The Durant Family

Seth loves, loves, loves to play in the dirt!  If he is outside for more than a minute he is sitting in dirt.  I got him a bucket and shovel to play with.  He just plunks himself down in our garden scooping up dirt and is in heaven. And by garden I mean the section of our lawn set aside for really tall weeds to grow, eventually we will plant actual vegetables in there, really!

One day we were out in the yard and I was busy working on getting our pool clean.  I walk over to check on Seth and he is eating the dirt.  Apparently it is quite tasty. And of course like any good parent instead of stopping him I run for the camera. Here he is after being “caught” by Mama:

With all the rain lately Seth hasn’t been getting much outside time, but this morning we finally had a little pocket of sunshine.  So after our walk we played in the backyard.  Seth was thrilled to discover that his bucket of dirt was also filled with water.  He had a blast mixing up some mud stew.  He kept looking up at me and saying “mixing, Mama!  mixing, Mama!”.  Of course when he had enough he dumped the bucket all over himself and decided to pull apart the pickets on the little fence that surrounds our “garden”.

He takes a lot of baths!  Today it was 2 in one day, but we love our dirty boy!

Ben, Seth and I spent Friday through Sunday of Memorial Day weekend watching my niece Lena so that my sister and brother-in-law could have a much needed anniversary weekend away, probably the last overnight kid free trip they’ll have before the new baby arrives in October.  Seth was so excited to get to spend the whole weekend with his “Lenie”.  I took both of the kids to park and wore the three of us out!  I had no idea how exhausting it would be to try and keep an eye on two kids at the park! But we had lots of fun and I got lots of pics.  Here are a few (I don’t put any face pics of kids on the blog without Mom’s permission, but I got lots of cute ones of Lena, too.)

Seth looking like such a big boy!

Feeding the chickens at the zoo.

Lena helping Seth with his lost shoe.  She’s such a sweetie!

And a couple of Seth going down the big kid slide all by himself!

Then Sunday we went to a fabulous BBQ at a friends house and Seth rediscovered watermelon, which he hasn’t had since last summer.  We had our own little BBQ just the three of us on Monday and picked up some more for him to enjoy:

Hope you all got to spend Memorial Day with loved ones, too!

I finally managed to get video of Seth saying his two favorite things: “Where’d it go?” and “Car” which I hear all day long.  He cracks me up.

With the gorgeous weather this weekend we decided to take Seth to have his first ice cream at Tasty Top, that’s our town’s version of Dairy Queen. (Side note: there is only 1 DQ in Western Mass that isn’t in a mall, but it’s not in a convenient location for us and it’s just not as satisfying to have DQ inside a mall on a hot day, so if you are thinking of moving out here you may want to consider this sad fact.) However, Tasty Top is delicious.  It doesn’t have blizzards (tragic!) but it does have dips (mmm…cherry dip) and it also sells hard ice cream like Mud Pie, plus it has a nice view of the mountain, too.  I’m pretty sure Seth enjoyed it.  We stripped him down, sat him at a picnic bench and let him have at it:

He made sure he got every drop!

I took Seth to Look Park this morning to get in some activity before the rain came and happily discovered that the toddler play structure there is closed in enough for me to let Seth play on it by himself.  He had a so much fun and I got a break from crawling through the tunnels (which I assume other parents do when their kid is too little to go by themselves, but these parents are never there when I am so I look like the crazy lady, but I digress).  Of course he had to touch every tree first and declare, “Tree!”

Seth also has a thing for flowers or he just enjoys it when Mama says, “Pretty”.

And on to the playground…

He has completely weaned.

**Disclaimer: Yes, this is a post about breastfeeding.  If that is not something you want to hear about feel free to ignore this post.  Go ahead, it won’t hurt my feelings.

