I'll Show You Classy

So, the blog Combat Boots and Pointe Shoes decided to sarcastically call the mothers from the Target Nurse-in "classy." She also stated, "Personally I wondered if it was a bunch of women who don't shave their legs or armpits. You know the Granola girls...." Because, as we all know... only hippies breastfeed their children. ::face palm:: She goes on and on just digging the hole deeper on telling the Target Nurse-in folks that they were basically an embarrassment and shouldn't harass poor innocent baby Target. 


It's attacks like this from fellow breastfeeding mothers that I just don't get. They tell the other mothers to not stand up for their rights and just quietly take the tongue lashings from NIP harassing jerks. Seriously? If this were any other human or civil rights issue would you be telling the victims to just be quiet and go away? I highly doubt it. Why is it so easy for folks to pick on breastfeeding? 


And folks that are okay with breastfeeding "so long as the mother is covered." Seriously? Have you seen a mother nurse without a cover in person? You can't see anything! I think people have this vision of a mother going completely topless. It's so frustrating. Also, have you seen a mother trying to nurse while using a cover with a child that does not want to be covered? 

We all need to stop splitting hairs about how a mother should breastfeeding in public. You do it your way, and I'll do it mine. But we're all in the same group and are protected by the same laws. Mothers who get harassed are not showing as much skin as you probably assume. Some of them are under covers when they are harassed. Stop fighting each other and let's work together to change societies views.

And mothers who have not started nursing in public yet - being harassed is a rare thing. Don't let the thought of being harassed stop you from feeding your child in public. If the worst happens and someone does approach you in a negative way, the best thing that will happens is you will make a whole lotta new breastfeeding friends. Check out our NIP Harassment Survival Guide that has some great tips for IF it happens to you. I've been breastfeeding in public for three years and have never been approached negatively. 

My 2011

Here are some of the things that I did in 2011:

1. Traveled a bunch: Texas, SnowCon in Denver, Nashville, Mammoth Caves, Las Vegas, the Natchez Trace, my mom's house in Mississippi, and England.
2. Told my birth story on my blog and finally achieved peace about what happened.
3. Got snowed in!
4. Planned (with Jenn) and attended our awesome ATLOSCon.
5. Was witness when Livy learned to read!
6. Really found my place in my education and future career plans. I started work in the writing center, which will be my research focus, and started planning my thesis, a study of "tutoring for transfer." I also found that my teaching and tutoring work and research is deeply connected to the positive discipline work Jenn and I have been doing for years. Yay integration!
7. Did lots of podcasting and speaking engagements, also with Jenn.
8. Gave Crossfit a good try and decided it wasn't for me, at least not right now. Did lots of walking (and I mean lots) to train for the England trip. Fitness level definitely rose this year.
9. Grew a very productive vegetable garden in containers.
10. Had an amazing summer of leisure with Livy full of nothing but fun, learning, and adventures.
11. Accepted the apology of a person who deeply wronged me and hurt me badly and learned to let go of being angry.
12. Led an Ender's Game Reading Group for ATLOS.
13. Faced up to jealousy of a friend and let that go too. This has been a big year for letting go and for peace.
14. Read about 40 gazillion books. When I get home, I'll do my end of the year book stat post. Until then, here's my post about the books I read in the first half of the year.
15. Got better (but still not perfect, of course) at communicating effectively. I really practiced this year, and, as you can see from all the letting go and such, I had lots of chances to work on it.
16. Made lots of new friends at school and really felt, for the first time, that I am a part of that social community, including finding a great new friend and mentor who is farther along in the program than I am.
17. Deepened some existing friendships, grew apart from others, spent time with family, loved Aaron and Livy violently. 
18. Wrote a lot on this blog and at school. My writing, both narrative and academic, improved.
19. This blog morphed into a travel blog, pretty much. Don't know if it will stay that way, but this was a year of serious travel for me.

I am excited about starting 2012. It will be my first year to teach a freshman writing course, and we are already planning two trips for next year (a roadtrip to the Northwest this summer and (probably) Costa Rica over Christmas. Never in my life have I had such a great year or looked forward to such another one. My thirties are turning out to be my best decade ever, full of fun and love and getting emptier and emptier of the insecurities and worries of my twenties. Look for a resolution post for the new year in a day or two.

P.S. As I chose labels for this post, I had to choose nearly every label on my blog because it seems I spent the whole year all wrapped up in all my favorite values. No wonder it was such a good year. I can't even think of anything bad that happened in it! (Though Aaron says that doesn't mean it didn't happen, I live by Elizabeth Bennet's philosophy: "Think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure.") In the end, I had to delete all those labels because there were too many for Blogger to accept.

My Second-Best Goose Chase Ever: Days 17 and 18

Yesterday, Aaron and I embarked on a crazy wild goose chase, destined for failure. We saw Holy Island on the map, an island just south of Scotland in the North Sea, where Lindisfarne Priory was (and its ruins still are). That priory is where the gorgeously illuminated Lindisfarne Gospels were made. Besides that huge draw (at least for me), the island can only be reached by a causeway that is underwater at high tide. We wanted to drive up on a whim and see if we could find a B&B to spend the night in on the island.

Sounds lovely, right? Well, the reason it was a crazy goose chase was that I knew for a fact that the Priory would be closed to visitors (for the winter season) and there was a good chance that all the guest houses would be as well. If we hunted one up for too long, we could get stuck on the island for 6 hours until the tide went back out with a place to stay. If the guest houses weren't open, chances are that the pubs and cafes wouldn't be either. And, we don't have a phone or any reliable internet access away from whatever hotel we are staying in.

However, we went. Why not? This trip is for adventures, and this island certainly qualified. It turned out BEAUTIFULLY.

We drove up from Penrick mostly in the rain, but not a hard rain. Seeing the causeway was even neater than we thought. We drove out to the island at nearly dark and marveled at the escape towers out on the sand, at the grasses and seaweed that lives both in dry and wet land (depending on the tide), and at the small part of the island itself that floods twice a day. It was pouring rain, but we managed to find out that the entire island closes down after Christmas until April. No hotels, no restaurants, no priory, no nothing but amazing views. We were expecting that there would be barriers preventing cars from entering the causeway at the high tide times, but all there was was a sign with tide times and a picture of a submerged car as a warning to follow them.

We drove off the island at dark, just as the tides were about to come back in and cut it off from the mainland. Luckily, we found a hotel one mile from the causeway with a restaurant and pub attached, and the rate was very reasonable because apparently we are the only people crazy enough to come to Holy Island in the winter.

We weren't ready to eat, so we drove into Scotland. Just to the tip of it, just to say we did. Scotland looked much like the part of England that was 5 feet away.

We had dinner in the pub, including a few pints of cider for Aaron and way too much wine for me, read "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" until we were sleepy, and konked out early.

We got up early to go to the causeway at sunrise. We timed it so there would be light and the water would still be out over the road. We were able to walk out onto the road as far as the water and watch it recede in front of us. We saw an animal poke its head up above the water again and again, swimming in a sleek graceful way across the water. We couldn't decide what it was at first--too graceful for a turtle, too big for snake. We saw later that this part of the North Sea has a huge seal colony, and it must have been a seal! There were also millions of birds, flying against the orange sunrise and purple clouds. It was amazingly beautiful and one of the highlights of our trip.

