I am still quite sick... and yet I feel like no one understands what I mean when I say that. Perhaps they don't understand.
What I mean by "quite sick" is "completely non-functioning and pathetic-like, requiring lots of help". And what THAT means is that I spend most of my time green-faced on the couch trying desperately not to be sick. That actually hasn't changed much since I acquired Zofran (which is a whole 'nother frustrating story I shall relate below).
I am still nauseous much of the time, just significantly less nauseous. To clarify, this means that the level of nausea has been reduced to what sounds a lot like what other women tend to give me advice for. You know. "Oh, just keep some Saltines around to nibble. That'll help a lot." "Such-and-such tea completely cured my morning sickness! I'll bring some for you!" "Keep a mint tea bag around and sniff it!"
Nausea that responds to these sort of things sounds like something out of a messed-up fairy tale. It just sounds so mild. So my nausea tends to abate only after I take a dose of Zofran (it wears off after almost exactly six hours, strangely enough) in addition to following all the stereotypical anti-nausea advice. Eat only small amounts. Eat frequently. Keep rested. Keep hydrated. Avoid triggers (in my case heat and lack of airflow, as well as certain smells). Avoid moving too suddenly. Get up slowly in the morning.
So following all that advice AND swallowing a Zofran every eight hours, I've actually had some nausea-free moments!
Still, I am intensely frustrated by what my body is doing in lieu of being too nauseated to stand.
Lately, I've been completely unable to function most of the time for reasons independent of nausea. Firstly, I am so lightheaded and dizzy all the time. Lying down on my back (generally a no-no for super pregnant women because the super ginormous uterus puts enough pressure on the inferior vena cava that blood flow is obstructed and bad things happen), I can hardly breathe. Same with lying on my side. Sitting is also not so good for breathing. I can breathe best when standing. Basically, I am feeling oxygen-deprived much of the time.
Secondly, and this is arguably even more annoying than feeling unable to breathe, I'm just weak. I avoid standing for very long because I feel like a sack of molten lead jelly... enough so that lifting my arms enough to hold a magazine in front of my face is extremely hard work, and I can hardly read the visiting teaching message before I have to put down that Ensign. My phone is similarly too hard to hold up sometimes. I am having difficulty staying upright in my chair at the moment. I am also having a hard time typing because my arms feel so heavy, even with much of their weight resting on the table. In fact, I've been putting off typing this blog post because I feel too weak to type much of the time...
And then I'm so drowsy...
And I have a constant headache. And Zofran makes my headache worse. (Still worth the relief from nausea, though.)
So basically, the idea of tending a toddler while in this state is quite simply overwhelming. And that means that James is staying home many days to help me instead of going to campus to think brilliant mathy thoughts and make money. And the more frequently this happens, the worse I feel about it. If I'm sick enough that my husband has to stay home... gosh, I feel pathetic. And a bit guilty. Like maybe if I was less of a wimp or something, James would be able to work as much as he's supposed to. As much as he needs to.
Here's the part where I whine.
It has gotten to the point where I almost wish someone would prescribe me bed rest. I feel like I'm already confined to lying down most of the day since I most emphatically do not wish to collapse or faint. So, at least in my imagination, the only difference between what is happening now and what life would be like if I were sentenced to bed rest is this: When people ask me how I'm doing, and I tell them "I feel awful and completely unable to do anything", they actually realize I am feeling awful and am completely unable to do anything.
I'm so frustrated. I shouldn't have to have James stay home so often. There are theoretically other people who can help, right? I shouldn't have to add the words "bed rest" to get across how bad things are, should I?
Is the problem that I am trying too hard or something? If I'm at church, clearly that means that no matter what I say, I'm really okay? Do I have to stay home for weeks in a row and neglect my calling in order for anyone to notice the words I am saying? Do I have to show up in a wheelchair and carry a sign that says, "I'm disabled! Help!"?
(And then if people did suddenly realize I needed help once the words "bed rest" or "wheelchair" or something were officially attached to my name somehow, I think I'd even feel slightly worse about the situation. After all, the situation would be the same, only people now actually believe I need help. I shouldn't need bed rest or a wheelchair for people to hear me when I say I need help!)
James is already doing most (or all?) of the childcare (and wifecare, hah), shopping, food preparation, and household chores. In addition to that, he is supposed to be doing math research. Which means he's essentially supposed to think up new math, and think deep, mathy (and preferably also new) thoughts about general relativity--you know, one of the things Einstein is famous for coming up with? [If you didn't click the link to his paper above, just think Einstein or something.] And then he has Church callings to attend to.
And then he feels guilty for not being able to do all these things without pooping out. And he wonders why it is so hard to find the energy to play with Amelia, while maintaining a happy, playful mood... Truthfully, he should realize that all of the above is an awful lot to ask of him. Probably too much to ask, in my opinion. I don't know what I'd do without James. (Although it probably wouldn't involve being pregnant, I suppose... Or taking care of toddlers...)
Foof. I shall stop that whining business... and move on to whinging about something else! I was disappointed last month when the best answer for my nausea anyone could come up with was Zofran. One of the midwives (I am seeing a team of them) prescribed me some. Specifically, it was 60 of the 8 mg oral dissolving tablets with two refills, with directions to take one every eight hours as needed. To my dismay, when I got to the pharmacy, the price was... *dun dun dun* $150. Ugh, no! And my insurance will only cover 24 of those precious puppies each month. So I went home in tears with enough Zofran for a mere eight days.
Thankfully, after digging around, I located an additional week's worth of old Zofran that I had leftover from last pregnancy. I was too traumatized from the last pregnancy to even consider getting rid of it. And also, I vaguely recall having much difficulty obtaining it in the first place. I may or may not ever throw out any Zofran I do not use...
I soon noticed that, yes, the Zofran helped a lot... and I just could not bring myself to take fewer than three Zofrans over the course of each day. I was hoping to ration it out so it lasted longer, but it didn't work. I got violently ill approximately six hours after each dose, which means I have two hours of misery before it's been eight hours. By then, my willpower has faded and I am no longer willing to not take the Zofran I was hoping to do without.
Well, I ran out of the Zofran I had on hand, and was unwilling to pay $150 for the remaining oral dissolving tablets the midwife had prescribed, so I called the midwifery clinic and asked the midwife who happened to be there that day to call in a new Zofran prescription for the regular tablets rather than the oral dissolving ones. Why? Well, 90 of the regular 8-mg tablets is $35. 60 of the 8-mg oral dissolving ones is $150. That's why.
The midwife called in a new prescription, and I went to go get it. And then I got to burst into tears again when I got what she prescribed. Zofran, yes. Regular tablets, yes. But only 20 of them, no refills. And, even worse, they were the 4 mg tablets. The 4 mg tablets help me significantly less than the 8 mg ones do. So basically I have enough Zofran to last me a little over three days. Three measly days.
Well, I haven't thrown out the empty Zofran bottle from that one time a couple years ago when someone got it right. (... And honestly, I got that because I was working at the doctor's office and could make absolutely certain that the prescription was being done right. And that doctor actually understood that I was sooper dooper sick because he saw me so often.)
Ugh. Maybe if I shove the empty bottle in someone's face and ask for exactly the same thing, I'll get it. I sure hope so. I'm fed up with trying to communicate via phone. -.- Monday is my next midwife's appointment. Here's to hoping I can miraculously obtain a prescription for generic Zofran... 8 mg tablets, not orally dissolving... in an appropriate quantity. Like 90. Or 120. It's cheaper when I get more at once. (Yay, Costco...)
Anyway. Let me repeat: I need help. HALP! I'm planning to gather up the courage to ask for help from the appropriate people in the ward. I'm not sure what to ask for. Maybe since it's summer, one of the youth can come over every morning and play with Amelia for me. Maybe someone can help with chores. Maybe people can bring food. Maybe someone can help when I need to go shopping. I just somehow need to survive when James goes to work. And, importantly, I need to somehow survive when James goes to Vienna, Austria for a whole week and a half at the end of this month. So yeah. HALP.
Ready for something more lighthearted?
So many of our forks have mysteriously disappeared. Of course, I suspect Amelia is the culprit, but I can't find them. Not in or around our couches. Not in our heat vents. Not in anywhere I could think to look.
Well, this small deficiency of forks caused my father to call and offer to send us what sounds like a nice flatware set that was obtained from some relatives in England. Stainless steel, but plated in something that makes them look gold. Service for eight. I accepted, and so theoretically we will be getting these in the mail.
And then apparently my dad decided we should have more nice flatware. Without asking, he purchased a 94-piece set off the Interwebs, and shipped it to us. It arrived yesterday. This is what was in the box. I was very pleased with them. They are beautiful, and nice and sturdy. (Thank you!)
James' reaction to them, though, completely flabbergasted me. It simultaneously elicited alarm and amusement in my heart, it was so utterly flabbergasting.
It was almost like the very idea of this flatware set was offensive. He spent the evening scowling and radiating black waves of malcontent into our already stuffy apartment air.
They are apparently too nice. We didn't know how much Dad had spent on them, but still, James was upset anyone would spend money on such things. I think, in his mind, there is absolutely no reason to spend more than a quarter on a fork. On the manufacturer's website, a new 94-piece 18/10 stainless steel set costs upward of $400. The set we received, I think, has been discontinued and cost more like $110... and STILL, James was grumpy about how expensive they were.
The other thing he apparently took issue with--what are all the funky looking ones? ... I hadn't been aware there were any funky pieces in the set besides the sugar spoon. (I didn't know what that is, but frankly, that isn't surprising given that I have never, ever been served tea or coffee, given my religious beliefs about such things.)
He picked up a soup spoon and demanded what the heck anyone would ever use such a bizarrely-shaped spoon for. I explained the virtues of the soup spoon, but James is insistent that he has never in his entire life even seen a soup spoon. (I would guess that he has seen one before, even if he didn't notice it. Soup spoons aren't exactly uncommon.)
"And what the heck are the sharp, pointy knives for?" ... "They're steak knives." He had heard of steak knives before, of course, but it just did not even occur to him that steak knives could be all metal or actually come in a matching flatware set. I keep laughing about this. He assumed they were some bizarre form of butter knife.
And then all the giant serving utensils. He does not see the point in owning such strange things. ... I explained how much I have always wanted pretty serving spoons. He thought this was absolutely bizarre.
We ended up having a two-hour conversation last night about flatware. James was just so disturbed that this whole issue needed to be resolved immediately. To give you some idea about how upset he was, let me tell you this: he has never, even once, been that upset in the entire three years we've been married. Actually, hostile is a more accurate word for the emotional vibes coming off the man last night. I could not think of a single occasion besides this one where I could feel waves of hostility expanding from his body and accosting the world in all their grumpy glory.
James has now accepted the existence of the flatware. I'm glad, because I like them quite a lot. He still has minimal traces of hostility toward them, but I think that will wear off eventually. I am hoping we won't have a repeat event when the goldish ones arrive. (Psst. I hear rumors there are napkin rings in that set! Gasp!)
