The Williams Family Times: Plugging along

Ok, I skipped the post last week but, in my defense, what little time I have to write a blog was taken up in searching for Julia’s white fluffy. It was magically found by Zach a few days after it was lost but only after I’d wasted several hours cleaning things out to find where it had been hidden.

So, why so busy around here? I can’t honestly say except adding work into the number of balls to juggle has made things a little harder. I do feel like it’s easier to fit work in now than when I was pregnant with Natalie so things are getting better. Natalie has been sleeping through the night for almost two weeks now so any day now I’m hoping to feel less tired.

Natalie has really developed a personality in the last few weeks. She smiles A LOT and loves looking at faces. She has her brother’s love for ceiling fans. Today, I put her on the bed under our bedroom ceiling fan so I could get ready for the day. She was almost laughing at it. Several people have predicted that she would be a tomboy because Julia is so girly. Could this be the first sign that the prediction will come true? Kindof funny. Zach and now Natalie both have seemed about to explode with excitement over the fan spinning but Julia could have cared less.

Natalie saw the lactation consultant last week. She was10 lbs 4 oz at her 14 week birthday. She’s probably gaining about 4 oz per week which is a little lower than I’d hoped but still good. Natalie currently takes 120 ml from the bottle and she was able to take 100 from me within the 30 minute time limit! So, I am trying to nurse again. I have been able to nurse her a few times a day and NOT PUMP AFTERWARDS! Amazing! The first time I nursed several times in one day, though, she woke up in the middle of the night. The lactation consultant had told me that Natalie might need to eat more frequently if I fed her from me more. Feels like a tough decision- do I go back to less sleep and hurt less or sleep and feel not so good from pumping all the time. The pain is not unbearable but I can not wait to stop pumping when the year is up!

We met with Early intervention for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing on Monday. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect but looks like they could be pretty helpful. A teacher for the deaf came and a speech therapist. They said they would teach me ways to speak and sing to her to help her learn to talk. Natalie has a mild hearing loss in the higher frequencies which could mean she will have trouble hearing some consonants like f, s, th. The speech therapist agreed that a hearing aide was not necessary for Natalie with such a mild loss but she did think monitoring fluid in her ears was important so more temporary hearing loss from the fluid didn’t delay her speech. She also saw her PT last week. Debbie was really encouraged by how much Natalie’s improved with tracking and watching faces. Debbie thought her neck strength was much better too. We see Debbie every other week and she thought that Natalie would probably have her head well under control by the next visit. Her baptism is scheduled for 5/15 so I’m hoping she’ll have her head under control enough that she won’t flop out of the pastor’s arms.

Didn’t get very far on the wall project. Here’s last weeks picture. I was almost to the point of putting the dirt back but we decided it would be helpful to even the ground out a little but maybe not make it completely flat. Zach is having a birthday party in a few weeks and I was determined to at least get the mulch down before the boys come over but looks like that won’t happen. We now have a pick axe from David’s dad to try and break up the rocky clay/shale that is our soil. I told David he looked like he was working on a chain gang when he was swinging the axe the other night. He muttered something clever about how hard his wife makes him work but I’m choosing to ignore that one! :)