We had breakfast after and headed south along a coastal highway, back toward Newcastle where we had to return our rental car. The ocean was stunning! I had never seen an ocean that didn't meet the land at a beach, and we saw cliffs dropping away into the waves, beaches, and fields full of cows sloping down to the water.

We drove right up to a beautiful castle in Bamburgh (picture); it was closed for the season, but I walked down along a path that ran at the bottom of the walls where they were built right out of the stone. From the top of the hill, we could look out over the North Sea to the Farne Islands, tiny islands (only some of which are visible when the tide is high) and see a lighthouse and a tiny chapel.

On the drive south, we also passed through Alnwick, which was my favorite of the northern towns we saw. It had an old beautiful downtown, like Newcastle and Berwick-upon-Tweed, but it was also thriving and clean and busy. I wish we had had time to go to the Gardens, but we did stop and walk on a path through a sheep pasture beside the river Aln. When I say through a sheep pasture, I mean it, too. We went right up beside the flock. We have seen a lot of sheep on this trip, enough to make me cynical about their existence (kind of like armadillos), but I thought it was neat to be so close to them. On the other side of the Aln was Alnwick Castle (our view of the castle), more beautiful, I thought, than Bamburgh Castle, though Aaron disagrees. Alnwick Castle was used in the filming of Harry Potter, and you can see it here in a still from the movie.

If we have a chance to return to Great Britain (probably on a trip to Scotland and Ireland), we would definitely return to the Northumberland Coast. I would love to visit the Holy Island in the summer, when the hiking would be pleasant, and I would like to spend a day or two in Alnwick, exploring the castle, the Abbey, the footpaths around the town, and the lovely city center.

Now, we are on a train headed back to London. It's the crazy train, for sure. So far, here are the nutty people I've seen (while Aaron sleeps, oblivious to the crazy):

• A lady with a dog who starting hysterically shrieking and running down the aisle when she missed her stop, causing the dog to hysterically bark
• A family with possibly the worst behaved children I have ever encountered, even in Walmart, who made me wish to be nearer the barking dog
• A little boy who got himself locked into the bathroom and banged on the door until someone let him out, the only person on the list I felt sorry for

We are spending the night tonight at a hotel near Heathrow (to be away from crazy New Year's Eve partiers), and then tomorrow we are back to our dear Mayflower Hotel near Earl's Court (the site of the beginning of my love of Chicken Balti).We have a few more days in London before we go home on the 4th of January. I will return home, now aged 33, satiated on adventure for a little while, and glad to see Livy again.

Change of Pace

A little vacation from the Motherland.

After yesterday's musings about Orks, today I grabbed a handful and got to painting.  It's not often that I can start and finish a mini in a single day, let alone a group of them, but that's more or less what happened here.  I drop that qualifier in because the batch had been started already, but keeping with my usual style I re-painted just about every bit.  While I know that Orks are a motley bunch and having them be different colors would be thematic, I still like having a consistent shade through bunches, if not the whole army.  Speaking of coherency the Evil Sunz portion of the army isn't speaking to me at the moment, despite what I painted today.  Somehow having the single color (blue) on the Deathskull part works for me more than the dual color (red/yellow) of the Sunz.  My concept for the army would work just fine as a strictly Deathskull force and if I didn't already have most of a squad of Evil Sunz done (not to mention other partially painted bits) then I'd probably switch over to just blue.  Perhaps pulling all the boyz out as a group will make the different colors more appealing.  If I've lost you in this reminiscing, do check the tag cloud on the right sidebar.  I've covered this Orky speculation before, but it's been quite a while.

Klaw detail.

On the painting front I tried something new out.  My default painting approach is "factory fresh," which is good enough for Marines but doesn't jive with Orks.  As such I put in some wear on the klaw by using a method I've seen many times in various tutorials.  I painted the klaw up red as usual, the blacked in the cutting edges.  This wasn't a uniform application but a random one.  To describe from a different angle, instead of painting one horizontal stripe I did a bunch of little vertical stripes.  After the black I repeated the process with the VGC equivalent of Boltgun Metal.  I made sure to leave some black showing and to vary the lengths of the stripes both in relation to each other and in relation to the black underneath.  Finally I used VGC Silver in the same manner but in the smallest quantity of the three.  The results were what I expected and didn't take long to do.  Speed was the key idea with this group.  While I spent longer painting them than I wanted to, I still accomplished my goal of finishing them off in a single day.  The notable exception is the Deathskull Nob, who got his skin finished and a basecoat on most other things.  I won't know for sure until I pull the models out and count, but I think I'm about a dozen models short of having a 500 point list fully painted.  Of course none of them have finished bases, but since I've gone this long without basing them I'm just going to wait and do them all at once.  Depending on exactly how many I have to go, I may try to crank out the remaining models before getting started on whatever the Paint the Target goal is for January.  I still think 40k has some glaring issues as a system, but I do love the models and a little variety never hurt anyone.

It IS hard to cover up

It makes me batty when breastfeeding mothers battle against other breastfeeding mothers saying that "they cover and respect other people." What about being uncovered makes people believe that there is an act of disrespect going on? 99% of uncovered breastfeeding mothers hardly show any skin at all.

We're all just feeding our children and need to stick together. The women being harassed for nursing in public aren't just the rare ones that bare some extra skin. Even covered mothers are harassed.

Then there are folks that think the covered mothers are giving us a bad name. So long as mother and child are comfortable being covered, I feel to-each-their-own. For a brief time I had to cover because my daughter was a distracted nurser out in public. It was either use a cover or stay home. You don't know that mothers reason for using a cover... so don't judge. Give her a smile, thumbs up, and hand her a "thank you for nursing in public" card.

We're all in the same boat and need to stop pointing fingers at each other thinking that any one of us is superior to the other.

All that being said... I'd love to see some new "it's hard to cover up" videos. We like to do this every once in a while, just to show that not all kids like to be covered and also that without a cover you really can't see much anyway. Please make your video and either upload it right on our Facebook wall or put it on YouTube and post the link. We've had some funny great videos in the past.

Driving through Hell: Days 15 and 16

So the last two days really sucked. There were moments of glory that I'll tell you about, but mostly big suck-ola.

We left Newcastle yesterday in a rental car, headed along Hadrian's Wall. I was very excited about this part of the trip, so when it turned out to be a miserable windy and rainy day, completely unsuitable for hiking. I was very disappointed.

There were a few highpoints. We saw a neat part of the wall, so straight and regular and well-preserved compared to the more modern boundary walls. There was also a moment that may have been my favorite of the whole trip when we fought our way down a path to a Temple of Mithras in the middle of a sheep field against 50 mph winds and freezing rain. It sounds awful, I know, and Aaron thought it was awful and only went because he loves me so very much, but it was exhilarating! I could lean back against the wind a little and not fall over! And it made my coat blow out behind me and made my cheeks red and bright. There was something primal about fighting the wind, almost like fighting backward against the current of time rushing at us, fighting to get to that temple. I left a coin to propitiate Mithras (and so along with Jesus and Sulis Minerva, whom I have already propitiated with candles and coins, I ought to be covered!). We also saw some lovely hillside country and a lot of sheep and a Roman fort or two on the hills.