Love and soup spoons,
Jenna
and Amelia
and Dragon
P.S. Mom and Dad Dilts--James has this idea in his head that neither of you ever had the remotest desire for nice dishes or flatware or such. Is he correct?
Wednesday, July 9, 2014
Friday, June 20, 2014
Dang It
This post is mostly about my theories concerning why my nausea has suddenly gotten so bad, with some dabbling at the end with thoughts about how big a family we might have and how closely spaced the kids might be...
*wince* Oh yes, I know. Bad Jenna. But my nausea was getting so bad that I just had to know if something I was taking was making it worse. I did it last pregnancy, too, coming to the conclusion that none of my daily medications were exacerbating my nausea. Something I'm taking seems to affecting my nausea this time, though.
So, with my initial experiments (badly designed, scientifically speaking)... on the days I did vomit profusely, I had taken my prenatal vitamin, Wellbutrin, and my new, increased thyroid dose.
On the days I did not vomit and felt almost nausea-free, I took none of them.
So yes, further experimentation was needed to confirm it was the thyroid stuff and not the vitamin or the antidepressant that I was taking at the same time.
The results of further testing were not what I was expecting at all. If I take thyroid and Wellbutrin, I am violently ill. If I take thyroid and vitamin, I feel just fine. If I take Wellbutrin and vitamin, I am again violently ill.
I think I might do some more trials. And talk to my doctor and stuff.
The desire to know what is making me sick so I can eat food and drink liquid and therefore NOT DIE is conflicting with my uneasiness about experimenting with my thyroid medication and my antidepressant. These are stereotypically things doctors cringe when they hear about, for good reason.
If I start going all depressed and anxious again... I don't know. It'd just be bad. I *think* it'd be better than struggling with hyperemesis. The vomiting is just... I'm scared. It is feeling exactly like it did when I was pregnant with Amelia. And that was scary. I need some prayers and such.
One thing to clarify, I suppose...
As for why I'm getting so sick NOW all of a sudden when I had been taking Wellbutrin throughout this pregnancy (even during the low-nausea parts)... and especially since it is almost unheard of for pregnancy nausea to suddenly show up or intensify in the middle of the second trimester (maybe third trimester because of the humongo uterus smooshing up against the stomach). Well, I have some suspicions.
My gut tells me it's because I stopped nursing Amelia. There is a rumor that nursing during pregnancy significantly decreases morning sickness for some women... unfortunately, nobody has deigned to do a study on this, so no one really knows if that little tidbit is myth or fact.
I will say, though, that it just happens to coincide with my own experience quite nicely. (Will somebody puh-lease do a study on this?)
Another theory I have is that it is now summer, and since heat is a known trigger, perhaps this is exacerbating it. Only... I've been staying in the air-conditioned apartment all day.With a fan blowing on me at almost all times. I am sometimes cold when I am vomiting lately. So this theory seems a little shaky to me.
So yeah. I need some prayers and such. I am desperately hoping to at least find some way to lessen my nausea to levels I feel are survivable, even if it doesn't go back to the comfortable levels of merely-annoying-nausea I had while nursing Amelia. Perhaps specifically pray that I can remain sane and not get uber-depressed.
I am also worried about the implications of the idea of nursing being the only thing so far that I've found that curbs my pregnancy nausea down to manageable levels. If this is true, this means that my best bet for surviving subsequent pregnancies is to conceive while breastfeeding (can be quite difficult... this one certainly required a lot of effort) and then nurse during pregnancy as much as possible (can be quite uncomfortable, and some toddlers choose to wean due to pregnancy-induced changes in the breastmilk)...
It also suggests that I should try to space all the babies close together, however many that is. I don't even know how many babies I want can handle. I've always liked the idea of a big family, though I will be the first to admit I may not personally be able to handle so many pregnancies. Maybe I can do four or five. Or fewer. I don't know.
I mean, I suppose I'm not certain that nursing is the reason early pregnancy was so vomit-free this time. But it is looking that way to me. Though, if it is, I should probably get down on my knees and thank God for promptings to try and get pregnant with baby #2 so soon after Amelia finally showed up.
I honestly thought I was absolutely nuts when, immediately after giving birth and therefore ending nine months of debilitating nausea, my first thoughts and feelings were, Wow. I like babies. I should have another, ASAP. These thoughts and feelings continued and even intensified as Amelia turned out to be fussy almost all the time and needed to be attended 24/7.
I also honestly thought I was absolutely nuts when, with a colicky six-month old, I kept feeling like I needed to start trying for another baby even though I felt like I couldn't handle anything more than crazy Amelia. I hadn't even resumed ovulating yet.
It took nearly a year before I ended up with another viable pregnancy. It also took all the expertise I had gained from working in a fertility clinic. So it was difficult, I was sure it made no sense, and I was also nearly as certain that--even without nausea--I was going to have an extremely difficult time with pregnancy once I had achieved, simply given the nature of the child I already had.
But now I wonder... If I had waited much longer, maybe I wouldn't have managed to get pregnant until after Amelia had weaned herself. And then, if it was nursing that made early pregnancy so bearable, I would instead have been too sick to take care of Amelia. Like at all.
Today I am too sick to adequately take care of Amelia. She is not feeling very loved today. I am insisting on sitting on the couch (alone) while staring at the ceiling, or perhaps sitting at the computer so I can type a few paragraphs at a time before I decide I need to lie down again. Toddlers were not designed to be ignored all day.
James is on his way home to help out. At the very least, I need to thank Heavenly Father that my nausea did not get severe until exactly when James suddenly had no real obligations at school. Of course, he still needs to do math research. But he can do that whenever he has time, and he does not have any classes to attend or teach, no office hours, etc. He can come home when I need him. Those of you sending prayers our way may want to include him. He isn't getting as much time to research his math because he is helping me, and he could use any divine interference he can get in being absolutely brilliant while working fewer hours.
I did not originally intend this post to be longer than half a page. Oh well.
Love and babies,
Jenna
and Amelia
and Dragon
Tuesday, June 17, 2014
Tales of a Sciencey Laundress
I don't know why this changed, but I have been extremely ill again... as in, approaching levels of illness I had while pregnant with Amelia.
The only clue I have is thyroid-related. I recently had a dose increase to get my lab results back into the normal range. I was sick enough that I experimented with not taking the thyroid to see if the nausea stopped... it did. Despite feeling obviously hypothyroid, I felt immensely better since I wasn't ill. I started taking it again at the lower dose and the nausea returned within hours. I felt AWFUL.
I felt so much better without the thyroid medication despite the hypothyroid symptoms that I am very, very tempted to just never touch the stuff again.
But then... there's Microraptor. Being purposely hypothyroid wouldn't merely mean having cold hands and feet and constantly feeling sleepy. It would just straight up be bad for little Dragon.
So I guess I should call up the doc or something and see what he says. Or maybe the midwives. Or both. I don't know. I could just cry. Even with chronically heavy eyelids and cold extremities, I just felt SO much better without the unremitting nausea or the extreme heat intolerance.
I wish I wasn't confident they'd tell me to take my thyroid medication anyway.
I take my medication at night so as to minimize nausea, but I could not sleep night before last because I was too hot, even with the air conditioner blowing straight at me. And then I began to vomit bile yesterday morning upon walking into the kitchen. I skipped the thyroid again last night, and again, I feel fine. If I think about it, I notice I am indeed a little nauseated, but obviously, it's not bad.
Sigh. Disturbing trend, this.
Moving on to a slightly less disturbing subject! Amelia's sleep habits!
Recently we got fed up with how Amelia's bed time has been creeping closer and closer to midnight despite attempts to put her to bed earlier. Thus, we began waking her up at about 7am every morning, napping her at noon, and putting her to bed at 9pm. Every day. The first few days went all right, but I could swear that now she is just as resistant to going to bed as she was before. Only change: she is now fighting sleeping from 9pm to 10:30pm instead of from 10:30pm to midnight. This is an improvement. I think. I'm not certain that waking up every morning (mandatorily, even!) is an improvement, though...
Anyway... were you wondering how the cloth diapering transition has been going? No? Too bad! I'm going to tell you.
Amelia likes the cloth ones just fine. She especially likes the cool prints on the covers, though at first she was really confused about why we were trying to put this fluffy thing on her butt instead of one of the disposable diapers. Once she figured it out though, it was great. Usually when it is time to put a disposable diaper on her butt, she runs away and plays hard to get. Most of the time with the cloth diapers, she'll just walk over and sit on the open diaper so we can put it on. We'll see if that continues once the novelty wears off.
[Caution: I am about to get really excited (and nerdy) about laundry. The entire remainder of this post is about laundry. You have been warned.]
Caring for the cloth diapers has been mostly quite simple, though I am still perfecting the routine, which has been less simple. I knew I would need to tweak the routine somewhat because of regional water differences and what my diapers are made of and the idiosyncrasies of this particular washing machine and such, but I am so surprised at how fulfilling I am finding it all to be. But after some thought, it becomes obvious why I am enjoying doing the laundry so much.
Troubleshooting. With science.
Guys, I get to use science. Science! I get to freaking use my brain! And my scientific training! And do practical experiments to test hypotheses! It is so wonderful! So fulfilling!
Laundry science has suddenly become a passionate interest. I can't believe I used to avoid laundry and put it off for as long as possible.Why didn't I ever figure out that laundry is fun? And that it stimulates the brain? Guys, laundry is like my favorite thing!
Ahem. I digress.
And the new detergent we got lots and lots and lots of... Oh my heck, I'm in love.
I never realized how much the smell of most commercial detergents bothered the heck out of me. That classic Tide smell makes me ill. And the new detergent cleans as well as... or actually, better than what I was doing before, even without the scoop of OxiClean and even without the bit of vinegar in the rinse cycle of each load. James' ancient and greying garments are turning white again.
Oh, and I just got some pit-stained white maternity clothes from someone in the ward. One wash in the new, gentle stuff and voilà! Pit stains gone. And that was one cold wash, mind you. Huzzah! (Probably the previous owner had viciously attacked those pit stains with a generous helping of bleach, which reacts with sweat gunk to make an even yellower, even more gross-looking stain...)
Oh, wait. Oops. Excuse me. I digress again. Ahem.
So far my adventures in getting the diapers squeaky clean have been exciting.
I started with the typical instructions: cold rinse no detergent (to rinse out any leftovers on the diapers that didn't get flushed down the toilet), hot wash with detergent, then a second cold rinse in addition to the one normally at the end of the wash cycle. All on "extra-large" capacity, even though the volume of stuff in there would normally call only for a small or a medium load. Theoretically having all that room to move about as well as the extra water helps gross diapers get ungross.
It was fine... only... well, a completely full load with all our diapers in it was rather underwhelming for our top loader. The spin cycle on extra-large was just too fast and every time it would get off-balance and I'd have to go move things around in there so that the washing machine could continue with what it was doing before it freaked out. Lame. Especially because each diaper load involves three spins.
So I switched down to the large cycle instead of the extra-large. That fixed the spin cycle issue. But then--doom! The diapers didn't smell clean after the washing was over with. Doom, doom, doom! Dang it, I did need all that water.
