Precious Moments

We've moved!!! With baby #3 on the way, I am finally making the transition into one blog for the entire McFamily! Keep up with all things McMillen at www.allofthepreciousmoments.blogspot.com

We Are Who We Are

Tucker has been such a sweetheart lately. I don't know if it's because I have now weaned Chloe or if he's just turning a corner with his maturity, but he has been so well-behaved and sweet with almost no outbursts!

I have also come to terms with him sleeping with me. I still start him off every night in his own bed but he's usually in with me by midnight or so. And I kinda like it. He sleeps well next to me and I love snuggling up to my sweet boy. Plus, I get to wake up every morning to him smiling at me when I open my eyes.

He is throwing out "I love you, Mama"s at random moments throughout the day, which always makes my heart all warm and gooey. His favorite song right now is ke$sha's "We Are Who We Are." Possibly a Mommy-Fail on that one, but at least it's the edited version.

He helps Chloe do things and he is also becoming a little leader, which makes me really happy! He still likes little details to be explained to him before things happen, which is totally how I am. I need to know the hows and whys way ahead of time and he is just the same. My mom gave me the great advice to make sure his future teachers understand that. He is also very much a visual learner, which is also good to know.

I blew his mind yesterday by painting my finger and toenails. My toes haven't been polished since right before I had Chloe and my fingernails haven't been polished in years, not since Tucker has been born anyways. He is obsessed with them! He asks to look at them several times a day and this morning he took the covers off my feet to see if they were still painted.

And just yesterday, he did the thing I envisioned when I was pregnant with him. He picked me some dandelions and ran up to give them to me, so proud of the "flowers" he brought his Momma. LOVE that boy!

Parent-Potty FAIL

How do you know your husband has taken a hands-on approach to helping out with potty training? Your son excitedly asks you to look in the toilet at his monkey tail.

Daddy Fail.

Three.

My baby boy turns three tomorrow. I have finally gotten used to the bittersweet feeling his birthdays bring. Happy because I love to see him grow and learn and because he is just so much more fun the older he gets. Sad because the time is going so fast and pushing "slow motion" or "pause" just isn't an option.

He continues to be really needy and demanding of my attention. I try so hard to be patient with him but I would be lying if I said it didn't lose my cool on occasion. I keep reminding myself that when he grows out of this Momma's Boy phase, I will be sad that he no longer needs me like he used to.

He is a very sensitive, smart, and a hilarious little guy. He has a sense of humor I don't think I've ever witnessed in another young child. He "gets" funny, even some adult humor that should be above his head, he gets.

Given his personality, I still spend time each night rocking him in his rocking chair before bed. Lately he has been serenading me with various songs and nursery rhymes; Humpty Dumpty, Itsy Bitsy Spider, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, etc. I was looking at him, really looking at him tonight and got misty-eyed. Three years ago, his entire body took up the spanse of my forearm. Tonight, his long legs dangle off of my own and my mind can't quite catch up to how big he has gotten.

Happy Birthday, Tucker Shay. You changed me and I am so thankful for you every day of my life. There is nothing I wouldn't do for you. You color my world. I love you to the moon and back.

Stomach Virus, Part Deux

Tucker has another stomach virus. He woke up at 3am telling me his belly hurt and that he wanted to eat. He said the same thing last time right before puking, he is obviously misinterpretng the upset stomach as a hungry belly. I will spare details, but he has vomited four times and it seems that it has passed now, as we've gone almost three hours without incident.

The strange thing is because of the snow, we haven't left the house since Sunday, so how in the world did he get this??? I shipped Chloe off to Grandma and Grandpa's house so I could focus on Tucker. That has been a huge help! I am praying nobody else in the family gets whatever this is, I have a HUGE massage event this weekend that I have to be at so I definitely need to escape this one!!

Oh, and guess what movie he just requested? A Christmas Story. That's my boy!!

My Big Boy

And the skies opened up and the sun shone down! Tucker is POTTY TRAINED! It all started on a whim last Thursday when he was in his room for time out. He took his diaper off and pooped on the floor. It was at that moment that I took the plunge and committed to no more diapers. Overall, he has done really great! He hasn't had a potty accident since Friday at my sister's house. He is still wearing a pull up at night but the days are dry! He is even pooping in the toilet, wahoo!!!!!!

Next up is to get the nighttimes to be dry, which means weaning him off of taking a cup of water to bed with him. We are working on it, but I can't tell you how proud of him I am! It was much easier than I anticipated and he's already going potty without prompting and without even telling us he needs to go.

Gosh, I just logged onto this blog for the first time in a while, trying to think of what to write. And then I scrolled down past his little profile picture. That picture was just taken in May and he has grown up so much since! He looks like such a baby in that! My baby boy is going to be THREE in 6 weeks!!!!!