We spent the night in a cozy little B&B and set out again this morning for York and the Viking Center. The drive was nice, and we loved seeing the country change from hills to flat land that I think might be moors (but no ghostly hounds were there to make me certain). The awful part came when we tried to get into York. It was comical how terrible it was. We learned never, never, never to drive in York. There is a ring road that looks on the map like it would be easy to stay on, like I-285. Oh no, that is not the case. There are hairpin turns, about 40 roundabouts that are unlabeled, and apparently the Brits haven't learned east and west yet. Once, we actually ended up in the middle of an intersection in a pedestrian only area. We had to honk at people to move to get out of the shopping area. We hated it so much and got lost so often that I groaned every time I saw the York Minster Cathedral in front of us, though I had been wanting to see it.

Finally, finding the parking lot that we had been struggling toward for over an hour and there not being any spaces and York Castle looking a lot like a sheep fold we saw this morning, just set up on a hill, we escaped out the first highway we came to and cared not a jot for the Cathedral or for the Vikings.

We ended up at the Yorkshire Air Museum, which was small but a lot of fun. Aaron got escorted by a worker into the private workshop to see a Harrier, which is a jet that can take off vertically, in case you are the British Air Force and don't have any carriers or other defensive technology other than planes designed in 1961 that are still in use. The man was super nice and seemed so sad that the Royal Air Force and Navy were so reduced. We also saw a big ass beige airplane that they named the Nimrod.

We wandered the hanger and a couple of outside planes, just like we do at Warner Robbins, and it turned out to be a lot of fun, though it rained on us. Rain here only lasts about 5 minutes, so we just ducked in a building and waited it out.

Tomorrow we are doing a crazy plan. It will probably turn out miserably, and I'll write about how ridiculous it was tomorrow night. But we don't care because it will be a truly great adventure, even if it's a disaster. We are going to drive through the North Yorkshire Moor National Park (because I am just fascinated with moors) and up to the Scottish border. We are going to wait for the tide to go our, drive across a causeway that is only available during low tide, visit Lindisfarne (a priory and castle famous for the amazing illuminated manuscripts produced there) though we probably won't find it open, attempt to find a room on the island (Holy Island) on the spur of the moment (because you can't book them on the internet), and drive back out to the mainland late at night, when the tide is low again if we can't get a room. We'll report on this adventure later.

Aaron comments:

1. I can't believe that people don't gamble more when there are gambling machines EVERYWHERE. No one is ever using them.
2. If I were a sheep, I would just off a cliff (like a "theoretical lemming") if I had to live in this weather. (But, says Kelly, as Aaron insisted yesterday, sheep cannot jump or else cow grates would not work on them.Maybe the dissatisfied Aaron-sheep would just fall off the edge of the cliff passively.)
3. Yorkshire has crossings for deer, tractors, ducks, cows, and TANKS!!! 

Kelly's extra comments:

1. Aaron is very good at driving a stick shift and on the wrong side of the road. However, he is a timid city driver and stops at green lights just like Mamaw. He needs to take amphetamines before heading toward a city center, especially a pedestrian-only zone. 
2. If we sound slap-happy, we are. It's the only way to survive the city of York with your soul intact.

Year in Review

The year what was.

First things first, I've picked up a couple new followers recently, so howdy to the new folks.  Hope you enjoy the ride.

With the new year on the horizon, and since I see them popping up across the interwebs, I thought I'd take a look at what I've done this year.  Starting with models built would be appropriate, but I'm not entirely sure what was done this year and what was done in years past, so let's just skip ahead to painting.




Blood Angels
10 Assault Marines
5 Sanguinary Guard

Orks
10 choppy Boyz
22 shooty Boyz (with a Big Shoota and a Rokkit Launcha)

Khador
Harkevich
Strakhov
Orsus1 (or prime as you prefer)
Irusk1 (though he already needs repairs ><;)
6 Doom Reavers
Winter Guard Deathstar (all 16 of them)
Manhuntress
Black Ivan
2 wreck markers
Juggernaut
5 Bombardiers

See something notable back there?

Grand total: 83 models.  I thought there would be more, but that's a respectable enough number.  Considering it doesn't count all the in progress stuff (another 10-15 orks, 10 more Blood Angels, War Dog, Destroyer, pSorscha, Widowmakers) it's not so bad at all.  Further considering that all my Khador was painted this year (I inherited a few already painted pieces from EV), and that I didn't start in on them in earnest until July, things look pretty rosy.

From a blogging perspective I managed:
168 posts (not counting this one), up from 88 last year
23 battle reports (including a video report)
Joined 3 blog networks
Revamped the design (now with a banner!)
And a bit of inside baseball, enjoyed a huge jump in blog traffic

As happy as I am with my painting list, the blogging list makes me a bit happier still.  I'm a writer by training and inclination (if not yet by trade, fingers crossed for 2012), so churning out the words is closer to the heart than cranking out the minis.  There's plenty of room for improvement (looking at you proof-reading) but considering that I'm averaging about a post every other day at least I have the an appropriate quantity.  Much as I'd like to be an every day poster, I just don't think it'll happen.  If I could find a way to make a living by blogging then I'd be a couple-times-per-day poster, but alas that particular pipe dream is well beyond reasonable.

In less tangible results, EV and I got in a game per week with great regularity.  I'm sure we missed a week here and there, but for the most part there was a steady diet of gaming.  I made my (Warmahordes) tournament debut and had a great time while also getting a good result.  Having recently found the Warmahordes community hiding (in plain sight) at my FLGS, games-per-week has risen dramatically and will hopefully hit a level that satisfies my Warmahordes hunger while also allowing for more system flexibility with EV, who loves to hop from game to game.

Now that's flexibility.

With that marginal transition in place, what am I looking forward to in 2012?  Foremost is getting a list fully painted.  What list?  That's a good question.  It'll be Khadoran, but beyond that I'm not sure.  I may shoot for the Strakhov list I played at the tournament, if only for nostalgia purposes.  By now some list should have emerged as my go-to, but nothing has floated to the top yet.  I've been having a good time fluttering around the faction and am loathe to settle in to one list for fear of becoming overly reliant on any given unit or piece.  Witness the lack of WGI in my lists of late for evidence.  Given my ultimate druthers a T4 Orsus list would be the winner, but considering I still have to get some Demo Corps and assemble (and magnetize) my omni-jack this is an option that won't be finished in the near future, though a full year should be plenty of time to get it done.  Of course a lot of what will get painted will depend on Paint the Target, which is responsible for better than half of my Khadoran output this year, but there will surely be overlap and getting stuff painted is a good thing regardless of what it is.

Had to get another one in.

Satisfying as it will be to be able to put a fully painted force on the table will be, I did mention flexibility.  As such I'll be looking to things that aren't Khadoran.  Top of the list is Legion, but considering that I have yet to figure out a scheme (though I did prime up a couple of Shredders for test purposes this morning) this project will probably take a bit to get rolling.  I have a good idea of where I want to go with Legion (beasts, beasts, more beasts) and my current plan is to collect towards a handful of lists instead of just collecting an entire faction.  I have similar intentions towards Trollbloods, though they're even further back on the burner with the recent Legion acquisition.  Menoth has gotten the biggest shove back of all, though with a decent reason.  My previous painting plan, meaning that Trollbloods will be my "halo" faction, has shifted to Menoth.  Considering how invested I am in the whole red-cross-on-white-background crusader theme I am, it makes sense to give the Menites the super detailed treatment.  I have some basing ideas for them as well, but don't expect any real progress until after Khador and Legion are done.  My poor, neglected Iron Dwarves are very close to completion, so they're on the list as well.  It would be a nice change of pace to have a fully painted collection of something.  Finally there's the Orks.  With EV's Dark Eldar resurgence the ladz have taken a couple steps up in my sea of consciousness.  Since they're the definition of a horde army, I can use them to scratch the "paint a bunch of stuff quickly" itch that I have while also clearing out a large chunk of the building and painting backlog that I have.  I have enough models on hand, and probably assembled and primed, for at least a 500 point list, probably 750, and perhaps even 1000, though that will likely take some stretching with wargear options.  The Orks are very appealing aesthetically so I'll be glad to get back to them.  There is a pull between wanting to get the done quick and wanting to paint (and model) them well, but I'm sure I can find a happy medium.  I think my painting has taken a couple steps since the last time I put brush to Ork, so I'll be curious to see how the next batch of them paints up.  Perhaps I'll start with a Nob or two to have a finished squad on hand.  Lots of options on hand for the new year.

