Grinding Halt

Three amazing things happening by taking this trip to SF and we never could have predicted them in advance.

1. No more pumping! I had been cutting down on my pumping but keeping the last pump of the night sloooowly moving it back. In truth, as much as I hated that pump there was a sick thing I like about seeing the milk in that bottle. Proof that I am making milk. However, I vowed that I would never travel with the pump and all that crap again. So, 2 nights before we left I pumped for the last time. I ended up nursing a sleepy baby around 11pm just to make sure my boobs would make it both nights...but they were fine. By the time we woke up in SF, me and my boobies were sleeping through the night. No more pumping! I'm sure if we hadn't gone on the trip, I'd still be 'holding on' to that last pump, silly as it was.
2. No more bottles! We had talked about dropping the boy's night time bottle once we were confident they were getting enough moo milk throughout the day. We had a strategy of making the bottles smaller and smaller...etc. But, we'd only talked about it. The night we arrived in SF, the boys were exhausted, we were out of milk and hadn't made it to the grocery to stock up. I decided to BF them and see what happened. The worst that could happen is they would wake up hungry and I would BF them again. They slept just fine (except for that NYC internal alarm clock waking time!) and just like that, we've stopped the bottles. Granted we only did one bottle a day, but still...I'm so happy to nurse them at night and be done with it and also KNOW that they are still getting enough milk from me to sleep 12 hours through the night.
3. Two mommies are better than one! I took W2 on the flight since he's more into nursing and Chicken flew with Grunter on her lap. By the time we arrived in SF, Grunter had formed an attachment with Chicken neither of us had ever experienced. He wanted her and reached out to her. I will admit that while I was pleased he bonded with her so tightly, I was....a little jealous. There I said it. And she knows and she wasn't surprised. But they have been such 'mommy' boys for over a year despite the fact that 'mama' is here as well. As Chicken says, "You've got what they want (boobies)." It was really sweet to see how she could comfort him and how tightly he clung to her, but strange to know that he didn't want me. Right now, he wanted her. Anyone else deal with this? It sounds selfish, I know. I want the boys to have a strong bond with both of us and I know that when I stop BFing it will probably be a lot easier.

In other surprising news...we thought the inflight entertainment systems would mesmerize the boys and buy us some time on the flight. Not at all. The boys don't watch any TV at home and it turns out they don't care for it on a plane either. A few people had strongly suggested we go out and splurge on some portable DVD players for each of them to take on the plane. I'm so glad we didn't!!

The boys also don't eat any sugar. We were the mean mommies who didn't even give them cupcakes on their first birthday. I know...heartless and mean. So, we figured while packing snacks for the plane we would be irrational and crazy and get some of those fruit (and some sugar) filled toddler cereal bars. Hated them. I also got them some instant blueberry oatmeal to make in the hotel room for them. At home they have slow cooked Irish steel cut oatmeal with lots of milk and some cinnamon. I thought the blueberry kind would be a nice surprise. They hated it. Spit it out. Too sweet.

Can I say they were both pleasant surprises?