Year in review, and a guess at what is to come

Big events for each month of the last year - yep, that's right, I go a months without saying anything and then post a novella:

January: Got fired six days into the year. With this auspicious beginning, DH and I both start looking for work.

February: No one has found a job yet. Despite the financial stress and mounting credit card bills, the whole family seems to be generally doing better than 2008 (when we were dealing with many health issues and family struggles, and the girls were not getting the parental attention they needed).

March: Our credit card debt grows and our bank account empties completely. I find a year-long contract position and start March 15th. DH keeps watching the girls and looking for work. The UI check for all my UI payments for the last 2.5 months arrives one week after my first paycheck, just in time to pay for the mortgage for April.

April: Birthday celebrations for all! Grandparents are very generous to our daughters. There's also an anniversary in there, but as usual, no one makes a big fuss about it. DH keeps applying for jobs, and has it down to a fine art. He applies to 3 or 4 jobs a day when they are available, and does this in about 2 to 3 hours a day.

May: We have an unplanned pregnancy, as expected. The only surprise is that it took so long to happen. Although we are both quite worried about how we'll manage the birth in this economy, there is also a subtle resurgence of hope and motivation that our family sorely needed.

June: Stupid car keeps breaking down. I garden when I'm not working.

July: Not only does the stupid car keep breaking down, it's going to need a $2,400 repair in 6 months. We decide it's worth adding to our huge pile of debt to get a new car using Cash for Clunkers. We mitigate our embarressment over having a new car (and the accompanying debt) by getting the vehicle with the lowest Total Cost to Own that we can find, which turns out to be a Honda Fit and quite possibly the car we would have bought anyways if we'd had money. The girls promptly name "her" Bluea.

August: Outdoors projects! A new firepit, one fish pond turns into a sandbox, the garden grows and we eat lots of fresh snow peas. Blueberries come to adorn our front yard. DH starts getting rejection notices occasionally, and we both find this immensely encouraging and take it as a sign that the economy is improving.

September: I realize we're two weeks behind on our mortgage, and try budgeting with Mint.com, which is a really neat service. DH starts getting scheduled for phone interviews that then get cancelled because the job filled before anyone actually interviewed him. My sister gives us a free car that she'd located for us back when we were having car troubles.

October: It's a girl! I make a spreadsheet of all our expected income and predictable expenses through the end of the year, in addition to the budget at Mint.com. DH starts actually getting interviews in person and on the phone, rather than just scheduling and cancelling interviews. The girls have to use last year's Halloween costumes, but still have a great time trick-or-treating with the grandparents.

November: I start putting effort into stocking the freezer so we have food when the baby arrives. DH and I finally agree on a name for the baby. DH gets a job offer for a seasonal tax software support position, and accepts it. I get a holiday bonus for Thanksgiving. We come home from a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner with the step-family in-laws with butternut squash and an excellent bottle of home-made wine.

December: During a cold snap while we can't afford to heat the house, the shower drain freezes solid for about a week. The girls get excited about Christmas despite the lack of decor. I get extra hours at work plus holiday pay, but then lose some money when the family gets sick. We still have enough money to buy work clothes for DH and a few gifts and much needed things. We go to the San Juan Islands to visit the in-laws for Christmas, and a gloriously relaxing time is had by all. DH starts his job the last week of the year, and I start working from home on a schedule that is flexible enough that I can also care for the children. It's a little crazy, but works well enough.

And, looking forward to early 2010, here is what we expect to have happen:

January: DH continues to work while I care for the children and work from home. The baby is due January 22nd, which means 95% chance of being born between January 8th and February 5th. My family tends to run late, so bet on early February. I won't be taking maternity leave at all unless I absolutely physically must. The laptop comes to the hospital with me, and I could conceivably return to my work before I return to my home. DH will probably take a day or two of unpaid sick time to be with me until I leave the hospital.

February: DH could lose his job this month, but I'm guessing he won't. So this month will probably be him working full-time in the office and doing all the housework and cooking (he'll have a good freezer stash to work with) while I work full-time from home and care for the children - including the baby, who will essentially live on the nursing pillow while I work. I suspect I'm going to need some help, especially immediately after the birth.

