I think he is trying to kill me.

I don’t know why he would want to do such a thing, since clearly my continued presence on this earth is to his benefit, but the child will not sleep.  As a matter of fact, for the past couple of weeks, he’s been waking up so very so sad at about midnight or 12:15…and then again sometime on or before 2:30, and then usually about 5.

I suppose since he is so young, he probably isn’t clued into the fact that I am a terrible sleeper and that his nocturnal nursing parties are keeeeeling me.  But really.

I’mabboutadie.

Since he and Joshua share a room, we haven’t been able to Ferber him in awhile.   Joshua bunked with Sophie for several months last year while we were trying it out, and I fear we’re going to have to put him back in her room again soon.  But the Ferbering has never seemed to stick with Jonah.  Blargh.

Well, Sophie started sleeping really well when she was about 15 months old…and Jonah is 13 months…so hopefully I’ve got at least eight weeks of fight left in me!  Until then, there’s coffee and Mountain Dew, right?

And at least he’s a cute little killer!

But seriously I’M DYING HERE.

How did it come to pass that my baby no longer fits snugly in my arms?  It seems like yesterday that his little body barely spanned the width of my chest when he curled against me to nurse.

Sleepily he reaches out with his left arm and grabs my hair, running his hand the length of it.  He pushes my face to the side so he can get to my ear, makes a grab at my earring.  Recreational activities, fighting sleep while he nurses.  Funny baby, I am still his favorite toy.  I am wearing my glasses tonight and he gets them about half off of my face before I can pry his fingers off of them.  Giving up, he turns his attention to his own ear – like his older brother, he plays with it when he’s tired.

I kiss his face and stroke his hair, I kiss his little fingers and bury my lips in his chubby cheeks.  I love my sweet baby boy so much it hurts.  Just yesterday I was complaining as I was pumping out a bottle of milk so Bobby and I could go out, but I will be sad when he weans. He’s my last little nursey baby.

How did he get so big? He will be 13 months old this week.  Soon he will be too busy to cuddle his mama, to play with my hair, to want to be mine and to want me to be his.

He unlatches himself and gives me a milky, sleepy smile.  I squeeze him tight, kiss those pink cheeks again, and gently place him in his crib with his bevy of blankies.  He rolls over, gripping one tightly.

Good night, baby mine.  Try not to grow too much tonight while you sleep.

(This is why I often refer to myself as functionally retarded.)

Little baby Jonah has decided that he only wants to eat off of my left side when nursing. About once a day I can con him into eating pretty well off my right, but that is not going to cut it!  I don’t want to be grotesquely lopsided, and I don’t want my right side to dry up!!

To complicate this matter, my left thumb injury (which makes my whole left arm hurt) is pretty painful at the moment and since Jonah ONLY wants to eat off the left side…it’s not as easy to “rest” my left arm (which is a joke anyways, I mean really, I kind of need both hands and arms at this point in my life.)

So.  When my left arm withers up and my right breast dries up…I am going to be one lopsided- looking mother!

I want to go on “Extreme Makeover: ‘I’m just Jacked Up’ edition”.

But seriously, how do I solve this nursing problem?  I swear I’ve got the same flavor coming out of both sides!!  Any advice??

So that’s why we are posting today, during World Breastfeeding Week, about the “I Breastfeed Because” campaign from Ameda, a company that makes great breast pumps and provides allll kinds of support for nursing moms.  To spread the word about  how important and wonderful breastfeeding is, Ameda has launched a new website at I Breastfeed Because and is encouraging all moms who did or do breastfeed upload a short, 20-second video about why you breastfeed. Here’s mine:

For every video, comment or tweet shared, Ameda will make a donation to the Human Milk Bank Association of North America (HMBANA), a non-profit association of donor human milk banks established in 1985 to set standards for and to facilitate establishment and operation of milk banks in North America.

And, every mom who uploads a video will be entered to win the grand prize of a $2,500 nursery makeover or one of 25 secondary prizes — $50 American Express gift cards. Woohoo!  So go check out the site, share your story, and enter!

And tell us, if you breastfed – why did you breastfeed?  We’d love to know, too!

And in the interest of FULL disclosure, we are posting about this fully for the love of breastfeeding, and because the campaign was brought to our attention by one of our loyal readers, Cara, who works for Evenflo headquartered here in our area, the parent company of Ameda.  A cause we love & support + a reader we can support, + a local business we can support = perfection!

He’s nearly 15 months old, and I know I should be prepared for this and ready for it to happen, but quite honestly I’m not. It makes me sad to think that he’s getting so big and that he’s not an infant anymore. I logically know this is true, but still, he is my baby.

We’ve been down to just nursing at night and sometimes in the mornings (when I’m trying to get a few more minutes of shut-eye), but lately Sammy hasn’t been nursing in very long stints – something much more exciting is always going on around him, and he’s soon ready to crawl off to find a ball or play with his sister. And the number one sign he’s just not that into it anymore – he doesn’t point and squeal at my laptop the way he used to when he wanted to nurse. (What? He thinks my laptop is somehow related to the nursing process, since it’s omnipresent when we sit down on the couch. Is that not normal??)

Tonight he was super tired and ready for bed, but I wanted to nurse him to sleep. I don’t normally do that, but tonight I wanted to pay attention, to make sure I remembered this night if in fact it turned out to be the last time he nursed. So we sat in the rocking chair in his room as we’ve done so many times before, and I just stared at him, trying to burn his soft little baby face into my memory. I want to remember everything about him.

He is my baby.

