Weaning

Weaning is horrible.

It is horrible and terrible and I'm considering nursing my child until she is 4 just to avoid doing it.

(Not really)
(Well, kinda)

It is not a one day thing. I can't just wake up one day and say, "I want to be done feeding" and have it happen. I am not one of those women who has their milk just magically dry up. I'm not one one of those people who says "I tried to breast feed her for a year but after 6 months, my milk just gave up!"

I actually know there are a lot of you out there reading my blog. I have nothing to say to you. I just don't get it!! Someone please explain that to me. How does your milk just run out? Aren't your boobs leaking milk every night? Don't you wake up in a puddle of your own making? Don't you stand in the shower and your milk shoots out hitting the wall 2 feet away? Doesn't this happen to you for the first 8 or 9 months of nursing? So seriously, how does one's milk run out?

That is SO not me. So not my family. We have plenty of milk. You all know that. I won't go into details (That would be the first time, right?) But this post is about me trying to reduce the amount of milk my body makes.

It is not pleasant. Within 2 hours of purposefully missing a feeding, (you know cutting down from 3 feedings to 2 a day) my poor ladies have rock hard nodules in them and are pulsing with pain. Picking up my baby makes them throb and if anything (a hand, my wrist, my baby's hand) brushes over any part of them (the side, the front, the middle) I shout out in pain. I'm counting down the hours to when she can eat right before bed.

On Tuesday, when I did this, my poor girls were so throbbing with pain they ached just as I stood in my kitchen. I finally got my child to eat right before bed, and she couldn't grab on to the nipple!! My boobs were so engorged that they had pushed out around my nipple rendering it almost flat. She tried to grab it once, twice, curled her lips into her mouth against the sensation (it was like she was trying to nurse from a rock) and then. . . .SHE PULLED HER HEAD BACK TO EXAMINE MY BOOB.

She looked at it quizzically as if to say, "It looks the same, it smells the same, but that sure don't feel like normal!!" She then tried one more time, and this time she just forged ahead. It was painful, just like those first days of feeding (you all remember those, right?) but soon the pain dissolved into relief. Sweet sweet relief. It will take 2-3 weeks for my body to get back to where it was previously. And then I just have to do it 2 more times.

So now you know. And seriously, if you see my kid sucking my teat when she comes home from an especially hard day of Kindergarten, please don't judge me.

"Never judge a woman until you've gone a day in her bra."

Truer words were never spoken.

Eureka

So coming home from Ecuador was horrible and great at the same time. We were going home, and yet we weren't. We had to fly to Costa Rica, then Guatemala and then LAX and then Utah. They made us get off the plane EVERY TIME. And most of those flights were very full, so we didn't get an extra seat to put the baby on while she was sleeping. But it was great to be going home . . .sort of.

Anyway, once we got to LAX, we realized that we didn't have our boarding passes for the Delta flight, and so we would have to check back in at the Delta counter. We didn't think that was such a problem until we realized that the Delta counter wasn't open and we wouldn't be able to check in until that time. Again, I will say this loudly TRAVELOCITY CAN SUCK IT. Great job making us stay in the LAX airport for 5 hours until the counter opened. And not in the good part of the airport where there are restaurants and vending machines. No! On the outside of the airport right next to the drug dealers who are driving by trying to sell their meth to weary travelers. It was seriously upsetting

Marcelo and I tried to find a corner to sleep, but we both couldn't sleep because what if someone ran off with our child? True, she was sleeping, but she was sleeping in her stroller, so it would be really easy to roll her away! The ticket counter finally opened up, and they tried to tell us to go to one of the kiosks, but we got to go to the front because they wouldn't check us in at the kiosk. After a diaper diarrhea blowout from baby, and a very overcrowded flight to SLC, we were HOME! I was so excited to be back where I could drink the water from the tap!

Reagan picked us up from the airport, and she drove us home. It was to be a short visit home, though. We were only there for about 4 or 5 hours. Because that night we went back to the airport to get on a plane to California! I know, we are crazy!! But my mom pulled every string in the book to get this vacation planned at just the right time when everyone could be there. And it was only going to be for 4 days, so I knew it wouldn't be that bad. Again, I was wrong.

I went and tried to do as much laundry as possible to be able to wash all the bugs out of our clothes and to have clean stuff to take to CA. I did pretty good! I had to take a load to the laundry mat down the street to dry it in time, but we did it just fine! Marcelo went to Target to buy another DVD player because I broke the other one in Ecuador (CLAAASSSSIC ALICIA!!!) We had no time to sleep: we packed up, and we were gone.

