Today I Wrestled an Aligator...

Yes, it's true, folks. I officially wrestled an aligator, and his name is Zachary Moses. You see, a few months ago my sweet, calm little baby disappeared and in return I was given a wild, baby aligator. Seriously, why do parents practically beg their children to hurry and learn to crawl, pull up, etc.? Don't they know that once this occurs your life will change FOREVER?! For example, giving a bath to Zachary=wrestling an aligator. Getting Zachary to sit still for a diaper change=wrestling an aligator. Getting Zachary to sit still for a diaper change AND clothes on=wrestling TWO aligators! Getting Zachary to nurse uninterrupted=THROW ME INTO THE SWAMP!

Seriously, trying to nurse Zachary these days is impossible! He is constantly doing one or more of the following: sitting up every .02 seconds; talking to himself, me, other people in the room, or his kitty cats; trying to pull up on me (sometimes by biting my shirt); sometimes just biting my shirt, or the chair arm, my arm, whatever he can get his teeth on; or sometimes he even will not lay to nurse, but insists on sitting up, facing forward to nurse, and then twisting his head so his mouth is angled correctly on the boob. Luckily, this still only takes about 10 minutes and he usually gets his full SOMEHOW in between all of that. Oh, and he also likes to stick his fingers in my mouth and feel my teeth.


This often makes me think back to the early days of nursing and how HARD it was. This week I checked out a book from the library called It Sucked and I Cried written by Heather Armstrong, who apparently is like, THE original Blogger or something. Anyway, despite her REALLY bad language (she grew up Mormom and then like, completely revolted after college) I am really enjoying the book, and can totally relate her on so many levels. I particularly liked the way she described the early weeks of breasteeding. (I will not describe it here, if you want to know, go read the book!) Anyway, we've definitely come a long way since those early days when all I wanted to do was sleep and why in the WORLD did I have to wake up every two hours to feed Zachary AGAIN when I knew it was going to hurt so bad I'd end up crying. Seriously, some days all that kept me from giving up was the fact that I am NOT a quitter and when someone asked me if I breastfed I was NOT going to say, "Well, yes, I tried, but it hurt too bad and he ate all the time so I quit." (Not to mention that I knew breastmilk was best for Zachary). But, just like they said it would, it got better. And now I'm wrestling an aligator 6 times a day. Well, really 5. Our bedtime feeding is the only one where he will just sit and nurse and be so content. They used to all be that way (well, once we got the hang of it and I wasn't in agony anymore).

In other news, Zachary has been pulling up in the bathtub since last week, and this week he decided it was much better to bathe standing up the ENTIRE time. And today he has figured out that he can pull up on other things besides the bathtub. Currently, he has just pulled himself up on the Cruise and Crawl. Thankfully he has not figured out the "cruising" part yet, but buddy, is he CLOSE on the crawling part. He no long goes backward, but can move himself forward, just only a few "steps" at a time, then stops and sits up. And then he does it some more. So I'm pretty sure we are going to have to ourselves get on our hands and knees this weekend and look for everything we think he can possibly get into because that day is coming quickly.

Well, it's time for me to go wrestle the aligator...