adventure.codyjbennett.comAdventures of Cody & Heather | After all, life is a

Adventures of Cody & Heather | After all, life is a journey! Adventures of Cody & Heather After all, life is a journey! HomeAlora Grace Bennett ← Older posts Our Blog Posted on May 7, 2010 by cody While we have kept up vague and sporadic appearances with some social networks, we (well, Cody) is really excited about maintaining a blog to share our experiences with friends and family, and to have chronicle the experience along the way. We don’t know where we’ll wind up though we do know some parts of the journey. Read on and stay tuned for more. Oh, and I almost forgot… COMMENTS are awesome, and SUBSCRIBING is encouraged! Posted in the blog | Comments Off on Our Blog 2022 Posted on January 16, 2022 by cody It’s been seven and a half years (?!?!!?!) since I’ve posted to this blog. Suffice it to say that life is full when you’re a parent. I don’t think I realized that I would drop off the map so fiercely when it came to blog postings. I actually enjoy writing, enjoy sharing, and enjoy connecting, but when you’re drained, the time and space for thoughtful articulation is hard to come by. This (me writing), of course, does not mean that life is peachy keen and that I’ve got lots of time and space. But humorously, I realized that I’ve been handing out my business card recently, and it links to this page. I suppose it would do me well to update it once every few years. Life is good here – Alora is 7 (wow!), she’s precocious, precious, and participatory in nearly everything. Heather continues to be Super-Mom, Super-Wife, and Super all around. We’re excited to continue our walk together and in the direction of our values. I’m running off to my next commitment, so I don’t know when I’ll be back… But it’s nice to see you, and nice to write a few words. Till next time, -Cody Posted in the blog | 4 Comments Heather, Super-Mom Posted on June 2, 2014 by cody It’s been 3 months, 7 days since Alora joined us. Thirteen weeks gone by in a blink. We’ve had ups and downs, and we’re still feeling our way through the day-to-day experience of Parenthood. This week alone, we’ve had tears and laughter and even exhaustion although Alora has been sleeping through the night for weeks. In the 97 days since Alora showed up, we’ve changed over 650 diapers, offered a bottle 800 times, and she’s consumed 1889.1 ounces (that’s 14.75 GALLONS) of breastmilk. Woah. My wife gets all the glory in parenthood, though. I might be able to change a diaper, but Heather is unsurpassed in all things baby related. In a word, she is incredible. From day one she has been tirelessly providing breastmilk for Alora despite our child’s delay in taking to the breast. Alora sleeps soundly while Heather has learned to live in a disrupted stacatto of a whiring machine strapped to her chest. Since we started tracking, she’s been attached to that breast beating beast a whopping consecutive total of 106 hours and 18 minutes. Of course a few of you may have been through this whole breastmilk pumping thing (so you know what it’s like), but as a guy, I can’t help but shudder to think about the idea of having any of my body parts attached to some liquid sucking apparatus. Yeouch. Heather just shrugs and says that it doesn’t really hurt anymore. I’m not sure I believe her. (Does anyone know if you can get calluses on nipples?) Sadly, having dual permanent hickeys isn’t even the worst woe of pumping breastmilk. The real killer is longing for connection with your little one and not being able to make it happen. While Alora still coos each morning and spends plenty of time on Heather’s chest, her sometimes playful interest doesn’t translate to bottle-free meals. As such, we continue our littany of appointments: Lactation Consults transitioned to cranial-sacral therapy and now the latest: speech therapy. Each time, we’re met with reassurance (by credentialed professionals) that Heather is amazing. Throughout her frequent pump schedule, and the business and busyness of living life, she still finds the time to patiently offer her breasts to Alora in all sorts of uncomfortable positions: reclining, seated, planking, side lying, and my personal fav, the Austrailian” (sidelying with the kiddo inverted.). You go ahead and try side planking after giving birth. I don’t even like planks, and I haven’t been through labor. And then there are the unanticipated surprises. Just when we start to think things are leveling out and success is on the doorstep, another bomb drops. Most recently, Heather injured her back: a bulging disk dashed progress and left Heather essentially bedridden until the swelling subsided. She is just now getting back to being able to lift and carry Alora after almost two weeks of enforced quasi-relaxation between pumping sessions, just in time to be headed back to work after three months spent tending to a baby. Heather continues to persevere in a world that keeps throwing her curves. We just had a talk last night about how our particular set of circumstances (feeding, pumping, etc) is, to a degree, a wonderful blessing that has enabled Heather to make new friends, and encourage others. Trying to fit a three-month summary of Heather’s heroic feats into a handful of paragraphs is a bit of a losing proposition. Suffice it to say, she’s a veritable superhuman, and yet still has the capacity to rub my head and show me tenderness after a long day. How in the world could I be so fortunate to have her as my best friend and the mother of my child? Providence, I suppose. Thanks for reading, we appreciate all of the care and comments and love. Till next time, -Cody Posted in baby , image(s) , kids , Reflection , the blog | Tagged Alora , breast feeding , breastmilk , challenges , heather , parenthood , pumping | 1 Comment 47 Things Posted on March 8, 2014 by cody Up next on the blog is a list of 47 things separated into 7 lists. For you parents out there, I’m exceedingly hopeful that you will comment with your own ‘Things’ so that we can all reminisce, laugh, or commiserate! Here we go! 1.3 Milk Coma! 1. Five Adorable Things Tongue thrusts (kinda lizard-like) & rosebud lips. Full-body sneezes and full tongue-out coughs. Milk induced comas (er, I mean serene sleeping). Seeing Alora turn to my voice when entering the room. Alora alert, eyes open, observing the world. Newborn photos! (This is the whole collection rather than the sampling on Meta’s Blog .) 2.2 A brief moment without, er, food supply management” by our Lactation Consultant, Debi. 2. Two Awkward Things Short umbilical cords Lactation consultants having no personal boundaries with their managing of your wife’s breasts 3. Nine Sucky Things So. Many. Diapers. (And I bet it’ll get worse before it gets better.) Interrupted sleep for all. Underweight kiddos. Kids books (so infantile). So. Many. Clothes. (And the subsequent laundry requirements.) Crying over spilt milk. (Breastmilk is like liquid gold.) Feeding with a bottle, then burping, then changing a diaper, then pumping, then cleaning the pump, then eating and drinking, then sleeping for an hour and a half, then doing the whole spiel again and again… and again. Heather’s headache & exhaustion (continued alignment issues compounded with lack of contiguous hours of sleep). Seemingly unneccesary doctor appointments. Daddy & Alora. 4. Six Funny Things Trying to dress a newborn for the first time. Pro tip: use oversized button up clothing not the perfectly” sized, over-the-head onesie. Un-diapered peeing on others. (Thanks, Madi, for taking her first like a seasoned pro!) Involuntary rocking of the baby. My foot will move (as though to move a rocking chair) at the fussing of our child, even if she’s in someone else’s arms. Buying baby diapers, wipes and maxi pads. Zillions of options, and getting knowing looks from other men while you read each package. We may never know the sheer number of photos that one can take of a sleeping baby. The never-to-be-seen-in-public self-fashioned hands-free pumping bra...