"You'll know when you're ready."

Hello out there! Is there anyone still reading this (besides my parents, of course)?? I haven't posted since October 9th! Yikes! October was pretty much a write off as my in laws were here for 3 weeks, then I had friends visiting during the last week of October into November. It was wonderful having visitors and I'm glad they were able to meet Adam, but it is really nice having our house back again.

Now for the title of this post - "You'll know when you're ready." I heard that a lot when I was pregnant. Most often they would say it when asking me if/when I was going to go back to work. I find it actually applies to a lot of parenting situations. You can plan and fret over lots of decisions, but you really end up just following your gut. Here are some examples over the last month:

I'm sure you're all chomping at the bit wondering what's going on with the nursing situation. Well, two days after I wrote that post I started pumping and I haven't looked back. I felt sooo much better once I made that decision and we've all be happier around here. I had the pump here at the house for a while and hadn't cracked it open. That particular day I was really trying to work on his latch. Pop him on, bad latch, pop him off, repeat. He just looked up at me and gave me huge smiles. Right. I was done with it. I cracked open the pump, ordered some extra stuff off Amazon, went out to buy some bottles and that was that. So far, everything has been going pretty well. Yes, pumping is a total drag, but I'll keep doing it as long as I can (or maybe until he starts solids). My current goal is to make it to 3 months and that's coming up quick!

Next up was cloth diapering. Good god I over thought this process. I had really good advice on using disposables for the early days as there's a lot going on and there's no sense throwing this into the mix as well. At about 5 weeks I pulled out a cloth diaper just to try it and see how it goes and boom - haven't used a disposable since. I don't know why people make a big deal out of cloth diapering, it's really not that bad. My husband even said the same thing. I use a mixture of bum.Genius and Fuzzi.bunz, but the BGs are our favorites. I love these diapers so much, I'm going to ask for some for Christmas! They rarely leak, even when we use it on him overnight. Sure, he'll get the occasional leak out of his leg (usually with a FB), but he's never had a diaper blowout up his back. Once he starts on solids, we'll use these flushable liners that make handling that poo a lot easier.

The most recent situation is moving him to the crib. When I was pregnant I went back and forth on whether or not we would have him sleep in our room or put him straight in the crib. I had no idea what I would prefer and I got a lot of good advice from both sides of the situation. My husband didn't really care either way, but he did have a sister who died from cot death, so I think he was kind of leaning towards having the baby in our room. We ended up getting a use Moses basket from a local mom and that's actually where he's been sleeping at night since he was born. It's been great! But, it's only so big and our big boy is really filling it up. It wasn't uncommon for us to wake up and he would have moved down to the end with his butt against the end and his legs up at a 90 degree angle. Oh, and the basket was tilted at a 45 degree angle. Oops! For the past few weeks I've been working at getting him to nap in the crib. See, he would spend his nights in the Moses basket, morning nap in the Pack n Play in the living room, afternoon nap either in the stroller or sling if we were out and about or on his favorite bed, mom. Where was he not sleeping?? Yeah, in his crib. So, I've been pretty successful with the morning naps. Regardless, at this point I couldn't imagine not having him in our room at night. I loved have him wake up next to us. Fast forward to two nights ago. We finally got him to sleep in the basket and we're tip toeing around and whispering so we don't wake the beast. Well, of course it didn't work and I was like, right, we're putting him in the crib. He has a perfectly good room where he can sleep without distraction! Off we went to the nursery. It took a few tries for him to realize that we weren't there for playtime, but he finally caught on and he's been in there for two nights and all of his naps (unless we happen to be out). Success! 

Oh, and as for the original reason most people ask this question. I'm definitely not ready to go back to work full time. I'm really enjoying this time with him and I'm fortunate that I don't have to go back right away. I am going to do a project part time from home for my old job. We'll see how that goes, but I have no desire to go to the office full time right now. People ask me if I miss adult conversation, but not just yet. Who knows though, maybe one day I'll just up and decide that it's time!

And, if you stuck around this long...here are a few pictures!

The pink boppy was a hand me down!