Walk like a man...

Hello!

How do you define when your child is officially "walking"? Is it when they take their first steps on their own? Is it when the take a few (like 5) steps all at once? Or is it when they frequently take 5-6 steps in the period of a day? Or is it when they are walking on their own and no longer falling down?

Well Eli took his first step on November 8th, my dearly departed friend Curtis' birthday. And to date he is walking 5-6 steps on his own probably 10 times a day. Can I consider this walking? Do I really care? I will likely just tell him if he asks when he started walking that it was around 9-10 months. Do we really need to get into specifics with every thing? I find it tiring. All I know is that my little man is adorable, despite that fact that he just unravelled all of Daddy's toolbox string and trailed it over to where I am sitting.

Unfortunately it appears he has eczema. Just two spots on his leg but still. Poor lil' guy.

I am dealing with one major issue at the moment. Guilt about weaning. We really want to have another child and it doesn't appear that is possible for us while breastfeeding. So my plan was to replace a feeding with goat's milk, the midday one. As I read more and more about the best way to do this and everything told me I was weaning him. I didn't really even realize I was weaning him. I was only going to take away one feeding to see if I could bring back my cycle but now I read I'm weaning him? There suggestions were to add honey to milk to make it sweeter and more in line with breastmilk. And honey is only allowed after one year hence making me feel guilty about weaning him when he's not even 10 months yet! I know lots of people wean much earlier but it's onto formula which is a little different. So the question is am I depriving Eli of what he needs in order to give him a sibling sooner? It feels a little like I am.

So that's the major decision I'm dealing with right now. I tried it one day and he would absolutely not drink any of the goat's milk. It could have been the bottle too because he hates the bottle (has since about 6 months). So I was feeling like I was forcing it on him and felt terrible and decided I just wasn't ready to wean him. Me, myself was not ready to wean. Then after 2 days break, I decided to try rice milk in his sippy cup. And I even changed it to the sippy cup lid rather than the bottle like lid (which weirdly enough he would take for some reason). And he drank it! Only about an ounce or two and he tends to do this weird thing where he drinks and spits so I'm not sure how much of it he gets but he ended up going from 10:30 to about 3:30 without breastmilk which he has done before but not often. A couple times at night and maybe one or twice during the day. And he only drank an ounce or two so maybe we can do this. I'm feeling a little better just by thinking I am only taking away one feeding. I really will only do the one feeding replacement until he's a year old. That makes sense to me. Then if it's enough to get me pregnant again, it's enough. If it isn't, we'll see how I feel at a year. If I need to breastfeed to 18 months or two years, I guess we'll have closer to a 3 year gap between kids, whatever happens is meant to happen. It has to be the right time for everyone.

So I am feeling optimistic again. Also I think it's cool that he'll drink from the sippy cup lid now. He also eats lots of finger foods now. It took him quite awhile to figure them out but he totally gets it now. Our best idea was to give him chunks of fruit (which he loves!) We gave him a whole strawberry on November 14th (and many others immediately after) and he just chowed down. It's great. Feeding has gotten easier and fun again!

Now bedtime!