It’s amazing how our bedtime ritual can turn Mr. Spaz (a.k.a. Sammy) into sleepy baby in 15 minutes. Most nights it works like a charm, and he’ll be out cold for precisely 8 hours.

Other nights, sigh, he’ll wake up in the middle of the night, usually 20 minutes after I’ve fallen asleep. Then, it’s usually check the diaper, schlep him downstairs, nurse him on the recliner, and hope that we can both fall asleep again. If I’m really lucky, he’ll fall asleep enough that I can put him in the pack & play and I can sleep the rest of the night on the couch. As if that kind of arrangement were lucky.

Ugh, what a frelling week. Tuesday night, I bring my cat Sneaky (a.k.a. taupecat) into the bedroom to give her a brush. As I’m tossing her onto the bed, her claws make contact with my wrist, leaving a four inch gash. Ouch. Then on Wednesday, I stub my toe on the leg of the bed WHILE HOLDING SAMMY. I heard a crack and yes there was considerable pain. But like an idiot I go to the Mommy & Me exercise class anyway and pound on it for a good hour. Come home, go to fry up some chicken for dinner and realize that I can’t put weight on it without excruciating pain!!! Sit down, take my sock off, and see that the toe is purple. Broken, great. Still got to hobble out to the Metro to pick hubby up, lugging the baby with me. Fun fun fun.

Also on Wednesday, I pick up the latest baby carrier I ordered, a Hotsling. Using the site’s sizing chart, I ordered a 4. Tried it on, and it’s HUGE!! And this is a pouch, so you can’t adjust it. Now I’m going to have to send it back, but I’m going to take a pic of Sammy and me in it one more time. Watch, he’ll spit up in it or something and I won’t be able to return it.

Time to hobble up to bed.

Today is Sammy’s three month birthday, and what a long, strange trip it’s been. I wanted to take some time and recount my experiences nursing Sammy, the highs and the lows etc.

Things went fine in the hospital. Sammy latched on right away and I made sure to nurse him every 2 to 3 hours like you’re supposed to.

But once we got home from the hospital, he was extremely sleepy, and difficult to wake for feedings. When he was awake, he’d thrash about so violently I couldn’t get him to latch on.

Part of the problem was that my milk was late to come in. Sam was born on a Friday night, and my milk didn’t come in until late late late Tuesday night. When we went to the pediatrician on Monday (2 1/2 days old), he’d already lost slightly more than 10% of his birth weight (down to 7 lbs 14 oz). According to the lactation consultant’s scale, he’d lost even more than that (down to 7 lbs 6 oz).

So in the early days we started supplementing with formula through a medicine dropper. When he became way too efficient at that and sucked the whole thing down in one fell swoop, I switched to bottles. Better to risk nipple confusion than to feed him too fast.

In the weeks that followed, breastfeeding was a hit or miss thing. We had some good feeding sessions, but for the most part he’d latch onto the breast and fall asleep two minutes later. It was extremely frustrating, and any time I tried just nursing him ended up in frustration and tears for both me and him. I had no peace during the day since he was constantly at the breast, and any time I had to eat or go to the bathroom he’d scream because he was still hungry.

So we started exclusively pumping. (Okay, we still “comfort nursed,” but bottle feeding of expressed breast milk was how he got most of his nutrition.) I knew that pumping wasn’t as efficient as nursing, but for this particular baby, maybe that wasn’t the case. After all, how much supply was he stimulating if he fell asleep at the beginning of every feeding session? Pumping, I felt, was the best option for us then. My supply didn’t quite keep up with demand, so we supplemented with formula, but at least I knew how much he was eating since he took the bottle pretty easily and didn’t have the same falling asleep issues.

Epumping worked fine for awhile. Sure, it sucked having to pump every three hours around the clock. But at least Sam was getting breastmilk. After a couple of weeks, my supply got to the point where we didn’t have to supplement with formula anymore.

But then I started having problems with my right breast such as plugged ducts, plugged nipple pores, and engorgement. Every time I had an issue, I’d have Sammy nurse the problem out.

A few days before Sammy’s two month birthday (as I was suffering another bout of engorgement), we nursed pretty much all day. To my relief, the engorgement subsided and to my pleasant surprise, Sam actually seemed satiated. So I tried going with the flow, nursing him instead of bottle-feeding him expressed breastmilk.

Things actually went well. I kept meticulous track of his wet and stool diapers, which all seemed fine. After one day where I must have changed him like ten times, I stopped worrying about whether he was having enough. Since then, he seems as active and happy as ever, and is alert and meeting his milestones. He appears to be gaining weight well, too, and looks as chubby as a baby should be.

Happy birthday Sammy!

The good news: I’m finally wearing regular jeans again. Yay!

The bad news: They’re size 14. Don’t think I’ll ever be a size 10 again. 🙁 Must be the oatmeal cookies. Yeah, that’s it.

Saw “Moebius” (well, part of it anyway. Got the whole thing recorded on the Comcast DVR.) again last night during SciFi’s Stargate SG-1 marathon. I love time travel & alternate universe & everything but there’s one thing about the ep that I don’t get: how did not finding the stargate in Egypt in the 1920’s turn Carter into Felger?

Oh, and while at my mom’s house last weekend, I read TV Guide’s tribute to Star Trek (she’s got a pile of old TV Guides for some reason). Apparently, the cast of “Enterprise” wasn’t too happy with the series finale. I can certainly understand that. But reading the article made me realize just what about the series finale bugged me so much: it was the Star Trek equivalent of the last episode of “Newhart.”

