Rosie's Dailies.

Last night I dreamed that my Salmon Faverolles (chickens) had pine cones instead of legs/feet because they had such terrible scaley leg mites, and I kept rubbing petroleum jelly on the pine cone legs to cure them. The Lone Twin, my last surviving Faverolle hen, kept talking to me and telling me how much she missed her sister hen Oddity who died during the cold snap. Then she pooped on my arm and apologized, but her poop was bloody and I realized she was really sick with cocci and I kept hugging her and sobbing.

Then the scene switched and I was at a beach house making out with a 65 year old man (no one I've ever seen in my life) and Tyler walked in with a plate of sausage patties and mushrooms for the three of us to eat. They were extremely greasy. Grease was running down our chins. (Random extreme dream detail!?!) The man pretended that we were never sexually involved and it made me angry.

Then while I was wondering around his maze of a beach house searching for a bathroom I randomly found a mud dauber's nest and started poking it. I dared them to sting me, but nothing happened. I looked out the window (after using the bathroom) and saw a Dish satellite man outside installing a satellite on the beach house and I laughed because there was a blazing red sky, which in dream land means a huge hurricane is coming. The Dish would just get ripped off the house, but 65 year old lover and the Dish worker were too dumb to realize...

Then I suddenly remembered my Faverolles were outside on the porch, and I ran to huddle with them in the shower before we got sucked away by hurricane force winds...

And Rosie woke me up at that point because her nose was stuffy and she was sweaty. It was 3 in the morning. I never got to go back to sleep because Tyler's alarm went off a little after 4.

These very strange dreams seem to be pregnancy induced. This is why I am never well rested...

Anyway, on to something more merry.

Pictures of Rosie's daily life...

Rosie wakes up so early, before sunrise. She's always wide awake and ready to play!

So with a little help she plays with legos in her pajamas while I try to become fully conscious.

There's breakfast somewhere in there, of course, and maybe a TV show or two. She likes to watch The Magic School Bus in the mornings.

Rosie wants to show you her newly organized room.

She loves her wall stickers.

All of the rooms in our house are tiny, so they feel crowded. And we seem to have too much stuff despite rabid phases of decluttering.

Rosie pretends to be a ballerina in her Dora bed.

This leads to much jumping.

Wide angle lens causes funny distortion when used for portrait attempts.

We go in the kitchen to eat lunch and Rosie gets grumpy because I'm no longer taking pictures of her jumping around in her room.

Instead, I dare to take a picture of our fresh eggs laid by Wings and one other bird--not sure which.

Her tears turn into goofy faces, accentuated by the lens distortion, and she looks at herself and laughs hysterically.

Then I put the camera away. That was yesterday.

Today is similar, as is every long winter day. I took pictures of different things, however.

Rosie is obsessed with writing, drawing, and coloring as well as imaginary play.

(From a few days ago, this picture cracked me up!)

No one would dare disrupt an artist at work...

She tells elaborate, dramatic stories about what she's drawing.

The dogs do whatever it is that dogs do all day during the snowy winter.

Suddenly the drawing notebook is tossed aside and drama occurs in the wooden castle's land.

It seems a fire breathing dragon has threatened the security of the castle.

There is much lamenting as a unicorn is slayed.

This occupies about an hour of time.

Then Rosie sits at the table to write and color for a couple hours. When she finishes, we hang some of her papers on the fridge to show Dad when he gets home from work.

(These are her favorite words to try and write, plus the baby's name which is cut off of the bottom of this picture!)

She insists that it is imperative to use pink marker today. I don't disagree.

We have a monthly calendar page on the fridge. Rosie puts a sticker on each day so we can see what day of the week it is and what number the date is.

The weekends have a blueish mark on them because those are the days Daddy is here when she wakes up in the morning.

Cats stalk us through the house all day.

Rosie and I make a feast of wooden food...

Then I sit down to upload some pictures and Rosie watches Wubzy on Nick Jr. while drawing and writing in her notebook again...

I really can't wait until spring, and for the birth of the new baby. I want to feel human again! I'm ready to get out of the house and meet friends, go to things like library story time and hiking...

Spring, hurry up!!

My brain can't stop storming.

I'm nesting and I can't stop myself! It's like an uncontrollable obsession that can lead to hysterical sobbing at the drop of a hat. This happened to me when I was pregnant with Rosie too, but I didn't start until closer to her due date.