Tucker really enjoyed Christmas this year. This year was the first one that was really fun for him because he was finally old enough to understand the story of Santa. He asked Santa for a "train, and railroad tracks, and gas." Or as he would say it: "rain, rairoad cracks, annnnnnnnnn gas." I have pics of Christmas and one of these days I promise to do a ginormous picture update, but for tonight, my pillow is calling my name.

Oh, forgot to mention that we also talked to Tucker about Baby Jesus and the real story of Christmas, but I'm not sure how much he grasped it. However, after his bath the other night, I had him wrapped up tight in his hooded towel, cuddling him in the cradle position. He looked up at me with his big, brown eyes and declared that HE was Baby Jesus!

Gah, I intended to merge Tucker and Chloe's blogs onto my own but something about doing that makes me sad. This is their virtual baby book and it just doesn't seem right to move....

Oh, Sweet Boy

Mr. Tucker is having quite the struggle with bedtime and separation anxiety. Enough so, that we have tried every technique imaginable and the only thing we have found to work is for one of us to sleep right next to his bed on an air mattress. In fact, I am laying on the air mattress right now while he snores the night away. He wakes up to twenty times a night and once he knows we are still here, he falls right back asleep. I feel so bad for him and I wish I knew how to make it all better for him. Sometimes he asks to hold my hand while he falls asleep. Part of me is annoyed at this because it certainly is not convenient to lay on air mattress. At 8pm. When you have a million things you need to do around the house. But, you know what? I am happy to do it. These days aren't going to last forever and someday I will be sad that he no longer needs me to be right next to him.

Like Father, Like Son

This is the literal definition of "Tuckered Out"

Sprinkler Cow

At the beginning of the summer, Tucker was scared to death of the sprinkler. He would run just outside the spray, only getting wet on his feet. Ryan finally had the brilliant idea to distract him with a sprinkler game, enough so that he would forget the water was spraying his face. The result had me laughing so hard! In this video, we told him to be a cow when he ran through....listen to his "moos", they get more and more panicked the further into the sprinkler he gets!

The Summer of the Big Boy

We kicked our summer off with saying goodbye to Mommy's Mulk. After a month and a half, he finally stopped asking for it. He is now very well adjusted and I can tell he has fond memories of nursing by the way he acts when I am nursing Chloe.

Up next, Tucker moved from a crib to a big boy bed! This was another rough transition that was resolved by the Big Mean Daddy Bear. Ryan is able to be much more stern with Tucker than I can, and Tucker takes him much more seriously. After three weeks, he is going to bed much easier...the only downfall is that sometimes he wakes up a 6am. Ouch.

The only step we have left is potty training. We attempted it this week but I just don't think he's quite ready. We will lay off of it for a month or two and try again.

Oh, and he also got a Big Boy haircut. I wanted to give him a Mohawk to showcase his auburn hair but Ryan insisted on a Flat Top. I lost the argument and he is now sporting a new short haircut that he really loves. He keeps saying, "I got haircut. Feels good!" For the first couple of days after getting it cut, he would run his hand up the back of his head to feel the short hairs. Here are the before/after pics:

aaaaaaaaand, we're back!

Wow, I have been the worst blogger lately. It's not that I don't have the time in the evenings after the kids are in bed, but it's a lack of organized thought. Sort of a "1,838 cute things happened today so where in the world do I even begin" kind of thing. I need to be better because in the meantime, I am forgetting 1, 837 of those things and only remembering one. *sigh* I promise to do better.

I need to sort through all of the pictures I have on the computer of the past few months and organize some thoughts, but my intention is to blog on each of the kid's blogs each night this week. Stay tuned!

One Week Later....

A week has passed since Tucker's last nursing. He is doing really pretty great! He is usually upset most in the mornings, that must have been the time he was most attached to his Mulk and Mommy time. He still asks for Mulk several times a day but it is getting easier and easier to distract him. We have also stayed extremely busy this week just to take his mind off of it.

On Tuesday, I conceded to the eczema and started a low dose steroid cream. After only six applications, the eczema is gone. I stopped using it but am watching his legs like a hawk for any kind of flare up.

On Wednesday I took Tucker for blood work for an allergy test. We are running a pediatric food panel and a Midwest seasonal profile. The lab sends the blood to the Mayo Clinic and it will take about a week to get results. I am so hopeful we will get some answers so we can eliminate the aggravating factor.

Tucker has, understandably, been much more hungry! He is eating massive amounts of food and I swear he's gained weight and grown in height! He actually ate two separate dinners tonight! He has also discovered a new favorite snack: Jello aka Lello.

