To Wean or Not To Wean

Warning for any male readers: The following involves a frank discussion of the biologic uses of breasts though no graphic images will be used you should refrain from reading if the subject makes you dizzy or uncomfortable

Well Adeline will be 9 months old on Wednesday and I can't believe how quickly the time has passed. She is getting so big and is such a little person now. She has favorites: her favorite food is carrots, her favorite snack is Teddy grams. Her favorite toy is the remote control. She loves bed time and her story, she waves (I can't say if she means "Hi mommy", "I want that" or "Hey look at my hand") She loves her giraffe and hates the Cheat. She is starting to crawl and loves to stand with a little help of course.
She loves to nurse and I love to nurse her. I especially love the first thing in the morning and the last thing at night nursing sessions. When I think back on learning to nurse and how hard it was in the beginning it is really amazing that I enjoy it so much. I am really happy with our little bonding sessions.
What I hate is pumping. I'm not exactly blessed with the biggest milk supply and I have to pump a lot to get enough to send with her to school while I am on a 24 hour shift. Granted she nurses less now than she did before she started solid foods but it still sucks to be tied to a pump especially at work. Adeline has teeth but she has never bit me. She's a good little nurser I've been very lucky. I just kind of want my body back...a little...I think.
I want to stop pumping but keep nursing. My hesitation is that this will mean that she has to have some formula when she's in daycare and I'll still have to pump when I do 24 hour shifts. I'm so happy to have made it to 9 months which is a lot longer than most professional moms make it and I don't like the idea of formula.... (evil empire peddling the most engineered, least natural product you could buy in the grocery store including Twinkies and hairspray) I just really hate the mechanical twins. I hate the setting up, the pumping, the constant cleaning...

Sigh

So if you have been there before or even if you haven't but would like to give me some advice I would really appreciate it.

S

I need a bigger Nightstand

I have always loved to read. It is a habit that my parents successfully instilled upon me at a very early age. (I read The Hobbit when I was 8 and was devouring Mitchner by junior high) But, save having a book to read for school and one for "fun", I have always managed to hold myself to one novel at a time. I have tried to adhear to this limit partly because of a touch of ADD but mostly because I was afraid to become my father. (Sorry Dad) I often thought that his demise would come the night the giant stack of partially finished works toppled off of his night stand and crushed him in his sleep. It obviously never happened and I have become lax to my rule. I just finished The Historian, a novel chronicling the death and burial of Dracula in parallel to the hunt for his final resting place. It was nearly 700 pages of Eastern European pseudo-history but I enjoyed it.
But before I finished that I had started Those Who Save Us for our upcoming book club. Together with the trashy novel I picked up for my recent trip to Boston,The Other Boleyn Girl and the pointless Labyrinth which I think I'm going to have to start over if I ever want to give it a fair shot there were 4 novels sitting on my nightstand along with the usual girly things, an alarm clock, lotion, 2 of Adeline's toys, a lamp and a spit rag. My nightstand is only 12"x18".
Meanwhile the list of books I want to read keeps growing and growing.

The Madness needs to stop