Mosaic of Me

I stole this from Domesticali. Here's how you play:
a. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search.
b. Using only the first page, pick an image.
c. Copy and paste each of the URLs (right click on the image, choose properties, then the image URL) for the images into Mosaic Maker.

Here are the questions:
1. What is your first name?
2. What is your favorite food?
3. What high school did you go to?
4. What is your favorite color?
5. Who is your celebrity crush?
6. What is your favorite drink?
7. What is your dream vacation?
8. What is your favorite dessert?
9. What you want to be when you grow up?
10. What do you love most in life?
11. What is one word to describe you.
12. What is your flickr name? (If you don't have one, use whatever you usually use for a user name)

Reminds me of all those get-to-know-you emails with all the super random questions, only with a pretty picture at the end. Mine is above; the Husband's is below.

My Husband, the Born-Again Electrician

Ever heard of knob and tube wiring? I'm betting older generations have, and anyone in my generation probably has not. I don't have time to find you a nice, educational link, but according to the Husband, it's old electrical wiring that was used in homes until around the mid 1900s when it became illegal due to the major fire hazard it caused. It's copper wire wrapped in cloth (instead of the good ole, lead-containing PVC that we're used to now), supported by little porcelain pieces that look like knobs.

Guess who has a sh!tload of it in their house.

We hired an electrician before buying this house for the exact purpose of ensuring that there was none of this wiring left in the house. At least none that was live.

He lied. Or was very bad at his job. Or both.

There's no ceiling light in the living room. We've had floor lamps in there, but now that the Papoosekin is mobile she's trying to pull herself up on them and both breaking them and attempting to break herself in the process. So they have to go.

The Husband set out to install a ceiling fan/light fixture. Should have been easy enough. Until he uncovered the web of fire-waiting-to-happen that is the wiring supplying electricity to about half the house, apparently.

Recall that this house was also sold to us with no smoke detectors. No, we have not made progress on that yet. We cannot keep up with our lives.

So, this has to come out immediately, which the Husband, luckily, knows how to do. He's off now to cajole Mr. Ouiser into watching the Papoosekin for me so I can continue to copy edit and he can turn our house into less of a deathtrap.

I may have to sleep on the floor outside the Papoosekin's room tonight, just for peace of mind.

In completely unrelated stressful happenings: My car registration expires on the 31st. I need a passport or birth certificate to get a TN license so I can get a TN registration. My passport has expired. My birth certificate is in NY with my parents. I'm so screwed.

Coming Soon to a Theater Near You

I took a video of the Papoosekin crawling, but it's so jittery you need Dramamine to watch it. So we'll skip that and go straight for the stills. I'll try another video soon.

Chewy's most recent haircut.

We went in to check on her one night because she went down for a nap at 5:00 and apparently seemed to think she was down for the night. This is how we found her, I swear. We did move her because we knew that if we didn't do it then, at 8:00, we'd be doing it later, likely at 3:00 am when she would wake up in a fit. Of course, she woke up after being moved. But better up for two hours then than in the middle of the night.

Ouiser said she looked like a flower today.

Ouiser and Baby S indulging in some magazine reading.

I'm Late! I'm Late!

Okay, I wrote this a few days ago and was hoping to get time to post pictures with it, but that's clearly not happening, so I at least offer you some text:

I know that was a longish hiatus, and there are more to come in the near future. I’m swamped with copy editing again: three issues dumped on me at once, and one is a huge, special issue, meaning lots of extra pages, so I don’t know how I’m going to get it all done, but it will be. Done. In about four weeks. So be patient with me, please!

Mother’s Day was kind of a train wreck around here. The Papoosekin was sick in the days preceding. Sick like projectile-vomiting-sick. And 102-degree favor. Poor bebe. She was sooooo not herself. When she was awake, she was crying, and felt like she was on fire. But mostly she slept, which was just as well. And when she had nothing left in her little stomach to come up, she dry heaved. It was a little bit heartbreaking.

Then, just as she started to look better, I got sick. Chills, which I don’t remember ever experiencing before, and my own 102-degree fever. And achy all over. And a wicked headache. But that was gone after a couple days.

And then we discovered the baby girl had a tooth in addition to being sick. She had her six-month pediatrician appointment when I was sick, so the Husband took her and the doc said that while some upset tummy issues can be caused by teething, not to the degree she had them. So she had a virus and was teething at the same time. And now she has a little bitty incisor to prove it. You can hardly see the very tip of it, but you can feel it. One little bottom right incisor. I will miss that gummy smile. But it’s not really gone yet.

Not to be an overachiever or anything, but she also decided that this was a good time to start crawling. At six months. Normal is eight to ten months. Though I apparently started crawling at six months also; I don’t know if there’s a hereditary link there. And I don’t know the Husband’s milestones. But my Papoosekin is officially on the move.

And, not easily satisfied, she seems to have decided that this is not quite enough achievement for one month and so she should start pulling herself up to standing now, too. She’s only done it a few times, but this morning I left her in what I thought was a baby-proofed living room, except for my laptop on the chair, which I knew she couldn’t get to. How many baby stories start with what the parents thought they knew? Anyway, in the time it took me to get my cup of coffee from the kitchen, she had crawled over to the chair, gotten her hands up on the edge of the seat, pulled up to kneeling, and was kind of hanging with her knees off the ground, but not quite standing. Trying to get to the laptop. I came over and gave her just the smallest bit of support and she pulled herself up the rest of the way.

Crap.

Did you all know that Scarlet Lily started walking at seven months? It’s true. Her mother told me so. According to my mother, I started around nine months. Both seem ridiculously early. Anyway, my little girl seems bound and determined to be as mobile as possible as soon as possible, so we may be in trouble soon. Another round of babyproofing at a higher height may be in order.

