Week 22

22 Weeks Old on 4/17/09

Embry fell asleep in her jumperoo today, it was adorable. Her little head was squished against the side and she was snoring. Of course I got out all my cameras (video, digital, and the *new* digital slr) and took lots of pictures. I knew she was tired when she was standing in there yawning, but I didn't think she'd actually fall asleep standing up. She's been bouncing around in there like a crazy kid, she really loves it and it makes me happy to see her happy. Here's a short video so you can see how much jumping she does!


Embry has been completely cured of her bottlephobia. On Monday, Tuesday, and half of Wed I exclusively fed her with a bottle. I have to say that anyone who pumps exclusively deserves a lot of praise because it is not an easy task! On top of taking care of a baby, you have to take the time to pump and then clean everything you used in the process. Not to mention, it's pretty rough on the tatas if I do say so myself! Anyhow, she took the bottle right from the start and I learned how great the dr brown's bottles are too. I used 'the green bottle' (a Nuby, the one I bought with a nipple more like a breast) for the first feeding and I could tell that Embry was actually having to suck pretty hard to get the milk out. She does this thing every couple of sucks where she shakes her chin and during those times the bubbles of air would go into the bottle to make it easier to suck. Point is, this never happens with Dr Brown's bottles because she doesn't ever have to come unlatched to let the air into the bottle. Booyah!

Speaking of milk, last week when she was in the nursery during MOPS she was given one of the 'in case of emergency' bottles of formula I have in the diaper bag instead of the milk I had pumped for her. Up until that point, she had been given zero formula what-s0-ever. I was quite proud of that fact. I have to say, I in no way dislike formula...in fact, I think it's darn great! I mean, what did women do before they had formula? What if you couldn't breastfeed for whatever reason or if you adopted...how could you feed your baby...it's a mystery. Point is, I had this weird thing going where I wanted to be able to say, 'my baby never had one drop of formula.' Don't ask me why, I don't know why, that's just the way I felt. So, she was given the formula, but when all was said and done, I don't think she actually drank any of it. This was back in the bottlephobia days and judging from the large cream colored stain on her shirt, none of it actually made it into her stomach.

I discovered a few days ago that if I sat Embry up, she could stay there for about 30 seconds. It was a pretty amazing discovery and I imagine she could have stayed sitting up weeks ago, I just didn't realize it at the time. I had been sitting her up on uneven surfaces up until a few days ago when I sat her up in her crib and *poof* she stayed there. Amazingly, I didn't run to get my camera but that's probably because she wasn't in a super cute outfit. Yes, I'm neurotic. Wait is that the right word...looking it up online..."Also called psychoneurosis. a functional disorder in which feelings of anxiety, obsessional thoughts, compulsive acts, and physical complaints without objective evidence of disease, in various degrees and patterns, dominate the personality." Yes, that's me.

And my sarcasm brings me to another point: My Blog. I've been having quite the struggle with honesty/secrets/being myself (call it what you like) lately. Ever since receiving a rather subjective comment around week 30 of my pregnancy followed by a very disheartening email, I've kept my true feelings on most subjects to myself. I feel that my sarcasm and humor have been completely lost in this blog and I'm sorry to the few people who read along every week for the extremely boring content. There were a million things I wanted to say over the past months, but bit my tongue for fear of being too transparent and possibly hurting feelings or offending others. Although I love my daughter to pieces and could talk about her for days on end, every week when I write this blog I feel like I'm saying 'blah blah blah.' At least inbetween the 'blahs' I'd like to throw in something with perspective about the delights, struggles, and flat out hysteria that comes along with being a mom. I recently heard about this mom who blogged about her journey to and through motherhood and took a no-holds-barred approach...she ended up making tons of money with a huge blog readership which led to book deals and tv appearances. Not that I could ever be remotely that interesting, but I admired that she was able to speak her mind and share her true thoughts with the world even despite receiving lots of critisism for it. So now I wonder if I should just say whatever I want in this blog or start another one somewhere and keep this one just a weekly Embry update or just forget about saying what I want to and continue doing what I've been doing? Then I think about all the stuff I didn't say and how dissapointed I am that all those raw feelings were never expressed or documented, not only for my own selfish reasons but it might have helped someone else in the long run, who knows? Now I sit and wonder if I should delete this entire paragraph. Guess I'll just throw it out there and chalk it up to the 'what's done is done' mentality.