Mara-verse

Farmers' Market

2010-04-17T12:21:00.004-04:00

I wish we could get to the Farmers' Market before it gets so crowded and before the sun is so high. I just can't seem to get it together enough for us to be there before 9:30 or so. Robert needs to be fed, changed, dressed; the dog walked; the dog, cat, and chickens fed, before leaving the house. Since I am not going to wake the baby up any earlier than when he wakes up on his own, well, I guess we'll be fighting the crowds all summer. Sigh. Today I bought our strawberry plants. We've been outside all week, feels like. Yesterday I mowed 5/8 of our yard, moved the chicken coop and cleaned it out, and pounded the stakes for the inner chicken-fence. I don't think I mentioned this yet-- I'm putting in a little, 24" high chicken-wire fence on the inside of the garden beds to keep the chickens out while they're free-ranging. This after noon I finished the other 3/8 of the mowing (can't get it all done at once because it takes longer than how long Robert will sit happily in his stroller) and worked on the fence a little more. I love this time of year but it is exhausting, too. You ever notice how the old-timers you see working in their gardens are always skinny? I think this is why.

"I DO NOT LIKE THE HAT"... he seems to say.

Garden Tour

2010-04-13T11:21:00.002-04:00

What's blooming in my neighborhood:

Bleeding hearts. I love these. If I ever have a shady garden, they're high on my list.

Creeping phlox. It's planted like this all over my neighborhood, since so many houses have steep drops from yard to street. Most of the year it's just a nice, unobjectionable ground cover, but every spring it puts on a huge display.

And my all-time favorite tree, the Eastern Redbud. Also, the lilacs and dogwoods are in bloom. I love this time of year!

What Don did this weekend

2010-04-12T16:35:00.003-04:00

In order to finish the Retaining Wall in Ditch project, as well as finish filling the raised beds with topsoil, Don rented a tractor. Lucky I'm not the jealous type, because I think it was love at first sight. (I now pronounce you Man and Kubota?) He spent the weekend moving dirt and building walls, grumbling something about starting projects you can't finish grr grr grr, while Robert and I stayed in our nice, air-conditioned house and took pictures.

In this picture, he has either just conquered the gravel pile or is auditioning for a Captain Morgan commercial, I can't remember. Does he have a little captain in him? Why no, he is filled with Magic Hat!

After his typical, seventy-hour workweek and two days laboring in the backyard, he re-built this raised bed for me. I think he really does love me. You can kind of see the arrangement of the two walls filling the ditch in this picture. We still need more back-fill behind the taller one, and each wall still needs the row of capstones that finishes it, but otherwise, mission accomplished. In between the two walls I'm going to plant strawberries, and the bed that Don is working on is going to be raspberries. I guess it's the fruity end of the yard.

In other news, I cleared out the tiny closet, have the fridge half done, and other small accomplishments crossed off The List. Robert can suddenly hardly get enough to eat; I'm feeding him every few hours around the clock. Big people-food meals during the day, breastfeeding in between times, and he still wants to nurse several times during the night. He even ate the green beans that he refused a few weeks ago. (Not the same ones, of course, but the other half of a two-pack.) I think he's going through a growth spurt. According to our scale, he is now 25.5 pounds. He understands the words for 'dragon' and 'dog', as in 'where's the ___?'; likes to imitate sounds, facial expression, and movements; and has started creeping along the furniture when he pulls himself up to standing. I guess it's a growth AND development spurt, really. At lunchtime I was blowing on each bite for him, and when I offered him a bite, he tried to blow on it too. SO cute.

...because it's not a blog post without the obligatory baby picture!

Finally Something Finished

2010-04-09T12:05:00.002-04:00

My marathon cleaning isn't going quite as well as planned. I should be at least one-third done and I am not. Whine whine whine, it's haaaard to get anything done with a baby, bitch bitch bitch. I know. It's lazy. But I got the first item from the kitchen sub-list, "clean and organize hutch" done yesterday. I know it looks over-full, but this hutch serves as most of my pantry and a good bit of my counter space; it's never going to be spare and minimalist the way it would be in a catalogue. Among other things, it holds fourteen one-pound boxes of dried pasta. I'm not a hoarder, honestly! The store was having a buy-two-get-THREE-free sale on the brand I already buy. What would you do? (Correct answer: pay for four boxes, walk out with ten.)

Zoom-in on my 'Never Trust a Skinny Cook' sign, which I love but would love to invalidate by reskinny-fying myself... or at least losing seven pounds or so. Today I will get more things done.

First Time at the Park

2010-04-05T12:02:00.003-04:00

I suppose the title says it all. There is a playground near our house, and yesterday we took Robert there for the first time. He is just barely big enough to use the little-kid swings. We actually went twice; just me, the dog and the baby in the morning, then all of us in the evening. This was partly because I knew Don would want to be a part of the Baby's First Swings experience, and partly because I was disappointed with the photos I'd taken in the morning. Time of day makes a huge difference sometimes: the top picture here was taken mid-morning, when the light was really bright and harsh. The others were taken at sunset.

Here, Don is playing I'm Going to Eat your Feet!, swing version. It's one of his favorites. We were kind of hoping that these people would invite us to their barbecue, the aroma of which was permeating the whole park, but no such luck.

Me:

2010-04-03T21:13:00.002-04:00

...with the baby on my back. In the background: compost heaps, chicken house and run, straw bales. I think we might be That House in our neighborhood.

Don took several pictures, but apparently it is not possible for both of us to look at the camera simultaneously. Perhaps it violates a law of photographical physics, I don't know.

Working on my marathon-list with varying degrees of success, but it's only the 3rd. We'll get there.

Which came first?

2010-04-02T18:40:00.001-04:00

The girls have fun scratching in what will soon be the raspberry bed.

I could also call this, why we grow our own. Grocery store-egg to the left, backyard egg to the right. And these are supposedly the really good store eggs, cage-free and all that. There's just no comparison.

Today I:

2010-04-01T20:06:00.002-04:00

Mucked out the chicken house.
Did a sink-load of dishes.
Walked the baby and the dog to our coffee place.
Went to both the grocery store and Bed, Bath & Beyond (with baby, of course).
Folded and put away two loads of laundry (from yesterday).
Organized out-grown baby clothes, stored away.
Re-organized Robert's dresser.
Moved all my seedlings outside to take advantage of this warm sunshine.
Made dinner.

I've been dealing with some fairly bad insomnia lately, and spent more time last night staring into space than actually sleeping. So the above may not sound like much, but considering the three-hours-of-sleep situation (multiplied by days and days now), it's pretty damn good. I'm trying to get outside, get things done, and avoid lounging around the house, in an effort to tire myself out.

April Spring Clean Marathon

2010-03-31T18:52:00.005-04:00

This is my to-do list for the month of April. It is essentially a deep clean, organization, and baby-proofing of the entire house. I realize that last month would have made more sense, what with the Official Last Date of Frost being April 28 in these parts (hence all of April being a gardening frenzy), but my time-turner is broken so, oh well. My reasons for wanting to do this are as follows: My mom, my sister, and my sister's boyfriend are coming in early May. My sister and her boyfriend are moving here (Yay!), and our mom is making the drive with them in order to help out (and to see us, of course, only grandchild and all that). They are both the kind of naturally tidy and organized people that probably secretly wonder how I'm from the same gene pool; the sort that, if they remove a sweater, hang it on a hanger or put it in the hamper, rather than dump it on the floor, which is what seems normal to me. Neither is judge-y, but I will feel much more comfortable knowing that the place is presentable through-and-through. The baby-proofing is obvious, what with having a crawling, pulling-up, mobile little monster rambling about the place, and is also to help my mom sleep more easily, knowing that our cabinets are latched, our outlets covered, and our carbon monoxide detected. Second, our Stuff is, once again, starting to grow larger than the available space. So, some things must be disposed of via the dump and Goodwill, and some better-organized and hidden away. Third, our little house only requires a big ol' cleaning every year or so (at least to my eyes, see above), so once I get this done, I can breathe easy and just do the usual mop-and-vacuum-and-dishes routine for the rest of the year. (The last one was shortly before I went into labor, so yep, about a year.) Since I plan on spending copious amounts of time this summer out in the garden, this thought makes me happy. With a better-organized, cleaner, and more child-safe space, everything will be easier once I'm through. So, what I will do is come back to this post every few days and edit to indicate what's been done. Obviously some of the things on the list will need to be done regularly, like scrubbing the stove, so those I mean specifically for right before everyone gets here. I'm actually hoping to finish several days before said family arrives, so I can cook and bake up a storm as is usual for me, rather than thinking about cobwebs. So here's the list:

Laundry Room
Empty shelves of everything random
Reorganize what's left
Move doors down to shed
Return top of washing machine to proper place
Scrub floor

Kitchen
Clean and organize hutch shelves
Ditto hutch drawers
Scrub fridge interior
Scrub fridge exterior, including top
Organize freezer
Check liquor bottles for viability
Organize over-stove cabinet
Scrub stove top
Scrub oven door, knobs, broiler door etc.
Fix kitchen sink faucet
Scrub sink w/ baking soda
Polish kitchen window, inside and out
Organize three lower cabinets
Install baby locks ditto
Wash all cabinet door and drawer fronts, etc
Clear off table, find home for random table orphans
Scrub floor

Bathroom
Organize medicine cabinet
Organize under-sink cabinet
Scrub area around toilet
Polish window in and out
Polish mirror
Get Don to scrub tub
Replace shower curtain
Scrub floor
Floor mat into washing machine

Study
Clear out and organize tiny closet
Clear out bookshelf
Move books to living room
Throw away many magazines
Clear desktop
Organize three desk drawers
Polish both windows
Bundle computer cords with wire ties, make inaccessible
Organize upper shelf of main closet

Hallway
Replace smoke detector
Install carbon monoxide detector
Clean or replace air-filter cover

Living Room
Move ADT system box
Shift left-side bookcase
Check that bookcases are still attached to wall
Go to IKEA, get bottom doors for bookcases
Install said doors, add baby locks
Staple speaker cords to wall
Polish window, door window, and screen door
Buy new blinds for window
Install blind-cord wind-upper thingie
Ask next door about baby gate
Vacuum sofa
Reorganize bookshelves

Bedroom
Figure out how to reinstall closet door
Get rid of random electronics via Craigslist
Flip mattress
Replace pack'n'play with child mattress?
Obtain more under-bed storage bags for baby clothes
Transfer current storage things to closet top shelf
Sort through baby clothes again, out-growns into new unit

Overall
Vacuum cobwebs from ceilings, door frames, etc
Dust everywhere, especially ceiling fans, light fixtures, etc

Front Porch
Don's job.

Random Errands
IKEA: bookshelf doors, kiddie mattress, sheets to fit
Lowe's: staples for staple gun, dowels for closet door, kitchen sink parts, new window blind, blind cord thing, more baby locks, smoke and CO detectors
Bed, Bath & Beyond: under-bed units
Take truck-load of stuff from shed, laundry room, to the dump
Take boxes to Goodwill

There are approximately sixty things to do here, but naturally it will not be a two-things-per-day kind of project; more likely a bunch of stuff one day, and nothing the next. Some will obviously only take ten minutes, some just require equipment or supplies I don't have yet. My goal is to hit about three per day whenever I can. Wish me luck, energy, and a baby who wants to be in a backpack!

My Crocuses are Blooming

2010-03-29T16:26:00.000-04:00

What else I've been up to

2010-03-28T11:29:00.002-04:00

Because believe it or not, it's not just all baby, all the time. I have big gardening plans for this year, very exciting. (To me.) In what was last year's vegetable garden, we're putting in raspberries. It's a bed along the south edge of the backyard, about 18' long. Raspberries are pretty much my favorite fruit (hard to say as I love them all but definitely up there in the top five) and they're always expensive, even in season. I'm so excited about having my own! According to The Garden Primer, once they're established I can expect "up to a quart of berries per foot of row". Eighteen quarts of raspberries! Not this year, of course, but still. Along the back (eastern) edge of the yard, we've* built a raised bed that's about 35' long and 30" wide, that will be this year's vegetable garden. (Next year, I'll be planting asparagus there.) Nothing fancy, just the basics like tomatoes, green beans, zucchini, salad greens, herbs, and flowers. Lots of flowers. To decide what to plant, I thought about what we bought the most often or spent the most on at the Farmers' Market last summer; we were always buying salad greens, zukes, and bouquets of flowers. So, in addition to edging both raised beds with alyssum, nasturtiums, and marigolds, I'm planting zinnias, cosmos, calendula, ageratum, and sunflowers for cuttings. No more spending $7 for a handful of zinnias this summer**! Don built me a plant light so that I could start seeds inside for the first time. I'm starting all the flowers ahead, since they're expensive to buy as plants, and I wanted a lot of them. I plan to buy some plants still, especially tomatoes. My logic is that I only want about six tomato plants, but I don't want all six to be the same variety. So I could either buy 3-4 different seed packets and use maybe 2 seeds from each one, or just buy the plants themselves from the Farmers' Market and get all the variety I want, with no waste. Right now I have 144 seed cells started, two trays of 72 that I'm running alternately under the light.

This is the first tray, three days after planting.

And here it is after one week. At least a few of everything has sprouted so far, and they're growing fast. I had one little problem with the marigold seeds I ordered from Seeds of Change, as the website described this variety as growing 2-3" tall. Turned out to be a typo as they meant 2-3', which luckily was correct on the seed packet itself. Since I wanted to use them to edge my garden, I had to buy more seeds from Lowe's, and use these elsewhere. No big deal really, although I'm still kicking myself for believing that any marigold could be only three inches tall. (I sent them an email in case someone else makes the same error, and they wrote back saying they'd fix it.)

The girls are doing wonderfully well, even after one of the snowiest winters in old-timer recollection. They seem to be perfectly healthy and happy, which reinforces the fact that chickens don't need much pampering to get by. Their house is unheated, and a bit airy (I was more worried about ventilation than insulation when we built it) but it's dry and out of the wind. I took this picture from the kitchen window, which is upstairs and many feet back from the backyard. I really like my new camera, and its 10X zoom feature. Gimpy Girl (to the far right) seems to have finally hit chicken sexual maturity, as her comb has grown larger and turned red, and she has laid at least two eggs. One was this tiny little thing, like a robin's egg but brown, but the other was a small-ish but normal chicken egg. The other day when I went to collect, there were four eggs nestled together, simple as that. She may have laid more than that, it's hard to tell since they all lay in the same place. We get anywhere from none to three, generally, with two being the median.

If I keep on with the blogging, expect many more boring posts about gardens and chickens.

*i.e. I design, Don builds to my specifications. Except when he doesn't, and I end up with something funky. Like the raspberry bed that's about 16" wider than I wanted, which is OK because I'll plant a row of onions in there too.

** Don't look too deeply into what the garden itself is costing... These things should be amortized over a few seasons anyway.

10 Months Old Today

2010-03-27T17:01:00.002-04:00

Pretty cute, if I do say so myself. This is his "Oy, enough with the camera already, paparazzi lady!" expression. It used to be so easy to take his picture... most of our early photos look like this one, from when he was about four weeks old:

He slept a lot. And even when he was awake, he couldn't really move around but stayed where he was put. Of course, as he gained in mobility, he also developed a bit more expression; now, I get a lot of pictures like this one:

... which wasn't cropped at all. "What's that? A camera? Let me see! Is it for tasting?" (He seems to say, as it all sounds like AHHHHhhhh to me.)

All in all, I think he's a keeper. Only two months until he's a year old, who can believe it?

Arrgh looking through his newborn pictures has me thinking about teensy tiny little newborn babies. Bad Mara. Stop that.

Baby Food

2010-03-26T13:02:00.004-04:00

We're feeding Robert a mix of store-bought baby food and homemade. Most of the homemade is just whatever we're eating, cooked down more and pureed. Easy, except that he's still scared of the food processor.

Chicken and carrots cooking in scratch chicken broth.

Salmon and kale.

Portioned out for the freezer.

Sometimes, it's even simpler: his favorite food, cut up and saved for later.

He approves mightily of the chicken blend.

I also blend up a lot of fruits, and mix them into either his infant cereal or plain, whole-fat yogurt. Bananas or applesauce with blueberries or raspberries, stuff like that. They taste good enough to add to my own yogurt or oatmeal. Regarding the infant cereal (an organic, heavily fortified wheat/oat blend), I've got mixed feelings. His pediatrician recommended using it at "two or three of his meals" for the iron, while explaining that many infants (especially breastfed infants) start to have lower iron levels at this age. I personally don't think that grain cereals are a very desirable food at this age, since without the added vitamins, they don't have much going for them. I'd rather he be eating fruits and veggies; meat, fish, eggs; and a little dairy (I mean other than the mama-dairy, of which he still takes copiously.) Having oatmeal three times a day seems excessive, so I compromised and included it in one meal per day. Then the doctor called back with the results from his blood work* and his iron was perfectly satisfactory, and that was before he'd been having any kind of cereal or fortified foods so it seems he was getting plenty before. (I guess my diet is satisfactory, too.) By then I was seduced, though, because with this stuff you just add plain water and stir! So easy! But something he was eating was making him sort-of constipated. I say sort-of because it didn't seem to be causing him any discomfort, but he was pooping very hard golf balls every few days, which just didn't seem right. I nixed the yogurt, nothing. Nixed the cereal, it got a little better. Finally went on a 24-hour all-breastmilk fast, which got him pooping like a baby again, but left me exhausted. Geez but this kid can eat. Now we're going to slowly reintroduce the cereal to see if it creates rock-poop again.

*This office checks iron levels and for the presence of lead as part of their nine-month routine. Robert turned up positive for lead (!) but that's another post.

I'm still here.

2010-03-25T14:03:00.002-04:00

So hey! Hi! It's only been like three months since I last posted anything here. That's not a long time or anything, no. Apparently, writing in a blog is like working out: the longer you go without doing it, the harder it is to just get up and do it. I guess there are many reasons for my long absence, including but not limited to Robert's short nap times, my own insomnia, a bout of depression somewhere in February, and the beginning of gardening season. Not that any of those are real excuses, of course. But they add up. It's not like I don't spend plenty of time on the computer; I do. But it's all little chunks: read a blog, play a game, update Facebook. Nothing that requires any real time, thought or energy. Often when I'm laying down with Robert, I'll think of things that I'd like to write, start drafting in my head, but when he's finally asleep... I don't know, I just don't. And I'm sorry about it, mainly because I think I'll regret having let a big chunk of my baby's first year gone undocumented.

As always, his sleep is all over the map, but I think it's slowly, slowly starting to improve overall. His naps have sort of coalesced from many little sleeps into two long-ish sleeps, or at least into sandwich-style naps (i.e. he sleeps for twenty minutes and when he wakes, I nurse him or otherwise convince him to return to sleep, putting him down all over again.) We have an official bedtime routine now that goes dinner--bath--bed, hitting the bed part right around seven. Sometimes, he sleeps all evening and night, only waking to breastfeed. Other times, he bounces up at 8:30, wide awake. Or, worst of all, at 4:00am. But, as I said, it's ever-so-slowly getting better. I think the amount of people foods in his diet is helping, as is all the crawling. I've completely given up caffeinated coffee, which helped some, too. Plus maybe just getting older.

He's crawling like crazy, can get from room to room no problem, gets into everything. When he's on a mission, he crawls very fast and makes this funny "eh-eh-eh" sound to himself. It's quite amusing but I haven't been able to capture it on video yet. He pulls himself up to standing. He waves hello-goodbye, says 'mama' (or 'mamba', depending), is still toothless, but has had a lot more hair come in. He has made the predictable shift from social butterfly to shy mama's boy. At his nine-month doctor visit, he was declared the picture of health, as well as still enormous-- 85th percentile for weight but off the chart still for length. He is wearing size 18-month onesies. He nurses maybe six times a day still, as well as eating three people-food meals. His favorites are avocado, anything mixed with mango or apricot, and a chicken-carrot combination I made, but he'll tolerate pretty much anything. He likes egg yolk, but only from a fried egg, not hard boiled.

I have become a master at over-easy eggs, and as Don says, if you can do a good over-easy, you can do any kind of egg.

I am not making any promises about posting more, but I am going to try.

Angel Fire 2009

2009-12-29T14:37:00.005-05:00

Where we were:

What we did:

... a wonderful week.

How Engineers Wrap Presents

2009-12-14T11:28:00.000-05:00

Oh hey look! A blog!

2009-12-09T12:24:00.003-05:00

Yeah. So... um. It's always difficult to come back to something more or less abandoned but I shall try, regardless. My friend Becca is staying with us right now, and somehow having a person to do things with (like yard work, or baking*) really cuts down on computer usage. So does this current stage of babyhood, in which Robert both notices and intensely dislikes being left on his own for any amount of time. His mantra seems to be, 'hold me, play with me, feed me, dance with me, just don't put me down!' On the bright side, he is so much fun right now, what with the giggling, making faces, and overall responsiveness. His sense of object permanence is developing right on schedule, so that when Don leaves the room, Robert stares at the doorway for awhile; or if I remove a non-suitable toy from his hands (like the DVD remote), he cranes his head to see where it went. Further complicating matters is the fact that his average nap is about 45 minutes. If he sleeps an hour, I feel lucky; more than an hour and I get worried. At night, he is still up to nurse every 2-3 hours. We haven't exactly started him on solid foods yet, but have tried giving him little bits of a few things-- some sweet potato on Thanksgiving, some avocado, and banana. I think once he's fully able to sit up on his own, we'll get a high chair and begin the solid foods in earnest; that will probably happen by the time he and I get back from New Mexico after Christmas. To be totally honest, I'm kind of hoping that as solids begin to make up more of his diet, he'll start sleeping longer.

We had his six-month pediatrician visit at the end of November, and he is still absolutely perfect in every way, as well as still hovering at the very top of the growth charts for both length and weight-- 20 pounds some ounces, and 28.5 inches. So much for my confidence that, as a fully breast-fed baby, he would gradually stop being so big for his age! Nope. His vaccines have all been fine so far, bolstering my decision to space them out across more visits.

*What, you didn't know vegans can bake? They can. They make wonderful cookies, and cupcakes...**

** hint, hint.

Quick catch-up

2009-11-08T12:47:00.004-05:00

Parenthood does not create much time to blog, it seems. Lately, Robert sleeps very lightly, and not for very long at a time. He might nap for twenty minutes or half an hour, then be up again. Regular noises like the kitchen faucet running, my cell phone ringing, the vacuum cleaner, or even typing are enough to startle him awake again. Don and his mother have suggested that I keep it too quiet in general, that we need more background noise*. I think it's probably too late to really change that, though. I'm a quiet person by nature, and he's been experiencing that since he was in utero. Even if I have the radio on, it's generally NPR or classical. If I lay down and take a nap with him, he'll sleep for much longer. Since he's still up every few hours at night to nurse, I need the rest too. When he's awake, he doesn't like to be alone anymore, or to sit by himself. I used to sit him in his car seat, on a kitchen chair while I would make dinner or clean up the kitchen; he doesn't like that now. Now he craves movement, motion. Wants to be tossed around, bounced, jostled. He's on the verge of being able to crawl, and his inability to move on his own seem to frustrate him.

I feel more than a little frustrated, myself, by my inability to get anything done. Don says not to worry about it-- who cares? I'm home to be with the baby, not to keep house. But I do. We have a friend coming to stay in a few days, and my 'to-do before she gets here' list is shrinking dramatically: not because I'm finishing tasks but because I'm having to pare it down to what I can actually get done. I'm at the point right now where I'm pretty sure I can vacuum the guest room and change the sheets before Thursday... On the bright side, once she's here we'll be able to do all kinds of things just by virtue of having another pair of arms to hold him.

That said, we've had a few really great days lately. Don took a Monday off, and for some reason Robert decided to take a two-hour nap that afternoon. I was able to help with the yard work and rescue all the grass clipping and leaves in the front yard.** And on Halloween, Robert and I went apple-picking with some friends, and he was absolutely perfect; just fell sound asleep in the carrier for pretty much the whole time. Gee, baby, is that all it takes-- me carrying you up, around, and down a mountain-side for a few hours, in the fresh, cool apple-orchard air? I'll try to fit that into our daily routine somehow.

All in all, it's hard to do more than throw a photo up here. This short post has taken me all morning!

It's okay to eat the apples.

**************************************************

*Mother-in-law: when Don was a baby, I'd always have the radio or TV on, just for the noise!

Me (under breath): and it just did wonders for his attention span, huh?

Don: Hey, what are implying, that...wait, what are we talking about, again?

** We bag the back yard for the compost heap. The front yard, though, is up a hill and far away from said heaps, so it takes too long to bag and haul. Its clippings just gets mulched. But we have built raised beds that I'm filling lasagna-style for next spring, and I wanted that good stuff to fill the beds. Don would empty the bag into the wheelbarrow, I'd run it down to the backyard. I've also been stealing bags of leaves from all over our neighborhood. It's not really stealing, since they're on the curb for pickup already...

When it rains

2009-11-01T16:24:00.000-05:00

Announcement:

2009-10-30T17:37:00.002-04:00

The world's most wonderful, loveable, amazing baby is now five month old.

Granola Cost/Benefit Analysis

2009-10-27T19:51:00.002-04:00

I made this granola recipe today, with a few changes: left out the sunflower seeds (because trail mix is trail mix, and granola is granola!), replaced the wheat germ with ground flax seed, used half coconut oil, half butter for the specified "vegetable oil", left out the brown sugar. I was hoping that making it from scratch would prove cheaper than buying the boxed stuff. It isn't and it is, depending how you look at it.

Notes for next time: add cinnamon to the dry stuff, not the syrup. Use food processor to chop the nuts. Buy already-ground flax. Lining the sheet pans was overkill. Use something besides raisins-- dates, maybe. Think about getting everything set up and prepped, but not baking the granola until the evening when Don comes home; it was really difficult to keep an eye on it in the oven while taking care of the baby.