What I eventually did was designate one or two towels to always go into the diaper load and bump the water level back up to extra-large. That fixed the spin problem. And, it probably helps to agitate the diapers that there's a bit more stuff in there to rub against.
The only thing I really wish I could do that I just can't do... Line-dry those diapers, particularly any that have any hint of a stain left. That'd get 'em all beautiful and white. The ultraviolet rays from the sun do a marvelous job of breaking down any organic stains (poop, blood, tomato sauce, fruit juice, sweat, chocolate soy milk, weird yellow underwear stains, etc.).
Unfortunately... this is Oregon. Sunshine theoretically exists here, though, and therefore ultraviolet rays do supposedly make it down to the ground, even through heavy cloud cover. Even in rain or snow. (Though if the snow covers up the item you are trying to stain treat, doom.) In theory, this means I should be able to sun out the stains no matter what, though perhaps it would take a much longer time that it would in, say, Arizona. So I elected to try it anyway.
Worst thing I could possibly have done.
I live in an apartment. It is technically against our contract to leave any of our belongings outside our unit. Bum, grumble, grrr. In any case, pretty much everybody does so anyway, so I left three inserts out in the sun on the pavement in front of our door.
Then wind happened. Even if I clothespinned stuff to a line-drying rack, there is sometimes enough wind to knock that puppy over. Not only does that mean the stain is face-down and not getting any ultraviolet goodness... it also means that the entire item is now completely covered in horrible, evil tan bark. EVIL stuff, this. Think tiny, nearly invisible splinters that get stuck in your skin if you go walking barefoot. Now add these to a microfiber diaper insert.
Disaster! Pure, horrid disaster! This was a Velcro-like reaction. Neither the nearly-invisible bits of tan bark nor the microfiber cloth had any intention of letting go of each other. Ever.
I had the not-so-brilliant idea to just throw those three prickly inserts into the wash with all the others. Surely the agitation during the wash cycle would dislodge those suckers, right?
Um.
Well, yes. It did do that. Kind of. The end result was nineteen inserts covered in tan bark prickles instead of only three. I very thoroughly bewailed my error as I laboriously picked each sliver of bark out of those inserts with tweezers.
Now, you can surely understand why I've decided a nearly undetectable poo stain (that I can't even see except in certain light conditions) is infinitely preferable to even a remote possibility of an insert ending up in the tan bark again.
Feeling determined, though, I again reasoned that some ultraviolet light must filter in through our open windows, so maybe if I just dry those suckers in front of the window...
Eeeenk! Wrong again. I believe this may have worked someplace besides Oregon, in an apartment situated to actually ever receive direct sunlight through one of its windows. Seriously, we get about half an hour of direct sunlight through our back window. Kind of. There is a tree in the way.
Add to that inconvenience the fact that the ultraviolet bleaching process really only works on wet stuff, and the item in question just air-dries before any appreciable difference in the stain happened. Even adding lemon juice (sunshine + lemon juice + water = extremely effective stain eater) was not enough.
The only thing I haven't tried on this front is leaving an insert on the dash inside my car. Only Fred's windows are uber-dark. They were designed to live in Arizona. Fred does not live in Arizona. I suppose some UV would get through the dark glass, but I am not desperate enough to try this unless I have an evil, eye-blinding stain.
...Especially since the stain I was originally worried about has simply disappeared after a few more washes. It may have helped that I switched from cold rinses to warm rinses. In theory, a stain is easier to get out at the temperature at which it originated. Obviously, poo and pee were originally body temperature, which is almost exactly the same temperature as the water on the warm cycle. This discovery was especially prudent given the hydrophobic nature of microfiber and the oleophilic nature of toddler poop. Perhaps cold rinses would have been sufficient if we had spent twice as much and gotten the more hydrophilic hemp/cotton inserts instead.
Enough about diapers, then, I suppose.
But, ohemgee. I just have to digress into another laundry subject. I just cleaned all our towels. They'd been smelling perpetually musty, as had our washing machine, no matter what I did. Well, the new detergent got the washing machine smelling clean again, so I tried it on the towels. GUYS, MY TOWELS NOW SMELL LIKE HAPPINESS! That is all. I promise not to go on any more laundry tangents for the remainder of this blog post.
...Perhaps this goal would be attainable if I stopped writing now.
Longing for the day I have an extensive backyard (without evil tan bark) with lots of space for line-drying laundry and gardening and taking over the world in general,
Jenna
and Amelia
and Dragon
P.S. Anyone in the Eugene/Springfield area interested in a mostly full thingy of Clorox 2 and a boatload of fabric softener sheets? And maybe some Shout stain remover? I do not think I will be using them again.
P.P.S. Donations of baby boy clothes are totally welcome. Also, this would give me an excuse to do laundry.
The only clue I have is thyroid-related. I recently had a dose increase to get my lab results back into the normal range. I was sick enough that I experimented with not taking the thyroid to see if the nausea stopped... it did. Despite feeling obviously hypothyroid, I felt immensely better since I wasn't ill. I started taking it again at the lower dose and the nausea returned within hours. I felt AWFUL.
I felt so much better without the thyroid medication despite the hypothyroid symptoms that I am very, very tempted to just never touch the stuff again.
But then... there's Microraptor. Being purposely hypothyroid wouldn't merely mean having cold hands and feet and constantly feeling sleepy. It would just straight up be bad for little Dragon.
So I guess I should call up the doc or something and see what he says. Or maybe the midwives. Or both. I don't know. I could just cry. Even with chronically heavy eyelids and cold extremities, I just felt SO much better without the unremitting nausea or the extreme heat intolerance.
I wish I wasn't confident they'd tell me to take my thyroid medication anyway.
I take my medication at night so as to minimize nausea, but I could not sleep night before last because I was too hot, even with the air conditioner blowing straight at me. And then I began to vomit bile yesterday morning upon walking into the kitchen. I skipped the thyroid again last night, and again, I feel fine. If I think about it, I notice I am indeed a little nauseated, but obviously, it's not bad.
Sigh. Disturbing trend, this.
Moving on to a slightly less disturbing subject! Amelia's sleep habits!
Recently we got fed up with how Amelia's bed time has been creeping closer and closer to midnight despite attempts to put her to bed earlier. Thus, we began waking her up at about 7am every morning, napping her at noon, and putting her to bed at 9pm. Every day. The first few days went all right, but I could swear that now she is just as resistant to going to bed as she was before. Only change: she is now fighting sleeping from 9pm to 10:30pm instead of from 10:30pm to midnight. This is an improvement. I think. I'm not certain that waking up every morning (mandatorily, even!) is an improvement, though...
Anyway... were you wondering how the cloth diapering transition has been going? No? Too bad! I'm going to tell you.
Amelia likes the cloth ones just fine. She especially likes the cool prints on the covers, though at first she was really confused about why we were trying to put this fluffy thing on her butt instead of one of the disposable diapers. Once she figured it out though, it was great. Usually when it is time to put a disposable diaper on her butt, she runs away and plays hard to get. Most of the time with the cloth diapers, she'll just walk over and sit on the open diaper so we can put it on. We'll see if that continues once the novelty wears off.
[Caution: I am about to get really excited (and nerdy) about laundry. The entire remainder of this post is about laundry. You have been warned.]
Caring for the cloth diapers has been mostly quite simple, though I am still perfecting the routine, which has been less simple. I knew I would need to tweak the routine somewhat because of regional water differences and what my diapers are made of and the idiosyncrasies of this particular washing machine and such, but I am so surprised at how fulfilling I am finding it all to be. But after some thought, it becomes obvious why I am enjoying doing the laundry so much.
Troubleshooting. With science.
Guys, I get to use science. Science! I get to freaking use my brain! And my scientific training! And do practical experiments to test hypotheses! It is so wonderful! So fulfilling!
Laundry science has suddenly become a passionate interest. I can't believe I used to avoid laundry and put it off for as long as possible.Why didn't I ever figure out that laundry is fun? And that it stimulates the brain? Guys, laundry is like my favorite thing!
Ahem. I digress.
And the new detergent we got lots and lots and lots of... Oh my heck, I'm in love.
I never realized how much the smell of most commercial detergents bothered the heck out of me. That classic Tide smell makes me ill. And the new detergent cleans as well as... or actually, better than what I was doing before, even without the scoop of OxiClean and even without the bit of vinegar in the rinse cycle of each load. James' ancient and greying garments are turning white again.
Oh, and I just got some pit-stained white maternity clothes from someone in the ward. One wash in the new, gentle stuff and voilà! Pit stains gone. And that was one cold wash, mind you. Huzzah! (Probably the previous owner had viciously attacked those pit stains with a generous helping of bleach, which reacts with sweat gunk to make an even yellower, even more gross-looking stain...)
Oh, wait. Oops. Excuse me. I digress again. Ahem.
So far my adventures in getting the diapers squeaky clean have been exciting.
I started with the typical instructions: cold rinse no detergent (to rinse out any leftovers on the diapers that didn't get flushed down the toilet), hot wash with detergent, then a second cold rinse in addition to the one normally at the end of the wash cycle. All on "extra-large" capacity, even though the volume of stuff in there would normally call only for a small or a medium load. Theoretically having all that room to move about as well as the extra water helps gross diapers get ungross.
It was fine... only... well, a completely full load with all our diapers in it was rather underwhelming for our top loader. The spin cycle on extra-large was just too fast and every time it would get off-balance and I'd have to go move things around in there so that the washing machine could continue with what it was doing before it freaked out. Lame. Especially because each diaper load involves three spins.
So I switched down to the large cycle instead of the extra-large. That fixed the spin cycle issue. But then--doom! The diapers didn't smell clean after the washing was over with. Doom, doom, doom! Dang it, I did need all that water.
What I eventually did was designate one or two towels to always go into the diaper load and bump the water level back up to extra-large. That fixed the spin problem. And, it probably helps to agitate the diapers that there's a bit more stuff in there to rub against.
The only thing I really wish I could do that I just can't do... Line-dry those diapers, particularly any that have any hint of a stain left. That'd get 'em all beautiful and white. The ultraviolet rays from the sun do a marvelous job of breaking down any organic stains (poop, blood, tomato sauce, fruit juice, sweat, chocolate soy milk, weird yellow underwear stains, etc.).
Unfortunately... this is Oregon. Sunshine theoretically exists here, though, and therefore ultraviolet rays do supposedly make it down to the ground, even through heavy cloud cover. Even in rain or snow. (Though if the snow covers up the item you are trying to stain treat, doom.) In theory, this means I should be able to sun out the stains no matter what, though perhaps it would take a much longer time that it would in, say, Arizona. So I elected to try it anyway.
Worst thing I could possibly have done.
I live in an apartment. It is technically against our contract to leave any of our belongings outside our unit. Bum, grumble, grrr. In any case, pretty much everybody does so anyway, so I left three inserts out in the sun on the pavement in front of our door.
Then wind happened. Even if I clothespinned stuff to a line-drying rack, there is sometimes enough wind to knock that puppy over. Not only does that mean the stain is face-down and not getting any ultraviolet goodness... it also means that the entire item is now completely covered in horrible, evil tan bark. EVIL stuff, this. Think tiny, nearly invisible splinters that get stuck in your skin if you go walking barefoot. Now add these to a microfiber diaper insert.
