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
Monday, June 2, 2014
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
Tuesday, March 25, 2014
Nearing the Second Trimester...
Only a week and a half until I hit the second trimester. Woohoo!
Theoretically this means the nausea will be completely gone any time now. In any case, it hardly bothers me at all right now. And headaches? Those have become more infrequent now, too.
The big, big problem is... Drumroll, please...
Fatigue. As in EXTREME fatigue. I sleep--not kidding--something between twelve and eighteen hours each day. I often get twelve hours of sleep at night and then I take a four hour nap in the afternoon, and heck, I might even have a second nap sometime.
This whole shebang is reminiscent of when I had uber thyroid problems in college. The thing is, I'm relatively confident I'm not low thyroid right now. If anything, I'm nearing hyperthyroidism right now. And if that's true, I shudder to think how tired I'd be if I were truly hypothyroid. Ugh. Theoretically, I'm supposed to go get my blood drawn for my monthly thyroid function tests. Problem is, I'm so tired that I haven't managed to roll out of bed and go.
James has been home for the last week or so break for "spring break" (i.e. reading "Words of Radiance" and playing the new Diablo III expansion...), so I've been all right. It's been fabulous. He and Amelia will hang out, and then I can snore myself to high heavens without worrying about Amelia getting into massive trouble.
However... he says "spring break" is over. As in, "I should really start being responsible and doing my job again". So, he's going back to work/school/whatchamacallit tomorrow.
I have no idea how I'm going to manage.
Let's see. Is there anything else interesting? Uhhh... I don't know. Oh, I brought a box of cookies for my class of eight-year-olds on Sunday, and I put it, along with all my stuff in my classroom during sacrament meeting. And the doom! I walk in afterward and find three-quarters of the cookies gone! Dooooooom! We have a cookie thief... And I totally let the pregnancy hormones take over and I burst into tears...
Anyway, that's about it. Just general tiredness and doomage and such.
Love and all that mooshy, squooshy stuff,
Jenna and Baby Delta
P.S. Can you tell which movie I just watched a few days ago?
Theoretically this means the nausea will be completely gone any time now. In any case, it hardly bothers me at all right now. And headaches? Those have become more infrequent now, too.
The big, big problem is... Drumroll, please...
Fatigue. As in EXTREME fatigue. I sleep--not kidding--something between twelve and eighteen hours each day. I often get twelve hours of sleep at night and then I take a four hour nap in the afternoon, and heck, I might even have a second nap sometime.
This whole shebang is reminiscent of when I had uber thyroid problems in college. The thing is, I'm relatively confident I'm not low thyroid right now. If anything, I'm nearing hyperthyroidism right now. And if that's true, I shudder to think how tired I'd be if I were truly hypothyroid. Ugh. Theoretically, I'm supposed to go get my blood drawn for my monthly thyroid function tests. Problem is, I'm so tired that I haven't managed to roll out of bed and go.
James has been home for the last week or so break for "spring break" (i.e. reading "Words of Radiance" and playing the new Diablo III expansion...), so I've been all right. It's been fabulous. He and Amelia will hang out, and then I can snore myself to high heavens without worrying about Amelia getting into massive trouble.
However... he says "spring break" is over. As in, "I should really start being responsible and doing my job again". So, he's going back to work/school/whatchamacallit tomorrow.
I have no idea how I'm going to manage.
Let's see. Is there anything else interesting? Uhhh... I don't know. Oh, I brought a box of cookies for my class of eight-year-olds on Sunday, and I put it, along with all my stuff in my classroom during sacrament meeting. And the doom! I walk in afterward and find three-quarters of the cookies gone! Dooooooom! We have a cookie thief... And I totally let the pregnancy hormones take over and I burst into tears...
Anyway, that's about it. Just general tiredness and doomage and such.
Love and all that mooshy, squooshy stuff,
Jenna and Baby Delta
P.S. Can you tell which movie I just watched a few days ago?
Wednesday, March 5, 2014
Crazier Than Ever
Well, the good news is that I am nauseous less often and seemingly less severely, though this morning I'm not sure that's the case. I feel awful.
