Blogging Again? Who knows!

Well, here we go again. Over and over I've said I'm going to blog, and I always do for a few months and then I manage to lose interest or just lose time. But, a friend of mine (go Lauren!) has inspired me to once again try and blog.

I have lots I feel like I can talk about right now...
As you can see, our family now includes our sweet little Allison Hope... as I look back at my blog, it's obviously been ages since I wrote anything, since the pregnancy never made it into writing. Last time I was writing, I was on my journey to healthy living. I did lose some weight, but when we decided we were ready to add another little one to our family, I decided to just try and maintain where I was at. I did manage that, and when I got pregnant, I also managed not to gain any "fluff" pounds.

Life has been pretty interesting with two children in the house (and as a reminder, 1 dog and 2 cats... oh yeah, and Keith and I!). I'm still at home on my 6 week maternity leave. It's going to be tough going back to work, but necessity calls for it so I must follow. I really feel like I've embraced being at home and while right now the house doesn't look too much like it, I have been getting some more housework done that I did before.

I started out nursing Allison, something that Victoria and I didn't get the hang of together. I wonder sometimes if we could have made it work, but I can't worry about it now - she's a healthy beautiful girl! With Allison, things were going really well, and they still are, but now she's primarily bottlefed - I'm using a breastpump about 8-10 times a day so that she is still getting the benefits of breastmilk. I'm happy with that, mainly because she was going to end up having to go to a bottle anyway when I went back to work, and secondarily because I can't let myself feel guilty about it.

We ended up going more and more to bottles pretty early on. This was definitely an interesting pregnancy for me, as most of you know, the last several weeks of the pregnancy I was very nauseous and didn't eat much, leading to a severe lack of energy. After Allison's birth, I went through a severe hormone shift (I think the nausea there at the end may have been the result of a major increase in my hormones as my body prepared, and so, once it was over, there was a big drop to take). I was having hot flashes, -severe- cold chills, more nausea, headaches. It took a lot out of me, and while Keith was out of work that week, he helped out - ie. more bottles.

Along this time, Victoria had a major stuffy nose - and I ended up with a sore throat, went into a cold, and back into the throat. Monday of Week 3 postpartum, I was diagnosed with Strep Throat. That took a couple days to recover and I had to use a medical face mask whenever I fed baby and was close to her - that was fun (*sarcasm*).

Last week was week 4, and I ended up getting a mild version of the stomach bug that has been going around.

Thankfully, I'm pretty healthy this week! I'm taking things a day at a time, and while I know many mothers who would have gone through the past 4 weeks and nursed diligently, every person has to do what is right for them and their body. I'm still incredibly determined to try and nurse her, and even more determined to continue pumping and give her the benefits as long as my body will allow me.

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Victoria has done really well adjusting to Allison. She has seemed more needy and occasionally whiny, wanting someone to play with her all the time, but that was expected and we're starting to work on that. She wants to be Mommy #2, and most of the time we spend asking her to not touch or back away. We allow her moments to touch and 'play' but sometimes it's not the time and she doesn't understand that. She's going to be an awesome big sister!

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See what happens when one doesn't blog for this long! Too much to say!