Disaster! Pure, horrid disaster! This was a Velcro-like reaction. Neither the nearly-invisible bits of tan bark nor the microfiber cloth had any intention of letting go of each other. Ever.
I had the not-so-brilliant idea to just throw those three prickly inserts into the wash with all the others. Surely the agitation during the wash cycle would dislodge those suckers, right?
Um.
Well, yes. It did do that. Kind of. The end result was nineteen inserts covered in tan bark prickles instead of only three. I very thoroughly bewailed my error as I laboriously picked each sliver of bark out of those inserts with tweezers.
Now, you can surely understand why I've decided a nearly undetectable poo stain (that I can't even see except in certain light conditions) is infinitely preferable to even a remote possibility of an insert ending up in the tan bark again.
Feeling determined, though, I again reasoned that some ultraviolet light must filter in through our open windows, so maybe if I just dry those suckers in front of the window...
Eeeenk! Wrong again. I believe this may have worked someplace besides Oregon, in an apartment situated to actually ever receive direct sunlight through one of its windows. Seriously, we get about half an hour of direct sunlight through our back window. Kind of. There is a tree in the way.
Add to that inconvenience the fact that the ultraviolet bleaching process really only works on wet stuff, and the item in question just air-dries before any appreciable difference in the stain happened. Even adding lemon juice (sunshine + lemon juice + water = extremely effective stain eater) was not enough.
The only thing I haven't tried on this front is leaving an insert on the dash inside my car. Only Fred's windows are uber-dark. They were designed to live in Arizona. Fred does not live in Arizona. I suppose some UV would get through the dark glass, but I am not desperate enough to try this unless I have an evil, eye-blinding stain.
...Especially since the stain I was originally worried about has simply disappeared after a few more washes. It may have helped that I switched from cold rinses to warm rinses. In theory, a stain is easier to get out at the temperature at which it originated. Obviously, poo and pee were originally body temperature, which is almost exactly the same temperature as the water on the warm cycle. This discovery was especially prudent given the hydrophobic nature of microfiber and the oleophilic nature of toddler poop. Perhaps cold rinses would have been sufficient if we had spent twice as much and gotten the more hydrophilic hemp/cotton inserts instead.
Enough about diapers, then, I suppose.
But, ohemgee. I just have to digress into another laundry subject. I just cleaned all our towels. They'd been smelling perpetually musty, as had our washing machine, no matter what I did. Well, the new detergent got the washing machine smelling clean again, so I tried it on the towels. GUYS, MY TOWELS NOW SMELL LIKE HAPPINESS! That is all. I promise not to go on any more laundry tangents for the remainder of this blog post.
...Perhaps this goal would be attainable if I stopped writing now.
Longing for the day I have an extensive backyard (without evil tan bark) with lots of space for line-drying laundry and gardening and taking over the world in general,
Jenna
and Amelia
and Dragon
P.S. Anyone in the Eugene/Springfield area interested in a mostly full thingy of Clorox 2 and a boatload of fabric softener sheets? And maybe some Shout stain remover? I do not think I will be using them again.
P.P.S. Donations of baby boy clothes are totally welcome. Also, this would give me an excuse to do laundry.
Monday, June 2, 2014
Baby Stuff
I'm still calling Baby Man "Microraptor" out of pure habit, even if we have picked out a name for him already: James Griffin Dilts. We may have even picked out a nickname for him, courtesy of Amelia. When I asked her what we should name baby brother, she pointed very matter-of-factly at my shirt, which pictured a fire-breathing dinosaur. "Ah, you want to name him Dragon, do you?" And then I made the mistake of publishing that little tidbit to the masses. Now we have a few uncles who are diehard fans of the name Dragon Dilts. Oh well.
Of note... this week is a stay-home-and-excitedly-wait-for-packages-to-arrive week. Huzzah!
The reason we are getting so many packages is that we finally are making the switch to cloth diapers. Yay! We've been wanting to do that for a long time. Why? Well, the main reason is because in the long run, cloth diapering is FAR cheaper than buying tons of disposable diapers, even when you factor in the laundering costs.
I am drooling just thinking about the money we'd save every single month if we weren't buying boxes and boxes and boxes of diapers (and wipes!) all the time. At least $40 a month, methinks. Definitely more once we have two babies. And and and! We could get other cool stuff! Like... sigh. Like, say, a reduction in student loan debt. Or something else just as exciting.
Our original excuse for not cloth diapering was that we did not have our own washer and dryer. I was not particularly fond of the idea of lugging a diaper pail to our apartment complex's lowly laundry room and then tossing the diapers into the community washing machine. And there was already a "no more than two loads of laundry per apartment per day" limit in this little laundry room. Darn. It would be extremely inconvenient. And I shudder just thinking about the sheer number of quarters we'd need... Maybe if I were more hardcore, I would have done it anyway.
One of the less obvious reasons I hesitated to use the communal washers to wash diapers was because I could not control everything that would be entering them... so there would be plenty of detergent residue on the inside of the washer. And actually, every communal washing machine I've ever used is visibly filthy with detergent residue.
This residue, apparently, is bad for cloth diapers, most importantly because the residue makes the diapers less absorbent over time. And ugh! If we want to use cloth diapers primarily for financial reasons, I want the diapers to last as long as possible so we can get the most bang out of our buck. Ideally, we'd want our diapers to last through as many babies as possible, so we'd want an appropriate detergent that would maximize the lifespan of our diapers but still clean them awesomely and affordably, etc.
Anyway, back to the excitement of packages! Packages, packages, packages! Out for delivery this very moment is our massive bucket of new laundry detergent. Yay! We got a lot. It'll cost us about 11 cents per load, which is actually quite good. (If we move somewhere that has hard water, we'll have to add something to counteract that issue so that the stuff in the water doesn't build up on the diapers--again, reducing the absorbency--but for now, 11 cents per load is teh awesome, I think.) Don't ask how much detergent we got.
Also, our diaper pail is supposed to arrive today. We never got one with Amelia. We've been using a plain old trashcan instead and sealing the poopy diapers in old grocery bags so they don't overwhelm us with odor before we take them out. (And actually, for much of her infancy, we used a Costco-sized cereal box as a diaper pail. Heh. Classy, I know.)
On Wednesday, the diapers themselves are supposed to arrive, along with some training pants for Amelia. (And, of course, the ones she picked were pink. Oh well.)
On Thursday, our diaper pail bags and our wet bags will get here. Wet bags are like the bestest things ever, by the way.
Tada! By the end of the week, we will have graduated into full-fledged hippies. We haven't switched to all organic clothing or family cloth, neither are we composting nor have we switched to 100% home-grown food... so don't worry about us getting too hippie. At least not yet. ;)
And the key words here are "not yet". After all, I have already stopped shaving my legs and armpits entirely. (Not because I want to be as hippie as possible. More because (1) I cannot for the life of me figure out how to make the sores on my legs go away, and the only thing that has at all helped is to just pretend I like leg hair, and (2) because my armpits have always hated the shaving experience, and also (3) because I hate shaving and am lazy. I seem to recall growing up that my dad had sores on his legs, too, so maybe I have inherited something evil from him. Curse you, genetics. Or epigenetics. Or perhaps a common environmental factor. Curse you, whatever you are. At least I can and do cover up my hairy legs with leggings.)
All in all, I suppose I am in great danger of becoming an extreme hippie before my days are through. I suspect it would greatly amuse God to arrange for us to live in, say, ultra-conservative Orem, Utah. I can only imagine a typical Utahn's reaction to the idea of, say, family cloth. (Also ... I want a bidet. They sound fun. Can I call it a bum gun?)
Still I am eagerly awaiting the UPS guy. Come oooon, UPS guy. Go zoom, zoom!
Anyway, all these baby-related purchases are practically making me itch to acquire more stuffs for little Dragon. We have practically nothing for him to wear that isn't pink or purple or covered in a girly print. And speaking of pink or purple or covered in a girly print... pretty much every single baby blanket we received for Amelia is pink or purple or covered in a girly print. Wo is us!
I was wise when I acquired our car seats and stroller and high chair and play yard... all is boy AND girl compatible. Huzzah! (And if I'd been even wiser, I would have realized how likely it is that our happy, reliable car will last us until we have three kids, and then purchase seats that'd fit three-in-a-row. Alas, I was not quite so wise. Our car has been so good to us.)
At least when I'm out walking, no one should say, "Aw, what a cute little girl" to Dragon, thanks to a lack of bright pink stroller. ... Though it wouldn't be too surprising if they said that anyway, I suppose. Even with Amelia decked out in a skirt and a pink top, people would think her a boy... simply because she was practically bald. Dang it.
Huzzah! It's the UPS guy! We now proudly own tons of diaper-friendly detergent and a shiny step-trashcan to be used as a diaper pail.
In other news... we just bought our plane tickets to Pennsylvania in December for Ethan (James' little brother) and Joon's wedding in December. Thankfully we had $1500 already set aside exclusively for this purpose, but still. It always hurts a little when you charge $1100 to your card. And then plan on paying another $200 for three weeks of parking at the airport because it just happens to be two entire hours away... Oh well. It is money already set aside for exactly that purpose, so it hurts a lot less. :) ... Ouch. Still hurts.
Speaking of which, I am totally a fan of living on a budget. We had a budget before... kind of. We'd budget imaginary money. It didn't really work for me. Now though, we have enough in the bank that we are budgeting actual money. It means that, despite the massive amount of money we've spent in the last two weeks... we STILL have plenty of money for a medical or automotive emergency. It is really, really nice to not actually have to be worried about money.
Anyway, I'm tired of writing.
Love and bum guns,
Jenna
and Amelia
and Dragon
Of note... this week is a stay-home-and-excitedly-wait-for-packages-to-arrive week. Huzzah!
The reason we are getting so many packages is that we finally are making the switch to cloth diapers. Yay! We've been wanting to do that for a long time. Why? Well, the main reason is because in the long run, cloth diapering is FAR cheaper than buying tons of disposable diapers, even when you factor in the laundering costs.
I am drooling just thinking about the money we'd save every single month if we weren't buying boxes and boxes and boxes of diapers (and wipes!) all the time. At least $40 a month, methinks. Definitely more once we have two babies. And and and! We could get other cool stuff! Like... sigh. Like, say, a reduction in student loan debt. Or something else just as exciting.
Our original excuse for not cloth diapering was that we did not have our own washer and dryer. I was not particularly fond of the idea of lugging a diaper pail to our apartment complex's lowly laundry room and then tossing the diapers into the community washing machine. And there was already a "no more than two loads of laundry per apartment per day" limit in this little laundry room. Darn. It would be extremely inconvenient. And I shudder just thinking about the sheer number of quarters we'd need... Maybe if I were more hardcore, I would have done it anyway.
One of the less obvious reasons I hesitated to use the communal washers to wash diapers was because I could not control everything that would be entering them... so there would be plenty of detergent residue on the inside of the washer. And actually, every communal washing machine I've ever used is visibly filthy with detergent residue.