A few quick items of non-baby news:

I had my last physical therapy appointment. Yay! I think I just may be one of those people who actually has to exercise, just to ward off pain and injury. Good motivation, I guess.

The Husband’s cousin graduated from college last weekend! So a shout-out to him. We wanted to be there so bad and tried for weeks to get plane tickets, but just couldn’t make it work. The Husband will be flying to Poland in a few months for his stepbrother’s wedding and it’s eating up basically all of his vacation time, making other travel pretty much impossible. Anyway, the point is, we are so proud of W and so happy for him!

No progress on house stuff recently. And none in the near future with all the copy editing I have to get done. Next on our list is getting the kitchen floor ripped up, getting the asbestos down, and laying new tile. We did choose new tile (thanks for the advice TT!), so I guess that’s some progress. Then I think that utility room will remain on hold a little longer because remodeling the bathroom just became a bigger priority.

There’s no vent in our first floor bathroom, which is the only one with a shower. And there’s a window in the shower. And it’s not one of those glass cube windows or anything; it’s just a regular window. At first we thought that if we opened the window and/or the door during showers, that would be enough to vent the steam out. But the window still gets soaked, and we’ve discovered evidence that water is likely leaking through to the outside of the house. Upon further research, we learned that it’s likely that the wall is so damaged it may have to be torn down and replaced. Basically, we need to get the window out, assess the damage, and go from there. But in the meantime, no showers. So we are looking at weeks of baths. Sigh. I had to take baths my whole life growing up because my parents live in an old farmhouse that didn’t have a shower installed, just a tub. They were fine with that. I always found it terribly inconvenient. An inconvenience I seem unable to escape. Ironic.

On the bright side, our TiVo is working again, though we’re having bizarre time zone issues that caused me to miss the season finale of Gossip Girl last night, so I’m off to watch that before the Papoosekin awakens. Have I mentioned that she’s taking two 90-minute naps per day now? And usually a third little catnap. Life is getting good.

Reality Bites

One of the (many, many) blogs I subscribe to (Crunchy Chicken) is written by a woman whose husband is dying of cancer. She has young children; she and her husband are young; the whole thing is pretty much heartbreaking and horrific and makes me feel so, so, so lucky for a healthy husband and baby girl.

But I don't share this with you for the depressing dose of reality. I share her blog with you because she is refreshingly honest about all that she goes through, but in a very positive and reflective way. She's matter-of-fact about what she and her family goes through, and it's an interesting perspective. It's different from how I imagine I would deal with such tragedy, were that my lot in life to bear, but it's a strength I hope I would be able to dig down and find.

Anyway, she just posed this question to her readers and I thought it was a really interesting and thought-provoking one. Read her post to get the full context, but for those pressed for time, the gist of it is: "If you could shake off the chains of societal expectations and the ideas of monetary wealth and do whatever the hell you wanted to, what would it be? Would you choose an alternative lifestyle?

Don't limit yourself - would you be willing to cash in the equity on your home to live extremely frugally in a yurt out on some land? And don't limit yourself to the U.S. I think this, as a mental exercise, is good practice for helping you get used to dealing with change....What do you actually, really need to live happily?"

And I think this is a different vein of the question Scarlet Lily asked us several weeks ago. This is taking an idea akin to hers to a much deeper level. Because it's not "what would your occupation be?" This doesn't even necessarily assume an occupation. And it does assume a more realistic thought process. Don't think of an imaginary lifestyle. Think of something you could actually, logistically do, but think outside the constraints of what we are culturally conditioned to think is possible. It's scary because there's a lot we're taught we can't do that really, we could, because plenty of other cultures do, and plenty of generations before us have.

If you go to Crunchy's post and you read the comments from readers who have responded, you'll note that many people talk about living off the grid somewhere in the middle of nowhere with lots of land to grow their own produce and meat, etc. Not a big surprise dream from readers of green blog. And it's a dream I harbor in dusty corners of my mind, too, that I don't really take seriously because I don't think I'm brave enough to ever try it. But it's nice to think about.

And if you read through those comments, you may come across mine, where I wondered, if someone was to follow through on that dream, living off-grid with sustainable farming, built their own log cabin, etc., and if that someone has kids, and if you want those kids to have the choice and opportunity of going to college when that time comes, what do you do about education? Obviously, you would home school, if you were really that removed from society. Or am I assuming too much isolation in that scenario? Do you think people could/would live in such a way and still arrange transportation to and from the nearest school for their kid? What would the social implications be for the kid? I guess there are plenty of more rural communities in this country where you could have enough land to do all that for yourself, but still not be too many miles from the nearest school.

So, fine, I've talked myself through that problem. But what if you choose to home school your child. Again, the social implications are even more innumerable, but put that aside for a minute. Do you think that you could home school a child as aggressively as would be necessary to make them college ready, while at the same time growing all your own fruits and veggies, raising your own meat, etc.? When I think of all the agrarian cultures that have certainly produced very intelligent and well-educated children, I don't think those were the same families that were grooming the kids for Harvard. Not in this modern educational system anyway. Modern schools are infamous in this country for not recognizing different brands of intelligence. It's the SAT-way or the highway. Could you teach the specific curriculum that American academia demands to your children while running a fully self-sustaining farm?

I tend to feel that accomplishing both those realities would be impossible, in which case, would it be wrong to consciously make that decision for your family knowing the limits it would place on your child's future? Let me know your thoughts!

Cybertherapy?

Wow, you know how certain ideas or inspirations or creative output seem to hit our culture all at once? I find this to be true over and over again reading strangers' blogs. Sometimes people are just ripping each other off, and unfortunately this happens with some frequency among the craft blogs. But in this instance, it seems to be just a collective awareness along the same vein as my most personal blog post to date, and recent reactionary thoughts by both Scarlet and die Frau. Now I've found this article. Check it out; it's an interesting read that resonates strongly with me.

