Chloe, the past few weeks, has been obsessed with spelling and reading. If she follows her past learning patterns, then it seems like she’ll be hitting a rather large learning boom very soon. Every word she can think of she is asking us to spell, and using the phonics she’s learned she is starting to sound out and read words. It really is exciting, although I do feel like I’m in a never-ending spelling bee. Unfortunately, for my little four year old, any rule that she learns has to be for every instance. I almost feel like I lied to her when she discovers an exception to a rule.
Exception Number One (haha)
Chloe: How do you spell one? *holds up one finger*
mommy: the number one?
Chloe: wha-wha-one
mommy: you spell the number one - O-N-E, one
Chloe: no, you don’t
mommy: yes, you do
Chloe: no! wha-wha - W. . . .W. . .O-N-E, w-one
mommy: well, when you win at something, you won and it is spelled W-O-N. I know that it sounds like a W but the number one is spelled O-N-E
Chloe: NO! wha-wha-ONE. . . I need a W please!
Exception Number Two
Chloe: How do you spell Chinese?
mommy: Chinese. C-H-I-N-E-S-E. Chinese.
Chloe: Ch-ch Chinese. C-H-I. . . .no! Not C-H, that’s K-inese.
mommy: Chinese is spelled C-H-I-N-E-S-E. What does a C-H sound like?
Chloe: C-H is K-inese. How do you spell CHinese?
mommy: *thinks for 2 minutes - then to my husband* OH CRAP! Her name is Chloe!
How Do You Spell “Breastfeeding”?
Okay. Chloe hasn’t asked to spell breastfeeding yet, but I’m sure if the word pops in her head I’ll be spelling that too. As I’m finishing up the design of our letter (I hope to be done soon; I have a color scheme and fonts and now I’m putting everything together to look all pretty!) I’ve been thinking more seriously about breastfeeding. Armed with resources, thanks to comments from AmericanFamily (thank you!), I have been able to look into this again. I’m a little unsure because, of course, I don’t know when we will be welcoming our next child into our family. I may get a few months to prepare and I may not.
I don’t particularly like the idea of using an SNS, which is a way to supplement while breastfeeding so that you still get the bonding time. At this point, and I realize that this may change, I don’t feel I want to go that route. I want to try to breastfeed as naturally as possible and if we need to supplement with the bottle along with breastfeeding, I’m okay with that. I’ve been reading a bit on the Newman-Goldfarb protocol, which uses birth control pills, medication, and herbs to induce lactation. The regular method is supposed to be started six months before the baby is due. Since I don’t really have control over time I’m trying to decide if maybe I should start the regular method a couple of months after our profile is done and we’re officially waiting OR try the accelerated method once we are with our baby. I’m leaning more towards starting early, just slightly hesitant about the possibility of carrying this on for longer than the six months.
So I’m still working through it. Hopefully I’ll have a plan set in the next couple of weeks. The only thing that I worry about is that pumping has never really been all that effective for me. I have one of those fabulous $300 electric double pumps, but pumping doesn’t really keep up my milk supply. When I used to pump at work for Chloe’s bottles when she was a baby; my milk supply dropped pretty substantially during the day. I would pump every couple of hours, but never got enough. I can only imagine if pumping was the only thing I was doing how my milk supply would be.
