Crawling implications

No updates on the attempts to learn how to crawl, Tina is still just flailing around the blanket with an occasional scoot forward.  Charlotte is still just lifting her arms and legs and hoping to body surf to her dream location.  She's been doing it since around the first month, it's a pose she really seems to enjoy.

A few hours before Tina's demonstration of her soon to be crawling prowess, I had called to schedule a bid for new flooring in the house.  That's on Monday and I'm really excited for it.  I want the new floor NOW!!!!

So I've been thinking about the logistics of the new floor and the work that's going to entail.  Along with the new floor, we need to child proof the house.  As I started thinking about it last night, I just got this wash of dread come over me because holy crap, we have a TON of work to do around here to make sure our children don't kill themselves once they can move.  And since we're getting pretty much every bit of our floor done, we're going to have to move just about every single belonging in our house during the floor installing process.  I think K is going to need to cash in a few of the vacation days he's built up because this is going to be a major undertaking.

Off the top of my head, the bookshelf in my office will need to move or just go away all together.  The shelves aren't secure and the backing is just cardboard, and right now it stores the inventory for my pottery store.  One kid tries to pull themselves up using one of those shelves and that kid is buried in planks of wood and pottery.  We have 50 billion cabinets and drawers all below waist level that will need to be secured.  There are computer cables and other electronic cables all over the floor that will need to be dealt with.  All of the general "stuff" that we have piled everywhere (I haven't seen the top of our dining room table since the girls were born) will need a place to go.  Litterboxes will need to be moved off the floor with mini steps made so the cats can get to them but the kids are less likely to nap in them.

Oh, litterboxes.  That reminds me of one of the very few things about K that drives me nuts.  In terms of husbands, he's as awesome as they come, but he's not perfect.  Very close, but not quite.  He has this habit of only listening to the first half of what I'm telling him and reacting to that first half, totally not hearing the second half.  However, my speech patterns are such that the first half of what I'm saying doesn't make any sense without the second half.  So last night we're talking about baby proofing and I talk about getting the litterboxes off the floor.  His cat isn't very agile anymore, we've set up small steps that lead to the hope chest at the foot of our bed so she can easily climb up the steps, onto the hope chest, and then onto the bed.  So last night I'm saying to him "we'll need to find a way to move the litterboxes up off the floor and ......." and he immediately jumps in with "we can't do that, my cat won't be able to get to them".  Argh!  Let me finish my damned sentence!  "Had you let me finish before jumping in to react, the rest of that sentence was going to be.....and set up a means for the cats to get to them that the kids are less likely to climb."  I know we can't make it impossible for the kids to get to them, but we can at least make them more of a challenge so they are far less likely to do so.  "K, see how we have the steps set up for her to get on the bed?  If we come up with something similar for other areas of the house and put the litterboxes up on surfaces like that, the cats can get to them, and the girls will have trouble climbing such itty bitty steps.  Or by the time they do, I'll be able to see what they're doing and redirect them before they manage it.  Besides, since our bedroom is going to be mostly off limits to the girls, your cats litterbox can stay on the floor where it is."

K claims he doesn't stop hearing me halfway through what I have to say so I had to call him on it in the moment that he did it.

Anyway, back to the implications of babies crawling.  Here's the big one - I get to wean off the pumping!!!  YES!!!  Once they are officially mobile, I wean down to 3 pumps per day so I'm only pumping once while K is at work during their nap, and then twice a day so I never have to do it when he's not home.  I get to change mindsets and go from having the frozen stash available to supplement if I have low production days to pumping to supplement what they eat from the stash.

Them becoming mobile has always been my stopping point in my mind.  My goal is to be the best mommy I can be, and while they're immobile, that means trying to produce as much milk as possible.  But once they can move and get into stuff, I think it's more important for me to be able to react to potential danger quickly than it is to keep them completely on breastmilk.  Everything in life is a trade-off and that's one that I'm totally cool with.  Even if my supply tanks to absolutely nothing when I start cutting back on the pumping, I'll still consider my primary goal as being reached.  If we can manage to keep them on breastmilk for a year, that's kind of my reach for the stars goal.

At their current consumption, we have about a months worth in the freezer.  There's a growth spurt coming up, abut they are increasing their solids, so I just have no clue as to what to predict in terms of how much milk they're going to need between now and their first birthday.  We might make it to the stars, but it's gonna be tight.

I think it would be wise if we broke open one of the sample cans of formula that we have, start using that for their morning bottles for a week just to make sure that they'll drink formula and that it won't upset their tummies too much.  I'd hate to find out that formula doesn't work for them after the freezer stash is gone and I'm no longer producing anything.  Besides, that's 12oz of breastmilk a day for that week that we can bank in the freezer while we're testing how they do.

So right now, one last push to get as much out of me as I can for the next couple of weeks and when the girls get moving, I wean down guilt free.  Hopefully by pumping twice a day, I'll still produce a significant amount for a while, but if I don't, that's ok too.  I'm totally looking forward to no longer running into that moment when the girls need me, but I'm really needing to pump too.