This residue, apparently, is bad for cloth diapers, most importantly because the residue makes the diapers less absorbent over time. And ugh! If we want to use cloth diapers primarily for financial reasons, I want the diapers to last as long as possible so we can get the most bang out of our buck. Ideally, we'd want our diapers to last through as many babies as possible, so we'd want an appropriate detergent that would maximize the lifespan of our diapers but still clean them awesomely and affordably, etc.
Anyway, back to the excitement of packages! Packages, packages, packages! Out for delivery this very moment is our massive bucket of new laundry detergent. Yay! We got a lot. It'll cost us about 11 cents per load, which is actually quite good. (If we move somewhere that has hard water, we'll have to add something to counteract that issue so that the stuff in the water doesn't build up on the diapers--again, reducing the absorbency--but for now, 11 cents per load is teh awesome, I think.) Don't ask how much detergent we got.
Also, our diaper pail is supposed to arrive today. We never got one with Amelia. We've been using a plain old trashcan instead and sealing the poopy diapers in old grocery bags so they don't overwhelm us with odor before we take them out. (And actually, for much of her infancy, we used a Costco-sized cereal box as a diaper pail. Heh. Classy, I know.)
On Wednesday, the diapers themselves are supposed to arrive, along with some training pants for Amelia. (And, of course, the ones she picked were pink. Oh well.)
On Thursday, our diaper pail bags and our wet bags will get here. Wet bags are like the bestest things ever, by the way.
Tada! By the end of the week, we will have graduated into full-fledged hippies. We haven't switched to all organic clothing or family cloth, neither are we composting nor have we switched to 100% home-grown food... so don't worry about us getting too hippie. At least not yet. ;)
And the key words here are "not yet". After all, I have already stopped shaving my legs and armpits entirely. (Not because I want to be as hippie as possible. More because (1) I cannot for the life of me figure out how to make the sores on my legs go away, and the only thing that has at all helped is to just pretend I like leg hair, and (2) because my armpits have always hated the shaving experience, and also (3) because I hate shaving and am lazy. I seem to recall growing up that my dad had sores on his legs, too, so maybe I have inherited something evil from him. Curse you, genetics. Or epigenetics. Or perhaps a common environmental factor. Curse you, whatever you are. At least I can and do cover up my hairy legs with leggings.)
All in all, I suppose I am in great danger of becoming an extreme hippie before my days are through. I suspect it would greatly amuse God to arrange for us to live in, say, ultra-conservative Orem, Utah. I can only imagine a typical Utahn's reaction to the idea of, say, family cloth. (Also ... I want a bidet. They sound fun. Can I call it a bum gun?)
Still I am eagerly awaiting the UPS guy. Come oooon, UPS guy. Go zoom, zoom!
Anyway, all these baby-related purchases are practically making me itch to acquire more stuffs for little Dragon. We have practically nothing for him to wear that isn't pink or purple or covered in a girly print. And speaking of pink or purple or covered in a girly print... pretty much every single baby blanket we received for Amelia is pink or purple or covered in a girly print. Wo is us!
I was wise when I acquired our car seats and stroller and high chair and play yard... all is boy AND girl compatible. Huzzah! (And if I'd been even wiser, I would have realized how likely it is that our happy, reliable car will last us until we have three kids, and then purchase seats that'd fit three-in-a-row. Alas, I was not quite so wise. Our car has been so good to us.)
At least when I'm out walking, no one should say, "Aw, what a cute little girl" to Dragon, thanks to a lack of bright pink stroller. ... Though it wouldn't be too surprising if they said that anyway, I suppose. Even with Amelia decked out in a skirt and a pink top, people would think her a boy... simply because she was practically bald. Dang it.
Huzzah! It's the UPS guy! We now proudly own tons of diaper-friendly detergent and a shiny step-trashcan to be used as a diaper pail.
In other news... we just bought our plane tickets to Pennsylvania in December for Ethan (James' little brother) and Joon's wedding in December. Thankfully we had $1500 already set aside exclusively for this purpose, but still. It always hurts a little when you charge $1100 to your card. And then plan on paying another $200 for three weeks of parking at the airport because it just happens to be two entire hours away... Oh well. It is money already set aside for exactly that purpose, so it hurts a lot less. :) ... Ouch. Still hurts.
Speaking of which, I am totally a fan of living on a budget. We had a budget before... kind of. We'd budget imaginary money. It didn't really work for me. Now though, we have enough in the bank that we are budgeting actual money. It means that, despite the massive amount of money we've spent in the last two weeks... we STILL have plenty of money for a medical or automotive emergency. It is really, really nice to not actually have to be worried about money.
Anyway, I'm tired of writing.
Love and bum guns,
Jenna
and Amelia
and Dragon
Wednesday, May 14, 2014
Weighing on My Mind...
Microraptor. Augh, Microraptor. The kid throws epic dance parties already. I am so doomed. We find out if the kid is a boy or a girl next Thursday, the 22nd. If it is a girl, I will almost certainly name her Abigail Joy. For those of you not particularly fluent in ancient Hebrew, Abigail means joy, so it's a rather redundant name. But, Microraptor already smacks of happiness. I don't know. I can just tell. That thing in there is happy and energetic, so Abigail Joy would be a great name for her. I don't have any idea what to call a happy, energetic boy.
Amelia is getting smarter and smarter. I'm not quite sure what to share about that, though. I still suspect she's just smart within normal limits, but... Well, just often enough, she does or says something that gets me wondering. Like last week, she pulled out a bottle of face wash that said "TopCare" on it. She pointed at it and said, "Top!" ...even though I've never read the words on it to her. (Maybe James did?) Ah, coincidence. Merely coincidence, I tell myself. But I find myself thinking these words to myself disturbingly often.
She has a definite interest in art/drawing/writing. Many of you saw the video I posted on Facebook less than a week ago. She has progressed and can kind of make a b, but you have to look for a... roundish thing attached to a straightish thing. She is also intently practicing coloring within the lines. Her skill with a crayon looks remarkably similar to a random three-year-old-from-church's skill with a crayon, so I would definitely count this as one of her special interests.
Anyway, I bought her some big fat (and washable!) crayons many, many months ago... She went through a phase where she loved them, and drew on EVERYTHING with them (thank goodness they're washable). Her current phase is details, details, details. The finer the tip on the writing utensil, the better. So now she shuns those big fat crayons. They are far too imprecise.
Unfortunately, this means straight-up PENS are the preferred method of destruction. Pens are, in general, far less washable than those crayons were. Today I went and got a big pack of those twistable colored pencils. I went ahead and got the more expensive twisty ones because I just know Amelia will want the fine tip on her pencils maintained, and boy, do I not want her experimenting with pencil sharpeners just yet.
Yes, Dad, she is interested in license plates. She cannot yet read them with any accuracy. Mostly she'll point to them and say "two!" or "B!" no matter what the numbers and letters are. What she can do is differentiate between numbers and letters. Almost always, when she says "two!", she is pointing to a number, and when she says "B!" she is pointing to a letter.
She is having a verbal explosion. She even says sentences sometimes. This morning, upon waking up, she instantly demanded, "Where is Daddy?" She is also prone to announce "I peed!" at the appropriate time. Once I could have sworn she said, "I need help," and another time, "I need doot-doo [music]!" But I can't verify either of those. Those could merely be motherly fancies.
Amelia is also making animal sounds, and is also using more baby sign language to indicate animals. It's interesting that all but two of the signs she's bothered to ever use indicate animals (the other two: potty and stars). She has signs for dog, bird, zebra, frog, bug... and a few more I can't think of off the top of my head. I think those are just things she is excited to "talk" about.
It is partly because of these signs that I know that she is quite observant. She makes the signs for dog and bird frequently when I don't expect them. But if I look around or listen (or review in my mind the sounds I had tuned out during the last thirty seconds), I will find that she is indeed correct. There was a dog barking just a bit ago. Oh, that flute sounded remarkably like a bird, didn't it?
Last week sometime, I got very discouraged. She somehow managed to defeat pretty much all my anti-baby-chaos measures that day, and I was too tired and sick to do much about it. In despair, I Googled "smart toddler", hoping to find advice for how to survive having one, and instead I was flooded with results along the lines of, "HOW TO MAKE YOUR BABY/TODDLER SMARTER! LOLZ!"
... My immediate thought was, why would anyone in their right mind try to make their baby smarter on purpose? Sounds downright stupid. Like self-torture. Because truly, smart child equals more work... at least while the kid is a baby or toddler. I don't have any experience beyond that.
Okay, okay. I do get it. Parents want their kids to succeed and being smart is one good way to help a kid do that sort of thing. I know, I know. But still.
Anyway, these last three weeks have been quite awful for me. I'm catching all the illnesses going around. Gotta catch 'em all, I always say... Although in all seriousness, I am terribly discouraged by remaining sick for so long. I'm certain that part of the reason I'm having difficulty recovering quickly is that I am having so much difficulty eating enough and eating well.
For those of you who were looking at this post merely for warm, fuzzy "aw, cute baby" feels, you should close this tab now.
I've briefly mentioned these difficulties before, but I haven't really dwelt on these in my writing because I'm not quite sure what to make of them myself. But this whole situation is really weighing on my mind because I am pregnant and I really need to eat well (and enough). And I'm secretly afraid people will freak out about it. Again, because I'm pregnant.
But I can't really think of what to do about it besides what I've already tried, so maybe writing will help? I don't know. Here goes. (It also helps that one of my friends told me about an almost identical problem, when I had never heard of anyone else struggling with it before. Maybe it isn't actually all that unusual?)
Phew. Anyway. You recall how seriously sick I was while I was pregnant with Amelia. The nausea went away when I gave birth, of course, but I don't think things went back to normal. Far from it. I used to love, love, love food. Now, each meal is an ordeal where I force myself to ingest food. The thing is, I don't like eating anymore. My relationship with food has changed completely.
I usually think of brain plasticity (the fact that neuronal connections are changeable) as an awesome thing... and it is. But I think some neurons got rewired up there, this time to my disadvantage. Eating used to hook me to that wonderful thing called the pleasure center, and now it's hooked up to the amygdala (the fear center) or something like that. I cannot get out of the mindset that food makes me feel awful and it should be avoided. And when I eat, I have trouble eating much. My brain says, "Food causes vomiting. Don't eat unless you have to." It also says, "Um, food. You need it. Eat it." So I do...
But now food doesn't taste good. Not really. I get cravings... but... they almost never repeat. Burgers... why did I never realize how yucky they were? Apple pie! ... Wait. This isn't actually pleasant. Stir fry! ... I don't remember vegetables being so bitter... when did that happen? When did ice cream start tasting like sugary lard? Is bread supposed to taste like anything besides cardboard? Etc, etc.
And now it's so hard to convince myself to engage in any sort of food preparation. You're supposed to get tasty food out of all that effort. So when the end result is... blegh, I remember this tasting a whole lot better... well, it's hard. I am thus having particular difficulty eating healthily because, let's face it, healthy food involves a heckuva lot more food prep than grabbing a bowl of cereal or a muffin off of the counter. And when I can barely convince myself it's worth opening the fridge to get the milk, or even getting leftovers and putting it in the microwave... Glug. Chewing and swallowing is already such an ordeal... do I really have to make the food, too?
