mumsy

I happened to snap this picture of Jason with my cell phone at just the right time, and I couldn’t resist myself. While I was in the process of taking it, he was looking over to the right because that’s where my cell phone’s camera is stationed at — he was also leaning on the couch in front of him beside where I was sitting to look at it, if that makes sense.

He also fed his baby brother a bottle for the first time, too! Jason randomly came up to me as I was burping James, picked up the bottle that I’d put down beside me and proceeded to begin to feed James as soon as I was done burping him. All he could exclaim was, “Baby brother’s drinking his milkies!” while he was feeding him. It was so adorable. I didn’t even tell him to do it, either! He just picked up the bottle and started on his own.

I’ve decided that I’m going to be giving Matt back the money that his mother gives me each month to help care for James. Like I’ve written about in previous posts, I don’t need her support if it has strings attached… especially if they’re of the extremely religious variety. I would much rather not have James come to be reliant on that money for things he needs, especially if this woman might rescind her support at a moment’s notice because I did not cow to her desires. Soon, I should be receiving the money — but I’m going to turn right around, hand all of it to Matt and tell him to give it back to his mother or do whatever he wants with it. Since February, my relationship with Matt’s mother hasn’t been a good one at all. It’s been driven by fear of her religious mania and indifference towards what she has to say, although I’ve recently begun to speak up for myself and put my foot down on certain subjects not caring what her reaction might be.

So far, James continues to do better since I’m continuing to supplement him with lactose-free formula. He’s still getting as much breast milk as he can handle, but padding formula around each of those feeds helps him keep it down. He’s not spitting up half of his meals any more! With any luck, he’ll begin to grow out of this and I can start giving him less formula and more breast milk. Although a lot of babies that have problems with lactose at younger ages can handle it better once they’re older and beginning to eat solid foods, the only way to see whether or not James is going to be one of those babies is waiting.

When he’s four months old, I’m going to offer him a mostly-watered down spoonful of baby cereal once a week until he seems amenable from it and just go from there. Because of my experiences with Jason, I remember that between four and six months of age is the best time to begin introducing solid foods to babies. However, I’m probably going to wind up waiting until almost six months to offer him actual solid foods aside from cereal unless he suddenly becomes really interested in what I eat. I’ll also watch for his beginning to teethe and take early teething as an indication that I might want to give him some solids.

Meanwhile, his father is giving me money once a month to help out with James. However, I think I’m going to turn right back around and give it to his mother because I know that she’s the one giving him the money to give to me. I’m not going to take her support if it has the strings attached that I’ve alluded to in previous posts, so she can just keep her money. If I need support in making sure that my children’s needs are met, I’m going to continue to go to folks like my parents and abstain from asking her for anything — they don’t attempt to extract unreasonable things from me in compensation for their assistance. Sadly, Matt’s mother is exactly that kind of person. She’ll buy nice things for both of my children, turn around and then attempt to wheedle me into doing things like baptize James in his infancy knowing fully well how I feel about that. Isn’t it hideously low?

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.