#14on14 November

Holy cow November woe is time going fast!  I remembered about my photos yesterday and I tried really hard not to make them all about the baby.  Anyhow here's our November 14th.

1 - jones napping in the morning (sometimes he gets dressed at like 10am.

2 - playing with his chicken rattle patiently waiting for me to finish with work.

3 - Bottle Bottles and more bottles. We only have 10 glass dr. Browns bottles and sometimes we use all 10 in the same day.

4 - Oil Change.  Jones was laughing hysterically when facing the other way (I thought the man sitting there might be annoyed)

5 - target for toilet paper and oh 100 other things

6 - it's too soon for Christmas not to soon for me to score stocking stuff USB port for the car. And aren't these foxes darling? 

7 - selfie in the car 

8 - This is how we do mail.

9 - daddy told us to be ready and yet we wait

10 - gas is $2.95/gallon

11 -it's Christmas at fiddlers too.

12 - dinner without the baby and he's on his phone

13 - jonesy with his aunt Maggie I think (twins it's hard to keep that straight) 

14 - bedtime (I sorta like this have shadowed shot).

Family Photos October

In October I took lots of photos of Dustin and Baby Burf there are a few of me and him and even some of Dustin and I but I only have this one photo booth strip of all three of us - FAIL!  I guess one is better than none.

My phone has a built in timer now so hopefully in November is better - I already snapped one.  December I am trying to decide if maybe I make an advent calendar or maybe one of those December Daily books so perhaps I will improve then as well.

On Breastfeeding

I am not sure why but I thought breastfeeding was going to be magical. I thought my baby was going to just eat and I would just produce his substance.   Both of these things were true but it was just not that simple.  From basically day 1 jones was a lazy eater he preferred nodding off to eating.  He also never would latch good and so we introduced him to a nipple shield - this was right up his alley. 

While the nipple shield seemed to help him eat it didn't make breasting magic.  It often made his latch worse and made me sore.  In addition to this he was taking about 1-1.5 hours to eat and I kept having to nudge him back awake.  

It took him two months to get back to birth weight because he was such a sleepy eater.  And I was feeding him pumped milk after feedings.  I kept wondering where the magic was.  The only thing miracle like was I could produce everything he needed myself.  

I started pumping after about a week to supplement him.  I had purchased a medala pump that was highly recommended but sadly it never emptied me.  I could shoot milk across the room but never could pump more than 4oz at a time.  Because my pump was not sufficient I was always engorged (hello painful).

I tried getting new parts for my pump, did power pumping, drinking gallons of water, hand pumping and lactation classes and consultants.  It didn't seem to really help.

 I went back to work when babyburf was 6 weeks old and very quickly my pumping problems became even more annoying.  I was getting up at 1 and 4 to pump even though the baby was sleeping.  This just to produced enough milk throughout the day - where is the magic in that? Jones actually preferred the bottle but all this pumping was making me crazy.  

At about 12 weeks jones was over breastfeeding he screamed bloody murder if I didn't offer him a bottle I offered the breast.    This made me engorged more because I wasn't even emptying a breasts 3 times a day as I had been when I went back to work.  It was highly painful and just frustrating.  It also caused the production of my right side to slow after he quit eating from me I never could pump more the 2oz on my right side😁.  It was about this time we introduced 1-2 bottles of formula a day because the baby was hungrier than I could pump milk for.  I felt crazy frustrated.

We actually tried a few formulas before we went with simalac I am still not entirely sure it's the best option but he's finally got out of the 1-5 percentile bracket (we hop 45%) and he's no longer taking a poo instantly after eating formula.  

Just recently I gave up on breastfeeding all together and we transitioned entirely to formula.  Since quitting entirely my only regret is spending the money on something I should be producing naturally - but for my sanity switching was entirely necessary or I should have taken off work for another 6-12 weeks (which is way more expensive than purchasing formula).  

Hopefully when we have a second child we will have better results.  Anyhow that's our story on breastfeeding.

#37 Picnic with uncle Jono and Aunt Lolo

Uncle Jono and Aunt Lolo finally got to meet #babyburf at the end of September.   They were in town for a wedding and I scheduled a picnic with them before Lolo had to fly back to Omaha.  I decided to make this my fill in the blank #37. It was a beautiful fall day perfect for a picnic too.  We picked up lunch because it was later than anticipated getting home from church. 

Nobody seemed to mind.  

I bought a few quilts and we just hung out in American Legion Park downtown Indy. (Ps my great grandma made this white quilt and the yellow one I made).

This is what jones sees a lot people staring down at him.  

We also went to see the fountains the baby was not as impressed as he is with ceiling fans.

It was a good day.  Too bad Omaha isn't closer so we can have more picnics and stuff.

#babyburf meets uncle Jono and aunt Lo

For the record Uncle Jono thinks he will be ncle Jones since babies can't say u. But anyhow after our trip to DC Jono and Lo came to Indy for a wedding and they finally got to meet baby jones. 