Tyler made fun of me when he came home and found me crying while scrubbing the marks on our ugly flat paint. It's a known fact that nothing takes those marks off, no natural or chemical substance known to man--trust me I have tried all of them, even things that aren't meant to clean walls. Even bleach, I'm not joking.

But still I feel the need to scrub them, despite knowing that the marks won't come off.

I made Tyler take in the crusty old paint can we found in the back of the garage so that they could match it and we could just touch up the marks with fresh paint.

The company doesn't make that paint any longer! (Probably because it's the ugliest beige on the face of the planet.) They tried to match it, but it is slightly off, they can't get it perfectly matching, so there goes the idea of using it to touch up those unwashable marks.

Oh well. I keep telling myself that the baby won't care if our walls have marks and toddler hand prints all over him. She'll be glad to add her own sticky baby hand prints soon enough.

I'm slowly going through my organizing to-do list. Yesterday I did Rosie's room, which I had previously thought would be impossible. Then on a whim I decided Tyler had to take out her top bunk with the attached shelf/dresser piece. She's too small to sleep up there, and it dominated the entire little room. Now she just has the full sized bottom bunk set up as a regular bed.

I spent hours rearranging everything and organizing it yesterday afternoon. I left spaces for some of her toys that are still boxed up from when we were going to move, before the whole Tyler-lost-his-job fiasco last fall.

Rosie suddenly decided she wanted to sleep in her room. She's never slept through the night, let alone by herself in another room! But she was so excited about having her room clean and organized and seeing us set up the full bed with Dora bed set she picked out. (Who could sleep with gigantic Dora heads all over your covers? *shudder*)

Then she couldn't fall asleep. She tried so hard, I really thought she was going to sleep in there.

I explained to her that if she woke up and she was scared she just had to call for me and I would come.

Or, I told her, you can just run really fast down the hall and jump into our bed and snuggle with us.

Finally after trying to get to sleep for half an hour Rosie told me to go lay in our bed and she would stay in her room by herself with Abby, our black lab mix.

I was confused, but I did what she said because she sounded confident.

Two minutes later she came running down the hall with her pillow, blankie, and two dolls. She threw it all back into our bed and said, "I got scared so I ran down the hall to snuggle with you just like you told me to do!"

Then she passed out cold in her usual spot in our big bed.

Tyler and I don't mind. We love snuggling her all night and waking up to her first thing in the morning!

I love her so much.

Old picture, but she's still just as sweet.

(That's a friend's kitten.)

I'm not sure if the new baby will wake her up or not during the night. I guess we'll see. We turn on the light and the TV and talk all the time while Rosie's asleep in here with us and 9 out of 10 times she doesn't stir...but when I was babysitting a baby and it cried during the night Rosie was wide awake, so I guess we'll just have to see.

Today I am continuing my nesting projects. I'm having a space issue. We don't have enough room for the last few baby items--no dresser space, no room for more plastic drawers. I'm not sure what to do. I have to figure out how to cram another set of plastic drawers in this house somehow. I'll be constantly wracking my brain trying to figure out where this will work until I make it happen...

Today is laundry day, and I need to return books to the library and possibly go grocery shopping. My goal for the next few days is to clean out the hall closet. I think there might be wasted space in there--I have to take stuff out of the back room closet and reorganize it into the hall closet. Then I'm going to put the litter box in the back room closet and we're going to use a big rubber maid tub as the litter box so our super large Rintoo kitty can't hang over the side and poop out on the floor, and they can't kick all the litter out. Plus the dogs can't munch out of the litter box easily when it's so deep!

I will be excited to get that accomplished! Then I can keep the dirty towels and whites basket in the floor of the bathroom closet where the litter box was instead of having it stuck in the hall. I can clean and organize the bathroom closet's shelves too, feeling better that there isn't a litter box stinking it up right there. And then I can labor and give birth in the bathroom if I want...

After that is done this week I just have a few things left to organize--the little living room closet, the laundry room shelves and on top of the dryer, a few kitchen cabinets that I didn't finish, and our bedroom closet.

Then I'll super clean every thing down to each tiny crevice in the floor, and then I'll be DONE...

Aaaaaah.

I'm about 30 weeks now, so I have 8-10 weeks to get this done. (Possibly 12 weeks, but I can't think about that right now. I'll face being past 40 weeks if that happens...and not dwell on it a second earlier.) Rosie was apparently born at 38 weeks according to those medical records, so maybe this baby will be born somewhere around the same time. I'm hoping for the week after Easter...

