and that's that

Things happen pretty abruptly in our house.  Or so it seems lately.  Transitions are not gradual, although they can be anticipated for quite a long time before actually happening.  Take walking...  Maggie just suddenly stopped crawling.  She was about 60/40 on the crawling/walking ratio until one day (2/13/13), the balance flipped and she decided not to crawl any more.  Boom.  Done.  She's a walker now, and that's that.

Potty use.  We've been embarrassingly casual about it, and I was starting to dread having a 3-year-old in diapers.  I was proud of Charlotte for dropping bottles by the time she turned one and for never needing a paci (I'm not judging parents or kids who use a paci.  I tried on several occasions to get Charlotte and Maggie to suck on one when I couldn't figure out how to console them.  Neither of them showed any interest, so we never had that habit and the need to decide when to beak it.).  I didn't want to deal with potty training, though, and kept putting it off thinking that "next week" might be better... less on the calendar, fewer stresses in our lives, etc.  But next week was likely never to come.  Charlotte finally took charge and told me one morning that she was not going to wear diapers any more.  She's had two extremely minor accidents (her underwear was slightly damp, but her pants were dry) in the five days since and has even gone entirely by herself on a few occasions (at home).  She has not had an accident during her naps, ever.  She wants to go to bed at night in her big girl underwear, but I'm not ready for sheet-changing at 2am so that's where I draw the line for now.  So here we are, a little over two weeks from her third birthday and Charlotte is done with daytime diapers, and that's that.

I've been toying with the idea of weaning Maggie.  We were down to two real nursing sessions each day- one first-thing in the morning, in the peaceful predawn before Charlotte woke each day, and again at bedtime.  The rest of the day, she'd nurse five or six times for 2-5 minutes and be on her way.  I was feeling like the glass of water I leave on the kitchen counter and sip from all day.  On Sunday, Charlotte woke at the same time as Maggie and was dancing around the room while I tried to nurse.  Maggie was on and off the boob, more interested in watching Charlotte than anything else.  She was kind of nipping at me each time she disengaged, and now that she has three teeth (two below, one on top), it hurt.  So, when she popped off for the fifth time, I decided that enough was enough.  We were done with nursing.  I think I have enough frozen breast milk to last about a week.  I'm mixing in a little cow milk to get her used to it, upping the proportion each day until we run out of the frozen stuff.  So that's that... she's weaned.  My breasts have hardly noticed.

In other news, I did not get the promotion.  I'm a little relieved since I wasn't really ready to give up the time I spend with my girls.  To celebrate, I rejoined my gym.  Childcare is included in the membership and Maggie is showing a bit of separation anxiety (she's fine being left with my Mom when I go to work).  I want to lose about 30 pounds to get back to my pre-IVF weight, and I'd like both girls to socialize and get used to being in a daycare environment.  It's good for all of us.