Words

I'm not doing super spectacularly today, so I figured I should do something to make me feel better. And spilling it all out seems to help me, so here goes.

I am having a second miscarriage... in a row. I got a faint positive on a pregnancy test on Monday. I was super excited about the discovery of Baby Gamma, and it was even more exciting after losing Baby Beta last month. And because we've trying for a second pregnancy for nine months now. I've found it frustrating, and what a relief for that to be over with.

Only then I started bleeding heavily the very next day. And you can guess a lot of what went on after that. Bye bye, Baby Gamma.

The biggest trial here for me is emotional. Now, both of the miscarriages were so early that they definitely qualify as chemical pregnancies, because they both ended just after four weeks gestation. Very, very early miscarriages indeed. So I sometimes berate myself for reacting so strongly to them, telling myself I have no right to cry compared to someone who miscarried at six weeks or eight weeks or ten weeks.

But the truth is, it still is really hard. In my mind, I can't not think of either of them as potential babies that just didn't make it. I know, in the sciencey section of my noggin, that most miscarriages happen because something was wrong the fetal genetic material. And I certainly would prefer my baby to have a fully functional body.

BUT... It. Still. Stings.

Especially when you add female hormones to the mix. Sounds like a recipe for an emotional earthquake to me. And really, the Atonement of Christ is the only thing pulling me through right now.

I am desperately hoping that this time I don't bleed for an entire two weeks like I did after Baby Beta. Every day of bleeding is a reminder of what I'd been so excited about.

So... here's to hoping Baby Delta comes soon and makes it to dinosaur name status (i.e. past the first trimester).

On that note, I should end happily. Amelia has been so sweet lately, and talking up a storm with increasingly recognizable speech. My Facebook is littered with words she's been spouting out this week. Yay!

Love and babies,
Jenna

Thanksgiving Eve

Note: I started this on the road but I finished long after arriving at Danny & Steffanie's house. Don't get confused.

At this moment, we are roadtripping to Nevada to spend Thanksgiving weekend with Danny & Steffanie. Woohoo! Amelia (15 months old) is decidedly anti-carseat today, of course. She keeps wailing something that sounds eerily like “LET ME OUT!” and it's freakin' me out a little. She's too young to talk! Well, not really. I know lots of kids her age are saying way more words than she does, but this kid uses words very inconsistently. At times I wonder if it's because James and I are usually pretty good at figuring out what she wants without the words, especially now that she can point at something she wants (usually something I'm eating) if a whine is insufficient to communicate her needs.

Amelia has also invented a sign which we think means “hug”. She folds her arms emphatically at times, and we've been interpreting it as a demand for a hug or cuddles or something. For a while we weren't sure what it meant. Heck, we're still not sure, but hugs seem to satify.

So it seems talking is merely a tool for entertainment for now. She has mastered “OH NO!” and “WHOOOAAA” and “MAMAMAMAMAMAAAA!” and “HAHAHA!”. I would find “mama” much more endearing if she'd use it without making it sound like a complaint. She says “daddy” sometimes, but she says it a lot when James is at work. Perhaps she's just wondering aloud where he is...

A few nights ago she said “amen” with us at the end of our family prayer. Woohoo! (Update: During family prayer at Danny's house, she even knelt and folded her arms with us. Impressively cute.)

Amelia has pretty much plateaued growth-wise. She's still big and all, but it my delight she has yet to grow out of 18-month size clothing. She's gotten longer without adding much weight to her bones, but I'm not sure if she's gotten skinnier or not. Still, now the clothes issue is keeping them clean. I've discovered how pervasive dirt stains can be... and yet I have discovered how strangely satisfying it can be to take once-white socks which have been brutally transformed into nearly-black (and sometimes multicolored) creatures of filth... and them make them brilliant white again. Ahhh. So good.

It's possible she no longer needs size 5 diapers and can switch back down to size 4... We had to move up to that size back when she was 8 months old because her thighs were so fat that the size 4s were too small to reliably hold in pee. I got leaked on too many times in a row to deny that we needed to move to size 5. It's just a little weird though, because her cousin Oak (about a year her senior) is only in size 4 diapers. It feels backwards for her to be wearing bigger diapers than he does.

Speaking of diapers... for some reason, ever since we came to California, she has all but shunned her potty. How odd! She used to love the thing. We've been giving her some extra diaper-free time lately (during which I tend to call her Naked Butt Lady) because, importantly, it helps her diaper rash go away and stay away.

So far, our carpet has been completely spared. (Miracles!) When she pees during diaper-free time (we can't always avoid it, sadly), she trots over to the adult toilet and pees next to it. Most of the time. If the bathroom door is closed, she squats and pees on the tile next to her little potty. (Sigh. Really? The potty is right there.) She also climbed onto the kitchen table once to pee there. As far as I can tell that was her only purpose in climbing onto the table at all. This morning she peed on the bed though. That was less fortunate, so I was grateful that we'd planned to wash the bedding this morning anyway.

I've decided to take her pee location choices as encouraging, though. I mean, peeing next to the toilet is almost peeing in the toilet, right?