I often feel as if I've been run over by a steamroller. I'm so exhausted all the time. I literally find it difficult to do more than sit on the couch staring into space for hours at a time... of course, I am occasionally interrupted by Amelia insisting that I read her this or that book (for the umpteenth time). I need naps during the day, and if I don't sleep at night, I'm an utter wreck the next day.
Inside my brain, things have gotten... interesting.
I feel like a witch. I don't ever recall raising my voice so often and for so little reason. For whatever reason, I am getting "touched out" much more quickly than before. Sometimes when Amelia pounces on me (for the umpteenth time) I find myself leaping away like a yowling cat, exclaiming, "DON'T TOUCH ME!" And then I lock myself in the bathroom.
Maybe part of it is that I am, for whatever reason, quite sensitive to body heat right now. Our thermostat is down all the way, and I still require air blowing on me in the night to keep cool. And at times during the day, I have to pull out a frozen fruit bar to cool myself down from the inside. So, unfortunately for Amelia, cuddles are much less welcome right now.
And then there are the migraines... I can't figure out how to make them go away. And I also can't figure out what's triggering them. I thought maybe dehydration, or hunger, or heat, or fatigue, or all of the above was triggering it, but I am at least one of those things all the time, whether or not I have a headache... Migraines make me grumpy. Very much so.
Of course, that's not all. I am having way more panic attacks than I am used to. I sometimes feel completely irrational. I often find myself thinking, "Seriously? I'm seriously having a panic attack about this? This is so stupid!"
Take, for instance, the twins obsession. I know (or at my frontal cortex knows) that if I actually am pregnant with twins (that's unlikely, says my frontal cortex) that that's fine, all will be well. My frontal cortex also likes to remind me that I have no rational reason to be so convinced there's more than one in there. It also also likes to remind that my pregnant sister-in-law is also somewhat convinced she's got twins too, and she doesn't seem to be off her rocker. So, concludes my frontal cortex, I just need to stop feeling crazy, and that's that.
I had an ultrasound yesterday. Kind of.
The midwife agreed it'd be a good idea to peek inside so that I'd be less anxiety-ridden. But... well... maybe if I only knew as much as the layperson does about ultrasound, maybe the ultrasound actually would have convinced me there was only one.
But then again, not only did this particular woman seem to have very little expertise with ultrasound, but I'm almost certain she hasn't ever personally dealt with anxiety and panic attacks of this sort before. If she was trying to comfort me, she probably shouldn't have said "Well, I'm very bad at finding twins. And they like to hide at this age. Sometimes twins are obvious, but just as often, they're not."
And I'm pretty sure she wasn't thinking two-dimensionally when we did get an image on the screen. She just took the transabdominal transducer and put it over my belly, turned on the machine, didn't move it once, and said, "Well, I only see one." She printed the image and then turned the machine off.
I wanted to shriek, "You didn't rule out twins! You didn't rule out ANYTHING!" (Well, maybe she ruled out monoamniotic twins, but that hardly counts.) I wanted to yank the transducer out of her hand and do the procedure myself. Either that or demand she pull out the transvaginal transducer, but I had a feeling she was even less skilled with that. (Invasive? Pshah. She just did a bimanual exam AND a Pap smear. And both of those suckers hurt. Transvaginal ultrasound would have been NOTHING!) She didn't scan across the uterus once. For all I know, there is another one hidden in there, and the edge of a second gestational sac was just slightly to the side of where we were looking.
But... I didn't shriek. Nor did I grab the transducer. Maybe I should have. Surely she has encountered absolutely insane pregnant women before, so surely she would have forgiven me that small misbehavior.
"So, feel better?"
... "No. I was sure I would, but..." And then I burst into tears. Fabulous.
While I got dressed, I examined my feelings and discovered, contrary to what I should logically be feeling (a small measure of relief), I was instead even more convinced that there are indeed two and I was angry. Furious with myself. I so badly want to feel like my normal, rational self. Instead, I seem to be growing more and more irrational by the day.
I got dressed and went home. I was tired. I'd been in the office for an hour and a half (wrangling a hyperactive toddler at the same time) and I just wanted a nap. I got a call when I got home and discovered that the midwife had meant to come talk to me some more, so then I felt even worse.