Overall, it turned out delicious, and it made a lot. I'm probably set for breakfast for a month. I added up the cost of everything as best I could, and compared it to the cost of boxed granola, it actually came out more expensive, bowl-for-bowl. This is disappointing, BUT. The problem with the comparison is that there isn't actually a comparable product on the market. Or, if there is, it's probably in the bulk-bins area of Whole Foods, and not in a box with a picture on it. For one thing, this recipe is really, extra nutty. Three cups of nuts total, a mix of pecans, walnuts, and almonds. Nuts are expensive, pricier than anything else in the cereal, but are really healthful. No prepackaged cereal that I looked at has as much nuttiness. Butter and coconut oil are more expensive (and again, a lot healthier and yummier) than, say, sunflower oil. Same thing with the maple syrup and honey: pricier than sugar, healthier than sugar. If there were a cereal for sale made with the ingredients I used, in the same proportions, it would probably cost the moon.

There's a real comfort in knowing exactly what's in what I eat, which is why I generally make oatmeal or eggs in the morning instead of cold cereal. Why, in the example cereal, is sugar the second ingredient? Second? Really? The proportions in the recipe I used are like this:

Oats-- 8 cups
Other grains/seeds (oat bran, flax)-- 3 cups
Nuts (pecans, almonds, walnuts)-- 3 cups
Fruit (raisins)-- 2 cups
Sugars (maple syrup, honey)-- 1 cup
Fats (butter, coconut oil)-- 1 cup
Flavorings (cinnamon, vanilla, salt)-- 2 1/2 tablespoons

Even so, it was plenty sweet, almost too sweet. I guess having so much fruit and nuts adds its own sweetness, too. As the MasterCard commercials would say, making your own cereal: $18.29 per batch. Knowing that there's no vegetable oil, no white sugar, and--God forbid-- no soy protein isolate: priceless. (I'm looking at you, Kashi.)

Stress-- or lack thereof

2009-10-20T14:29:00.002-04:00

(obligatory baby picture)

A little while ago, my dad asked me whether I found motherhood to be stressful, and if I was handling it OK, or something like that. It reinforces this theme that I've noticed again and again, in books, magazines etc; that adding a baby to the family creates major stress. I'm sure this is true in a lot of cases, maybe even most cases. But I haven't found it to be true in mine. Certainly, the baby itself makes a difference; Robert is a fairly easy-going, manageable baby. We've had a few bad days here and there, maybe even a bad week or two. And those first six weeks or so of breastfeeding were pure hell, no doubt about it. But if he were an intense, high-needs, colicky baby, I'd probably be writing a different post... assuming I'd have time to write at all. As it is, I have to say that I feel less stressed right now, than I have in years.

One overlooked factor in this equation has to be, what came before? What did life pre-baby look like? Maybe it's the couples living their ideal lives who-- poof!-- add a baby on top of it, that have their ceiling fall in. Their lovely relationship that had never been severely tested, suddenly is. Their happy, not-too-stressful lives, changed forever. But I am coming to motherhood from two years of infertility, four miscarriages, and a job that really stressed me out. In a way, I traded two very stressful things (my fertility/miscarriage saga and the job) for one, much-desired and much-less-stressful thing: Robert. Seems a good trade in my book. The major questions that used to keep me awake in the wee hours, like: Are we ever going to have a baby? Is this ever going to happen? What's wrong with me/us? How many miscarriages is too many? How many am I willing to go through before saying, 'enough, no more'?, are gone. Their offspring are smaller and quieter. I worry a bit about the next one, but having one successful pregnancy under my belt makes it so much easier. (I can do this. Look, we did it. It may not be easy, but there's a precedent now.) I used to know, without even trying to think about it, exactly where I was in my cycle. Four days until I ought to be ovulating. Three days. Nine days ago. Too early to take a test? If I was pregnant, I knew exactly how many weeks and days along I was, even as I knew that it didn't mean anything. Really, the first fourteen weeks of my pregnancy with Robert was probably the most stressful time of my life, as I could do nothing but wait helplessly as the days ticked along, waiting for the inevitable cramping and bleeding to start. If I start thinking too much about how I felt then, it still brings tears. Honestly, compared to that, how stressful is waking up to feed a baby, or pacing the house with a crying infant, or changing a poopy blow-out diaper? Not at all, that's how. It's not life-and-death.

Of course, I didn't experience all that alone, and Don and I have been tested hard. The guilt and self-blame, trying to comfort one another when so miserable ourselves, the endless doctors' appointments and rounds of tests... Not to say that we're iron-clad and that nothing can affect us now, but I would have a hard time envisioning that the daily stresses of parenthood could damage our relationship when the major trauma of losing our babies, again and again, didn't. To use the old cliche, it didn't kill us and so we're stronger.

Not working, after working in a job that didn't suit, is of course a smaller matter than having a baby after dealing with infertility. But in its own way, it's also a big relief. Those small things-- the sales goals not met, the endless meetings, the corporate double-speak, the coworkers one likes well enough in small doses but that drive one nuts with constant exposure-- they all add up. I hadn't liked my job in a long time, but didn't feel able to leave. It was dreading Monday morning, hating the alarm clock, never having enough time to do the things I wanted to do, always holding my tongue. A little baby is a whole lot less demanding than a corporate job, and I'm lucky as hell to be able (so far) to stay home with him. I get more sleep now, than I did then. If Robert keeps me up during the night (or even if he doesn't, but my old friend insomnia does), I can sleep late in the morning, or take a nap later. I eat better, too. Partly this is because I had fallen into the deadly cycle of I'm stressed, I deserve a Snickers bar. After that customer, I need another Starbucks. What a day-- we need to go out to dinner. I'm too tired to pack a lunch; I can buy one at work. With a convenience store across the hallway, a coffee shop next door, and the student cafeteria nearby, temptation was close at hand and I had the cash to indulge myself. Now that I think about it, probably some of the weight that I've lost since having Robert is simply the effect of not having multiple caramel macchiatos, candy bars, fast-food lunches, and restaurant dinners every week. I've not been making a special effort to cook healthy meals (working more on the look, isn't it nice to have a partner at home? aspect, which involves more butter) but pretty much any home-cooked lunch and dinner is going to be better than Pizza Hut for lunch or Chili's for dinner.

This is not to say that I am never stressed out, or that being a stay-at-home parent doesn't have its own challenges; rather that, given where I was before, I personally am experiencing much less stress now.

Good grief, 4.5 months old already!

2009-10-19T10:58:00.004-04:00

Amazing: no matter how much I try to slow down time, Robert keeps getting older at an astonishing rate. Despite my best efforts, he is already four and a half months old. Not a newborn anymore... not even still in the "fourth trimester". This rate of change is impossible to adapt to. As soon as I think I have "it" down, it changes. For example, Robert used to be able to sleep pretty much anywhere, any time. I didn't have to worry about whether he got enough naps because he could nap in the stroller, in the car seat, in the Mei Tei. He also slept fairly soundly, once he got to a certain point. Now, for the most part, he sleeps much more lightly and it's much harder for him to fall asleep. I didn't realize how much of what I did was dependent on that sound sleep until it changed! Our routine used to be that we'd put him down to sleep in the middle of our big bed, then (usually) move him to his bassinet when we went to bed. I used to trim his fingernails during his naps, and do the dishes. For the last week, though, he's spent every night in the bed, his nails are terribly long and scratchy, and the kitchen is a wreck.

People keep asking me "how he's sleeping", and I don't know how to answer that. He usually goes to bed around 7-8pm, and stays in bed until 8-9 in the morning. During that time, he gets up to nurse three or four times. So, he's certainly not "sleeping through the night", but it's not very disruptive, either; it's not as though I have to haul myself to the kitchen and make up a bottle four times a night. If he's in bed with me, I don't have to get up at all.

Robert learns something new practically every day. Actually, it probably is every day; most likely some of the things he's learning aren't obvious to us. He's so interested in everything around him, even stuff that seems trivial to us, like the red numbers on the alarm clock. Nursing during the day is becoming difficult as well, because he wants to stop every thirty seconds and look around. For one thing, he doesn't really "unlatch" to do this-- he stretches me to the breaking point instead and suddenly 'pops' off, which is painful. Also, this is impeding my fledging efforts to feed him outside of the house more often (to facilitate our being out and about), since it leaves me rather suddenly exposed. More importantly, though, his distractedness is keeping him from eating enough at any one time, so he's hungry again very quickly. I think I'm nursing him more often during the day now, than I was when he was a newborn.

The most obvious new things right now are his interest in his hands, and the new squeak. He's transitioned from batting impotently at interesting objects, to actually reaching for and grabbing at them. He can hold his rattle, bring it to his mouth, and only occasionally smacks himself in the head with it. He can grab our faces, to scratch us with those sharp little fingernails. He reaches for the cat and dog. The squeak is basically awful. He's replaced all of his previous noises with the new one he's discovered, which falls somewhere between 'bats leaving the cave' and 'nails on chalkboard'. Sometimes it's a happy squeak, sometimes demanding or fretful. Don and I are hoping that it's a short phase.

For the record: at his four-month doctor visit, Robert weighed 18 pounds and was 27 inches long, which puts him in the 95 percentile for weight, and "officially off the chart" for length, according to his pediatrician. She also declared him the picture of health, and was very impressed with him overall. I like her. At four and a half months post-partum, I've lost all of the 50 pounds that I gained during his pregnancy, plus an extra few. Being the sole source of nutrition for a baby this size is a better fat-burner than any workout DVD: most breastfed babies don't get to this weight until they're closer to 6-8 months old, at which point solid foods would most likely be a part of their diet. I am, however, expecting him to slow down pretty soon, based on this quote from Kellymom:

Healthy breastfed infants tend to grow more rapidly than formula-fed infants in the first 2-3 months of life and less rapidly from 3 to 12 months.

For comparison, a picture of Robert at four months, and a very early one taken on the same pillow:

Grandma's Visit

2009-10-05T12:49:00.003-04:00

I know they're all blurry. I need to learn to better use my camera. But the scenes were cute, even though the documentation sucks.

Aaaaack!

2009-09-13T15:42:00.006-04:00

Mother-in-law coming here less than two weeks' notice must clean house. (Breathe. Breathe.) Also, must think of things to do besides sitting around staring at baby, running errands, and similar. Nothing strenuous. Must unearth and display various gifts from same. This blog will probably suffer in between now and then, for obvious reasons, as one cannot dust and write simultaneously, or take boxes of stuff to Goodwill and post photos. Goodbye, sweet computer. I will miss you for awhile.

Here's some pictures, in the meantime.

Sometimes, when the baby is napping, I try to spend quality time with the dog and tell her I still love her. I don't think she buys it though. And yes, I seem to take all photos lately on the same unmade bed.

Random Observations

2009-09-08T15:51:00.003-04:00

On the bottom of my sugar bowl is a sticker that says, "dishwasher safe, microwave safe". Since I have neither appliance, it is of no matter to me, but I do want to know WHO is microwaving their sugar bowl, and why. Is one supposed to remove the sugar first?

Looking at my stove, I realized that it would make much more sense for the pot to call the kettle "stainless", since they're both steel. I don't have a black pot. I don't have a black kettle. All I have is one black cast-iron frying pan, and it doesn't communicate much with the rest of the cookware.

Because Don can still eat only soft, mushy things, we've been on a pretty weird diet lately. Pea soup. Mashed potatoes, as entre. Canned soup. Pudding. Pea soup again. The invalid diet is making him grumpy; he craves steak or a pork chop. I'm rounding mine out with salads and such, but I can't wait until chicken is back on the menu. Tonight, I'm baking some winter squash.

Eating My Cake

2009-09-05T17:26:00.002-04:00

When Robert was younger, it was easy for me to read while he slept or dozed. At three months, he's a bit more awake and interactive, and it's harder to justify ignoring him to read a book. So, I've been reading whatever I'm reading, out loud to him. He seems to enjoy it: he seems to like just watching my face make words. It's good for me, too; reading aloud forces me to slow down a little and pay attention to words rather than paragraphs. So far we've read quite a bit of the Earth's Children series (skipping the smutty parts), and a lot of Dorothy Parker, although I can only read her in small doses without getting depressed. I know that in not too much time, we'll be reading children's books, Sandra Boynton, Dr. Seuss. I'm making time with adult literature while I still can...

Tooth

2009-09-03T11:44:00.002-04:00

For three weeks, he thought it was a sinus infection. Don gets those fairly frequently, and deals with them in the time-tested way: wait it out and maybe it will just go away on its own.

For the last two weeks or so, I've been telling him-- gently, at first, then less gently-- that his breath was bad, that something was wrong with his mouth, and that he might need to see a dentist. It was that sickly sort of halitosis that lingers even after brushing.

For about the last week, he noticed what felt like an earache, but contributed it to the sinus issue.

Tuesday evening, he came home with his face all puffy, and said that it seemed to be a tooth, after all. I agreed and called him Ed for the rest of the night, because with his chubby cheek he looked a bit like Ed Norton. He decided that he would try to get to a dentist Friday morning and asked me to find one for him the next morning. Preferably one of those that specialize in anesthesiology* and are willing to put patients under for any and all procedures. See, Don, who is afraid of basically nothing, has a fear of the dentist. Although details are scarce, this seems to stem back to his service days and the removal of his wisdom teeth by an unkind army dentist. I think it's safe to say that he hasn't been to a dentist since, and that was twenty years ago.

Yesterday, Robert, Alice and I took our usual morning walk and when we returned, I started my search for a dentist for Don. I had only gotten as far as bringing up the Google page when his truck turned into the drive: he had been sent home from work with instructions to go to the doctor that day. His cheek had morphed from cutely chubby to scarily swollen, and the pain had become unbearable**. I found a dental surgery place, loaded the baby into the car, and we spent the rest of the morning driving and waiting, breastfeeding and waiting, walking about the waiting room, and waiting, while they did who-knows-what to Don's mouth.

Needless to say, after being neglected for so long, the tooth was not salvageable and had to be 'extracted'. There is also quite a bit of other work that needs to be done ASAP in order to keep this from happening again soon. So let this be a lesson to you procrastinators and those fearful of various doctors and dentists. Go. Just go. Otherwise, you will eventually be forced to go while in tremendous pain, and it will be much worse.

Don insisted that I drop him back off at work after the procedure, instead of taking him home. I'm not sure if this was sheer stupidity, badass-ness, or some combination. I reminded him not to lift anything heavy, climb ladders, or operate machinery, and to call me when he was ready to come home. He's actually in a very good mood... I'm not sure if this is because he finally did what he'd been dreading and got through it, or because for the first time in almost a month he didn't have a bad headache, toothache, or earache, or simply because of the hydrocodone he's on.

*****************************************************

*I spelled that right on the first try. Am so proud.
**Don bears pain incredibly well, so that is saying something. Unbearable for him means "anyone else would have passed out by now".

She's Lightning McQueen, I'm 'Mater

2009-08-29T18:15:00.002-04:00

Last night I tried to make one of Rachel Ray's "30 minute meals" for dinner. The pasta was yummy (yum-o?), but the timing... 30 minutes MY ASS. I guess cooking is like getting your tires changed. Technically, your tires could be replaced in like 30 seconds if you were a race-car driver with your own pit crew. But most of us have to go to Sears and wait at least an hour. Rachel Ray is the race-car driver. Her Food Network set kitchen is the pit crew. I'm the poor shmuck wandering around the mall, waiting for Sears to call me and tell me my car is ready. I mean, in my kitchen it takes 20 minutes just to bring enough water to a boil to cook a pound of pasta, not to mention the 10 minutes to boil the noodles themselves. That's half an hour right there, not including mixing it into the sauce, pouring the whole shebang into a casserole dish, topping it with the Special Crunchy Topping, and putting it into the oven for awhile. Assuming that you have everything together enough to get the sauce and the topping done while the pasta is cooking, it's still more like a 45-minute meal.

I think her water must be pre-heated, because she turns on the stove and-- BAM!-- water is boiling just like that. She chops her veggies, but the onions and garlic are already peeled, everything is washed, and somehow she magically takes exactly the amount of everything she needs from the fridge-- no searching for a Tupperware to house the leftover frozen spinach or the other half of the chopped onion. Little things, but sure makes a difference when you're trying to replicate her results.

I don't know whether to be annoyed at her efficiency, or to try to turn my kitchen into my own speedy pit crew...

On a similar note, I made a banana-cream pie from scratch, that I'm very proud of. I haven't made a pudding not out of a box since maybe high school. The eggs came from our own back-yard flock-- all three of the non-lame girls are laying now. The yolks were bright orange and made the filling the same color as the additive-filled Jello stuff. Kind of makes me think that if those folks used higher-quality eggs, they wouldn't need to add yellow food coloring to their vanilla pudding. Anyway, it was easy, and delicious. If I could find a way to nix the Nilla wafers and their evil ingredients, I'd be really happy, but apparently it just isn't a banana-cream pie without either a wafer or a graham-cracker crust...

I don't even own an apron

2009-08-28T10:19:00.002-04:00

It's official: I no longer have a job. I quit the bank last week, turned in my keys and alarms. I am now, for lack of a better description, a stay-at-home mom. Really, you'd think the house would be cleaner. A few people have expressed interest in how we can afford to make this decision, but to be honest, with what I was making and the cost of daycare, it wouldn't put us that much ahead if I kept working. (It would be different if I were in a job that I loved, that spoke to me or fulfilled me in some way-- in that case, it would be worth it to go back to work even if we just broke even with it. But that is not the case.) The real bank-breaking decision is not my staying home, it was to have a baby in the first place. Since having a baby was non-negotiable, we'll make this work out, somehow.

In other news, Robert is three months old as of yesterday. Three months feels significant to me, not least because it marks three successful months of breastfeeding. Successful, as in, we're still doing it. Robert has had nothing but the boob-juice (as Don and I so elegantly call it) since coming home from the hospital, and it seems to be working OK as far as keeping him alive and growing, as he's still resting comfortably on the highest line on the growth charts. I've grown a prize pumpkin, or perhaps a lumberjack. Breastfeeding is better than it was, almost to the point of being good. The last bout of thrush seems to have cleared up, although I'm still doing the vinegar rinses, pro-biotics, and garlic supplements to keep it that way. We don't have a feeding pattern, the way we did earlier when he would nurse every two-three hours. Now, sometimes he goes five or six hours between feeds, only to make up for it later by nursing every hour for awhile. It's unpredictable. Word has it, though, that everything regarding breastfeeding is easier after three months. Here's hoping! At the very least, I hope it will never again be as awful as those first six weeks or so.

(I want to sell him to Gerber or Pampers, but Don won't let me.)

Farmers' Market

2009-08-24T13:13:00.003-04:00

Tying Robert into the Mei Tei carrier, in the parking garage. I wish this picture were clearer (and not taken into the light) so that the pretty pattern on the Mei Tei showed up better.

This is a crepe stand across the street from the market. You'd basically never know it was there unless you knew it was there, if you know what I mean. Or, if you just happened to see a long line of people waiting for crepes, and walked over to investigate.

I don't think the French look like this when they eat crepes... It's hard to imagine an elegant Parisian doing this. I'm not including the photos Don took of my face all covered in the Nutella filling.

Sometimes, he doesn't LIKE being in the carrier.

Most of the time, though, he's fine with it. His hair makes a funny pattern on the back of his head-- it's all in the middle! Note the mandatory Farmers' Market iced mocha.

Contrary to what it looks like, I am checking out the tomatoes in this picture, not the ass of the girl next to me. Honestly, they have a dozen different tomatoes!

I think next time, I'll make Don wear Robert so that I can take pictures, instead. Not that I'm a great photographer (far from it), but he takes point-and-click entirely literally.

Post-bath cuteness

2009-08-23T15:46:00.001-04:00

Loving Hands

2009-08-18T15:04:00.005-04:00

Most kids have some kind of 'lovey' object, a stuffed toy or a blanket that they won't sleep without. My sister, brother and I each did, certainly. So far, Robert seems to feel that way about my left hand. When he's fussy and over-tired, this is how he finally settles down:

Part of me looks forward to the inevitable transfer to some special toy. Most of me, though, does not. It's such a short period of time when we are everything they need and want...

The Hospital Experience, Part II

2009-08-17T10:12:00.002-04:00

The things I didn't care for regarding the hospital can be divided into two categories: the systemic and the organizational. By systemic, I mean those things that are done because... that's how they are done;that, to get around them, one would have to sign an "against medical advice" waiver. By organizational, I just mean those times when it seemed like the left hand didn't know what the right hand was doing.

To be admitted to Labor and Delivery, one should be at least three centimeters dilated, or with water already broken. This makes sense in theory, since it keeps women from coming in too soon. My issue was that I had a scheduled doctors' appointment the morning I went into labor. My contractions started about 5:00am, and I was at the OB's office by 11. At first they freaked out a bit, because I happened to have a contraction right as the nurse was taking my blood pressure, so my BP readings, which had always been in the low-normal range, were way off. The doctor rushed in and started rapid-firing all of the Pre-Eclampsia questions: headache/ blurred vision/ vomiting/ etc?-- but I assured him I was fine, had merely had a contraction right at that moment. He re-checked it and it was back to my usual 110/68. I asked for a cervical check, to see if this was "real labor" (as I mentioned previously, I never did lose my mucus plug and my water never broke), and my doctor determined that I was three centimeters dilated, with the baby totally posterior. He asked about the timing of my contractions, which at that time were all over the place, and said that once they became regular, 3-4 minutes apart, I should call back in. Well, they became regular during the five-minute drive back home. I timed them: every three minutes. I hung out at home for maybe an hour, called Don home, called the doctors' office. They made me come back to the office for another "check" before sending me to the hospital. I pointed out that I'd been there not two hours ago, and had already been declared 3 cm, but apparently there was nothing in their protocol that allowed for such inconsistencies in the routine. So, even though I'd been checked at 11:00 by The Bad, I had to go back at 1:00 to be checked by The Good, since he was the one who'd be delivering me, and THEN drive from there to the hospital. (Which, OK, is basically across the street, but still. In the three minutes it took to find a parking space, I had two contractions in which the baby turned completely around*, and it hurt like hell.)

Robert's extra time in the Special Care nursery was pure CYA on the hospital's part. They held him until they were absolutely sure that he didn't have an infection of some sort, particularly Group B Strep. From what I understand, the antibiotics I was on during labor, while drastically reducing the odds that he would contract the strep, also made it very difficult to diagnose an infection should he get it anyway. The doctors never said this explicitly, since it would make the antibiotics look questionable, but its what I pieced together from their explanations. Since Robert was breathing very fast and had a somewhat elevated temperature, the doctors weren't taking any chances. I understand why they do that, but it was pretty obvious after his first day in the nursery that Robert was perfectly healthy-- his breathing had dropped to mostly normal, no fever or anything-- and his being there wreaked havoc on my post-partum emotional state and on our breastfeeding relationship.

The organizational problems were things like nobody being able to come up with a breast pump for me during the time that Robert was not able to eat (breathing so fast that it was an aspiration risk; IV only); a nurse forgetting to bring me my (desperately needed) Ibuprofen; my previously-described hospital-discharge fiasco; and the three-hour bath. A few hours after the birth, as I was rolling from the delivery room to maternity, my nurse offered to take Robert to the nursery for a bath. I agreed, mostly because his hair was still caked with dried blood. I didn't see him again for three hours. If I'd known that ahead of time, I would have kept his grotty little head with me, instead. Apparently, newborns have to be 'warmed up' under heat lamps to a certain temperature before the nurses can strip them down and bathe them, then re-warmed before being returned to their mothers. I ended up calling for him repeatedly on the little intercom: "Yes, this is Room ___, the nurses took my baby for a bath? But that was ninety minutes ago? Can you tell them to bring him back?" Had I been able, I would have simply marched down to the nursery and retrieved him, or hung out there while he was bathed and warmed, but I was still totally bed-bound at that point.**

So, there it is: the less-than-pleasant aspects of giving birth in the hospital. The whole experience is still tilted in their favor, all things considered.

*************************************************
*I could tell partly because up until then, all of the contraction pain had been in my back; these two were all over the place, and from then on the pain was much more "in front". Also, the next time I was checked at the hospital, the baby was no longer posterior.

**Three hours later, with Robert safely at my side, I got out of bed and went to the bathroom all by myself. This is something I never thought I'd have to be proud of, but it took heroic effort and planning.

The Hospital Experience

2009-08-13T10:09:00.004-04:00

Yes, I'd say that, overall, I am happy with the care that Robert and I received at the hospital. I say this as somebody that originally wanted a midwife-attended homebirth, one fairly suspicious of the whole hospital methodology; a lot of publications imply (or say right out) that in order to have a 'natural' birth in a hospital setting, you have to fight hard for it. I did not find that to be true. There were a few things that were irksome, but they seemed mostly a matter of organization. So, the things that were good, in no particular order:

--The nurses are very pro-movement during labor; there's no tendency to try to keep the laboring woman on the bed. "Do whatever helps" seems to be their mantra. My nurse suggested walking around, squatting on a birth ball (they did seem rather inordinately proud of their birth balls, I wonder if they're new or something), kneeling, and going to hands and knees near the end, when I was almost fully dilated but still had a "lip" of cervix in the way.

--The jacuzzi tub. This is probably what made the difference between being able to get through the first stage of labor with no painkillers, and needing an epidural. I spent more than four straight hours in that tub. (And, they never run out of hot water...) The nurse came by periodically to check on me and on the baby (with a hand-held Doppler), but other than that just left me alone, which was what I needed. If I have my next baby at that hospital, it will be because of the tubs more than anything, probably.

--I was asked on arrival whether I thought I'd be wanting an epidural, and I said no. Nobody ever offered me one again. My nurse explained afterwards that she knew that I knew that I only had to ask should I change my mind, so why offer? There was simply no mention of painkillers until after Robert was born, when I needed some for the stitching.

