That's Life

I know it's been a while. Life just knocked me over after that last post. Luckily Adi did not get chickenpox, but soon after that episode we started her in group daycare (we'll call it Gan) and she has been sick. ever. since. No joke. Everyone warned us that the first year in Gan she would be sick but this has been rediculous. Usually I can take a little perspective and know that it is normal and that she's just been living in a relative bubble until now, but when I'm in the middle of the third fever in a week and a half I start to panic and wonder what is it that is making her get sick so frequently. Luckily we have a great Pediatrician and is on the same page as me in taking the frequency of her sicknesses seriously, we're keeping an eye on it and that's all we can do for now. Chances are it's just a lot of viruses.

Things just got completely out of control two weeks ago when E got called for reserve duty for two weeks in the army. Why they wanted him back after not serving for about 10 years due to being out of the country, plus being pretty close to the age that he would be discharged I have no idea. But, he's been kind of putting the army off for a couple of years now so he was good and went. Of course the minute he left I got a call from Gan that Adi was sick. Then promptly that night I also got so sick that I couldn't even get out of bed to take care of her. Awful. The worst feeling in the world. E was able to come home for the next night, and then his mom came to help a bit. Oh, being far away from my parents is very difficult. This pretty much lasted the whole time he was gone. I have never appreciated having him home more in my life.

Right now, I am home, working. It is calm. And I hope it stays that way for as long as possible.

In other news, Adi is almost a year old. I don't believe it. She's turned into a kid. No more baby. I'm still not completely comfortable with her Gan, I was very spoiled with our nanny. But overall I think it's really good for her developmentally and she needs to be with other kids. She's really doing great, she crawls all over, she pulls up on stuff, she walks while holding our hands, she plays increasingly complicated games (she can put nesting dolls together now). She talks up a storm, she says Ima, Abba, our dog's name, Savta, Boobah, Dag. She barks at all the dogs in the neighborhood, and she always knows what she wants. Definetely not an easygoing kid, but I think it will serve her well in life, she's not going to be a pushover.

At a year old I'm still nursing Adi. I never got to write my whole nursing saga, I hope too in the future, but in a nutshell we had a lot of latch problems at the beginning so that it took about a month and a half of pumping/nursing before we were nursing full time since then it's been great. While I love nursing, I hate pumping. I have been pumping full time since I returned to work. Luckily I work from home so it's ideal for pumping, but even so I have had to pump six times a day to get the amount of milk that she needed in bottles. Pumping for me is just not nearly as effective as nursing. And as my supply has been naturally dropping as Adi needs less pumping has been feeling less and less productive. It is just so stressful, I can't wait to be done with it. My plan is at a year old to switch her one bottle that she gets at Gan to cow's milk. I know most kids still take formula, but as much as I've read there's no reason to give them formula, especially since I know Adi will still get breastmilk in the morning and the evening. I would much rather give her a whole food like milk than formula if I don't have to, but I need to stop pumping. I just hope she'll like the milk, she takes it mainly to calm down before her nap at Gan. I'm praying that it works.

The hardest thing for me at Gan has been going against the grain. They have a great system going there that allows them to take care of so many kids, but as a result they are also very set in their ways. All things considered, they're great about our cloth diapers (though the director at first wanted to keep the dirty diaper bag hanging out the window until we pointed out that she had a trashpail filled with poopy diapers sitting in the changing room, and there was no difference between the bag that we would take home and the bag that would be taken to the dumpster, anyway), but they really think it's wierd that Adi is still nursing. Out of 20 kids who are getting bottles, Adi is the only one getting breastmilk, only one. It's really pretty unbelievable, especially considering all the people I know who do breastfeed. Their answer to everything is based on how they take care of kids who are on fomula. Their feeding schedule etc. is based on being able to pop a bottle in the kids' mouth whenever they need, even if the kid doesn't need. At the beginning when Adi was still adjusting, the caretakers would claim that she needed to get used to doing everything without having my boobs there. First of all, Adi has been with a nanny for months and has been taking a bottle forever so that's definetely not the issue, second, she's never really been obsessed with nursing. She eats, sometimes she uses it to relax, but especially now that she's older she really doesn't comfort feed, it's just not her thing. Anyway, it's just hard sticking to my guns with them, everytime I bring in a little less milk for her the keep saying, why don't you just give her formula? I'm so tempted to let them do what they want just so that I know Adi is getting the best care from them. I see why people switch over so easily.

Anyway, so that's life. Very rambling. But that's what's going on now. More soon.

Not the Only Chickens in the House

Adi was exposed to chickenpox on Thursday. I still can't believe it. Our friends called us last night saying that their daughter has the chickenpox and that they found the spots Friday night, meaning she was contagious and didn't know it on Thursday when they came over to visit. I'm still reeling. This particular couple is really my only set of friends on the Moshav but their parenting choices have been making me feel more and more uncomfortable and this is really crossing the line. How did they not pay attention to the fact that their daughter had been exposed? I can tell you we're not taking Adi anywhere near kids for the next 21 days. I'm fuming, especially since I am decidedly pro-vaccine and this just proves it even more for me. The fact that so many kids have the chickenpox in my area is a little rediculous, but then our friends kept putting off the vaccine and boom, now their daughter's sick and who do they put at risk? My daughter, who's not even old enough to get the vaccine! Maybe epidimioligists actually know what they're talking about.

I'm praying with every fiber of my body that Adi doesn't get sick. She's still so little, she'll just be miserable. I feel so awful. I don't know what to do about these friends. How do you go to someone and say, hi I think you're an irresponsible parent and I don't want my kid around you?

Bahhhhh

My old template is gone, poof. I saved it but it won't read whatever format I saved it in. Aggggh.