30 weeks, can you believe that? In six weeks I think I'll be safe to have my homebirth. I'll ask the midwife tomorrow at our appointment if she will deliver at 36 or 37 weeks for her safe point. Not that I even remotely expect to have the baby that early, it's just good to know for peace of mind.

I've been staring at Baby A's ultrasound photos from when I was 19 weeks.

I can't wait to meet her.

CAN'T WAIT!!

That's taken care of.

I FINALLY got my medical records yesterday.

I called the medical privacy and complaints officer (or some title like that) for the hospital systems and she never answered. I called a hundred times over three days. I decided to leave a voice mail eventually. I didn't want to leave one because I didn't want to be waiting for someone to call me back, yet again. I mentioned that I'd been trying to get my medical records since November and that I knew I could complain to HIPPA and JCAHO but I really just needed my records for an appointment on Tuesday.

The lady called me back in less than five minutes.

She sounded appalled that it had taken so long for them to give me my records. She asked for the names of the people I talked to. I only had one name to give her, and I told her I'd spoken to many people in the medical records department multiple times over the past three months. I gave her the entire story. She said she would call the supervisor of the department and see how soon she could have my records ready, and she would call me right back.

Ten minutes later she called back and said my records would be ready to pick up at 3 pm downtown.

It was seriously that easy.

She apologized several times and told me to have a nice day.

Rosie and I went to pick up my records, and we had to park 900 miles away from the building. By the time we walked through the parking lot and through the huge hospital to find the medical records office my hips and tailbone felt like they were going to crack and splinter off! I can tell the baby is getting heavier because I'm starting to get a slight bowling ball feeling going on. I remember with Rosie it started about now also, and then at 34 weeks she dropped down and I was really waddling after that.

Anyway, it took forever to find the medical records office because there was no sign leading there. I had to ask three people for help. Rosie was scared of the hospital and all the sick people in wheel chairs and stuff, and she started crying. She weighs too much for me to carry her while walking that far at this point in pregnancy.

When we found the office I went in and the lady at the desk asked if she could help me. I told her that I was here to pick up my medical records and said my name. She immediately gave some kind of knowing look and nod to the other lady, and the other lady ran and grabbed a huge yellow envelope and handed it to me and told me to have a nice day twice.

It was awkward. I wonder if they got in trouble for sucking so bad at getting me my records on the first place, or if they were really that paranoid of me calling JCAHO...?

Surprisingly, without me even mentioning that I'd requested them, they also included all of Rosie's records!

As soon as I got home I read all 180 pages of my records. I started with the D&C at the end and worked backwards. The surgeons D&C notes said that he found a gestational sac and small fetus in the cervix.

I read that part over and over. He held my baby, when I didn't get to. It still hurts that my baby was discarded as medical waste.

But my baby was real. It says so right there in his notes. A small fetus.

The uterine contents were in the cervix, his notes said. This makes me wish I had just waited another day, I could have seen my baby.

At the same time, I know I couldn't have waited much longer because of the extremely scary gushing blood. It kept making me pass out and dry heave, it was horrific. There was more blood than a pad an hour. There was more blood than a pad a minute. It was like a flood, all over the floor and I couldn't even sit up.

The record also notes that my HCG was more than 40,000 when the baby first died. It says this indicates a pregnancy of 2-3 months.

Another piece of proof that my baby was real. I was pregnant for 12 weeks with a live baby.

I read about Rosie's birth last. I was so hoping for more details about the midwife pulling on the cord, but there was no mention of it. The notes are so short, and hard to read. They say that it was 23 minutes from Rosie's birth to removal of all placenta. During that time they snuck a shot of pitocin in my leg and I lost 350-375 mL of blood. The placenta pieces were manually removed by swiping with gauze until all gauze came out clean.

I don't think 350 mL of blood is that much. I googled it and found differing things. It looks like 500 mL is considered hemorrhaging. It wasn't that long between birth and when she tried to pull the placenta out. I don't understand what the rush was or what happened any better than I did before I read my records.

Interestingly I did not consent to use of pitocin. It's not signed on the form and marked in large block letters as DECLINED.

Rosie's APGAR scores were 8 and 9. It notes that she had wet lungs, which I remember being concerned about and asking them if it was a problem that she kept spitting up clear slime streaked with blood. They told me it was my fault because, "That's what happens when you insist on having the baby on your chest after birth instead of letting us take her and do our job."

Right.

I'm so thankful that my midwife will never say that to us. Ever. I have high hopes that Baby A's birth and postpartum time will be everything that Rosie's birth and postpartum was not--peaceful, relaxing, and being respected instead of arguing and defending every choice...