Bombs away

Gogo Ice Axe.

Quick one here before hockey.  Finished up the latest batch today.  It took longer than I expected, but in the end all the little rivets and tiny highlights pay off.  Of course forgetting details like the Ice Axe and the Bombardiers leader's head until the very end didn't help on the time front, but they're done now which is what matters.  The axe in particular was a bit of an experiment.  I wanted to get a sort of blue glow effect, so once I realized I had forgotten it I went back over the regular silver color with the light blue (not sure what it is, akin to GW Ice Blue) and started filling in at the "base" of the axe with the idea that the "glow," and the ice itself, was coming from the center of the axe and would get fainter as it got closer to the edges.  Straight blue went in the middle with progressively more VGC Silver mixed in as I moved out.  It didn't turn out quite like I wanted, but it doesn't look half bad either.  Next time I might try a blue base and put the silver on top of it, or perhaps use a blue wash over a silver base.  Because time is an issue, have a photo dump for the finish.

Ready for bombardiering.

Now with individualization!

Solo detail.

More solo detail.

Super shoulder detail.

Guest Blog: Brandy's Preemie Breastfeeding Story

I am the woman who has always said that I would nurse/give my child breastmilk until he was ready to wean. I did that. Sadly, it was not as long as *I* wanted to.

My son, Clark, was born at 30 weeks, weighing 2 1/2 pounds. He was tube fed starting at 9 days old, starting out with a whole .5mls of expressed colostrum. The thing I remember most after his birth was (from the operating room table) asking for the lactation consultant to bring me a pump. I kept asking and kept asking until, FINALLY, 4 hours later, a Medela Symphony showed up at my bedside. At that moment, it was the most beautiful thing in the room. (Clark was, of course, in the Neonatal ICU).

I remember being so excited about learning how the pump worked and finally getting to try it out. I pumped religiously, around the clock, every 2 1/2 hours. I met some of my best NICU mom friends in the pumping room, as we dragged in there with our bag of pumping accessories.

When Clark was 9 days old, he contracted pseudomonas sepsis, an obscenely deadly infection, from an infected ventilator. The same ventilator that was actually keeping him alive, go figure. Neither the doctors nor we knew if he was going to live or die. That's when my pumping schedule took a nosedive. I couldn't eat, I couldn't sleep, I couldn't do anything except worry about him. My husband and I moved into the Ronald McDonald house and we were so thrilled to see 3 huge deep freezers full of pumped breast milk for other babies whose parents lived there. I tried and tried but couldn't get back into my old pumping groove and my supply suffered.

He didn't "eat" for days following his illness, so of course, I was able to get ahead of him and build up a nice stash of milk. But, by the time he came home, almost 3 months later, he was slowly catching up to me. We tried and tried in the NICU to get Clark latched on, but he has what is called micrognathia, which is an undersized jaw. He never could get a decent latch and even at the moments we thought he might, he had no strength to nurse. So--I kept pumping.

He made it out of the NICU formula-free! A month after he came home, my supply had suffered so much that I ordered domperidone. It was a miracle worker for me and doubled my supply, which, in all honesty, barely helped me keep up with Clark. We kept trying and kept trying to nurse. Finally, when he was just over 6 months old, he was able to latch and nurse. However, he only had enough energy to weakly nurse for 5 minutes every hour and a half. By then, we were great friends with the LC's at the hospital and tried every method they could give us to get him to nurse normally, to no avail. Of course, he lost weight because he was getting no hind milk.

By that time, he was in treatment for his congenitally dislocated hip. When he was 8 months old (developmentally, and size-wise more like a 4 month old), he went on a nursing strike, never to return to the breast. I was crushed, there are no words to explain how badly I wanted to ditch my pump and nurse my baby. At 10 months old, he went into a body cast to set his hip into place and started refusing my milk all together. I had to resort to mixing my own milk with apple juice just to keep him hydrated. He was still exclusively (besides the juice) breastfed, and was nowhere near being able to eat food, so this was quite a predicament we were in.

As you can imagine, my supply tanked from that point on. He refused the breast, he refused my milk in a bottle, I was completely crushed. We tried everything we could do to get him to take my milk alone and nothing worked, we even tried donor milk. He was losing weight in a very bad way and we tried every milk you can think of, preemie formula (which he had never received before), goat's milk, cow's milk, heavy cream, yogurt. At that point, we were desperate. I continued to pump.

Finally, by the time he was 13 months, after 3 whole months of being refused, I decided to quit pumping. My guilt was palpable. I had my milk and donor milk in my freezer going unused, which I ended up donating to another pumping preemie mom who was short on milk.

But, I can say this. My son had my milk for the great majority of his first year. He was a healthy little preemie during that time and to this day, is still relatively healthy (aside from his weight, which is still an issue due to milk refusal.) He is incredibly smart and at 20 months old was using 4 word phrases. Breast milk helped him get where he is today. All babies are entitled to their milk, but especially preemies.

A hint of things to come

Family portrait.

I've let the battle reports pile up to the point that there are no less than four waiting for some love.  Some will be shorter than others, but it's a troubling collection no matter how long they turn out to be.  I'll start chipping away at the stack and hopefully get caught up by the new year. 

In the meantime, I have a little nugget here from one of the upcoming reports.  I played against...Steve? (horrible with names) a couple weeks ago at the FLGS.  It was his first game under mk 2, and first in a couple years.  It was also my first mirror match against a fellow Khador player.  The exact goings-on will have to wait for the actual report, but one of the things that came up during the game (Steve was very nice and chatty) was a Black Ivan comparison.  He did a so-called "Full Metal Ivan" conversion, using the old metal Destroyer as the base.  I've seen a couple of these across the interwebs, but this was the first I'd seen in person.  The plastic jacks are bigger than the old metal ones in my experience, and I expected the same results in this comparison.  Imagine my surprise when the two Ivans were more or less the same size.  My plastic Ivan is wider due to how I posed him, but height-wise there isn't much difference.  Plastic Ivan is a shade taller, but you'd have to do some looking to notice the difference and I don't think you'd be able to tell if they weren't sitting right next to each other.

In other teaser notes I had my first game of Hordes today facing off against EV's Skorne.  I thought it would take some time to get used to how Fury works, but turns out it was pretty natural.  Looks like Hordes is, or at least can be, exactly what I hoped it would be: a game of beasts with some infantry support.  Looks like this week won't work for gaming at the FLGS, but next week I'll be faced with a tough decision: fight for the Motherland or spread Everblight's influence? 