First my own two cents: I’m a pretty big breastfeeding advocate.  I like to think every Mom should at least try it, but I’m not close minded enough to believe that it will work for everyone.  I do think that Moms need to be supported and encouraged more for making the choice to breastfeed.  It is a wonderful thing to do for your baby, offering lots of health benefits, and it can be an amazing connection with your child, but it is also a huge commitment that can be difficult at times especially in a world where pumping is often a very necessary part of nursing.  Women should feel comfortable nursing in public and I mean pretty much anywhere, people. That’s what breasts are for.  If I can eat a cookie there, then I should be able to nurse there (and for the record I wouldn’t eat a cookie in a bathroom stall so please don’t ask me to feed my baby there).  I have nursed just about anywhere: restaurants, my work, my car, in a church, at the mall, during a concert, etc.  That being said I also make every effort to be as discreet as possible. I’ll use nursing rooms if they are available, but if not I just use my handy nursing wrap and we are good to go.  I realize no one is interested in seeing it and I’m not interested in giving a free show.  But when my kid is hungry I’m going to feed him and I’m not going to apologize for it.  Hmm…  I guess I had more to say about the subject than I realized. Sorry for the rant, climbing off my soapbox now…

And on to my post about Seth.  Normally I don’t share such personal information on a public blog, but as a Mom who is mostly at home and isolated from other Moms a lot, I have realized that discussing our parenting experiences can be a huge stress reliever and provide helpful resources.  So this is for all the Moms or Moms-to-be who read the blog.  Also I’ve put just about every major milestone of Seth’s on here and it seems strange to leave this one out.

Seth was an exclusively breastfed baby for his first 6 months and after that we started solids in addition to nursing, an accomplishment I’m very proud of.  I had initially made the decision to try and breastfeed for the recommended one year, but to be honest the idea of nursing him once he got teeth frightened me and creeped me out.  I was lucky though because Seth didn’t get his first tooth until 11 months old. And for those of you wondering, I needn’t have worried about him biting me.  He did it once or twice, but he learned pretty quickly that meant the nursing session was over and he never did it again.  So we made it to the one year mark pretty easily. 

And truthfully I really enjoyed nursing.  Not only was it a wonderful bonding time for me and Seth it was also just plain convenient.  Seriously, I mean an endless supply of free, perfectly nutritious food that is always prepared and ready to go.  What’s not to love about that?  At one year I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do about nursing. Seth was eating table food like a champ and no longer needed it for nutrition, but it was such a comfort for him.  I knew I didn’t have it in me to just force him to wean, but I also knew I didn’t really want to be nursing a 2 or 3 year old and definitely didn’t like the thought of tandem nursing with a second child.  I had also heard/read that the older they get the harder it can be to wean.

So at one year I started a don’t offer/don’t refuse policy with nursing.  Which is just as it sounds, I never offered it to him (with the exception of a few times when he was pretty sick), but if he asked for it either by signing milk or more often by just attempting to help himself then I let him nurse.  Well months went by and Seth showed no real signs of stopping.  He asked for it at least 2 to 3 times a day sometimes more, but I did notice that if we were out of the house and busy he would skip the middle of the day ones and just ask for it before bed.  I started to worry that I might have to become more assertive about trying to wean him especially because I wanted to be done before Ben and I start trying for another baby (and no we aren’t trying yet sometime in the next year most likely, we want Ben to be done with Grad School before #2 arrives)  But then just a few weeks ago we had a few busy days where Seth missed a lot of the nursing sessions because we were out and about and he was napping/sleeping in the car.  And then one day after that he just didn’t ask for it and that was it.  At 17 ½ months old he just weaned himself.  No drama and no crying (by either of us). 

It’s been a few weeks now and he asked for it once or twice in the first few days after that, but only for a few seconds almost just as a security that he could have it if he still wanted it and that was that.  For all my stress and worry about it, he just stopped when he was ready.  Now I’m so glad I waited for him to make the choice instead of my forcing it on him.  It is a little bittersweet though, not because I wish we were still nursing because I was ready to be done if he was, but because for me it really signals the end of Seth’s babyhood.  He’s officially a toddler and a big boy who can make decisions.  I thought I’d be really sad because I’ve heard Moms talking of feeling rejected, but for me it made me feel really proud of him.  Nursing was such a comfort to Seth, so it makes me really happy that he felt secure enough to give it up.  So my boy is all grown up.  <sniff, sniff>  Now someone pour me a glass of wine while I go dust off the glasses…

We started our Easter with Seth’s first egg hunt.  He had so much fun looking for the eggs and even more fun getting to eat sugar before breakfast.  He did really good with finding the eggs with a little help from us.  Then he opened his basket in typical Seth fashion by tipping it upside down and shaking it until everything fell out.  Easter was almost ruined though when I wouldn’t let him drink the bubbles I put in there.  Apparently Seth thinks all Easter surprises should be edible.  Don’t worry, chocolate cheered him back up and Easter was saved.