Has it really been so long since I wrote in here? Yikes.

Well, the reasoning is something like this: I created this little corner of the web to gripe about my pointy-haired boss and how he was making all of our working lives completely miserable.

Well, while I was hanging around the East Coast, I got a call from a coworker saying Mr. Pointy-Hair had been fired. Yipee!! Suddenly there was a bit less to gripe about, and I kinda stopped coming here.

Well, more stuff’s gone on. For one thing, Mr. Pointy-Hair was eventually replaced by another pointy hair. Meh.

But that’s okay, really, since I’m not in that office anymore. I’ve moved my butt out to the East Coast for good, and now I don’t even have to deal with Mr. Never Turns the Light On in His Office. Heh.

So whatsoever shall I talk about here? Well, I’ll go on a bit about my Stargate SG-1 obsession (but since I contribute so much to Gateworld’s forum, I don’t know how much I’ll talk about it here). And just random gripings and musings as they come to me. So nothing specific.

Someone care to propose a topic?

AAAAAGGGGHHHHHH!!! Is it too hard to even get a simple bookcase at this crappy company? Apparently yes, the one I ordered is on backorder. So I guess the papers and books will remain strewn out on the floor behind my chair.

This SO sucks.

Okay, it’s been awhile since I’ve been here. A lot’s happened that I want to gripe about.

So last Friday I’m working from home because of some husband things. Around 6pm I get a phone call; it’s the new VP of marketing for my company. (For some, G*d only knows reason, I’m in the marketing department, even though I’m really just a PHP programmer). Anyway, he’s calling to let me know that my boss has been let go. Ouch. Some business decision or some crap. There are a ton of theories going around, but the real truth lies with the two-faced CEO. But anyways…

He also lets me know that he’s moving our group upstairs to the old sales office. The small, cramped sales offices with crummy desks. Oh, and later I realize that MY desk is right in front of one of the product marketing guy’s offices. He’s ALWAYS talking, either on the phone or with someone in his office and the door open. I’m never going to get anything done.

But the conversation gets better. The VP guy, my new boss, apparently, tells me he thinks I spend too much time doing IT stuff. I’m a PHP programmer, for crying out loud!! What does he think I should be doing? Well, I’ve had enough of this conversation, and him going over and over “Not to worry”. Well, screw that. Anyway, we make a deal to talk more on Tuesday (thank G*d for three day weekends) and the conversation, mercifully, ends.

Time to make contingency plans. Now’s the time to switch over to being the financial planner I’m training to be. Unfortunately, my cell phone (which doesn’t work in my office anyway, damn Cingular) has been abducted by my husband, so I have to wait for the Verizon ones we’ve ordered before I can start down that track.

Well, Tuesday comes, and of course the whole day (and my left thigh) is blown by moving. Gotta get the computer hooked up, phone, yadda yadda yadda. I have no bookcase, so all my PHP and language books are strewn across the floor behind me. Hopefully that bookcase won’t take too long to arrive. (Oh, and before my computer is even hooked up, the channel sales director asks me if I’m finished that project for him. Give me a frelling break!!)

Also, I’ve made a decision to not use my Mac at work anymore. It’s mine, not the company’s, and I don’t want anyone there claiming otherwise if I’m shown the door (which I half expected). So I’ve got to use my crappy windows machine. It’s slow, nothing is configured right, I don’t have the fonts I need for graphics, and it takes me twice as long to do anything. But whatever. At one point I did need to work on graphics, so I just kicked the graphic designer off his dual-processor PowerMac G5. Sweet…..

But a bit of good news: apparently my long-awaited PO for an iMac has gone through. Yay!!! Okay, I’d be happier if it was the PowerBook, but hey. It’ll do. Too bad I might only need it for a few months before I’m outta there. I feel like such a short-timer already.

And about the meeting with Mr. VP. This was Tuesday. He took back his “spending too much time doing IT stuff” comment. Apparently he realized that he doesn’t really know what I do, so who is he to judge? Well, duh. Nice revelation. Any resemblance of his to Dilbert’s pointy-haired boss is purely accurate.

Well, the crap doesn’t end there, but I gotta bolt right now. More griping later.

Okay, today’s my xx birthday. Well kiss my hairy yellow butt.

Lovely thing about birthdays is that it reminds you you’re getting older. Well, at least you can get free stuff which in this case was a free meal at Todai seafood buffet. Not a bad deal. And aside from idiot California drivers and not knowing which direction is which on I-580, it was a pretty good day overall.

Quick entry today. I have a headache from eating my first sugar in 3 weeks.

Hi, folks, and welcome to my little corner of the Internet. Okay, I actually have a *bunch* of corners in the Internet, but whatever.

Here’s where I’ll be ranting and raving about things that you don’t care about at all, cheering every Washington Redskins’ victory, and declaring, without a moment’s hesitation, that yes, Joe Gibbs IS g*d. Okay, ’nuff said.

I’m really excited right now. My boss is sending me to a conference next month in New York City. How cool is that? Aside from some personal reasons why I’d like to be in New York as much as possible in the next six months, it’s just a really cool town. Lots to do, visiting my friends, yadda yadda yadda.

Don’t get me wrong. Living in the San Francisco Bay Area is nice and all (especially when it’s 65 deg. in February), but really it’s as boring as hell here sometimes. That I’m going to be paid to go to New York is just an awesome plus.

Oh yeah, I have to go to a search engine conference while I’m there. Eh. Might learn something.

Well, I guess I’m done with my inaugural entry. I’ll have a lot more stuff to rant about later.

Cheers.