Ugh. I cried a lot yesterday evening because I felt so... unstable and irrational and just plain panicky and even a little bit actually crazy. I don't actually care about there being one or two babies right now; I just want to having my thinking brain back--the one that is actually pretty good at neutralizing irrational feelings like these ones I'm overwhelmed by.
I almost feel like I'm convinced the sky is falling, and I'm angry at the sky for not showing any evidence of doing so BECAUSE THE SKY IS FALLING, DANG IT. That's just crazy.
Mentally, I didn't feel anything like this when I was pregnant with Amelia. I mean, I suppose I wasn't so stressed back then. I did just move back to Oregon, when I didn't want to... at all. And there's no sunshine. And there's no family here. And etc., etc., etc.
In the meantime, I'm going to... try and convince myself there is only one kid in there. Maybe I'll feel more sane that way. After all, it is much, much, much more likely that there really is only one baby instead of two. Once I make it to the second trimester, I'll start calling Baby Delta by his or her dinosaur name: Microraptor.
Love and steamrollers,
Jenna and Baby Delta
I often feel as if I've been run over by a steamroller. I'm so exhausted all the time. I literally find it difficult to do more than sit on the couch staring into space for hours at a time... of course, I am occasionally interrupted by Amelia insisting that I read her this or that book (for the umpteenth time). I need naps during the day, and if I don't sleep at night, I'm an utter wreck the next day.
Inside my brain, things have gotten... interesting.
I feel like a witch. I don't ever recall raising my voice so often and for so little reason. For whatever reason, I am getting "touched out" much more quickly than before. Sometimes when Amelia pounces on me (for the umpteenth time) I find myself leaping away like a yowling cat, exclaiming, "DON'T TOUCH ME!" And then I lock myself in the bathroom.
Maybe part of it is that I am, for whatever reason, quite sensitive to body heat right now. Our thermostat is down all the way, and I still require air blowing on me in the night to keep cool. And at times during the day, I have to pull out a frozen fruit bar to cool myself down from the inside. So, unfortunately for Amelia, cuddles are much less welcome right now.
And then there are the migraines... I can't figure out how to make them go away. And I also can't figure out what's triggering them. I thought maybe dehydration, or hunger, or heat, or fatigue, or all of the above was triggering it, but I am at least one of those things all the time, whether or not I have a headache... Migraines make me grumpy. Very much so.
Of course, that's not all. I am having way more panic attacks than I am used to. I sometimes feel completely irrational. I often find myself thinking, "Seriously? I'm seriously having a panic attack about this? This is so stupid!"
Take, for instance, the twins obsession. I know (or at my frontal cortex knows) that if I actually am pregnant with twins (that's unlikely, says my frontal cortex) that that's fine, all will be well. My frontal cortex also likes to remind me that I have no rational reason to be so convinced there's more than one in there. It also also likes to remind that my pregnant sister-in-law is also somewhat convinced she's got twins too, and she doesn't seem to be off her rocker. So, concludes my frontal cortex, I just need to stop feeling crazy, and that's that.
I had an ultrasound yesterday. Kind of.
The midwife agreed it'd be a good idea to peek inside so that I'd be less anxiety-ridden. But... well... maybe if I only knew as much as the layperson does about ultrasound, maybe the ultrasound actually would have convinced me there was only one.
But then again, not only did this particular woman seem to have very little expertise with ultrasound, but I'm almost certain she hasn't ever personally dealt with anxiety and panic attacks of this sort before. If she was trying to comfort me, she probably shouldn't have said "Well, I'm very bad at finding twins. And they like to hide at this age. Sometimes twins are obvious, but just as often, they're not."
And I'm pretty sure she wasn't thinking two-dimensionally when we did get an image on the screen. She just took the transabdominal transducer and put it over my belly, turned on the machine, didn't move it once, and said, "Well, I only see one." She printed the image and then turned the machine off.
I wanted to shriek, "You didn't rule out twins! You didn't rule out ANYTHING!" (Well, maybe she ruled out monoamniotic twins, but that hardly counts.) I wanted to yank the transducer out of her hand and do the procedure myself. Either that or demand she pull out the transvaginal transducer, but I had a feeling she was even less skilled with that. (Invasive? Pshah. She just did a bimanual exam AND a Pap smear. And both of those suckers hurt. Transvaginal ultrasound would have been NOTHING!) She didn't scan across the uterus once. For all I know, there is another one hidden in there, and the edge of a second gestational sac was just slightly to the side of where we were looking.