Well, now I remember why I hate the new blogger template customization thingy. And I pretty much forgot all of the Html I had taught myself. Sucks.

Two Weeks Worth of Rambling

I just decided that I need to make a batch of cupcakes. Something poufy and sweet and completely self-indulgent. My parents just left after a two week stay this morning. I'm always rediculously sad after they leave, it makes me feel so alone and far away. At least when they come here to visit I have my life to fall back on immediately. When they leave I always feel like I need something to make me feel less depressed that they're gone while at the same time celebrating being on my own again, that's where the cupcakes come into play. What kind should I make????

Anyway, the past two weeks were great. Lots of grandparent/granddaughter time. It took Adi about a week or so to really get comfortable with my parents, but that's why they came for two weeks. It really was great.

We decided to send Adi to the local daycare center coming up in September. Her nanny is officially retiring, and the drama that has surrounded finding her a new place for next year has been a bit rediculous. We originally wanted to send Adi to a family run daycare (they are called Mishpachtons here, women who take care of about 4-5 kids in their homes) until she was a little bigger, we figured she would get more personal care there. Plus, we really needed something in our Moshav because we only have one car and being able to walk her there if we need is a huge deal. So then we went looking, there were none opening in our Moshav, so we increased our search to the town nearby. We looked at lots of them but I really came away with a creepy feeling from all of them, I don't know why. Then one finally decided to open by us, we went to visit, we actually really liked it, then due to cultural prejudices some other families wouldn't even go look at it and it didn't open due to too few kids. Ahhhhhhh. Finally, we decided to look at the daycare center (I really don't know why we ruled it out, I guess same prejudices) and you know what? we really liked it. They're really professionals, the caretakers seem great, it's clean, a good kid/adult ratio, and there's definetely somthing to be said about it being government regulated and very official. They have their shit together. It's things like how they have a full time cook so the caretakers don't have to take their attention away from the kids. We just felt good leaving there and we couldn't say that for any of the other places. So, it's not in our Moshav, but we'll deal with it. The most important thing is that Adi will be well taken care of and she'll have a great time being around other kids.

Oh right! How could I forget! Adi officially started crawling (forwards, and actually getting somewhere) last week. It's absolutely incredible. She can go get what she wants now. The changes that have happened with her in the past two weeks have absolutely blown my mind. She interacts like there's no tomorrow, she's starting to make noises like she's talking, she says ma ma ma, even Ima sometimes (while referencing me no less), and she has a specific noise that she makes when she's trying to get your attention. I feel like we're at a calm before the storm right now. All of these new developments have turned her into such a person and it's so much fun. But I know that in a matter of weeks, maybe even days, her little will is going to start showing it's head and then the real work starts. I'm at this surreal point where I see it coming before it's actually here. I pray that she's as easy a toddler as she has been a baby, and that if not I hope we have the sanity to deal with it the best we can, and if we need help later on to get help. Oooooh, scary. Well, time keeps marching forward and the best we can do is just to try to be aware all the time. I just hope we'll give her what she needs.

Oh, she gives kisses now too! Big open mouthed kisses. And she waves hi and bye. Incredible. And before I forget, may I introduce the four newest members of our family....

From front to back we have, Tzilli, Gilli, Fluffy, and Coco. E wanted chickens so we got chickens, well he really wanted a goat but I put my foot down there. Their job is family egg producers. So far so good. E is still trying to convince me that we need a rooster but these chickens are like 10 feet from our bedroom window. The puppy will have to protect them instead.

It is Officially Summertime

Back from Florida. I had a lot of fun, but it was seriously stressful. Adi was just not happy the entire time, when you mix a 14 hour flight, jetlag, lots of doting family members, and a tooth that finally breaks through on the flight home, you get one unhappy 7 month old. Oy. But despite all that, I had fun with my family. Disney was great, a little known secret about my family is that they love love love Disney world (if you knew them you would be very suprised). I think it's the resort aspect of it that draws my family, everything is easy there (well, except for the crowds and the soup quality of the air in June), flawlessly organized and designed. After Disney we went to the Beach where E was at his conference. That was great too as long as I ignored the fact that our very fancy room smelled like ass. But, no matter how the actual trip was, having Adi be miserable really made me feel like a guilty parent and put a damper on things. But that's life with kids, right?

I still haven't cut Adi's hair, I'm such a chicken. What if I mess up her perfectly natural pixie! She can officially not see when she doesn't have a clip in her hair, I must take a picture of this, she is the epitome of baby einstein.

We have tentatively found child care for Adi for September. Our wonderful nanny is retiring and I think it's time to have other kids around as well. The whole process of finding this was a bit crazy, but hopefully it's working out. I think every single person on this moshav has been looking for childcare for the past 3 months and it took that long for someone to finally open something here. Thank god. Anyway, it's looking good, and in honor of the transition I just ordered 8 fancy shmancy Bum Genius diapers. Our nanny was great about using our prefolds (the couple bum geniuses that we have are used by E's mom who is just not quite meticulous enough to successfully use the prefolds) but we can't justify asking her future child care providers to take the extra time to fold and stuff diapers when they have lots of other kids running around. This way we know that Adi will be correctly diapered. Though every day care we talked to was perfectly happy to use our cloth diapers. One benefit to being in Israel is that most people still remember the crazy old hardcore cloth diapers that everybody had to use because disposables just weren't available (seriously, this is a westernized country and everything) so any improvement over that is a walk in the park.

Update Needed

I really have to update my sidebars. I haven't taken a good look at my blog in ages and I really need to change my links. My reading habits have definetely changed.

Cuteness and a Question

Some pictures for the cuteness factor. But more importantly, what do I do about the hair????? I'm paralysed. It's out of control but I don't want to mess it up by cutting it. Do I cut her bangs??? Help!