So the last time Marcelo and I had a complete REM cycle was the night of the 23rd into the 24th. For some reason we were late. I don't know why. I think it had to do with Marcelo needing to stop to get a Red Bull at the Mavrick so he could be awake enough to drive to the airport. But I know we got to the airport about 40 or 45 min early. Not great, but not too bad. We knew that we would be leaving our car in long term parking but I didn't know if I should drop Marcelo off and let him check in alone, or drop him off with baby and luggage, or he drop me off. We ultimately decided to park together and then go and check in together.

BIG MISTAKE!! We missed check-in. Apparently you have to be checked in 30 before or they sell your seat. We were there 24 min and they sold our seats. (that shuttle from long term parking takes a LOOOOONG time. PUN INTENDED)

Please note that we were on NO SLEEP. Our baby is on NO SLEEP. Poor girl is being jacked around so much, she has no idea which way is up! And we get there and are told that there are no seats. My mom is supposed to pick us all up at the airport in Redding, and if not, she has to make a 3 hour trip to come later!! It's so not good.

These are our options:

1) Pay to fly out tomorrow. This will cost the purchase of whole new tickets and will be over $1000 each.
2) Pay to fly to LAX on another airline. Only Southwest still had a flight going out there that same night. But to make our connection up to the other flight was WAAAY tight and she didn't think we would make it. Oh, and the cost to fly Southwest would be $1000 for each ticket.

Then the lady asked us if there were any other airports nearby. In my drunkenness, I was only thinking about Lake Tahoe because they tried to sell me a ticket there before thinking it was "close" to Redding. I am on no sleep and it takes me longer than it should to say, "Oh yes, Eureka is close!! You guys have a direct flight there! Do you still have a flight going out tonight?" And she said yes!!! And the cost to "change" our ticket would be around $360 each. Not great. The money becomes the issue now. Marcelo is freaking and saying that he's not going! If it's that much money, he's not going!! Screw it! He's going home and going to sleep!

I tell her that is the best option, because for sure we can get someone to pick us up on their way to the cabin. It will at least get us there, and then we can figure out how to get 3 hours away to our cabin. I'm sure there are a few people still in Eureka waiting to come up!

Nope. There is no one there so we have to rent a car in Eureka. We call about 45 million rental companies (actual number: 5) and are told they can get a car for us, and then at the end they say, "oh, sorry, we don't have any cars here" Crazy. The car is expensive, but by the end of the day, I'm so tired of calling places and I feel lucky that we even FOUND a rental car!

So at the end of the day, our plane is OF COURSE late getting to CA because the flight crew was on another plane delayed in Chicago. They had to call in a whole new flight crew and wake them up to get us there! It made us even later getting to Eureka, where we then had a 3 hour drive to the Cabin. Which I did. Without any sleep for the past 2 days. All I have to say is that Sunflower seeds + Dr. Pepper=Crazy Delicious. And a crazy jolt to the system. While Marcelo was falling asleep in the back in the middle of conversations, I was feelin' fine!!

And then we were there at 2 am!! And our travel problems were over!! I think we are done traveling for a very VERY long time.

So here are some pictures of our great time at the Cabin:

The family picture of just us kids, spouses and grand kids. There are tons of us!!

And then the "everyone" picture. We take one every year. It's a lot of blood, sweat, tears, yelling screaming and crying to make it happen. And I'm not kidding! But we get one every year!!

Oh, and P.S. we didn't have to pay the $360 to change our tickets because apparently they gave our seats away too quickly. We didn't have any bags to check, so they shouldn't have given them away until 20 before take off!! So due to "their error" they changed them for free. THANKS DELTA!!

And be on time for your flights, people!!

Ecuador Part Two

Just a few more pictures and items from Ecuador.

Gifts from my mother in law: My mother in law made a few choice items for my baby. One I took back to the USA with me, and one I hid so that she *thought* I took it, but by the time she discovered it, it would be too late. This is the one I took. It's ok. She said I could hold the baby's "hair stuff in it". Ummmm, thanks?

Anyway, it has little pockets on it and it's a caterpillar. Obviously. My mother in law's house was FULL of things like this. I hate junk like that. I mean, I know that they don't have tons of money (neither do we for that matter) but at least I don't make stuff just for the sake of having something on the walls. But nevertheless, like I said, I really didn't mind it, and it was easy to carry, so I took it with me.