But... I didn't shriek. Nor did I grab the transducer. Maybe I should have. Surely she has encountered absolutely insane pregnant women before, so surely she would have forgiven me that small misbehavior.
"So, feel better?"
... "No. I was sure I would, but..." And then I burst into tears. Fabulous.
While I got dressed, I examined my feelings and discovered, contrary to what I should logically be feeling (a small measure of relief), I was instead even more convinced that there are indeed two and I was angry. Furious with myself. I so badly want to feel like my normal, rational self. Instead, I seem to be growing more and more irrational by the day.
I got dressed and went home. I was tired. I'd been in the office for an hour and a half (wrangling a hyperactive toddler at the same time) and I just wanted a nap. I got a call when I got home and discovered that the midwife had meant to come talk to me some more, so then I felt even worse.
Ugh. I cried a lot yesterday evening because I felt so... unstable and irrational and just plain panicky and even a little bit actually crazy. I don't actually care about there being one or two babies right now; I just want to having my thinking brain back--the one that is actually pretty good at neutralizing irrational feelings like these ones I'm overwhelmed by.
I almost feel like I'm convinced the sky is falling, and I'm angry at the sky for not showing any evidence of doing so BECAUSE THE SKY IS FALLING, DANG IT. That's just crazy.
Mentally, I didn't feel anything like this when I was pregnant with Amelia. I mean, I suppose I wasn't so stressed back then. I did just move back to Oregon, when I didn't want to... at all. And there's no sunshine. And there's no family here. And etc., etc., etc.
In the meantime, I'm going to... try and convince myself there is only one kid in there. Maybe I'll feel more sane that way. After all, it is much, much, much more likely that there really is only one baby instead of two. Once I make it to the second trimester, I'll start calling Baby Delta by his or her dinosaur name: Microraptor.
Love and steamrollers,
Jenna and Baby Delta
Monday, February 17, 2014
Milestone!
So I just had to share the big news... Amelia is doing so much better at night now! Huzzah! For a few nights this week after her bedtime nursing session, she went progressively longer and longer without night nursing (2am, 4am, 6am) and last night she didn't ask to nurse until 8am. Huzzah!
I've been sleeping in the queen bed and James has been sleeping on the twin in the next room. We still like each other just fine, of course, but recently this has been the sleeping arrangement most likely to result in us all getting enough sleep.
Anyway, what usually happens is that I nurse Amelia, hand her over to James, and then they go fall asleep on the twin mattress in Amelia's room. Sometime in the middle of the night, Amelia usually wakes up crying looking for me and desperately wanting to nurse.
Last night, though, she apparently needed to fall asleep with me. So that's what happened. But! Sometime in the night she ambled back over to her room and cuddled up with James without waking either of us. I actually had to search for her in the night when I woke up to pee for the third time (ugh, pregnancy is fun) and she was GONE. WHUT?
Sometime later she woke up again and decided she needed me and came back to sleep in the queen with me. Only she didn't nurse... she just wanted to cozy herself in my armpit. Gross, I think, but whatever floats the kid's dreamboat.
So I'm super excited about last night for several reasons. Mostly I'm excited that she ambled back to her own room on her own. But also, I'm glad she is nursing less at night. It's been disturbing my sleep more severely lately.
Now if only I could tell you that Amelia night nursing less and spending more of the night in the other room with James were actually helping me sleep.
Baby Delta is making nighttime AWFUL. I've been getting up at least four times in the night to pee. And then I can't fall back asleep because I feel sick and/or too hot and/or headachy and/or anxious and/or sore all over. Last night I was all of the above. Fabulous. Yeah, so the last half week has been horrible for me.
I hear that around age 14-18 months, little kids are still extremely needy (must have Mother ALL the time, no exceptions!) but are also hard to keep up with thanks to the whole "must run everywhere", "must climb ALL the things", "must destroy ALL the things", "must flail ALL the limbs when near Mom's face", "must create ALL the messes", etc., etc., etc. Amelia has fit into this stereotypical development stage PERFECTLY.
