Words

I can’t list them all, but here are some of the words and phrases Miles uses at almost 19 months:

Pees (please)
Gack-oo (thank you)
Sowwy (sorry)
Kissss
Ug (hug)
Mah! (mwah, when kissing)
Ow, Ouch
Hot
Cold
Wet
Water
Pee
Poo
Yucky
Dapoo (diaper)
Showah (Shower)
Bah (bath, sometimes an alternate pronounciation is used, see below)
Potty
Chayah (Chair)
Whee-chay (Wheelchair)
ah-SY! (outside)
Dock (dog)
Cah (Cat)
Bird
Bee-Bird (Big Bird)
Count
Buh-FY (butterfly)
Ahmo (Elmo)
Cooookie (Cookie)
Mahter (Monster)
Zoe (Monster and neighbor cat)
Tari (Atari, the neighbor dog)
Reh (Red)
Owah (Orange)
Lellow (Yellow)
Gree (green)
Bawoo (Blue)
Poopuh (Purple)
(he’s still parroting colors, but is starting to get the concept)
Fwoh (frog)
Hop
Burip! (ribbit)
Mouw (Mouse)
ee-Yow? (sound a dog makes…lol! Also cats, but he often says “Dog, Meow”)
Mama, Mom, Mommy
Daddy, Ah-oo, Dad, Dada
Sissy, Shiny, Niney,
Kay-yee
Grampa and Grampa (Uses same word for both my mom and dad…lol)
LURRRRRR (his cousin Laura, whose name is always yelled)
Cash (Cas, our former roommate)
Shut (shirt)
Pants
TSHOOO (Shoe)
Bock (block)
Duck
Ball
Toy
Book
More
Nap
Bet (Bed)
Yes
No
Mine
Me
You (and he’s starting to use these correctly about 70% of the time)
Dink (drink)
Eeee (eat)
ongy (Hungry)
TSHEEE (cheese)
Geeps (Grapes)
bawoobeyyey (blueberry)
Booger (Burger)
Sawsee! (Sausage, but also he uses the same for music?)
Eck(Egg)
anana (banana)
BUM! (plum)
Peas (and he means it–freeze dried peas)
Angy-burr
Bahnee
Shiny Tie (Signing time)
Run
Walk
Jump
Spin
Win! (wind)
Ky (Sky)
Go (and Go outside, go other places)
Stop
Barfoom (bathroom, lol!)
Uhstays (upstairs)
Gay (gate)
Nefick (necklace)
Boorsh (brush as in teeth)
Head
Eye
Ear
Foot
Piggies (Don’t think he knows they’re actually toes yet… oops)
bayeebunin (bellybutton)
Boop! (boob)
Noursh (nurse)
Neeepo (nipple)
Muck (Milk)
Peen (yep, that)
BALLS
Butt
Butt (Bus)
Butt (Butter)
Butt (Bath)

And today, I’m pretty sure he said, “Shih”.  And meant it… Shiny had just crapped everywhere.

So that’s more than 100 words off the top of my head. He does plenty of “Go ah-SY, go barfoom, Gack-oo MUSH (thank you very much)” and “all done/all gone/no mine” type phrases.

Every day he’s learning many  new words.

18 months, 8 years, 20 years…

Miles…. language abounds. I put Signing Time season 2 on Shiny’s iPad, and he is thrilled and picking up everything. “Win? Ky? Shining Tie! PIN!” (wind, sky, singing time, spin, the last usually accompanied by him turning himself in circles until he falls down.) The other night he woke in the night, a rarity, and cried… I came in and he said, “Duck. Duck. Meow.”

I blinked for a moment and then said, “Dark, not dog. (he’s constantly mixing up dogs and cats).” Then I pulled back the curtain to allow a little moonlight in, and he agreed, “Dock. Boop.”

I went downstairs after obliging him by nursing him, and he was quiet for a bit, then I heard crying and, “Dapoo? Dapoo?” so I went back up to change him. Found that he wasn’t poopy but had gotten some crumbs in his diaper that were chaffing… changed, rinsed and voila… he went to sleep without bothering to nurse.

Shiny’s summer  vacation sucks rocks. Even the parts where she’s in school are exhausting. Last week, by Friday I was 15 hours short of sleep over the course of 5 days. I got enough sleep over the weekend but it barely made a dent. So, so rough. She was being gone for 5 hours a day but I had to ask them to cut it back because the morning commute was a whopping 88 minutes long. Insane for a young-for-her-age 8 year old to be on the bus that long. She was starting to have accidents, plus they weren’t feeding her often enough at school. I was the squeaky wheel, got her day shortened and food opportunities increased and voila, she stopped pissing on things and started enjoying school. But it means that she’s not gone long enough for a decent nap for Miles or me, and there is no physical way for me to get enough sleep since I have to get her up at 7 and on the bus at 7:30. Going to bed before 1 am is futile for me–I will wake after 2-3 hours and be up for the rest of the night. So the week sucks the life out of me and I catch up on the weekend, which fails miserably when hubby goes out of town for the weekend. The last time he was gone for the weekend by the end of the second week with not enough sleep I was very near homicidal and suicidal at the same time. He will be gone for much of the weekend two weekends from now, and I am not looking forward to it.

Kailea is finally settled in a place that is pretty good for her, her job is working out pretty well, and she’s off to the south of England in a few weeks to visit her girlfriend for the first time. We do things like going to movies together. It’s nice.

