Weaning

Well, it happened.  The bag of baby formula is gone. The husband and I had decided that when Noelle was done with her 50lb bag of milk replacement, she was going to be cut off cold turkey.  We rationalized that since we were only going to be feeding her formula for a short time, we would continue to use the gigantic baby bottle until the end so she would really bond with us, despite much more knowledgeable dairy folks telling us she should have been weaned from the bottle a month ago.  How could we?  She was almost three months when we got her and she is sooo cute when she slobbers milk all over you trying to get the last drop of ambrosia from the bottle.  It is udderly (get it) adorable when she tugs on the nipple as she thrusts her head forward ramming the bottle into your ribcage or forehead depending on how you are holding it; not to mention how sweet it is to have a 200lb baby giving you the pat down with her tongue once she has sucked the bottle dry because she is sure you are hiding more milk in your boots.  Who'd want to give that up?  I was quite relieved I was boarding a plane a day after her last bottle.  The weaning process was not going to be pretty with our spoiled little princess.

Yesterday morning as I was calmly getting myself and the children ready for school in the most organized fashion,  the husband asks, "How long can a calf be given formula? "

I know what is coming but reply, "Anywhere from 2 to 6 months is what is recommended."

This is what greeted me when I got home that afternoon.

Technically, she should be getting cow's milk since she is a cow, but we couldn't find a supply of raw milk nearby so settled on the formula, which seems strange, but she is thriving.  When Prince was a baby I felt like a failure as a mother because I had to supplement him with baby formula. He wasn't getting enough breast milk because, to quote my lactation consultant, "He was a lazy sucker."  I know I should probably stop telling this story since Prince is almost a teenager and is probably mortified by the knowledge that he was breast fed, but the double entendre (a French term I will surely be using next week) is just too funny to take out of my comic repertoire (more French).

This reminds me of another funny thing that happened at school this week.  I know I said I wasn't going to write about the children, but this more of a situational story that just happens to have occurred while doing a project with a group of five and six year olds.  It has absolutely nothing to do with cows or double entendres but I still start laughing like a thirteen year old boy when I think about it.

So yesterday in my ELA group, the children had to cut out letters and unscramble them to spell a word. Each word scramble had a picture to give them clues as to what the word was.  For one of the word scrambles, there was a picture of a little girl picking blueberries and the letters P, K, C, I.  They needed to cut out the letters and paste them next to the picture in the proper order which would be, "PICK."  One little boy proudly showed me his work.  He had inverted his "P" so instead of "pick" it said, "dick."   I turned purple trying to stifle my laughter for fear he would think I was laughing at him.  I am pretty sure someone at Houghton Mifflin chose this word on purpose knowing that many children would be pasting the word, "dick" onto their school work, in order to give overworked teachers a little chuckle.  I may need to add this person to my list of dream BFFs.  Nigella still tops the list, though Nico Case is coming in at a close second.  She was hysterical on NPR the other day.

Phew. Is there such a thing as writer's ADD?  I definitely have it.  Back to my lazy sucker.

The first four months of Prince's life were spent with him curled up on a nursing pillow eating for three minutes, sleeping for twenty, eating for three minutes, sleeping for twenty and on and on, while I sat on the couch watching every episode of Law and Order.  Breastfeeding was the best thing for my baby and damn it, I was going to do it.

This all day nursing session was a big reason why I didn't go back to work after he was born.  Well, this and driving around in a cargo van with a film crew at all hours of the night with generator fumes wafting through the air probably wasn't the best place for baby. Oh, and there was also the fact that I was convinced anyone who took him out was going to drop him on his soft spot or push his baby carriage into an open manhole.  I may have had a teensy bit of postpartum crazy.

He finally got the hang of the nursing thing, but decided to wean himself right around a year.  It was a much easier process than it was for James Dean or Scrappy or I guess Noelle at this point.

Tomorrow I am off for five days in Paris!  Waves of excitement come rushing over me followed by waves of anxiety about being so far away from my boys. The tsunami of apprehension of leaving the husband in charge of getting them to school and feed them something besides cereal is starting to subside.  I thought about leaving him cold turkey like Noelle, but the roast chicken for dinner tomorrow is already in the oven and I have mapped out a meal plan for the week, but just in case, I have stocked up on cereal.  Luckily, since he has been home and I have been working at the school every day, he has learned how to do a load of laundry and he loads and unloads the dishwasher.  Weaning all around.