excerpt of an email sent to Melissa: "I'm cleaning out my inbox (i have many pages of messages that need to go) and this one stood out for some nostalgic reason. i think josh's 4th month has been the best so far. this month is shaping up with new challenges such as teething, sleeping interruptions, general fussiness, louder squawking and crying, stinkier poo and solid foods messiness. There are plenty of good things such as rolling over, more smiles, more laughter, more alertness and awareness of his surroundings, new sounds, longer attention span, self play, etc. I guess what I'm rambling towards is I passed the last month so fast and didn't appreciate how easy and pleasant it was until that time had passed.

today was an exceptionally bad day with food rejection, crankiness, loud cries, not wanting to be laid down, and spitting up all over my new jeans within hours of wearing them for the first time. i hope next month gets better and i pay attention to how easy things are compared to where we're headed next."

i had a mommy meltdown after dinner. i was so stressed out from josh's fussiness and loud crying, and so tired from being up half a dozen times over night. rusty casually mentioned "maybe we should start him on formula" and something in my brain clicked. i slowly turned from general tired and cranky to weeping. i still don't know what exactly got to me. I guess i had had enough and needed to purge.

we went to a Halloween playdate hosted by one of the moms in my new moms group. it was fun for about 30 minutes then i spent the rest of the time soothing a cranky baby. I brought a bag of milk to defrost and pour into a bottle. it takes about 5 minutes to defrost it with hot water and two hands to pour it into the bottle. not only did josh get pissed about having to wait to be fed, he really got pissed about being laid down on his back while i poured the milk into the bottle. so he's on a screaming frenzy while other babies and moms are taking pictures and playing. Then he was sleepy after his bottle so he proceeded to cry and whine and fuss. and spit up. so i spent another 15 minutes soothing him and trying to get him to sleep in my arms while other moms where socializing and showing off babies everywhere. i finally gave up, packed our stuff and left knowing he would sleep in the car on the way home- which he did.

one problem of late is my transition from the breastfeeding to bottle feeding. i only breastfeed josh in the morning now (twice) and the rest of the day is from a bottle. this takes time to prepare the bottle and then clean up afterwards. I'd like to keep pumping and giving him breast milk because it is so good for him, but pumping 4 times a day with one pump and using only two bottles is becoming a nightmare. i'm constantly cleaning and preparing for the next meal. and twice today josh was hungry before i expected him to be. so we did our first bottle of formula tonight. i think i'll buy a few more bottles tomorrow and solve at least one problem.