--Nobody ever suggested speeding up the labor. This seems to be the biggest complaint against hospital procedure, that they push the Pitocin too much. I don't know if it's because I was progressing nicely every time we checked, or because my water hadn't broken, or if my timing was just particularly good: I arrived shortly before a mid-afternoon shift change, and delivered well before that shift was over. Robert was born somewhere around 8:00pm, so it could just be that we were being convenient. Or maybe this hospital just doesn't have a policy of pitting patients that haven't truly stalled. All I know is that I came in expecting to have to defend myself against the Evil Pit, and it never came up.

--Every procedure done prior to the birth was framed as an option, not a requirement. The nurse never said, "We're going to check your dilation now", it was always, "If you like, we can check to see how you're doing, but it's up to you". Once I got to transition, she went over with me what I wanted to happen immediately post-birth: place the baby on my belly, delay cord-clamping, all that. (Did I mention that my carefully crafted Birth Plan was still in the car, with the rest of The Bag?) Of course it all went out the window with the shoulder dystocia-- the cord was cut immediately and Robert rushed away-- but from talking with other women who've delivered at this hospital, I don't doubt that without that circumstance, it would have happened as discussed. I do like that they never took the baby from the room or out of my sight, even though he couldn't be with me immediately.

--My obstetrician was fine. The practice that I use has three OBs, which I think of as The Great, The Good, and The Bad; he is The Good. I do think that he was getting a bit frustrated or annoyed with me towards the end, since I basically screamed non-stop for the better part of an hour while trying to avoid the pain (and therefore not progressing)-- I remember thinking at one point, "who cares, dude, this is MY party"-- but Don said that he seemed chagrined once he saw what I had been dealing with. I have to take his word for it, I neither noticed nor cared. The doc did what he was there to do, left the touchy-feely part to the nurse, and did a meticulous job sewing me together again.

--The way the dystocia was handled. Had I not already known what it means for shoulders to get stuck (and what it can lead to), I might not have even noticed what was happening; they were so calm, focused, organized, and fast. Anti-drama. I can easily see how somebody in my situation could have missed it entirely, up until the rest of the baby was born and the pediatric team took over.

--The nursery nurses were amazing; they deserve their own post, or some brownies or something. Actually, all of the nurses-- labor & delivery, post-partum, and baby nurses-- were fantastic; they're kind of a local legend here. The baby nurses really seemed to understand just how special MY baby was*. Since Robert spent an extra two days in the hospital as well as the last day of my stay, I think I saw more of the nurses than one usually would, and they were so nice to me.

--Every nurse except one was able to help me with the breastfeeding, in addition to the hospital's lactation consultants that came by periodically. This was good since it did not seem to come naturally to either of us. I didn't get any bad advice from them, nor were any of them pushy or invasive, which I understand to be the main complaint against hospital nurses and LCs in regards to breastfeeding.

*************************************************************
*I also think that they liked him because he was an anomaly; every other baby in the Special Care Nursery was premature-- tiny, red, and in need of a lot of care-- while he was this big, chubby, mellow guy that was clearly healthy and merely needed observation. He was literally twice the size of any of the other babies there, happily basking under his heat lamp, equally OK with breastfeeding or taking a bottle. They kept playing with his hair, styling it into a little baby-Hawk...

I'll outline what I didn't like about being in a hospital next time...

Birth Story, from the moment of crowning.

2009-08-12T13:38:00.004-04:00

I really want to hear your birth story. Shoulders rarely truly get stuck. --
ayla

I was answering in the comments, but it got ridiculously long. I still don't seem to be up for writing the whole birth story, but I can jump to this part:

I'd been pushing for about half an hour, maybe forty minutes. The nurse had positioned something called a squat bar over the bed and tied a sheet to it, so that I could pull on the sheet in a way that repositioned me a bit. It really seemed to be helping to bring the baby down, which had been the obstacle so far. She was very excited, and told me she could see "lots of hair"* and that I was almost there. I couldn't tell her that at this point, the baby felt like an afterthought and I just wanted the pain to be over. I got to the point of the famous 'ring of fire' and was actually, literally afraid that I was getting ripped in half. (The nurse told me later that it was at the moment of crowning that she realized Robert was a larger-than-average baby.) Somebody-- the nurse? Don? the doctor?-- exclaimed that the head was out! I remember wondering, why the pain hadn't lessened at all yet. Then my doctor said, "shoulders stuck". Suddenly, everything seemed to stand still and speed up, at the same time. My focus snapped back from myself to the baby. The doctor or nurse must have hit an emergency button, because a team of medical personnel rushed into the room. The room felt very quiet, and very focused. The doctor asked me to stop pushing for a minute-- he repositioned my legs slightly-- then told me to push as hard as possible-- simultaneously, the nurse sort of pushed on my abdomen from the outside-- it was this kind of rolling motion-- while the doctor reached inside me to reposition the baby (felt about as pleasant as it sounds, but I wasn't caring)-- then the whole baby rushed out. He was covered in blood (mine, but for some reason I thought it was his) and they rested him on my stomach for an instant, just long enough for me to try to grab at him-- my hands were all bloody for some time afterwards. The nurse exclaimed that he was huge, I asked "so he's a boy, then?", she said that she actually couldn't see and asked the doctor, who confirmed, a boy. Just as quickly, before I could do more than touch him, the baby nurses and pediatrician hurried him to the back of the room and started checking him over.

The whole time elapsed between Robert's head emerging and the rest of him being born was easily less than a minute, and yet I can remember each fraction of that minute as though it were an hour, like a car crash. It was probably less than another minute later, that the baby team on the other side of the room confirmed that he was just fine, no nerve damage or anything else. Robert was bawling by this point, and I was too.

Everything after that point was clean-up. The nurse added some Pitocin to my IV (I was on intravenous antibiotics for Group B strep); I delivered the placenta; the doctor called for the materials he'd need to start the stitches. He informed me that I'd suffered third-degree lacerations and that it would take him some time to get me "put back together". Gave me two shots of a local anaesthetic since I hadn't had an epidural and started sewing, but for some reason when he got to a certain point I could feel it. I was still screaming and crying, partly because I was still in tremendous pain, partly just from being totally overwhelmed. I could hear Robert crying from his end of the room (they never took him out of the delivery room, everything was right there) and was irrationally worried that they were going to do something to him that I hadn't authorized (I don't know what-- a quick circumcision, maybe, or the Hep B shot?-- but I was not exactly rational at this moment.) I kept asking Don to go over to that side of the room and be with Robert, but he wouldn't leave my side, said that the baby was in good hands. At this point, I got the shakes and realized that I was freezing-- my hospital gown, pillows, everything was drenched in sweat, but I hadn't noticed; thankfully, the nurse did. She tried to change my gown and pillows without moving me too much, since the doctor was still parked at the other end of the bed with the needle. The baby team finished up with Robert, bundled him up in a blanket, and handed him to Don. Don brought him over to the bed, but there was no way I could hold him, I was shaking like mad. The nurse tentatively offered me a general painkiller that could go in my IV-- something morphine-like-- that was very fast-acting, would warm me up, and leave my system just as quickly. I accepted, explaining that the baby was out and it was only him that I didn't want drugged. I'd take whatever she had! Almost as soon as she added the opiate to my IV, I could feel it take effect; it was as though the room had suddenly gotten much warmer, as though I were under a warm blanket. I could still feel the very weird sensation of the surgical thread being pulled through the stitches, but not any pain. I relaxed, stopped shaking, stopped crying. I noticed Don in a chair holding the baby; they seemed to be in deep conversation.

Finally, after about forty minutes, my doctor finished sewing. He put the end of the bed back on so that I could stretch out, and Don brought the baby to me. The nurse asked if I wanted to try to put him to the breast, since he was awake, and we tentatively tried nursing for the first time. Somewhere during that time, the doctor shook my hand and Don's, and left. The nurse went to try to find me some real food, since the cafeteria had closed by then. She brought back a salad, talked about the labor and birth with me a little bit (post-game analysis, you know); mopped up some of the blood on the floor, brought the placenta over for me to see, walked me to the bathroom. After all this, she said that we could try moving from the delivery room to the room I'd be staying in until we left.

Shoulder dystocia occurs in 0.6 to 1.4 percent of births of babies between 5 pounds 8 ounces and 8 pounds 13 ounces. The occurrence jumps to between 5% to 9% of babies in the 8 lb 13 oz-- 9 lb 14 oz range**. Robert was 10 pounds. While his head circumference was in the normal range at 14", his chest circumference (14.5") was both larger than average, and somewhat unusual in that it was bigger than his head. I didn't have any of the risk factors for shoulder dystocia (gestational diabetes, maternal short stature, past-due pregnancy), nor any of the labor risk factors, like a forceps delivery, but Robert's size alone made us susceptible.

His size was also a big surprise, to everybody. My obstetricians had estimated a birth weight of about eight and a half pounds at our last ultrasound, three weeks before the event. I had no trouble believing it. There is no history of big babies in our families. Looking back, I don't know whether or not I would have wanted to know ahead of time, that he was going to be that big. It may have affected my belief in whether or not I could do this natural-no-drugs delivery; it may have affected my doctor's treatment of the birth. I suppose it could be argued that the doctor would have been better prepared for dystocia had he suspected a big baby, but I don't see how the process could have been any smoother: they worked like a machine as it was, with no notice at all. I think it was for the best that we all went into the birth expecting an eight-pounder, and getting the other two pounds as a bonus, so to speak.

Robert only ever lost 8 ounces of his birth weight, and had already started gaining it back by the time he was discharged from the hospital. (The pediatrician looks from the scale to me and says, "Well, I guess I don't need to ask you if your milk has come in yet!") At 11 weeks, he is still at the very top of the growth charts for both weight and length, so it doesn't seem to be a fluke so far; he is just a big dude.

*This is Robert at two days, so she wasn't kidding!

** I read somewhere that the average head circumference of ten-pound babies is not any larger than the average head circumference of eight-pound babies; the extra weight is all in the body. This is probably why the potential for problems during delivery of the chest and shoulders increases with larger babies.

Placentas and Mucus Plugs

2009-08-11T10:04:00.004-04:00

Supposedly, there are several ways to know for sure that labor has started and the baby is finally on the way. I guess they're just a loose guideline, though, because none of them happened to me before Robert's birth. The obvious one is The Water Breaking, that's the event in every movie and sitcom featuring a birth. It's always shown as the very first sign, even before a contraction, although that's hardly the way it really happens for most women. Losing the mucus plug is the other Big Sign of Impending Birth, although that one is rarely mentioned in media, probably because it sounds so gross. Well, my water never broke, and I never lost my mucus plug; I just had contractions. That was my only indication that the baby was on his or her way. When I was about eight centimeters dilated, the doctor offered to break the amniotic sac for me, to 'speed things up a bit'. Don says that the doctor asked me several times about the 'plug', although I don't remember this. (I think there's probably a lot that I don't remember about the birth, to be honest.) He says that they asked me a few times, I kept telling them that it never came out, and then (apparently) they found it... I still don't know why they needed to know.

After the birth, once Robert had been thoroughly examined and I'd been stitched up and we were finally back together again, the nurse offered to show me my placenta. Generally, I despise trying to divide populations into neat groups, but in this case I think it's safe to say that people can be deposited into one of two camps: those that do not want to look at or even think about the placenta-- throw it into the medical waste bin and be done with it-- and those that are curious and want to see it. (Then there are those that want to take it home and eat it, but that's a whole 'nother category, I guess.) I definitely fall into the wants-to-see group. I mean, I grew this thing; it was the bridge between me and my baby for the last six months. To think that women grow this entire organ, in such a short time period, and it's disposable. It amazes me. For a long time, I seriously doubted my ability to grow a healthy placenta. One of the pregnancies that I lost (August 2007, AKA "the one with a heartbeat") went wrong right about the time when the placenta should have started taking over, and that was after we'd seen an embryo with a beating heart. The odds of miscarrying in those circumstances are very low, so I suspected a bad placenta or cord. This is pure supposition on my part, not based on anything the doctors told me, so it could all be in my head. But all through my pregnancy with Robert, I worried about our placenta and cord. The ultrasound techs probably thought I was a bit odd, because at each ultrasound, after determining that the baby was developing perfectly, I'd ask about the placenta and the umbilical. I'd ask them to show me where they were, confirm that they were perfect, too. Naturally, I wanted to see it afterwards.

It was interesting, larger than I would have expected, but then Robert himself was larger than expected. What really took me by surprise, though, was the amniotic sac, the so-called "bag of waters" that breaks-- or doesn't-- during labor. It was so much stronger and thicker than I expected. I guess I was expecting plastic wrap, and it was more like a zip-top freezer bag. The nurse showed it to us, actually lifted the whole placenta (which seemed to weigh a couple of pounds) by the sac, it was that strong. I think that if the obstetrician hadn't sliced it, the sac wouldn't have broken until the moment of birth (or, in our case, several long, terrifying minutes of birth), and that if we hadn't had the additional complication of the baby's shoulders getting stuck, he might have been born in it.

Can't Deny Him

2009-08-05T11:22:00.003-04:00

Robert bears a great resemblance to Don. It's in the shape of his face, his eyes, his fair coloring, even at times in his expressions. Don says, poor kid. I say, rubbish. After all, why would I reproduce with someone, if I didn't want to see their genes represented? Naturally, everybody that sees Robert and knows Don, feels the need to comment on the similarity, which is fine. What I don't get-- what really bothers me-- is this: "Well, Don, there's no denying this baby!" and its many variants. What the hell?

First of all, how is my baby's parentage up for discussion, in any way, shape, or form? Is it my faithfulness that you're questioning, or Don's virility? Do you routinely speculate along these lines about babies who are born into happy, monogamous marriages? It just boggles my mind that this is considered an appropriate comment for casual conversation. Second, what if Robert didn't happen to be Don's doppelganger? What if he looked nothing like Don; if he looked, for example, more like me? Does that mean that Don could deny him? Can men look at their new babies and say, "Sorry, he doesn't resemble me closely enough, therefore I do not accept him as my own?" I hardly think so, especially in this day of paternity tests and child support. It's like there's this implication that men have the option of denying their children's existence.

Lastly, for all of those who can only see Don in Robert, check out this picture of my brother as a little boy:

Clearly, some of my family's genes are being expressed, as well, and I strongly suspect they'll get more obvious as Robert gets older...

Not a good morning so far.

2009-08-04T12:22:00.005-04:00

Apparently, the pediatrician can only treat Robert, not me. This is news to me, since they did treat us both the last time. I did not receive a call back from them, and by the time I called again and got through to somebody, it was too late to call my OB's office (they close a lot earlier than the pediatrician). So now, I'm waiting for a call from a doctor's office, AGAIN, having left a message requesting the prescription. It's so much like yesterday, it may as well be the same day. My nipples hurt. Robert's mouth is a disgusting mess, and he's off his usual sunny form. I can't start him on his prescription until I get mine, since they should be done concurrently.

Last night, Robert would not sleep. Usually, he falls right back to sleep after (or during) a feeding. Not last night. He wasn't crying, really, just fussing: whimpering, grunting, kicking and waving. Just enough to keep me from sleeping, either. Not nearly enough to keep Don up, of course. Because of that, I stayed in bed longer than I meant to this morning. Having no air conditioning in my car to speak of, if I want to get out of the house at all during the day, I have to go early, before the car heats up too much. (It's not so much the outside temperatures, which I can handle pretty well as a born-and-bred Texan, but the added green-house effect of the car itself. I worry for the baby.) We had to skip our daily walk (sorry, Alice) and trip to our favorite coffee house. I decided on a route that would take us to Shenandoah Joe's instead (another great coffee place), then Whole Foods, then Harris Teeter. (I know it's fussy to use two different grocery stores, but that's how it is. I like getting produce, fish, and meats from WF; paper goods, pet food, and stuff like that from the other.) The problem with Joe's is that their parking lot is very small, and there is no other place to park. We drive there, find no place to leave the car, so I have to go on. Decide to hit up Starbucks instead, as it's quite close to Whole Foods. Finally reach Starbucks, park the car, and... realize that I left my purse (wallet, money, drivers' license, everything) at home. Swear copiously. Turn around and head for home. Have I mentioned that it's like 90 degrees out? Because it is.

Drive all the way back home, run inside, grab stupid purse. Since we're starting from scratch, now, decide to try Joe's again. This time, there's a parking spot, thank goodness. Things start to look better with an iced mocha. (Have I mentioned that I haven't, at this point, had any coffee or any breakfast yet?) Decide to scratch HT's and just do Whole Foods as quickly as possible. Hope that they have something called Gentian Violet, a topical remedy for thrush. They do not. Robert, who has been a model citizen up until this point, loses it in the checkout line. I'm carrying him in the Mei tei, and he's having no more of it. Aside: you know what's funny? There seems to be an inverse relationship between how much help somebody needs, and how much is offered. I've had people offer to let me cut in line ahead of them, ("because your hands are so full!") when Robert is sleeping peacefully in the Mei Tei. Checkers and baggers offer me help out to my car when I only have a few items. But when the baby is screaming, or I have a forty-pound bag of kibble to wrestle with, everybody seems to look the other way. I don't get it.

Anyway. Whoever had been in line front of me had apparently left to grab something, leaving her goods on the conveyor belt. Three little things: a candy bar and two tubs of convenience food. For some reason, the check-out guy is dithering and worrying about where she went and what to do with her foodstuffs. Have I mentioned the screaming baby in my arms, yet? For God's sake, man, just set her little purchase aside, and ring me up! She left the line, that's her problem. It's not as though we're talking about a cart full of food, here.

Now we're back home, obviously, and I'm trying to regain some kind of good mood. Robert is already there. The poor little guy is such a cheerful one by nature, that he tries to smile even when he's upset. Now, recently fed and cool again, he is smiling and having a discussion with the ceiling fan. (I do not know whether the fan talks back, or whether it matters.) I am a morning person, and the downside to that is, if I miss the morning or it doesn't go well, then my whole day feels shot. It probably doesn't help that I hate this time of year. August is my least favorite month; all I can do is put my head down and power through it.

I'm giving my OB one more hour to call me back, before I start calling them again.

Dinner last night was funny, because it was non-meat for the second day in a row. Not for any intentional reason, it just worked out that way; pasta with pesto and veggies the night before, then quesadillas with cheese, onion, and peppers last night. Usually I put chicken in the quesadillas, but didn't have any handy. I was a bit worried about whether Don would like them, whether they'd be enough for him*, but he scarfed them down with compliments. Then as we were cleaning up, he mentioned that they could have "used a bit more chicken". I said, "you mean, could use some chicken, period? Because these didn't have any..." It just goes to show the power of suggestion: because Don expected there to be chicken in the quesadilla, he didn't notice that it was missing. And he'd already gone on about how yummy they were, and that he was quite full, etc. Ha.

*Don = carnivore. Me = omnivore. Robert = lactivore. hehehe.

Arrrrgh...

2009-08-03T12:56:00.004-04:00

Well, we have thrush... again. Breastfeeding: it is so fun, I don't understand why everybody isn't doing it! I noticed that I was in a good bit of pain again with the nursing, and did what I always do when faced with a possible medical problem: ignore it and hope it gets better all by itself. Unfortunately, it got worse and not better, then the Evil White Spots of Doom showed up in poor Robert's mouth to make him miserable. I can't take the laissez-faire approach with Robert; when he's sick we call the doctor. I'm waiting for the pediatricians' office to call me back regarding medicines... Apparently there is a bit of confusion as to whether or not they are supposed to treat me as well as Robert. They did last time, so I assumed that they could again, but the nurse on the phone wasn't sure. (Thrush is a lovely "shared" experience between a nursing pair; there's not much point in treating the baby but not the mother, or vice versa, because the untreated will simply re-infect the other.) I might have to call my obstetrician, instead. Will they want to see me, or can they simply call in the medication? They'd pretty much have to take my word for it, that it hurts to nurse, and hurts in-between times, too. Why the heck would I want a prescription for a systemic antifungal, unless to treat a yeast infection? It's not as though I'm looking for painkillers or something. What I do not want to have to do: load my unhappy baby into his car seat and drive to the doctors' office on this hot, sunny day, when I don't have air conditioning in my car. I want somebody, anybody, to call in two prescriptions for Diflucan, and for Don to pick them up on his way home from work. For awhile, I was taking probiotics religiously, and garlic pills, but I got lax about them as we started to feel better last time. I think we're both still a bit unbalanced from the intravenous antibiotics I had to be on during labor and delivery; Don doesn't understand this since it was over two months ago, but I tried to explain that if you kill off all of your happy, healthy, "good" bacteria, it doesn't just grow back overnight, and they're the bugs that keep everything else, like yeasts, in check. On the bright side, I don't feel the deep pain in my breasts like I did last time, and I don't see any signs of a yeast-based diaper rash in Robert (indicating that it's in his gut as well as his mouth), so maybe the thrush isn't as established this time as it was before.

Two more television-themed observations: One, I know I'm watching too much TV during the daytime, because the info-mercial type products are becoming more and more interesting. Suddenly, I want to buy a Sham-wow. I want that kit that fixes the dings in my car, and that thingie that cleans the inside of the windshield-- like a sponge on a swivel-y stick. The funny thing is that, until Don gets home, I'm usually only watching about 10-15 minutes at a time, every 2-3 hours (i.e., when the baby is nursing); the Internet tends to be my drug of choice. I guess it doesn't take that much exposure, or else I'm unusually responsive to advertising. Speaking of which, Robert nurses for about ten minutes at a time. The Weather Channel broadcasts local weather every ten minutes. I am always familiar with our local forecast these days. Second, doesn't it suck when, having both a decent DVD collection and cable, a movie comes on cable that you have on DVD, and you end up watching it on TV? Already half over, with scenes left out, words bleeped, and commercial breaks? I hate that! And yet it happens all the time, especially with Don. For some reason, it's fine to watch two-thirds of a movie on cable, but it's too much of a commitment to go ahead and get out the DVD. I don't get it, especially because a lot of our favorite movies play like an auditory Mad-Libs game on cable. Fill in the following blanks: " Up yours, ________!" "You use your mouth prettier'n a twenty dollar _____!" Can you tell that we watched part of Blazing Saddles last night?

Well, I must go swallow a couple of probiotic capsules and stare at my cell phone, willing the nurse to call.

How to Apologize

2009-07-31T10:07:00.002-04:00

(a lost art in our society?)

Here's what not to do: don't apologize, while simultaneously rejecting responsibility. Do not say. "I'm sorry about that.... of course, it's not MY fault." For one thing, if you have nothing to do with it, why are you in the position of having to apologize in the first place? Think about that, it doesn't make sense. Second, whomever you are apologizing to likely doesn't care whose fault it is.

I've had this happen twice recently. The first time was upon being discharged from the hospital, following Robert's birth. Now, maybe Don and I did something wrong, didn't follow some un-written procedure, I don't know; I have never been admitted to a hospital before. But somehow, we managed to leave without getting any of the prescriptions my OB had written for me. (I had a lot, because the birth was pretty complicated: an antibiotic, a stool softener, prescription-strength ibuprofen, and Percocet.) I didn't think about it until later, but we were returning to the hospital every two hours anyway, so that I could breastfeed Robert*, so when I saw my OB behind the nurses' station, I said, "You know, I never got those scrips you wrote, could I have them now?" (Basically the only one I really wanted was the stool softener, because I didn't realize it was the same as the over-the-counter ones. I didn't think I needed the abx, and definitely wasn't going to be taking the painkillers.) Oy, the drama that then ensued. Apparently, Percocet is a controlled substance, and now they had a prescription for it floating around loose somewhere. He could only re-write the other ones. He apologized for the inconvenience, but said, very definitely, that this was "not his fault". OK, one, obviously it's at least partly his fault. Otherwise, see above: why are we having this conversation**? Second, I am standing here in the hospital, exhausted, in tremendous pain, an emotional wreck because my baby can't come home with me. I DON'T CARE whose fault it is, do I? I just want the meds I'm supposed to take. If I'd actually wanted the perc, I'd probably have thrown a fit right then and there.

Anyway, I'd more or less put that incident out of my mind, until dinner the other night. Don and I went to Chili's, and got some pretty terrible service. Not that I expect much from Chili's and its peers in terms of service, but still. Right now they have a "two for $20" deal, in which two people can share an appetizer and a dessert, and each get an "entre", for twenty bucks. Not a bad deal at all. So we ordered our appetizer and meals, and waited. And waited. Our cheese fries were very slow in coming, and we were getting antsy because Robert was awake and getting fussy. Then our meals arrive, still with no appetizer. We ask the girl who brought our dinners (not our server) about it. Before she returns, our server shows up (for the first time since she took our order) with the cheese fries. "Sorry about that, but somebody should have ran these out to you a long time ago", she said. No, YOU should have "run them out" before. I don't care what Chili's policy is about food running***, YOU are our server. Don't put this off on the rest of the staff, and by the way, thanks for the implication that these have been sitting under the warmer lights for the last fifteen minutes. I mean, it's going to be obvious as soon as we try them, anyway, but it's a visual I didn't really need. For whatever it's worth, it's Wednesday night, after nine oclock. The place is not exactly hopping. If she had come by our table at some point after taking our order (maybe to refill our iced teas, since we were sucking on the ice cubes?), she may have noticed that we had no app yet, and gone to check on the kitchen's progress.

What's the point of apologizing-- the very act of taking responsibility for something-- and simultaneously trying to distance oneself from it? It just doesn't work. Be big enough to apologize graciously, whether you think it's "your fault" or not. If something is genuinely out of your hands, whomever you are apologizing to will probably, grudgingly, realize this. They may even say so. I had that happen at the bank a lot; somebody's account would be frozen, or they'd have fraud, or be hit with a gazillion fees, and I would have to apologize as I tried to sort out their problems. I never said, "this isn't my fault, you know". Because to the customer, it is. To them, I was not "Mara", I was "The Bank". Just as the OB is not just Dr Zoidberg, he is The Hospital, and the Chili's waitress is The Restaurant. If you are representing an institution, stop worrying about your personal level of responsibility, and step up to it.