Amelia still nurses a lot. There was about a month or so where she cut her nursing in half—inexplicably—and then—also inexplicably—she went right back to nursing like a maniac. There are still some days when she shuns solid food and prefers to nurse. (Those days are just a tad frustrating because it seems she is never quite satisfied. And some of those days I don't want to nurse that much, so she just has to deal with it. I figure no nursing when Mommy would rather listen to hours of fingernails on chalkboards instead is a completely okay as a rule, particularly when Amelia is old enough to get calories elsewhere.) Mostly the lots of nursing is fine with me. The increase was just surprising. And she still shuns all liquids besides water and the rare orange juice or high-quality apple cider. Seriously. Picky, picky, picky.

Ug. So just now we took a 45-minute walk around some fancy schmancy shopping center because Amelia needed to stretch her legs. It took that long before she seemed even remotely ready to be strapped into the carseat again. Of course she screamed bloody murder when we strapped her back in.

We still have another two hours before we reach Danny and Steffanie's. I'm really hoping she'll decide to fall asleep and stay asleep now... or soon. [She didn't fall asleep until we were half an hour from Danny's house. She was quite angry until then.] She slept for about forty-five minutes earlier, but honestly, it didn't count for much because I got emergency starving and so we stopped at Popeye's and ate some finger-lickin' good fried chicken. Om nom nom. And then she woke up. Oh noes! Darn it. We wasted our nap on fried chicken. Oh well. Thankfully, she is currently quite entertained by some My Little Pony board books we found at Barnes & Noble the other day for fifty cents a piece. Awww yeah.

Anyway. Speaking of naps, the little one continues to be wildly erratic in her napping habits. Sigh. Well, she usually takes one nap everyday, which lasts something between twenty minutes and three hours. And we've established a bedtime routine... short and simple. Pajamas, brush teeth, sit on the potty and maybe read a book with Daddy, baby prayer, then nurse and/or cuddle with Mommy in bed until asleep. Even with the routine, there is no guarantee she'll actually go to sleep anywhere near the same time each night. She goes to bed sometime around 7pm and 11pm. Doom. Especially because James and I ideally like to climb into bed by 9:30pm.

Oh oh oh! The other night was super special and she slept for four hours on her own mattress all by herself. After the four hours though, she apparently desperately needed to nurse and so I was forced to abandon my book and join her in bed. Oh well. It was a record-breaking mommy-less stretch of sleep, so I was excited. I think she is nursing less and less at night. It really is kind of exciting.

At the end of next month (December 22^nd), I will be flying down to Arizona with Amelia to spend a couple weeks with my parents. I'll be honest. I partly decided to do this because I wouldn't have to ride in a stuffed-to-the-brim car with a whining toddler for an entire 8+-hour drive. Also, if I fly away, I will also take the baby, the carseat, the gianto stroller, and an entire suitcase worth of clothing. Which means there will be lots more room in the car to take extra things back to Oregon. Namely, books.

I am so going to miss Pleasant Hill. I love, love, love it here. It has been my most favorite place to live in my entire life so far. So I am sad to leave. One of the awesome things I will be leaving is a library which is highly superior to the pathetic library back in Springfield, Oregon. One of the things that makes this library so awesome is the HUGE used book sales every three months. We will be leaving California with over one hundred more books than we entered with. I am so saddened that we will be missing on this book sale for the rest of our lives. Le doom.

Though I'm not certain that I could point to any one thing about the Pleasant Hill that I like better than anywhere else I've lived, but I do love it. Most places I have to continually convince myself that I like it. I have not had to do that here. My best guess is the proximity of other Diltsen. We like Jesse and Jenny. And Urban and Ayla and Oak. And I'm sure we'd like Pikachu when he or she is born. (I wonder what they'll name him or her.) And also there is significantly less rain. And our apartment is significantly nicer than any we've lived in before. And library. And everything I could ever want within walking distance...

And even a ward I really like. And the ward really likes us. (Honestly this shocked me. My first impression of the ward was that everyone even close to my age were couples of “it” girls and former jocks. Possibly still true, but my mistake was thinking that meant I'd never be able to connect to anybody in the ward. Boy, was I wrong. And I was never happier to be wrong in my life. I guess I needed to learn something. To my credit, my hopelessness at finding any friends here lasted all of forty minutes.)

People keep trying to convince us to stay. Unfortunately, as I keep trying to explain to the Pleasant Hill branch of our fan club, this would require James dropping out of school and losing all our income and perhaps find a job as a cashier at Safeway or something. And then we wouldn't even be able to afford living here. Doom! And then there isn't much hope of us ending up here in the future because that would require James landing a professorship at UC Berkeley. In his words, he's good but not that good. Awww maaan!

I've spent a lot of time reading lately. Although I've been reading like a madwoman trying to get through the Wheel of Time, I've finally admitted I'm not going to get through book 11 by the time I leave California if I continue at the current rate. I slowed down significantly this week while trying to read Lord of Chaos. I suppose it's possible it's something about that particular book, but I think more likely it's just because I've been busy and super tired. I've spent more of my free time napping this week. Oh well. I guess that just means I'll be forced to purchase book 11 so I can continue reading the series since the Springfield library is lame and doesn't have it.