It has been extremely demanding on me, particularly during the last few weeks while I've been feeling groggy. (I am SO tired ALL the time. I attempt to stay in bed until noon every day and then take a nap later.) Amelia is so difficult to deal with a lot of the time. Now, I do not mean to say that she is a bad kid or an unhappy kid or an angry kid or any of that sort of thing. She is SO happy. I seriously don't think I know of any other kids her age who are so happy, so friendly, so boisterous, or so loving. She is very, very nice.
Everybody at church thinks she is so well-behaved... and by this they mean she doesn't really get angry and throw evil tantrums. She is definitely mischievous and laughs maniacally as she constantly gets into all sorts of trouble. Amelia is simply irrepressible and always adventuring in some way.
She is NOT quiet in church, nor do I think she even remotely has the capacity to sit still, but to my surprise even the people I was sure would say, "Why can't you get your kid to sit down and shut up and act like a tiny adult?! What is wrong with you? You are obviously doing this parenting thing wrong!" ... Well, instead they are saying, "Why, isn't she just the sweetest thing? So well-behaved. Not like some brats I know..." So I don't get it, but I'll take it.
Oh, and the pediatrician told me, "Yes, I know you're tired. But Amelia is the happiest and most well-behaved 18-month old I've seen in months." She told me this while Amelia was driving me bonkers with her energy level. In some ways, I apparently have got it easy right now. For instance, I suppose we don't ever have any battles of wills.
Maybe the secret is this: if the kid is grinning ear-to-ear and isn't mean, it doesn't matter how many grey hairs or bald spots or black eyes or bruises or bags under-the-eyes or quasi-electrocution hairstyles or twitching facial features Mom and Dad have. That is one good kid.
Theoretically, Amelia should be approaching a new stage: emerging independence. Oh my, this sounds like exactly what I've been dreaming about and my current energy levels warrant.
We are actually beginning to see this happen, I think. Sometimes she plays by herself for all of fifteen minutes. Egads! Sometimes in the night she actually rolls over and takes up the OTHER half of the bed instead of sleeping on top of me! Sometimes (semi-regularly) she lets us completely abandon her while she sleeps! (This is good. Given the frequency that I'm waking up in the night to pee, I shudder to think what would happen if she bolted upright each time I got out of bed in the night... Ooh, ooh! Last night, even, she did wake up when I got out of bed. She looked up to see what I was doing... and then laid back down and went back to sleep. Of course, this did happen after a few instances of her following me to the bathroom to see what I was doing in the night, but still. Success!) Oh, and of course, the transition to nursery could not be going more easily.
And, of course, the biggest evidence that she is getting more independent... more SURPRISES. I found her giant blue ball inside the dryer today. James found that she had ripped off all the pull tabs on our soy milk food storage. (Ugh.) Art on the walls. Sticker wall art ripped off the wall and shredded into pieces and spread throughout the house. Cheerios in the heater vents and inside the computer case (... ... ... I do not like the implications of that one). Baby covered in pen and/or marker. Toilet paper EVERYWHERE. All our apples pulled off the table, each of which have one or two mysterious bite marks in them (Bunnicula?). Pieces of tissue shoved up into the innards of our printer. Giant puddles of water dangerously close to things that should never under any circumstances have puddles of water nearby (i.e. computers).
Love and surprises,
Jenna, Amelia, and Baby Delta
I've been sleeping in the queen bed and James has been sleeping on the twin in the next room. We still like each other just fine, of course, but recently this has been the sleeping arrangement most likely to result in us all getting enough sleep.
Anyway, what usually happens is that I nurse Amelia, hand her over to James, and then they go fall asleep on the twin mattress in Amelia's room. Sometime in the middle of the night, Amelia usually wakes up crying looking for me and desperately wanting to nurse.
Last night, though, she apparently needed to fall asleep with me. So that's what happened. But! Sometime in the night she ambled back over to her room and cuddled up with James without waking either of us. I actually had to search for her in the night when I woke up to pee for the third time (ugh, pregnancy is fun) and she was GONE. WHUT?
Sometime later she woke up again and decided she needed me and came back to sleep in the queen with me. Only she didn't nurse... she just wanted to cozy herself in my armpit. Gross, I think, but whatever floats the kid's dreamboat.