I pumped for the very last time.

And I am so relieved.

No more packing and unpacking, or washing all of the 9000 parts every night. No more schleping the pump back and forth to work anymore. No more trips to vacant parking lots in the freezing cold because there’s nowhere in my office to take care of business. No more business trips with a van full of colleagues wondering why I have a heavy Trader Joe’s freezer bag on the way home that I didn’t have on the way there.

No more worrying that I’m going to be pulled over on my way to and from work and have to explain why I’m half naked.

So yeah, I’m relieved.

I have been counting down the days, really, but now I’m surprised to find I am kind of sad about it in a weird way. Sammy will be a year old on Thursday. He’s not a baby anymore. And while I’m planning to continue to nurse him when we’re together, he no longer relies on me when we’re apart.

I’m just not sure I am ready for that.

January: I scare the meter reader and deal with mystery turd #1

February: Emily has a good laugh at my expense. Or lack of expense.

March: Emily and I hit the brand-new IKEA store in our area. And ALMOST buy the correct items!

April: Emily pops out baby Sammy, and more importantly, I don’t have to wait any longer to know if it’s a boy or a girl. GEEZ.

May: A kid on Kate’s t-ball team makes the best blog fodder. EVAH.

June: Emily smokes crack, and is therefore a much more fun mommy than I am.

July: Mystery Turd 2: Electric Boogaloo! Nancy Drew tries to solve the case.

August: An old lady pisses Emily off. Watch out, Grandma!

September: We got a hurricane in Ohio. It was WEIRD. And windy.

October: I FINALLY wean Sophie at 23 months. Oy.

November: Emily and Oprah are like twinsies. And also 83-year-old ladies are smart.

December: My lady business is perfect. (According to my OB-GYN. I’m just sayin’.)

I had way too much fun putting this together. I must say Emily and I crack me up! So…at least that’s one of us…I hope you all reminisce with me and have a laugh too!

HAPPY NEW YEAR! Let’s make 2009 a great one!

Because seriously, talking about running gives me HIVES. I can’t run a BLOCK, people, much less a 5K. And I don’t want to. When it comes to exercise, I prefer not to. BUT I also don’t want to be obese and die young, so I do Pilates. Um, at least I did until about a year ago. The time has come to get my butt in gear because now that I’ve finally weaned Sophie, I’m no longer burning those magic milk-making calories. And, I only have 60 days until BlissDom ’09 (which you all really need to attend!! Emily and I will both be there, and for some reason they are letting me speak. Say what??) at which I need to look HAWT, so…

…Monday I am back on the Pilates wagon. And maybe in nine or ten weeks, when Emily runs a 5K, I will no longer have a muffin top. Or stretch marks. Or that giant wrinkle on the right side of my forehead.

One can dream, right?

So it is time to move on. There are a whole host of things I’ve said I would do after Sophie was weaned, and it’s time to do them. I need to get a sleep study done and find out why I can’t sleep. I need to get my #@! wisdom teeth out before they push my teeth together so hard that the front ones just pop right out of my head. I need to find out how to get my hormones back to normal.

I don’t want to do any of it. I just want it to be done.

*Sigh*

But first I have to get through Soph’s birthday, and then I’ll have the holidays to use as my excuse, right? So…I guess we’ll just have to pick this conversation up later…

In the meantime, I’d love for you to take a look at some of what I’ve been up to. Yesterday I published the Blissful Style 2008 Holiday Gift Guide over at Blissfully Domestic. Lots of stylish gifts at lots of different price ranges! Please go check it out and let me know what you think! Also, on Sunday, I guest posted at Velveteen Mind, in an effort to save Megan’s NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month) efforts. I’d tell you what she calls NaBloPoMo but my mom reads this blog, so you will just have to head over there and find out for yourself!

Oooh one more little thing I need to let you in on. Did you like the contest we posted yesterday? I hope so, and I hope you get used to it! To celebrate the craziness that leads up to the Fa-la-la-la-Lalidays, Emily and I will be doing a giveaway every Monday until Christmas! It’s our Monday Holidaze Giveaways! So make sure and check in with us obsessively several times a day every Monday!

Mmmkay. That’s all I got, fer realzies. Now leave me a comment and tell me to get my ACT together!!

Friday I nursed my little Sophie girl for the last time. It was high time, as she is 23 months old, and I’ve been complaining about wanting to wean her on this here blog for months. We had been down to one feeding, only in the morning, for two weeks, and I knew that with my husband home on Saturday, I could just hide (a.k.a. SLEEP IN) in the morning and avoid nursing her that way. So that’s what we did, and it worked just fine. She tried to nurse once in the afternoon but I just told her “all done” and cuddled her while she fussed. She got over it pretty quickly. Sunday we did the same thing, and it wasn’t a problem at all.

Friday morning when I was nursing her, I knew it was more than likely going to be the last time. So I savored it. I stroked her face and her hair and relished her sweetness. Then she finished up, jumped up, and got to the business of playing.

She didn’t know it was going to be the last time. I’m trying not to feel guilty about that. What do you think she would have done if she had known?

I know I should be happy, feel liberated, be elated even. Part of me is all those things. I loooove wearing a regular bra! I look forward to my hormones balancing out and to being able to take an aspirin for goodness sake!

But right now, looking at her, watching her play, listening to her babble, knowing she’s my last baby, it’s all I can do to keep myself from pulling up my shirt and goin’ one more round.

I’m riding the emotional roller coaster and the “off” switch appears to be broken…could someone call a handy carnie and shut this thing down?