However, the second item was not so lucky. It was conveyed to me that I should put my kid's diapers in it. Again, thanks? Here is a choice picture of it:


I don't know how to describe it's hideousness. You know how in my last post I tried to describe to you about how no one listens to me? Well, it's like that with these "gifts" too. No one bothered to ask if we would have room for them. No one asked if we even wanted them. It was just assumed that we would take them.

It was huge, firstly. Also it was heavy. Also, I think she's under the impression that I use cloth diapers, because this is a classic cloth diaper caddy. I hated everything about it the first time I saw it, and I was going to be forced to take it. Marcelo said, "my mom worked hard on it, you have to take it." UUUUGHHH!! I'm sure these last few paragraphs make me a horrible person, but I really REALLY hated everything about it.

Moving on. My mother in law is a very unique person. Her birthday was on the 18th of June and everyone got her something. Marcelo and I brought this great new set of silverware, and her other kids got her clothes and shoes and fun things like that. However, my mother in law is a CONTROL FREAK, and she had no idea that the party was happening. Here is the look on her face when she found out what was going on:

SHE IS TICKED!! She's pretending to smile, but she's seriously annoyed. Those things on her lap are her presents, but she wouldn't touch them or look at them for like 30 min. She was just going on and on about how she didn't know, and she should've known, and why didn't anyone say anything? and why didn't she know, and SHE SHOULD'VE BEEN TOLD ABOUT THE SURPRISE PARTY THEY WERE THROWING FOR HER, DANGIT!!! She was really REALLY ticked off.

So Here are a few group shots from that same "party night. I like how these pictures also show a little more fully my in-laws house:















So the picture on the left has 3 of the 4 siblings (Leo wasn't there yet) and the parents. Marcelo. Lety, Cesar and Vicente (My father in law on the far right) And of course my mother in law, not smiling. And then the picture on the right has everyone in it. (except me who is taking the picture) The little boy in front and the boy in the back with the black hat are the kids of Anita (seated) from her first husband (He died in a sad motorcycle accident a few years ago) In yellow is Leo, Marcelo's older brother and married to Anita. Anita is currently pregnant (after a serious ectopic pregnancy scare/surgery and miscarriage 18 months ago) and they are hoping everything goes well. Jan 6th is her due date, so that will be exciting.

So that is a great family shot. Here is one of my favorite pictures from the whole trip: My father in law and my baby:















AGGGGHHHHH!! That shirt makes me laugh every time I see it!! My father in law is so soft-spoken, so kind-hearted, so peaceful so it makes the shirt hilarious on every level. Plus the fact that it's pink. AWESOME! My father in law is one of my favorite people on this earth. I really love the look that Evi is giving while he holds her. And she took to him SO quickly. I think she just knows and can sense his kindness. She would cry when he left and wanted to walk outside to see him leave. Honestly, my father in law is amazing. As much as my mother in law annoys me, my father in law makes me happy.

Next: my baby loved LOVED their cat "Chiqui!" (pronounced Chee-kee) Chiqui is a boy, and they starve him. I'm not kidding. I was told by Marcelo that you "HAVE" to starve them so that they will run around the house and catch and kill the spiders and roaches and mice. That is all well in theory, but when you have no more mice or roaches or spiders because the cat ate them all, then what? I just know that cat cried all the time, and I hated it, so I would sneak him food whenever I could.


My child LOVED him. She would chase him around the house and he quickly learned that being close to the baby got his face smacked or his tail pulled. He was a great sport about it, and never scratched her. I will say that the animals in that house are VERY well behaved. . . they have to be or they don't get any food!!

Here is a video of Evy "demanding" the cat come down and play with her:



And finally, this little "stroller" was purchased by my in laws and generally liked by my child. It was liked by her until she saw me sitting down watching her ride in it and she wanted to be held by me. Until then, however, she had a great time:


Oh, that red outfit is actually a set of PJ's that used to have long sleeves. I had to cut them off. It was very difficult trying to find the balance between not over heating my child and protecting her skin from the malaria/dengue carrying mosquitoes. We figured that this was a good option for these PJ's.

Well that's it!! All my pictures from Ecuador. I wish that I had more. I'm just not a picture girl!! Oh well, maybe next time.

My New Favorite Thing

You know what my favorite thing is these days? Checking out books on CD from the Library, and then downloading them to my iPod. Then I listen to them, and when I'm done I delete them!! It's awesome!!

Doing the dishes? Listening to the Great Gatsby.

Changing a diaper? Listening to Jane Eyre.

Taking the dog outside and picking up her poo? Listening to Stephen King.

