Coffee Withdrawals and a Mischievous 10 Month Old

Today Mattimeo turned 10 months old, and today I woke up with the worst caffeine withdrawal symptoms ever. I love the act of drinking coffee: it tastes good, it’s warm, and it makes me feel cozy; it’s a nice routine. But I hate feeling dependent on it. Coffee doesn’t really help me wake up; it doesn’t seem to matter what time of day I have a cup. But if I don’t have one cup, my body really takes notice, and that frustrates me to no end. Since I am breastfeeding, I am really careful to only have one cup a day. I’ve read that one cup a day is perfectly fine (check out this article on KellyMom.com, and amazing resource for nursing mothers: http://kellymom.com/bf/can-i-breastfeed/lifestyle/caffeine/), but sometimes I get it into my head that having no cups would be better and I decide to quit. Yesterday was one of those days. Everything went great, I felt really energized yesterday and perfectly normal. But when I woke up this morning, I had a terrible headache and I felt extremely nauseous. I climbed out of bed to drink some water, get an ibuprofen and try to eat a piece of bread to calm the sickness in my tummy then laid back down for twenty minutes. Mattimeo sleeps in bed with us, and as he was now awake, I put him on the floor to play while I tried to give my body time to heal. Eventually though I needed to get up and make us some breakfast and change is diaper, but I still felt awful. To the point that holding Mattimeo made me feel so sick that I had to put him down and run to the bathroom to throw up. Gross. I decided to make some coffee.

Over the course of the morning, I nursed my one cup of coffee, and over a period of an hour, that coffee nursed me back to health. In the meantime, my ten month old was a very busy boy. Let’s just say that I am glad that coffee helped me feel better, otherwise I would have had one hellish morning. Instead, it was fun to see him explore and get excited about the messes he was making. If you aren’t aware of the kind of trouble a ten month old can make, please let me enlighten you. In less than one hour, Mattimeo:

1. Tossed his plate on the ground and got raisin bread and strawberries all over himself, the high chair and the floor.
2. Found the cats’ water fountain and splashed around in it for a bit.
3. Found the cats’ food dish (I thought I blocked the area off, but apparently not well enough) and proceed to try to stuff handfuls of kibbles into his mouth. Hopefully his vegetarian digestive system is up to the challenge.

See you again soon, cat food.

4. Climbed up onto the trash can and started pulling apart the trash bag.

5. Climbed up onto the dishwasher and pulled the rack off while I was emptying it.

6. Climbed up onto a cupboard and knocked down all the travel coffee cup lids. He did this twice this morning.

7. Got into the Tupperware drawer and pulled out lots and lots of Tupperware.

8. Got a hold of the kitchen rug and proceed to gather it up and jam out on it like it was a drum.

 

9. Used the stove to stand up (thank goodness the oven wasn’t on).
10. Started pulling out laundry from the basket while I was folding.

As you can see, we had a very busy morning. While sometimes it is a nuisance to pick up after his messes, I like to give Mattimeo a lot of freedom to explore his surroundings. He has so much fun! I can tell when he is excited about something he is going to do because he makes cute little squealing/laughing noises as he quickly crawls over to his destination. He also has the most adorable mischievous look when he is doing something fun but slightly naughty. We have all the dangerous stuff blocked off or latched shut, so I’m pretty comfortable letting him do his thing, though I still always keep an eye on him. I think it’s great for his development. Plus it’s refreshing not having to hover over him telling him “no” all the time.