This Old House

The Husband is so sweet sometimes. I hate when I accidentally thwart him. Ouiser wasn't the only one throwing money at the Sigg peeps this week. The same day (unknowingly), I also bought Sigg bottles for the Husband and myself. Apparently, that was also my Mother's Day present. We only figured it out because he called me to verify a charge that our credit card company had found suspicious, leading them to block further charges until we verified it (I am so grateful about how seriously they're taking our identity theft issues, really, but I am wondering what they found suspicious about us buying diapers from Amazon. Seriously? That company should be sending me a Christmas cards every year thanking me for personally funding their corporate holiday parties in Maui.). Anyway, I made him change the Sigg he'd picked out for me to the one I'd picked out for myself. Then I canceled my order. At least, that's what the emails we sent the company said. I'm pretty sure we're actually just going to end up with four Siggs.This is the one he was going to get me . I like it a lot, and blue is usually a great guess for me, but this one I love:Those folksy Swedish designs get me every time. Thank God the nearest Ikea is in Atlanta.

Who knew there was so much to say about a water bottle?

If I haven't lost you to more interesting reads, in other news around here, we have seen the first of the Papoosekin's first tooth (Ouiser, do you have to filch all my blog fodder? LOL)! Thursday afternoon, out of nowhere, she projectile vomited all over me, herself, and the highchair (The Papoosekin did. Not Ouiser.). She didn't act like she was feeling bad, except for all that gagging and turning red during the vomiting. I took her temperature: 102. Stripped her naked, turned on the AC. When the Husband got home, we called the doc. To make a long story short, she was much worse the next morning. If she wasn't asleep, she was crying, and she is generally such a happy baby, I felt soooo bad for her. I held her all day long because she screamed bloody murder the second I tried to put her down. No interest in playing. No interest in crawling, sitting, standing (all the current favorite pastimes). She just so wasn't herself. In addition to burning up and vomiting.

The doctor wanted us to come in this morning, but she woke up with no fever and we discovered the tooth. I knew that teething could cause GI problems at the other end, but I didn't know about the vomiting. So it's a pretty classic, cliched story of new parents getting all worried about their child's illness only to find out that it was just a tooth. But in our defense, I know babies who show no symptoms of teething, just wake up one morning with a tooth. So I think our little one is just pretty far on the other end of that spectrum. At any rate, she's doing better today, though not all better yet. Send her happy thoughts to distract her from the pain.

The Husband and I are off this afternoon to look for new tile for the kitchen. Remember that tiny earthquake in the Midwest a few weeks ago? We barely felt it here. In fact, it was the Husband's first earthquake ever (except for a small one at my parent's house a couple years ago, but he slept through that), which he was very excited about, but I was not. It woke us up in the middle of the night, and I knew he was going to make a big deal about it and all I wanted was to go back to bed, so I tried to convince him that it was just the cat. Shaking the whole bed. Yeah, he didn't buy it either. Hey, it was the best I could come up with at 4:30 in the morning!

Anyway, that earthquake pushed up one of the tiles in our kitchen. Enough that it needs to be replaced. But we have asbestos linoleum under the tiles. And we have a six-month-old. And we're a little uncomfortable with that situation. There was a little patch of asbestos that we were already going to remove from where we made the new door into the utility room. The Husband was going to do that himself because it was so small. But now we're talking about the whole kitchen, so we're calling in the professionals. And frankly, it's not just a matter of safety at this point, but time. We need people who know what they're doing to come in, get 'er done, and get out. This is the kitchen we're talking about. Kind of an important room.

So the gist of all that is, we need to go pick out new tile. This will be the same tile that will eventually extend into the utility room, so once that's purchased at least I can pretend we're making a little headway in that area, too! Any tile choosing tips? Anyone out there with experience in this?

Have I mentioned there are no smoke detectors in this house? How do you buy a house in 2008 with no smoke detectors? Especially when the previous owners had three small children? Maybe they took them with them? Not so hard to believe if you knew some of the other details about the condition in which they left this house...

Anyway, we're out...

Happy Mother's Day

Emailed from one of the Husband's aunties and especially poignant to me right now.

For All My Favorite Moms by Anna Quindlen, Newsweek Columnist and Author

All my babies are gone now. I say this not in sorrow but in disbelief. I take great satisfaction in what I have today: three almost-adults, two taller than I am, one closing in fast. Three people who read the same books I do and have learned not to be afraid of disagreeing with me in their opinion of them, who sometimes tell vulgar jokes that make me laugh until I choke and cry, who need razor blades and shower gel and privacy, who want to keep their doors closed more than I like. Who, miraculously, go to the bathroom, zip up their jackets and move food from plate to mouth all by themselves. Like the trick soap I bought for the bathroom with a rubber ducky at its center, the baby is buried deep within each, barely discernible except through the unreliable haze of the past.

Everything in all the books I once poured over is finished for me now. Penelope Leach., T. Berry Brazelton., Dr. Spock. The ones on sibling rivalry and sleeping through the night and early-childhood education, all grown obsolete. Along with Goodnight Moon and Where the Wild Things Are, they are battered, spotted, well used. But I suspect that if you flipped the pages dust would rise like memories. What those books taught me, finally, and what the women on the playground taught me, and the well-meaning relations --what they taught me, was that they couldn't really teach me very much at all.

Raising children is presented at first as a true-false test, then becomes multiple choice, until finally, far along, you realize that it is an endless essay. No one knows anything. One child responds well to positive reinforcement, another can be managed only with a stern voice and a timeout. One child is toilet trained at 3, his sibling at 2. When my first child was born, parents were told to put baby to bed on his belly so that he would not choke on his own spit-up. By the time my last arrived, babies were put down on their backs because of research on sudden infant death syndrome.

