Another night out

My girlfriend had a little mom's night at her house this evening. She collected donations for Colette's House, which helps homeless women and children.

I really didn't think I was going to go. My trainer kicked my ass last night and I needed a good night's sleep. Unfortunately, X had other ideas and was up three times.

Enough. Already.

The older kids had, shall we say, a lot of energy this afternoon, but because Sage has a cough, I didn't let them play outside with the neighbor kids. So they decided to spend a couple hours tackling each other and shrieking.

X, meanwhile, followed me around, fussing, pulling up on my leg, and chewing on the seam of my jeans. The best part was when he had a mouthful of sweet potato. The boy refuses to sit in a high chair, and today insisted that I stand up and hold him while feeding him. So my shirt was also decorated in smears of apples and sweet potato.

By the time David got home from his day in Vegas, I'd had it. And David, being the smart man that he is, literally walked directly into the kitchen and made us dinner. So I ate, felt a little better, and decided to go to my friend's.

It's always nice to get out. There were two pregnant women there, both with their third. Sage went to school last year with the oldest son of one of the women, named Jen. The other one, it turns out, adopted her first two kids. She and her husband tried for 12 years to conceive. They were told by two fertility doctors that they wouldn't conceive.

And here she is, six months pregnant.

I obviously didn't know about her issues when I first met her. But Jen and I were talking about nursing allergic kids - her first son had a ton of allergies, which he's just now outgrown. I was telling her about how I'm off dairy, soy and wheat, and the other pregnant woman said "Why? Why would you do that?"

I just said something about how it's my last baby, and how I feel guilty for force-weaning my first two, and how it's the first time the elimination diet worked. She still looked at me like I'd just told her I give my kids shots of Jagermeister.

When I later learned that this is her first pregnancy, I thought back to her reaction and it made sense. She'd never nursed a baby, never had the horrible guilt of having to quit because her milk was causing such pain for her child. Now, maybe
she'd never had an interest in nursing, which is fine. Or maybe because most adopted kids, I'm guessing, are formula-fed, not being able to nurse is not that big of a deal.

I don't know.

We all do the best we can. If my not eating dairy, wheat and soy means he gets to nurse for a year, then how can I not do it? It's been almost nine months for dairy and seven for wheat and soy. And I have a healthy, happy (most of the time) baby.

That's worth more than a gazillion slices of pizza.