I keep reminding myself that this summer is logistically the hardest things will ever be. It is challenging to get both kids out of the house at the same time because Miles runs and Shiny flops and they do it in different directions. Mornings to the bus go pretty smoothly but other than that it is a struggle, always.

Much time is spent fighting my own inertia. Or succumbing to it.  I strongly dislike spending the majority of my time as the only adult in the house. I miss K, I miss Cas. I miss having the freedom to run to the store or to physical therapy without dragging the kids along or waiting for the evening or weekend. The last time I took Shiny and Miles to Trader Joe’s Shiny pulled all the forks off the sample counter and I had to put all the groceries under the cart to keep her from screwing with them.

I feel demoralized a lot of the time. But the kids are both alive and without too many bruises, and they both have sufficient food and I clean their butts regularly. So not a total fail.

Shiny bit me about 5-6 weeks ago, on the chest. I still have “fang” marks there… it is healing really slowly. Every time I look at it I am reminded at how little control I really have of my life.

Ten Years

Crossposted from MDC

The milestone passed unnoticed, another day of nursing among many.

My son turned 18 months old a few days ago, on July 2. And that day marked 10 years of breastfeeding in my lifetime.

When my oldest was born (20 years ago as of a few weeks ago), I thought I’d nurse her for maybe 8 months, maybe a year. That stretched without effort to two, then I set some boundaries and we went on to 3, and she went on a trip for a week or two with her dad and came back wanting boob. At 4 I weaned her for 2 weeks and she urged me very eloquently to let her comfort nurse, and that went on for another 2 years. I’d ask her when she would wean, and she’d say “When I’m six.” Always, “When I’m six.” She was 5 years and 364 days old when she nursed her last, a few quick sucks and a pat on the breast and she was done. She’d come in putting blisters on my nipples and went out as gentle as could be.

Her sister, born over 8 years ago, came in like a lamb, lapping at the milk that spilled from my breasts but not sucking, and after 5 days of “easy” she was weighed and all hell broke loose and nursing became an arduous chore. I nursed more often at first, that kept her from losing but didn’t make her gain, so finger feeding and bottles followed every breastfeed, I would weigh, nurse, weigh, pump, feed until she’d had the minimum amount that would keep her gaining well enough to keep the doctor from pushing formula. She’d been gentle because she was born with no suck at all, due to a chromosome problem we didn’ t get fully diagnosed until she was 7 weeks old. Shortly after that, bottles started making her gag, so I went from the arduous pumping schedule to manually expressing milk into her mouth at every feed, and things got easier for a little while, though I could never sleep, never relax when she was at the breast. At 5 months she learned to suck, and I started to relax… but she stopped gaining weight. At 6 months old she started to chomp… oral defensiveness kicking in and teething, but with no rhyme or reason or way to predict… and at 8 months she got teeth and didn’t stop biting. There was no formula on the market she could tolerate, so I persevered. My eldest had been allergic to dairy so we held off on plain milk for a long time… and she kept biting. Every day just about, and sometimes multiple times per day, she bit me. Sometimes every feed. Finally, desperate, and fighting always the urge to push her away, fling her across the room whenever her jaw locked on my breast, I weaned her at age 2 1/2 years, just about exactly.

My youngest, my son, was born 18 months ago, and did okay but not great. My reflexes of massaging and hand expressing hid a problem… posterior tongue tie. I was sore, and it didn’t get better, kept getting worse, but he gained okay. I had PTSD type flashbacks when he’d clamp down, when it hurt, but giving up was not an option–I’d now had two children who could not have tolerated formula as infants, and I wasn’t about to find out if the third was following in their footsteps. At 2 months I asked for help… and found out he had a grade 3 tongue tie, his tongue locked tightly to the base of his mouth, couldnt’ even get a finger under it. We got it fixed and things got better…but never, ever perfect. I don’t know how long he’ll nurse, but he still nurses now, at 18 months old, and I don’t believe that weaning before age 2 is an acceptable option if I am capable of nursing him, so we’ll see how long after that we make it. He’s starting, finally, to learn better manners. He asks “please” rather than just shoving on my breast, sometimes. If he can learn to be more gentle, to be kind, I’ll let him nurse as long as we both want to.

I enjoyed nursing my first after that first horrible week with her. I can’t say I’ve enjoyed it much since. But I don’t do it for my own pleasure, and anyone who thinks I do has a screwed up notion of what pleasure is. I do it because it is the right thing to do for my babies, it is what they need. My soy and dairy-allergic eldest thrived on mother’s milk. My middle child who cannot have added citrates and who needed every single extra stem cell and IQ point I could give her is doing better than they ever let us hope. Breastmilk may well have saved her life–there are not many children with her syndrome and a significant percentage of those died very young.

My little boy, though… he loves his “boop!” and even when he’s driving me crazy and making me feel touched out and panicky…. I still manage to find moments where it is comfortable enough, where I can watch his eyes flutter closed as he drinks his “mook”.

People always say that they are sad when their last baby grows out of a phase or hits a new stage of development. For the first time as a parent I’m not wondering when he’ll hit a stage or wishing he’d develop faster, but likewise I don’t regret that he’s moving past babyhood. When he is done nursing, I will be done with nursing as well, and a good long run of it.