The end of the world as we know it.

Slightly dramatic I suppose, but it is very monumental to me.  Pichu turns 2 on Friday, and there is no breast milk left.  Yep, all dried up.  After over 9 years of being either pregnant and/or breastfeeding I am finally off the hook.   This brings mixed emotions, sadness, joy, pride, and a massive sense of achievement.   

Pichu has been feeding for the longest, he was fortunate to not have to give up the breast milk because of pregnancy like the other boys did.  He also kept having night feeds for the longest.  He screamed for the longest, and now has tantrums for the longest.   It wasn't until he was 19 months old that I had had enough of the night feeds and decided it was time to say no to night feeds and yes to sleep.  This began the battle of wills.  Ultimately I was the winner!

So I am sad that it has come to an end, I am also sad because my bra size has dropped permanently.  It is now very long ago revisited territory that I am in, but it was so long ago it just doesn't feel right.  It will take awhile to get used to not being tied to a baby/toddler by an invisible string.  The beginning of the end was Oshawott having Scarlet Fever and being in Hospital for 5 days.  With me staying in hospital with him it meant that Pichu did not have Mummy at home putting him to bed.  And that meant no bedtime feed for 5 nights, and then again a few days later when Oshawott was back in hospital with Pneumonia, no night feeds for 2 nights.  After we were home it just wasn't the same anymore, we kept on, but it too late to save any supply. 

So that's that.  An end of an era.

And the winner is...

In the sleeping corner, Mummy!  Yes, that's right, I slept. I am pretty sure I slept from 11 to 5.45am, without being woken up by someone.  Pichu slept through the night, this is only the 4th time he has ever done that, in almost 20 months.  He had a cry at 5.45 (which woke me up) but he went back to sleep, and didn't end up waking until 7.30.  Gobsmacked.  

 Pichu had his first taste of chocolate a few days ago.  I think he likes it.

On other matters, my iphone is broken again.  It is sporting a new series of cracks and also one of the microphones isn't working correctly and no one can hear me talking during a call.  Which is quite a fundamental part of a phone.  I have discovered though, that I can be heard if I use speaker phone.  Fine at home, but not sure how that will go at the shops.  I really don't think Lady in isle 3 wants to know that my car is overheating or that Legoman has a dentist appointment on Thursday.  Not sure what's going to happen with this one, I might have to relent and just get it fixed again.

Legoman is going great guns with his tutor, i'm feeling positive we can get on top of this.  Legoman happily works with the tutor, without complaining for the whole 60mins. This is great, but frustrating at the same time. I get maybe 5mins from him and its rife with whinge! Legoman loves Monopoly, Coder bought it last weekend and now every spare moment Legoman is setting it up, talking about it, and trying to drum up players.  He loves it so much he will even play against Voltorb and Oshawott, which is really saying something because the times I have played along with them they are quite challenging to play against to say the least, and then they randomly just throw in the towel to go find something more interesting to do.  I started off going a little easy on Legoman.  Coder didn't, his cut throat approach to Monopoly has led to an all out gung ho approach to my play style.  That didn't help me last night, I was crippled by Coder and his 4 housed Regent Street, then squashed over on Legoman's housed Vine St.  Game over for me.  Legoman won that game, the squeals of delight could be heard all over the house, high fives all round as the Coder was at last defeated!

 Note the fortune and hotels of Coder's empire.

Look at all the mortgaged properties... not looking good.

Deals being made, high finance discussions. Even Pichu likes to play.

Voltorb is doing great learning his magic words, I love watching his little mind work. It's extremely hard to contain myself at times, this is what I mean..  he is trying to sound out 'that'  "th th th a a a t t t ... with!"  What? haha, no Voltorb.  He does this often, sounds a word out and then grabs one out of thin air, completely off track. Hilarious.  But really, he almost knows all of his green words now, just needs to go over a few of them.  He loves drawing and writing.  He came home with this yesterday, he had done it in his free time at school.  It's a drawing of me, and then he added in a few words he remembers how to spell.

Oshawott is big now! Yesterday he was quite upset in the morning when I got out of bed.  He was saying there was something wrong with his arms.  Oh great I thought, his joints must be hurting, which is strange that it was elbows as it's normally his feet.  On further investigation, apparently the problem was his pyjama top sleeves were too short and riding up halfway to his elbows when he bent his arm.   An upset Oshawott soon turned into a 12 foot beaming Oshawott when I explained he had grown out of his size 3 jammies.  All day he raved about how big he was, that he was almost as big as Voltorb now.  Several times during our interactions with other people I found myself having to explain what it was Oshawott was excitedly trying to tell them.  Which is no new thing to be honest, I find myself explaining them to people quite alot, yes, that is one of Daddy's ties wrapped around their forehead, how could they be Ninjas' otherwise?  Yes, that is toilet paper tucked in their pants, trailing behind them, the perfect made-to-size tail.

 See?