So I'm super excited about last night for several reasons. Mostly I'm excited that she ambled back to her own room on her own. But also, I'm glad she is nursing less at night. It's been disturbing my sleep more severely lately.
Now if only I could tell you that Amelia night nursing less and spending more of the night in the other room with James were actually helping me sleep.
Baby Delta is making nighttime AWFUL. I've been getting up at least four times in the night to pee. And then I can't fall back asleep because I feel sick and/or too hot and/or headachy and/or anxious and/or sore all over. Last night I was all of the above. Fabulous. Yeah, so the last half week has been horrible for me.
I hear that around age 14-18 months, little kids are still extremely needy (must have Mother ALL the time, no exceptions!) but are also hard to keep up with thanks to the whole "must run everywhere", "must climb ALL the things", "must destroy ALL the things", "must flail ALL the limbs when near Mom's face", "must create ALL the messes", etc., etc., etc. Amelia has fit into this stereotypical development stage PERFECTLY.
It has been extremely demanding on me, particularly during the last few weeks while I've been feeling groggy. (I am SO tired ALL the time. I attempt to stay in bed until noon every day and then take a nap later.) Amelia is so difficult to deal with a lot of the time. Now, I do not mean to say that she is a bad kid or an unhappy kid or an angry kid or any of that sort of thing. She is SO happy. I seriously don't think I know of any other kids her age who are so happy, so friendly, so boisterous, or so loving. She is very, very nice.
Everybody at church thinks she is so well-behaved... and by this they mean she doesn't really get angry and throw evil tantrums. She is definitely mischievous and laughs maniacally as she constantly gets into all sorts of trouble. Amelia is simply irrepressible and always adventuring in some way.
She is NOT quiet in church, nor do I think she even remotely has the capacity to sit still, but to my surprise even the people I was sure would say, "Why can't you get your kid to sit down and shut up and act like a tiny adult?! What is wrong with you? You are obviously doing this parenting thing wrong!" ... Well, instead they are saying, "Why, isn't she just the sweetest thing? So well-behaved. Not like some brats I know..." So I don't get it, but I'll take it.
Oh, and the pediatrician told me, "Yes, I know you're tired. But Amelia is the happiest and most well-behaved 18-month old I've seen in months." She told me this while Amelia was driving me bonkers with her energy level. In some ways, I apparently have got it easy right now. For instance, I suppose we don't ever have any battles of wills.
Maybe the secret is this: if the kid is grinning ear-to-ear and isn't mean, it doesn't matter how many grey hairs or bald spots or black eyes or bruises or bags under-the-eyes or quasi-electrocution hairstyles or twitching facial features Mom and Dad have. That is one good kid.
Theoretically, Amelia should be approaching a new stage: emerging independence. Oh my, this sounds like exactly what I've been dreaming about and my current energy levels warrant.
We are actually beginning to see this happen, I think. Sometimes she plays by herself for all of fifteen minutes. Egads! Sometimes in the night she actually rolls over and takes up the OTHER half of the bed instead of sleeping on top of me! Sometimes (semi-regularly) she lets us completely abandon her while she sleeps! (This is good. Given the frequency that I'm waking up in the night to pee, I shudder to think what would happen if she bolted upright each time I got out of bed in the night... Ooh, ooh! Last night, even, she did wake up when I got out of bed. She looked up to see what I was doing... and then laid back down and went back to sleep. Of course, this did happen after a few instances of her following me to the bathroom to see what I was doing in the night, but still. Success!) Oh, and of course, the transition to nursery could not be going more easily.
And, of course, the biggest evidence that she is getting more independent... more SURPRISES. I found her giant blue ball inside the dryer today. James found that she had ripped off all the pull tabs on our soy milk food storage. (Ugh.) Art on the walls. Sticker wall art ripped off the wall and shredded into pieces and spread throughout the house. Cheerios in the heater vents and inside the computer case (... ... ... I do not like the implications of that one). Baby covered in pen and/or marker. Toilet paper EVERYWHERE. All our apples pulled off the table, each of which have one or two mysterious bite marks in them (Bunnicula?). Pieces of tissue shoved up into the innards of our printer. Giant puddles of water dangerously close to things that should never under any circumstances have puddles of water nearby (i.e. computers).
Love and surprises,
Jenna, Amelia, and Baby Delta
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