Ages and Stages: 2 Years!!

Forgive me for being a few days late but I wanted to wait until after your doctors appointment so I would have accurate stats for weight and height. Which are, 21lbs (1% at our doctors office) and 34 inches (55%). And your head is at

Kylie you are so incredible! I want to remember everything, because you say about a dozen hilarious things a day, but sadly, I often don't even remember them long enough to tell Daddy at the end of the day. At this exact moment I am sitting on the floor beside you attempting to type this and remember what I want to say, while you are looking at a Sesame Street calendar from 1990 that Memere kept for Daddy haha. Wow, talk about coming full circle! You find the pictures very interesting.

Okay, so you still absolutely love puzzles and really like the body puzzle I got you for your birthday. You also are very into dinosaurs right now and Daddy found you a nice play set for your birthday as well. You still LOVE to play pretend and most recently you have been pretending that you are Fozzie, I am Miss Piggy and Daddy is Kermit OR that you are "D.W.", I am Binky, and Daddy is Mr. Ratburn LOL!!! Another thing that cracks me up is this new game that you just started where you force me to look into my closet, Daddy to look into his closet and then you run into your room too look in your closet and then say "I have books in my closet" and name anything else you see. We have also played a pretty fun game where I pretend to be Santa and you tell me what you want for Christmas and so do all your toys.  You will make up your own songs by singing gibberish to the melody of songs you know. You can count up to 18! You are a great little helper and love to do things "all by myself" as you would put it. :)

You have been eating really well lately! And since we weaned a few weeks ago you have been sleeping through the night more than ever! Sometimes you still wake up once though and ask for a snack.

Weaning During World Breastfeeding Week

It's been a week with no breastfeeding and I think it's safe to say we have officially weaned. I was afraid to post anything before in case I might jinx it, and maybe somehow I still will. But so far everything has been going really well. I ended up putting band aids over my nipples and telling Kylie they needed a rest. She cried for about ten minutes the first night but then let me bounce her to sleep, although this did take a really long time because she was being extras fidgety trying to fight sleep (and boy can she when she tries). Then when she woke up around four the next morning she just let me rock her in the chair. The next night it was easier to put her to sleep but when she woke up she was more sad. Since then most nights have been pretty easy (some really easy) but there were two that she was extra tired and a little more cranky. But I think that is more just the regular patterns of a two year old than anything to do with breastfeeding. She doesn't even ask to nurse anymore. Now instead of telling me "it's time to nurse", she says "mommy's boobies are alllllll gone".

 I'm a little sad, ideally she would have let go on her own, but I think I would have had more luck with that had I stopped nursing her to sleep when she was younger. But really I'm mostly happy and relieved it is going so well. I'm actually surprised I'm not more sad and in some ways it just feels normal. Since it has been so gradual and I have been working up to this point for basically the last six months, taking out this last step of nursing at bedtime and night hasn't really changed our routine that much. I'm also super happy to find that because we had nursed so rarely, my boobs have been adjusting really really well. It hasn't even been as bad as when I would just skip a feeding back when we were nursing regularly. The first day was no problem, the second day was pretty full, and the third day was quite full but still I hadn't felt like I really need to express anything out to be comfortable. And by the fourth day they had started to get soft again! I didn't even need to use those cabbage leaves I bought!

I think another surprise of weaning has been how proud I feel. I was expecting to feel guilty because I'm usually feeling mom guilt of some sort, but I really just feel very proud that we made it to two years! There were definitely times when I doubted myself, and especially during this second year I wondered if I was making a bad habit that I would never be able to stop. But now I just feel more confident that I did exactly what I wanted to do and everything worked out fine!!

Weaning during this week has meant many breastfeeding articles and pictures on my Facebook newsfeed to remind me that we are no longer nursing. I thought great, this is just going to make me sad, but really it has again just made me feel really proud and appreciative of our breastfeeding journey.