Maybe My Next Post Should Be About How Much I Want to Win a Million Dollars

Petunia hasn't even touched her third bottle for the past couple of days. (I usually send four bottles, of which she usually drinks three.)

She has been eating solid foods for about a month, and she has recently really ramped up her intake. So maybe she will drop down to drinking less milk consistently, and I won't have anything to worry about.

Or maybe the last couple of days were just a fluke, and next week she'll be back to sucking down three or four bottles a day.

So thanks for all the great tips in the comments to the last post, but maybe I won't be needing them, after all.

Time in a Bottle

Someday, in the not too distant future, I won't spend any time getting anyone else to sleep. And I suspect that this will make me sad.

In the meantime, my evenings are punctuated by seemingly non-negotiable sleep needs and chores (oh, the never-ending chores), leaving little time for anything else. I am stealing a few minutes between Petunia's bedtime and Pumpkin's bathtime to write this post.

Given the paucity of free time in my life, I am loathe to add another non-negotiable task to my evenings. So I am trying very hard to avoid adding an evening pumping session back into my schedule.

However, I am not keeping up with what Petunia is drinking at day care, and I am watching my frozen supplies dwindle. We haven't reached a critical point yet, but it is looming on the horizon.

I have nothing against formula, but I stubbornly don't want to use it. I am blessed with an abundant milk supply- really, you almost need an over-supply to keep up with a baby by pumping- and since I went to great lengths to provide Pumpkin with nothing but breastmilk, I feel like I should do the same for Petunia. For fairness, you know. (Yes, I know this is silly.)

Regardless, I view the little bottles of milk as liquid time, because they are not irreplaceable- I can make more (see above about the abundant supply), but to do so requires time, and of that I do not have an abundant supply.

All of this is to explain why it drives me absolutely bonkers that I can't figure out how to explain how I want the day care teachers to handle the last two bottles I send for Petunia, to maximize the amount of milk that I can reuse the next day. (I send extra because she refuses to settle into a schedule, so some days she needs it. Anything that has not yet touched her lips can be reused the next day. Anything that she has had a crack at has to be tossed if it is not used that day. Believe me, it hurts to pour milk down the drain. I usually make Hubby do it.)

I remember having a similar problem when Pumpkin was a baby, and I don't remember ever solving it. I don't think it can be solved, because the milk in the bottle represents time to the day care teachers, too- a more complicated routine would add to the time it takes to give Petunia her bottle, and with four babies to each adult, they don't really have an abundant supply of time, either. So I watch my frozen supplies dwindle and wonder if Petunia's solid food intake will increase enough to reduce her milk intake before my frozen stocks shrink to that critical point at which I decide that yes, I really do have to add the evening pumping session back to my schedule.

And will Petunia be sleeping well enough by that point to make those extra 20 minutes in my evening routine acceptable?

Back Home

Last week, we were on vacation at my parents' house in Arizona. It was a good trip- we got to see a lot of family and some friends, Pumpkin had a blast with her Mimi and Boppa, and Petunia got to see what its like to have enough grown ups around to ensure that she is constantly entertained (at home, she has to amuse herself a lot, while we deal with her far more vocal older sister). Hubby and I got a night away in a local hotel for our 5 year anniversary, too.

We drove over in our new Mazda 5, which was great. It easily held all of the gear we have to travel with these days. It was nice to be able to go out visiting relatives and what-not in one car. The "way back" seat in the Mazda 5 is not luxurious, but it was certainly comfortable enough for short trips around town.

Both girls did fairly well on the drives, too. The drive between San Diego and my parents' house (in the Phoenix area) is about 6 hours if you don't stop. On the way over, we left after dinner and stopped in Yuma for the night- Yuma is roughly half way between San Diego and Phoenix. Petunia slept the entire way, and Pumpkin fell asleep after an hour or so. They both did OK in the hotel, but Petunia started our day bright and early by waking up and refusing to go back down at 4:30 a.m. We were on the road by about 8 a.m., but had to take a couple of longish potty breaks, so didn't get to my parents' house until lunch time.

On the way back, we left after lunch, having convinced Pumpkin that the Birdie would find her if she took quiet time in the car. She slept most of the way to Yuma, and played with her magnetic doodle thingy the rest of the way. Petunia slept. We stopped for about an hour in Yuma at a really great park. Pumpkin had fun on the playground, and Petunia had a chance to sit in the shade and move around a bit. Then we drove to El Centro, which is about an hour from Yuma), for dinner. After dinner, we changed the girls into their PJs and headed home. Petunia fussed a bit but then slept the rest of the way. Pumpkin played with her magnetic doodle thingy a bit more, and then slept the rest of the way. Both transferred to their beds fairly easily.

