I guess we're a breastfeeding success story

Yesterday was Baby A's 4 month checkup.


Him: Wow, you're a chubby one, aren't you?

Her: grin, drool

Him: What are you feeding her?

Me: Just breastfeeding.

Him: Are you serious? How many times a day?

Me: Too many.


LOL

They grow up so fast...

C is three now. And all of a sudden it's like she's decided to grow up. We're almost fully confident now with daytime toilet training (as long as there's a step handy), she's starting to dress/undress herself, likes to sit and play games on the computer, can change her own DVDs and CDs... where does the time go?

And today marked a new milestone for the baby - she had her first taste of cereal today. She took to it just as well as her older sister did - which means she'd probably have eaten half a cup if I'd let her. LOL I kept her to a couple of tablespoons though for the first feeding. I made it myself; actually I'm planning to make more of her food than I did with C. It was surprisingly easy, actually. I ran some long-grain rice through the coffee grinder, put it in a pot with some bottled spring water, cooked it til the water was absorbed, added more water a few times til finally it had the consistency of cream of wheat. Then I mixed in a couple of scoops of formula powder and a bit of cold water. It made a small cereal bowl full, so I fed her some at lunch today and there will be enough left for maybe a bit at supper tonight and then tomorrow's lunch.

School the last few days has mostly been C helping me around the house - we've been painting her bedroom so we've been talking a bit about before (primer) and after (paint). We made sourdough bread the other day (unsuccessfully...) And she's hooked on her latest leapfrog video - The Storybook Factory. Love that series.

Also, we've been working on memorizing family facts - mommy and daddy's real names, grandparents' real names, where we live, where daddy works. Next comes learning our phone number but that one is taking more work.

This is gonna be some crazy year...

We've decided to get out of the owning-your-own-business psycho life and pursue a different path. The tricky bit is, in order to pursue a different line of work, DH would need further education. (He wants OUT of the office.) Difficult to manage an education when you've got kids, a house, a car, a debtload...

So the next question is, how can you get training and get paid for it?

The answer is, take a job with the military. You get paid during training, then you have a commitment to work for the military for something like three years, before deciding whether to stay in or to go back to civvie life.

During the 13 weeks of training we'll be at home and he'll be on his own, but after that, depending what trade he gets into and where he goes, we can move to the base with him. The only part I'm dreading is that 13 weeks of single parenting... but my mom and dad live just down the road so that will help. As for the actual time living on the military base, I'm kind of looking forward to it. I've been checking out the most likely base online and there are a LOT of facilities we will be able to take advantage of, moms' groups, kids' groups, a preschool, even a private school if we decided not to homeschool. But there's also a homeschooling support group there.

He's shooting for fall to start basic training, so it looks like we'll be looking at early next year to be moving with him. He's done his aptitude testing and did really well, so well that they'd have liked to have him start the end of next month (ACK). But he can't do it that fast, he has to wrap things up with the store first.

Here's to the future...