March: DH could lose his job this month, and it's actually pretty likely that he will. I will definitely lose my job this month, as my contract ends March 15th. I'm supposed to be in the office to train my replacement from March 1st to March 15th. If DH is still working, we will need childcare during that time. I have no idea who or how that will work. Once the contract ends, I will get UI. We shouls also have a $1,000 emergency fund and may have some additional savings. There is a small chance that our mortgage payment might be reduced by $1,000 a month permanently starting about now if our application last October for a Home Mortgage Loan Modification finally goes through, but we aren't counting on it.

April: If DH hasn't lost his job yet, it will end by the 15th of this month. If he does get this far without being laid off, he might get UI. It won't be much, but every little bit helps. Either way, he's going to be looking for any work he can get to keep us from going broke, so I can focus on getting the best job I can. I don't want to end my "UI-paid maternity leave" for anything less than enough to cover our expenses and get us out of debt pretty quickly, too.

May: Our emergency fund and my UI will keep us in the black through this month even if DH's job ends back in March or earlier and even if we put all his income to paying off our credit cards. However, we'll need some additional income between March 15th and the end of May to make it through June in the black. We are pretty optimistic about being able to manage this.

Looking beyond May gets pretty hazy . . . things could end up being really messy financially, in the worst case, which could result in rough times for the whole family. Things could end up being really great, in the best case. So much depends on us finding jobs, and maybe even finding good jobs, and we only have so much control over that. However, I can say that baby Audrey will probably say her first word in 2010, and might even take her first steps near the end of the year. The twins will continue to grow up, and by December they will be 4 years 9 months old. We'll need to start deciding if we will put them into a public school kindergarten in September of 2011 or not. And, of course, we'll be in God's hands no matter what happens, and we will have each other (barring tragedy). There are some things that just don't depend on finances, and I would be a fool not to consider them worth mentioning.

Day 12 of mother-encouraged weaning

Well, it certainly doesn't feel like I'm weaning the girls. While we are making progress (I think), it's mostly at bedtime - and they are nursing more at other times to make up for it, so they don't actually nurse less. The advantage is that bedtime is the hardest time to distract the girls from nursing, so if they quit nursing at bedtime I just need to focus on distracting them from nursing during the afternoon to go nursing-free. Now we are offering them a choice of pacifiers, or milk right before bed - seems to be working, although we'll have to wean from the pacifiers later.

I think once they are routinely skipping the bedtime nursing, I'll probably try to have them skip nursing all day one day a week, then two the next week, then three days, and so on until they are just nursing on weekends.

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Some neat things the girls have started doing:

Lenora is learning her colors. I thought she might be starting to grasp them about a month ago, so Bjorn and I have been working with her (and a little with Iliana, but she doesn't seem to get colors as well). She now recognizes purple easily, and requests purple items and orange items specifically. She is starting to get green, and yellow and will occasionally recognize red or blue correctly.

Iliana, on the other hand, is practicing another skill: Asking, "Why?" This one blind-sided me. I simply wasn't prepared to have to start justifying our rules to our children quite this early. The first time she clearly asked it, she wanted to know why she shouldn't go downstairs after her bath. I fumbled out something about how it was inconvenient to have her downstairs while we're upstairs and how we were busy trying to get pajamas and diapers on her. I needn't have bothered working at it so hard - she was more interested in getting any explanation at all. She looked so pleased with herself by the time I was done talking!

Lenora has started singing her "AFB's" - that is, the Alphabet Song, but a bit tuneless and with random letters that she likes alternating with F. "A, F, B, F, Y, F, A . . . " Iliana isn't as good, but does sing her "UBU's" - mostly just alternating between U and B, and with absolutely no tune at all.

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And the big anecdote . .. We were watching an episode of Full House from the season with the twin boys. In this episode, Jess has to punish his toddlers, and during their time-out they call him "mean Daddy." Ouch. I joke to Bjorn that if we're not careful, Lenora will pick up on that and start saying it. About two minutes later, she does just that - "Mean Daddy!" and laughs.

But it gets better . . . when I start encouraging her to say "Nice Daddy" instead, she first repeats herself for a bit - then starts saying "Nice Mommy". If she weren't a toddler, you'd think I'd have set this up ahead of time and bribed her.

And a little more . .. we finally get her to say "Nice Daddy," so in the interest of equal treatment (or something), she spontaneously decides to also throw in "Mommy bad."

Definitely a story worth writing down and saving for when she gets older.

