Accomplishment

I've felt a great sense of accomplishment with several things over the years...getting a 97% on my U.S. Constitution test in the eighth grade, getting the "Golden Glove" award in high school softball, graduating third in my high school class, making the honor roll my senior year of college, graduating with my Master's of Business Administration degree, buying my own house and fixing it up so nicely, marrying Ross, having Lucy....all of those things have brought a great sense of accomplishment to my life.

Now having Lucy I have a whole new set of ways to feel accomplished. One of those ways is successfully doing outings with her. Today I met some friends at the park for a "play date." We walked the trail for a while and Lucy was so good. I fed her before we left home and put her in the stroller when we got to the park. She was awake for a little while but then fell asleep for about an hour. She woke up and needed to be changed and was in a pretty good mood (no screaming!).

After the park we went to a restaurant to meet some friends from my old work. She got a little fussy on me because it was lunchtime. I started feeding her a bottle and then realized she needed to be changed. So I changed her and then finished feeding her and all was well. She sat in her car seat while we finished eating and was just so good!

Lucy immediately fell asleep when I put her back in the car seat to leave. Since she was sleeping I decided to run an errand, of which she slept the entire time until I got home!

I am so proud of Lucy and kind of proud of myself, too, for adjusting so well to this new life. Today I certainly do feel accomplished!

Shut Out

One morning last week I came downstairs to find this:

 

 

The doors to Ross' office closed! 

 

I'm sure to you it's no big deal to you, but to me it was kind of startling. He never closes those doors and I felt totally shut out! But, it's okay and even good that he closed them. Ross works from home so he does work in his office in the mornings and makes all of his calls to schedule out his day. Now that we have a baby and I'm home in the mornings he needs to keep out the noise that we make.

 

Gardening

We planted a raised garden bed in May 2011 and have been enjoying keeping up with it each year. You can read about the history of our garden here.

Last year we talked about adding another raised bed in our backyard, but that just didn't happen this year! We were kind of busy in March and April getting ready for Lucy! Perhaps we can do that next year. We did manage to get some potatoes and lettuce planted this year. It is so much fun to just walk out to the backyard and cut our own lettuce for dinner. The potatoes aren't quite ready yet (or at least I haven't really checked to see if they are ready) but we are looking forward to them.

We are very excited to have finally raspberries this year! We planted the raspberry plant in 2011 but didn't get any berries until this year. Ross has picked some and they taste pretty good. I kind of even like them and I'm not a raspberry fan at all.

A New-Found Freedom

So for the past two months since Lucy was born my life has revolved around a 3-hour schedule. I feed her every 3 hours so that's how I've scheduled my life. I plan errands, tasks, outings, etc., around whatever 3-hour schedule she's on for the day...6am, 9am, 12pm, or 7am, 10am, 1pm....you get the picture.

Since I have been nursing her I am really tied to this schedule. I have to make sure I'm with her and in a place where I can nurse when that 3-hour mark comes around. We don't give her formula, but will give her a bottle occationally with pumped breast milk if she's still hungry.

Last Friday night we went to dinner and in order to avoid the rookie mistake I made here, I brought a bottle along filled with milk in case Lucy got hungry. I sure am glad I did this! She was supposed to eat around 7:30 and around 7:15 we were still at the restaurant and she started getting fussy. I got my bottle out and started feeding her and it worked. She was satisfied and clamed down.

Ross and I had some errands to run but didn't know if we'd get to them that night, just depending on Lucy. When we left dinner we realized we could do our errands because we didn't have to go home and feed Lucy. We went to two stores and could have even done more.

Now I don't expect you to understand my feelings about this, but it was just wonderful. It was like a whole new world had opened up to me! I want to feed her myself as much as possible, but now that I know she will take a bottle okay instead of me, we aren't super tied to our 3-hour schedule. I'm still in awe of this and excited about it!