Another thing. "I'm sorry..." has two meanings. One, as discussed above, takes responsibility for some circumstance, e.g. "I'm so sorry your steak was over-cooked, let me compensate you in some way, perhaps with a complimentary dessert." The other, of course, just conveys sympathy; "I'm sorry your birthday cookout got rained out", "I'm so sorry to hear about your diagnosis", etc. People, if somebody is using "I'm sorry" in that second way, do not say, "well, it's not your fault!" If I say, "I'm sorry about your car accident", I know it's not my fault (assuming I wasn't there at the time). I am not apologizing for it-- I am not God. I am merely conveying sympathy, and implying that I mean the first kind of "I'm sorry" is kind of stupid, really. "Thank you" is a much more appropriate response.

***************************************************

*Don't even get me started on how they discharged me, while keeping him. That's a whole different rant.

**How was I supposed to get the scrips, anyway, if he didn't hand them to me? He had clipped them to my chart. Were we supposed to "check out" somewhere, instead of just leaving upon discharge? Was somebody else, a nurse maybe, supposed to formally go over everything? Maybe discharge procedure needs to be part of the hospital tour?

***I've worked at restaurants where the rule is, if there's hot food in the window, whoever's available takes it out ASAP. Period. I know other places have dedicated food runners. Whatever. On a night that slow, she should have been running her own food, regardless.

TV, con't.

2009-07-29T14:24:00.002-04:00

There are a few shows on Food Network that involve handing contestants a bundle of random ingredients, then judging what these hopefuls can create from them. "Chopped" is the show that comes to mind, but I think there are others, or at least, it's also a common practice on "...Next Food Network Star". I really don't understand this. How is what one can make from, say, a tin of anchovies, maple syrup, and ground venison in any way indicative of one's culinary chops? In what real-world scenario would a chef be faced with random, mis-matched foodstuffs, and be forced to use them to feed a crowd? In real life, chefs and home cooks alike tend to plan menus ahead of time, shop for the necessaries, and keep a well-stocked pantry for any incidentals. Even if I have a raid-the-pantry-dinner night, it tends to be based on ingredients that were meant to go together. I could be a fantastic cook, and still have trouble marrying raisins to capers, or beef stock to vanilla ice cream, on the fly. I just don't see how these contests reveal a person's actual culinary abilities.

On all of the home-buying shows on HGTV, potential buyers complain about places that are way nicer than our house. This is very depressing. We have 850-ish square feet, in a very poor layout. (I think that is an adequate amount of space for two-three people, IF it has a neat, nifty floor plan. I could design a place smaller than this one, that would work better.) We have two bedrooms and a very small bathroom. It is sad to see a place twice this size, with a BIG bathroom (like, with a counter around the sink), whose residents are exclaiming that they can't wait to leave this dump. Oh, well. It also always cracks me up that they always discuss "entertaining". Seriously, are Don and I the only people who don't "entertain"? We do "have friends over". The difference is that "entertaining" seems to require a formal dining room, a big kitchen, and a big deck outside, while "having friends over" requires a sofa and delivery pizza. And yet, we are entertained, and entertaining. Huh. Maybe someday we'll grow up and suddenly need to throw a fancy dinner party? Or have cocktails on the deck, instead of beer in the kitchen?

Advertisers tend to aim their commercials at the particular demographics watching X show/channel at Y time. Hence, tons of toy commercials on Nickelodeon, none on MSNBC. I think I tend to have "old person" viewing habits, as I see a lot of commercials for prescription drugs, arthritis creams, and the AARP. Since I've been home with Robert, I've noticed that the advertisers seem to think that anybody watching TV during the day is either (a) unemployed, (b) overweight, or (c) both. So, many commercials for educational opportunities, like online university courses, tech schools, etc; and for weight-loss programs. There are also a lot of "hurt? can't work? call us!"-- type ads for law practices. I feel kind of offended by these assumptions, but then, who does watch TV in the middle of the day? If I had a bit more energy, or a son who didn't need to nurse every two hours, I'd probably not turn it on, either.

What really pisses me off-- especially when I was pregnant-- are the commercials for stuff that I can't actually get where I live. This is not something I experienced until leaving Dallas, because Dallas has everything that might be advertised, ever. But here, Sonic is always advertising their yummy drinks and smoothies. There's no Sonic here. Same for Dairy Queen and their darn blizzardy milkshake things. The Olive Garden. Ace Hardware. I could go on, but for God's sake stop teasing me with extreme closeups of a chocolate milkshake when there isn't a Dairy Queen for several towns down the highway! Bad tv, bad.

Note to self: get Netflix moving again.

Two Months Old

2009-07-28T14:19:00.003-04:00

Robert had his two-month doctor visit this morning. I was so tired that I almost drove us to my OBs office, instead of the pediatrician-- they're in adjacent buildings. Robert is, of course, totally perfect. The nurse admired his chunky thigh rolls; the doctor, his precocious head control and overall strength. Naturally, once Robert was naked he peed all over his blanket and spit up on the table. We were just covered in unsavoury liquids by the time the nurse came back to measure him. Isn't 'unsavoury' one of those words that just looks better when spelled all British-style? Anyway. My Chunky Monkey is 14 pounds, 7 ounces today, and 24 1/2 inches long. He seems to be stretching out a bit, as his weight came down from "off the chart" to "90th percentile", while his length went from 90th to 95th. Good grief. I guess I really can stop worrying about whether he's eating enough, huh? To think that I've grown all that good baby on breastmilk alone. Speaking of which (or not), Don really likes Ben & Jerry's Chunky Monkey flavour (going with the theme here), but he doesn't care for Chubby Hubby. It seems to me as though he ought to enjoy Chubby Hubby, out of principle. Or maybe, that's why he doesn't like it? We started Robert's vaccinations today, having skipped the Hepatitis B series so far: we opted instead for a don't-have-sex lecture*, as they're surprisingly effective at this age, although I hear that changes with adolescence, which is when the vaccine starts to actually make sense. So, first shots, very traumatic, no less for me than for him. We have to go back in a month, for more.

ETA: I saw a baby younger than Robert, when we were at the pediatrician's office. It's the first time since he was born, that I didn't have the youngest baby around... it's a tiny little milestone of sorts, like when you start a new job and for some time you're the newbie, but eventually someone else gets hired.

*Don't worry, we also covered "...and don't share your needles!"

Finally!

2009-07-25T12:02:00.002-04:00

Many weeks after I started looking for the first eggs, we finally have these! The chickens are free-loaders no more. Unfortunately, they've become fully free-ranging birds, so it's almost literally an Easter-egg hunt; they're not laying them in their coop but out in the yard. Now that I know we have layers, I'll have to scour the back yard every day; nothing like an overlooked egg in ninety-degree weather!

Watching Too Much TV

2009-07-24T12:31:00.002-04:00

... Because "multi-tasking" is still limited to "changing chanels while breastfeeding."

"HGTV" used to stand for Home and Garden Television. When was the last time they had a gardening show? It's all housing, all the time. The most overused phrase on that channel is "Old World", closely followed by "Tuscan" and "Provencal". I don't think anybody should be allowed to describe any space as any of the above, unless they can either locate Tuscany or Provence on a map of Europe, or prove that they've been there. Painting a wall yellow in no way makes a modern, American dry-wall McMansion somehow resemble an ancient stone farmhouse with two-foot-thick walls.

Meanwhile, the most over-used word on Food Network is "caramelized" and its cohorts. Can't we ever just saute or brown something anymore? Cooking something in a pan on the stove does not automatically mean that it is caramelizing. Sometimes I feel like Inigo Montoya: "I don't think that word means what you think it means!"

The Weather Channel is actually a lot more interesting than one would imagine.

I basically understand commercials for products that help people get more vegetables into their diet, like V-8 and its counterparts. I love most veggies, but most folks barely tolerate them, or at least that's their bad reputation. Also, even for veggie lovers, most vegetables have to be prepared in some way, which takes time and effort. But WTF is up with these new "drink your fruit"-type ads? NOT getting it. One, fruit is delicious all by itself. I know very few people that need to disguise their daily fruit intake as something else just to choke it down. Second, fruit is edible in its totally raw state! No prep, no cooking. Just grab and eat. It's literally no more work than opening one of these new juice drinks. My daily fruit intake during this time of year is limited only by the unfortunate effects of eating too much, if you know what I mean. So what, exactly, is the advantage of these pricey, sugary, low-fiber, plastic-bottled beverages?

Still addicted to NCIS. Thanks to a few marathons, Don is too, now. When I find that I like a show, I like to really get into it: see every episode (preferably in order), understand the back story, get the inside jokes. This is why I love to watch TV shows on DVD (besides the commercial-free-ness): to get the additional content, director's commentary, actor interviews, all that. Yummy.

Tomato Season

2009-07-22T12:44:00.002-04:00

Products of the least-worked veggie garden ever. Don tilled it, I planted it, and then we completely abandoned it for about three months. When I finally had enough energy again to go downstairs and take a look, it was covered in weeds, and loaded with tomatoes! I think I've found a new gardening style: "neglect"! The garden itself is visible out the window, the little patch by the fence. (It has since been weeded and mulched, obviously.)

I stick my tongue out at thee, sir

2009-07-21T13:29:00.002-04:00

Robert is going through another growth spurt, I think, but not a physical one. Rather, he's leaping forward in his mental development. He seems to be able to see farther, focus more carefully, and pay attention to something for much longer, than he could even a week ago. He plays what we call "the faces game": I stick my tongue out at him; he does the same. He grins at me, I smile back. I laugh. He laughs. Etc. Repeat for maybe five minutes at a time. It probably doesn't sound like much, but in its own way it is amazing; suddenly, he recognizes the relationship between the tongue in my face, and his own. He can stick his tongue out, not to lick something or as an unconscious reaction to hunger, but intentionally. When we first brought him home from the hospital, he barely opened his eyes during the first several days. Everything he did then, was reaction, reflex. So much growth, so fast... he is moving from merely reacting to external stimuli, to actually acting from within. He's thinking.

While this is fascinating and fun to watch, it's also exhausting; so much is going on in his little head that he can't seem to deal with it all, and it makes him cranky and difficult to handle. It's harder for him to settle down, and to sleep. He has a new cry to go with his new thinking phase: a loud, pissed-off, angry, wailing, scream. A purposeful cry. He is trying to learn to suck his thumb. This is harder for him than I thought it could be; some babies do it right after birth. He can purposefully un-fist his hand, wriggle his thumb, and open his mouth, but when it comes to making contact, he just smacks himself in the face... repeatedly. The only times he's succeeded, so far, were when he was asleep on his side, and it just happened. I guess those instances were enough to let him know that this is something he wants to do, so it seems that whenever he's awake and his arms are free, he is waving them furiously, and hitting himself in the mouth. At the moment, he is asleep with his arms tightly swaddled. He didn't get much sleep last night (nor did I, of course), and seems to be catching up. I'd be thrilled except that he's missed feeding time, and pretty soon I shall explode like a milk-filled pinata.

0% Segue

2009-07-20T15:37:00.004-04:00

I have been wondering when we should start reading aloud to Robert. My guess was, when he's three or four months old? I wanted to start him on Harry Potter right away, get him good and indoctrinated when he's still young. (I actually considered starting Philosopher's Stone out loud while still pregnant, the way some people play Mozart to the womb, but decided that I was being crazy. Plus I wanted to re-read Half-Blood Prince before the movie came out, and didn't want to start Robert at the end of the story; he might have gotten confused.) Don bypassed me, though, and my careful considerations. I came into the living room the other night and found him reading My Side of the Mountain aloud to Robert, who seemed to be enjoying it. (He was staring off into space and not crying or fussing... that counts for a lot after eight at night.) Don explained that the baby seemed to like hearing him talk (all deep and rumbly!), but he ran out of things to talk about, so he grabbed the book instead.

Do all babies float? I am naturally bouyant; I can tread water or float on my back with very little effort. This was true for me even as a child, when my percentage of body fat was hovering around zero. Don is the opposite; he sinks like a stone. It takes all of his effort to just keep his head above water. I've noticed that Robert floats in the bathtub, and wonder whether he's taking after his mama already, or if it's just a baby thing. He is about 1,000% fat, after all-- all thigh rolls and neck folds.

Don and I spent some time this weekend reclaiming our garden. I planted it when he was in Illinois, and then... we did nothing. Didn't weed, didn't water, didn't fertilize, nada. The weeds overtook the space, but everything we planted took off, and we've actually been harvesting a decent number of tomatoes and etc. The fact that it's been such a rainy year probably helped; nobody's garden has needed watering. Now the space is mostly weed-free again. I've got some plans for fall crops, and bigger plans for next spring, that we'll need to get started this fall. My big issue is this: how long are we going to be in this house? I want to put in an asparagus bed, but it takes years for them to start producing. Worth it? Not worth it? I don't know. I think I'm going to do it, on the grounds that I'd hate to be here in ten years, still dithering over the asparagus, and wishing that I'd planted some at first opportunity.

What the baby books don't tell you

2009-07-17T17:23:00.002-04:00

When Robert first came home, he averaged one poopy diaper per feeding, i.e. one every two to three hours. In fact, he has the tendency to fill his diaper while nursing; I don't know if that's typical or not. He gradually dialed it down a bit, thank goodness, to maybe every other meal. Then, he even went a few nights here and there with no poops at all. Then... he went all Wednesday night without poop. All day Thursday. Then all of last night. He seemed happy, content, not bothered at all, so I didn't worry to much... and then, this afternoon, he finally went. After maybe 40 hours. Oh, my God. OHMYGOD. The next time this happens I am calling Don home from work to deal with the diaper, is all I'm saying, because this is no job for an amateur.

I have never seen a baby look so darn pleased with himself, as Robert did at that moment.

About an hour afterwards, once I'd gotten him all clean, dry and in a fresh diaper and outfit, cleaned up the changing table, and changed my own pants (don't ask)... he went again. And now, I think he's working on another. OY vey.

Homeland

2009-07-15T13:26:00.002-04:00

We visited Don's mom, and we survived. The drive there took thirteen hours, we spent two days visiting, and drove the same thirteen hours back. I have now breastfed and changed diapers at various truck-stops and highway rest areas in West Virginia, Kentucky, Indiana, and Illinois.

Robert was a real trooper. He was wonderful on the drive out, sleeping for most of the trip. Unfortunately, this lulled us into a false sense of security for the return drive, during which he shrieked from the eastern end of Kentucky through West Virginia. I think change the altitude was hurting his ears (it was certainly affecting mine), because he settled down again once we got through the mountains. He was wonderful with his grandmother, who basked in his smiles and talked to him constantly, many decibels louder than most would consider necessary. (You know how sometimes, some people start needing a hearing aid, but are in complete denial about it? So they just turn the TV up louder, talk louder, and constantly ask everybody else to repeat themselves? I think a hearing check should be a mandatory part of either the yearly physical or drivers' license renewal, or both, starting at some arbitrary age like 65.) Until this spring, when Don stayed there for weeks when his dad was dying, he never visited for more than three days or so. He said that he just couldn't handle being with his mom for longer than that, and that a longer visit would damage their relationship. Having finally gone with him, I have to say that I agree. It's one of those situations in which the easiest, best thing to do is to just nod, smile, agree and humor someone, which you can only do for so long.

The cat and dog handled the trip like the pros that they are. With the exception of the cat continually trying to sleep on the car seat (on the baby) at first, they were no trouble at all.

This was my first time to see Don's ancestral homeland. I mean, um, his home town. He's described it in great detail during our nine years together, so I was really interested to finally see it for myself. He was in full reminiscing, story-telling mode from the moment we turned off of the Interstate; every house, farm, creek, and wooded area had some bit of personal history attached. Actually, the whole town and its surrounding area can be described in one of two ways: as having an important memory for Don, or having not been there back in the day. "That (subdivision, new school, etc) used to be a cornfield" came up rather often. It is one of those Midwestern, farming communities in which half of the town is related to each other some ways or another, and to the residents of the surrounding towns as well. I read in the town's paper that the county fair was starting the day we left (unfortunately, because I would have liked to go) and it listed the eighteen contestants for Fair Queen. One, from a few towns over, had Don's last name, so I asked if he was related... I was kind of joking because Don's last name is one of the most common in the country. Turns out, he was. Of course. This girl was his father's cousin's daughter... or something like that.

For someone like me, who grew up in the suburbs (and in the eighties/ nineties), Don's childhood seems fuller and richer, almost idyllic, like something from a book or the movies. All of the things that my family would have to go on vacation to do, like fishing, camping, boating, or even just playing in the woods, Don did at home, all summer long.

6 weeks old today

2009-07-08T12:30:00.002-04:00

And he's started really smiling.

One more comment found to freak out one's husband:

"If we have another baby, I might try for another natural, drug-free birth..."

Poor guy. I relented and said that the epidural is at least a strong option from now on, depending how things go. But I'm an eternal optimist... just because labor and birth the first time around was absolute hell, doesn't mean that it will be next time, right?

How to Freak Out a Husband

2009-07-07T09:59:00.004-04:00

"Look at him... he's so cute. He's wonderful. Let's have another, ASAP!"

"You know, I really did think he was going to be a girl for awhile there. But since he's not, we can move on to Plan B... let's have five *more* boys, and then one girl. Weasley style!"

In other news, Don and I are going on a road trip soon, to take Robert to visit his grandmother. (I mean Don's mother, the baby's grandma). She keeps making these "jokes" about keeping Robert for herself, that aren't really "funny", at least to a hormonal new mama. And she seems a little confused by the idea that, since Robert is breastfeeding, he does not require any other foods and/or formula. Yes, mama's milk is ALL HE EATS. There is nothing anybody needs to buy from the store for him to eat. We are taking the dog and the cat along for the trip, as we usually do, so we'll be driving for ten hours with a dog, a cat, and a newborn who nurses every two hours. Although come to think about it, ten hours is how long it takes for just Don to make the trip, stopping only for gas, so it will probably take us, what, fifteen? Wish me luck. I wonder if there's a way to feed Robert on the road, without taking him out of his car seat, injuring my back, or being indecently exposed to passing trucks. I'm trying to remember why this seemed like such a good idea when we planned it out and promised to come visit...

Because I Can

2009-07-04T09:40:00.003-04:00

This is your brain on parenting

2009-07-03T11:21:00.002-04:00

Before the hospital discharged me, Don and I had to attend a short class on baby care. It was 'optional', but you know how these things are, and it included a lunch. The class essentially boiled down to 'how to not kill your baby and/or yourself': SIDS, shaken baby syndrome, post-partum depression, as well as a video about soothing fussy babies. One topic the nurse covered was 'babies accidentally left in the car: they DIE', and she suggested that, whenever we put the baby in his car seat, we also put a purse, cellphone, or similar in the backseat, that we would retrieve before leaving the car. Part of me thinks that this is pretty clever, because sure, nobody is going to leave their handbag in the backseat if she's going shopping or whatever. But a bigger part is wondering, who is going to forget the baby but remember the purse? Since he was born, Robert occupies about 90% of my brain-space. I am literally thinking about him all the time, even, apparently, when I'm asleep. (I wake up to nurse him, about 30 seconds to a minute before he actually wakes up hungry. I don't know how.) If you try to talk to me about other, supposedly interesting things-- Iran, Michael Jackson, or lyin', cheatin', Republican senators-- I will attempt to be polite for maybe a minute before bringing the conversation back to the baby... did I mention that he's started smiling for real? I'm surprised that my friends are still answering my calls, to be honest. So the idea that one could forget the baby in the car baffles me. Forgetting anything else, yes... I keep walking into the kitchen and wondering what I came there for (I generally assume that I wanted some orange juice, so we're going through it pretty fast), but forgetting Robert, even for a second? I wonder what percentage of those cases involved mothers, as opposed to fathers or babysitters, because I can't be the only new mom whose mind has been completely re-wired by her baby.

Someone just knocked on my door, offering me an invitation to a talk on how to survive the End of the World. I was, unfortunately, both changing Robert's diaper and completely topless (you fellow nursing mothers will understand) when I heard the knock, and would have ignored it completely if I hadn't thought that it was either FedEx or a neighbor. (We keep getting presents. It's amazing. The thank-you-card guilt is starting to keep me up at night.) So I answered the door wearing Don's undershirt, inside out and backwards, holding a half-dressed baby. Having read the flier, it seems that becoming a Jehovah's Witness is key to survival, which is too bad because I was hoping it was more of a Peak Oil sort of End. I know a lot of people get pissed off at religious people going door to door, but I think it's sort of nice, as long as they're not pushy. I mean, they're trying to save me. That's nice, right? What the heck do they get out of the deal, besides bragging rights or whatever at church? I wonder how many people are so easily influenced, that a flier on their doorstep changes their religious beliefs? It can't be that many.

Robert has just officially* outgrown the 0-3 month size and is now in 3-6 month. All I can say is that I'm glad we're planning on having more babies, because half of our 0-3 stuff hasn't even been worn yet. Maybe the next one will be a seven-pounder? I already have goals for the next pregnancy: GAIN LESS THAN 50 POUNDS. HAVE SMALLER BABY. HAVE EASIER BIRTH.

I have finally found a baby carrier that I like. We have a front-pack carrier, a Baby Bjorn, but I could never seem to get it adjusted right, even with all the straps and buckles. It just seems so high-tech and complicated; Don said that it looked like something you could use to rappel down a mountain. It is big and made of nylon, and doesn't breathe. I also have a Hotsling, but don't like it, either. The hold just seems so precarious that I have to keep one arm still wrapped around the baby, and he seems so squished-up in there. It hurt my back and was really bad for my posture-- I seemed to sort of hunch over the baby. Tuesday, though, I bought a Mei Tai carrier, and I think our search is over because it is awesome. It holds Robert upright, which he prefers, and balances his weight across both of my shoulders, like the front-pack. But, it is soft, flexible, and breathable, made of cotton. There aren't any buckles, the straps just tie wherever you need them, which is so much easier. We used it this morning at Whole Foods, solving the problem of where to put the food when the car seat is taking up the whole cart. It feels very secure, and Robert feels lighter in it, than in the other carriers. I think it disguises how big he is, because one woman thought that he was tiny! She asked how old, and when I said that he was five weeks on Wednesday, she asked if he had been a preemie. Uh, no. I told her that he had been ten pounds at birth and was now almost thirteen, and she said that was bigger than her 10-week-old, and he must just look small in the carrier. I guess we are the Goldilocks of baby carriers... I'm just glad that the first two were second-hand. Can't wait to try it at the Farmers' Market tomorrow!

Breastfeeding update: it's getting better. Feeding Robert is now only irritating/ uncomfortable, down from 'incredibly painful'. My breasts don't hurt as much between times, and my supply seems to be regulating somewhat. I think the thrush is going away. Still can't fathom nursing him anywhere but at home, so we're still really limited in where we can go, and for how long. Need to work on that. I think in another few weeks we'll really have it all together.

*****************************************************
*By putting a hole in the toe of one outfit. I was in denial about how snugly they were fitting him, even though Don kept saying, "I really don't think that fits him anymore". 0-3 months, my ass.

Genes of Giant, Appetite of Hobbit

2009-06-30T11:01:00.003-04:00

My sister and her boyfriend just left, after a long-weekend visit. I am feeling that disheartening, when-will-I-see-you-again? feeling... You know, when you're going to see someone and so look forward to it, then suddenly it's over, they're gone again, and you don't know when you'll see each other again? Having a baby seems to amplify that feeling, because they grow up so quickly; it's possible that my family won't see Robert again until we meet up in December-- he'll be seven months old! Essentially a totally different baby than this flailing little newborn, by then he'll be a sitting, crawling, babbling creature.

We had Robert's one-month doctor visit yesterday, and it actually went really well. We didn't have to wait at all: not in the waiting room, and not in the exam room either, surprising after our last experience there. He now weighs a whopping twelve pounds, twelve ounces (up two and three-quarters pounds from his birth weight of ten pounds) and is 22.5 inches long (up an inch). He is not actually on the growth chart but hovering above it, over the "95%" line. The doctor assured me that he is "proportionate": big, but not fat. I guess my "growth spurt" hunch last week wasn't wrong. Speaking of which, I realized the other day that I have this creature who enjoys twelve meals a day when he can get them, who has a lot of hair that has a tendency to curl... it seems I gave birth to a hobbit. Except that he's giant. A giant hobbit?

His crying/ screaming/ fussiness/ gas is getting mostly worse. The doc wrote us a prescription for baby Zantac, since it sounds like reflux, so we'll see if that helps at all. I'm trying again to eliminate dairy from my diet, too, to see if that helps. Last night he cried for over an hour, and it was awful. He just sounded like he was in so much pain, and there was nothing we could do to help him... I hope either the medicine or the diet works. He still sleeps well, thank goodness, as I imagine that if he were sleep deprived it would have everything else feel worse for him.

The breastfeeding is getting marginally better. We have been off the pump for three whole days now--no training wheels!-- my supply seems to be evening out somewhat (as long as I keep feeding him frequently, if I go more than a few hours I'll get engorged still); and although my nipples still hurt when he nurses it's more of a normal-feeling, breaking-in kind of pain, less of an intense, hit-the-ceiling sensation. We're about half-way through the thrush prescription and it does seem to be helping; Robert's diaper rash is gone, his poops look more normal, and my breasts hurt less.

Snippets

2009-06-24T10:12:00.003-04:00

I get a lot of approval of Robert's name from a certain generation: it seems that anybody over sixty or so is just thrilled to see 'Robert' still in use. "How lovely, my husband's/ father's name is Robert"-- we hear this a lot from older women. My dad, who I suppose falls into this category, was very pleased to hear our choice, as was the pediatrician who finally released Robert from the hospital (although he was young)-- but he was a Robert, himself*. This is balanced by the reaction we get from pretty much anyone under sixty, which is subtle dismay. "You're not going to call him Robert, are you? Such an old name for a newborn. Does he have a nickname yet-- Rob? Bobby?" To be honest, I felt that way myself, a little, and it took me several days to get used to calling him Robert. Part of that, probably, is that it isn't a name I would have chosen were it not for the circumstances. It wasn't even on the list, being verboten as the name of such a close relative**. But when I think Robert, I think of Robert Louis Stevenson, Robert Frost. It's a good, strong, simple name. Incidentally, Bob Dylan and Bob Marley were both Roberts.

