Life

I thought I should go ahead and write about what's happening lately with us. I'll start with the boys, go from there.

Eamon has tubes in his ears now. He had a hearing test done just before Easter, and we found that he has hearing loss due to fluid behind his eardrum. Took him to an ENT, who recommended tubes, and we went ahead and had the surgery two weeks ago. Since his surgery, he's become much more understandably verbal - he's starting to use more words and is even putting together little sentences. His speech is still slurred, so we're looking into some short-term speech therapy for him, but he's doing a ton better now in terms of communicating. It's amazing what a difference we've seen in him since he had his surgery and isn't hearing the world as though he's underwater anymore. His other big news is that he seems to be eating meat finally! Yes, my vegetarian toddler has eaten meat 4 nights in one week, and I'm ecstatic! We'll see if the picky eater continues with last week's trend of eating meat - I'm hopeful that he's maybe turning a corner on his problems with food textures. For anyone who doesn't know - Eamon's always had issues with the texture of meat and has generally refused to eat meat since he was an infant.

Quinn is 2 months old and growing like a weed still - we're almost into 9-12 month clothes because he's getting longer and longer and outgrowing clothes as fast as I can buy them. He's also a rolling fool - if you set him down on the floor he takes off most times and goes to explore the world around him (and invariably screams bloody murder when he runs into something that doesn't move for him!). He's working on getting those knees up under him and it's only a matter of time before he takes off crawling. He's also working on his bottom teeth and chews on everything in sight - for some reason, he likes my shoes, so between him and the dog, I have to keep my shoes up or I won't have any left soon! He's still as mellow as ever, and it's a wonderful change of pace from Eamon's high energy. They're as different as they could be - complete polar opposites in terms of personality.

Garry's working like crazy, adjusted to our new schedule pretty much. He likes his Saturdays with the boys - they run around town together and watch movies and clean house and sleep pretty much all day. I'm envious, because on my day off with the boys, we're generally going non-stop running errands. Figures. But he's doing well - supposed to be heading to Germany at some point this summer for work. Lucky dog!

And me? Well, I'm still liking the job, most days. I'm loving the schedule and getting to spend some real quality time with the boys and Garry in the evenings. That part of life, and the part when I get to hang with my guys a lot more, is pretty good. So what's the not so good part, since obviously there is one? The bipolar demon is striking again, and I'm finding myself having more frequent and more severe mood swings. My anxiety is popping up again as well; we went to a party last night, just Garry and I, and I got pretty freaked out by all the people and the noise and ended up having to take a break from it to get myself calmed down again. What's all this mean? Well, it pretty much means I need to sit down and think long and hard about whether it's finally time to go back on mood stabilizers again, which means that I will need to wean Quinn, since they're nasty drugs for babies. And therein lies my dilemma. I love nursing. I'm not emotionally ready to give up that time spent bonding with Quinn. I'm not emotionally ready to let go of that particular part of my relationship with him. And he's not ready either. It doesn't matter if he just drank a bottle; if I've been away from him and he sees me, he's ready to nurse. It's almost like it's his little touchstone, his reassurance that Mommy is back again. And I don't want to take that away from him, not yet. But I also know that mentally I'm starting to fall apart again, and that's not healthy for any of us. It's one of those decisions that's just really, really hard for me right now, and maybe I need someone on the outside to make that decision for me. I know that I can't keep on like this indefinitely. I'm going to talk a little to our new doctor about it tomorrow, and hope that I can get a little more direction, something to help me make my mind up. Because I know that if I wean Quinn now, there's no going back again.

As I say every time, I do have new pictures of the boys, and I will try and get them posted in the morning. Garry is planning to take the boys to daycare for me in the morning, so that I can try and catch up a little on missed sleep and have a little time to myself to try and work out things in my head. With any luck, I'll actually manage to remember to post new pictures.