Lazy Day and Train Day: Running of the John Bull Line, Days 13 and 14

Boxing Day was a lazy day. We slept late in our posh hotel; I have a visit to the steam-room, sauna, and pool; and we walked out for lunch in the early afternoon. One artichoke pizza and one fight later, we were back in the room, watching Dexter and hanging out. I took a little walk along the Thames, but only a little one. Later, Indian food. Total lazy day, total awesomesauce.

This morning we got up early, packed up, and headed out of London. King's Cross Station is a nuthouse. How on earth Mrs. Weasley gets all those children and owls and such into there and onto a train is beyond me. I commented that it was worse than London itself, and an old, toothless man overheard me. He cackled gleefully and said (at least 4 times): "I used to live here. I wouldn't come back for a thousand pounds." I'm a little of sick of London too, so I smiled at him in camaraderie.

We took the train to Newcastle, which is  so far north that it's almost in Scotland. I looked out of the window at the lovely countryside the whole 3 hours. The fields are bordered by hedges, filled with either black, loamy dirt or sheep grazing. In the distance, we saw villages far away enough to lose any flaws and just look charming, and there were often pretty little churches in the center. We saw some factories too, enough to keep Aaron interested in whether or not they were nuclear power plants or oil refineries.

Now we are settled into our hostel, which is a VERY LARGE step down from our last hotel. :) Like, a step the size of the Grand Canyon. But we like it. It's cheap. There are bunkbeds!! Aaron is unimpressed by bunkbeds, but I love them and called dibs on the top bunk! We are doing laundry this afternoon, an essential task at this point, as Aaron is one day from commando.

I'm very excited to be on the move again. I had a nice rest over Christmas, but I'm ready for adventures again. We are going to rent a car in the morning and head out along Hadrian's wall for some scenic driving and hiking.

Aaron's comments:

• There was a Hari Krishna riding a little scooter in his full orange garb with orange Vibram Five Fingers  to match.
• England doesn't seem to have trailer parks. I need to check their tornado rate, but I'm assuming it's nothing like ours because clearly trailer parks cause tornadoes.
• I'm surprised they have solar panels at this latitude.
• London has the most bizarre strikers ever. They planned and had signs announcing the Underground strike on Boxing Day. In a real strike, they surprise everyone and stay away until they achieve some goal. This should have been "call in sick to work day."

Painting and developments

Quick pictures are bad pictures.

A belated painting update.  On Friday I got the reds done and touched up the areas that will be black and little metal bits, which is all that now remains.  Aside from basing of course.  This time around I tried to be more liberal with the shading on the red, which was challenging since I wanted these models to fit in with the rest of the army that has less-shaded reds.  I've been wanting to do a darker red for a while now, but I'm basically locked-in to the bright red for the Motherland (not to mention my Blood Angels).  With Paint the Target due on Wednesday, and a game with EV tomorrow, it looks like Wednesday morning will be "get the Juggy done ASAP" time.  I don't anticipate any problems finishing on time, but stuff has a way of cropping up when you don't expect it.

In other news, my not-quite local FLGS had a Legion deck when I stopped by today (along with eVayl), so the Legion train is ready to hit the table.  Color schemes are still giving me fits though.  I think I want to go with blue and orange, but I'm faltering on how to put them together.  Blue skin with orange armor/scales?  Considering I want to do a very pale blue, more of a white shaded with blue than an actual blue, I'm not sold on orange working.  Going monochrome is an option, using orange as a spot color, but that seems like it would get monotonous with little delay.  Hopefully inspiration strikes at some point or I may be doing speculative paint jobs on some poor Shredders.

In other other news, no luck on little winter trees at Micheal's today.  I think I may have been early as it looked like they were just starting to set up the Christmas clearance stuff.  Perhaps a return will prove more fruitful.

Our England Christmas: Running of the John Bull Line, Days 11 and 12

You may have noticed that I skipped day number 10 (probably not, though, because you aren't so methodical). This is not because I have a secret day that I am not going to tell you about; instead, it's because I messed up my numbering (pointed out by Aaron, Mr. Methodical himself) and am now correcting it. I counted 2 days of travel as day 1. So, Christmas Eve should be day 11 and today, day 12.

Now that that VERY important detail is out of the way (major sarcasm alert), let me tell you about our Christmas.

As I said earlier, we got a much nicer hotel than usual for Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and Boxing Day, so that when all was closed and there wasn't much to do, we could be in a spacious room in a hotel with room service and amenities that we are used to (Every Motel 6 in America has a bathtub and in-room temperature control, but not here!) Our room is very nice, and the hotel overlooks the Thames and Tower Bridge.

After we checked in on Christmas Eve, we ate amazing Thai food (all the Asian food here is amazing so far), and we went to Harrod's (big mistake, but we were looking for something specific). It was slammed full of people and slammed full of expensive stuff we were afraid we were going to break. There were Christmas crackers that cost 400 pounds with silk handkerchiefs and jewelry inside. We got out of there as soon as possible with very little trauma (except for Aaron, who can't even stand to go to the Marietta grocery store). Mama, we were very right to avoid it.

After that miserable interlude, we went to do fun stuff. We saw the new Sherlock Holmes movie at Leicester Square, and it was great fun. I thought it was better than the last one without all the crazy coming back from the dead stuff. Aaron thought it was too silly to be better, but we both still loved the relationship between Holmes and Watson. After the movie, we went back to our favorite London neighborhood, the one near Earl's Court, where we stayed for a few days before Bristol and Bath. We ate at our favorite Indian restaurant (more chicken balti!), bought some champagne, and tried unsuccessfully to find Christmas crackers that cost 4 pounds instead of 400. After we got back to the hotel, I took a bath (A BATH!), which I have missed so much. Showers can only make you feel so happy; the biggest amount of happy requires a nice, immersion bath.

We exchanged presents, too, all of which came from Blackwell's Bookstore in Oxford. Aaron got me a lovely illustrated version of Cooleridge's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner," which he would have to have been blind and deaf to not get me, as I oohed over how beautiful it was for 10 minutes. (It was after this that I suggested we get each other book Christmas gifts to exchange.) He also got me 2 surprise books--From Elvish to Klingon: Exploring Invented Languages by Michael Adams and The Time-traveller's Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century by Ian Mortimer. I love my books, but we realized after packing them up that it might have been best to get something lighter for Christmas. I got Aaron The Gun: The Story of the AK-47 by C.J.Chivers, If Rome Hadn't Fallen: What Might Have Happened If the Western Empire Had Survived by Timothy Venning, and Alexander the Great Failure by John D. Grainger. Aaron likes What-If books and guns and has found that he has "huge gaping holes" in his knowledge of the Roman Empire, so I think my gifts were a win.


Today, Christmas Day, we slept in until noon and ate a ridiculously over-priced lunch in the hotel restaurant. For Aaron, the price was not as bad as for me, since he got to take home 2 noise makers and a mask. Apparently, Brits celebrate Christmas with the trappings we use for New Year's Eve. The person who gave Aaron his stupid whistle and horn should be tortured for all the hours I have been tortured; he takes every opportunity to blow those awful things. Too bad I can't just send him off to David's house with them, like I do when Livy has some super loud and annoying toy.