Anyway, it's been nearly two years since Amelia was born and the hyperemesis gravidarum said goodbye. I had then noticed that my relationship with food was strained, but I just thought it would get better with time. It hasn't really.
Now, lest you freak out about Microraptor starving to death in utero, I am eating. Possibly even enough, most of the time. Probably barely enough, but I'm trying really hard. It is really disheartening to feel like I must have been gorging myself over the last few weeks (so surely I've gained a few pounds, right?) only to step on the scale and see... maybe a half-pound weight gain. Once, after feeling like I ate like a ravenous beast for days straight, I went in, stepped on the scale, and nearly burst into tears upon seeing that I had actually lost weight.
It is comforting that despite the sluggish weight gain (I have managed to gain five pounds! Woo!), Microraptor is doing splendidly. Just the right size, a good heartbeat, etc. It is hard to worry about the kid too much when he or she throws so many epic dance parties in there. The midwives are not worried about my weight gain so far. I was hoping things'd get better now that I'm here in the second trimester rather than the evil nauseating first trimester (which, well, wasn't that evil), but it hasn't, so I'm going to do more... inquiring about this next time I visit the midwife, which isn't too long from now.
Sigh. I wish I knew they would have good ideas to help me. The whole situation smacks of an eating disorder, though I hesitate to use those words, because people usually think of body image issues... and ha! I most certainly have never worried about my body image before. If I could make a deal where I never had to eat again, but I would permanently gain thirty pounds... right now, I think I might actually do it. That doesn't sound like any eating disorder I've heard of. The brand-new DSM V actually has something my problem might actually fit into ("avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder", though it is mostly seen as a problem little kids have). Maybe someone actually has seen this before and does know how to help me. Perhaps.
Anyway, I think prayers would be beneficial. I'm not sure how else you could help if you wanted to. James is helpful because he actually makes food and puts it in front of me to eat.
Love and noms,
Jenna
and Amelia
and Microraptor
Amelia is getting smarter and smarter. I'm not quite sure what to share about that, though. I still suspect she's just smart within normal limits, but... Well, just often enough, she does or says something that gets me wondering. Like last week, she pulled out a bottle of face wash that said "TopCare" on it. She pointed at it and said, "Top!" ...even though I've never read the words on it to her. (Maybe James did?) Ah, coincidence. Merely coincidence, I tell myself. But I find myself thinking these words to myself disturbingly often.
She has a definite interest in art/drawing/writing. Many of you saw the video I posted on Facebook less than a week ago. She has progressed and can kind of make a b, but you have to look for a... roundish thing attached to a straightish thing. She is also intently practicing coloring within the lines. Her skill with a crayon looks remarkably similar to a random three-year-old-from-church's skill with a crayon, so I would definitely count this as one of her special interests.
Anyway, I bought her some big fat (and washable!) crayons many, many months ago... She went through a phase where she loved them, and drew on EVERYTHING with them (thank goodness they're washable). Her current phase is details, details, details. The finer the tip on the writing utensil, the better. So now she shuns those big fat crayons. They are far too imprecise.
Unfortunately, this means straight-up PENS are the preferred method of destruction. Pens are, in general, far less washable than those crayons were. Today I went and got a big pack of those twistable colored pencils. I went ahead and got the more expensive twisty ones because I just know Amelia will want the fine tip on her pencils maintained, and boy, do I not want her experimenting with pencil sharpeners just yet.
Yes, Dad, she is interested in license plates. She cannot yet read them with any accuracy. Mostly she'll point to them and say "two!" or "B!" no matter what the numbers and letters are. What she can do is differentiate between numbers and letters. Almost always, when she says "two!", she is pointing to a number, and when she says "B!" she is pointing to a letter.
She is having a verbal explosion. She even says sentences sometimes. This morning, upon waking up, she instantly demanded, "Where is Daddy?" She is also prone to announce "I peed!" at the appropriate time. Once I could have sworn she said, "I need help," and another time, "I need doot-doo [music]!" But I can't verify either of those. Those could merely be motherly fancies.
Amelia is also making animal sounds, and is also using more baby sign language to indicate animals. It's interesting that all but two of the signs she's bothered to ever use indicate animals (the other two: potty and stars). She has signs for dog, bird, zebra, frog, bug... and a few more I can't think of off the top of my head. I think those are just things she is excited to "talk" about.
It is partly because of these signs that I know that she is quite observant. She makes the signs for dog and bird frequently when I don't expect them. But if I look around or listen (or review in my mind the sounds I had tuned out during the last thirty seconds), I will find that she is indeed correct. There was a dog barking just a bit ago. Oh, that flute sounded remarkably like a bird, didn't it?
Last week sometime, I got very discouraged. She somehow managed to defeat pretty much all my anti-baby-chaos measures that day, and I was too tired and sick to do much about it. In despair, I Googled "smart toddler", hoping to find advice for how to survive having one, and instead I was flooded with results along the lines of, "HOW TO MAKE YOUR BABY/TODDLER SMARTER! LOLZ!"
... My immediate thought was, why would anyone in their right mind try to make their baby smarter on purpose? Sounds downright stupid. Like self-torture. Because truly, smart child equals more work... at least while the kid is a baby or toddler. I don't have any experience beyond that.
Okay, okay. I do get it. Parents want their kids to succeed and being smart is one good way to help a kid do that sort of thing. I know, I know. But still.
Anyway, these last three weeks have been quite awful for me. I'm catching all the illnesses going around. Gotta catch 'em all, I always say... Although in all seriousness, I am terribly discouraged by remaining sick for so long. I'm certain that part of the reason I'm having difficulty recovering quickly is that I am having so much difficulty eating enough and eating well.
For those of you who were looking at this post merely for warm, fuzzy "aw, cute baby" feels, you should close this tab now.
I've briefly mentioned these difficulties before, but I haven't really dwelt on these in my writing because I'm not quite sure what to make of them myself. But this whole situation is really weighing on my mind because I am pregnant and I really need to eat well (and enough). And I'm secretly afraid people will freak out about it. Again, because I'm pregnant.
But I can't really think of what to do about it besides what I've already tried, so maybe writing will help? I don't know. Here goes. (It also helps that one of my friends told me about an almost identical problem, when I had never heard of anyone else struggling with it before. Maybe it isn't actually all that unusual?)
Phew. Anyway. You recall how seriously sick I was while I was pregnant with Amelia. The nausea went away when I gave birth, of course, but I don't think things went back to normal. Far from it. I used to love, love, love food. Now, each meal is an ordeal where I force myself to ingest food. The thing is, I don't like eating anymore. My relationship with food has changed completely.
I usually think of brain plasticity (the fact that neuronal connections are changeable) as an awesome thing... and it is. But I think some neurons got rewired up there, this time to my disadvantage. Eating used to hook me to that wonderful thing called the pleasure center, and now it's hooked up to the amygdala (the fear center) or something like that. I cannot get out of the mindset that food makes me feel awful and it should be avoided. And when I eat, I have trouble eating much. My brain says, "Food causes vomiting. Don't eat unless you have to." It also says, "Um, food. You need it. Eat it." So I do...
But now food doesn't taste good. Not really. I get cravings... but... they almost never repeat. Burgers... why did I never realize how yucky they were? Apple pie! ... Wait. This isn't actually pleasant. Stir fry! ... I don't remember vegetables being so bitter... when did that happen? When did ice cream start tasting like sugary lard? Is bread supposed to taste like anything besides cardboard? Etc, etc.
And now it's so hard to convince myself to engage in any sort of food preparation. You're supposed to get tasty food out of all that effort. So when the end result is... blegh, I remember this tasting a whole lot better... well, it's hard. I am thus having particular difficulty eating healthily because, let's face it, healthy food involves a heckuva lot more food prep than grabbing a bowl of cereal or a muffin off of the counter. And when I can barely convince myself it's worth opening the fridge to get the milk, or even getting leftovers and putting it in the microwave... Glug. Chewing and swallowing is already such an ordeal... do I really have to make the food, too?
Anyway, it's been nearly two years since Amelia was born and the hyperemesis gravidarum said goodbye. I had then noticed that my relationship with food was strained, but I just thought it would get better with time. It hasn't really.
Now, lest you freak out about Microraptor starving to death in utero, I am eating. Possibly even enough, most of the time. Probably barely enough, but I'm trying really hard. It is really disheartening to feel like I must have been gorging myself over the last few weeks (so surely I've gained a few pounds, right?) only to step on the scale and see... maybe a half-pound weight gain. Once, after feeling like I ate like a ravenous beast for days straight, I went in, stepped on the scale, and nearly burst into tears upon seeing that I had actually lost weight.
It is comforting that despite the sluggish weight gain (I have managed to gain five pounds! Woo!), Microraptor is doing splendidly. Just the right size, a good heartbeat, etc. It is hard to worry about the kid too much when he or she throws so many epic dance parties in there. The midwives are not worried about my weight gain so far. I was hoping things'd get better now that I'm here in the second trimester rather than the evil nauseating first trimester (which, well, wasn't that evil), but it hasn't, so I'm going to do more... inquiring about this next time I visit the midwife, which isn't too long from now.
Sigh. I wish I knew they would have good ideas to help me. The whole situation smacks of an eating disorder, though I hesitate to use those words, because people usually think of body image issues... and ha! I most certainly have never worried about my body image before. If I could make a deal where I never had to eat again, but I would permanently gain thirty pounds... right now, I think I might actually do it. That doesn't sound like any eating disorder I've heard of. The brand-new DSM V actually has something my problem might actually fit into ("avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder", though it is mostly seen as a problem little kids have). Maybe someone actually has seen this before and does know how to help me. Perhaps.
Anyway, I think prayers would be beneficial. I'm not sure how else you could help if you wanted to. James is helpful because he actually makes food and puts it in front of me to eat.
Love and noms,
Jenna
and Amelia
and Microraptor
Friday, April 18, 2014
I'm Alive! (Despite Inactivity on the Interwebs)
So. Lots of news, if I really think about it. Perhaps I should warn you right off the bat... this one is likely to be long. Pop some popcorn or something.
Tomorrow is our third wedding anniversary! Kind of. Next Wednesday is also our third wedding anniversary. We got married the day before Easter in 2011, which was April 23rd. I gave James permission to remember "the day before Easter" as our anniversary. So... this has resulted in his near-inability to remember that April 23rd is special. Oh well. I personally think "April 23rd" is easier to remember than "the day before Easter" (fewer syllables!), but I'm not super impressed with James' memory for names and dates and such, so I'll let him get away with it.
Just this Monday, I gave him a pop quiz: Name all your nieces and nephews, James. Go. He performed... poorly. [Don't worry, the following embarrassing conversation has been posted with James' permission.]
"Okay, James. Danny's kids. Go."
"Uhhh... [thirty second pause]... Nathaniel!"
"Yes, okay, next kid?"
"...[long pause]..."
"Seriously, James?"