To a new parent this ever-shifting certainty is terrifying, and then soothing. Eventually you must learn to trust yourself. Eventually the research will follow. I remember 15 years ago poring over one of Dr. Brazelton's wonderful books on child development, in which he describes three different sorts of infants: average, quiet, and active. I was looking for a sub-quiet codicil for an 18-month old who did not walk. Was there something wrong with his fat little legs? Was there something wrong with his tiny little mind? Was he developmentally delayed, physically challenged? Was I insane? Last year he went to China . Next year he goes to college. He can talk just fine. He can walk, too.

Every part of raising children is humbling, too. Believe me, mistakes were made. They have all been enshrined in the "Remember-When-Mom-Did" Hall of Fame. The outbursts, the temper tantrums, the bad language, mine, not theirs. The times the baby fell off the bed. The times I arrived late for preschool pickup. The nightmare sleepover. The horrible summer camp. The day when the youngest came barreling out of the classroom with a 98 on her geography test, and I responded, "What did you get wrong?" (She insisted I include that.) The time I ordered food at the McDonald's drive-through speaker and then drove away without picking it up from the window. (They all insisted I include that.) I did not allow them to watch the Simpsons for the first two seasons. What was I thinking?

But the biggest mistake I made is the one that most of us make while doing this. I did not live in the moment enough. This is particularly clear now that the moment is gone, captured only in photographs. There is one picture of the three of them, sitting in the grass on a quilt in the shadow of the swing set on a summer day, ages 6, 4 and 1. And I wish I could remember what we ate, and what we talked about, and how they sounded, and how they looked when they slept that night. I wish I had not been in such a hurry to get on to the next thing: dinner, bath, book, bed. I wish I had treasured the doing a little more and the getting it done a little less. Even today I'm not sure what worked and what didn't, what was me and what was simply life. When they were very small, I suppose I thought someday they would become who they were because of what I'd done. Now I suspect they simply grew into their true selves because they demanded in a thousand ways that I back off and let them be. The books said to be relaxed and I was often tense, matter-of-fact and I was sometimes over the top.

And look how it all turned out. I wound up with the three people I like best in the world who have done more than anyone to excavate my essential humanity. That's what the books never told me. I was bound and determined to learn from the experts.

It just took me a while to figure out who the experts were.

End of the Line

You know that game where you have your iPod pick a random song from your playlist and it's supposed to tell your fortune or something? At the gym this morning, my iPod and I were in harmonious synchronicity as it first chose "Lose Yourself" by Eminem, a song that always inspires me to toughen up and plow through whatever is bothering me, immediately followed by "End of the Line" by the Traveling Wilburys. Then it played the latter again! Randomly! I draw heavy meaning from that. That song was on my list of survival songs for grad school. It was on my delivery playlist for the hospital when I was pregnant. It makes me melt with relaxation every time. Spooky, eh? For those who don't know it, or just need a reminder, here are the lyrics. I'm too lazy to hook you up with a downloadable link.

(Well it's alright)
Ridin' around in the breeze.
If you live the life you please.
Doing the best you can.
As long as you lend a hand.
You can sit around and wait
for the phone to ring.
Waiting for someone to tell you everything.
Sit around and wonder what tomorrow will bring.
Maybe a diamond ring.
(Well it's alright)
Even if they say you're wrong.
Sometimes you've gotta be strong.
As long as you've got somewhere to lay.
Every day is just one day.
Maybe somewhere down the road a ways.
You'll think of me and wonder
where I am these days.
Maybe somewhere down the road
when someone plays,
Purple Haze.
(Well it's alright)
Even when push comes to shove.
If you got someone to love.
Everything will work out fine.
We're going to the end of the line.
Don't have to be ashamed of the
kind of car I drive.
I'm just glad to be here, happy to be alive.
It don't matter if you're by my
side. I'm satisfied.
(Well it's alright)
Even if you're old and grey.
You still got something to say.
Remember to live and let live.
The best you can do is forgive.
Ridin' around in the breeze.
If you live the life you please.
Even if the sun don't shine.
We're going to the end of the line!


Hope that brightens someone's day like it did mine.

You Spin Me Right 'Round, Baby, Right 'Round

I've composed so many blog entries in my head since my last post. The fact of the matter is that I am still having incredible time management problems. The Husband is trying to get me to go to bed earlier every night, and he's right: a better-rested mommy is a better mommy. At least in my case. But after the Papoosekin goes to bed is the only time I have to myself, so it's so hard. I know every mama must struggle with this. She won't play on her own. And she doesn't just fuss when I try to leave her to play on the floor for five minutes. It's a full-on screamfest. And maybe I could train her out of some of that, or some will improve with age, but my gut says a lot of it is just her personality. She just seems to want to be right in the middle of whatever I'm doing. All the time. This is great in some ways, but it makes it hard to get things done around the house, like, oh, I don't know, breakfast.

Anyway, she's already making a transition toward longer naps. We've had one as long as two hours, which contrasts nicely with the three half-hour naps per day we've been living with. She celebrated her six-month birthday yesterday by dropping the third nap after one hour nap and one hour-and-a-half nap. This seems to have proved to be a thoroughly exhausting endeavor that set her right back on three mini-naps today, with possibly a fourth one to come, but hey, it's a process.

There's a part of me that wants to completely let go in a post about how hard things have been around here. How I'm not, apparently, one of those moms, like Ouiser, who was born to do this. You hear about all those moms for whom, yeah, it's hard, and they certainly have their bad days, but the whole baby-raising thing turns out to be this amazing period of growth and burgeoning strength and finding reserves of patience and nurturing and blah, blah, blah. That hasn't been the way it is for me.