All in all, we're feeling like we worked out the timing pretty well. Of course, we'll try to do it again sometime and it will go miserably wrong... we know this was more luck than anything else. Only luck can explain how both girls managed to sleep through the blindingly bright lights and stop and go traffic associated with the Border Patrol checkpoint we had to go through last night. (These checkpoints are an annoying side effect of our current approach to immigration and border enforcement- all traffic stops under bright stoplights and a Border Patrol officer looks into your car. We are always waved through almost immediately. I imagine that they are even more annoying if you have to stop for a chat with the agent. We went through one on the way over during daylight. I still do not have a good answer for Pumpkin's question about why we had to stop and talk to the nice man.)

I've got some trip stories to post, and more posts kicking around in my head, too- for instance, I have some more thoughts on feeding a picky eater that I want to write up. But Hubby has convinced me to take advantage of the fact that we've already disrupted Petunia's sleep environment to start the process of moving her out of our room. She's asleep in her crib, in her own room, right now. Since she's currently waking up 2-3 times a night, I should probably get to bed. I'll have to actually get out of bed and go down the hall to her when she wakes up tonight! (The cosleeper is still set up, and I suspect she'll finish the night in it- I don't want to undo all the good rest I got on vacation in one night.)

I know it is time to move Petunia to her own room. She is almost 7 months old now, and I actually suspect she'll sleep better in her own room- we seem to wake her up when we go to bed. But I can't believe my little baby is so big. Transitions are hard on me, too!

Still More Thoughts on Food

I've still been thinking about food, particularly about the idea, taken as gospel in some corners of the internet, that processed food is a bad thing.

Two questions are floating around in my head:

1. Do you suppose that when humans first learned how to turn wheat into flour and then into bread, a group of traditionalists went around grousing about this new, unnatural processed food?

2. Why is it that when Native Americans or a tribe in some remote corner of the world use all parts of an animal it is considered noble, but when a food company does something similar and fashions chicken nuggets out of less-favored bits of chicken meat it is considered bad, even evil?

I suspect the answer to the first question is a resounding "no", because that technological innovation increased the food calories that could be extracted from a plot of land, and enabled those calories to be stored for delayed use. These were good things. But who knows, maybe some people at the time were suspicious of the new-fangled bread.

The answer to the second question is harder to fathom. I suspect it has something to do with our deep-seated ideas about how homes should be run and what women should do with their lives, mixed with a healthy dose of knee-jerk "if a big corporation does it, it must be evil".

Personally, I think we should evaluate our food based on whether its production is sustainable and whether it is good for us, not on what technology was used to produce it or who produced it. I think we should be rational about this, instead of dogmatic. I don't think high-fructose corn syrup is a problem- I think the problem is our overuse of refined sugar. So I don't search for juices cookies made with "real sugar". I limit our use of juices cookies*. Similarly, I don't think the problem is that we are using foods that are made by a company and not baked from scratch at home. I think the problem is that some of those foods use too much fat, sugar, and salt as a shortcut to good taste. So I try to chose these foods carefully and use them in moderation.

It is not that I am a huge fan of "processed" food. We don't eat fast food very often at all. We cook most of our meals in our house, and I try to find recipes that I think are healthy. The vast majority of the recipes in heavy rotation come from Cooking Light, actually. However, I do make use of "convenience" foods, such as pre-shredded cheese, store bought tortellini, and frozen sweet potato fries (which I bake, not fry). And once every week or so, we eat a frozen pizza. I read the ingredients, and I decide if I think the product is a good mix of nutrition and convenience. I balance those things against the limited time I have in the evenings, and my desire to spend some of that time with my children, not in the kitchen.

I suspect that as my children get older, dinner time will move a little later and I will get them to help me make dinner- or at least hang out at the dining table while I make dinner. Hubby will make dinner more often, too, once we don't have to try to eat between 6 and 6:30. When these things happen, we will use fewer convenience foods, because we will have more time to cook and the work will be shared among all the family members.

In the meantime, I will continue on as I am going now- evaluating recipes and ingredients one at a time, with an eye to both nutrition and easing my hectic after work routine. And I will continue to refuse to feel guilty about it.

*Thanks to Petunia's decision to let me get some uninterrupted sleep last night, I'm thinking a little more clearly, and I realize that juice is a bad example. What I actually do with juice is look for products with NO added sugars and less added "sweetener juice" (e.g., grape juice). And then I still limit its consumption- Pumpkin gets juice at home only rarely.

Also, more on HFCS, food safety, and additives in the comments!

A Blinding Flash of Insight

A couple of hours ago, I was sitting at my desk, engrossed in an interesting user interface design problem. I realized that I was fidgeting in my chair because I had to go to the bathroom, but wanted to finish designing the screen I was working on.

And then I flashed back to last night, when Pumpkin was sitting at her little desk, engrossed in a picture she was coloring. She was fidgeting around, clearly in need of a potty break, but wouldn't stop to take one until she finished coloring in the sun she'd drawn on her page.

One of the most humbling things about parenting is seeing your own bad habits and personality quirks echoed back at you.