I used went down to the fitness center of the hotel and relaxed in the steam-room, sauna, aromatherapy room (that's a warm room that smells yum), and swam some lazy laps in the pool; Aaron actually did a real workout. Later, I went to the spa for my foot and leg massage, which included buffing my feet, exfoliating my feel and legs, and tons of wonderful massage. Aaron was considering doing one too--his feet have been hurting from all the walking--but I don't think he would have enjoyed being buffed and exfoliated. Maybe I should just rub his feet for him. :)


For dinner tonight, we had more Indian food. We may start to smell like curry, but that's okay because if both of us reek, we won't notice it on the other one. As we ate (chicken balti!), we watched a bit of the second Bourne movie on TV. Now we are hitting the sack. We had a very happy Christmas, and we hope all our friends and family did too!

P.S. Lest you think we never try any new Indian dishes, I wanted to tell you that we always get an order of chicken balti and something else. I just mention the chicken balti so often because compared to it, all other curries are red-headed stepchildren, squibs, and B movies.

Bristol and Bath: Running of the John Bull Line, Days 7, 8, and 9

Bristol and Bath were next on our trip, though it's hard to remember, as I am so relaxed from our luxurious Christmas hotel with steam room and sauna. :)

We stayed in Bristol, but we really didn't see much of it. It wasn't a place we really wanted to see, but it was much cheaper than Bath and within 15 minutes of it by train. The only cool Bristol thing we did was see Rory. He came over on Thursday afternoon from some place in Devon to hang out with us. We ate a late lunch, wandered all over Bristol, looked in at the cathedral, and ended up yapping in a pub. It was awesome, and we finally had someone to ask all of our questions about England. Have we been tipping correctly? (Pretty much, maybe a little too much.)Which button do you press on the toilet? (He can't figure it out either.) Should people walk on the left side of the sidewalk and stairs? (It's a crazy free-for-all, mostly.) And finally, why the hell didn't you go to Oxford? (Apparently, British people make stupid mistakes in their youths as well. Why didn't I go to Oxford, after all?) We were so glad to see Rory again, and it was even more fun than the last time.

Each day in Bristol, we took the train over to Bath. The first day, after leaving London, checking into our hotel in Bristol, and going back over to Bath, we just ate and wandered. Bath has an amazing amount of shopping, and after this first day, we managed to avoid those areas. :)

The next day, Thursday, we went to the Roman Baths in the morning before we saw Rory. They were bigger and more extensive than I remembered, and it was very interesting. Going to see them with an engineer made a difference in the focus; I do not remember Mama and I spending so much time looking at sluice gates and pipes. :) But seeing those things closely made me appreciate even more the amazing building abilities of the Romans. 

We especially enjoyed the section on curses. Apparently, a lot of folks came to the baths (dedicated to Sulis Minerva) in order to curse people who stole from them or messed with them in some way. They would have a scribe write their curse on a piece of metal and then throw it into the spring. Archaeologists have found a lot of them, and they go something like this: "Dear Sulis Minerva, someone stole my gloves from the baths. I think it was . Please make the culprit pay for this crime with his blood, his eyes, his fertility, and the lives of his children. Amen." We had fun reading them, and I loved trying to figure out the Latin. I threw a coin into one of the baths along with a curse for Sulis Minerva; we'll see how effective she is. :)

Friday, I went to Bath much earlier than Aaron for a Jane Austen day all to myself. I walked by the Circus, the Royal Crescent, the gravel walk, and down Gay Street (all mentioned in her books). I toured the Jane Austen Center which is primarily about her life in Bath. I bought ALL the cool Jane Austen souvenirs. I got a Jane Austen Choose Your Own Adventure Book, a quiz book so Aaron can entertain me with Jane Austen trivia on the train, her History of England By a Partial, Prejudiced, and Ignorant Historian (a delightful parody of schoolroom history books on the monarchy), and graphic novel versions of Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility. The people at the Center were all very knowledgeable and all in period dress, and when I went back outside onto the regular streets, I was a bit disappointed to be in 2011.

Aaron went to Bath in the afternoon to try to go to the Hershel Museum (the guy who discovered Uranus, hee, hee), but it was closed for all of the holiday season. Darwin's house too, except for Dec 31, so we might still make that. The scientists aren't making a very good showing in England. I'm so glad that he got to go to the History of Science Museum in Oxford. Rory reminded me that Lyra went there in His Dark Materials and that she met Mary Malone there. It says something about my interests that that fact made it twice as appealing to me.

We left Bristol and Bath on Christmas Eve, heading back to London to spend out Christmas in a much nicer hotel that we would usually get, since there is nothing open and not much to do. I'll blog about our Christmas in another post.

Happy Christmas everyone!

Uncharted Territory - Again

I don't know what I'm doing. I'm admitting it here on the world wide web.

When Christa brought Ella home she told me "I don't know what I'm doing, I've never nursed a newborn before!" Now, here I am, I'm approaching Chase's 1st birthday, still breastfeeding A LOT, and I realize I don't know what I'm doing. I only nursed Aiden for 8 months. I'm more than 50% farther along now...and I know things are a little different. I'm having a hard time knowing what "the rules" are for nursing a baby this age.

Rules? What? Since when does breastfeeding have RULES? That's ridiculous...but that's how I feel! I was so cautious about introducing solids, avoiding pacifiers, nursing on cue, and following his lead, working through a nursing strike, making sure I always offered the breast before foods...I was super nervous about getting it "wrong" because I did get it wrong with Aiden, I didn't want to do it again. I wanted to be sure we would make it past any bumps in the road. I was really having an internal struggle, and being just a bit neurotic.

Probably about a month ago I gave a detailed play by play to my girlfriends about how I was handling nursing and food and additional fluids. Told them I wasn't sure if I was doing the right stuff in the right order or what. They were very kind and reassuring. Thank goodness. Now, however, my brain is all rattled again...

...fast forward 2 months...I started this blog a few weeks before Chase turned 1 and I was all frazzled...but I wanted to share this unfinished post for a reason.

First of all, Breastfeeding doesn't have rules. I have long proclaimed the benefits of following your instincts and your child's cues when it comes to breastfeeding, doing what works well for you and whatever seems right. For some reason I was struggling with embracing this tactic in nursing my "Baby-toddler." Then one night I had a long conversation with Mama Christa during which I worked out my insecurities. At this age especially there are no rules...and I confirmed with her that I was overthinking the whole thing. This was like a switch going off. At this point I don't keep mental notes about how many times he has nursed, I just have a general perception about whether he has nursed "a lot" or "not much at all" and largely it doesn't concern me one way or another. This is a freeing place. Not paying attention is freeing. This is how nursing should be. Now I offer milkies and foods whenever he seems to want them and it's working. He's happy, I'm happy, and it's all good.

Second of all, we don't know it all here. We are all having new experiences in some arena or another...teeth, older nurslings, nursing on demand, day-time sippers...every child brings new experiences in all arenas and nursing is not any different. Over the last few months I have really embraced nursing not only as an important nutritional component in Chase's diet, but also as a critical parenting tool. Recognizing that nursing is a fluid, shifting, multi-purpose thing helps to relieve a lot of the "am I doing this right" anxiety that I think we have on our shoulders these days.

Third, if your baby is happy and healthy, there is no reason to worry about food, milies, diapers, weights...just go with it...your baby will let you know what he needs and you will know when he needs something more...even without a chart, mental log, etc. Why? Because you are the mommy, and if you shut off all the checklists, all the "what are the rules" and just let your intuition speak to you...You'll know what's up! That's how it is being a mommy!

