Will is 8 months old!

Will turned 8 months old the other day. He is such a happy little dude. Some things about him lately:

- He got two sweet little teeth last week after months of crazy drooling and chewing on his hands and my hands and every single thing he could. Cohen got his two first teeth around this time too. 

- I am still breastfeeding and also pumping for work. I'm still hoping to make it to his first birthday. He takes a bottle easier these days when I am working, which is nice. 

- He eats everything. We never buy him baby food anymore, and I never make him purees. He just eats whatever we are eating. Tonight we had fish and rice and broccoli and he had all of that. Our family physician told us to feed him everything, and it felt so freeing and way easier than dealing with baby food. 

- He is the fastest crawler! He pulls himself up on everything, so I am constantly catching him trying to eat soil from our big plants, pull garbage out of the garbage can, and dip his sweet little fingers into the toilet water. In that way, he is such a handful! We tried to use the same high chair set up we used for Cohen at this age, but Will kept climbing right out of it and onto the kitchen table. Such a strong little guy. 

- We start the bedtime routine around here at around 6:30. Will is usually in bed in his crib by 7 pm, and sleeps until 6 am or so. He sometimes sleeps through the night, and sometimes he wakes up a couple times for a quick drink. I am hoping to phase out those night feeds really soon. I feel like I am getting enough sleep these days, which is great. 

- Will is allergic to peanuts, so we feed him peanut dust mixed with applesauce every single day. They increase the dosage every two weeks, and we are slowly building up to him being able to eat an entire peanut. At this point, I find the whole allergy thing pretty routine. I don't even pull the epipen out of the cabinet when we feed him the peanut dust anymore. Between Jon, myself, and my mom, we take him to the allergist every two weeks for a few hours. 

Library list

I'm reading a little less now that Will is sleeping (mostly) through the night and I am working a little more, but still loving the books.

The Alice Network: This is about lady spies in German occupied France and is historically accurate, which I love. It wasn't a life changer or anything, but I enjoyed it.

small great things: This one was pretty intense. It's about the cultural racism that happens when you say that you are "colourblind", and also the obvious racism that is happening in the states all the time. I really liked it.

The Power of Moments: Omg. This book. I love this one so much, and I am trying to think of ways to live by this book. One part talked about how we mostly remember big transitional moments from our life. So we need to make an effort to celebrate little things more. This book pretty much gave me permission to make a really big deal about birthdays and holidays. I was reading this book when I decided we needed to have a piñata at an Easter brunch I was doing. No regrets! The piñata was a hit.

Feel Free: This is a bunch of essays. I am skipping around reading a few, and pretty into a couple. I love reading essays about life in New York, for some reason I can't explain. I want to hear about busy sidewalks and tiny apartments and corner bodegas. So this book is for me for sure.

Jon just finished When Breath Becomes Air and he is plowing through 12 Rules for life, so those are next for me.

34 years old

I was lucky enough to have my birthday fall on a Saturday this year, so I got to sleep in (until 7:15, but still!), have a day date with Jon, hang out with the family. I was super spoiled this year with two cakes (one ice cream cake with the kiddos, and one normal cake with work), and some really thoughtful gifts. The best for me was getting to go on a nice long lunch date with Jon while my sister and mom watched the boys. 

(May 5 downtown Freddy)

Jon and I talked a lot about the past year. To be honest, 33 was kind of insane for me. The past year has definitely been the worst year of my life. I am at a point where I can feel myself getting over it, and sometimes I think I need to get over it faster because in the end nothing actually happened. It was almost exactly a year ago that we got our diagnosis and we went to Moncton for the weekend. Mother's day was a totally write-off last year. I remember my sister and I trying to celebrate a little for the kid's sake and also to keep me occupied so I wouldn't just cry all day. We forced ourselves to go to the zoo even though it was cold and we were the only ones there. We went to the pool, which was so not fun for me because my bump was visible. It's weird, but I feel like I didn't even get a summer last year. It was like that whole season was so consumed with my worry and stress and grief that it didn't even exist. So right now I am just looking so forward to doing normal summer things and being 34.

(Jon and I took a walk downtown to check out the water) 

(Love him so much)

Goals for my 34 year old self: Keep working hard and learning more about owning the practice. Stay in the moment with these two little boys of ours. Don't buy any new clothes! I am going to try to keep mostly buying secondhand, which is something I have been doing for a year and a half now save for the few nursing shirts I bought. Read and write a lot. I read constantly and write pretty often, so I want to keep that up. Stay active. I want to run a few 5Ks this year, and do pilates in the winter. Nothing crazy, just enough to feel good. I am also going to try to shop in person a little more. I LOVE online shopping for everything from shampoo to sofas. But it is SO much packaging. I am sick of the packaging. So I am going to make more of an effort to try to find what I want in stores. This is going to be the hardest thing for me for sure.