Robert is four weeks old, today. I'm waiting for my medal for keeping him alive for one whole moon, but it doesn't seem to be forthcoming. His one-month doctor visit is on Monday, and I am interested in finding out his official weight/height. He just seems so big to me. Speaking of which, how do they measure length in the hospital? Newborns are so balled-up... does it take two nurses, one to unroll the infant to full length, the other to hold the tape measure?

He seems to be going through a growth spurt or something. He's been on a pretty regular, every-three-hours-or-so eating schedule since coming home from the hospital... until about forty-eight hours ago, when he decided that he was going to be hungry all the time. I didn't even realize it, because it didn't occur to me that he might be hungry before Feeding Time. Poor guy. I finally tried a bottle (ahead of schedule) and he gulped it down, burped richly, and fell asleep. He's eaten a lot since then, and slept a lot. So I think he's either growing suddenly, or entering a new phase, or something. Who knows?

Robert is not just big, he seems to be pretty physically advanced for his age. His neck strength and control astounded me in the hour after he was born, and now he can hold his head up purposefully, for quite some time. The way he uses his hands, and his arms and legs, seems like the movements of an older baby, and I think he's going to be an early roller. This morning, when Don was giving him a bottle, Robert actually grabbed the bottle and held it in both hands as he ate. Don and I joke about having an athlete on our hands, wonder what we'll do if he turns out to be a football player or something. I just can't handle having a dumb jock, Don says. I assure him that neither is likely in what is, for now, the scion of my family. We don't tend towards either the dumb or the athletic. Besides, who says it has to be football? He could play rugby, lacrosse, soccer. Ballet, if he falls off the growth chart a little. Anything, or nothing at all. This age is so much fun, when everything is conjecture.

He still likes being swaddled. It calms him down when he's upset and helps him sleep, but I don't like seeing him all wrapped up. I understand why babies like it, why it helps, but it seems so confining to me-- I think I'm projecting my own mild claustrophobia onto him. I got the shivers thinking of him in utero in those last weeks, too, all cramped up and unable to move around.

He likes the movement of the stroller, and the car. I wish the air conditioning in my car worked, so that I could take him out more; right now being in the car after about ten in the morning, is unbearable. Don wants to get me a new car. With what money, I ask? Can we afford a monthly payment? No. Can we afford to pay cash and wipe out our savings? No. So stop dreaming about a four-door sedan that we could get the car seat into and out of without resorting to acrobatics, that has working a/c and possibly cruise control. Trading vehicles with Don isn't an option, as he drives a pick-up truck. I am not installing the car seat into the passenger side of the truck, it's just wrong.

Stupid new-mommy mistake: I didn't realize that our Diflucan prescriptions would be under our individual names: mine under my name and Robert's under his own. I guess I thought they'd be in the same bag or something. Don went to the pharmacy and returned with just mine... It's like Robert is a whole real person or something, with his own insurance card and prescriptions in his own name. Awww.

I pump at my computer desk. Since it takes at least one hand, I can't actually type while pumping, so I play solitaire, or FreeCell. Five or six "daytime" pumping sessions times at least fifteen minutes each-- usually more like half an hour-- and I've gotten really good at FreeCell. I don't think it's possible to get good at Solitaire, it's much more of a luck-based game.

************************************************

*Dr. Rob. He declared our Robert to be the picture of health, said he looked "like a little surfer dude" due to the spiky blond hair, and that we could take him home any time. I think I loved Dr. Rob at that moment.

**Jewish tradition, at least the part of Jewish tradition that I descend from, forbids the naming of babies for living relatives, for spiritual reasons. Children tend to be named in honor of deceased relatives instead, although at least here in America, this is often reflected by a common initial rather than the whole name. (I'm not sure but I'm willing to guess that the original names were just too "old country" and recent immigrants wanted to compromise by giving their kids American-sounding names that still payed homage to great-grandma. I would do this, personally, because Robert is one thing, but to name a baby girl Bertha for my beloved grandmother would just be cruel.) If you look at my family tree, you'll see Milton, Michael, Michelle, and Mara all named for the same much-loved, M- ancestor. My newest cousin, born in March, is named Gabrielle in honor of my Aunt Gail, her grandmother. (I was trying to find a G-name too, in case we had a girl, for the same reason.) Because of this, you never get Juniors, or So-and-So the II, III, and IV in Jewish families; every kid gets his or her own name, which I like. So Robert wasn't even a possibility until March, when Don's father passed away, and it suddenly became not just possible but definite.

Dread Pirate Robert takes no prisoners

2009-06-23T11:09:00.004-04:00

Alternate title: Nothing goes as planned, does it?

Breastfeeding: simply the hardest thing I've ever done, after giving birth. We have the Murphy's Law version of a breastfeeding relationship: everything that can go wrong, will. It started with Robert's extra days in the hospital, the resultant use of the breast pump, WRONG use of breast pump (who knew?) combined with barracuda of a son leading to severe nipple damage, screaming FUCKING HELL every time he latched on (in front of my mom, no less), repeated trips to the lactation consultant, overactive letdown and too much milk, switching to pumping (the right way, this time) and giving bottles of expressed milk, and now a raging thrush infection. Because nothing says "bonding!" like matching anti-fungal prescriptions!

Pumping doesn't really hurt anymore, but it is so time consuming. Every three hours, pump. It takes at least fifteen minutes, usually more. It's hard to determine when to stop pumping. If I do too little, I risk Robert not getting "the good stuff"-- the high-fat, high-protein hind-milk, that comes at the end of a nursing session-- and also risk getting engorged again, or getting a blocked duct; because there is just SO MUCH MILK. If I pump too much or for too long, I risk overstimulating my supply again. I don't know how much the early pumping has to do with my supply problems, because there's no way to know what it would have been like had Robert and I had a normal, mouth-to-boob beginning, but I suspect it did a good deal of harm. So every three hours, pump; bottle-feed the baby; and wash or sanitize all of the pump equipment and bottles. It usually takes at least half an hour, generally longer, to do this. So if I start pumping at eleven at night, go to bed at 11:45, get up at 2:00, get up again at 5:00am. Never sleeping more than two hours at a time, and that's assuming that Robert falls asleep again shortly after being fed.

Everybody says, take naps during the day! Sleep when the baby sleeps! But not everybody can just lay down for a nap anytime, you know? Sometimes, I'm tired but I can't sleep. Sometimes there's just other stuff I have to do (like pump. Again. Or boil the bottles.)-- or want to do. Everybody says, let the house go! Let everything go, just concentrate on taking care of the baby! Nobody discusses whether seeing the same pile of dirty laundry on the floor for three days might be too much for the fragile, post-partum mental state to handle, and that it's honestly better to just run it through the wash than to look at it and cry.

It's funny, when Robert was in the hospital and I was bringing in milk (and pre-milk, at first), it seemed like such a precious commodity. I'd stayed up most of the night pumping, and carefully transported it to the Special Care nursery; "I brought him some milk, is this good? Is it enough?" Now, I see it more as a biological contaminate... whatever doesn't make it into a bottle or into my son just makes a mess: soaking towels, shirts, bras, pads (Don calls the breast pads "boob diapers"); dripping onto my pants, onto my desk where I keep the pump. And it's a lot better than it was a few weeks ago. I am no longer sleeping on a folded towel, for instance. Pity the fool that tells me, "At least you have enough! Too much is better than too little!" They have not seen my poor baby gag and choke at the breast, trying to deal with a flow that's like drinking from a fire hose, or felt him clamp down as hard as he can on the nipple, to momentarily stop the spray. They haven't seen the screaming, gassy stomachaches that follow a feeding, and that happen less often and less severely when he drinks from the bottle, a fact that makes me want to cry. Oversupply and forceful letdown are not "a blessing in disguise", they're a serious problem and a real pain in the ass.

We have not even put a cloth diaper on him, yet. I hardly ever carry him in the sling or front-pack. At first this was because he was so heavy, and I was so weak and tired. Now, it's because the thrush has made my breasts so sore that nothing can rest upon them, definitely not the straps of the Baby Bjorn. He does not look comfortable in the Hotsling, and seems so precariously perched in it that I wrap one arm around the sling anyway, defeating the purpose. I think what we need is one of those big wrap-type slings with lots of fabric, but I don't have one yet. So far, he's been in the stroller more than anything. He spends about equal time at night in his bassinet, and in our bed; I thought we'd co-sleep more. He sleeps better with Don than with me; Don thinks this is because I smell like food to Robert and make him hungry, but it's still slightly disheartening. I spend a lot of every day, just surviving.

He's getting bigger...

2009-06-18T11:48:00.003-04:00

The scale is freaking me out because nobody should be losing weight as quickly as I am unless on some kind of drugs. I haven't really tabulated before, but I guess I gained almost 50 pounds during the pregnancy. When I first thought to weigh myself again, about a week after the birth, I'd lost almost thirty pounds. That was OK, because it includes my gargantuan son, our placenta (which was correspondingly big), all the amniotic fluid, and what seemed to be a LOT of blood. Plus my appetite really mellowed out, (pretty much back to normal), about 48 hours after the delivery. But in the two weeks since then, I've lost another seven pounds. It's as though the 1/2-oz or more that Robert gains every day is reflected by a 1/2-lb loss in me. While I'm thrilled to be getting back to size, I feel like I'm fading away too fast, like one of those seals that loses half her body weight while nursing her offspring, who grow something like 1000 percent before the cold season comes again.

So I fried up some bacon to eat with breakfast. It should help.

Fun with vocabulary words

2009-06-15T15:12:00.003-04:00

Me: "Who's mommy's little kumquat, huh? Who's a little kumquat?"

Robert: (looks politely puzzled, as though he's not at all sure who my kumquat is, but hopes that I find out soon.)

Don: "Kumquat? Come on, honey, he has a lot of hair but he's not *that* hairy..."

Me: ???

..... (insert much longer conversation here).....

Me: KUMQUAT is a cute little orange citrus fruit. SASQUATCH is a hairy bigfoot. I wouldn't call our son that!

Breastfeeding Mother's Playlist

2009-06-08T18:45:00.005-04:00

I'm Just a Milk Machine (and I won't work for nobody but you)-- I dunno, Wham or someone?

C'mon Baby, Finish What You Started-- Van Halen

Just Keep Sucking-- Dory, from Finding Nemo

Yummy Yummy Yummy (I Got Love in My Tummy)*-- no idea

Love Bites, Love Bleeds-- Def Leppard

*Don's contribution, had to ask him to stop singing it every time we nursed. Gag me.

2009-06-07T13:32:00.004-04:00

One day old, right before he was moved to the Special Care nursery.

Two days old.

Three days old. Check out the chunky fat rolls! I'd say that he gets the double chin from Don, but after seeing myself in these pictures...

9 days old, at home.

Still here

2009-06-03T11:30:00.002-04:00

It's not that I don't want to post, or even that I don't have the time or the energy... it's just that I have approximately ten gazillion stiches in a place that makes sitting at the computer almost impossible. But I'm still here, and everything is going well. Robert is home, and he's amazing; he seems a bit older to me, than just one week (today!).

I hope to be back on here soon, I've got so much to talk about!

We did it!

2009-05-29T18:08:00.003-04:00

It's a boy!

Announcing Robert Nicholas, born Wednesday, May 27th, at 8:10pm.

10 pounds even
21.5" long
Head circumference: 14"
Chest circumference: 14.5" *
Tons of blond hair
Covered in chubby, delicious fat rolls
Cutest baby in the nursery... by far

Photos and birth story to follow soon, but here's the quickie version: it was an all-natural, drug-free vaginal delivery. Nobody was expecting Robert to be so big, least of all me... He surprised all of us! His shoulders got stuck briefly, but were freed up fast and it didn't cause him any damage. (I, on the other hand, am simply shredded, but that's for the long version. ) Robert's still at the hospital due to some breathing issues that are apparently common in big babies, but is doing great and is due to be released tomorrow morning. Breastfeeding going OK so far, although it's hard to tell at 48 hours; we're on the way back to the hospital now for another feeding.

*You know how they say that the head is the biggest part? Apparently, not always the case... Let me describe that bit sometime.

Pregnancy, Work, Chicken Feet

2009-05-23T10:05:00.004-04:00

Yesterday morning, Don woke up thinking that I was in labor. I was merely sitting on the end of the bed, trying to get my socks on, but I guess the excessive grunting and sighing sounded alarming. It's hard to remember a time when getting dressed in the morning wasn't the most difficult thing I do all day.

If you'd been in the right grocery store at the right time yesterday afternoon, you could have found me standing in front of the Ben & Jerry's display, stroking my belly and murmuring, "So what do we want, baby? What sounds good? Chunky Monkey? Cherry Garcia? Whirled Peace?" The guy stocking the case didn't seem phased at all, though. I think being this pregnant qualifies one for a certain amount of eccentricity.

Yesterday was my last day of work. Next week and most of the week after, I am on vacation; after that, maternity leave. If there's any time in between, (i.e. if I get through the next two weeks sans delivering baby) I'll get a doctor's note and take short-term disability, because I'm not lumbering back into work that much past my due date. Actually, they probably wouldn't even want me, more than a week overdue* and ready to pop any minute. It feels strange to be done with work. I've always worked. The bank offers a 12-week maternity leave, so combined with my vacation time and etc, the earliest I would be returning would be September, if I go back at all. That is still up in the air, because it's very hard to know what I want to do, in a situation I've never been in before.

Our annual, surprise bank audit happened Wednesday, months before we were expecting it. (They actually nailed the "surprise!" part of it this year.) I was at the doctor's office when my coworker texted me, letting me know that the audit team was there... I'm glad the nurse had already checked my blood pressure by that point, because I'm sure it shot right up... I know my heart rate did. It's a nerve-wracking experience, a bank audit, no matter how prepared you think you are. We got the highest score possible, which is really unusual and puts us (me) in a very small winners' circle... The bank is buying dinner for me, my manager, her manager (like he had anything to do with it, really!) and two tellers; hopefully the dinner will be early next week or else there will be a tiny, uninvited guest coming along. I had originally been hoping that the auditors wouldn't come until I was gone, just so that I wouldn't have to go through it, (did I mention that it makes for a rough day?) but now I'm glad it happened this week. I figure that if they had come later in the summer, one of three things would have happened: we get a lower score based on something that was done wrong after I left (i.e. new people coming in and messing up my banking center, grrr); we would get a lower score based on something that I had unknowingly screwed up before I left, so that everybody is cursing me after I'm gone; or, we get the perfect score that we got Wednesday, but because I've been gone for a month, I get no credit for the results, even though I'd been diligently keeping the center in order for the whole year since the last audit... people's memories are short. This is really the best-possible outcome all around.

Things are starting to change in a way that makes me think that I'm not going to go past my due date. I think the baby has 'dropped' somewhat, based on the new, interesting pain in my pelvic bones; the sudden, otherwise unexplained, constipation, balanced out by *less* need to pee... baby's head seems to be resting in new places. I'm carrying so low that strangers feel the need to comment on it: "If that baby falls any more, he'll drop right out!" Well, that is kind of the plan, really. I've been very even-keeled, calm and steady, for most of this pregnancy, but in the last week or so I've been... less so. Hormonal whirlwind would be more accurate. 'Evil pregnant monster' might be Don's honest assessment, should you be able to drag such a thing out of him. I've actually cried twice in the last week, and I am not a crier in general. So, either all of these little changes mean that the baby is coming soon, or it means that the next two or three weeks are going to be... interesting**.

Last night, Don and I had to perform chicken surgery. Nobody mentions these things in the books glorifying backyard chicken-keeping; nobody discusses having to sneak into the hen house late at night, grab the bird you need, and spend a nerve-wracking ten minutes plucking feathers out of her feet. Now my first batch of birds were purebred, which means that you pretty much know exactly what you're getting. This batch is mixed, the result of somebody not separating their chickens by breed for the winter. Since I can't have a breeding flock anyway, it doesn't matter much, and it's actually been more fun so far; the first chickens were not only purebred, they were sisters, and completely identical to my eyes. These girls are all different. One's black-and-white, one's all white, one's almost all golden, and one is gold-and-black. She's the smallest, the prettiest, and Don's favorite. And for some reason, she has feathers growing down her legs and out of her feet. Now some breeds of chickens do have feathered legs and feet, but they tend to be fancy show birds, not the sturdy, barnyard layer types that are supposedly the parent stock of my chickens. We noticed several days ago that she was sort of limping and hobbling around. My first thought was that she'd hurt or broken her leg somehow, but a close inspection showed her legs to be fine, albeit with big feathers growing between her toes. At first I thought that maybe the feathers were just slowing her down, affecting her balance, (since the feathers were as big as her toes) but another few days showed her seemingly in pain, and pecking at the feathers to the point of drawing blood. We decided that if they were bothering her that much, the feathers had to go. So we waited until dark, kidnapped her, and I de-feathered her feet using pliers while Don held her on his lap. She was not happy with this procedure; I could tell it hurt. I think generally you don't pluck chickens until they're dead, but then again she was trying to get them out herself, and I think I did a better job. This morning she seems to be getting around easier; another day and we'll know for sure whether it was the right thing to do. At least the experience didn't traumatize her too badly, as this morning she's eating, drinking, and hanging out with the rest of the flock... This is a good thing since tonight, we'll be doing the same thing, except just to do another inspection, and a hydrogen-peroxide foot-bath. I love the chickens but they do walk in their own poop a lot, and she's essentially got open wounds on her feet-- I don't want her freed from the feathers only to be taken down by an infection instead. The joys of livestock, they never end. One funny thing, though; all of the advice books claim that you need to provide your chickens with at least 9" of roosting space per bird, and ideally 12". We have a four-foot-long roost in the coop for four birds. I thought, given the recommendations, that they would sort of evenly space themselves out along the roost at night, but it turns out that they all huddle close together, squashing themselves into the first 18" or so. I had wondered if they were doing something like that just based on where the droppings seemed to accumulate, but it wasn't confirmed until last night, when we actually saw them sleeping. I guess we could have used either half the length of roost, or had twice as many birds in there at night... Silly books.

*Don't worry, I'm fully aware that I would have to get past 42 weeks, not 40, to actually qualify as "overdue", and that the average first-time gestation is a little more than 41 weeks. But my work doesn't know that, and I have no intention of enlightening them.

** By which I mean HELL.

Bits of Things

2009-05-20T20:49:00.002-04:00

The Target in my city sells basic cloth diapers, which is nice. They do not, however, sell diaper pins. They use stylized images of diaper pins in their baby-section decor, but they don't actually offer said pins for sale. This confuses me, because without the pins to hold them together, the diapers are nothing more than burp-rags. I tried both the masculine and feminine methods for Finding Something in a Store, (because I am in touch with all of my aspects); first I wandered around by myself for ten minutes, looking and looking. Then I asked a salesperson for help. Neither method produced satisfactory results, but the womanly way was faster and more efficient, and came with a tip: try Babies'R'Us.

I've finally been making some progress around the house, little by little. Nothing like an impending deadline to get that fire burning, you know? There's still a ton to do, big messes everywhere, but I at least have a game-plan now. Don has discovered one of the Many Things to NOT Say to One's Pregnant Wife, which is that the fabric that she picked out for curtains* looks to him like it's covered in big marijuana plants**. This is the fabric that I spent three days choosing, on which I had already asked his opinion, and had spent most of the weekend sewing. It's a leafy, green batik print that mostly resembles BAMBOO. Believe me when I say that he has spent most of this week admiring the curtains...

I'd love to paint this room as well, but can't because it has water damage on the ceiling and (now) on one wall. The plan is: fix the leaky roof, THEN redo the walls/ceiling. It just makes more sense that way, really. But it will probably be a few weeks at least before Don can get to the roof, so no pretty green walls yet.

Had yet another doctor's appointment this morning, everything is still fantastic. Nothing to report. Turned down the option for a vaginal exam/ cervical check, because really, there's no point to them. When people ask me whether I'm dilated at all yet*** I basically just fib and say 'no'. I mean, I might be, and I might not be. It's easier than going into a diatribe of why internal exams aren't necessary during the last weeks of pregnancy.

*not for a nursery, since we don't have one, but for the room that is becoming the guest bedroom.

** Since he does not partake of said leafy herb, it wasn't a compliment, like, ah... my favorite plant... that it would be coming from some.

*** HONESTLY, the things people ask a pregnant woman. I'm sorry, but my cervix became your business WHEN exactly?!

Assurance

2009-05-14T17:40:00.002-04:00

I promise you all, Cathy is in good health! She is not obese, or even close. Her coat is nice and the dandruff is hardly noticable, unless you're brushing her. She hasn't stopped eating. She's had a recent physical (or whatever their called for pets-- a well-cat visit?) and was declared a fine specimen of an 8.5 year-old cat. Please don't worry!

Maternity Ward Tour

2009-05-13T18:46:00.004-04:00

I have finally taken the tour my hospital offers of its maternity ward. This is apparently something that one should sign up for many moons in advance, but I didn't get that memo. Honestly, there is so much involved in getting ready for a baby, which all has to be squished around the work day as it is, AND accommodate for having a pregnant body and mind*, that it's pretty amazing that any memos get through at all . So I called last week, and asked to reserve a place in this week's tour, only to be told that it had been booked solid for ages. But the nice lady asked when I was due, and when I told her, said that she'd keep my name and number handy in case there were any cancellations, and booked me for the next week instead. Who knew that the maternity tour was something you could be wait-listed for? Somebody actually cancelled, and the receptionist actually called me back to see if I wanted in. I did.

This actually gave me pause, because whoever couldn't show up, took the time to call and let the hospital know. Keep in mind that this is a free tour, so it's not like there's a deposit involved or something; it was just such a considerate thing to do, since the hospital takes so few people on each tour, and procrastinators like me are on a waiting list. If I had signed up early and then couldn't make it, would I have called? I hope so. More likely is that I would probably have meant to call and then forgot.

The tour was great. Don couldn't go given the short notice, so I was the mama-to-be that appeared to be all on my own, without even a girlfriend or mother for support. Ah well. The only aspect that Don was really concerned with was the "where to park, what door to go through" bit, and I took notes on that part. (We were wondering whether it would work better for Don to drop me at the front door and park the car, or if we should park together and walk up together-- I maintained that it really depended on how I was feeling at that moment. It turns out that there's free valet parking, solving that little dilemma right there.) On a similar note, I timed my trip from our front door to the hospital's parking lot, and it took 6.5 minutes. This was during the worst part of rush hour traffic, going the speed limit, and obeying all laws; it would be even faster later in the evening. Sometimes I love living downtown.

If this hospital had a theme song, it would appear to be Roy Orbison's "Anything You Want". We have jacuzzi tubs! Birth balls! Squatting bars! Epidurals! NO epidurals! A snack room just for you! The baby at your side! Or, the baby in the nursery! The nurse's refrain was, "but it's totally up to you! It's your choice!"-- she must have said it a dozen times at least. They do have a few rules. You can wander around the halls, but should stay on the fourth floor; apparently this was instituted after a doctor (temporarily) lost her patient and happened to catch sight of her through the window, walking down the street, two blocks away. I'm assuming that patient chose to labor in her own clothes and not a hospital gown. (It's totally your choice!) I was pretty impressed, both with the ward itself** and with this cater-to-the-patient attitude. Of course, we'll have to see how it actually plays out during the real event. It could all be window-dressing, I suppose.

I had a prenatal appointment the next morning with my least-favorite-of-the-three-OBs and mentioned the tour, said it seemed pretty awesome. The doctor's reply (and you must imagine this in a heavy, Eastern European or Russian accent): "It is a small hospital, quite small maternity ward, which is good for personal care, I guess. The equipment is fairly up-to-date. Most of the time, they know what they are doing." High praise, indeed. "most of the time"?! Other than that, the appointment went very well; the only embarrassing incident was when the nurse found me using the hand-sink in the nurses' station after delivering my urine sample, and I had to explain that instead of peeing IN the cup, I accidentally peed ALL OVER the cup***, and then had to carry it. Ick. Blood pressure, fetal heart rate, fundal measurements, all good. Weight is shocking, but not a concern. I guess we're getting there!

*Honestly, I can deal more easily with the pregnant body than the infamous "pregnancy brain". Hips and back hurt, everything heavy and slow? You adapt, adjust, take a little extra time or effort, take a nap. How do you adapt to leaving your keys random places, or forgetting to put the groceries in the fridge?

** Not that I have anything to compare it with, it just seems really nice, with the big bathtubs and bouncy balls and all.

*** Because things Down There are Not the Same: peeing in a cup, at which I used to be a pro (you would too if you spent so many months using ovulation-prediction kits for half the month, then pregnancy tests the other half-- you only have to have one faulty, no-answer pregnancy test before you start using a cup just in case. "ARRGGH the test didn't work and now the first-morning-urine has been flushed! I can't test again until TOMORROW!") is now more like using a water hose with your thumb over the end, and still trying to aim.

Definition of Infinity

2009-05-13T18:22:00.003-04:00

If you groom an 11-pound, short-haired cat with a wire brush, the brush fills up with hair, which then has to be removed and thrown away. (I call the clump that comes off the brush a hair-biscuit; the process of removing it is oddly satisfying, kind of like getting the dryer lint off the screen in one piece.)

If the cat enjoys being brushed, as mine does, you'd think that eventually, the hair-biscuits would become smaller or less frequent as you continue to groom; or even that the brush would eventually stop accumulating fur entirely. All of those thoughts are wrong. What happens is that the brush collects hair at the same rate for as long as you are willing to brush said cat. Therefore, the amount of cat hair on this one cat, is INFINITE. This discovery goes a long way in explaining the condition of our house and furniture.