After that we got ready and headed out to my Aunt Kate and cousin Joe’s in Weymouth for a delicious dinner.  I had every intention of getting some cute pictures of Seth in his adorable little spring green polo shirt and maybe even a family picture, but it didn’t happen.  I dressed him right before we hopped in the car to get to my Aunt’s in plenty of time, but then we hit mad traffic because there was one toll booth open.  One toll booth…on a holiday weekend!?!  It took 45 minutes to get through.  I seriously considered driving through the fast lane even though we don’t have a pass.  So once we got to my Aunts we pretty much ate right away and even though I removed Seth’s shirt and pants, plus put two bibs on him, he still managed to be a sticky mess by the end using the mac-n-cheese as some type of hair gel.  Not the family photo op I had in mind. So no cute dressed up Easter pictures, but video from the egg hunt makes up for that, right?  I mean he’s in monkey pjs.  How cute is that?

Seth’s new favorite thing is to insist we go out.  He’ll go get his jacket, bring it to me and say, “Shoes!  Shoes! Car! Car!” while pointing outside.  He definitely takes after Ben.  I can be quite the homebody, but Seth is trying to change that.  He also often pops out with whole phrases like, “Where did it go?”, telling the kitty to “Hold still! Hold still!” (obviously I say this to him a lot) and “What is that?”  Well the other day he insisted we go out, then walked toward the door and said clear as a bell, “Gotta get my keys!” which I guess I say every time we leave the house.  He cracks me up.

So today he again decided it was too nice of a day to stay in the house so we went to the park:

Seth had lots of fun and was pretty fearless about climbing up the steps like a big kid, but he was also really good about holding my hand across all the parts that weren’t closed in enough for me.  We stayed for a long time until this little girl around age 4 showed up and Seth started following her.  He has a thing for older girls.  Seth wanted to do all the big kid things she was doing so it was time to go.  I was glad he insisted we go out though.  It was a beautiful day.  Good call, kid!

We had a very busy weekend with birthday parties on Saturday and Sunday.  First on Saturday we celebrated my niece Lena turning 4! I can’t believe she’s that big already.  I don’t have pictures because I forgot my camera.  Somehow after your child turns 1 the camera gets forgotten more and more.  I need to get better with that.  But at any rate Lena had a very nice time and seemed to really like the little ballet barre and mat we got her.  She even had Seth trying to do ballet.  Very cute.

Then on Sunday Seth and I drove up to celebrate my friend Heather’s son, Alex, turning two!  It was at this really cute play center for kids.  Seth had a blast!  He was a little overwhelmed by its awesomeness at first, but after a little while he warmed up and then was all over the place.  Alex sure looked like he had a great time, too!  And thanks to Heather’s reminder I did bring my camera with me.

Having fun in the ball pit.  Ball is one of Seth’s favorite words right now.  At one point he climbed out and took my hand to bring me over to the ball pit and pulled out a toy orange and handed it to me.  Even though it was round like a ball, Seth apparently knew it did not belong in the ball pit.  Funny kid.

Enjoying one of his favorite activities - climbing.

Playing with the little wooden train set, which he completely took apart.

He loved the cake.  After Lena’s birthday the day before Seth knew the drill.  We sing and he gets cake.  He climbed into his chair, grabbed a plate and spoon, and pounded the table until he got his cake.  He’s doing really good with utensils, too.

I think his favorite part was the bubbles at the end.  Seth liked them so much he learned to say the word bubbles.

Happy Birthday Lena and Alex!

Ben decided that Seth was finally old enough to have the rocker base taken off his little car.  It took him about 2 seconds to figure out how to drive it around the house. He’s growing up so fast!