mumsy

Before classes, I like to look at what books the campus bookstore has in their nonfiction section. For the most part, they tend to stock really good books that I wind up buying and bringing home to read when I’m done wit my homework and both of my sons are asleep for the evening. As a matter of fact, I bought two books today! One of them is about the science behind how people make decisions — it surprised me to know that there was a whole science behind that, let alone the number of studies that have been done just on that one topic. The book is quite humorous in its delivery of the subject matter, though.

Another book that I bought was about making the most of your daily routine so as to get healthier and live longer, even going so far as to include Immune Support tips in there. Although I haven’t finished reading it, I did flip through a few pages before deciding to buy it and also read a little bit of it once I got back to the house. Once I’m done reading it, I might begin posting some of my favorite tidbits here in this blog for you guys to look at.

I don’t know how this woman did it or why she would even want to do it in the first place, but his mother lied to me about attending some classes that she told me would help me learn more about their family’s religion. They were actually religious convert classes. Furthermore, the fact that she had been attempting to go behind my back trying to get my boyfriend to connive me into consenting for our son’s infantile baptism when she knew what my personal thoughts were on it — namely, choices — was and still is sickening. I told her that I had never been that much of a religious or spiritual person for going on ten years now, and she kept on responding that I would suddenly “feel it” if I began trying.

Well, I’ve tried. I still do not feel the spark. I know that I will never have that passion.

I told her this, also letting her know that I no longer wished to go to church with their family or to any of these religious conversion classes and her only response was to scream at me. Nothing that I said to her was with malice, as it wasn’t my intention to get underneath her skin. I just could not continue to present myself in a manner that wasn’t entirely truthful to his family, and apparently this decision was me “emotionally black-mailing her son”. How? Me continuing to attend church with them when I didn’t believe in most of the things that were being discussed would have been worse, because I would have been a liar. Me converting to a religion whose core values I did not believe in and would never practice would have made me a liar as well. Matt’s mother made it clear to me that she would have wanted me to lie about these things so her son didn’t “look bad”.

I mean, take me or leave me. But if you’re going to take me, do it for the person I am…

After school, I headed down to my local WIC clinic to talk with a nutritionist about James’ dietary problems. Apparently his case is one of few that she could think of where exclusive breastfeeding is contraindicated, because James seems to has a hereditary predisposition to where he can’t easily digest lactose. Up until he was two months old, he wasn’t getting enough lactose to tip the scales over because his dietary intake didn’t demand it — however, as he grew and I continued to feed him more and more breast milk, that was what eventually did it. He’d spit a lot of it back up once it got to that point, and he was slow to gain weight because of that. Now that I’m supplementing each feeding with one to two ounces of formula in addition to whatever he’s easily willing to take from me, James is doing so much better it’s almost unbelievable. He’s steadily gaining weight according to the Wii Fit Plus, and he’s actually satiated because he can keep food down!

I’m not sure if, or when, he will grow out of this. Jason seemed to have a bit of a problem with being supplemented with cow’s formula-based milk, so I had to switch him over to soy and then everything worked wonderfully. Then again, with Jason my supply issues had more to do with his refusal to latch on to the breast because someone else made the mistake of giving him a bottle too early on — James has a slightly different problem than that. I have, and can make, enough breast milk for him because he latches on well. However, his stomach upsets prevent him from digesting as much of it as we would like to see him digest, and he needs a little supplementation to put him on the right track.

I know I may not have written much about him lately, but he’s still as awesome as ever.

He seems to have come around to the idea of being someone’s big brother rather well, for which I’m still thankful. Then again, that’s just part of Jason’s personality — he’s a fairly laid-back kid in most cases, and you guys will certainly never hear me complain about that!