Incidentally, it turns out that the solution to cat dandruff has nothing to do with grooming, but rather involves adding fish oil to her diet*. Thank goodness, because if there's one thing a pregnant lady has on hand, it's fish oil... it's too bad she seems to heartily dislike it, so far. They say that it can take up to 15 presentations of an unfamiliar or disliked food, before a child will finally accept it. Nobody seems to know anything about how many presentations it takes for a cat. Will it take two solid weeks of dribbling (expensive, people-quality) fish oil on her kibble before she starts enjoying it? Or will the fact that she has nothing else to eat except fish-tainted Purina One speed up the process? Does anybody sell cheap, pet-quality fish oil, and does wondering about that make me a bad person? Stay tuned for the exciting conclusions, next!

*Thank you Google. My debt to you is also bordering on infinite-- so much information, some of it valid, and all for free... Where else would the phrase "cat dandruff" return 360,000 hits?

Trudging Uphill

2009-05-04T08:28:00.002-04:00

Don returned home Thursday evening. Since then, he has fixed the toilet and the air conditioner, mowed the front yard, and used the string trimmer on all the edges. (The string trimmer is beyond my capabilities at the moment... apparently they don't come with front-wheel drive like the lawnmower.) It's good to have him back.

I'm finally making a little bit of progress in terms of getting everything together for the baby's arrival. My goal of having everything "done" by the end of April turned out to be a huge joke, except not the funny kind. Still, I've bought the car seat, started the diaper stash, washed a bunch of the clothes and blankets, and started looking for a dresser/changing table on Craig's List. Don and I started looking for our new couch yesterday, too. This may not seem baby-related, but it is, in its own way. We have two bedrooms, and contrary to popular expectations, we aren't turning the second into a nursery, but into a guest bedroom/ study. In the beginning, at least, the baby and his/her accessories will stay in our bedroom. To accomplish this, we're going to move our futon, which has faithfully served as our one-and-only sofa for many years, into the spare room to be the guest bed as needed (it actually makes a comfortable bed, honest!), and buying a Real, Grownup Sofa for the living room. Exciting stuff, seriously. That way, when people come to stay with us, we have a place to put them that isn't the living room. Since my mom is planning to come as soon as the baby arrives (or sooner, depending how long Baby takes to get here), and my sister and her boyfriend are coming in late June, it's pretty critical to our overall baby-readiness. The biggest setback is that I currently have NO energy. None. It seems to be all I can do to go to work each day.

Speaking of work, I no longer have access to The Internet from there: a new company-wide policy is preventing us from checking our personal email accounts, and is monitoring and tracking who is still doing so. It doesn't take a huge leap to think that this also may apply to Google, Amazon, EBay, and other non-work related sites. Since I did almost all of my blog-updating on my lunch breaks, posting might be even scarcer than usual for the next three weeks. (Three weeks, because that's when my vacation starts-- the vacation with no end date! Sad, I know, but I'm almost as excited about NOT WORKING for awhile as I am about the baby coming. Three more weeks!)

Who Needs a Man?

2009-04-29T12:11:00.002-04:00

Me, apparently. I do. Who would have thunk?

Don has been out of town, again, these last two weeks. His father took a sudden turn for the worse and was rehospitalized, so Don drove back to Illinois on the doctor's strong suggestion. We were both hoping that it was a false alarm, not as bad as it seemed, maybe the doc and his mom were over-reacting, etc, but apparently the doctor knew of what he spoke, as Don's dad passed away last week. It was decided for me that I should remain here and not travel for the funeral, so while Don has been there, tending to his mom, funeral arrangements, financial stuff, and cleaning his parents' garage; I've been here, holding down the fort. So to speak.

It is interesting, in a way, to discover exactly what one can and can't (or won't) do, when one is used to having a handy spouse around. Can I mow the lawn, having never done it before, and being eight months pregnant? Apparently, yes. (Four times in two weeks, since I can't do the back yard and front yard at the same time. The chickens aren't as scared of the mower as I think they should be.) Can I fix the air-conditioning unit when it breaks during an almost-unprecedented 90-degree April weekend? No. Can I still move the chicken coop, in my delicate condition? Yes. Operate the string trimmer? No. Fix the toilet, which also broke? No, but I know how to turn the water off at the base. Buy 120 pounds of compost and manure from Lowe's, haul it to the backyard, spread it on my garden, rake it in, and plant all the plants? Yes. Without crying from the pain and stiffness the next day? No. And I can take the dog on every one of her walks, morning, afternoon, and night, and keep everybody fed, watered, pooped and happy.

Really, it's as though the house knew Don was leaving, and felt vengeful towards me for some reason*. The high on Saturday was 93, and the air just never kicked on. It got to 89 degrees inside the house, even with all of the windows open and ceiling fans running. At 4:30 in the morning, it was still 79 inside. Sunday and Monday were the same. I did essentially nothing all weekend but take cool showers and lay naked on the bed under the fan-- so much for my to-do list. Who could vacuum or do laundry in that heat, I ask you**? Meanwhile, the toilet started running nonstop, water trickling endlessly from the tank to the bowl, and fast. I think the house doesn't like me.

When Don gets back, it will be to a neat yard, semi-clean house, planted garden, and healthy chicken-coop. But can I say that while I'm glad to have earned my I-can-do-it, who-needs-a-man! badge, I'd rather not have to? I hope yesterday was the last time I'll have to mow the lawn this season. On the bright side, I found at my doctor's appointment this morning that my weight has actually dropped a bit. Whether from all of the physical exertion of late, or from doing nothing but drinking water and sweating copiously all weekend, I don't know, but I'm guessing the latter. To think, some people pay a lot of money to experience such things. Come to my home, and sweat for free!

*Does this count as paranoia?

** Except for all of the generations of women who did it before a/c was even invented, and didn't get a break for being pregnant, either.

Try, try again

2009-04-14T12:02:00.003-04:00

I have new chickens, replacements for my girls that were killed in the Pre-Thanksgiving Massacre. We have a new back gate, and new reinforcements on the back doors of the coop. It takes me some time now to undo all the latches in order to change the feed, water, or bedding, but that's OK. These doors can't be opened by anything but human hands and a decent amount of strength. I also accidentally trapped myself in the backyard, as the gate opens out (so that it can't be pushed in) and the latch is the type that drops into the ground. It seems that it is possible to drop the latch by reaching over the gate, but once it's lowered, it's too low to reach from the other side. Thank goodness Don was mowing the front yard and saw me jumping up and down trying to get his attention.

We are also experimenting, trying to determine exactly how "teachable" chickens are. Obviously they can learn some things; for example it only took them a few days to realize that Mara = food and they like me a lot, now. What we want, is for the girls to learn to run for the coop should they see a dog in the yard. We're using Alice, who is a hunter by blood and would kill the birds if she had the chance. We walked her down to the backyard and when she saw the birds, she froze and pointed. She raced around and around the run, and the birds ran in circles inside. Then three of them jumped up into the coop, while the fourth (re-named Stupid) continued to flap in circles. Eventually she figured it out, too. It's too soon to tell if they're learning (we'll do another trial next weekend but I don't want to put undue stress on them), although I noticed last night that when a bunch of neighborhood dogs started barking, the chickens all ran to the side of the run (haha, that sounds funny) and stared out, alert-like.

I hope it's safe to say that, whatever may happen with THESE chickens, it won't be a dog attack. I say all this because whenever I announce the arrival of New Chickens, the first thing people tend to ask about is our new defensive system, as in, "You're not going to let dogs get these ones too, are you?" Still, when I called Don yesterday evening, they were the first thing he asked about-- "Is it the chickens? Are they OK?"-- still traumatized, I guess, by my phone call last November along the lines of, "All my chickens are dead and I need you to come home and deal with the bodies."

I'll have pictures soon. Meant to take some Sunday when we were free-ranging, since the photos come out so much better without the wire mesh of the run in the way, but I forgot to bring the camera downstairs with me.

Let Me S'plain.

2009-04-13T11:17:00.003-04:00

No, there is too much; let me sum up.

Sorry for the extra-long, worrisome silence. Everything is OK.

My father-in-law was hospitalized shortly after my trip to Texas, with a cascade of issues; the most serious being a stroke and the most immediate, a kidney infection. I didn't want to write about it until I knew more about what was happening, which took a long time. He has since been moved from the hospital to a nursing home for 'recovery'; whether he graduates from there back to his home remains to be seen, but the estimates right now are at about 3 months. Whether that estimate is based on his actual progress or on insurance, I can't tell.

Don drove out to be with his parents and was there for a little more than a week. I didn't want to post about that, not wanting to advertise my being all alone, not ever really knowing who's reading the blog, etc. There's something about being this much pregnant that makes me feel more vulnerable than usual. I don't know if it's because I'm all big, slow, and wobbly, not my usual nimble self, or because I'm feeling defensive for the little one within. Either way, I find myself suspicious of passers-by, fast-moving vehicles, thunder and lightning, everything.

I am finding out why nobody seems to rave about the last trimester of pregnancy; it's really starting to kick my ass. All of the energy and drive that I had in January and February left me sometime in mid-March. All of the great things I was getting done, have been un-done by sheer entropy and nap-attacks. The baby is coming and NOTHING IS READY.

We did get more chickens. Many posts to follow, surely, about the new chickens.

More of the same

2009-03-18T12:47:00.002-04:00

Two weird things.

First, bookending my vacation to Dallas last week, were two days of perfect flights. Four planes took off on time, landed on time, let me off the plane and into the airport, on time. Twice, I got through security with hardly any lines and no hassle. Nothing was cancelled, or rerouted, or delayed; I did not find myself in cities that I'd had no intention of visiting. I did not have to avail myself of the Little White Bags. For anybody not familiar with my general experiences with flying, to say that this is not usual for me is rather an understatement. All I can think is that the universe is still paying back a little karma for the Dallas/Austin/New Mexico saga last December. I wonder how many good flights I can have before my usual luck kicks back in?

Second, I had a doctor's appointment this morning (every two weeks now, sheesh) and I didn't have to wait. AT ALL. I arrived twenty minutes early, and was called back before I could even open a magazine. Then, instead of leaving me alone in the examining room for half an hour (you, know, like last time) the doctor came right in and did his thing. My appointment was scheduled for 9:45am, and I was back in my car by 9:51. Amazing.

Today's visit was with Doctor # 3, so I've finally met everybody who may deliver my baby. (Although I had ANOTHER fast-birth-accidentally-at-home-Don-delivered dream a few days ago. I don't generally put much stock in dreams, but why does this one keep coming up? I'm only a few repetitions shy of signing him up for an emergency-childbirth class.) Doctor # 3 seemed pretty cool, definitely laid-back, and rather patient-as-consumer, which isn't a bad thing. (I.e., birth = whatever the heck I want.) He did seem a little surprised that I was only now really thinking about labor and birth, that I hadn't signed up yet for the classes I hoped to take, etc. It's hard to explain, but after so many losses, one takes pregnancy day-by-day... you don't think ahead, don't plan ahead, don't assume that you'll still be pregnant tomorrow just because you happen to be that day. It's only now, in my third trimester, that I can start thinking about giving birth, breastfeeding, things we'll need for a baby, stuff like that. Everybody seems to be asking, "What do you have so far for the baby?" "Bought a crib yet?" "Done the nursery?" and it seems so foreign. Like, you do those things THIS EARLY? Don't you know what could happen? No, bless you, of course you don't. May it stay that way. But you would think that a doctor might make the emotional connection between the four miscarriages on the chart, and the delay of interest in the later stages of pregnancy, labor, birth. Either way, apparently I need to call the hospital ASAP if I want to learn how to breathe, or, you know, where the L&D department is.

I have gained an amazing amount of weight. (29 pounds if you must know, and I'm 29 weeks along. Hey!) I now weigh about one pound shy of my husband. Pretty soon if he annoys me, I will be able to just sit on him. But, the doc says it's no problem, nothing to worry about, except for if I want to lose it again later.

Most Recent Appointment

2009-03-06T14:54:00.002-05:00

I aced my glucose test, and basically failed on iron. Based on my rudimentary knowledge of diet, I would have predicted the opposite: I get a decent amount of iron but eat my weight in sugars every few days. Since getting those results I've done some research, and now realize that the copious amounts of dairy I consume have probably prevented most of that iron from getting through. (Yeah, the whole fortified cereal thing? It doesn't really do much good if you eat your cereal with milk. Go figure. And chopping up my prenatal vitamins and mixing them into yogurt probably wasn't the BEST idea. Too bad the best spinach is creamed spinach...)

Nurse: "Actually, with iron levels in this range, I'm a bit surprised that you're not experiencing any symptoms from it."

Me: "What kind of symptoms?"

Nurse: "Primarily fatigue. Being very tired, not having enough energy, is the first and strongest sign of iron deficiency."

Me: "Well of COURSE I'm exhausted, but I kind of figured it was from being six months pregnant. Or from the chronic insomnia of the past several months..."

Honestly, how am I supposed to tell one kind of fatigue from another? She seemed surprised that I am still standing up and walking around under my own power. Now, I take most of the doctor's-office tests with a grain of salt or two; half of them are half-useless and some can do more harm than good. But iron, not so much. I know that at about 28 weeks the baby starts storing iron (from MY blood supply) in its own little liver, and that store is supposed to help him or her get through the first six months or so of life. So not having good iron stores means that either the baby saps me dry and I become really anaemic, or the baby doesn't get enough and is either born with low iron or is deficient within a few months, or both. Iron deficiency can also contribute to early labor and premature birth. I'm kicking myself right now for not foreseeing that this could be a problem; I've been turned away from blood drives a few times over the years for not having enough iron to donate, and I know that the last miscarriage took a lot out of me. Now I'm 27 weeks and trying to make up lost ground, and it can take months to reestablish healthy stores. I wish I'd requested an extra test early in the pregnancy, but then I was too concerned with the more life-or-death stuff like progesterone, hCG betas, all that jazz.

So, I am on a separate iron supplement, and (more importantly) a strategy to keep it far away from any stray calcium. (It's not a complicated strategy: don't eat any dairy or other calcium foods after 2:00pm or so, then take the iron a little before dinner around 7:30pm or so, with some orange juice.) I ordered the fancy, plant-based Floradix that so many people swear by, it will arrive next week while I'm in Texas. In the meantime I'm taking prescription samples. I'm also drinking more of my medicinal tea, which itself is high in iron.

Meanwhile, the doctors are quite pleased with my blood sugar and blood pressure, and if they have any concerns about my weight gain, they haven't voiced them. I saw Dr. Zoidberg again, even though I'm supposed to see each doctor in turn. (My fault, because I had to reschedule. No wait, WORK's fault, for making me reschedule.) He is a little odd in that his answer to everything seems to be, "More water, prunes, vitamins." Which makes sense when you're discussing constipation, but this is the answer to maybe four different issues? I mentioned that ordinary activities like walking, or going up a flight of stairs, was making my leg muscles burn as though I'd been working out, and his answer was still more-water-and-vitamins. Meanwhile, his solution to the insomnia was to NOT drink so much water before bed (even though it's not my bladder waking me up), and his answer to the heartburn was Tums, even after telling me that calcium is the enemy of iron. Help. It was quite funny, though, when he was explaining that I would need to take extra iron, and that the iron WILL make me constipated if we don't have a plan of attack. "You will need to plan ahead! Water! Lots of water! Buy some prune juice! Fruits are good but NOT bananas!" (Oh, that banana I've eaten every day for two months? Not helping, apparently. But, it is the only thing that helps with the leg cramps, so oh well. I'll trade brain-freezing leg cramps for being a little stopped up.) I guess it's only funny if you can imagine it in the heavy Eastern European accent, and with the going-to-war-against-poo gesturing. He did explain WHY I have heartburn, which really interested me. Apparently, my body is being ruled by progesterone right now... the same progesterone I couldn't make enough of, so many times. Now I have lots. Progesterone relaxes soft muscle tissue, because part of its job is to keep the uterus relaxed and happy (i.e., not forcibly ejecting the baby.) The little sphincter (hehehe) at the base of the esophagus is ALSO soft muscle tissue, and equally affected by the hormone. So it, too, is relaxed and happy, and not doing its job of keeping the stomach's acid where it should be. Live and learn! (I wonder, although I didn't ask, whether any of the muscles of the bladder or urinary tract are this kind of muscle, too, and whether that would explain the random incontinence of pregnancy; if the uterus is relaxed so that it won't contract before its time, and the esophagus is all relaxed and not guarding itself against acid, maybe the bladder is relaxed and not holding in what it should. Just a theory from this maxipad-packin', pregnant woman...)

Well, I must go now and drink some water, take my vitamins, and eat a few prunes, in preparation for my flights to Texas tomorrow...

Because you asked...

2009-03-03T18:27:00.003-05:00

A coworker took these pictures for me. I think they illustrate a lot more than just my baby-belly, unfortunately; especially the fact that my ass has grown substantially to counter-balance said belly. And that, apparently, I'm growing another chin, too.

And you all wonder why I never post pictures...

6 months, more or less

2009-02-26T13:51:00.001-05:00

I don't know what it is, but people don't like to see a cheerful, pregnant woman. It is, apparently, irksome. I get asked, "How are you feeling?" and when I reply, "Great!", everybody says the same thing: "Just wait!" Wait until next month, the next trimester, labor, birth, parenthood. Nobody ever seems to say, "That's wonderful!" or "How nice." Why try to bring me down? Does my feeling good somehow, in their eyes, make me so deluded as to think that I will always feel good, and so they must warn me otherwise? It's too hard (and private) to explain that "great" is short-hand for, "After everything that I've been through to get to this point, after four miscarriages and six months of specialists, after thinking that I would never get to have a healthy pregnancy, how could this be anything BUT great? Sure, I'm not sleeping at night, my hips and back have been killing me for months, and I've peed on myself twice, at work, with no idea how it happened. But I DON'T CARE because there is a BABY INSIDE OF ME and s/he is ALIVE. That, people, is GREAT. Period."

Similarly, someone that comes to where I work has been commenting on the fact that I'm "getting big!" Well, yeah, that's kind of supposed to happen, you know? I'm six months pregnant, and pretty much right on-track for weight gain, fetus size, and overall "look"-- that is, I look about six months along, not much more or much less. Am I supposed to be upset over getting bigger? There is a baby growing in there, after all. I guess I don't get it... I just say, "I sure am! Can't wait to see what I look like in May!" which so far has shut her up.

Two wonderful things happened yesterday. The first is that I discovered this movement that relieves almost all of the pain in my hips. You stand with legs a bit apart and knees bent, and then move your hips around in a huge circle several times, and then the other way. Then the first way again. Etc. I figured this out by accident in the shower, trying to get the hot water to land on my back the right way. It's awesome. I wouldn't recommend doing it in public, though, because it looks like something half-way between hula-hooping and what a cat does right before it hacks up a hairball. I did this so much last night that I have that post-work-out burn in my thighs today-- but my hips don't hurt. The other thing was that, somehow, I slept almost all night long. I woke up this morning and remembered, this is what it feels like to be rested. I'd forgotten.

Tips for Better Banking

2009-02-24T11:59:00.003-05:00

First: If your bank requires deposit slips to make a deposit, then you generally have two options: use your own, pre-printed deposit tickets, or fill out the generic form offered at the bank. USE YOUR OWN SLIPS. Seriously.

Pros:
Much faster. They already have your name, address, and account number printed on them, so all you have to do is fill in the date and the money. You get to smugly slide by all the poor saps standing around the counter, laboriously printing out their address for the millionth time.

More accurate: Mistakes happen. Deposit slips have to be read by multiple sets of eyes, and messy handwriting or transposed digits on a hand-written slip can derail a deposit. Hand-filled deposit tickets have to be typed by hand into the computer system, first by the teller and later by a proof-work operator. Your pre-printed slips are read through a machine: more accurate, and again, faster for you.

Cons: None. They're free to order, so why on earth not, right? There are a few at the back of every book of checks, and you can order deposit slips separately... at no cost. This is because the bank WANTS you to use them.

Second: Take some of that time you're saving by using pre-printed tickets, and write your account number on the back of every check. Some banks require this. Some don't. It doesn't matter-- this is for YOU, not the bank. This comes back to the "mistakes happen" concept. Sometimes a check gets separated from the herd... ah, from the deposit. Bank paperwork equals big stacks of deposits, rubber-banded together and sent elsewhere. 99.999% of the time, every check in every deposit gets where it needs to be-- the system works. But for that one check that doesn't, it ends up in a "homeless items" bin somewhere, waiting to be matched back to the account it belongs with. If that account number is written on the back, then the check can get back where it needs to be so fast, you may never notice that anything went awry. If there's no account number, though, it can take a long time: long enough to cause major problems for you. By labeling the checks in your deposit, you are only protecting yourself!

Third: Writing your account number on every check does something else for you: it helps you learn or memorize your account number. No, you don't need to know the whole thing, but memorizing at least the last four digits of each account is very useful. For one thing, when you look at your receipt and the last four numbers on it, you may notice if the teller screwed up your deposit.

Fourth: If you have multiple accounts, have some mental system for knowing which is which. The best, as stated above, is to know at least the last four digits of each. Otherwise, know (for example) whether one is in your name only but the other is jointly held, or the approximate balances in each if the balances are relatively stable. That way, if you walk up to the teller window and ask to withdraw from an account, or transfer from a checking account to a credit card to make a payment, or close an account, and the teller asks, "OK, which account?"... you have a good answer. This will keep you from getting your stuff in trouble by using the wrong account for the wrong thing. Again, account numbers are best because they are concrete.

Fifth: Speaking of credit cards, if you have any, set your PINs. While every debit card holder has a PIN to use at the ATM or at stores as "debit", most credit card holders have no idea what their PIN is. Working with the theory that credit cards are for emergencies, it is imperative that you be able to use one for cash if need be. To get a cash advance off of a credit card at an ATM, you need that PIN. Hopefully, this will be something you never, ever have to do, since the interest rates and fees for cash advances are awful. But you never know*, so be prepared! To set a new PIN, call the customer service number on the back of the card. It's usually one of the first options offered in the automated menu.

Fifth-A: PIN advice: I set the PIN for all of my credit cards and my debit card to the same number. Now it doesn't matter how seldom I use it, it's that number for everything. Also, do not use any part of your date of birth or your social security number. Hello, obvious?

Sixth: Research what your bank offers, so that you can take advantage of everything. Chances are, you're already paying for it one way or another. Free online banking? Free savings if you have a checking? Free checking if you direct-deposit your paycheck? Free text-message alerts if your balance drops below (x) dollars? Savings services that make matching contributions? Debit cards linked to charitable organizations? For brand-new customers, all of this is spelled out in the account set-up, but if you've had your account for years, you may be missing out. When you're in the bank, look around at the promotional materials; if your friend banks where you do and his debit card has the Habitat for Humanity logo on it, ask how he got it and why; or just sit down with someone at the bank, and ask if your accounts are still the best thing going. Banks are constantly rolling out new programs, trying to attract new customers, but old customers can really get the shaft if they aren't paying attention.

*Last summer, the day I found out I was going to miscarry our fourth pregnancy, was such a time. Don was out of town, my car was in the shop, I was driving his truck, his truck got towed, and I was stranded. I was without cash and without my debit card (it was in a pants pocket at home), I was at the doctor's office and fairly nuts from grief from what I'd just seen on the ultrasound (i.e. another failed pregnancy). All I had was my Discover card and my cellphone. Luckily I was able to use the phone to get a ride from a friend (back to the impound lot where the truck was), and borrow cash from her, too. But that day I called Discover and re-set my PIN so that should I ever need to, I can withdraw from it, and started carrying cash in my wallet at all times.

Paper Hoarder

2009-02-22T13:49:00.006-05:00

There is one part of this whole cleaning/de-cluttering that I'd been putting off for as long as possible, until every other major task had been completed... the PAPER. Piles of paper. Mounds of paper. Drawers, boxes, files full of paper. Important papers mixed with junk mail mixed with sentimental stuff. Like most pack rats, Don and I hold onto stuff like paperwork "in case we need it someday", while still managing to lose or misplace the bits we really do need. We had years' worth of bank statements, electric bills, and pay stubs, since I had no clear idea what needed to be kept for how long, and what could be tossed.

Last weekend, I jumped in head first and just tackled it. This was my system: grab a mountain of papers from somewhere (I ended up working in roughly reverse-chronological order, since the most recent paper-junk was the easiest to reach, rather like an archaeological dig) and sort into three categories: keep (actual, important documents), toss (non-personal items without identifying information), and shred (stuff with our names, addresses, socials, whatever). Needless to say, the "keep" pile ended up being the smallest. Once I was done with that arm-load of paper, I sorted the "keep" into actual, labeled files: tax returns, W2 forms, 10-99s, mortgage documents, everything. I had a separate "keep" stack for things that were sentimental: snapshots, letters, cards. Once the first armload was done, I'd grab another pile, do the same. Repeat. Stop periodically to shred. Here's what my work-table looked like at one, random point in the process:

I ended up filling more than 5 paper grocery bags with shredded paper. Unfortunately, I didn't think to document this amazing feat until the first batch or two had already gone on the compost heap, so this is only the last of it:

I don't know if every bit of paper is sorted, I can't find any more, but with our housekeeping skills that is no guarantee. I read in a book about organization, that the only kind of filing system that works for paper is vertical storage. Anything horizontal is just a stack. I really didn't get that before, strange as it probably sounds. Several years ago, I built myself a desk with a cabinet. The bottom drawer was supposed to be a file-drawer, but I didn't size it quite right, and it was too shallow to hold files vertically. I still ended up throwing all the paperwork in there, but horizontally. Stacked. That drawer was one of the last areas to be attacked, and it was a bitch to clean out. Now, I have this:

And that's all that's left of the paper. It took me an entire weekend and several evenings. My room is still a mess from the aftermath. The compost heap will be out-of-whack for awhile, trying to absorb all that paper. But it is finished. It's such a relief, for several reasons. For one, I have a system now. As of now, our entire life-on-paper fits neatly into 25 hanging folders. If something new comes up, I can make a new folder, but currently there is a place for everything. I know now what we can just get rid of immediately; going through this process has really helped with my sense of what to keep and what not to. This really synchronizes with my new policy of dealing with the mail right away, every day. No new piles! Second, I know where everything important is now. All those things I knew "were in a pile around here someplace" like our homeowners insurance policy, or the title to Don's truck, are piled no more. We are planning to get a safety deposit box at the bank soon for the really important, hard to replace documents, but for now, at least they're all in one place and I know where that is. Third, I know that there will be back-sliding. Twenty-eight years of messy doesn't go all organized in three months flat and stay that way. I will most likely fall off the wagon at some point. But it will never be as bad as it was before, because all that stuff is gone. We're starting with a clean slate right now. If I let all the paper go again for a month, or even for a year, at least I will never be shredding bank statements from 2004 again.

