July!

It appears I'm behind... And once again, a friend has reminded me that I haven't updated my blog in over a month. So, I guess I will update it. I can't promise anything particularly witty or intelligent, but here's what's been going on...

3-tier Frog Cake

I, of course, have kept up with my regular attendance at meetings for my mommy group. The "group owner" has been working on getting her non-profit organization (a mom support and education organization) off and running which is cool. I really would like to help out, but since I still feel like I'm pulling my hair out with two kids, I really don't want to promise to do anything and then flake out. In the mean time, I'm just standing on the sidelines and observing what's going on and if I see an opportunity, I'll jump in. For example, today, they are having a booth at the local Independence Day "festival" and along with holding a bake sale, they were looking for items to either raffle off or sell in a silent auction. I made a diaper cake and donated it for said event. I hope it does well. Though, I have to admit, it was a bit selfish since I'm hoping to get my name out a bit more in the diaper cake biz. I suppose it's win/win really - as long as someone actually wants to bid on it in the silent auction. I really hope it goes for what it's worth and not a super low amount - that would be a blow to the ego.

My pump - it's a hard worker these days.

I've also been working on pumping a lot of milk. Well, the purpose was not to pump "a lot," really. I was just pumping. See, I had contacted the Mother's Milk Bank of Austin to get signed up as a donor. I went through the phone interview and was waiting on the donor packet to arrive in the mail so I could complete the next step as a donor. About that time, I heard of a mom in our mom group that was having some supply issues and was welcoming milk donations. I figured, why not? I could certainly pump and help her out, so I set off. I pumped some for her and some extra to boost my supply enough so that when the paper work went through I could donate at least something to the milk bank. The paperwork seemed to take forever and in the mean time, I'm just pumping along and creating a stash in my freezer as well as passing it along to the mom that needed it. Finally the packet arrived and I got it filled out and sent back, received my donor ID and was able to pick up some bottles for donation (they require "rigid" containers for collection at the milk bank). So, starting with the first day of July, I was officially able to start pumping for the milk bank. Yay! It turns out also,  that the mom I had been pumping for has been on a new milk boosting medication which has helped her immensely and she won't need me to pump any more (at least for now. I told her not to be shy if she needed more at any time.). So now, all my pumping efforts can go toward the milk bank which is great, but that means unless I get more bottles with each visit to the drop off site, I'll be going once a week to pick them up. We'll see how it all works out. I also have to get blood work run before I can drop off my first "installment" but they recommend doing it when you are close to having enough for your initial donation of 100 oz. So, I guess that means in the next several days I'll have to see about doing that.

Aside from that, I'm mostly trying to survive with two kiddos. Luckily the mommy meetings and regular trips to the mall or where-ever with my mom friend, Laura, allow me to get out of the house and give Noah some extra stimulation so he's not crazy with boredom and cabin fever. It's rough though. That kid needs to be able to run and climb to really burn off that energy which isn't the easiest for me to keep up with having a baby strapped to me, but I try.

August had his two month visit last Thursday. I can't believe he's that old already! Everything went well. He's growing (though not as quickly as Noah, but then, he was smaller to begin with so I guess it's relative) and up to 12 lbs 7 oz. He got his first big set of vaccines, which was no fun, but he did ok. Nursing after a trauma like that will fix anything. =) Noah did fantastic and though he was bored at the doctor's office, was surprisingly well behaved. I was so proud of him. I'm glad he behaves for the most part in public. =)

Two pairs of boy shoes size 2T packaged and ready for sale.

This past week I had my first sale of the shoes that I make. Up until then, I had only made them for Noah, but one of the moms in my mom group liked them so much she asked me to make two pairs for her. I was happy to do so and tried to package them up all nicely. Some of the other moms seemed interested in possibly buying them, so I may go ahead and add them to my baby boutique as another product which is a pretty exciting prospect for me.

This weekend, we anticipated going to visit Taran's family but that didn't pan out well since he returned from the rig several days later than planned due to a training course he had to take. We stayed in town and had some friends visit and wouldn't you know it, it's been about a year since we saw the one friend. We had a nice time, though I have to admit, we may not be the most fun hosts b/c we didn't do much but sit and chill and chat. Oh well. They've headed back now and it's back to our regular routine. Hopefully that includes more frequent blog updates, but we'll see...