Ok, I know...

... You'd think I'd be better about keeping up with the blog but life is BUSY! I work full time as a band director and there are so many extras that come with that, parades, football games, Homecoming bon fires, district/regional band auditions and on and on. I am also training for a half marathon and trying to run lots of races to prepare myself. Just did a 10K last Sat. It's great fun and good for my mind but time consuming. I've also started guitar lessons but I may be ending those. There's only so much one can do in a day. Which brings me to my kids, the busiest but most satisfying part of my day!

Rileigh Melissa turned 11 months on Monday. She is wearing 18 months clothes. She is long and lean. She has wonderfully long arms and legs. I was really saddened when I went to buy her winter clothes and I discovered she's out of the infant section and into the toddler section.

She eats... a lot. She'll down an entire bowl of noodles, some applesauce and an entire thing of yogurt and be looking for more! One of my joys and something I've been proud of is she has been almost completely breastfed. We had some supply issues in the beginning and she had formula for a week solid and then was supplemented for a couple weeks but since her 3rd month she's been on total breast milk. It's been a battle, I have to take several supplements several times a day to maintain my supply. I pump 2-3 times during the day in the uniform room at school. I take a medicine called domperidone. It's not actually FDA approved in the US so I have to buy it from New Zealand. As she is approaching one year I didn't buy more when knew I would run out. I have two more days left. As I wean off of it, my milk is slowing drying up. It's kind of bittersweet. It's the best food for my daughter. I've enjoyed our breastfeeding relationship but at the same time I'm ready to be done. I need that time at school to plan. I need her to sleep through the night without expecting to nurse 3-7 times a night. I haven't had a night of unbroken sleep since she was born. If she sleeps through the night I still have to pump. I'm really tired! Last night she only work at 12am and at 5am to nurse. Holy cow, 4 hours of straight sleep was amazing! I have a frozen stash of milk to which I am no longer adding. We mix the breastmilk with whole milk hopefully making the transition easier on her belly. Any milk I pump during the day, which is becoming less and less, I feed her that evening in addition to nursing. In about three weeks she'll get straight whole milk and whatever she's able to get straight from the tap. She's much more efficient at "milking" than the pump is! I will have made it to my goal of one year!!

She is mobile too. She acquired her first black eye one evening when I wasn't home. Her daddy let her play in the dog water (ICK!) and she slipped on the wet floor and hit just below her right eye on the edge of a dog bowl. She likes to bang open and shut the tv stand cabinet doors and likes to stick her hand in the vcr. We tell her very sternly no and she giggles at us. She also likes to go for whatever Landon is playing with. Sometimes he shares but most often not which is a recipe for two crying children! She is just starting to try and pull herself up to standing. Heaven help me when she's walking and even faster!

Landon Joe has started preschool and LOVES it! His teacher is Mrs. Hendrickson and she used to watch him in the nursery at church. Her loves her and her assistant, Mrs. Hare. He is making all kinds of crafts that decorate our fridge and sculptures to decorate the bookshelves. He is working on writing numbers and letters. He can count to 18 and sings his ABC's. He is really a smart little boy. He still brings his tongue between his teeth when he talks so he is hard to understand. Sometimes when I have no idea what he is saying he gets very frustrated with me and ends up crying and saying never mind. Breaks my heart when that happens. We are working with him and hope to see an improvement soon. His teachers are also working with him. He is a little myna bird, repeating everything we say. He was saying something one morning that wasn't nice. I told him he was being rude. I was disciplining him later and he told me I was being rude! If I do something he doesn't like he tells me to go sit my butt down on the couch and not to get up until he tells me! He's certainly wild and I will be very grateful when the "terrible threes" pass! He can be so sweet. I was having a hard time getting Rileigh's medicine into her one morning and he patted my arm and told me, "It's ok, Mommy, she'll eat it."

I have lots of pictures and videos on my iphone. I rarely use the camera anymore. I need to sync the phone to my laptop and get some new pics on here. We are hoping to take the kids on a hay ride on Saturday so I will wait until then. But that's the kiddo update in words for now!