Although it is a dietary staple

2009-02-18T10:33:00.002-05:00

Don: So I was thinking about names today.

Me: And...?

Don: How about Benjamin for a boy, or Geraldine for a girl?

Me:...

Don: If only it were twins and we could do both...

Me: ... We are NOT naming our baby after the ice cream!

Viable

2009-02-11T17:56:00.003-05:00

We have passed the 24-week mark, a big milestone, the earliest age of viability. It means that if this little Passenger was for some reason (God forbid) born now, s/he would have a chance of surviving. It also means, more practically, that should something threaten the pregnancy at this point, doctors will do everything in their power to fix it and save the baby. (There seems to be a sliding scale here, from the early days when they tell you, "Yep, you're going to have a miscarriage, might as well go home and be comfortable" to performing life-saving heroics-- in-utero surgeries, major drugs to stop contractions, things like that-- based on the baby's viability. We're on the good side of that scale now.) I am now pregnant enough to have total strangers ask me when I'm due, if I know what I'm having. I am also now wider front-to-back than I am from side-to-side, for the first time ever. I found this out in a narrow corridor in a restaurant; I was exiting the bathroom as a waitress was coming by with an armload of dishes... I did that instinctive thing where you turn sideways to let someone pass by, only to find that it made the situation worse, not better. Whoops. I discovered this weekend that the problem with a normally very active fetus is that, occasionally, it will try to freak you out by taking a few really long naps. I'm so used to this constant, reassuring tumble-kick-slam, that when my little rugby player wouldn't move for what felt like hours at a time on Sunday, I panicked. Then Sunday night s/he started right back up again. Stop messing with mommy's mind, little one. All I want is for you to be alive, is that so much to ask? Speaking of my mind, I'm losing it. I didn't believe in "pregnancy brain" until today... maybe I still don't, since I can also blame the never-ending insomnia. But I accidentally left my purse at work, the work that is a 1/4-mile walk from the bank where we park. I had to walk back and forth, again, to get it.

Things I thought wouldn't happen to me that I was wrong about:

pregnancy brain
urinary incontinence AKA sneeze-pee-damn!
waddling (not yet but I can feel it coming, my walk is changing)
constantly touching belly

I'm wondering what else is going to make that list...

Little steps

2009-02-05T12:17:00.003-05:00

Part of my cleaning/organizing marathon includes trying to get rid of anything we don't use anymore. Sounds totally obvious, I know, but it's like doing the dishes after dinner every night: what seems perfectly obvious and normal to normal people just doesn't occur to us, and when it does it's an inspiration.

WHY do I still have a bridesmaid dress (with matching shoes) from a wedding I was in three years ago? Storage in our home is very limited; we have two bedrooms, each with one reach-in closet. The closet in our "master bedroom" (in quoties because HA! hahahaha) is really small, maybe five feet long, so Don uses that one. The closet in the spare bedroom is a lot longer, so I've been using that one for my clothes, and one million other things. Now we have a baby coming, and I've been told you have to dress THEM in clothes, too, at least most of the time. More stuff is coming in, and yet no new closets have magically made themselves available. I don't understand this at all. To make the most of our closet, I have obtained* one of these closet organizer thingies. I hope it's as efficient as it looks, because we really can't bring in much more furniture. And have I mentioned that we're going with the cloth diapers? Oy. Hence, me getting rid of everything I don't wear, like bridesmaid dresses. A lot of it was easy, since I can't fit into any of my existing wardrobe, all I had to do is ask myself, "When I'm this size again, which will be at least a year from now, will I still want this?" "NO." Right now the organizer is still in the box. Getting Don to install it will be my reward for getting that room clean, I think, although finishing up downstairs comes first.

Speaking of downstairs, did I mention that we drove to IKEA last weekend-- about 2 1/2 hours away-- and cleaned out the rest of our renovation account for cabinets, counters, et al? I don't think the folks there are used to people buying an entire kitchen, from drawer pulls to faucets, at once. I can't wait until the apartment is totally finished, I'm just sick of dealing with it already. Honestly, we had no idea when we bought this place last summer, that we'd end up having to completely gut the kitchen and rebuild it from the wall studs on... New lumber, insulation, drywall, electric and plumbing, everything. it's really the kind of thing you want to plan on ahead of time, you know? Don has the next week off of work, and hopefully that is all it will take.

*I didn't buy it, I redeemed my "points" at work. We get them for random things like winning contests; I've been here for four years and had racked up quite a few and never used up any. Part of the changes for 2009 include no more points system: any we have we have to cash out by the end of the month. So I bought a closet system with them.

Doctor's visit

2009-02-04T17:23:00.003-05:00

I had my prenatal appointment this morning, the one I'm supposed to have every four weeks but haven't had since October. You know you dislike your job when a doctor's appointment is actually exciting and fun: when the idea of peeing in a cup and having your blood pressure taken is a distinct improvement over a conference call.

There are three or four different obstetricians in the practice that I'm seeing, and their policy is to rotate each patient through each doctor several times for office visits; that way when it comes time to deliver, there's no "Hi, I'm your OB today!" conversation between contractions. I think it makes sense, although it means you're never seeing the same dude twice in a row. Today's doctor is the practice's New Guy, and his accent is surprisingly similar to Dr. Zoidberg's of Futurama, making me wonder if Dr. Zoidberg's accent (which I'd always assumed was made up) is based on some authentic dialect. It it going to be very difficult to NOT think of this doctor as Dr. Zoidberg in my mind, sadly. I like him so far, though, because he seems very diet-and-lifestyle oriented. When I mentioned my insomnia, he talked about what to do and not do before bed; when the prenatal-vitamin-constipation issue came up, he listed prunes, yogurt, fruits and vegetables, instead of medications. I'm more used to doctors throwing prescriptions or samples at me, so it's rather refreshing. He asked me maybe six times if I had any questions, but I don't. Except for the insomnia, I feel fantastic. (Actually, considering the amount of sleep I'm averaging, I feel amazing, like if I got seven hours of sleep sometime, I'd probably be able to fly.) He asked me if I'd had any bleeding or discharge (nope) and then asked, "Is there any reason I should do a cervical check?" Well if I'm not having any bleeding or discharge, why would we need to do that, right? Are there some women that just don't feel like it's a successful doctor's visit if they don't have a gloved hand up their privates?

Getting weighed was really funny. I've gained a good bit of weight (enough where I think I need to start paying more attention or else hit 50 pounds by June, I'm afraid), but that increase is since my 8-week appointment three months ago, the last they have on record for me. The nurse weighs me and starts to record the number, and I watch as her eyes get huge (clearly thinking that I've somehow gained 20 pounds in four weeks-- is that even possible?) then furrowed, as she compares the dates, then relaxed again as she realizes that my chart is just really screwed up. "Haven't been here in awhile, huh?" "Nope."

The problem with watching my weight or my diet, is that food has become amazingly wonderful. ALL food. My appetite is amazing, I think about food and eating fairly constantly. Everything tastes so good, even mundane things like apples or hard-boiled eggs. I have almost said out loud, "Be QUIET, I am concentrating on this apple! MMMmmm... apple." but luckily did not, as I was at work at the time. But it's like that with everything. I distinctly remember having a conversation with a friend who told me about this second-trimester eat-a-thon (she compared it to being stoned, I do believe) and now I'm experiencing it for myself. Well, how hard can it be to lose fifty pounds, anyway? I must go, we're having eggs and sausages for dinner, and they aren't going to cook themselves.... Mmmmm sausages.

Recap

2009-02-02T12:47:00.005-05:00

All in all January was a fantastic month for getting stuff done. I have scared my husband, who is not used to so much productivity, activity. But he is enjoying the food and the house.

My new bill-paying system is this: When I come home from work, I immediately check the mail. I go through it, recycle the junk, shred the junk with personal information, and then immediately pay any bill. Go to the computer, pay the bill through online banking. If there's not enough money, then put it on a credit card, because staying current on bills trumps the no-debt policy. My problem is that almost all of our bills are paid automatically: the mortgage, electricity, cable, cell phone, Netflix, etc, are all automatically drafted; all I have to do is keep enough money in the bank accounts to cover them. But medical bills keep messing me up. First the hospital sends an "insurance billed" notice, then the insurance sends a "hospital paid" notice, then FINALLY I'll get a bill for whatever is left from the hospital. When your bill-paying system involves throwing all the mail in a big pile and vowing to look at it later, certain things escape... like that last important letter.

I brought my lunch to work almost every day in January, saving about $100.00. Saved a lot of money by meal-planning, making a shopping list, and only buying groceries once a month. It's not that there were NO impulsive purchases, but it's a lot less than when I'm at the store every other day. Also, a lot less of that food is wasted, because I have a plan for any leftovers. Saved some by cutting way back on trips to Starbucks and Barnes & Noble: I still get my morning walk-the-dog mocha but that's it for the day.

This next part will only make sense to fellow messy people: neat folks just won't understand.

I have spent what feels like 1,000 hours cleaning and organizing the house. Have I ever mentioned that it's only 850 square feet or so, and that I've barely touched the living room or spare room? Crazy. I didn't really have a strategy to start with, just jumped in and started scouring the kitchen. But I have a plan now, sort of. First, I'm trying to get rid of more stuff. Like probably everybody, we have too much stuff. Two huge boxes of clothing and a Mr. Coffee have gone to Goodwill, with a lot more to follow. I plan on unloading our VHS player (still works, haven't used it in over two years), getting rid of all of our VHS tapes, and my Agatha Christie collection. (I have almost everything she wrote, and they're not "re-reads".) Second, I'm trying to create a home for every practical thing that we use. Our house is not great with storage, and in trying to clean, I realize that we have no set "place" for a lot of things: light bulbs, batteries, important paperwork, hats and gloves, clean towels, extra toilet paper... The list goes on. I want to get to the point where, no matter what I pick up, it has a place where it belongs: a drawer, a cabinet, a file, a hook, something. I think that the combination of these two concepts will do more in the long run to keep the place clean and clean-able, than all scrubbing and vacuuming. The last bit of my strategy is kind of weird and redundant, but it's working for me so far. Before I start cleaning in a new area, I re-do what is already (mostly) clean. I started this whole project in the kitchen, naturally, so before I clean in the bathroom or bedroom, I go back to the kitchen and do whatever little thing needs to be done to keep it nice-- clean the stove, empty the dish drainer, sweep the floor. That way, what has been cleaned stays pretty, which bolsters my feeling of making progress. When I walk back into the kitchen, everything there is finished. Also, it is starting to get me in the habit of cleaning a little bit every day, which (believe it or not) I've never done. I've been more of a let-it-go-completely-for-three-months-then-do-a-marathon-scrub-and-vacuum-session cleaner. I'm starting to realize how much easier it is to keep a clean space clean, then to start from scratch every time. For example, the first time I cleaned the stove this month, it was hard scrubbing. The second time was also hard, but only because I went deeper, cleaning the black spider-thingies and under the hood where the pilot lights are. But the past few times, I just spray-and-wipe, and it's clean again, just like that. Same thing with everything else. When I tackled the Laundry Monster, it took a full week plus a weekend to get everything washed, dried, folded or hung up, and the stuff we don't wear anymore either donated or thrown away. Since then, the laundry has been ridiculously easy, and the Monster has shrunk to a single basket of hand-wash/dry-clean-onlies. Maintenance. Who knew?

This time, I'm not falling into the trap of what's happened before, of moving from room to room over time, and having the first rooms get trashed again. As of now, my kitchen, bathroom, laundry room, and bedroom are clean, and I will do what needs to be done to keep them that way before moving forward. This is probably why I haven't made a whole lot of progress on the last two rooms, (plus this weekend NOTHING got done due to being bed-ridden with an awful headache all day Saturday, and going to IKEA Sunday) but I know that when I finally get them done, it won't be at the expense of what should already be nice: the whole house can stay clean.

2009 Goals Checkup: January

2009-02-02T10:23:00.005-05:00

Money:

1. Finish lower apartment: NOT done, but tons of progress. Don finished all the drywall and priming, and we bought all the cabinets and counter tops: it should be done within two weeks or so... (but where have I heard that before?) But, we DO have a renter coming, so that's good.

2. Financial system: not yet. But, I have made a few decisions that should make it easier: to pay bills a new way, and to get a real file cabinet, with files in it. (Do NOT ask what we've been using.)

3. Taxes: Haven't filed yet, but are on track to do so. We have all of our paperwork together, and are just getting a rec for a good tax person.

4. Credit cards: Progress! Made a full payment in January (no interest, ha!) to the Discover card, and will again next week. Will use my 4th quarter bonus coming on the 13th to start paying down Don's card, which will leave my Visa.

4A. Do NOT get more debt: Unfortunately had to put a past-due medical bill on my Visa, so no.

5. Start working with Don re: combining finances, reducing spending, and living off of one income. YES! We've had several very productive conversations, and I am already seeing results.

6. Cutting expenses: YES,YES, YES! Saved LOTS of money in January! Details to follow.

House:

1. Clean: Yes. I'm not totally done, but after four weekends and many evenings, it is SO much better than before. The only rooms not clean and organized are the living room and the spare room. I could have people over, seriously!

2. Rearrange spare room: not yet, but I'm thinking about it.

3. Garden and new chickens: not yet. But I'm really waiting for spring anyway.

Kitchen:

1. Cook dinners at home: Huge yes! We had only one dinner out in January, my birthday. This is literally the most at-home, from-scratch dinners we've ever had in a row.

2. Plan menus and shop only weekly: Yes. This is really working out well.

3. Keep the dishes done/ kitchen clean: Pretty much. Don is showing some resistance to doing the dishes every night, but he's getting there.

4. Stock freezer: have added 3 meals and some chicken broth.

Pregnancy:

1. Walk every day: yep.

2. Yoga class: No, too expensive and difficult to schedule. But I did get some DVDs and have been trying them out, instead.

3. Special tea: Maybe half the days.

4. Panic less often: doing pretty good.

2009-01-29T18:40:00.001-05:00

Don't you wish you were eating at my place tonight? Or that blogs came with smellovision? Hurry home, Don, I'm starving...

22 Weeks

2009-01-29T11:54:00.005-05:00

I had my 22-week ultrasound yesterday, and everything looks good. Perfect, even. Both the technician and the doctor were great about respecting my desire for a "surprise", so I am still completely in the dark about the gender. But the baby's important bits and parts are all present and accounted for; s/he's measuring "exactly right" for my dates (a relief considering the, ah, considerable weight that I've put on); my placenta* and the cord are just where and how they should be. Since I've been able to feel the baby so much, I was actually more worried about those two parts than about the Passenger, on the grounds that s/he's got to be at least mostly OK to be treating me as though I'm a mosh pit**. Incidentally, my hunch that this little one is more active than is usual was confirmed by the ultrasound tech, who asked, "Good grief, is it always like that?" because every time she stopped the probe to take a picture, she had to start again as she went back to the live image, as the baby was in a different position than before.

Gender prediction update: For those going by fetal heart rate: It was 147 bpm yesterday, for whatever that is worth, which I don't think is much... a little Googling found me this:

One of the first questions asked, and easiest answered, was, "Does the
fetal heart rate predict the sex of the baby?" We performed a t-Test of the
means for females and males and found no significant difference (mean for
females = 149.26, males = 149.38; p = 0.929; +/-1SD: females = 13.8, males =
13.1). The means were less than a quarter of a beat per minute (BPM) different,
with two standard deviations being approximately +/- 26 BPM for both genders. A
quarter of a BPM with that much variation is nothing.

I have two little snafus with the medical system, apparently. The first is that at my appointment yesterday, the receptionists forgot to check me in (you know, by doing that thing where they move my chart from the "incoming appointments" area to the "ready and waiting" spot where the doctors/nurses/techs can pick it up and call my name) even though I checked in with them and presented my new insurance card and all. So I waited for more than 40 minutes before finally going back up to the desk to ask what was going on, since I had to get back to work after my visit and all. That's when they realized their little 'oops'...that sucked.

The second is kind of weirder. I just got a call from the wonderful nurse practitioner at my OB's, wondering why I haven't been in for a prenatal visit in forever. Confusing, much! It turns out that the visits to the Prenatal Diagnosis Center are supposed to be in addition to regular, every-four-weeks visits with the obstetricians, which kind of explains why they never weighed me or asked me questions or any of that stuff. Back in the beginning of the pregnancy, when I got booted from the REs to the OBs***, I had an 8/9 week appointment, the "initial visit". On my way out, they had me schedule an ultrasound with the other clinic for 13 weeks. I had that visit, and upon leaving, they had me schedule a 22-week scan, which is the one I had yesterday. Apparently, in addition to those two ultrasounds, I should have been back to the OB at 12 weeks, 16 weeks, and 20 weeks, so I've missed three month's worth of appointments and literally haven't been checked out by a doctor since I was 9 weeks along.

OK, now I'm not completely clueless... I did kinda, sorta know that I was missing an appointment in there somewhere. It was in the back of my mind, that no doctor or nurse had weighed me, checked my urine, my blood pressure, asked how I was feeling, or anything like that since that first visit three months ago. But getting away from work to go to the doctor is a HUGE pain in the ass: the bank is this terrible combination of "retail" and "office". If I worked retail, I would have to work some weekend shifts, and would have a day off (or at least a morning or afternoon) during the week in which I could do things like visit the doctor. If I worked in an office, my hours would be more constricting, but it would be easier to just leave and come back as long as I scheduled well. Like an office, my hours are exactly business hours-- I work 8:30-4:45ish, Monday through Friday-- AKA doctor's-office-hours. Like retail, I can't leave unless we arrange for someone else to cover me; it's shift work. With the bank's hiring freeze, we're perpetually short-staffed, so getting that done is difficult.

The other thing is, I tend to view pregnancy as black-and-white. Either everything is going OK, or everything is ending terribly. I know that later on, there are things to look out for-- warning signals for gestational diabetes, pre-eclamsia, etc. But for the past few months, I knew how I felt; and between the ultrasounds, the textbook-perfect uterine growth, and the fetal movement, that everything was OK with the baby. I know how to eat well, take my vitamins, keep moving, rest. Pregnancy is something that essentially progresses on its own, you know? So I kept the missing-appointments-thing in the back of my brain, and rationalized that if I were supposed to come back, they would have had me schedule an appointment, as they do (somebody in the office really did miss the boat on that one). Until today, when Peggy called me wondering why I hadn't been in for an appointment since October. Whoops.

In other news, a customer brought me a baby present-- a tiny UVA hoodie and booties-- and a card. The card was a really nice thank-you for some things I'd taken care of for her at the bank... it was so sweet and so unexpected that I cried.

I was doing so well with all of my goals and plans lately: bringing lunches, making dinners, saving dollars, cleaning and organizing. Yesterday, though, I totally fell off the wagon. I was so revved up from my ultrasound that the idea of going home to work on the house for awhile just didn't seem appealing. So I went to Barnes & Noble... and bought a slice of cheesecake, a caramel macchiato, and a magazine... and spent the rest of the afternoon and early evening in their cafe, reading books... Thus neatly killing my financial, house-keeping, and dietary goals simultaneously. I am nothing if not efficient, apparently.

*Is the placenta mine, or the baby's? Neither? Or both? It's really the most mysterious part of the whole deal, to me.

** I've heard expectant mothers say that they must have a little soccer player in there. HAH. I think we've got either a little rugby player, or a heavy-metal/ rock concert enthusiast, as it's not little feet I feel but whole head and body slams... ALL THE TIME.

*** Now that you're pregnant we have no further interest in you! Go back to your regular doctor, please!

Boy/Girl Symptom Scorecard

2009-01-23T11:52:00.003-05:00

Urgggh I was sick yesterday. I would have guessed the flu, or maybe the plague, except that I really feel fine today. Sinus headache, aches and pains, and a pulled muscle (an ab just below my ribcage, I think from swinging around a few boxes of coin at the bank) just to round things out. It's possible I was dehydrated. I'm also wondering if it was because I wore a pair of new pants without washing them; sometimes I have allergic reactions to the chemical crap they treat new clothing with, but usually pants are OK, being so far from my face and all.

My mom sent me a huge box of maternity clothes and baby clothes for my birthday, just in time because I've outgrown everything I own and can't find ANYTHING here to buy, that will work for work. I tried Target's maternity section: nothing. That was really annoying because it's a long-ish drive up there and I'd received a tip that it was the place to try. I tried Old Navy, and didn't find anything there in their maternity, but I DID find a pair of dark-brown cords for the weekend that fit beautifully, in clearance. (Right now their size 14 fits me just right; usually I would wear a ten.) I didn't realize that it was "take an extra 50% off clearance" day, so when the pants rang up as eight dollars, I almost fell over. Now I have all of these maternity things from mom; I just have to try them on, and, if they fit, wash them before wearing. Totally stoked.

For those keeping track boy/girl:

I'm carrying very low so far, although at 21 weeks it may be too soon to tell.

"Morning sickness" or "pregnancy sickness" was definitely present for the first trimester, but it was never really bad and disappeared by 14 weeks or so. It was much milder, for example, than one friend's and two coworkers, and they all had boys. (You know who you are!)

I'm pregnant in my face-- it's rounder and chubbier than usual!-- but my skin looks good, if I may say so. That's kind of a mixed signal, there.

The fetal heart rate has measured consistently high, in the high 170's to 180's. I have an appointment next week, so we'll see if that is consistent.

Emotions are a mixed bag. For the most part I've been on a pretty even keel, although it is hard to judge these things oneself. I have had less patience with work, but work has gotten considerably more difficult and stressful in the past few months, and that has nothing to do with the pregnancy; I notice that everybody I work with is showing signs of stress and grumpiness. There have been a few episodes, like the recently documented Meatloaf Fight, but I'd say that I really am my usual laid-back self, all things considered, for whatever it's worth.

Anybody that knows me 'in real life' knows that my bum's been pregnant for years; I am so ass-positive that it would be impossible to judge anything from that region. With my overall Hubbard-squash shape, it is hard to tell... Judging by my pants, though, my butt, thighs, and hips are more or less stable so far, compared to my belly. Compounding the issue is the fact that I've been eating like a hippopotamus since getting pregnant, so even if I AM gaining in those areas, it probably has more to do with Ben & Jerry than with the Sprout Within.

Birthday

2009-01-19T09:29:00.002-05:00

I celebrated my birthday Saturday in typical fashion, by mopping a lake of water from the kitchen floor and doing dishes in the bathtub. Nothing like a frozen, busted pipe to help highlight the day! On the bright side, the kitchen floor has never been cleaner. On the extra-bright side, none of the water seems to have penetrated the down-stairs kitchen, the one that Don has spent six months renovating. When Don and I went to Lowe's yesterday to get the replacement parts he needed to fix the sink, everybody else there seemed to be getting the same stuff, and the stock of valves and hoses looked as though it had been ransacked. Guess we weren't the only ones in the neighborhood to forget about leaving the cabinet doors open and the tap dripping. It just doesn't get that cold here very often, so one forgets the routines.

I also got a pedicure, for the first time in many months. When I walked in, the proprietress looked me up and down and said, "You look different!" This has got to be the best, most discreet inquiry I've heard, because there are so many possible answers: "Well, I'm pregnant!", "I changed my hair", or whatever. So much better than a direct, "Are you pregnant?" that could be embarrassing if the answer were 'no'. I've gotten to the point where I'm visibly pregnant, for the most part; a nice change from just looking ten pounds heavier than usual. The pedicure was a birthday treat (from me), but I also consider it a frugal expenditure, because I get the worst in-grown toenails, and a pedicure is still cheaper than repeated trips to a foot doctor. Then again, I am a master of justification-- just ask me about the Ben & Jerry's that I'm consuming for the calcium. (What?)

This morning the baby was doing his usual acrobatic routine of thumps and kicks, and I could feel one kick quite clearly with my hand that was resting on my belly-- the first time I have felt anything externally. So I woke Don up and made him roll over, so that he could feel. The baby immediately stopped moving. So it's going to be like that, little fella, huh? Being difficult for mama already? There are sometimes these funny little kicks directly to my side, that make me think of when swimmers reach the end of a lap and do that turn-kick thing on the side of the pool to start the next one; I keep waiting to get one on each side so that I can time the laps. Less funny are these new kicks straight down, that I guess are probably hitting my cervix but feel exactly like a punch to the Girl Parts and are about as pleasant as they sound. Still, I welcome any and all movement, even the crotch-kicks, since nothing keeps me calm and relaxed like knowing that the baby is still alive. It's a good feeling.

Don and I reached our goal of no-dinners-out-until-my-birthday, perhaps our longest stretch of home-cooked meals to happen while we were both employed. That bit is going really well, especially since I've been quite good about keeping the kitchen clean, the biggest obstacle to cooking in my home. I've been trying to get some of the other rooms under control, too, and have filled two big boxes with clothes for Goodwill. Today I will actually drive them there and drop them off, which I have discovered through trial and error is the only way to actually get said boxes out of the house. It's funny that just having the good intentions and filling the boxes isn't enough; they will sit in the corner of the bedroom forever without that crucial last step. This should help a little with the ongoing Laundry Issue. I figure the more goals I get done in January, the better, since New Years ideas tend to fade with time.