"James!"
"Good. Next?"
"Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh... Oh, um... Lizzy. Elizabeth."
"Good. Next?"
"...[deer-in-the-headlights face]... I honestly don't remember."
"What is wrong with your memory, boy? You should totally remember her name after this last month!"
"I should, I suppose, but I forgot."
"AUGH! Katya."
"Oh yeeeeah!"
"Okay, Jesse's kids."
"...[another pathetically long pause]... Urban?"
"And?"
"... Uhhh..."
"James. You seriously have no excuse. We basically spent four months living right next to them!"
"Uhhh... Oh, Ayla!"
"Okay, good. Next?"
An entire minute goes by. "Um..."
"!!!!"
"Um..."
"Do you even remember which vowel it starts with?"
"...No?"
"O."
"Oh, Oak!"
"Now. Their newest baby?"
Another two minutes. "I have no idea."
"Hint. Think math."
"That didn't help at all."
"Seriously? Eigenvalues?"
"Ohhh! Yes! Eigan!"
"Ben's kids."
"Oh no."
"How long did you babysit for this boy?"
"A lot. Ian?"
"That's number two."
"Oh."
"What is number one's name?"
"... Uhh... uhh... Puma! Wait..."
"They're all Puma." [All of Ben's kids have Puma as their middle name.]
"Oh! Sean!"
"Good, good... Now, the newest baby...?"
"... ... ... ... ... ..."
"Oh, come onnn!"
"I have no idea."
"Uhh... Think Discworld?"
"How the heck is that supposed to help?"
"What is wrong with you, boy?"
"Yeah, I don't know."
"It's Terry, James. Terry."
"What does that have to do with Discworld?"
"Terry Pratchett? [facepalm] You do remember your siblings' names? And your parents' names?"
He did fantastically on those, at least. I'm not going to embarrass him with his attempts to remember his grandparents' names. One of these days I'm going to have to make him niece-'n'-nephew flashcards. With pictures.
Anyway... James is doing all right. This newest term has bestowed him with a schedule that makes me want to wail and gnash my teeth. Or at least it did at the beginning. I suppose it isn't so bad now... (James, you did not see the previous two sentences. My life is horrible, mmk? And it's all your fault! ;) Just kidding...)
James teaches Monday through Thursday during the 5 o'clock hour, which means he doesn't get home until after 6pm. (The doom!) It is worse on Tuesdays when he often just barely has time to eat something before heading out to do missionary stuff, as well as on Wednesdays when he stays on campus until maybe 7:30 so he can climb. (Ugh! Exercise? Service? The dooooom! Poor, poor wife! ;) I am cursed to have a wonderful husband. Cursed.)
Theoretically, James is going to finish his Ph.D. (often pronounced "fudd" in our house) sometime this next year. Which means that sometime in the summer of 2015, we will be moving somewhere new and mysterious. And we will stay there for a year or two before moving somewhere newer and mysterious...er. Possibly permanently.
One very possible possibility (hmm... I should expand my vocabulary) is San Diego, California. The postdoc salary (minus rent, minus taxes) is about twice what James is making now (minus rent, minus taxes), so this is a fabulous thing. He might actually be able to support a family! Huzzah!
Amelia. Amelia, Amelia, Amelia... Um, well, she's alive. Doing well, mostly.
She has suddenly shown an interest in the potty again. She completely abandoned the idea of using the potty in favor of "being too busy playing". Seriously. ("No! Not the potty! I'M BUSY DESTROYING THE HOUSE! I can't cause chaos whilst stuck on a TOILET!")
She's obsessed with walks outside. Um... what else. Let's see. Oh, she likes to give her stuffed animals food and drink, as well as tuck them into blankets for naps. And she "reads" to them. It is cute.
She continues to expand the number of things she can reach. I have had to clear off the top of the piano, because anything I put there is going to get... gone. Like my keys. I foolishly left my keys up there. Amelia found them, and expertly hid them. It took me an entire hour and a half to find them. I seriously looked everywhere I could think of. Every cupboard and drawer. In the dryer. Inside the printer. Inside the computer (not kidding). Inside the couch. Under the couch. Under the oven. Under the refrigerator. In the dishwasher. In the oven. Inside the baseboard heaters. In the piano. In each shoe. Etc. I finally found them inside her stroller... which has not been unfolded for ages. I only found them because I prayed and because I looked in the stroller a second time, only this time with a flashlight. Glinty, glint. Oooh, keys. Shiny.
She's still obsessed with ponies. (My Little Pony ponies, specifically.)
Cheese is her favorite food. (Darn it.) Also popular: bananas, pineapple, yogurt, fruit snacks, mozzarella/spinach ravioli, spaghetti noodles, dry cereal, anything I'm eating, popcorn, anything James is eating...
She gives lots of hugs and lots of kisses.
Bedtime is the devil. (But naptime is her favorite thing...?)
She was resisting toothbrushing as if it were torture... until I got Pinkie Pie toothpaste. Seriously, smalls? All we had to do was put a picture from My Little Pony on the toothpaste tube, and you're good? Whatever. Now, sometimes (like right now), she wants to brush her teeth in the middle of the day. Again... and again... and again...
Amelia is nursing much less, though I suspect this is more my fault than hers. Or rather, if we want to be technical, Microraptor's fault. Pregnancy seems to do different things to different nursing women. What has it done to me? Well...
Oh, I am so sore. Pregnant boobs are sore boobs, as many of you know. Amelia is a ravenous beast, and sometimes, I just don't want to deal with the initial spike of intense discomfort when she latches on. (After the initial latch-on, it's quite tolerable, but still kind of uncomfortable.) So our nursing sessions are shorter and farther in between.
And I'm not making a ton of milk anymore. I haven't "dried up" or anything, but the toddler milk has definitely turned into colostrum. Thick, sticky, yellow colostrum. Amelia likes it just fine (more than regular ol' milk, I sometimes suspect), so I don't think she'll completely wean during this pregnancy. I know it sometimes happens that toddlers wean themselves while mom is pregnant, but it seems Amelia is not going to be one of these. I have sometimes thought she'd nurse if I was making motor oil for milk. (Yuck!)
Yay, bodily functions!
Sigh. So yeah, pregnancy. Microraptor is alive and kicking. I can't really tell you much else. I'm exactly 16 weeks pregnant today, so if you really want to know more besides the whole "baby is approximately the size of an avocado", just Google 16 weeks pregnant and you'll find out all sorts of stuff. This stuff was way more exciting during pregnancy one. Pregnancy two isn't nearly as exciting, except when something is noticeably different.
Like, for example... nearly absent nausea! It isn't completely gone yet, but I'm beginning to suspect it actually will be. I get ill maybe once or twice a week. I get lightheaded a surprising amount, sometimes even when I'm well watered and fed. It's kind of weird.
Still very tired. Remember how last blog post I was like, "I'm so tired, and I'm sleeping like 12-18 hours every day, but I couldn't possibly be hypothyroid... If anything, I feel hyperthyroid..." After I had my blood drawn for thyroid function tests, I skipped a few days of thyroid meds to see if the "hyperthyroid" symptoms went away. Sometimes that's the only way to know if it's just plain old pregnancy being evil, or actually thyroid problems. Well, skipping my thyroid meds did absolutely nothing. And then the lab results came back to confirm my conclusion that I was not hyperthyroid. In fact, it told me I still wasn't getting enough thyroid medication. I was wrong, I guess. So my thyroid dose has been increased yet again, and I feel better. I am now only sleeping twelve hours a day. And, as significant, when I'm awake, I'm not completely wiped out. Huzzah!
I'm surprised to discover that my pubic bone has been quite sore... already. This surprises me because even if my uterus is theoretically big enough to house an avocado-sized baby, I still appear normal-sized. (Except when I have to pee. Then I look pregnant. Once I've emptied myself, all of a sudden I'm tiny again.) It turns out that a pregnancy hormone is responsible. Now, relaxin is a wonderful thing... making ligaments and such stretchier so that the baby will have an easier time coming out... But apparently it's doing its job a little too well this time. Poo. Walking, standing, and rolling over in bed all actually hurt a bit. Doom.
Even if I look normal-sized most of the time, I definitely believe things are getting more crowded in there. Wiggly Amelia bumps me in the belly often enough that I am definitely starting to tell there isn't any "give" left in my belly. So when a stray foot bumps me in the belly (even somewhat gently), I want to toss her across the room and roar, "DON'T TOUCH MY BELLY! OUCH! GET BACK, YE FIEND!"
In maybe a month or so we will have another ultrasound and will likely find out the baby's gender if all goes well.
Love and fiends,
Jenna and Co.
Tomorrow is our third wedding anniversary! Kind of. Next Wednesday is also our third wedding anniversary. We got married the day before Easter in 2011, which was April 23rd. I gave James permission to remember "the day before Easter" as our anniversary. So... this has resulted in his near-inability to remember that April 23rd is special. Oh well. I personally think "April 23rd" is easier to remember than "the day before Easter" (fewer syllables!), but I'm not super impressed with James' memory for names and dates and such, so I'll let him get away with it.
Just this Monday, I gave him a pop quiz: Name all your nieces and nephews, James. Go. He performed... poorly. [Don't worry, the following embarrassing conversation has been posted with James' permission.]
"Okay, James. Danny's kids. Go."
"Uhhh... [thirty second pause]... Nathaniel!"
"Yes, okay, next kid?"
"...[long pause]..."
"Seriously, James?"
"James!"
"Good. Next?"
"Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh... Oh, um... Lizzy. Elizabeth."
"Good. Next?"
"...[deer-in-the-headlights face]... I honestly don't remember."
"What is wrong with your memory, boy? You should totally remember her name after this last month!"
"I should, I suppose, but I forgot."
"AUGH! Katya."
"Oh yeeeeah!"
"Okay, Jesse's kids."
"...[another pathetically long pause]... Urban?"
"And?"
"... Uhhh..."
"James. You seriously have no excuse. We basically spent four months living right next to them!"
"Uhhh... Oh, Ayla!"
"Okay, good. Next?"
An entire minute goes by. "Um..."
"!!!!"
"Um..."
"Do you even remember which vowel it starts with?"
"...No?"
"O."
"Oh, Oak!"
"Now. Their newest baby?"
Another two minutes. "I have no idea."
"Hint. Think math."
"That didn't help at all."
"Seriously? Eigenvalues?"
"Ohhh! Yes! Eigan!"
"Ben's kids."
"Oh no."
"How long did you babysit for this boy?"
"A lot. Ian?"
"That's number two."
"Oh."
"What is number one's name?"
"... Uhh... uhh... Puma! Wait..."
"They're all Puma." [All of Ben's kids have Puma as their middle name.]
"Oh! Sean!"
"Good, good... Now, the newest baby...?"
"... ... ... ... ... ..."
"Oh, come onnn!"
"I have no idea."
"Uhh... Think Discworld?"
"How the heck is that supposed to help?"
"What is wrong with you, boy?"
"Yeah, I don't know."
"It's Terry, James. Terry."
"What does that have to do with Discworld?"
"Terry Pratchett? [facepalm] You do remember your siblings' names? And your parents' names?"
