Curious George and Bitten Nipples

Delano is 11 months old today!!!  AHHHHH!!!!  Only one single solitary more month before he's a whole year old.  So crazy!!!

Which reminds me....I need to order his birthday party supplies!  I've decided that the theme of his party is going to be Curious George, since he likes monkeys (and it's super cute when he goes "Eee-eee-eee" to sound like a monkey).  The bad news is that Party City doesn't carry the Curious George themed party supplies anymore.....but the good news is that it's all 50% off on their website!  I'm also going to check Pinterest for some additional cute monkey ideas, though I'm not quite as dedicated to being crafty like some of my other friends are.  And I've put my friend Jill up to the task of making the cake.  :)

Delano will have his first party up in Nashville, since we'll be up there for the majority of the weekend, and then he'll have his Chattanooga party on Sunday evening.  I need to start making the guest lists!

So I was having this conversation with Lucas's mom last weekend........I always find the formal "sit down to open presents" portion of a one-year-old's birthday party to be awkward and almost pointless.  The one-year-old NEVER wants to sit still, they really could give a rat's ass about the act of opening presents, and the parents are always forcing cards and gifts in the child's face wanting them to show a positive reaction so the gift-giver can feel good about their gift choice.  I'd like to skip this whole formal "sit down to open presents" portion of the party, BUT I do want to know who brought what for thank you note purposes.  And people really do want to see the child open their present.  Am I just going to have to suck it up and suffer through it?  Any suggestions?

This is the reaction people hope for.

So Delano needs to be weaned from breastfeeding in about 3 1/2 months.  He could, of course, end up weaning himself (which would be nice), but otherwise I'm going to have to do it.  I actually don't think it will be all that bad (knock on wood).  Yesterday, he only breastfed four times - when he woke up, right before his morning nap, right before his late afternoon nap, and then right before bed.  Sometimes there will be another time or two tossed in there, and sometimes he skips the afternoon feeding all together.  Once he's over a year old and I can introduce whole milk (though I AM going to research other options as well before doing so, as there are LOADS of debates about what we've been engrained to believe about cow's milk), I'll be able to wean him off the boob. 

So is this considered propping the bottle?

One fun thing about Delano lately......ok not really......is that now that he has teeth, he figured out he can bite my nipple!  OUCH!  He's only done it a handful of times, but that's a handful of times too many for sure.  And this past weekend he bit down and then twisted away while holding on.....my nipple throbbed for half an hour.  Lucas suggested switching him to a bottle (formula) for this last month or so to save me from injury, but websites out there tell me that I can teach him not to bite.  I'm going to keep rolling with it for now and see if I can keep the biting at bay with the suggestions from the websites I've read, so cross your fingers that my nipples stay intact!  I'd rather save the formula for emergencies and babysitters, since I think I'm down to maybe two or three bags of frozen breastmilk for those times.

I haven't had any environmental projects tossed my way in quite a while.  In fact, the last project I completed was due on May 31st.  I've enjoyed my time "off" from working on projects, but I would definitely like to see a few more fat paychecks come my way before I get too fat to travel.....and then have two babies and can't take projects anymore!  I did receive a proposition from my "boss" for some lighter work I could help him with after Baby #2 is here and we all get settled into a routine, so I'm excited for that.  I want to keep my connections going with this company so that once the kids are a little older (and maybe with D in preschool) I can take full projects again.  I enjoy what I do, plus the money is totally worth it.

I can hear Delano waking up from his nap, so I guess it's time to wrap this up!

P.S.  There's a mosquito in my house.  I saw him once and missed catching him.  But since I've been sitting here, he's bitten both my elbow and my foot.  Grrrrrr.  Little bugger.  Literally.

He LOVES Annie's mac n cheese!!  Growing up!!