I treasure every day that I get to spend taking care of the Liliputian. I do a pretty good job of living in the moment while I care for her. But then the Husband comes home, reality comes crashing in, and the to-dos pile upon me until I feel like I'm suffocating. I feel like an inadequate, suffocating, incompetent, ten-pounds-overweight blob. Then she smiles at me and I forget everything. Then dinner burns and I burst into tears.

A touch of post-partum depression? Could be. I plan to explore the possibility with my doctor. Normal hormonal fluctuations of a nursing mother? Very likely, and unfortunately nothing with an end in sight for another six months. Simple sleep deprivation? Oh, almost definitely. I need to take better care of myself, I know. And I need to get to the gym. And eat better. Cut back on sugar. I need, I need, I need...

Then I have weekends like this one, where we spent Saturday morning at the local parade (Old Timer's Festival, see Ouiser's blog here), and I had the best time ever. Outside, under the beautiful blue sky, 70-degree weather, total sense of community, sitting with Ouiser's family, including her aunt, cousin, father-in-law, husband, and daughter, watching the Miss Old Timer float, the high school marching bands, the float of the family of the woman with 41 great-grandchildren, eating authentic southern sausage and biscuits for a dollar, the smell of barbecued chicken in the air (again, see Ouiser's post on that one!).

My baby is sooooo agonizingly close to crawling. In fact, Mr. Ouiser swears up and down he saw her do so last night, but the Husband and I haven't seen it yet. She's basically sitting up with some minimal balance support every minute or so. She's babbling! Lots of "ba" and "da" and "bva."

So I have a pretty great life. And I'd love to explain in great depth about how and why I lose sight of that, but, frankly, I don't have the time. And that's a shame. Because I think about other mothers who may feel the same way, friends who aren't mothers yet but may experience similar feelings when they are and need to know it's okay, and friends who may not even see motherhood anywhere on their horizons but wonder why I don't write or call more... I want you all to understand, but don't have it in me to make you. Maybe someday. In the meantime, let's all have a look at my beautiful daughter...
...who can hold her own bottle now (kind of)...

...who smiles a bazillion times a day at the mere sight of me...
...who was more interested in the people standing behind us than in the parade itself...
...and who lives for weekends and the hour from six to seven every evening when she gets to see her papa.

Six months. I never thought we'd make it. It's been such a major time of reflection for me. I hope I can get a chance to share it with y'all soon (like how I slipped that bit of southern influence in there? I'm blending.)

Happy Earth Day

I love how there are more new and ingenious ways to save the earth every day. And you don't even have to get off your patootie or spend a single sent to accomplish these ones.

Now, I'm as Google-dicted as the next person, but try using this search engine, at least for a day. Ecocho is partnered with Yahoo and they're planting trees with the revenue coming in from the ads. So the more you use them to do your searching, the more trees get planted, and the more greenhouse gases are offset. Apparently, Google was working with Ecocho at first, but have since stopped. I don't know why. But I emailed them a nasty letter here: adsense-support@google.com and suggest you do the same, if you're a Google user.

There's also this from the Earthday Network:

Tell your leaders to act before the heat hits the fan

You know how we always talk about how politicians aren’t doing anything to stop climate change? NOW is the time for us to make them change their ways. Earth Day Network has drafted a petition demanding that Congress act to solve this crisis, and to solve it fairly.

Join me in signing up Earth Day Network's online petition, at:

http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/1807/petition.jsp?petition_KEY=858

See? Now you can feel good about doing a little something for Earth Day this year.

Love Hurts

My blog is going to start sounding like Scarlet's.

I had my first regular PT session today. I got the good ol' e-stim, learned some new exercises, then massage, and ultrasound. I was feeling pretty good about all that, until I realized what time it was and that she'd gone an hour past the time I told Ouiser (who was keeping the Papoosekin) I was sure we'd be done by. Nuts (excuse the kindergarten-speak, we're trying to cut the foul language around here as Baby S is coming up with about 17,000 new words per day, and we all know how malleable children's language is. Just ask Toddler Tamer--sorry again, TT! The Husband's a little out of control. Holy tangent.). So I owe Ouiser. I'm actually going to owe her a whole bunch because she's keeping the Papoosekin twice a week for a while so I can go to PT sessions. We don't really know how long "a while" is because I don't know how long the PT will go on for. No one really knows because it depends how my body progresses. I know my insurance only covers 30 visits, but I'd be shocked if I had to go that many times. Well, if it started to look like that may happen, I'd certainly look into day care. Of the non-taking-advantage-of-my-friends kind. Ouiser and I are tight, but I fear her southern hospitality may not extend to three months worth of free babysitting!

Anyway, today I learned all about my transverse abdominal muscles. Well, that's not true. I learned all about all the abdominal muscles during my first semester of graduate school, but I learned to isolate these particular muscles today. These are the very muscles that Pilates focuses on, which is why I suspect I'm heading into Scarlet territory. These are muscles that we all apparently should be engaging at almost all times for postural support, but many of us don't use at all. In fact, my therapist told me about a study where they did EMG on 40 NFL players with back problems and found that only 2 of them used these particular muscles during any given activity under which they were tested. The rest relied on their power muscles but completely ignored these. These transverse muscles are the ones that run laterally across your abdomen. They're the deepest of the abdominal muscles and can be tough to isolate. They're also almost non-existent after having a baby. Thank goodness for my athletic background because they are tough suckers to isolate.

In Babyland, gates are up, which means Baby S can finally play at our house without being subjected to innumerable death traps. We still have more to put up on the stairs, both indoors and on the deck, but we at least have the living room and dining room quartered off from the rest of the house as baby-safe zones.

Ouiser and I are trying to get all our ducks in a row before heading off to NY for Scarlet's shower and bachelorette party this weekend. Our little ones will be with their papas all weekend. Should be interesting for all involved. I'm trying to make peace with the fact that I'm convinced the Papoosekin will start crawling while I'm gone. Sad for me, if she does, but it may be the only "first" her papa would be around for because he works, so it's only fair. It's going to be so weird being away from her. I'm torn between being really, really excited to have time to myself to do something fun and really anxious about being away from her. It will be good for me, but it's going to hurt, too.