I've been really enjoying this series, but I feel a little silly when I realize that it has most affected me in the following way: I am heavily considering not cutting my hair for a decade or two because I think it'd be sweet to have a waist-length braid to tug when I'm angry. I'm not sure how this'll work, since as you may recall, I don't like having hair. I have a better chance now than I ever did before though, since ever since James bzzzzed all my hair off, it has grown back immensely more cooperative than I ever remember it being in my entire life. Strange, but I'll take it.

I've also convinced myself not to ever write fiction... at least not for a public audience, anyway. No one would enjoy fiction I'd write because I have the most remarkable difficulty imagining any point of view besides my own in enough detail to write with. All my characters I imagine all act like me, think like me, and speak like me. My brain hurts when I even try to invent a character even remotely energetic or flippant or evil. Which presents another problem. How the heck am I supposed to create conflict when I can't imagine any motives for anyone ever doing anything bad? Ugh. I try sometimes. I'm like, oh, well maybe he's going to do this awful thing because he's super jealous and... wait. That makes no sense. Why would anyone ever do something that dumb? Yet somehow, other authors can pull it off.

Since this realization, my in-head fiction has even started boring me. And since I've used my in-head fiction to help myself get to sleep at night for almost my entire life, now I don't know what to think about to wind down at night anymore. Doom.

Oh, joy. Amelia just handed me a loaded mouse trap—which I mistakenly assumed to be sprung—and it snapped onto my thumb. (Danny's house apparently had a mouse problem before they even moved here, and now that the neighbor cat is no longer sleeping in Danny's garage... Lo, and behold, Speedy Despereaux Gonzales has moved in and is masterfully evading all traps.) And earlier she set it off and scared her. I think moving it out of reach was probably a good idea...

What else, what else...

Ah yes. It took a while, but my body eventually got over the miscarriage of Baby Beta. I was shocked that despite only knowing of Baby Beta's existence for two days, my brain had a really rough time coming to terms with this. I feel better now that I know that this is actually pretty common to feel that way... well, at least it is for women. It didn't seem to even phase James, so for a bit I wondered if I was going nuts. But apparently, I was acting and feeling pretty normal. Once the two weeks of bleeding was over, I started feeling pretty normal again. Woohoo. Thanks for your prayers and well wishes. I'm feeling optimistic for Baby Gamma to arrive soon. (Don't laugh. Sometimes when I'm feeling particularly baby-hungry, I look down at my belly and say things like, “Go, Baby Gamma, go! Divide into sixteen cells! Commence morula stage!” and “Psst. You should be burrowing into my endometrium now. I've made it super cushy for you over the last few weeks! You can do it!” I really hope there is a Baby Gamma and I'm not just talking to nothing...)

Well, love and turkey,

Jenna and Amelia (and hopefully, any time now, Baby Gamma)

Diva

I wish I could tell you that James and I have been super exciting for Halloween and such, but the fact is, we have not. We did not celebrate Halloween at all. We didn't dress up or go trick-or-treating, and no one knocked on our door. Oh well. We figured it was all right to ignore Halloween this year as we may never get to do so ever again.

I am worried to report, however, that Amelia may be a diva in potentia. I couldn't tell you where she inherited her diva-ty, as I was sure I'd distilled every ounce of diva out of my genetic code and, well, James didn't teach her how to diva.

Nevertheless, the signs are there. Take, for instance, her innate sense of dramatic timing. Need a maniacal laugh? Sounds of evil plotting? Incredulous laughter? Indignant exclamation? Amelia will provide it and you won't even need to ask. She's that good.

Next, I have detected a certain love of clothing and fashion. Every dish towel is a chic scarf. She digs through our laundry in search of flamboyant zebra-print panties to wear on her head, and is often found raving in loud tones about some clothing item or whatever. She was too pleased about her new penguin pajamas that we got at Costco last night.

(What does she do with all of mom's flamboyant underclothing? Why, dance, of course! I swear it looks like she's warming up for a dance performance.)

And, of course, she's a charmer. Oh, how she loves the boys. There is no doubt about it--she flirts shamelessly. And no one can resist her wiles.

Now, here's where it gets interesting.

The fact that it is her destiny to be an epic nerd woman is written all over her future. She never bangs me on the head with toys demanding for me to entertain her rather than rest; it is invariably a book that she stubbornly carried across the house to demand me to read to her. This happens something like twenty to forty times a day.

And then, if it wasn't obvious, she is my child... and James' child. She already has a nearly scientific approach to life.

Thus, we have reached the conclusion that she is doomed to be trailed by a swarm of nerd men until she is married (early in life). There will be so much doom.

Other than this revelation about my daughter's perilous future, I have been... stressed. And hormonal. Unfortunately, shortly after learning of the existence of a Baby Beta, I learned that Baby Beta had already met his or her demise. My poor body has been overreacting to this event, and I have felt... well, frankly... bloody (and) evil. Downright grumpy and mean. Quite unbalanced in every way. So I could use some prayers and good vibes and things. I am eagerly anticipating a return to my normal hormonal state.

Love and feather boas,
Jenna

Oh Yeah, I Have a Blog

Hello folks, I'm still not missing the Internet all that much, but boy, do I miss you. Do you miss me? (I think maybe Facebook misses me. It keeps deciding I simply do not get enough updates anymore despite my hard work to minimize what I see.)

