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Bottle Battle 2010 Continues

Mia is almost 13 weeks old, and still refuses to take a bottle.  That means for 90 days straight now, every single meal has come from mommy (not that I’m counting).  This is both a blessing and a curse.  Breastfeeding is really important to me and it’s amazing to watch Mia grow solely on what she’s getting from me–she’s now 13 lbs, 4 oz.  But, it’s also really hard because I am her only source of nourishment and she gives anyone who tries to feed her an extremely hard time.  This means mommy never gets much of a break, and daddy doesn’t have the ability to comfort her when she’s hungry.  It also means we can’t go out for longer than a couple hours.

It’s funny how different Mia’s eating is from Evan’s–he refused to nurse at first and it took nearly 4 weeks to get him to latch.  Once he did, he didn’t have any issues switching between bottle and breast though I did have to use a nipple shield the entire 11.5 months I nursed him.

We’ve tried Medela, Dr. Brown’s, Tommee Tippee, Adri, Avent and Playtex.  We’ve tried freshly pumped milk, warm milk, cold milk.  So far nothing’s worked, but we haven’t given up hope, and I’d rather have this problem than the opposite one.  At least we haven’t had to clean a lot of bottles or pump parts 🙂  And, she’s so precious, it’s worth it! A pic of our Sassy Miss.

Lesson Learned

Recently a friend and I participated in a children’s resale.  We thought it would be a great opportunity to sell some of the baby clothes and items we had spent tons of money on and clear out our closets.  It cost $15 to participate, so we agreed to split the fee.  After signing up, the rules began flooding in–clothing must be washed (duh!), pressed (ok, but annoying), hung facing the same way with the hanger making a question mark, etc.  All items needed to be entered into their computer system, then printed on card stock–regular paper was unacceptable.  then tags needed to be safety pinned to clothing tags or on seams.  We were only allowed to include a limited number of items from so-called “B” brands and they needed to be in a separate pile.  Everything needed to be separated by gender and size and delivered to the resale location–there were some other guidelines, but this is getting long.

So after all that, guess how many items we sold.

16 of 81 (23%) for a total of $52.65.  When you take into account the consignment fee, my portion = $0.95.  95 cents!!!!!!!!  And if I deduct the mileage from driving to and from the resale, my net takeaway is probably 0.  So my lesson learned is ’tis always better to donate.  Family/Friends and local charities, you have a lot of good stuff headed your way.

First Loves

This has been a big week for the Kantowski Kids.  Evan has a “girlfriend.”  Her name is Samantha and she’s a few months younger.  Evan comforts her when she’s sad and hugs and kisses her goodbye everyday when we leave school.  It’s quite adorable.

And, Mia didn’t want to be left out, so yesterday when we were visiting friends at Little Monkey Bizness, Mia “held hands” with Isaac who is four days younger than her.  Young love, so cute!

Mia & Mommy’s Trip to the Big Apple for BlogHer ’10

Mia is seven weeks old and she and I headed to NYC for the BlogHer ’10 conference.  I’m a relatively new blogger and in the process of launching a couple others, so I was super excited to learn some new tricks and meet some of the amazing bloggers I currently follow.  BlogHer was amazing.  The sponsors are super generous and as a PR person, it was fun to be treated as a journalist for a bit.  Mia was a big hit with attendees and she served as a great ice breaker–yes, I used my daughter to meet people.  She became a bit of a drama queen, so we cut out early, but all in all it was a great experience and definitely provided the motivation and inspiration I needed to blog more often and get my new sites up and running.

Rough Ride

The past couple days have been a little rough because poor Evan has been sick. We went to the doctor today and he was diagnosed with a sinus infection and bronchospasms so he’s on steroids and a nebulizer machine. While he hates the nebulizer, it really helps him and he’s having the first restful night’s sleep in a few days.

It’s also been challenging because he’s been expressing more interest in Mia, but we’re trying to keep him from getting his germs all over her. toes and the top of her head are where we allow him to touch. really hope he recovers soon.

Updates

Very behind on updating the blog, but our newest bundle of joy arrived last Tuesday.  Mia Celine Kantowski was born at 2 p.m. on Tuesday, June 15.  7 lbs, 9 oz and beautiful!  Labor was much shorter this time (13 hours vs. 25 with Evan) and she’s a champion nurser, which Mike and I are both extremely grateful for–that was so stressful last time because it took 3.5 weeks for Evan to latch.  Evan was sick the first few days, so he didn’t get to meet his baby sis right away.  When he finally did, he pointed and said baby and then went off to do his own thing.  He’s starting to get more interested in her and so far, we haven’t had any major issues.  A few photos of Mia’s first week of life and our number one boy.  More regular posts to come.

Mommy Brain

This week, I’ve lost the key to the lockbox that contains all the money we made during our garage sale, the camera charger and camera connection cord. Does this mean labor is near? And if so, I must find all these items asap!

We’re back!

Preggo mommy couldn’t remember her username/password and it took awhile to reactivate this account.  New blog posts w/ photos coming this week.

Evan’s First Passport

We’re headed to Toronto this weekend to visit some friends, so it was time to obtain Evan’s first passport.  Since the government is behind on issuing passports, we booked a rush appointment last week and were able to pick it up in person today.  Evan didn’t like getting his photo take very much, so he looks a bit goofy, but we still think this is one of the cutest passports around.  Crazy that it doesn’t expire for five years–it’ll be interesting to see what he looks like in 2015!