"happy papi!"

Happy Papi's Day, Benji!!

Thank you for getting up in the middle of the night when in the dark we hear a little, but loud voice say "Agua, please. Agua!" over and over again. Thank you for having infectuous belly laughs. Thank you for taking care of the heavy stuff. Thank you for taking care of us. Thank you for being reliable. Thank you for supporting mama dreams even if they change from day to day.

We love you!

Is 7 the lucky number?

My mom has been telling me and everyone else that I plan on breastfeeding Soluna until she is 7. It's kind of her "joke" but she is continually trying to discourage me and Soluna from continuing our nursing relationship. She flat out says to Soluna "Why are you still breastfeeding? You're not a baby anymore!" She tells me that my breasts are going to be down to my knees. Great! I asked my Inang (my mom's mom) how long she breastfed her kids (all 8 of them) and she said around 1-2 years, except my Uncle Alex that breastfed until he was 7. That's where my mom got the number 7. It does not matter that Soluna is still in that 1-2 years stage, my mom insists that it's time to stop. I don't understand why it's such a big deal to her. Actually Ben's grandma also said she breastfed her youngest until an age where she came home from school and breastfed. I think it's our mamas' generation that actually decided to stop earlier and, interestingly, I think it was part of their "Americanization" although I bet neither my mom or Ben's mom would admit it.

With that said, I am posting a link to a blog post that cites some research that concludes that the longer you breastfeed the higher your kids GPA will be and the more likely they will go to college. I think research like this is kind of funny because a) there is no way to prove breastfeeding relates specifically to the two outcomes, and b) you can prove almost anything by the way you set-up your experiment. But, I still like to see this research... because maybe it is true... and that would be nice.

words words words

Soluna has been talking, talking, talking. I love it. Here are a few things she's saying pretty regularly:

mom, mommy, papi, papa, lolo, lola, apong, abuelo, abuela, dog, ball, cat, duck, quack, go, walk, outside, inside, aqua, please, thank you, excuse me, wow, owie, lali, jair, baby, kids, play, head, eyes, hand, nose, socks, shoes, susu, hurry, faster, up, down, ice cream, cookie, katie, two, mango, avocado, go, bed, pee pee, caca, bird, butterfly, uh oh, mine, book, num-num (hungry), emma, pizza, hat, Giants!

And there's so much more she understands!