Amelia is walking, for real. At a schmooze-with-other-mathematicians-and-physicists party James, Amelia, and I just attended, she totally walked all over the place. Toddle, toddle, toddle. She also tried really hard to uproot the ADT sign in the yard. She guzzled apple cider (the opaque kind). And she climbed a cat tower.

My life is not all that interesting, but I suppose I'll have to come up with SOMETHING I can tell you. Hmm.

Oh, yeah. I've been reading so many books! Since I last blogged, I have devoured the following:

• Mistborn, by Brandon Sanderson
• The Eye of the World, by Robert Jordan
• The Great Hunt, by Robert Jordan
• The Dragon Reborn, by Robert Jordan
• Men at Arms, by Terry Pratchett
• Soul Music, by Terry Pratchett
• Interesting Times, by Terry Pratchett
• Maskerade, by Terry Pratchett
• The Source of Magic, by Piers Anthony

And I am 8.8% of the way through Feet of Clay by Terry Pratchett. And I have Well of Ascension and Hero of Ages by Brandon Sanderson on the shelf ready to be read by osmosis under my pillow tonight.

Huh. Only nine done since last time? For shame! Actually, that's not bad, considering how many pages some of those books have, and how much time Amelia eats like a supermassive black hole. (Oooh, good song. Sing it, yo.) Oh, and did I mention the child has an evil tendency to run up, slam my book shut, and scream like a mini female Tarzan baby? She does. She can't keep her hands off my books. First word in both Serbian and English was book, too.

I've noticed though, that when she points to things on the covers of the books, it is most often blurbs of text, like the title, or the author, or Tor Fantasy, or "New York Times Bestseller", or "sequel to such and such", or even "OMG, so awesome--The New York Times". I sometimes wonder if she is trying to figure out how to read, and then I decide, naw, that couldn't possibly be it. And then I remember my mother telling me I started reading when I was two.

I don't think I realized that was impressive until I imagined Amelia that old. And now I am twitching thinking that it might actually be remotely possible that she will begin reading books aloud to me sometime between 24 and 36 months. It makes my jaw drop through the floor, the basement, and halfway through Earth's crust. I actually find myself hoping my mother was exaggerating, because I think that'd scare me a little bit. Almost as much as it would make puff to twice my size with motherly pride. (And we don't want that to happen, now do we?)

Oh, oh, oh! Good news for Mommy the Me!

Amelia kind of suddenly started nursing less AND falling asleep without nursing, almost all the time. Yaaay! It just kind of happened without us doing much differently. She is also suddenly accepting more solid foods at the same time, but I think that is because she decided to, and not because I've been offering her an elephant to eat everyday. I realize most babies have already passed through the less nursing and more solids transition by now, but apparently Amelia's biological clock had it scheduled for fourteen months. Well, not complaining now.

Amelia hearts grapes. And raspberries. And blackberries. And popcorn. And fruit snacks. And honey nut Cheerios. And almond butter and jelly sandwiches. And chili. And zucchini soup. And Swiss chard lentil soup. And pizza. And chicken nuggets.

She does not heart cow's milk. Or soymilk. Or almondmilk. Or coconutmilk. She tried each one once, and now won't even touch them. Apparently it's breastmilk or bust. (Oh hey, pun! That wasn't even on purpose.) She does drink water though... for which I am thankful. I don't like being Amelia's only source of fluids. Though I suppose today she guzzled apple cider, but I think that will be a special occasion thing. It made her so excited that her eyes went wonky.

I believe that's all I can think to prattle on about.

Love and wonkytizing apple cider,

Jenna

California

Apologies for the long wait in between updates, my loyal fans. It was unavoidable, though. We've had quite an adventure. We are currently living in Pleasant Hill, California in a cute little two-bedroom apartment that is much bigger and much nicer (and more expensive) than we needed, but it is in the perfect location and, more to the point, we were allowed to live here despite the brevity of our stay.


James takes the car to work everyday. He drives for 25 to 50 minutes depending on the traffic... I think it's usually closer to 30 to 40, but you'd have to ask him. I have yet to drive since we've been here. I'm scared of the drivers around here. They are so aggressive! I am not an aggressive driver, however, and so I feel a lot less safe. I haven't exactly practiced driving assertiveness.


I walk everywhere that I need to go. Jesse (James' brother) and his family live about a half-hour walk away... the church building is about that close. There are three grocery stores that I'm aware of within that half-hour radius (two Safeways and a Lucky)--four if you count a restaurant supply store, and if I'm willing to walk a tad farther, I can get to a Sprouts. There's a post office close by, and our bank has a branch inside one of the Safeways. And, most importantly, the library is about a twenty minute walk away.


This is super important because, well, we do not have Internet at the moment. Our apartment costs us, roughly, a whopping $1500 each month, and then suddenly we have to pay gas and car maintenance for James' commute (he used to take the bus when we lived in Springfield). Oh, and it seems like our grocery bill has gone up too. I don't know how permanent that is, but part of it was inflated because at first we didn't know which store has the cheapest Swiss chard and which store has the cheapest almond butter, for instance.