29 Weeks Belly and Other Media.

I didn't call the hospital about my medical records today. I just didn't feel like going in circles with them. I need to call the hospital's privacy and records complaints officer tomorrow and go from there.

Today I cleaned...everything. I deep cleaned the bathroom, all except for the floor. The floor has stick-on tiles that were done poorly (by the previous owner) and they are peeling up. Not only that but they have gaps...big gaps. It's so disgusting, the gaps are filled with kitty litter and floor grime. The only way to get it out is to sit and scrub it with an old toothbrush for hours. I desperately want a new floor, but the subflooring is warped so there wouldn't be much point putting down a nice new floor with an old subfloor under it.

So I avoided scrubbing that floor for now.

I vacuumed the entire house, mopped the kitchen floor then scrubbed the areas under the edge of the cabinets and stove and fridge. I scrubbed some of the baseboards through out the house, cleaned the painted white dresser, cleaned the living room window sills, and then I attempted to get some of the marks and dirt off of the walls but since they are painted with terrible flat paint nothing comes off hardly.

Tomorrow if I'm not feeling too sick I have to go to the feed store and get 200 lbs of chicken feed and 50 pounds of scratch...

The chickens are starting to lay eggs again!! I'm so excited. My Wings chicken has been laying a green egg almost daily. Today in addition to her egg I also found two large tan eggs. I'm not sure who laid those, but I'm thrilled. Now I can stop buying grocery store eggs. The only sad thing is that the eggs keep getting frozen before I find them. They're still fine to bake with when frozen, as long as the shell hasn't busted, but they aren't quite normal textured when you fry them for breakfast.

The baby has been quiet today. It keeps freaking me out when I realized she has hardly moved in hours, but I think it must be that she's sleeping and growing on her slow movement days.

Speaking of which...

If this baby is born at 39 weeks like Rosie was, then I only have 10 weeks left to go!

On the left is my belly at 19 weeks...10 weeks ago. On the right is my belly at 29 weeks, tonight.

What will it look like in 10 more weeks!?!

Some more fun pictures taken with the iMac:

I think I forgot to share these videos.

Rosie always wants me to make videos of her playing the piano so that she can watch herself.

During this video Buzzy (the frostbitten rooster) escaped his confinement and decide to come hobbling down the hall.

I put Buzzy back outside today. His toes still haven't fallen off, though they are looking more and more black and shriveled each day. He seemed to be ok hobbling about outside. He sort of hops on one leg and flings out his opposite wing. He can move surprisingly fast! His crop was full of food when I set him on the roost pole tonight, so he is able to push his way through the other chickens to eat...I'm glad. Having a chicken living in your house is very stinky.

This is getting ridiculous.

Well apparently the hospital does not care that they are in violation of HIPPA.

It's been 30 days since I requested my records, and after spending two hours calling trying to get to talk to someone, I finally talked to the woman in charge of medical records release. She said that my records were in copying, which she could do nothing about and has no control over.

AKA not her problem.

And they don't give out the phone number for that copying department--I don't know if it's offsite or what. So she will forward my phone number to them.

If they actually call me I will be shocked.

I told her it had been 30 days, that they were in violation of HIPPA, and that I desperately need the records for an appointment on Tuesday. She claims she can't do anything, I have to talk to "copying".

Now I don't know what to do, besides wait. Oh and file a formal complaint with HIPPA officials online, if I can figure out how. It looks confusing.

I also still need to get Rosie's records. It hasn't been quite 30 days for hers. I want them more out of curiosity than anything, I don't need them as badly as I need mine.

...And the saga continues.

Arrrgh.

Baby gear...or lack of.

It's Monday again...laundry awaits.

Woohoo.

I'm hoping for a lot of things in the mail today. This is the last week the hospital has to send me my medical records. It's been almost 30 days since they received my (2nd) form, according to them. (They lost the first form, apparently.) I hope each day they will come in the mail, and then they don't!

I'm also expecting my Sookie Stackhouse books in the mail. Amazon said they arrived in town on the 29th, but they have yet to make it to my front porch. I need to read book four ASAP!

The last piece of wool for my stash that I bought from DiaperSwappers better come in the mail this week too. I paid for it on the 15th and she hasn't let me know if she was delayed shipping it. I've purchased something since then from someone else and already got it, and I also got both of the items I traded things for since then. If I don't get it this week then...ugh.

