First Weaning Attempt = FAIL

The best laid plans and all that...

So, I went to New York this past week for work. Before I left we had Oliver down to one nursing session a day (right before bed) and the plan was to get him used to not nursing at all while I was gone. I nursed him on Sunday night for what was supposed to be the last time.

I was gone from Monday to Friday and Oliver and Brian had a blast all week. Check out the pictures I posted on the Oliver Pictures 2010 page. They went to the Children’s Museum, to the UT campus, to the Umlauf Sculpture Gardens and to the park. Even better, Brian took tons of pictures and videos while I was gone so I got to see what all they were up to. 

Oliver took to the lack of breast milk like a champ - he went to bed without protest and was perfectly content while I was gone. All that changed when I finally got back to town late Friday night. All day yesterday, Oliver was crazy grumpy. He wailed and wailed at both nap times (he never did make it down for his second nap) and was completely inconsolable numerous times yesterday. He kept clawing my shirt and obviously wanted to nurse. So, finally I let him. He was immediately back to his old self. 

So, it’s become clear that he’s not ready to let all of this go. And since I’m not 100 percent committed to the whole weaning thing, I will continue to nurse him at bedtime (although today he demanded three nursing sessions, I’m hopeful that we can get back to the one time a day schedule we had going before I left). I’m not ready and he’s not ready so it’s not time yet. I feel fairly confident that one day (maybe soon) he’ll be ready to wean and that’s when it will be time. The one thing we will work on this week is getting him used to having Brian put him to bed while I am in the house. This will give me the option of not having to nurse him and put him to bed every night if I don’t want to.

This weaning thing really is quite the process...

Best Mother's Day Present Ever!

We are down in San Antonio this weekend to celebrate Mother’s Day and my mom’s birthday. My grandmother came down from Midland, too. Tonight, Oliver decided to give me, my mom and my grandmother the best Mother’s Day gift ever. 

Baby Signs

Without really thinking much about it we started trying to teach Oliver some sign language last week. As I reported earlier, he picked up the sign for “water” within minutes and now uses it all the time (and correctly). In the past few days he’s added a few more signs to his repertoire. He now does the sign for “all done” as well as “eat,” “ball,” and “more.” He will also wave when you say “bye-bye” or “night-night.” It’s been really cool to see him do all these signs but I worry that he’s not trying to say the words as he signs them (with the exception of “ball” which he says all the time). I don’t know much about baby signing and worry that it might slow him down in his verbal development instead of speed it up. We always use the word when we make the sign for Oliver but he’s not trying to make the sounds. I should probably do some research on it before we keep going.