Day 1 of mother-encouraged weaning

I just put my girls to bed without nursing for the first time in 3 or 4 months. Even though I came home 90 minutes before bed, and even though I was interacting closely with them most of that time, they still accepted my discouragement of nursing. First DH helped me distract them with dinner, and they accepted my refusal to nurse in exchange for extra cheese and frozen teething toys. Then when they started asking for milk again we moved to baths, and they were happy with that. Then stories and pajamas and one more story, and then Iliana climbed into bed without being asked - so I finished reading Lenora the story quickly, tucked them in, and started giving out kisses.

Finally Iliana realized she wanted milk and started to cry. We told her firmly but kindly that it was too late and we were going night-night, and then turned the light out and left. We know from experience that any attempts to calm and soothe this late in the bedtime routine usually backfire, as the other child gets upset and confused by the change. Iliana wasn't happy about it, but she didn't melt down either and quit complaining as soon as we left the room - and moved on to playing with her sister, rather cheerfully.

Lenora is actually still awake, almost an hour later, talking to herself quietly. They've been doing this at bedtime lately - playing, chatting, singing, and occasionally running around the room after we put them to bed and walk out. It's very cute, and the thing that really impresses me is that they will put themselves back to bed without any fuss when they get tired, with no help from us.

And now . . . silence. Wow.

"Family-led" weaning

I had originally planned on getting as close to child-led weaning as a working mother possibly can. However, I gave that up before a year as night-wakings for nursing were hurting my abilty to work during the day. I opted to night-wean just after a year, after pump-weaning at 11.5 months. Since then, I have allowed my children to nurse roughly on-demand during the waking hours of the day when I am home.

Now I am finding that nursing so much is starting to chafe. Right now, almost all of my precious time with my children is spent nursing. I think complete but gradual weaning is the solution that will be the easiest on everybody, so I am moving to "mother-encouraged" weaning: Gentle weaning mainly accomplished through distractions that doesn't push the child very hard. I'm doing this now because the girls are in a less-clingy phase, and I suspect that if I don't wean in the next month or two then we'll be in a clingy phase again. Then I'll have to wait 3 or 4 months longer to have such an easy chance to wean again. I don't really want to nurse that much longer.

I've been nursing my twins now for 21 months, and think "extended" nursing should be considered normal and weaning before 14 months should be considered "early weaning". This isn't to say that there is anything wrong with weaning before 14 months - I do believe that there can be excellent reasons to wean early. However, I think that later weaning and child-led weaning should be more common and would love to see them normalized.

At the same time, I find the "all or nothing" attitude that some radical lactivists express towards weaning to be off-putting. I don't think child-led weaning is always the right decision for a family. I think of the style of weaning used in my family as "family-led" weaning: Every one gets to have their opinion heard, and the best choice for the entire family is selected. There is no pressure on Mom to keep nursing no matter what. The only pressure is to keep nursing as long as the reasons to continue outweigh the reasons to quit.

Doctor's visit

We visited the doctor yesterday morning. Everything looks fine, and she isn't very concerned that Lenora isn't babbling. She said to come back in a month and a half if she hasn't started by then. I'm not too worried, either. Lenora is actually doing better with language and communication than Iliana, except that she doesn't babble. She uses gestures more effectively, though, and even had a day where she was using a word of sign language ("milk"), although she hasn't used it since. Lenora is also better at responding to spoken language than Iliana, probably because we need to speak to her more frequently - she can be so mischeivious! I'd be more concerned if she weren't able to communicate, but it looks like she is just slow to make certain noises with her mouth.

Yesterday we also had a breastfeeding "Oh, cute!" moment. It was after the girl's bath. Bjorn was lowering Iliana's crib since she became a pro at pulling to a stand in it overnight just the night before. I wanted a few minutes to relax with a book, but knew that the girls would want to nurse. I solved this by declaring an open buffet - that is, I lay down with my shirt off and let the girls crawl over to nurse at whim. At one point, Lenora was draped across my chest, lying on one breast and nursing on the far side, keeping Iliana from having nursing access. Iliana started to fuss, so I shifted Lenora all the way to the far side. By that point, Iliana had already started to go around, so I called her back. "Iliana, look!"

She turns around, and seeing that her sister has been moved and she can now nurse, she begins to crawl as fast as she can with this *amazing* expression. It was sort of a, "Wow, it must be Christmas, I'm so lucky, thanks, Ma!" look, with her mouth wide open and her eyes gleaming. I really wish we'd had a camera!