Green machine

Marching onward.

 Got some good painting in yesterday.  Though I didn't think I had much time, I sat down at the table to get in some work and ended up finishing off the green.  This is an obvious coup since  the models are mostly green, putting them into one or two more sessions and done category.  For good measure I even got in a coat of red, though I think I'll be going back and doing the plates on top of the Bombardier's hands in red as well.  In an unexpected turn, the Bombardiers were easier/more fun to paint than the Juggernaut was.  Lots of large, flat planes aren't so engaging as it turns out.  Freehand might be a game-time decision, so to speak, depending on how long I have after finishing the model and before the Paint the Target deadline.  I'm not worried about finishing on time, but if I start throwing extra decoration in there then deadlines will be more of a factor.  Considering that this Juggernaut is likely to end up as a placeholder/ringer for extreme builds I won't feel bad if it doesn't get all the extra nifty touches.

Edge highlighting action shot!

In unexpected Christmas news, I got a whole rack of stuff from EV this morning.  In addition to actual Christmas no less!  I got a Totem Hunter and Swamp Gobbers from EV (I got him Primal mk 2 and Archduke Runewood).  The extra bits are Legion.  A lot of Legion.  pLylyth, pThagrosh, a pair of Carniveans, a Seraph, eight Shredders, two Forsaken, and full (or almost full) units of Swordsmen and Archers.  All assembled and primed, though some have taken dings in storage and transport and will require minor repairs.  Quite the solid base to start from.  EV wanted a pair of Venoms in return, which I'm more than happy to provide.  Now I'm trying to keep myself from heading off to the FLGS to get a Legion deck, under the ruse of going to get lunch of course, then going over the Hordes rules again ahead of trying out the new beasties tonight.  It would be far more prudent to put in a Warstore order for the Venoms and add on the deck and some other bits (UAs for the units, any extra models to bring them up to full, Absylonia, solos for taste), but where's the fun in that?  The biggest hurdle I see thus far, aside from painting and learning a new faction (plus deciding on a scheme), is storage.  The Seraph is too spread out to fit in the big Battlefoam slots, and I imagine there are plenty of others that will be in the same boat.  Battlefoam makes a Legion beast tray, which is one solution, though I'd hate to start getting alternate trays for a bag that isn't even a month old yet.  There's also the pistol case I got about a year ago that doesn't have a role yet.  That would be more of a stop-gap, but it should hold plenty of infantry and the pluck foam, if thick enough, would accommodate enough beasts to do the job for a while.  The problem then is either I'm carrying a case and a bag, or I lose all the extra storage of the Battlefoam bag and have to carry the case plus another, different bag.  Life is tough sometimes, but I'll persevere.  Now for lunch.  And maybe cards.

Our Days in Oxford, Home of My People: Days 5 and 6

Oxford is not really the home of my people, not like you would think. My family isn't from there, and I've never been there before. But being in that city was like coming home. From the second I got my first look at the spires and read the lines I had printed out about when C.S. Lewis first saw Oxford, I was in love, in awe, in bliss.

On the first day, we visited the Bodleian Library. It is housed in the original medieval building, books on the shelves in the same order, but no chains holding the books in place like they had until the 1700s. (There were actually complaints that the library was too loud because of all the clinking and rattling.) The library tour was my favorite thing we have done so far because I got to learn all about the founding of Oxford University and about the use of the library in the past. Aaron thought it was gonna be dead boring, and even he loved it!

My next thing to do when I get home is to look at their archives online, find something I can research there in classical or medieval rhetoric, get a grant, and spend some time actually working in that library. It would be AMAZING!

I saw St. Mary the Virgin church, where Thomas Cranmer (among others) was martyred for refusing to be Catholic during the reign of Mary Tudor (who just keeps coming back like that damned cat in the song.) It was also the scene of John Wesley's last Oxford sermon before he got booted for being all Methodisty.

Later that evening, after it got too dark to gawk at beautiful buildings and pretend I am a fellow of some Oxford college in the early 1900s (and that they let women do that), we went in THE MOST AMAZING bookstore in the world. To my mother: It puts Square Books to shame. It was Blackwell's, and though they have other locations in the UK, Oxford was the biggest. They have a huge section for classical texts, in translation and in the original, a huge section of history divided into very specific eras (for instance, a full ceiling-tall shelf on the Anglo-Saxons, including both scholarly and popular titles), 4 full floors of books and the kind of books that you wouldn't find in your run of the mill Barnes and Noble.

I partly enjoyed the bookstore (cause really, it was so interesting), and partly, it made me feel terrible. I had a crisis moment when I realized how frivolous I have been in my reading. I can't believe how much there is to read and how I have frittered away my time. I am going to start on a much more serious reading plan when I get home (not in Marianne Dashwood style, though, as I am going to be reasonable and not get all carried away with plans I cannot carry out). I am going to sign up for the Anglo-Saxon language class that I have been putting off, rejuvenate the Sex Vultures, and read more classics, especially from Greece and Rome. I realized that by age 33 (my age on Jan 3), Jesus had lived and died, been a messiah, and started a religion. I haven't even learned Sanskrit. So I have some work to do.

We spent a second day in Oxford because it was so great. I got up early and took an earlyish train from London by myself to fit in more awe. Aaron joined me later for lunch. Before I met up with him, I toured Bailiol College and Trinity College. I enjoyed the grounds, chapels, and history of both. Oxford colleges are so weird to me. They are so independent of the overarching university and have so much personal character; their isolation within a greater body is fascinating. The tutorial system is also foreign and intriguing to me. I had a chance to study abroad in Oxford as an undergraduate and passed it up, and I regret it deeply. It makes me sad to think of the mistakes that I made because of how little I understood myself back then. I was ON THE PATH to grad school and world domination, but as it turns out, I am more relaxed and a soak-in-the-atmosphere kind of a person. Oxford would have been perfect. I also didn't apply for the Rhodes scholarship (which would have been unlikely), as I was busy getting married and stuff.

Aaron and I had lunch (not Indian food, strangely, since that beloved stuff makes up about 80% of our diet), and then we split up again. Aaron went to an exhibit at the Oxford History of Science Museum on timepieces, astrolabes, and stuff like that, which he liked A LOT. He says that the highlight of the visit was a metric clock where they tried to divide the day into 10 hours with 10 divisions each. It didn't catch on. :)

I went on a walking tour of Oxford that I printed out from a C.S. Lewis fan sight. I saw where he stayed when he first arrived in Oxford, saw the pubs where the Inklings met, and toured Magdalen College where he was a fellow. It was my favorite college so far, by a landslide. The buildings were spectacular, especially the cloisters and the chapel, and the grounds were amazing. I couldn't believe that I was still in Oxford. It was totally quiet, and I was almost completely alone. I walked for miles and miles on the paths that Lewis walked, along the Cherwell River, past the Deer Park, and around Fellow's Garden. Part of the paths are called Addison's Walk, and that walk was the place where Lewis was convinced to convert to Christianity by Tolkien and another Inkling whose name I cannot remember. I walked there for most of the afternoon. In the chapel, I lit a prayer candle (not as a prayer, but as a memorial and a symbol of affection) for Lewis and for all the kings and queens of Narnia from Frank and Helen on down to Tirian and for Reepicheep. Lewis might have rather had a prayer, but I think he would have approved the gesture.

