We dodged mosquitos for an afternoon and enjoyed a sunny day in the backyard a few weeks ago, and I snagged some pictures of my little explorer while we hung out. It's wild how different he is even just a few weeks later. I feel like his mobility is accelerating at an exponential amount right now. Just yesterday he pulled himself up to standing on an ottoman and all of a sudden I look over and he's standing up! He army crawls everywhere and I almost feel like he'll go from army crawling to walking because he is so mobile with the army crawl I don't think he'll bother with a regular crawl. We shall see. Basically nowadays whenever he's not asleep I have to be monitoring him constantly. Gone are the days of putting him down and going and doing a thing without worrying about him putting everything in his mouth, climbing up on things, and falling over. It's a weird juxtaposition of feeling proud of his newfound abilities, and disappointment of my newfound loss of independence. At least when he was less mobile I could get stuff done while he was laying around playing with toys on the ground. Now I turn my head for a second and he's off to attempt climbing up the side of a couch or something!
Part of me was feeling disappointed in myself for not booking as many photography jobs this year as last year, but honestly I think it's a blessing in disguise. Shooting weddings with a baby is a new level of stress, and since pretty much all my weddings this year are this month, I'll be pretty relieved to have them all done and under my belt.
I know a lot of women seem to love breastfeeding but it's one of my least favorite things about having a baby. I do feel like it helped my bond with Jack and it's a hell of an experience to feed and grow a person with food that your body makes, but it's also this strange invisible anchor that keeps you from being away from your baby for longer than like 2-3 hours at a time. Like a baby bungee cord. Oh, did you like that brief taste of freedom? LOL, too bad, come back and feeeeed meeee. There are a lot of people with strong feelings and thoughts about breastfeeding. Women feel bad if they aren't able to breastfeed. Women who have to go back to work shortly after giving birth have to pump to feed their children. Breastfeeding can be painful, stressful, emotional, depressing, joyful, comforting, annoying as hell, among a multitude of other things. Part of me feels like saying I find breastfeeding annoying and stressful will make women who can't breastfeed frustrated that I'm complaining about something they would love to be able to do. That's probably valid, in maybe the same way that complaining about a difficult pregnancy experience would be frustrating to someone who can't conceive. But I also know there are tons of women out there who feel the same way about breastfeeding and are looking forward to the day when their kids are finally weaned.
I plan on breastfeeding Jack (hopefully) until he's a year old, and then I'll see how things go. It's definitely convenient to have food for him wherever we go, especially when flying. Also can we talk about how clean it is? Feeding a baby solid food is hella messy, y'all. Sticky faces, fingers, clothes, tables, everything. Everything sticky. Breastmilk has such a clean and convenient delivery system.
Okay, I don't know how this turned into an examination of breastfeeding when it was supposed to just be a post about playing on a blanket in the backyard on a sunny day. Oh motherhood ramblings.