At Least We Know I'm Not Spineless

The big news around these parts is that the Papoosekin is learning to crawl. I mean it is imminent. Wednesday afternoon Ouiser kept the Papoosekin for me while I was at a physical therapy appointment (more on that later). When I came to pick her up, she was playing on the floor and was apparently so excited to see me that she got up on her hands and knees...for about a second. But it was the first time I'd ever seen her do that.Then yesterday morning she did it again when she was on our bed and realized Bob was there, too. Last night, after the Husband came home, she did it over and over again for about 20 minutes on the living room floor. She got up on her hands and knees, would hold it for maybe 10 seconds, including some rocking back and forth, and then fall. Once she even got a knee forward, then fell on her face. I cannot even begin to describe how exciting it is to watch this. So, so, so cool. I mean, five months ago she was barely breathing oxygen and opening her eyes. Now she's about to be mobile.
We're also a smidge terrified. I can't even think about the babyproofing we need to do. Have I mentioned she's only five and a half months old? We're not prepared for this. We just recently discovered an appalling lack of smoke detectors in this house (didn't the last owners have three kids? Yes, they did.). Obviously, that needs to be fixes asap, hopefully this weekend. Then we'll get on the babyproofing.And as our child is flourishing, we are decaying. Seriously, it feels that way sometimes. The Husband came down with another round of that mystery stomach virus/plague from hell that has laid waste to his innards four times now in five months. Sound suspiciously like something other than a virus to you? Me, too. I made him go to the doctor who ran an ulcer test, but that came back negative. Now we have to decide whether to do further tests, or let it be for now.

Did I mention we have a $5,000 deductible? We do. Each.

And I started physical therapy last week. With the repeated back issues...the Lilliputian getting heavier (I've gotta stop feeding her...)...I'm only 30; I shouldn't be this broken. Anyway, I went to the doctor. He took an x-ray. It showed that I do not have scoliosis (lateral curvature of the spine), but my pelvis is crooked. And I have kyphosis (anterior-posterior curvature of the spine...why older women look hunchbacked. And by the way, that explains why my rowing coach used to always yell at me to straighten my back, and I'd say, "I am," and she'd say "No, you're not!" and I'd say, "I can't straighten it anymore!" and she'd yell, "Yes, you can!" Etc. We all hated her.). And my left leg is 2 cm longer than my right.

So they put a heel lift in my shoe and gave me a gazillion exercises to do each night. And I have to go see my PT twice a week. I like her a lot though. And there's that deductible. So let's home this is worth it.

Gotta get to bed. Mr. Ouiser was sick. The Husband was sick. Twice. Baby S was sick. Now the Liliputian and Ouiser are both sick. And I'm just starting to feel a strange sensation in my left sinus. Drat.

And I Wonder Why Her Breath Smells Funny

We've now got three meals a day, consisting variably of rice cereal, avocado, and sweet potatoes. Today was the first day of sweet potatoes, and they were a hard sell, but she's been unsure of everything the first go around so far, so we'll see how she fares tomorrow.

I'm also growing acutely aware that we have a massive bib shortage. I've used everything from a cloth diaper to a kitchen towel to a washcloth today because I just can't keep up with the bib laundry. Six bibs doesn't make it very far when you're doing three meals a day.
The Husband has been on a great 7:00-4:00 schedule at his new job...until this Friday. Someone else in his department is temporarily unable to do his 8:00-5:00 shift, and because The Husband is the most junior employee, he has to take over. Fortunately, it should only last a few months. Unfortunately, during that time he won't get home until about 6:00, which is the Papoosekin's fussiest time of day as she winds down toward that 7:00 bedtime.


These smiles weren't really for us. These are the squeals of joy that are bestowed upon Chewy every time he gets within her line of vision. I really need to confirm with our pediatrician that there's no harm in Chewy giving her a good tongue bath every time he comes upon her, including the inside of her mouth.

I've had so many other things I've wanted to blog about, but The Husband and I continue to feel overwhelmed by life in general. We've made a conscious decision to just start letting some things slide because we're both about to lose it completely. So the house is extra messy. Dinner doesn't always get made. And I don't blog much. Hopefully it will get better. But happy husbands and wives and mamas and papas are more important than all that other junk, so that's what we're focusing on.

In the meantime, current projects include: filing taxes, installing baby gates, installing carbon monoxide/smoke detectors, figuring out how not to freeze our baby out (who lives on the first floor) without sleeping in pools of our own sweat (in our room on the second floor), and jumping through the endless hoops required by the State of Tennessee in order for me to get a license to practice here. Apparently AZ was a little more lax. Funny, it didn't seem like it when I was jumping through their hoops. Oh, and more bibs are on the shopping list. And baby food freezing trays.

Gourmet Beginnings

The subject of last meals comes up sometimes in conversation. You know, if given the choice, some people say they would have a chocolate cake, others filet mignon, etc.

Have you ever thought about what your first food would be, if given the choice? Neither had I. But surely it wouldn't be this, would it?

Rice cereal. Mush. The Liliputian had her first taste of it yesterday and her second today. The awful face she makes in this video only lasted for the first few bites. Then she was pretty eager for it. It took forever to feed her the few ounces, but it went faster today.

We're supposed to continue with this for four days, then we can try something new from a very brief list. I've been going by the popular Super Baby Food book, which has some problems (inaccuracies with advice, very dense text, a bit disorganized), but seems like a great resource as long as you're aware of these. The four-day wait period is to ensure there are no allergies. Then you introduce one new food after each wait period; so, if there is an allergic reaction, you know exactly to which food it was. So, we'll probably try some avocado on Wednesday. Wish us luck!