I didn't finish my walking tour because I spent so much time on Addison's walk at Magdalen. I did stop in at a tiny churchyard nearby to hunt out the interesting dead, and I looked at the outside of Merton College where Tolkien was a fellow. I intend to go back on Boxing Day to tour Christ Church College and try to get a look inside Merton. And to visit the bookstore again like I would a religious shrine. :)

I cannot accurately describe to you the feeling Oxford gave me. It was like a religious experience, like coming home after being away many years, like coming to the surface of the water and taking a deep breath just when you had run completely out of air. It was a mixed feeling, half glory, half grief. Glory because a place like that exists and people like me must have made it and might still inhabit it. Grief because the giants of that place, my people, are not easy to spot anymore, if they ever were easy to spot and if there are any left. I felt at home and at the same time horribly lonely. It's the feeling I always have when I read a Matthew Arnold poem: this guy and I are just alike, and he and I will never meet. I can only describe it as sublime.

Guest Blog: Do People Actually Still *Do* That? - Jen's Story

My first experience with breast feeding came in the office of my OB/GYN at a prenatal check-up nearly 8 years ago. I was 18 years old and had no idea what I was getting myself into. But as I lay there on the table while the doctor took his measurements, he asked me the question that would change the course of my life forever. "Do you plan on nursing? It's the best thing for your baby, you know." 


 That was the question that stopped the world spinning, if only for a moment. I remember thinking in my head Do people actually still do that? Looking back on that moment in time, I have to laugh. But the truth is... we live in a bottle feeding culture. And as it happens, I came from a bottle feeding family. My grandmother bottle fed all 4 of her kids. They were born in 1960's when formula was all the rage and only poor mothers fed from the breast. My own mother tried nursing me for a torturous 6 days in 1985. From her stories, I know that she and I suffered from a bad latch. But no one would help her. Doctors and nurses alike would tell her to "just keep trying" and lactation consultants were basically unheard at the time. She put me on formula on day 7 of my life and told me how I went from a "screaming, angry baby to a happy, smiling baby overnight." So when my sister was born 4 years later, my mother never even tried. 





So back to that moment in time. After the initial shock to my system, I looked at my doctor and said "Sure, I'll give it a try. I want to do what's best for my baby." Of course I did. Doesn't every mother? Interestingly enough, even with that in mind, I went home and really didn't give it any more thought. 





Fast forward a few months. My beautiful daughter, Maia, was born in June of 2004. I put her to the breast for the first time within an hour after she came into the world. There were 2 lactation consultants on staff as well as a couple of helpful nurses who really came through to get her latched on. We had a nice, strong beginning in the hospital and I am grateful for that. 





Going home was a somewhat different story. My milk came in on day 5. I was engorged and sore. I just wanted Maia to empty those poor, aching globes! She fed constantly, but it seemed like she couldn't keep up -- almost as if she were choking! And soon after each feeding, she would projectile vomit all over the room. I called the nurse's station at the hospital crying and asking if my poor daughter was allergic to my milk. Was formula the answer? Did I already fail at giving her what was best? The nurse kind of chuckled at my question. She assured me that this was normal. She told me I probably had what was called "over-active letdown." She recommended that I buy a small hand pump to empty just a bit of milk off the top and then offer the breast to Maia afterward. Miraculously, it really helped! Although it didn't eliminate the spitting up completely, it was now at much less alarming quantities! 





With this initial hurdle put behind us, I set myself a new goal. I was going to "try" to nurse to 6 weeks. It's amazing how quickly 6 weeks flies by. During this time we had very few issues, though I quickly learned that both Maia and I got a lot more sleep if we slept together. I became a believer in the power of co-sleeping for a nursing baby from a couple of weeks old on. After 6 weeks, I again set a new goal of 3 months. At 3 months I was going to be returning to work and college, so I would re-evaluate then.





Maia was 3 months old before I knew it. I went to a WIC appointment around this time and was made to feel like a complete superstar for making it that point with breast feeding and NO supplementation. I was encouraged to continue nursing even with my return to work and was given a double electric breast pump to help me express my milk for Maia to drink while I was away.





My return to school and work was very emotional for me. Although I was never away from her for more than 6 hours at a time, I missed her a lot. Luckily, my college campus had a room in one of the buildings set aside for nursing and pumping mothers, so I was able to express without an issue. I ran into very few issues at all from 3 months on. My 3 month goal became 6 months and then 6 months became a year. However, around the 9 month mark, I began noticing a substantial dip in my milk supply. I wasn't able to keep up with how much she was drinking and the freezer supply was dwindling. 


 About this time, I turned to a breast feeding community on Live Journal for some answers. The ladies of the group recommended that I increase my water intake and begin taking Fenugreek capsules to re-establish my milk supply. To my surprise, the suggestions worked -- and I didn't at all mind walking around smelling like maple syrup while on the supplements either! The Live Journal group became my saving grace through Maia's biting stage and plugged milk ducts and blebs. Soon enough, I'd reached my goal of 12 months. And like most breast feeding moms in this country... I weaned my daughter.





Okay. No I didn't. The truth there is... I got to 12 months and said, "What reason is there to stop now?" Over the course of a year, I'd learned that breast milk cures a lot more than hunger and thirst. It cures fear, anxiety, boo boos, sleeplessness and illness... among other things. What an amazing tool. What an amazing bond. My biggest challenge at this point was dealing with friends and family who loved to ask me constantly when I was planning on weaning. Most seemed confused and even sometimes disgusted that we would nurse past a year. The reactions got stronger the longer we nursed, but eventually -- the question stopped coming. People learned that they were not going to change my mind. Maia would wean when she was ready.





When Maia was 18 months old, she began staying overnight twice a month with her father. I was concerned this might make her wean prematurely, but she always came back to the breast and it was often the first thing she asked for upon returning home to me. Over time, twice a month became every other weekend for the full weekend. She did start to taper off and in frequency of nursings, but she still loved her "num nums." Then one weekend when she was 3 years, 7 months old, that changed. She returned from her dad's and did not ask to nurse. She did not ask that night. Or the next day. Or for four days after that. On the fifth day, I knew. She had weaned herself with no help from me. My baby was a big girl now. 





I cried. I cried like a baby. I cried for a long time in mourning the end of this stage of my little girl's life. And then I rejoiced that she was given the opportunity to decide when she was ready to let go and take the next step into independence. It's a choice the vast majority of children, in this country especially, will never get. This is not to say anything negative about the mothers who don't buy into child-led weaning. It's not for everyone, but it was right for us, no doubt. 





I am now mom to a son as well. Eli will soon be 15 months old. I don't know where the time has gone. The journey has been very different with him as I'm a stay-at-home mom now. Apart from a bad latch in the beginning and one plugged duct a few weeks ago, our obstacles have been very few. Sometimes I wonder how long he'll decide to nurse for or what lays on the road of nursing fun ahead!





Maia loves to watch her brother nurse and laugh at his toddler nursing acrobatics. And sometimes, she'll snuggle up beside me and tell me that she remembers when she used to drink milk from me. How special. I can only hope that she'll remember her own nursing experience and that of her little brother's. And if some day she has children of her own, I pray that they will be blessed with a beautiful nursing relationship like the ones I have enjoyed with my children.






 So that's my story. I've come a long way from "They still do that?" Of course they do. That's what breasts are for.