The last important thing the mailman needs to bring me is a W2. The company said they mailed them on the 25th, so it should be here any day now. I want to find out how much we'll get for our tax refund. We got about $2,000 last year and I'm hoping for something similar this year. We have $400 to go towards the midwife and I need $2,200 by 36 weeks in March. So if we get enough tax refund money to cover that, I will be over joyed. I'll be relieved even if we only get part of that. We can put the rest on a credit card that is interest free for 6 months and then pay it off over the next few months after the baby is born, if we have to, before the interest kicks in. But I hate having credit card debit.

I realized the other day that I haven't taken any time to really think about what this baby will look like. After the ultrasound I briefly considered that she might look like me, or that she might resemble Rosie, but I haven't dreamed about what color her eyes and hair might be or anything like that. When I was pregnant with Rosie I focused on that a lot, I spent hours imagining what she might look like.

Some aspects of this baby still seem so unreal to me. I think I'm still a little afraid to hope she'll be real, after the miscarriage and the TTC for months.

We never thought Rosie would have blond hair. I have red/brown hair and Tyler has dark dark brown hair, almost black. My mom and sister have blond hair, but I have never in my life had a blond hair and both of Tyler parents have dark hair...

So Baby A could be a blond, or a redhead maybe, or have dark hair!

I also never thought Rosie would have blue eyes. My eyes are blue, my parents' and my sister's eyes are blue also. My grandparents on both sides had blue eyes, except one grandfather who had hazel...sometimes they were green, sometimes they were brown. My mom I think has a green eye gene because her eyes are blue with a tinge of yellowish around the pupil.

Tyler's eyes are hazel just like my grandfather's were, but both of his parents have brown eyes and his brother does also.

I expected that Rosie would have brown eyes since that is dominant. But they are blue, very very blue! Just like mine!

Baby A could have blue eyes too, then. Tyler must have a blue eye gene to contribute. I'm sure he also has a green eye gene and a brown eye gene, since his eyes are a mix of the two. He's a wild card, haha. If by any chance I have a green eye gene hiding in me then our baby could even have green eyes.

I kind of hope she has hazel, like Tyler and my grandpa. At the same time, I can't imagine having a baby that looks different than Rosie!

Rosie is a Tyler clone aside from her eye and hair color. I really wonder if Baby A will be a Tyler clone too. I kind of hope not, for the sake of variety, but obviously it's not a big deal if she is.

It feels odd to consider what she will look like. That makes her so real. The idea of having a second baby feels very abstract, I can't imagine what it will be like or that it will actually happen. I have her clothes all sorted out, and her diapers too. I just need to wash them since it was all in storage for several years. I went ahead and put everything into the two sets of plastic drawers.

The only thing we have left to buy is the humanity family bed. It's a little expensive, but this time I will need to let go of the baby to tend to Rosie during the night and I want to be sure she's safe. Also, I think the thick pad will be worth its weight in gold because my boobs leak so much and the baby could be a happy spitter like Rosie was...it's impossible to wash the giant king sized mattress pad we have in a regular washing machine. I'm hoping to find one of the co-sleeper things on sale somewhere soon!

I also have to get out the car seat and the flannel receiving blankets and find one of my missing wraps, and I might pick up a few more baby t-shirts or dresses at the big consignment sale at the beginning of March...

Other than that, there is nothing else to prepare besides general insane nesting stuff.

It seems like everyone else I know is doing so much more, buying all kinds of stuff and setting up a nursery.

I don't even have a room to put a nursery in, should I decide for some reason I want one.

I must be strange. I will use the one bouncy seat we have...maybe, if the baby likes it. But that's it. Tyler and were looking at the ads in the Sunday paper yesterday and he said, "I don't understand. Who would want to buy a $45.99 tub of 204 diapers and then just throw them all in the trash? Thank you for not letting us waste money like that!" We spent less than $200 on diapers that will last the entire time the baby is diapered, and we are able to use them for future babies also. Almost all of Baby A's diapers were Rosie's--the only new things I got were wool covers because I decided they would be better than the plastic covers we used for Rosie.

Then Tyler flipped through to the baby stuff on sale in the ad. "Amy! Who can afford to buy all of these things for one baby? What would we do with all this stuff? Where would we put it?"

$100 stroller/car seat set
$80 high chair
$60 bouncy seat
$150 crib
$75 crib bedding set
$100 pack n' play
$120 changing table

Diapers, wipes, bottles, formula, cereal, baby food, rubber coated baby spoons...

