Plus, I would prefer to leave her with a sitter sometimes while I am working… Anything to keep her indoors and cool as opposed to the 80 degree temps and 50% humidity that I am working in while teaching a colorguard. I am worried about her getting dehydrated, overheated, sunburned and bug bitten.

Anyway, we’ve been working at getting her to take pumped milk from a bottle now that breastfeeding is well established and risk for “nipple confusion” has passed. We’ve read books, stocked up on different nipple/ bottle types and I have pumped breast milk.

N tries to give her the bottle when I am still asleep in the mornings. He takes her in a different room or even outside so she’s away from me and my scent. Everyone says that she’ll be more likely to refuse the bottle or pacifier if she knows the real thing is near.

He would love to be a part of the feeding process and has been eager to begin bottle feeding her. Unfortunately she screams bloody murder like he is torturing her each time her tries to offer the bottle to her.

He’s tried the walking around with her in the facing out position like The Nursing Mother’s Companionsays to, she still wont take the bottle. We also read The Complete Book of Breastfeedingfor advice.

We have both tried our hand at the cradle hold and a few other positions, different nipples, feeding at different times etc. We have both tried everything we can think of to ease her in to bottle feeding. We are even offering her a pacifier to get her used to the artificial feel.

We have the Adiri Natural Nurser Bottle,a Gerber Nuk Bottleand the bottles that came in the Medela Breast Pump Accessory Set. We have a Nuk, a Soothie and an Aventpacifier that she’s also refusing.

She simply will not have any part of bottle feeding or pacifiers! She only wants the real thing, which is a nice compliment but at the same time I am worried I’ll never be able to leave her side till she’s weaned of breastfeeding.

I welcome any advice or tips you might have to help get her to take an occasional bottle of pumped milk every now and then.

The post She only wants boob! appeared first on Updates from Ryder Family Farm.

Job searching can be a tedious and stressful time for anyone. You sift through the possibilities, talk yourself out of the ones you feel are unachievable and then you pursue the ones you feel best suited for. Eventually you end up with another less than fulfilling job somewhere else but is it the job for you?

The worst thing you can do is sell yourself short when job searching. This is something N and I learned first hand a few years back. It’s natural to not want to feel rejected so your tendency is to not be willing to put yourself out there when you aren’t sure you will succeed. That is the worst thing you can do for your job search though!

Learning to entertain all the possibilities and to put yourself out there is very important, it allows you to be noticed by as a many people as possible which in turn leads to more possible options for you to choose from! More options is aways a good thing right?

So, N announced to me this morning that he had submitted like 10 applications to other stations around the country today. He joked that “everyone can have a copy of my resume!”, we are trying to put him out there and to entertain reasonable job offers now so that we have somewhere to go when his current contract is up this summer.

I am a firm believer in things happening for a reason and that if you put yourself out there on the line you are allowing for the right opportunity to find you. Often times the hardest thing is to just convince yourself that you are something worth “selling” and that you should put yourself out there.

If you are a job searching right now say goodbye to limits! Determine the direction you intend on going with your job and let every possible employer know that you are on the search. Let the employers determine if you are good enough or not and keep yourself open to as many possibilities as you can!

In times of change or transition we need to surrender control and open ourselves to the endless possibilities ahead, often times the direction we see ourselves going is not the best thing for us and something else will come about instead that is better in the long run.

We all end up where we are meant to be, everything happens for a reason!

The post The job search begins! appeared first on Updates from Ryder Family Farm.

So much of life is a self fulfilling prophecy. We can very easily become products of our environment if we allow it. This is a very difficult concept for people to understand and it is even harder for those that have had trauma in their lives.

It is so easy to believe that bad things are bound to happen to you especially when that is all you have experienced up to this point. but think about it, you were expecting bad things to happen right? Then they did and you proved yourself right which in turn solidified your belief in the notion that bad things are bound to happen to you which made you think more about bad things.

If you expect the bad and spend the majority of your day dwelling on the negative that is all you are going to experience because that is all you are attracting to you. I firmly believe this and I’ll share an experience that illustrates it.