A Little Catch-Up

Happy 5 Month Birthday, Papoosekin!

Wouldn't you agree that this is not a baby with a weigh-gaining problem anymore? Look at that chin!
She's rolling, she's sitting up almost independently, she's standing for a few seconds holding onto the couch...She is acting so ready to start solids. The debut of brown rice cereal is planned for this Saturday. She may be teething; she was so fussy today and she's almost never fussy. I can't see anything, but her mood improved after a little homeopathic teething drops application. Sitting, standing, rolling, eating, teething, fattening...my little newborn is a full-fledged baby. I told the Husband that I feel like she'll be telling me she hates me any day now. OMG, we need to childproof this place. She's going to be mobile any minute.

(This one's from our last day in Tucson, at only three and a half months.)

(And this one's from our first day in the new house in TN.)

In other news, we had a fabulous visit with Scarlet Lily and her fiance last weekend. I joined a gym. I hurt my back again (though nowhere near as bad as before). I'm looking for a physical therapist or physiatrist. We moved the Liliputian out of her temp nursery adjacent to our room and into her own, permanent room (I'll take pics when I get a chance). The Husband is sick with the same cold Mr. Ouiser and Scarlet's fiance have. Chewy and Otis have met and made friends. My laptop has been officially wiped. I've got all new credit cards and a bunch of credit reports I need to review with a fine-toothed comb this weekend. That's about all I can come up with...we're real exciting around here.

Want a list of things I need to do? No, you don't. I'll give you a partial anyway. I need to get a rain barrell. I need to plant some vegetables. I need to get curtains up in the dining room. I need to install baby gates. I need to make sure all our outlets have plugs. I need to install magnetic cabinet locks. I need a haircut. I need to pack up the size small Fuzzi Bunz. I need to report the identity theft to the feds and the local police. I need a TN license and registration. I need to seed the lawn. I need to get a TN SLP license and look for someplace to work. Ugh, I need to update my resume. I need to post this and go to bed.

I'm getting more sleep at night, though, thanks to letting the baby cry it out. I learned a magic trick involving turning off the monitor while she screams, waking up by instinct after about 10 minutes when she's done crying, and turning the monitor back on. Cuts down significantly on my trauma and sleep deprivation, which makes all of life seem more manageable. Although I'm a little panicky that they're not replaying last week's Lost tonight like they normally do. What happened?!? No, wait!! Don't tell me. I'll catch up somehow.

*(Huh. Sorry about the duplicate posts. Don't know how that happened. Anybody know how to delete those?)

No Joke.

My identity has been thieved. Absconded with. Jilted, even.

Two weeks ago, The Husband was purchasing and obligatory 72 doughnuts from Dunkin Donuts (don't ask, they literally made him) for a work meeting when our Visa was declined. This actually didn't raise his eyebrows too high because (1) the clerk said that it was probably her machine and this happens all the time, and (2) it happened to me at the same Dunkin Donuts a few weeks before with three different cards, none of which had any reason to be declined. She reran it; it went through without a hitch. He then made a purchase at Wal-Mart with no problem on the same card. However, paranoid/wise security specialist that he is, he called Visa to make sure there were no problems. He learned of a $1,500 charge to Amazon that we had not made. Because the card is really in my name, I called, disputed the charge, closed the account, and ordered a new card with a new number. In fact, Visa had already flagged the charge, declined it, and had some kind of security alert on the account. Go Visa.

The Husband and I discussed whether we needed to order credit reports, file a fraud alert on our credit reports, or other options. We meant to make a decision on it that weekend. Life got in the way. We hadn't forgotten about it, but we let a week lapse and still hadn't addressed it.

Meanwhile, I noticed I wasn't getting my Gmail anymore. Well, specifically, I was getting it but with increasingly long delays. Finally, last weekend, I stopped receiving email altogether, despite knowing that I had made online orders (with the new Visa number, as well as with another card) from major companies that I knew must have sent confirmation emails.

I poked around in Gmail for a while, assuming there was just some glitch in my account. Lo and behold, I stumbled upon a setting whereby all my incoming email was getting forwarded to another account and deleted from my inbox. An account I'd never seen before. To say I felt violated is an understatement. It felt gross. People always say that it does, and Holy Monkeys, they're not kidding. It felt like someone was in my house. In my life. In fact, they were. They were reading all my email. But wait, it gets worse.

I was finally able to recover some, but not all, of the missed emails in my Trash folder. There I discovered two emails, one from BananaRepublic.com and one from Gap.com telling me they'd received my returns and credited my account. Wait, what? I haven't ordered anything from either website in months, though I have a BR card. The emails listed the ordered items; uh, I'm not and never have been a size 2.

By this time, The Husband and I were strongly suspicious of some sort of keystroke tracking software being planted on my laptop (or possibly his desktop) by some hacker. I had hightailed it to Ouiser's house to use her Internet to stop whatever damage was being done, since I obviously couldn't do a darn thing from my infected computer. Ouiser was a saint and took care of my baby and hers for hours while I was on the phone and online trying to stop the runaway train.

Do you have any idea how hard it is to get a fraud alert placed on your credit bureau files if they've already caught wind that something's amiss? There's tons of info online regarding what to do if you suspect your identity has been stolen. That's great, really. But you can't get a live person on the phone at any of the three credit bureaus. And guess what? If there's a security alert on your file, you can't get to anything online. It took me forever on the phone to finally get a fraud alert placed with all three bureaus and order a copy of my credit report from all three.

I've also learned that once I receive my credit reports and go through them with a fine-toothed comb, I need to file reports with the FTC and my local police. I spent today on the phone with Visa and BR trying to get the details of dates and charge amounts and shipping information for the fraudulent orders (about $2,500 in all, that I know of, so far). I've closed or requested new numbers for every single credit card I have. We still need to follow up with our banks, but it's complicated because of the move and switching over from one bank to a new one.