He did fantastically on those, at least. I'm not going to embarrass him with his attempts to remember his grandparents' names. One of these days I'm going to have to make him niece-'n'-nephew flashcards. With pictures.
Anyway... James is doing all right. This newest term has bestowed him with a schedule that makes me want to wail and gnash my teeth. Or at least it did at the beginning. I suppose it isn't so bad now... (James, you did not see the previous two sentences. My life is horrible, mmk? And it's all your fault! ;) Just kidding...)
James teaches Monday through Thursday during the 5 o'clock hour, which means he doesn't get home until after 6pm. (The doom!) It is worse on Tuesdays when he often just barely has time to eat something before heading out to do missionary stuff, as well as on Wednesdays when he stays on campus until maybe 7:30 so he can climb. (Ugh! Exercise? Service? The dooooom! Poor, poor wife! ;) I am cursed to have a wonderful husband. Cursed.)
Theoretically, James is going to finish his Ph.D. (often pronounced "fudd" in our house) sometime this next year. Which means that sometime in the summer of 2015, we will be moving somewhere new and mysterious. And we will stay there for a year or two before moving somewhere newer and mysterious...er. Possibly permanently.
One very possible possibility (hmm... I should expand my vocabulary) is San Diego, California. The postdoc salary (minus rent, minus taxes) is about twice what James is making now (minus rent, minus taxes), so this is a fabulous thing. He might actually be able to support a family! Huzzah!
Amelia. Amelia, Amelia, Amelia... Um, well, she's alive. Doing well, mostly.
She has suddenly shown an interest in the potty again. She completely abandoned the idea of using the potty in favor of "being too busy playing". Seriously. ("No! Not the potty! I'M BUSY DESTROYING THE HOUSE! I can't cause chaos whilst stuck on a TOILET!")
She's obsessed with walks outside. Um... what else. Let's see. Oh, she likes to give her stuffed animals food and drink, as well as tuck them into blankets for naps. And she "reads" to them. It is cute.
She continues to expand the number of things she can reach. I have had to clear off the top of the piano, because anything I put there is going to get... gone. Like my keys. I foolishly left my keys up there. Amelia found them, and expertly hid them. It took me an entire hour and a half to find them. I seriously looked everywhere I could think of. Every cupboard and drawer. In the dryer. Inside the printer. Inside the computer (not kidding). Inside the couch. Under the couch. Under the oven. Under the refrigerator. In the dishwasher. In the oven. Inside the baseboard heaters. In the piano. In each shoe. Etc. I finally found them inside her stroller... which has not been unfolded for ages. I only found them because I prayed and because I looked in the stroller a second time, only this time with a flashlight. Glinty, glint. Oooh, keys. Shiny.
She's still obsessed with ponies. (My Little Pony ponies, specifically.)
Cheese is her favorite food. (Darn it.) Also popular: bananas, pineapple, yogurt, fruit snacks, mozzarella/spinach ravioli, spaghetti noodles, dry cereal, anything I'm eating, popcorn, anything James is eating...
She gives lots of hugs and lots of kisses.
Bedtime is the devil. (But naptime is her favorite thing...?)
She was resisting toothbrushing as if it were torture... until I got Pinkie Pie toothpaste. Seriously, smalls? All we had to do was put a picture from My Little Pony on the toothpaste tube, and you're good? Whatever. Now, sometimes (like right now), she wants to brush her teeth in the middle of the day. Again... and again... and again...
Amelia is nursing much less, though I suspect this is more my fault than hers. Or rather, if we want to be technical, Microraptor's fault. Pregnancy seems to do different things to different nursing women. What has it done to me? Well...
Oh, I am so sore. Pregnant boobs are sore boobs, as many of you know. Amelia is a ravenous beast, and sometimes, I just don't want to deal with the initial spike of intense discomfort when she latches on. (After the initial latch-on, it's quite tolerable, but still kind of uncomfortable.) So our nursing sessions are shorter and farther in between.
And I'm not making a ton of milk anymore. I haven't "dried up" or anything, but the toddler milk has definitely turned into colostrum. Thick, sticky, yellow colostrum. Amelia likes it just fine (more than regular ol' milk, I sometimes suspect), so I don't think she'll completely wean during this pregnancy. I know it sometimes happens that toddlers wean themselves while mom is pregnant, but it seems Amelia is not going to be one of these. I have sometimes thought she'd nurse if I was making motor oil for milk. (Yuck!)
Yay, bodily functions!
Sigh. So yeah, pregnancy. Microraptor is alive and kicking. I can't really tell you much else. I'm exactly 16 weeks pregnant today, so if you really want to know more besides the whole "baby is approximately the size of an avocado", just Google 16 weeks pregnant and you'll find out all sorts of stuff. This stuff was way more exciting during pregnancy one. Pregnancy two isn't nearly as exciting, except when something is noticeably different.
Like, for example... nearly absent nausea! It isn't completely gone yet, but I'm beginning to suspect it actually will be. I get ill maybe once or twice a week. I get lightheaded a surprising amount, sometimes even when I'm well watered and fed. It's kind of weird.
Still very tired. Remember how last blog post I was like, "I'm so tired, and I'm sleeping like 12-18 hours every day, but I couldn't possibly be hypothyroid... If anything, I feel hyperthyroid..." After I had my blood drawn for thyroid function tests, I skipped a few days of thyroid meds to see if the "hyperthyroid" symptoms went away. Sometimes that's the only way to know if it's just plain old pregnancy being evil, or actually thyroid problems. Well, skipping my thyroid meds did absolutely nothing. And then the lab results came back to confirm my conclusion that I was not hyperthyroid. In fact, it told me I still wasn't getting enough thyroid medication. I was wrong, I guess. So my thyroid dose has been increased yet again, and I feel better. I am now only sleeping twelve hours a day. And, as significant, when I'm awake, I'm not completely wiped out. Huzzah!
I'm surprised to discover that my pubic bone has been quite sore... already. This surprises me because even if my uterus is theoretically big enough to house an avocado-sized baby, I still appear normal-sized. (Except when I have to pee. Then I look pregnant. Once I've emptied myself, all of a sudden I'm tiny again.) It turns out that a pregnancy hormone is responsible. Now, relaxin is a wonderful thing... making ligaments and such stretchier so that the baby will have an easier time coming out... But apparently it's doing its job a little too well this time. Poo. Walking, standing, and rolling over in bed all actually hurt a bit. Doom.
Even if I look normal-sized most of the time, I definitely believe things are getting more crowded in there. Wiggly Amelia bumps me in the belly often enough that I am definitely starting to tell there isn't any "give" left in my belly. So when a stray foot bumps me in the belly (even somewhat gently), I want to toss her across the room and roar, "DON'T TOUCH MY BELLY! OUCH! GET BACK, YE FIEND!"
In maybe a month or so we will have another ultrasound and will likely find out the baby's gender if all goes well.
Love and fiends,
Jenna and Co.
Thursday, March 27, 2014
Why So Tired...?
First, I shall answer a couple questions I have been asked repeatedly.
1) Do you think it's a boy or a girl?
Sigh. You guys. Did you not catch the "I'm crazy, I'm convinced there's two" statements littered across the last two months' blog posts? I think there's one of each. If I had to force myself to admit that there was one baby, I would tentatively guess this is a boy. (I did feel that Amelia was girl way back when.)
2) Are you hoping for a boy or for a girl?
I honestly don't get why so many people's immediate response to finding out that I'm pregnant has been, "Oh, I'll pray for a boy!" or something to indicate that I want a boy now that I have a girl. I think I'd prefer a girl, and maybe have a boy next time. The reasoning for this preference is dumb: first, I honestly cannot think of a place to store tubs of boy clothing in our current apartment--I had enough problems finding a place for all the girl stuff we have; second, I cannot for the life of me think of a boy name I am completely satisfied with. Which leads into...
3) What are you going to name the baby?
NO IDEA.
4) Uhhh... name ideas, then?
If it's a girl? Most likely Abigail Joy.
If it's a boy? Wo unto us, for I have no idea.
5) Uhhh... very, very tentative boy names, then?
Oh, I don't know. Henry? James? John? Jack? Thomas? William? I am not really completely satisfied with any of these. And James has not been much help in selecting names either.
6) What if it's twins? What would you name them?
Uhhh. I still don't know? If I needed two girl names, Abigail Joy... and Adella Katharine. Probably. Less certain about that second one. If a boy and a girl, Abigail and... perhaps Henry. Abigail and Henry sound kind of nice together, yes? Two boys? Definitely no idea.
7) Why all the A names?
I just happen to like them. 'Tis purely a coincidence.
8) Not making up names?
No, I'm not.
9) Just for kicks, if you had to make up a name, what would it be?
Seriously? Under what circumstance would I have to do so? I don't know. Alloria? (A quick Google search tells me I'm not the first person ever to come up with that. I guess I'm not the most creative person ever.) Don't hold me to that. Especially if it's a boy. Because then I'd for sure have no idea what to name him. Probably something I'd have to write an apology letter for. ("Dear son, I am sorry for naming you that. In my heart, I knew it was a mistake...")
Now, for the rest of the blog post.
Still very tired.
You'll be glad to know that I actually went and got my blood drawn for thyroid function tests yesterday. Hopefully all I need is a dose adjustment on my thyroid meds to make me feel a bit better. Hmm. Speaking of which, I should probably plug in my phone and turn it on so that when I get the call with the results, I'll actually know about it. I let my phone die a few days ago and haven't bothered with it since.
The thing is, if I had to predict the results of the blood test, I'd guess that, if anything, they'll have me decrease my dose... but I am far from sure. I find it much, much harder to pick out hyper/hypothyroidism symptoms when I'm pregnant because everything changes. Many of the symptoms which I have been attributing to just being pregnant just happen to also be the same things to watch out for if you're hyperthyroid.
The only thing that doesn't really fit in is how tired I am. Although fatigue can happen when you're hyperthyroid, it is more common during hypothyroidism. That's been especially true for me. More common with hyperthyroidism is difficulty sleeping, and I am hardly having that problem.
My next prenatal appointment is on Tuesday... April Fool's Day. If my thyroid labs come back as I suspect, maybe I'll ask them to check if I'm anemic or something.
I have no idea what else could be possibly going on, so if it's not a thyroid or anemia problem, I'd just have to assume "I am simply tired because I am pregnant" and that's all there is to it.
And then the little crazy part of my brain adds, "It's 'cuz there're two of 'em in there. Little buggers." I had nearly succeeded in convincing myself that there is only one, but honestly, being so tired is beginning to re-convince me otherwise. Clearly there is no other explanation. And it certainly doesn't help that I'm also half-convinced I have already felt the baby move, even though I didn't feel Amelia moving until something like 18 weeks. Seriously, I should not be feeling a singleton moving already. It's a wee bit early for that.
Perhaps I will not be entirely convinced there is only one baby until the 20-week ultrasound. I just keep finding something else that could mean twins and it is just too much. I sincerely hope I am not this crazy during subsequent pregnancies.
Love and zzzzzz...
Jenna and Baby Delta
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