Lizzy (Legoman has named the skink) is still alive!  Lizzy likes long walks around the cube, basking on hot ceramic rocks and cowering from gigantic millipedes under the water bowl.  Lizzy also likes to eat little grey moths, dead or alive, but mostly dead because that's all we can usually find.  Funnily enough we have a moth plague at our back door at the moment.  But they are gigantic brown moths, and mammoth grey moths. Too big for Lizzy, because we did try of course. One look at that and Lizzy didn't come back out of hiding for hours!

Weaning Wars

I have decided to finally wean Pichu, he's 19 months now.  He loves his milkies, so this isn't going to be easy. It had started to get a bit ridiculous actually.  He would want milk all the time, anytime he was upset, or a bit peckish, or just because Mummy sat in 'the' chair, or at the computer even! We would go out for coffee, and Pichu would be there getting his 'coffee' too.  But the deal breaker was at night, I honestly didn't care that he had a night feed (or 2!) up until about a week ago.  He would have milk and go straight back to sleep.  We were sick last week, for a week, 3 of us, Oshawott, Pichu and myself.  We had some cracker nights as to be expected, which was fine, we were sick after all.  For several nights in a row we would just be up for 2 or 3 or 4 hours, I have had 8 years of not sleeping well, so no biggie.  Pichu ended up needing anti-biotics, and that soon fixed him up.  A new habit had evolved from this brief diversion from the usual routine.. wanting to stay up half the night!  

(I have to pause here as I have been detected.. Pichu radar has discovered Mummy at the computer and he is trying to climb up to have milk)

So at night, Pichu was not going back to sleep after milk, he would seemingly be asleep until I started to leave the room after laying him down. Then he would sook, I could not pat him, hold his hand or even talk to him, he would just shriek in his banshee way until I picked him back up and he would happily suck away again (no milk mind you, just happy to be there with Mummy)  It would often take hours before he went back to sleep, I had even taken to letting him play in his room as I lie down trying to sleep while he played all over me.  

Enough was enough.  No more night feeds.  The decision was made.  

Easy to make a statement like that in daylight hours, the words fell so easily from my mouth under the bright sunshine and mug of coffee in my hand.  

The plan.  2 feeds per 24 hours.  One before his nap and one before bedtime.  Right now we are starting day 3 of this new schedule.  During the day it has become quite impossible for me to sit.  That's right, sit..  because if I sit, and I mean anywhere, Pichu climbs into my lap and assumes the position.  My life has become one of mastering the art of distraction.  He climbs on my lap or pulls and sooks at my legs, I scoop him up and we go in search of something interesting to do.  Unfortunately this has led to a love of textas.. and inadvertently wall art.  Yes, he had done this before, but we had learned to keep all forms of stationary away from his reach.  Until desperate times call for desperate measures and the best distraction of all is that of self expression using texta.  I aim for paper use only, but he seems to have a way of slipping a rogue texta through security and is often caught in the act of drawing on the walls, fridge, toys, books, floor and himself. So we are still working on finding a happy medium where texta and boy can work together in harmony.

Back to night feeds.  The first night of the new schedule I admit.. I caved.  It was 9pm and we were watching The Voice, I started to have doubts.  What if Pichu thought Mummy didn't love him anymore?  What if he was crying in misery and anguish because he thought Mummy wasn't there for him?  She had been there every other night (for 19 freaking months!) why is she not giving me milkies now?! So at 1am when he woke up, I gave him one side.  Miraculously he went right back to sleep!  Yay!  But was awake again at 3am.  Nup.  Not going to happen.  I climbed into the cot with him, armed with pillow, blanket and toilet paper wadded up in my ears. I braced for impact.  Much thrashing, screaming, writhing, and hair pulling later.. oh and he removed one of my makeshift earplugs, because damn straight Mummy if i'm going to all this trouble you are going to hear me!, he went to sleep.  I climbed out of the cot at 4.45am and into the bed right next to the cot.  He woke up at 6am very upset, so we came upstairs to start our day of distraction.

So last night, after a day of standing whilst having coffee with a friend (slightly awkward), standing the entire time of playgroup and cleaning up texta from the kitchen floor and laptop, we had a no night feed night.  He woke at 2am, I climbed into the cot with him (yes, its a very sturdy hand built cot) armed once again with my arsenal.  He carried on a bit, but im pretty sure it wasn't as bad, hard to recall and separate one screaming night from another. BUT! I think it was better.  It had to be, he had no night feed.  Victory!  Strange kind of victory I suppose, one in which I am contorted in a small space with my ears bleeding.  No seriously, I'm happy.  I managed to escape the cot after a couple of hours and get some sleep.

This morning we are friends again!  

 What Mum? No I'm not hiding a texta under here and drawing on the wall and bike.

 This better?

Note the floor.

Nice look.

One casualty of a scream filled night and early morning (apart from any spelling or grammar mistakes in this post) was the mega Moccona coffee jar.  This is what happens when you are so tired you put the coffee lid on the wrong way, it gets stuck, and your husband has to try to remove it, ending in a jar of freeze dried coffee and glass flakes. Delicious!  Lucky for the 6months old international roast tin we had stashed away in the cupboard!

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And the winner is.
Tea for two at 2.00.