So, yeah, Internet. If we just live without our home Internet and canceled Netflix, we have a fair amount of extra money every month. This has had its disadvantages, but all in all, I'm actually pleased with the change. What this means is, if I want to use the Internet, I absolutely HAVE to get off my lazy butt and walk for half an hour. There's the library, there's Jesse and Jenny's house, and there's even the church building. We have enough Internet for our needs.


What our Internet-less home ALSO means is that both James and I are spending A LOT less time squandering our life away reading everything to be read on the Web. I thought I was pretty good about not idling away my time too much, but apparently there was a lot MORE time I could have shaved off. I've had to suck it up and pretty much hide all but Griffins and Diltsen from my Facebook news feed.


This was, I'll admit, a little heartwrenching. I thought, Oh man, I absolutely CAN'T hide so-and-so from my news feed. I heart her face and I want to know everything that's happening in her life. And then I realized that I heart too many people's faces, so if I'm not checking the Internet every two hours every day, then I will have about two hours worth of stuff on Facebook to sort through every two or three days. Um, doom. I do not have that sort of time.


So I ruthlessly hid all-a-y'all who ain't related to me. I figure if I'm all that curious and I actually do have extra time, I can stalk you as much as I want by actually going to your personal wall. Brilliant. Now I only devote about ten minutes to Facebook when I do check it, and I hardly click on any of the links anyone shares.


I've done a similar thing with my email account. I ruthlessly unsubscribed from all sorts of stuff I had previously thought worth my precious time to look at, but since I now only have a few minutes a week to check my email, I just got rid of it all.


So, what have I done instead of browse the Interwebs endlessly when Amelia does not require my attention?


The same thing I used to do before I had Internet—or for that matter, obscene amounts of homework. (Oh my gosh, that was over a decade ago.) I am reading gazillions of books. Since I've been in California, I've read: Small Gods by Terry Pratchett, Introvert Power by Laurie Helgoe, Lords and Ladies by Terry Pratchett, Alcatraz versus the Evil Librarians by Brandon Sanderson, Alcatraz versus the Scrivener's Bones by Brandon Sanderson, Alcatraz versus the Knights of Crystallia by Brandon Sanderson, Alcatraz versus the Shattered Lens by Brandon Sanderson, and A Spell for Chameleon by Piers Anthony. I am about one hundred pages into Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson and am waiting extremely impatiently for whoever has Men at Arms by Terry Pratchett checked out to turn it in so I can get on reading all the Discworld books in order. I also have The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan on hold. (I've been waiting to start the Wheel of Time series until it was finished entirely, and well, it's finished and now I have no excuse.)


Huh. So I guess I've really only read eight books in the last three weeks, but I say that's totally impressive given the amount of time I spend tending the Amelia-bot. I haven't spent much time socializing with the people here, but I'm beginning to suspect that I'll be happy without them. After all, I have enough Diltsen to hang out with and enough books to read, plus I'll only be here for a little over three more months. Often, it hardly seems worth the immense effort it takes me to make friends considering that it took me a year and a half in Springfield before I felt like I had friends.


The Amelia-bot 2000 had some difficulty adjusting to the new environment at first, but this was to be expected. I think after about three days, she finally started to recognize our new apartment as home base.


We celebrated her first birthday a few days late by eating “birthday cake” (i.e. rice krispies Dilts-style) with Jesse and Jenny's family. It wasn't much of a party, and it wasn't even our idea. She didn't get any presents besides the big box of board books Katie and Peter sent her. (Thank you!) Oh, and I suppose I got her a xylophone, but this was unveiled during the big car ride down to California rather than on her birthday.


Amelia is not walking yet. That's all right. She is demanding as ever, and I fear she'd be much quicker if she could walk, so I'll just say I'm lucky.


She loves bathtime with a passionate fire of firey passion. If I am showering without her... wo is me! For I shall receive a cacophonous earful in an echoey bathchamber while she tries her best to climb into the tub with me, fully clothed. Sigh. And she's close to succeeding in her bath entry attempts.


All in all, this is BY FAR the nicest apartment we've ever lived in. I'd probably want to stay here longer if we didn't have to pay for it. We have a lot of empty space in this apartment, which I've always enjoyed. Space is luxurious. Furniture-wise, we have only a queen-sized bed and a kitchen table and chairs. That's it.


Amelia sleeps with us, so the second bedroom is essentially the play room. And the living room is completely bare, so that is practically the running-around-in-circles room. We have our first backyard (miniature though it may be) and the countertops in the kitchen and bathroom are granite (or more accurately they look granite—I doubt it's real). We have our very first kitchen table and chairs, which is nice, though I've been shocked to discover that Amelia can reach well over the edge and can pull nearly everything off of it.


So perhaps you won't be shocked to discover that, within a week, she got hold of BOTH my pairs of glasses (despite them having been placed in what I thought were secure locations), and broke them, fairly irreparably. One she broke at the nose bridge. The other, she twisted off one of the arms; it's twisted enough that no screw can hold it together anymore. Doom!


I was a little panicked about this at first since I needed an eye exam for a new prescription... and we couldn't really afford that, let alone a whole new pair of glasses. But! The Lord always provides, and we received an anonymous donation from someone in our new ward who recognized a need and decided they didn't need $100 for themselves. (I think it would be so cool to be able to do that. This seems to be one of the many benefits of self-reliance.)