Back in November 2005 we were notified that the television station (where my partner works) was being sold, this meant the possibility of being uprooted without much notice. This was hard for me to deal with because I had just started to build a life for myself in this new town where we had just moved to. I built up my freelance choreographer/ instructor job, had many contacts/ opportunities. I made all new friends in this town and we were just getting settled in and getting ahead. Moving would disrupt everything and it would mean starting all over again.

My first instinct was to be upset about the predicament, it was so easy to be angry and defeated by it all. After the initial shock and grief I tried very hard to view things in a different light. I began getting excited about change and lately my thinking has been that we will end up in a place where we will be most happy and successful.

I did not think about what I didn’t want and I did not have my heart set on a particular place or situation. I just trusted that destiny would put us where we belonged and that we would prosper.

In the last two weeks I have changed jobs (for the better) and this week I just got promoted! My partner was informed that his company has interest in keeping him at the TV station (the station never sold) which means we are staying right where we are. I am continuing my freelance work with the local high school and also with the university and I have an opportunity to help out an old coworker this summer with his new high school program. Our full time jobs are paying us more and we have been working to clean up our credit so we can buy a home in the next 4-6 months.

Everything is falling into place and I don’t think it is simply luck!

Try to modify your thinking and see how your life changes. Whether it is the laws of attraction or optimism or whatever it does work. Try it!

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Do you have a similar experience? Would you like to discuss your own situation or beliefs on this topic? Please feel free to leave your comments below about this topic, we would love to hear from you!

The post Learning to attract what you want…. appeared first on Updates from Ryder Family Farm.

Do you believe you have control over your life? What does it mean to control your life? Can you control death and various other life changing events? Can you control the direction your life is headed? Your answers to these questions make you the person you are.

When life-changing events take place many of us begin to analyze our lives and the steps we have taken to get to where we are. People ask “why me?” or “what could I have done differentially?”. When we loose someone close to us we wonder why and we often do not understand the loss. Some will become angry or resentful others will learn and grow from the experience.

I strongly believe that we are presented with obstacles in life to force personal growth. Sometimes we are perfectly happy where we are in life, other times we feel we lack the strength to change anything. Change is hard and people resist it but without change you can never grow. Life has forced me to move forward and grow many times, all of which were against my will.

A personal story illustrates this perfectly-

My significant other and I moved to Flagstaff, AZ for personal growth, career advancements and to free ourselves from the area we grew up in. We consciously made the choice to leave our old lives behind and to see what life had in store for us. We have been here and doing great for two years now.

In November 2005 we found out a major job/ life change was in the works for us. The television station my significant other works at is up for sale. That means we may not be able to continue living in Flagstaff if my significant other is out of a job. In the beginning the news was heart breaking to me since I have poured my heart and soul into creating a Colorguard program at a local high school. The idea of having to leave my students and all that I have worked to create was very crushing.

First I felt shocked by the news, and then I became angry because “It just wasn’t fair”. I became depressed for a while then I began to accept the situation. Once I was in the acceptance phase I was able to start seeing things from different perspectives. I then started to become excited about the possibilities. Finding a new job for the significant other will most likely take us out of the state of Arizona, which is exciting. We have both only lived in Arizona so moving to a new state will be quite an adventure. Also my significant others’ career possibilities are exciting. He is a news personality and is just starting out, moving and getting a new job provides him with the chance to make more, to gain more valuable experience and to move to a bigger station/ market area. Also, the possibility of having to move urged me to start my own online business that can go with me wherever I may be.

Once I cycled through all the stages of grief I was able to find the good in the situation. I realized that if we are not forced to forgo change we could probably stay here comfortably forever. We would probably never become the people we are meant to be though.

“If we always do what we’ve always done, we will get what we’ve always got.”

We still have no word on when the TV station will be sold and to whom. We have accepted this situation and we anxiously await the end result. We will go wherever life takes us and we are working to be more accepting of the changes that life throws our way. We are trying to “be the water not the rock” and are doing our best to play the cards we are dealt.

Realizing you don’t know everything and that you don’t call all the shots is really hard but also a bit comforting. Life has a direction for all of us and all we really have to do is go where we are sent, do the best we can and keep our spirits up throughout it all.

The post Destiny and the journey of life- everything happens for a reason. appeared first on Updates from Ryder Family Farm.