I don't think Tyler has ever realized that we use none of those things. It's just so much easier *not* to. We don't need any of that stuff! And it's a good thing we don't, because we can't afford it. See, it turns out that babies are actually not expensive. All those things people think they need are mainly marketing gimmicks. Believe it or not, your baby will be perfectly happy without them.

Of course we do need a car seat, but we leave it in the car...because it's a car seat. The only time we ever carried Rosie in it was the one time she fell asleep on the way out to eat, she slept through the whole meal. I remember it specifically because it never happened again.

She hated riding in a stroller. She much preferred to be worn close to me, either nursing or held up to look around. I felt so disconnected from her the few times we tried the stroller--I couldn't see what she was thinking or feeling, and I couldn't point stuff out to her or talk to her. Tyler and I both loved wearing her in a wrap or a sling. It's so easy because she can nurse while your hands are free, or she is happily looking around and chattering on your back. I personally think she has learned faster from always being up on our level and hearing us talking and seeing what we see, rather than down in a bucket seat or in a stroller out of our line of sight and away from our flow of conversation.

People kept telling me that if you don't do "tummy time" or let your baby lay down to practice rolling over or being independent then they will never learn. Turns out that also is untrue! Being up right in the sling helped Rosie develop strong neck and back muscles from the beginning. She sat up on her own at 4 months, then she stood up and walked away at 9 months. I wore her almost constantly when she was an infant, and very often still once she was in the 4-9 month range. I didn't get the point of tummy time...I tried it a couple of times and she screamed hysterically. I doubt making her unhappy is really doing much for her development.

We never used a high chair. Rosie had a little $12 booster seat with an optional tray so she sat right up at the table with us, and we used it when we went out to eat also because it folded up to just carry along. Then you could put a lid on the dirty tray, take it home, and throw it in the dish washer. Much, much easier than a huge expensive high chair!

We got a crib from Rosie's baby shower, but the only sleeping that got done in it was from cats. They especially loved the mobile. The pack n' play made a great laundry and toy basket until we finally just put it away.

A changing table we never bothered to get because I'm way too lazy to go to a certain spot in the house every time a diaper needs to be changed. (With cloth, that is often!) If it was a poopy diaper I laid her on a towel or receiving blanket where ever we were in the house, then I got up and put the diaper in the wet bag and grabbed a clean diaper while she laid there and let her parts air out.

Rosie had a bouncy seat that she would sit in for like 10 minutes at a time occasionally. She hated all of the toys and noises, I think it overstimulated her. She was much happier with just the plain seat without the toy bar and stuff. Turns out more is not better, though the baby gear companies would rather you buy a $60 seat that has more features than a luxury car for some reason. I'm pretty sure that a baby is better off looking around the room and observing life in the house than staring at a hot pink plastic fish swinging in her face.

We never used any formula, and we just had a couple bottles to put pumped milk in for emergencies or occasional unavoidable long outings. I never did baby cereal because the fake vitamins in it (the iron especially) interfere with the natural iron in breastmilk. I also never did baby food, aside from one week where I thought it was a good idea. I just don't understand why I would want to shovel pureed food into my baby's mouth when she's growing teeth and getting fine motor skills in order to learn to feed herself. How will she ever know when she's hungry or full if I prop her up and shovel purees into her face? I just gave her soft things, like a whole over ripe pear or big chunks of avocado, or peas to practice picking up, and let her play with it and eat what got into her mouth. Tyler and I have a personal policy that we won't feed our babies anything we wouldn't readily eat ourselves...I don't know about you, but a lot of baby food stuff is really foul to me. We could also never figure out the point of those Gerber puffs...why start your kid out eating puffed processed cheeto-like foods? (Even if they are fruit and vegetable flavored.) We gave her actual fruits and veggies instead...and she still prefers them over junk food, go figure.

We've been in Babies R Us a couple of times and I just stare around in wonder...how could you need so much stuff for a tiny baby? Rosie preferred to snuggle, nurse, and then try to eat what we were eating. That pretty much summed up her existence for the first two years of life...I can only assume that the new baby will also want to snuggle and nurse and then try to eat what we are eating, why wouldn't she? I mean I can understand if she doesn't sleep well with us, because that's an individual preference and a part of personality...but as for the rest of it, I don't feel under-prepared not having a single piece of baby gear set up. Why does our society think we need so much stuff? Just enjoy loving on your baby while you can, they grow so fast...

1/29/2010

Drink your tea slowly and reverently,
as if it is the axis
on which the world earth revolves
- slowly, evenly, without
rushing toward the future;
Live the actual moment.
Only this moment is life.

-Thich Nhat Hahn