Anyway, so I got my eye exam on Thursday and then ordered a new set of glasses. (Incidentally, did you know you can get great deals on the Internet for glasses?) I knew what shape of lens looks good on me, so I found one that shape, and this time, I got memory titanium frames. You know, the basically unbreakable kind that you can also twist around your finger if you want to. And I even got a hydrophobic and oleophobic coating on the lenses so they'll stay cleaner longer and be easier to clean. Awesome!


So yeah. Amelia the Destructo-bot, should she get hold of my new glasses (and I shall redouble my efforts to prevent this), will have to work extra hard to destroy them.


Money is coming from everywhere. Pay your tithing, folks. That's all I can say. Pay your tithing and when the Spirit leads you to do something crazy, do it.


Seriously, I can't really fathom how we are paying for our little California adventure. The price of moving and living here is so great that it totally requires divine intervention for us not to go broke. I'm not sure why it is so important that James needed to come to this general relativity (though there are some obvious vague guesses, like meet other researchers in his field, etc.), but from the very beginning, I knew he needed to go. I felt like that even though at the time I thought that meant I'd be in Oregon for four months without him.


But miracle after miracle has facilitated this experience for us. First, James' advisor's grant got funded by the NSF—in full, even after the government supposedly cut back on science spending. So that meant Amelia and I could come too, because James will be receiving $1000 each month from that grant to help pay rent. Then, another miracle, we found the perfect location in which I personally would not go crazy. In fact, this is quite possibly the most ideal location I've ever lived in for anti-craziness. I could never have picked a better location if I had been looking for it.


Money is practically falling out of the sky for us. I already mentioned how money for my glasses materialized from a kind soul in the ward. I got a survey in the mail today which I will get $40 for completing, which will cover the extra glasses expense. We got our oil change and our tire rotation both for free, coincidentally. James' advisor let us store all our possessions in his garage for free so we don't have to pay for storage. Some days, James is getting paid $70/day to take notes on stuff he was planning to take notes on anyway. And it even looks like we'll get money for babysitting too, perhaps as much as $45/week. Um, seriously, the Man Upstairs is just making stuff up now. He's not even trying to make up good excuses to give us money anymore or pretend like it isn't Him meddling in our lives. I mean, getting paid to take notes? Pssh. It's gotten to the point that it's almost impossible to worry about finances because somehow, everything is getting paid for with relative ease.


And—there were even miracles to help me get comfortable here. Not surprisingly, I felt a bit uprooted once we got here, and I actually even felt some culture shock. California culture is apparently just barely different enough from what I'm used to that I feel out of place here. After about twenty minutes at church the first Sunday, I was extremely discouraged and lonely. And right when I was feeling my worst, I looked down at the Relief Society newsletter being passed around—and I recognized the baby picture on it. I knew that baby's mother! I already knew someone in this ward. I felt so relieved.


And then we went to a barbeque after church to meet other ward members... and BAM. We immediately met a Serbian woman who was absolutely thrilled to have someone to speak Serbian with. She even brought out her visiting mother (who doesn't speak English) so she could join in too. I was shocked to realize how much of the Serbian conversation I understood. I understood noticeably less of what the mother was saying because she was Bosnian, but I was still shocked that understood as much as I did.


AND. (Yes, there's another and.) This ward is filled with one-year-olds. If nothing else, there are tons of other families we have something in common with—babies. Whabam. Miracles, miracles, miracles.


Money and love,
Jenna and Amelia-bot



P.S. Amelia now has four teeth—she sprouted two on top, though they aren't visible in pictures yet.
P.P.S. I really appreciate comments.

Eleven Months

Gosh, I haven't been writing on here as frequently as I used to. And double gosh, I may be taking a months-long hiatus when we move to Berkeley and live largely Internet-less. I guess that could be okay. One of the biggest purposes of my blog is to soothe myself through write-it-out therapy. I haven't needed it as much since Amelia's sudden improvement after visiting the chiropractor at six months.

But today... Today I need it. I am more harried than usual. I suppose then, that the following will all sound rather pessimistic and melodramatic. Please keep in mind that this is a skewed version of reality and that Amelia is mostly sunshine and giggles.

Amelia, I believe, is kind of in between the baby and toddler stages. I think they call it the "older baby" stage. Yes, she's mobile. Horizontally, vertically, diagonally, diurnally, nocturnally, you name it and chances are... she is indeed mobile in the manner of that adverb. The stairs are kind of a scary place for me. If I set her down, she makes a beeline for them. I sometimes feel as if she's trying to become stairmaster within the week or something. Stair fetishes are scary things.

I'm grateful that she isn't walking yet... I have a nasty feeling that she'll get speedier once she can actually run anywhere she wants to. Oh, and not to mention that she'll be able to get into more things. Doom.

The little lady is insatiably curious. She loves water, which is also a tad scary. Another thing she makes a beeline for... the toilet. I am glad we have a toilet lock, as annoying as it is. I am dreading the day she figures it out, for then I'd have to worry about her possibly playing in it, drowning in it, splashing its unsanitary water all over the bathroom, flushing valuables down it, etc.

Ay caramba.