The only sad thing is that our library doesn't have that great a selection of CD's. I would go to Orem (They have a much bigger selection) but I don't have a car again. So I just have to hope they update their inventory soon.

It's seriously my favorite thing. So what should be the next book I put on there? Suggestions?

Ecuador Travels & Trevails

I don't know why, but I just couldn't get back in the mood to blog for a long time now. I think I have so many things to blog it's so overwhelming. But I've decided I'm just going to have to start and then if I forget some things and have to come back later and tell you about them I will.

So the last your heard from me, I had a horrible traveling trip but I was finally with my in-laws enjoying the fresh fruits and other tasty foods of Ecuador. Here are a few pictures of some of those tasty foods. These are called Achotillos (they might be achetillos and I'm just pronouncing it incorrectly. Marcelo isn't here to double check so you'll have to forgive me if I'm spelling it incorrectly.) From the first pictures, these little fruits looking menacing















They look spikey and a little hairy all at the same time. That is actually a very good description of them on the outside. However, when you crack into them they look like this:


Yeah, they are like a nice peeled grape inside. You peel of the spiny but soft outer shell, and inside you find a soft flesh not unlike a grape who has married a mango. The taste is very sweet, and the texture is very peeled-grape-ish, but the mango reference comes from how the fruit clings to the large pit inside and how the little strings get caught on your teeth. But these things cold are the best on a hot afternoon or a hot night for that matter.

Here is another food item: Chifles.














Chifles are a gift from Heaven.They are made from "verdes" also known as plantains to you English speaking folk and they are much more related to a potato than to a banana. They look like unripe bananas, but they are completely different. You have to cut off the skins and if you get some of them under your nails it will give you a splinter like you wouldn't believe. That's right, the SKINS will do that! There is no easy peeling going on with these bad boys.

So the reason they are in the bag is because we bought them from the "chifleros" down the street. They do nothing all day but use a mandolin slicer and take these verdes and slice them into big vats of hot oil. They make thousands of them every day. And this whole bag cost like 50 cents. It's good they are so cheep because Marcelo's family loves them with ceviche and 2 of them can finish off a whole bag. Heck! I can finish off a whole bag myself! They taste like potato chips but fresher. Uggh, I'm getting a little salivated just remembering them again!

So enough about the food. You know that the food was good. It was great! But that was one of the only good things about being there. I hate to say it, but it was true!! It was so different being down there. Just so different and more difficult. The heat, the location and the fact that our baby didn't adjust so well all made things so difficult.

A typical day involved the following:
2:00 am, 3:30 am and 4:30 am: The family dog (who's name is León) sleeps up on the roof. However, you need to know that they have a sheet metal roof and he likes to put himself under the edge of it. If you know anything about big metal buildups, you know that the sounds travels EVERYWHERE in them. So when he is under that edge and starts barking, he might as well be inside the house right next to my head. It's honestly that loud. So at those times posted above, León hears other dogs in the neighborhood barking and decides he wants to get in on the action. The barking action I'm always terrified it will wake up Evi, but it actually doesn't! Never! She's used to the craziness already

6:00 am: Marcelo waking up and sweeping the floor in the house. My baby also wakes up at this time. I count the number of mosquito bites I accrued over the night. The number is always in the double digits.

8:00 am: Breakfast. Usually some sort of fried meat. I did not like breakfast. I would avoid it. Much to the annoyance of my mother in law. She hated when I refused food. One day my sister in law made tuna, onions, tomatoes and cilantro in lime juice for breakfast. BREAKFAST!! Again, I would avoid it. While trying to find something my child would eat. She usually didn't want to eat anything.

8:30 am Marcelo leaves to goodness knows where. Honestly, I have no idea where he is or who he goes to see!! But I know he won't be back before 1 pm, sometimes as late as 3 pm. I never go with him. Why is that? Well, we tried it one time and put the baby in the stroller and once we hit the sun she started screaming. It was way too hot for her and all the little bugs kept biting her! It just wouldn't work out. So he just left without me and went to make his visits alone. He had to go alone and I was left in the house alone with my mother in law. . . .

10:30 am: Nap time for me and baby. I LOOOOVED nap time. Especially when I had dengue. Evi and I put the fan on and just slept.

11:30-3 pm. Nothing. Nothing at all. I would maybe listen to my iPod, maybe talk to my sister in law. But usually nothing.