Aunt Lo matched him , which totally was not planned. 

Ncle Jono and  #babyburf. 

They also brought him some balls to teach him young ball handling skills.  He is already much better at palming his bb. 

Happy Halloween from Bacon!

Seriously super easy and amazing halloween costume.  

He wore last weekend too at trunk or treat. 

Costume is made by me. 

New wardrobe

So I have been seeing all these bloggers post about having a capsule wardrobe.  And the more I read about it the more I think "oh hey I can do that I really only wear a handful of things".  So when switching mine and Dustin's clothes closets so he doesn't have to bother grandma in the morning when going to work.  I started to take assessment of my clothes and as I put things into the closet I said to myself - 

"Do I love this?"  

"Does it fit right? Is it flattering?"

"Do I wear it to work?" 

As I did this I discovered.  I love a total of 6 things yes you read that right.   

1. A sweater dress (target circa 2011)

2. Michael Kors long sleeve tee black

3. pair of skinny jeans

4. Two nice dresses

5. Gray dressy t-shirt 

Yup that's it.  Might I also add the said skinny jeans have a hole in them?  When I added into my assessment things from my drawers I loved I had 5 additional things - 

6. yoga pants circa 2009 that are stained with paint

7. my most favorite navy tee from old navy - it's the perfect softness and perfect cut sadly it's starting to fade

8. Fav hoodie which are starting to show age

9-10. Macys Leggings x2 all with various flaws but they stay up

11. Levi's jeans purchased in like 2006 they are literally borderline risqué but they are the most comfortable pants ever

So basically I discovered that while I have 11 things or a Capsule wardrobe really I have like 5 things that should be in it.  It's depressing really.

So I really should start from square one.  After I discussed this with Dustin he said I could work on purchasing more key pieces to build my "capsule".  To be continued...

#babyburf meets Uncle Schreve and Aunt Alicia

Sometime before we went off on the baby's first vacation #babyburf got to meet his uncle Schreve and Aunt Alicia.  They were most excited to meet him and Schreve even held him even though he was a little apprehensive because he was so small.  I think he slept most of the time when we hung out but they still got to love on him. Since then they already got to babysit for a whole day which I am pretty sure they enjoyed (jones is such a good baby very low key).

#babyburf meets family

So another fun aspect of our trip to DC was that #babyburf got to meet a bunch of his cousins which are really like third cousins or something.  My second cousin Dave happened to be having a wedding reception while we were in town so we saw lots of family there.   So we got to see lots of family. 

Like Lauren.

And Uncle Stevie who taught jonesy about the drums

Cousin Dylan who's about a foot taller than last time I saw him.  (Baby in the way back sleeping)

And uncle rob and aunt kate. 

Aunt Sara and uncle Bruce not photoed

And Jessie... And Cody and Dave  and new cousin Jiilian not photoed

And uncle Andrew who loves babies, and Aunt Jo. 

He also got to meet his great great aunt ila and uncle walter, but I shared those photos already. 

Zombie/Michael Miller Challenge Quilt

So I finally finished my Michael Miller Quilt only a little bit late (Michael Miller Fabrics sponsored a challenge with the Modern Quilt Guild - which Indy Modern Quilt Guild is a part of).  The rules of the challenge were to use the fabrics they supplied + only solids or other MM prints which I was on the right track with previously.  But I went ahead and broke the rules since I can't win the prize now and I added in a print that is not by Michael Miller but rather by Riley Blake.

Dustin has been wanting me to make him a quilt he seems to think I'm making everyone else a quilt but him, he specifically requested bacon and or zombies.  I pretty much denied booth of these options, but then when I needed backing for this and didn't have something coordinating in my stash that wasn't solid I remembered about Riley Blake's Zombie fabrics and ordered the gray one.   I think it works perfectly with the colors on the front.  I added a block from the front to the back and then quilted this with straight lines up and down and then a 35 degree angle rather than a perpendicular angle to hide any imperfections.  It's quilting with a thread that is probably not really a good option as it kept breaking but I pressed on - I think it's an embroidery thread but it was in my stash of threads.  

From a distance the triangles on the front look great (ps I'm not a fan of paper piecing triangles it's so wasteful of fabric). 

I guess they don't look so bad up close either. My original idea did not include the green or the blocks of prints but when I was running out of blue and the store was out.  I just went ahead and picked a green close to the green in the prints.  To make it less like a frame I added in the strips in the middle of the design.  I like how that turned out. 

A close up of the quilting.  The pucker on this is my favorite part of the quilting it's just enough. 

And the back which is almost entirely zombies.  

But there's that one lone triangle - which by the way for some reason even though I paper pieced these was like 1 inch smaller than the other blocks?  The struggle is real.

And the binding,  it machine stitched (which I prefer) and pieced from two grays in my stash and a small bit of a Michael Miller dot I think.  

Anyhow Dust pretty much loves it he's already using it for watching Netflix on the sofa and then still bringing to bed at night.  Clearly this guy really did want a quilt.