Oh, and yes, we are still doing that elimination communication thing. With mobility, though, came a newfound desire to NOT sit on the potty for longer than is absolutely necessary, because that is BOR-ING! So... yeah. She's in a "I'm way too busy to sit on a potty. I'd rather pee while exploring the house!" phase. It's mildly frustrating when I know the little vixen needs to release a turd, but she won't sit on the pot. And then it gets even more scream-inducing when she does poo in her diaper... and by the time we notice that she's soiled herself and change the offending diaper, her bum is already bleeding from poo exposure. And, gosh, is it difficult to get all the fecal matter out of all the nooks and crannies of a wriggly, writhing female baby... bleeding bum or no bleeding bum. Diapering a mobile baby is quite the adventure.

Amelia eats everything. She can handle pretty much anything we're willing to give her. Recent favorites include air-popped popcorn, strawberries, pineapple, bread, pizza, chicken nuggets, and... well, ANYTHING that we happen to be eating. Sometimes I just don't see the point of giving her "her own" portion, because she won't eat what we give her. She much prefers to steal our portions.

The baby lady is absolutely convinced that if she sleeps, she will miss out on all the wonders of the world. So, of course, she resists falling asleep no matter how tired she is. It is a rare occasion when she falls asleep without lots of help. And help usually means that I nurse her for five to sixty minutes. (Ugh. The sixty minutes gets a little laborious. And then it gets frustrating when it takes sixty minutes to get her to sleep... and then she only sleeps for a grand total of twenty minutes. Gross.) Sure, I admit it could be possible that we are encouraging a bad habit here, but SHE WILL NOT GO TO SLEEP ANY OTHER WAY, so it's not like we presently have much of a choice if we want any semblance of rest and sanity in our house.

We had made some progress getting Amelia to fall asleep without the breast... but she got sick a few weeks ago, and all that progress went out the window. She was miserable. And then she got so plugged up in her nasal passages that it was impossible to breathe while nursing... which lead to her first ever nursing strike! Doom!

And remember now that she doesn't go to sleep without nursing. But now she couldn't/ wouldn't nurse, and so... the miserable, sick, starving baby would not sleep and was SUPER DUPER GRUMPY.

I suppose if I had been better rested (i.e. not dealing with a miserable, sick, starving baby who would not sleep and was super duper grumpy), I would have been wise and thought, "Oh, I should take special care not to get engorged. It would be bad if I got a plugged duct. Or mastitis."

Buuuut. I was NOT well rested, and I was actually also sick with the same illness that had Amelia under the weather, so I did not think this thought. Thus, disaster struck.

I went to bed feeling like the symptoms of my respiratory viral illness were finally fading (hallelujah!), and I remember thinking these words: Gosh, tomorrow I'm going to feel fabulous, I can tell.

...

Well, no. I did not feel fabulous. Definitely not. I woke up about two hours after drifting off to sleep imagining how fabulous I'd feel upon waking... FREEZING. I was convinced that it must have been like fifty degrees in that room. And cuddling with mini-space-heater (a.k.a. Amelia) was not warming me up sufficiently. I was so cold, in fact, that my teeth were chattering uncontrollably... and also, my whole body was seizing and shivering... and I was just flat-out miserably cold. Doom.

So, I cuddle up with James. Also, I chatter my teeth loudly in his ear.

This grumpifies him. Also, he icily informs me that it is NOT cold in the room and I should take my temperature. It was difficult to do so, as I was shivering and chattering so badly, but I did manage to find that my temperature was nearly 103°F.

Anyway, I somehow made it through the night. Mostly with the help of my martyr of a husband who sacrificed being not-too-hot and let me cuddle him until my hypothalamus finally determined I was hot enough to kill demons and I stopped shivering uncontrollably.

It was mastitis. I was pretty sure it was, because when I woke up with that fever, I also had a plugged duct that magically appeared out of nowhere. So, besides all the usual advice you get to treat mastitis (which I followed), I also had to see the midwife to get antibiotics... Apparently one of the indications that antibiotics might be appropriate is if the symptoms come on severely and suddenly, and that certainly seemed to be the case for me.

Anyway, Amelia STILL refused to nurse, so I had to fish out my breast pump. And we had to syringe the pumped milk into her face in order to quell her starving and exhausted screams. I kept trying to offer her the breast, but all she would do is bite me. Hard. (Ouch!) And then scream even more when I wouldn't put her back on the breast for a replay of said piranha action. So yeah. We didn't nurse for a couple days until her nose deplugged.

It sucked. (Oh ha, pun! I didn't even do that on purpose.)

And I was exhausted and under the weather for another few weeks, and Amelia hasn't gotten into a happy sleep routine since then, and seriously... the child is probably sleep-deprived, but I CAN'T get the kid to sleep for very long. The world is too darned interesting.

We've also found it difficult to get her to sleep at night. Instead of falling asleep once the lights are out, instead she will crawl all over and inspect stuff and giggle and scream loudly, and pound on the wall that separates our bedroom from the jumpy neighbor's bedroom. (Doom.)

Despite the lack of sleep... Amelia seems as happy as ever. She's grinning from ear to ear most of the time. She giggles a lot. She laughs heartily: "HAR HAR HAR! HOO HOO HAA!" She giggles some more. And she says, "Giggle-giggle-gogle-giggle-gogle-gogle-gogle!" Just like that. She squeals in delight when people (familiar or stranger) talk to her and smile at her. Happy baby.