The End of an Era

Tonight was the last night I will ever nurse my firstborn. Just typing that made the tears start flowing again. I can't think of a more bittersweet moment than the one we shared just a few minutes ago. I didn't know this was coming so soon, but it feels like the right thing to do.

Tucker has been battling a severe case of eczema on the back of his knees. I have tried everything I can think of on a natural level (no steroid creams are used in this house) and it is just not clearing up. The one thing I have not tried is taking him off of my milk. Tonight he was screaming in pain and I just can't let him go through that anymore if, by any chance, my milk is causing the problem. In a way, I think it's good that our nursing relationship is ending this way. I am weaning him in an effort to help get him out of pain. I hope in the coming days where I will have to stay strong and stand my ground, that tidbit will make it a little easier to stay the course.

My first goal with breastfeeding was to nurse him until he got teeth. The teeth came, and to my surprise there wasn't much pain (other than a few nips here and there, nothing major). My next goal was to nurse him until he was a year old. Oops, got pregnant when he was 9 months old, but I kept going even though my OB at the time (I fired her about halfway through the pregnancy because of her lack of knowledge about being pregnant and breastfeeding) told me I had to wean him. There was just no way I was going to stop short of my goal.

I thought for sure he would self-wean during the pregnancy. Nope. By the end of my pregnancy with Chloe, I felt like I had waited too long to wean him and he would suffer irreparable damage from being weaned, and then weeks later being "replaced" with a little sister. Tandem nursing has not been the dreamy experience I had hoped it would be. It has not, in all honesty, been the best idea I've ever had. I had read online about how wonderful tandem nursing is, how it helps the older child accept the new sibling, yadda yadda yadda. For me, it was very difficult with many mixed emotions. I do hold a few mental snapshots where it was pure bliss, however. Times when they weren't fighting for a good position and they both had their eyes rolling back into their heads on the verge of milk comas. Times where Tucker would reach over and pat his brand new sister, or when Chloe would reach over and touch Tucker's face. Times when they would hold hands while nursing. That was beautiful and I hope I never forget.

Along the way, I am sure I freaked out many people. Before I was "one of them," I was totally freaked out by extended nursers. I could not fathom why a woman would want to nurse a toddler. Ew, gross! Um, if they can walk over to you and lift your shirt and ask for it, then they are way too old. Oh, how naive I was! Extended nursing is certainly not for everyone and I understand that. I hope along the way I have educated those who do not understand and I hope I have inspired just one mom to breastfeed. I have met my goal. I have exceeded the World Health Organization's recommended two year minimum. I have done an amazing job and I deserve the right to say so. Tucker is 27 months old. I have been breastfeeding since February 21, 2008 and tandem nursing for the past 9 months.

Our last session took place on the big chair in our living room. I was trying to calm him from screaming in pain, tears running down my face. Some tears were for his pain, some tears were from the realization that this would be our last "Boo" or "Mulk" session. My husband got the camera and took a few pictures of our last time breastfeeding. I look like crap in them but they are the most beautiful crappy pictures I've ever laid eyes on. Tucker kissed my breast and said, "Kiss Mulks." It was so cute. I explained to him that after tonight he would not be getting any more of Mommy's milk and that he was a Big Boy now and the milk was just for Chloe now. He said okay and I am so hoping he understands. I expect to have a rough week ahead so I would really appreciate any prayers and good thoughts you could send my way.

To Tucker: You are amazing. You have completely transformed me as a person. I cannot wait to see who you become and I'm so excited for the next chapter of you as my Big Boy. I love you, Baby Boy. Always and Forever. Love, Mommy

Tucker Loves Memma

I was looking at old(er) videos tonight and came across this adorable one I never posted. He is watching his cousin Emma sing a song. He used to call her Memma and he just loves her to pieces!

Emotions

As Tucker journeys through The Terrible Twos, we have been talking about different emotions and what they look like. I start with furrowing my brow and telling him what angry looks like. Then we do sad, and then we end with happy. I am trying to teach him how to read faces so he is aware of when I am not kidding around anymore and he needs to shape up. Here he is practicing his faces:

My Reasons

Sweet Boy, Where Art Thou?

The Terrible Twos have officially arrived. For the past several days, Tucker goes into random episodes where he throws fits. He screams. He hits. He pushes. He throws things. He is inconsolable. Nothing in particular seems to set him off, one minute he is fine and then next he is revisiting his caged animal experience x 100.

I have tried to explain it away for my own well being. Maybe it's teething? Maybe he is getting sick? Maybe he has low blood sugar? Sadly, I don't believe any of the above to be a factor. I think this is something he is going to have to grow out of and he just needs some extra love and attention right now.

I saw an infant onesie once that said, "Mommy drinks because I cry." I totally think they missed the mark, it should be made in size 2T. Cheers and Bottoms Up!

Hardboiled Baby