Will is 11 months old!

We are just loving our time with this sweet little 11-month-old. I am feeling more and more like I am out of the fog of having a new baby, and more like myself again. For me, that has a lot to do with not breastfeeding anymore. Will drinks whole milk from a bottle sometimes, and also eats all the food! Now Jon and I are better able to share baby duties like bedtime and middle of the night wake ups and also getting up super early. In the last month I have done a two night trip with a bunch of other moms, and also done a two night trip with just Cohen to Newfoundland. My life feels SO much more balanced now. Some things about Will lately:

- The big thing that just happened is he started walking a teeny tiny bit. He usually only walks a couple steps, but he walked across the room one single time when a few of my friends were over with their kids for a playdate. I think it might be another couple months before he is walking for real though. He almost looks too small to be able to walk. It is the cutest thing!

- He eats everything. He particularly loves ground beef and blueberries. He will eat a whole banana really easily and also an entire peach. If we serve hims something he is not into, like broccoli, he just throws it on the floor. With a sneaky little smile.

- He also eats some "bambas" every day. They are these little peanut corn puff snacks that are popular in Isreal. His allergy doctor has him eating 1.5 per day, and we will keep increasing it until he is no longer allergic.

- He sleeps really well right now. He goes down around 7 pm and wakes up around 6 am every morning. I think getting a good sleep each night is also contributing to my overall sense of wellness these days. Will naps twice a day right now.

- Favourite thing to do: crawl up the stairs. He also wants to be wherever his brother is at all times.

- He is pretty chatty, just saying dada dada and mama mama all the time. No actual words yet though. He also loves to clap and wave.

These first 11 months have gone by so fast. Jon and I are really enjoying the moments, especially the little moments where Cohen and Will are sitting together and playing or laughing with each other. So happy!

Will is 9 months old!

I just need to preface this by saying I am absolutely sick about what is happening on the border in the states with immigrant children and their parents. I am so lucky to have won the geographical lottery that is being born here in Canada. Being separated from my two boys for any reason is truly my worst nightmare and makes me physically ill to even think about it. 

Anyway, Will. He is such a sweet little angel. He is 9 months old now, and such a joy! We have a very laid back baby. 

(at family day on Base Gagetown) 

(at the Killarney Lake beach) 

What's happening with Will lately:

- He had his 9 month checkup with the doctor the other day, and he is totally average for height, and a little but less than average for weight. The doctor said is is probably a little light because he is mobile.

- The doctor also told me I can feel free to quit breastfeeding and switch to whole milk if I want. I was so thrilled when I heard that! I had decided fairly arbitrarily that I wanted to breastfeed long enough so I could avoid buying formula. I am now planning to slowly wean Will over the next month or two.

- Sleeping is kinda wild these days. Some nights he wakes up only once for a few minutes, and other nights he is up for hours ready to party. He starts every night in his crib at around 6:30 pm. Some nights (most nights?) he ends up in bed with Jon and I. I am so focused on making sure Jon and I get decent sleep that I can't be bothered with any kind of sleep training/learning right now. Eventually we will get 8 hours of consecutive sleep again (I hope!). Will is up for the day around 5 am most mornings. For some reason I find 5 am sooo much harder than 6 am.

- And naps are kind of a joke right now. We get maybe 45 minutes in the morning and another 30 minutes in the car in the afternoon. It doesn't help that our days are jam packed right now, so Will rarely gets the opportunity to nap in his crib in the afternoon. I think the summer will be a little slower and better for the sleep schedule.

- Will just got his two top front teeth. Omg they seem so huge in his little mouth! It felt like the teething went on for days if not weeks. His sweet little gums were red and inflamed and he was drooling like crazy.

- Will's new favourite things to do: crawl into the bathroom and put his hands in the toilet water (uggg!) and climb up our super steep stairs. He keeps us on our toes for sure.

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.