Half-way

2009-01-14T11:09:00.003-05:00

We are twenty weeks pregnant, this week. Twenty weeks! Half of the distance to forty! It boggles the mind, really. I feel good, amazing. I worry that I shouldn't feel good, that there should be a high price to pay for successful gestation; I've seen it with my friends and colleagues, their constant sickness, heartburn, enormous ankles. Shouldn't I be feeling like that, too? With the exception of some insomnia, I feel great. If it weren't for this semi-constant, sneakers-tumbling-in-my-dryer feeling and my changing dimensions, it would be easy to forget about the pregnancy entirely. Maybe feeling worse will come again later.

Work is dragging me down, getting more and more stressful just as I start to find that I really don't care about it at all; not the best combination. This is not a great time, apparently, to be in the banking industry, even with a solid company. Wage freezes, hiring freezes, bonuses cancelled... It's grim. We're shorthanded one position that won't be refilled anytime soon, so it is two people doing the work of three. (Except that it isn't, can you guess who has to do more?) With just two people day in and day out, even little things like taking lunch breaks become difficult. This is the first week of the semester, or what we call "Oh Hell, the Students are Back Week"-- one of the busiest times of the year. I just have to think, it will be easier next week, and afterwards.

All my little 2009 projects and goals are a fun distraction from work. It's nice to have the readily visible results that come from cleaning or organizing something (or keeping it clean); from making a substantial credit-card payment; from maintaining a bank account balance. I'm hoping that with enough time, little things like bringing lunch to work will become a habit, rather than something that requires a lot of time and thought, but it's working really well so far.

Vacation, part 2

2009-01-09T11:26:00.004-05:00

So, last night I just made a quiche for dinner and everything was fine.

I have my cellphone back, finally, making the last two weeks the longest I've gone without one since 1999.

I didn't take any pictures at all on my vacation, which was stupid. And sad. See, my brother is a fantastic amateur photographer (with a fancy camera), who takes beautiful, artistic photos of the landscape, the sky, all that jazz. My sister has a cool new digital, one of those flat, pocket-sized, take-anywhere ones that is great for capturing spur-of-the-moment candids. The pictures she got of our sledding adventure, alone, are worth the price of the camera. Parents sledding equal great pictures. Four-months-pregnant sister, looking like the Michelin Man in ski pants and a parka, also sledding, is priceless*. Hopefully she will be emailing these to me soon, so that I can share the hilarity here as well. But my camera is neither impressively hefty and amazing, or sleek and tiny... it's a seven-year-old, 3.14 - megapixel digital that still works well enough but somehow never made it out of my backpack, because theirs were just so much better, why bother? (The answer, apparently, is "because they will forget to share their pictures with you afterwards, and you will have none of your own.")

I managed to get wrong-sized sweaters for half the family. My sister and my mom got each other copies of the same book, which was pretty funny. (There's a lot of reading-material overlap in our family.) My dad's New Year's Eve toast, (which we did at 11:00pm because I couldn't stay up any later, justified by the fact that by then it was midnight in Texas and 1:00am in Virginia) made me cry: "To this time next year, when we will meet here again but will also be joined by the newest member of the family..." There's not too much else to say about the trip, as 85% of it was spent sleeping, eating, and lounging, which while wonderfully relaxing and restorative does not make for amusing blog content. I will post sledding pictures should I ever receive any.

*Thank God nobody has a video camera, or the potential footage of me spreadeagled at the bottom of the hill, entangled in the sled, a foot deep in snow and hollering for help, I would never live down. You know that classic I Love Lucy scene of a heavily pregnant Lucille Ball trying to get out of the easy chair? This was worse.

Hell in a Meatloaf Basket

2009-01-08T11:14:00.003-05:00

"A hint for not buying lunch: make enough dinner that you have leftovers for
lunch the next day. Also, big pots of things (like chili) or baked trays of
things (like lasagnas) are easy and provide ample leftovers for lunch the next
day."

This is what I usually do when I want to brown-bag my lunch. It's a good system usually... until it all fell apart last night. It started when I realized that I hadn't been to a bookstore in over two weeks and was suffering major withdrawal pangs. Since I hadn't planned on giving up that particular addiction any time soon, I headed to Barnes & Noble right after work, knowing that I had plenty of time until Don would be home. There, I found this book. Now, I really liked Chocolat, but then I read Five Quarters of the Orange by the same author (Joanne Harris), and hated that one. This new-ish book, The Girl with No Shadow, was apparently a sequel to Chocolat. It's interesting when an author can vary so widely in his or her own writing, that one of the books is on my favorites list, and the other isn't even on the bookshelf... like Orson Scott Card. I love Ender's Game, but pretty much can't stand anything else he's written. Go figure. I kept trying, though, until something in Ender's Shadow made me throw the book across the room. But Card annoys me by pretty much hacking his own work to death. The Harris books just threw me because the first one I read is rather light and fluffy and fun, and second was dark and disturbing, totally different in tone; not at all what I was expecting.

So to make a long story short, I stayed at B&N way too long, completely engrossed in this novel (which turns out to be a lot darker than Chocolat but really, really good, for anyone interested; not depressing like Five Quarters) when I realized I must head for home--bought the book and the new Mothering magazine, and camped out on the sofa until Don got home. See, we were just going to have pancakes and bacon and maybe some eggs, which doesn't need to be started ahead of time... it's a no-time kind of meal. When Don got home (at close to 9, I think) I was almost done with the book-- it's a psychological thriller in a way, very suspenseful-- and I had to finish it before I could do ANYTHING else, which Don understands because we've been together for eight years so he knows that nothing comes between me and the last two chapters of a book. So he said he could start dinner and make me some tea in the bargain; I said I had planned on bacon and pancakes, did that sound OK? And if he could start the bacon frying I would be done with my book before it finished. And he said OK and wandered off to the kitchen, which is when everything went to hell.

I finished the book in no time, came to the kitchen to check on dinner and my tea, and what is in the frying pan? NOT BACON. The last two slices of meatloaf (our previous night's dinner), mashed and crumbled into bits, and a big bowl of mixed-up eggs on the counter. That meatloaf was supposed to be my lunch for today, alongside a big heaping of the broccoli-rice casserole that went with it. I had tender, loving plans for that last bit of meatloaf, and I WANTED BACON AND PANCAKES THAT NIGHT. (There may have been some pregnancy hormones involved.) In ten unsupervised minutes, Don basically destroyed two whole meals. Naturally he refused to see it that way, claiming that he was "just" trying to use up some leftovers. You would not believe the argument that resulted from this situation, in which I was completely, 100% in the right at all times and Don was a meatloaf-destroying, plan-changing, BAD COOK*. Who didn't even realize that if I HAD wanted eggs, WHICH I DIDN'T, I would have wanted them FRIED which is the ONLY way I've eaten eggs since getting pregnant. We basically resolved the issue (such as it is resolved, although I'm realizing now that I am NOT OVER THIS AT ALL, you just don't fuck around with a pregnant woman's food, OK?) by agreeing that if for some reason the dinner plan changes between the living room sofa and the stove, it will be by mutual agreement, and not UNILATERAL, ARBITRARY, Bush-White-House style decision-making. I mean, it hadn't been thirty seconds since he said, "yeah, I can start the bacon", when he made the indecipherable plan to destroy my meatloaf instead**.

So today I had to buy a bagel sandwich from Bodo's for lunch. And as the husband is banned from the stove, he's on permanent dinner-dishes duty instead.

*Who luckily does not have a blog of his own.

** We have a fundamental difference in theory about what constitutes a "leftover" and how they should be treated. My thinking is that many dishes, like soups, stews, chili, spaghetti sauce, casseroles, and similar lend themselves very nicely to second and even third appearances, often getting even better with time. Others, either because they don't reheat as well or just because they don't make as much at a time, go very well for lunch the next day or two. Sometimes, a single ingredient can be re-purposed, with a little planning; for example the regular brown rice left over one day becomes part of the broccoli-cheese-rice casserole the next, while the purposely doubled batch of cheese sauce from that casserole goes to the freezer for next week's macaroni and cheese; or the intended bacon of last night, of which I was going to fry up the whole package and use the second half in tonight's frittata. Don somehow doesn't see any of that as "leftovers"; to him, it isn't "leftovers" unless you take bits and pieces from several different meals and throw them together to make something new, unrecognizable, and frankly disgusting. During the argument last night, he claimed that we "never have leftovers!", which left me baffled. To me, anything that you spend ONE evening slaving over, but get to enjoy "for free" the next night too, is leftover! We eat leftovers by MY book more often than not: every time I make spaghetti sauce, or chicken soup, or a stew, and we eat it again... and usually again. But I guess to him it isn't leftover if it's not hashed up in a frying pan and mixed with a scrambled egg. I don't get it. I just know that he's banned from unsupervised helping until I feel better about this whole thing.

The first week is easy

2009-01-07T11:45:00.002-05:00

With typical first-week-of-the-year fervor, I throw myself into my new goals: home-cooked dinners, brown-bag lunches, three days in a row. The dishes, done at night, two days in a row. Don and I have set a mini goal-within-a-goal of no dinners out or meals brought home until my birthday on the 17th. As we usually eat out (or have take-out) two or three times a week, this is no small commitment. I would have tried to make it one month, but we always eat out on birthdays. It's tradition. It's a steakhouse. Come on. Don is the real winner in this deal, because I get off work at 4:30 or so; he gets off around 7:00-- if we're lucky. I go to the grocery store, I cook. He comes home to food. Also, since he pays for most dinners out, it's his bank balance that wins. It's not that he doesn't cook or can't cook, just that he does so on the weekends, if he has a day off. I start thinking about dinner in the morning, if I don't already have a plan. That way I can thaw something, hit the store, whatever, before dinner time. Don starts thinking about dinner when he gets hungry for dinner. I've seen him come home from work at 7:45 in the and take something out of the freezer to thaw... for that night. This is when I get pissy and insist that we go out, since who wants to eat dinner at 11:00pm? I don't know if this is a gender divide, or just a two-different-people thing, but it's easier to just take over dinner and plan the menus. I get no small comfort in knowing, for example, that we're having pancakes tonight, and that we already have all the fixings.

I paid the balance on my Discover card today, too. It's funny that I was complaining about not getting any benefit from these falling interest rates, because apparently, I am. I checked to see what interest rate I would be paying on the card if I didn't make the full payment, and it's a lot lower than I remember-- like 4% lower. So I checked my other card (which also has a balance, boo), and the interest rate on that one has fallen to less than the interest rate on our mortgage. You know how people take out home equity loans to pay off credit card debt? I'd be better off getting cash advances on this card to make mortgage payments! OK not literally, because the cash-advance rate is always higher than the purchase rate, but still, it's quite funny. The rate on that card has always been really low because it's an associate special through the bank, but I guess falling prime rates really do affect credit cards. Who knew?

2009 Goals

2009-01-06T08:46:00.002-05:00

Financial

1. Finish lower apartment so that we can rent it: should be done by end of January.
a. Rent said apartment. (Hopefully this is already accomplished but just in case.)
b. Use rental money to help pay mortgage, make extra mortgage payment, and build savings.

2. Figure out some kind of system for organizing finances, other than keeping it all in my brain. This may be a year-long project.

3. File taxes ASAP, using real professional person, not computer software. Hope to be done by mid-February. (Pray for a refund.)

4. Pay off credit cards... AGAIN. (Stupid credit cards. Stupid holidays.) Do not accumulate more debt.

5. Figure out a way of working together with Don, so that we can live off of one income should we want to come baby-time. Right now we each have our own checking accounts and spend our own paychecks, with little if any financial accountability to each other... Somehow we need to come together and create a plan, a system, or a budget that will let us use just the one paycheck for his-n-hers.

6. Which leads to, finding a way to do without my income, pitiful though it may be. Cutting "expenses" like: meals out, coffee-house lattes, new books, and all the other little extras that eat up our pay.

7. Which leads to, making those changes ahead of time, to increase savings before the baby actually comes. (Starting right away, since we're due in May or June.)

Household

1. Get house clean enough for company by end of January, as opposed to the smelly pit that it is currently, so that we can have friends in without shame.

2. Figure out exactly how we're going to arrange spare room to make a combination nursery/guest room/ computer room in a 9x12 space. (This may require a magic wand.) Must be done by end of April.

3. Move futon into said room, buy new sofa for living room. (Ignore contradiction to financial goals above.)

4. Dig and plant garden in the spring.

5. New chickens.

Kitchen

1. Switch hutch with kitchen table.
a. Take laundry room door off hinges, replace with curtain.
b. Baby gate to keep dog out of laundry room.

2. Figure out a way to light fridge.

3. Cook dinners at home.
a. Plan menus a week at a time.
b. Go grocery shopping once a week or so, instead of all the time.
c. Do dinner dishes AFTER DINNER, so that kitchen isn't overwhelmingly messy the next day, leading to another dinner out. This is actually a financial goal.

4. Get freezer and pantry good and stocked up for late pregnancy/ early baby weeks; lots of meals ready-to-eat.

5. Look into getting a big, upright freezer.

Pregnancy

1. Keep walking every day.

2. Maybe sign up for a prenatal yoga class or similar?

3. Drink special tea daily.

4. Try to freak out/ panic less often.

5. Let everything else, like work, just roll off my back and not stress me out.

Work

1. Don't let work stuff (i.e. management, coworkers, and customers) get under my skin. Leave it all at work, so to speak.

2. Get everything in really good condition so that when I leave for maternity, nobody is cursing the mess I left behind.

(That's it. I don't have a lot of work goals right now. Pretty much just, "stay afloat".)

This is a really ambitious list, so I'm not expecting to nail everything on it; I just think it's better to aim high. If I can accomplish half of every category, that would be great.

Vacation-- Day 1

2009-01-05T11:25:00.004-05:00

My flights from New Mexico back to Virginia yesterday, were perfect. Unfortunately, it will take ten perfect air-travel experiences to make up for the horrors of the trip out there. I had to get up very early, before 4 in the morning, in order to drive from here to Richmond. I didn't mind, though, because with the time zones and everything it would still be morning in New Mexico when I would get there, so I would probably be able to catch up with a nap then. Ah, "would", and the conditional tense. Conditions changed.

The first flight, from Richmond to Dallas, seemed to be going along OK until the captain announced that nobody could land at DFW due to thunderstorms. So, we entered a "holding pattern" (read: plane circles the city, tilting and turning until I'm good and sick) for half an hour... Until the captain announces that, actually, we are being re-routed to Austin for the time being. This is a bit upsetting as I have a connecting flight to catch, but I figure that if no planes are able to land, then nobody is taking off either, which should delay my second flight as well.

The landing in Austin takes us down through the far end of whatever storm system is over Dallas, making it rougher and more turbulent than any landing I can remember. I had to use my Little White Bag for the first time in probably ten years. Is there anything more embarrassing than throwing up in public? Let me know, because I sure can't think of it. Once we're on the ground at the Austin airport, we sit. And sit. There are maybe ten other planes in exactly the same situation, having been turned away from DFW airport and waiting to return there.

After about an hour and a half on the tarmac, we finally re--fuel and take off again for Dallas, which takes forever considering you can drive between the two cities in less than three hours. Once again the landing is so rough that I use another bag... eugh. By now the flight that should have taken 2 1/2 hours has taken more than four. I haven't eaten anything except a bag of pretzels, which was wasted anyway. When we land at DFW there is no gate for us, (being that every plane that had been rerouted is back and they're all waiting to de-board) so... we sit, on the tarmac, again. For a long time. It is during this time that I find out that my second flight was not delayed, but cancelled entirely. Why? WHY? It is two days after Christmas, and every flight is completely booked or close to it. How can they cancel a flight and expect to squeeze all 160 people (or however many fit on a 747) on standby for the rest of the (ALSO FULL) flights to that destination? It makes no sense.

By the time I actually de-plane, I'm starving and actually pretty out-of-it. My sister, who was supposed to be on the same (CANCELLED) flight to Albuquerque, met me at my gate and explained the situation to me. She, having been at the gate when the flight was cancelled, managed to get a confirmed seat on a later flight. I, however, had to get on standby, after being told by the gate attendant that not only was every flight to Albuquerque for this day booked solid, but also the next day and the next. And, unfortunately, there are about 90 other people also waiting on standby seats, all in exactly the same position as me. Also, unfortunately, each flight left from the other end of the airport, so I (and the other gazillion people doing the same thing) had to scoot from Terminal C to D, back to C, back to D... repeat as needed. Did I mention that I am still pregnant? And that I carried on all my luggage rather than checking it? Hoofing it all over DFW lugging my baggage, unable to eat, was a BAD combination. I end up waiting on standby for the next three flights, before finally boarding a plane again. I have never been so incredibly glad to actually get on a plane. It just seems so weird to think that you can buy your air tickets four months in advance, check in first thing in the morning to confirm your seats, and still be confronted with the possibility of not getting to your destination. What other industry could work like that?

KK and I were supposed to arrive in Albuquerque about 11:10 am. She ended up getting in about 6:00, and I about 7:30, which isn't bad at all considering that I was afraid of not getting to New Mexico for days. What was bad, was that Albuquerque wasn't our final destination; Mom and Dad's vacation house is about three hours away, north of Taos. So my brother and Dad had set out first thing in the morning to come and get us, and ended up spending all day hanging out at the airport waiting for us. Once we had both finally gotten in, we of course have to drive the three hours back to the house. We get to the house around midnight, which is 2 am Virginia time, making my total awake-time almost 24 hours. The drive from Taos to the house is so mountainous and twisty that I threw up for the third time that day, thankfully at the house and not, say, on the side of the road. Small blessings.

Need it be said that we all of us did nothing the next day, but sleep? Apparently, at some point in the Albuquerque airport, I dropped my cellphone on the floor without realizing it. We couldn't find it that night at the house, but as I was sleep-deprived and barfy I didn't worry about it at the time. The next morning we got a call (on my brother's phone) from a nice lady who had found my phone at the airport and is in the process of mailing it back to me. So, if I've been ignoring anybody's calls, don't take it personally; it's because I've been without cell phone for over a week (a truly strange feeling).

I know that observing human behavior at the airport is passe and over-done, but it really is interesting to see how people react to adverse situations. For three flights, I had to wait with the dozens of other booted passengers desperate to get on a plane. Standby is computerized and in order, so you can see exactly where you are; for example on my first standby I was number 50-something. For each subsequent flight your place in line remains stable, so your number drops as the people ahead of you get on planes. By the time I was on standby for the flight I eventually boarded, I had dropped to number 12. The vast majority of people seem to both understand the system and comply with it, realizing, I guess, that there is nothing else to be done. There is also a lot of commiseration, even camaraderie, among the stranded. But there are always a few folks that just don't know how to act. Their situation is so terrible, they must whine and bitch and moan, loudly, for all to hear. Hello, we are all in exactly the same boat! All of us were supposed to be on that cancelled flight; all of us are in the uncertain position of waiting. All of us had confirmed, paid-for seats at one time that no longer exist, and are now stranded. YOUR problem, that you seem to need to broadcast all over the airport, is no bigger, no different, than that of the other 50 people shuffling from gate to gate with you. You are not as special as you seem to think. Seriously: read the manual, "How to Act".

Maybe Sky-diving, Instead

2008-12-26T09:51:00.002-05:00

Don's gifts this year included a few new CDs, on the theory that, for the first time EVER, one of our vehicles has a CD-player and he should try it out sometime. So I got him the new-ish Metallica and a Johnny Cash best-of collection. Don loves it. The dog, apparently, doesn't. She hates Johnny Cash. Who knew? It is only the second time she has ever displayed an opinion about music, the first being when she tried to howl to Aerosmith; but that had the extenuating circumstances of (1) being in the car, (2) I was singing along, and (3) it was that part of "Dream On" that jumps up an octave or three. (No, I can't hit that note-- can anybody?) If Dream On sounds like howling, maybe Johnny Cash sounds like growling. Who knows what musical criteria lurks in the minds of dogs?

In other gifty news, Don's mother sent a box for Christmas... I got a necklace, a bracelet, and these cool kitchen utensils that have my name on the handle. Don got socks, boxer shorts, and jeans. I think it's official: she likes me better than her own son.

I am leaving at the ass-crack of dawn tomorrow for New Mexico--seriously, I have to get up at FOUR AM., that time shouldn't even exist-- where I will spend a long-awaited week with my family*. My mom and I discussed the fact that I don't want to ski, since I haven't been skiing in about twenty years and I don't think it's the thing to take up at four months pregnant. Somehow she has translated this into, "The whole family can just veg out doing jigsaw puzzles and playing Scrabble!"-- or at least, the two of us. I'm not sure if this is an attempt to keep me comfortable, or if she's using me as the perfect excuse to laze out. I said that I'm totally up for snowshoeing, hiking, whatever, that doesn't involve falling down repeatedly; that my nausea is gone and my energy is back, but I don't know if that sunk in at all.

*My natal family, as opposed to the motley crew of husband, dog, cat and various dust bunnies that I have assembled myself over the past eight years or so.

Baby's First Latkes

2008-12-22T17:13:00.004-05:00

Now repeat after me, little passenger: baruch atah Adonai, Eloheinu...

Happy Chanukah, ya'll...

Cookie Monster

2008-12-19T13:18:00.002-05:00

When you use powdered sugar, maple syrup, dark brown sugar, light brown sugar, molasses, white sugar, and turbinado sugar (optional) all in one evening... you KNOW it was a good cookie-baking night.

(Maple walnut bars, molasses spice cookies, and good ol' chocolate chip. For work presents. They seem to be a smash hit.)

Money Bad

2008-12-16T12:38:00.002-05:00

I don't understand all this interest rate stuff. (For a banker that's probably a bad thing, right?) For one thing, every time some pundit comes on to the tv or radio to discuss What Went Wrong in the economy, he will always begin with "the abundance of cheap credit" in the nineties, which led to X, Y, Z and Hell. So if cheap credit was the first stepping stone on the way to "housing market crisis" and "frozen credit markets", how exactly is cutting the federal interest rate (again) NOW, a good thing? They're talking about making it smaller than it has ever been before, including during those crazy 90's. I don't get it, really*. Secondly, how is it that "rates go down" affects the rate at which I can EARN interest, but seemingly not the rate at which I can borrow? CD rates that were in the 4-5% range over the summer have dropped to 2%... or worse. Savings accounts are a joke. Treasury bonds are even worse. And yet my credit cards are still charging 16% interest. Even if I applied for a new card, the interest wouldn't be any lower than what I would be paying right now. Supposedly mortgage rates will be affected, but they're not going to drop that much, and they've been at "historical lows" for ages now anyway. So I get no benefit as a lender, OR as a borrower. Go figure.

Gift-wrapping PSA: It can be very, very important to use those little to:/from: gift cards as you wrap. For example: in my case, everybody in my family is getting some combination of books and/or sweaters. (Sorry, you guys.) If you're in a situation like that and you wrap too quickly, you'll end up with a pile of square-ish, book-shaped packages, and a similar pile of lumpy, sweater-shaped packages and not know which goes to whom. Luckily I could see where this was going after just one or two presents and broke out the gift tags, but it was a close call. I'm still not entirely sure that my dad and brother's books didn't get swapped.

* Please don't try to explain why it's a good thing now. Just nod your head in agreement with me, please.

Oversharing, as usual

2008-12-13T16:31:00.003-05:00

I am now, apparently, qualified for a C-cup bra for the first time. This is exciting in a way that only others who have spent their adult lives comfortably resting in B-cups, will understand. 36C... it's the stuff of legend.

Less exciting is that I also appear to wear size 14 pants, all of a sudden. (I don't know what happened to size 12, I guess I bypassed it entirely.) There is balance in all things, or so it seems... but it doesn't seem quite fair that the boob size went up only ONE, while the ass size went up TWO.

Other news: I am the MacGyver of holiday present wrapping, having just wrapped all of my presents for Don using a glue-stick instead of tape (there was no tape). For the record, the glue-stick works wonderfully well on anything that is firm and square, like small appliances in boxes, books, or CDs, but not as well for random lumpy stuff, (for example a sweater wrapped in tissue paper), in which the tape is really needed to kind of hold everything together. Perhaps I don't have my own gift-wrapping closet like Martha, but I think I'm probably better in an emergency wrapping situation, in which one would have to fashion gift wrap out of random household objects. (Yes, being too lazy to go back out and buy tape is an "emergency".) These are the kind of skills I hope to pass on to kids, someday...

My neighbors across the street just put up their plywood nativity scene. It's kind of funny because while the camels seem to be a clear nod to the Middle-Eastern locale of the First Christmas, Mary appears to be a blue-eyed blonde. (They were ever so common among the Hebrew population 2000 years ago, just as they are today. Why, if you walk the streets of Tel-Aviv, you'd think you were in the Netherlands!) Ah well, as the good book says, man does create God in his own image... or something similar to that.

Confession Time

2008-12-10T12:02:00.002-05:00

I've been keeping secrets from my own blog, is that weird? It probably is, but honestly, I've been called weird for bigger things than that. Here's the scoop: I'm pregnant! I know, I know, I'm always getting pregnant, so what else is new, right? So get this: I am 15 WEEKS pregnant. That's right, in the second trimester, baby! I have BEEN pregnant for a long time now-- the longest ever, for me, by several weeks. This might actually be THE pregnancy that results in a real, live baby rather than the blood, testing, and tortured blog posts of the four previous pregnancies. We have had three ultrasounds, at 6 weeks, 9 weeks, and 12 weeks; that last one was the fancy technical one where we got to see everything... heart and stomach, feet and hands, brain, umbilical cord, all the bits and pieces. They were all there, in the right places. We even have a placenta, which is something that I (secretly) think may have gone wrong before. We've had the nuchal translucency test, the first-trimester blood work, all perfectly normal and chromosomally sound. Obviously we're not out of the woods yet, but things are looking decent. I'm starting to "show". I think I feel movement. I'm hopeful.

I didn't tell my family or my work until just recently, which is why I didn't mention it here, on the theory that you never really know who's reading, right? Also I've been tired for the last few months, go figure. So that's it, I'm officially Out of the (knocked-up) Closet.