Weaning = tears

I was SO excited and thrilled that I made it to a major milestone of breastfeeding Gracie thru her 1st birthday. Her 1st birthday has come and gone. She is now 14 months old! Now that she's started on whole milk she doesn't really nurse much except before bed, every time she wakes up at night which means she is nursing basically all night long (that is another whole subject), and then early in the morning before we get out of bed. She doesn't take a pacifier so I think part of her still nursing is because it's what calms her down or "pacifys" her. I don't mind. I am not in any rush to stop EXCEPT the fact that she still feels she needs to nurse at night every time she wakes up. She refuses to go back to sleep without nursing. It only take a few minutes then she drifts off to sleep BUT if I try to move her to her bed or move her at all she starts vigourously sucking or starts screaming. So either I let her scream and wake up the whole house or I lay there and nurse her where we all can just sleep. I vote for the latter. Sleep is not something I get lots of so the sleep I do get is precious. I also don't mind the bonding I have with my baby daughter. I do have to admit that when she does not wake up that much at night or sleeps in her own bed longer than normal I do miss her when I wake up. For information on our sleeping arrangment you can read this previous blog post. Click here I'm not really sure how or when to start the weaning process. It's not a real big issue EXCEPT I'd like to start having her sleep thru the night. I'm SO happy to have made it this far. I never imagined I've have issues on how to stop breastfeeding. It wasn't a big deal to stop the feedings during the day and replace those with bottles and sippy cups of whole milk. But it's just the night time nursing sessions that bring her to tears if I don't give in. Those tears are tears of her not understanding why I won't nurse her. It breaks my heart to hear her cries SO we are continuing our nighttime and early morning nursing sessions. I'm not saying I have to stop instantly, cold turkey...i'm just wondering when and how we will stop. I just can't see this taking place without tears. I'm guessing the tears will come from both of us! I don't think I will be able to handle seeing her cry because I won't nurse her.

Summer is coming to an end....

Bear with me. This blog may jump around a lot of subjects! I haven't blogged in awhile and got lots of thoughts on my brain.

It's August. Most schools have already started or are very close to starting. My kids are still in summer break mode. As you may have read in a previous post by me (click here for the post) I was spending my summer break planning for the next school year. Working hard on gathering curriculum. Then it was time for house hunting. We wanted to find a new house to move into (the one we were in was just temporary until we could find the exact location in TN that we wanted to live). After much searching we found it. We moved in on August 1st. So we've only been in it for a few weeks but can I say it feels SO MUCH like home already? It's GREAT! I was so missing that homey feeling in our other house. This is A LOT smaller than the 3000 sq ft house we were living in. This house is only 1500 sq foot 3 bedroom 2 bath home. BUT it's strange. I feel like we have MORE space in here. I think it's because this has the closet space we need so I'm able to organize things better. I have now learned that bigger isn't always better. The layout of our other house was kinda odd so we had lots of spaces that we didn't really use, they just ended up collecting the kids toys and ended up a cluttering mess. We do have too much stuff. So a garage sale in definetly something we need to have. But seriously, we have boxes of stuff that hasn't been unpacked in a few years so do we REALLY need that stuff? NO. We did have to spend a little money on shelves for the kids' rooms. We found some great shelving units at Target (blue for the boys room and pink for the girls room). Our 8th wedding anniversary was August 3rd (told you this blog would jump around) so we spent our anniversary with all 4 kids at Target picking out things to organize the kids' rooms. It was GREAT! Our gift to each other was organized kids' rooms!
So where was I?? Back to what I really was going to blog about. School. We will be starting school in a few weeks. (2-3 weeks or so). I have half of the curriculum needed. I just may have to purchase the rest of it new. I have been having trouble finding the rest used. We are going with Bob Jones curriculum this year. It's a christian based curriculum that is more like what is used in a classroom. The books I have purchased already seem to be just what my kids need. I'm excited to kick off this school year with fresh, new curriculum and have more of a "normal" school year. (last year was different because we started homeschooling in the middle of the year, click here to read my blog post about when we first started homeschooling)
Now the only problem I'm seeing with this upcoming school year is where we will homeschool. This house doesn't have an actual "homeschooling room". Our last house did (the temporary house had a basement with a room we used BUT we had to outside to go down there and really ended finding it easier to work upstairs). Some homeschooling blogs I follow have been showing pictures of their homeschooling rooms. Can I just say that I'm SO jealous? Their rooms look like REAL classrooms. I'm going to have to get REALLY creative as far as our homeschooling space. It's going to take place in our kitchen. Right now I have 4 big boxes filled with our school stuff. I have NO where to put them. We need to find some sort of cabinet, armoire, shelves, etc that look decent in our kitchen that are also big enough to have it basically be a "classroom". I want to be able to organize everything in there and have everything we need at our finger tips. I know it's going to take some money and some work to make it happen. I just wish I had lots of extra money right now to just go and buy exactly what we need rather than having to shop around for a good deal or being patient waiting to find something that is used. I'm sure there are LOTS of homeschooling families that do not have an actual "homeschool room". Luckily our living room and kitchen are completely open. I love this because when I'm in the kitchen I can see EVERYTHING going on in the living room. So it will feel like we have more "space".
Oh and can I just say that I LOVE shopping for new school supplies. I have ALWAYS loved doing this. But it's even more fun when I'm shopping for them knowing my kids will be using them right in our own home! I get such a thrill buying glue for 20cents and crayons for a quarter!
Yesterday we went to a carnival at a local park that our Homeschooling group put on. It was SO great seeing all the homeschooling families from this area here. It was an encouragement to me knowing there were that many families in this area that homeschooled. I'm not sure the exact number of homeschooling families that were there but they gave out 100 membership cards to those that became members of the homeschooling group but there were more than that there. At the carnival we were able to sign up for field trips so that will be exciting to get to go on field trips with other homeschoolers. I know my kids are excited about that.
Guess my blogging time is over for now. I am excited to get this school year started. I'll have a 2nd grader, a kindergartner (mya already started K in the middle of last year BUT the curriculum we were using ended up being more of Pre-k work so since she was only 4 anyway and now she is 5 we are going to start "real" kindergarten this year--she's excited to learn to read). Then Mason will be doing preschool work (colors, numbers, alphabet, etc) and Gracie will be along for the ride! What an exciting school year we will have! :)