Oh, and here's a kicker: I was poking around Amazon.com last night after changing my password, trying to determine if there was anything else I needed to do. You know how they keep a record of addresses you ship to? Funny I should run across a little lady in OH and a gentleman in CA whom I'm darn-tootin' sure I never shipped anything to. I'm sure they're fake and will be dead-ends for the authorities, but I'll certainly turn them over, just in case.

And, as Ouiser quipped, "What does Brown do for you?" A heck of a lot more than I realized, apparently. At least two of the three BananaRepublic.com and Gap.com orderes that were placed were returned because the idiots tried to ship them to our old address in Tucson; UPS knew that the house was vacant and suspected fraudulent activity. So they just returned them to sender. Thank you, Mr. UPS Guy. Thank you, thank you.

The activity started mid-month. We don't know if someone has hacked into The Husband's computer. VERY unlikely. He's got some pretty sophisticated protection in there. I could have gone somewhere I shouldn't have online; although I'm not perfect, I do think I'm more careful than most, so I really don't know how it could have happened. I don't recall being anywhere weird. But it definitely happened through the computer, not snail mail or through our garbage or the movers or some application we filled out, etc. They had all my passwords. They shopped at the sites I shop at. They must have been recording keystrokes.

Anyway. Use sophisticated passwords. Don't visit suspicious sites. Update your antivirus protection. Hug your UPS man. And for the love of capitalism, check your credit card balances frequently so you can nip suspicious behavior in the bud.

I haven't seen the end of this and will be dealing with it for quite some time. Thankfully, we already bought our house and have our mortgage, so I don't need a spotless credit anytime real soon. But that's a silver lining borne of shear luck. Others are not so fortunate. If it can happen to me, with a husband who knows more about protecting against this stuff than anyone I've met, it can certainly happen to you.

I'm off that particular soapbox now. Class is dismissed.

Eye Candy

Toddler Tamer has a similar picture that I've always loved. Happy to capture my budding reader on film, too!

One of the very few times I've managed to slip away during naptime.

Ferberizing teaches you to self-soothe. Nummm...fingers....

Fur baby and...uh...skin baby?

This t-shirt was missorted and we just found it. Already too small for her. And nothing is too small for this child. 'Gaters, if you order for a baby you know, go a size up. I remember Ouiser and Toddler Tamer also having the same problem when we gave them some 'Gate babywear.

Ferberizing

Not to be confused with Febreezing.

The days of my bitty girl napping on me, and only on me, after nursing herself to sleep had to come to an end. For the sake of my sanity and of this house ever getting remotely clean enough for us to even think about childproofing it, she really had to learn to go to sleep in her crib, on her own.

The problem is, for those without a little urchin of their own, if you put your kid in they're crib after they've fallen asleep somewhere else, they get to the end of a sleep cycle, wake up just enough to check the status quo, and are shocked and dismayed to discover themselves someplace other than where the sandman stole over them in the first place. The analogy that is commonly used here is imagine that you fall asleep on the couch and wake up to find yourself on the kitchen floor. You may not cry, but you'd be pretty shook up. We all (babies and adults) wake up just enough between sleep cycles to notice such a major change. And the baby gets pissed. And tells you.

And my particular baby didn't even get that far. She'd usually wake up just as I was trying to move her. Or after five minutes, I think when she noticed the extra body heat was gone. So anyway, it was time. I was sick of spending six hours a day on the couch with her sleeping on me.

So I read that book by West that Ouiser lent me. I tell you, baby S is a wonder baby who has the adaptation skills to bring a tear to Darwin's eye. It didn't really work for us. But I think it may have toughened me up a smidgen regarding the crying. The Husband came back with Dr. Ferber's book last night, at my request.

I've been saying since before the Liliputian was even born that I wanted to avoid "Ferberizing" my baby for as long as possible. I had been told by people, books, and websites that it involved leaving your child to cry, alone in her crib, for increasing lengths of time between your checks on her. I'd heard of people leaving their kids to cry for hours this way, and that it was so heartbreaking for the parents that it often didn't work. I didn't think I had the heart for it. Turns out I'm a heartless ogre of a mother after all.

Well, it actually turns out that Ferber recommends only letting your child cry for a length of time you can stomach. So if you can only handle 10 minutes max, that's fine. You need not ever let your child cry for 30 minutes, 60 minutes, 90 minutes straight without a check, as I had heard. So, you can start out going in to check on your baby after only 1 minute of crying, if you want. Then you increase to 3 minutes before the second check, then 5, then 7, then 10, and stay at 10 if that's what works for you. Much more humane and compassionate than I was expecting. I was near to a panic attack with all the crying she was doing yesterday. I swear my heart felt like it was going to explode. I was literally sitting on the couch panting. So now I know 15 minutes is too long for me. Or at least it was yesterday. I'm sure I'll get better at this, too.

Today's she's napping spectacularly, for it being only the second day. Though that could have more to do with the fact that she had her vaccines this morning. We finally had an insurance number to go to the pediatrician with. And the other good news? She's between the 25th and 50th percentiles for both height and weight! Yay! We may have kicked that weight gain problem for good, finally! Hers anyway. I make no guarantees about any weight problems of my own.

And I finally got the card reader hooked up, but Blogger's not letting me upload the photos for some reason. I'll try again asap.

Tidbits

Check out the who's who signed onto this letter to the Daily Telegraph lamenting the death of childhhod and urging the government to take action.



Remember this video, shared with me by the Husband's auntie, LK-H? For any, like Ouiser, who were freaked by the news that even breastmilk is apparently dangerous, here's some mildly reassuring news. And, LK-H, it mentions you MOMS friends, too!