3:00 pm: Lunch. Usually something I didn't want to eat. But what could I do. They never ask you if you are hungry, and they never ask you how much you want of the food. You sit down and a plate of food is in front of you, and you eat it. Those are the rules. Don't like tamarindo juice that tastes like rotten fruit? Then plug your nose and chug it! Seriously, she had this tamarindo paste sitting on her counter for like 3 days and on the 2nd day I lifted the lid and my head snapped back because it was so strong. It smelled very rancid, almost alcoholic in it's rancidness. I asked what it was, and they said it was for the "business" (The business is "health juices". Whatever) And then they put it in front of us to drink!! I did not like it! But like the good daughter in law, I ate it.

Most days I wasn't hungry. It's too hot to eat. Or I only wanted a little something. No luck. You didn't get to choose your portion size. At the beginning I would fight through it, but at the end I was tired trying to make everyone happy and I just left the food that I didn't want.

3-9 pm: More of nothing. Another nap for Evi, maybe another nap for me. Maybe some more hammock time. Marcelo gone visiting people: Me alone.

And that was my day. Over and over again. I was so tired of all of this, it was too long being there.

And my baby was sick. She got persistent diarrhea. And she didn't want to eat. My father in law really got to see how strong willed my baby was. If she doesn't want to eat, she won't. She would go meals and meals without eating. And my mother in law would whine and try to get her to eat something, but she wouldn't have it. There was nothing we could do to make her eat. So that was so nerve racking.

And then she started the vomiting. She would vomit at least once a day. She wouldn't eat anything all day, and then we finally got some food in her, and she would puke it up 4-6 hours later. Everything. I was so nervous. I could see her losing weight in front of me. It was scary. I am so thankful I was still breastfeeding. Sometimes it was the only thing she would eat. And I knew that she was getting it at least 4 times a day. So I at least I had that going through my mind saving me from running to the nearest airport and jumping on a plane directly home!!

And I almost did lots of times. My in-laws have cement floors. That's right, just cement on the floors. The front room is a smooth cement, but quite slippery. The dining room, bedrooms and kitchen all have a rougher uneven cement. Which does not bode well with my baby flinging herself on the floor in the middle of a tantrum. Or slipping out of your arms trying to get away and falling on her face. She did this over and over again. And I got a picture of it:


Nice, right? It was huge for like 4 days, then it went away. And then the very night it went away, she did it again!! I swear people thought that we were smacking her around. On the picture on the right you can see the sheen off the smoother cement in the background.

Anyway, my kid was always smacking herself or trying to eat the dirt off the floor. (No wonder she was so sick all the time!!) It just wasn't an enjoyable trip for me!! I wish it were! I wish I could say it was better! But it was just torturous.

Oh, and I didn't get to go to the beach. YUP, remember how excited I was to do that? Remember how I had never been to a warm beach and I was so excited to go while in Ecuador? Well, it didn't happen. I got dengue fever. What is dengue fever you ask? Well, Healthline.com says:

"Dengue fever is a virus-based disease spread by mosquitoes. Dengue fever begins with a sudden high fever, often to 104-105 degrees Fahrenheit. A flat, red rash may appear over most of the body early during the fever. A second rash, measles-like in appearance, appears later in the disease. Infected people may have increased skin sensitivity and are very uncomfortable. Other symptoms include: Headache, Joint aches, Muscle Aches, Nausea, Swollen Lymph Nodes, Vomiting."

It's basically like mono for a week. With a rash. I had all those symptoms except the vomiting. It did last a week, and I didn't take anything for it. No reason, the recommended medicine is Tylenol! Obviously just for the discomfort. I can stand it, so I didn't want to take anything. It ruined the last week of our time there. I just slept all the time. And I had a rash. And Marcelo had me take like 3 showers a day. I was SOOOO tired of showers.

Did you know my in-laws don't have hot water? So when I say shower I mean cold shower! Cold showers are horrible first thing in the morning. And cold hair first thing in the morning? LESS EFFECTIVE!! I was so done with Ecuador and dengue and just everything in general by the 24th. ALL DONE!! (Say that the way my niece Isabel used to say it with the accompanying sign language. I know most of you don't know it, but you can make it up in your mind)

Ok, that's all I'm going to write for right now. I'm going to leave you with a few more Ecuador pictures. These are the Bibi and I with some chicks that my in-laws bought. I don't know why they bought them. Probably to raise so they could someday eat them. That's usually why they have animals!! But here we are looking at them and I'm trying to keep her from pulling a Lenny and snapping their little heads off. She loved how soft they were!


More Ecuador stories tomorrow!!