wanted to eat it was pouring down rain again, so we came home and made spaghetti!

Travis, me, and the girls went down to my OB in B’ham today to get my incision checked. Everything looks good. I’ve lost all but 2lbs of my pregnancy weight, so I’m actually lighter now than when we got pregnant since I had lost 14lbs during the pregnancy.
My incision is healing well, although I have some stitches trying to come through my skin. This is normal and just happens where the knot is tied at the end of the incision. Just some stitches that won’t dissolve apparently. So, that will be interesting to see what happens and if some stitches do come through the skin, I’m just supposed to clean it and snip it off with some scissors. No big deal, so no worries. And I have to say that stitches are so much nicer than staples!
Arwen did well in the car, she slept pretty much the whole way there and the whole way home.
Hopefully, she will like traveling in the car because Anya was never much for it.
Travis is doing well, he’s still covering the night shift from 10pm til 2am and then I pretty much handle it from there. I think Arwen has her days and nights a bit confused but that will resolve itself in time and she is sleeping at night so we really shouldn’t complain.
Finally, here’s a few new photos…including one of my doc with Arwen!

Starbuck and Sawyer are our two squirrels that live in our trees outside. Starbuck is named after the female character on Battlestar Galactica and Sawyer is from my favorite TV show LOST. Anya was watching them jump from tree to tree this morning in a rather amusing game of chase apparently. I’mnot really sure if they are the same two squirrels, as we have many squirrels of course, but there are always two squirrels together and that is why we named them because you never see one without the other and Anya gets a kick out of looking for them. And I like to say “Anya, have you seen Starbuck and Sawyer today?” Its also very nice just to have a house and live where we can see squirrels in our backyard.
Arwen is doing well. She’s changing things up on us a bit lately with her sleep schedule, but that’s to be expected and overall she’s doing great. She generally sleeps 3 hour stretches at night so we can’t complain too much. She love the new sleep machine we got though, from our friends parents in Vegas. She loves the Waterfall sound and I have to say that I think this is a wise investment for any parent of a newborn to buy for $20 or so. It really seems to help her calm her fussy moments.
Anya is all about Peter Pan in the Return to Neverland movie these days. I never liked the original Peter Pan, but this movie I like the morals and storyline in much more. Anya loves it and she also got Horton Hears A Who this past weekend. My brother and sister in law and parents came up on Saturday for us to have Christmas with them and for Stephen to meet his birthday niece! Arwen was born on my brother’s birthday. And thanks to Uncle Stephen we have another addition to our family. Stephen got Anya a blue betta fish for Christmas. Anya named him Nemo.