Today I fed Lexi breakfast & then she got down to play. Not much time had passed when she started playing with some pre-packaged baby food she had pulled off the shelf & kept holding it up to me. So I prepared the food & went to put Lexi in her high chair & she shook her head & said "No". She didn't want to sit in her high chair. So I showed her the food I was going to feed her & then she let me put her in.  Seems like she just wanted to know why I was putting her in.  (Addy is like that too. She often just needs a good reason why we're asking her to do something & then she'll comply). 

Lexi is on a nice, predictable schedule now & she's communicating a little bit. She sleeps through the night, 12 hours, & takes 2 regular naps a day. I'm finally feeling a little less stressed, maybe a little more relaxed. I was worried for awhile that Lexi wasn't going to be as good as a sleeper as Addison was/is. I nursed Lexi longer than I did Addison & as soon as Lexi was weaned to a bottle she started sleeping better. And it has just gotten better & better, thank goodness!  Lexi still doesn't sleep as much as Addy did at this age but I'm very grateful she's finally on a predictable schedule & she sleeps through the night! When I was nursing her I think she would wake up in the night not because she was hungry but I think because she liked the cuddling & closeness that went with the nursing. I did too but I'm very grateful for a good night's sleep now. 

Nursing was such a struggle! Harder than I realized it would be. With Lexi first it was getting past the initial pain of starting. Then I got mastitis. Then it was trying to avoid eating dairy since it bothered her. Then I think there were a few months that went smoothly. Then severe pain hit when I nursed. I figured out I had a candida infection in the breast. My stress level hit an all-time high because I wasn't ready to stop nursing but it was excruciating pain. I was determined to not give up yet. I cut as much sugar as I could out of my diet which was SUPER hard. I tried not to eat bread since the carbs in bread turn to sugar in the body. I went to bed hungry for awhile (which ended good for me because I lost a lot of weight!). I tried soooo many medicines! In the end some of the pain went away but not all of it. Then at one point it seemed like Lexi wasn't getting enough milk from me. So that's when I finally gave up. I had fought so hard to nurse her to at least a year & we only made it to 10 months. I was disappointed because there were things about nursing that she & I would miss. But weaning her really helped decrease my stress level!

One day, when I was still nursing, I was out to lunch & saw a woman nursing her baby at the next table over & she was eating at the same time. She made it look easy. For me it just wasn't like that. I could never nurse & eat at the table let alone out in public. For some lucky ladies I guess it is just that easy. Just like some women have easy pregnancies & enjoy being pregnant, & some have 'easy' labors.