Ay caramba... so tired.

Love and giggle-giggle-gogle-giggle-gogle-gogle-gogle,
Jenna and Amelia

Mobile, Vocal, and Fanged (Er... I Mean Tooth'ed)

Amelia is a different baby woman... compared to my last report anyway. On Thursday she will be ten months old!

Earlier this week, she progressed from that nebulous state where she can move, but not purposefully in the right direction, to where she can move in whichever direction she decides to go. Let the (more) chaos begin!

Well, of course, her first target was me. Once she succeeding in achieving this goal, she realized that she could go wherever she pleased... and thus, she immediately turned around and headed for our tall, rickety, overburdened bookshelf, babbling a triumphant "booh, booh, booh!" as she went. And proceeded to pull expensive (and fairly new) Brandon Sanderson novels off the bottom bookshelves. Before she destroyed all the dust covers and ate all the About the Author pages, I distracted her with board books (and grandma) and immediately set to packing all our books safely into boxes.

I suppose that if you were unfamiliar with the extreme ricketiness of our bookshelves and our plans to move in two months or so, this course of action might seem a little extreme.

Well, here was my course of logic.

The bookshelf in question was basically five planks with thick plastic sticks in between. Once the plastic sticks kind of screwed into the planks, but most of them were broken. Now though, if you were unbelievably unwise, you could pull out one of these plastic sticks and most of the bookshelf would collapse like a Jenga tower, only with books. Put a baby at the bottom, and we've got a major problem.

Well, of course, if I wanted to save the books, I'd have to relocate the ones on the bottom shelf or two. You can imagine though, how this would throw off the balance of the rickety bookshelf so that if you were to sneak up behind it and tap it on the shoulder, it would let out a pathetic "eep!" and then collapse. Again, pancake baby.

In general, I don't approve of pancake babies.

So, there was only one thing left to do... pack away all our books (except for the ones we planned to read during the next six months) and destroy the bookshelf. The poor creature was at the end of its life and would not survive another disassembly and reassembly.

Now, we have two bookshelves. Unfortunately, the second bookshelf--though sturdier than the rickety one aforementioned--is by no means a baby-safe furniture item. The designer did not have securing it to the wall in mind when he or she designed it. It is built in such a way that if we were to  attempt securing it to the wall, and Amelia were to attempt scaling it, the backboard of the bookshelf would likely remain attached to the wall... and then the rest of the shelf and all its books would fall down on top of her. Boom, pancake baby.

So basically, I packed nearly the entirety of our book collection into boxes. I was surprised and disappointed to find it only filled six large boxes. The ones we left out would probably fill a small box. Clearly, we need more books. Donations are welcome. (Particularly if these donations come pre-packed away in boxes.)

As for the fate of the bookshelves... We will be giving away the less rickety bookshelf (anyone interested?), and the majority of the very rickety bookshelf went straight to the dumpster. It has lived a long and useful life. I think it belonged to Katie in one of its previous lives. But a piece of it lives on!

The rickety bookshelf has been repurposed into a baby bookshelf. It is now two planks with the four sturdiest plastic rods in between... and these all still have threading on them and can screw into the endpieces! Woohoo! It turns out that the rickety bookshelf's most recent incarnation is actually rather sturdy. Amelia has her very own shelf! She hasn't discovered it yet. Partly because we haven't put anything on it yet. I'll get around to it later in the week.

Besides using her newly-found mobility powers to attack the heebie-jeebies out of all our books, Amelia uses them to chase James. And sometimes me. But if James is home, mostly James.

Amelia is saying pseudo-words... semi-words? Half-words? Whatever. Not quite words. I am "muh", James is "duh", Becca is "buh", and books are "booh". I don't know when these sounds will morph into actual words, but I fear "book" may get the privilege of being her first word. Humph. I thought "mama" was supposed to the requisite first word. Oh well.

In any case, if her first word is "book", it would reflect the reality that Amelia is extremely fond of books. If presented with a large basket full of toys and a single book, she will dig out the book more often than not. I personally believe she is so good at fine motor skills because she decided she needed them in order to properly play with books--hold them, pick them up, open them, turn pages, etc. Amelia may have nearly forty books, possibly more. I haven't counted them, but she has lots. All of them are getting quite used... Her current favorites seem to be "Pat the Bunny", "Peek-a-Boo Bambi", "Goodnight Moon", and "Baby Day".

There are some indications that Amelia is beginning to understand English (and Serbian!) to some extent. She definitely knows what mom, dad, Becca, Grandma, potty, bonk, milk, and book mean. And she knows zvezde (stars) for sure, and possibly patka (duck). Oh, and possibly miš (mouse) and pas (dog) as well. Yikes, she is growing up!

Amelia finally sprouted a couple teeth (both lower central incisors) right around 9.5 months old. They are starting to be visible instead of just invisible sharp things in her gums. They haven't made much difference, except that I have to be careful if she smiles while still at the breast or I will get pinched. Ouch!

James and I decided yesterday to begin teaching Amelia in earnest how to fall asleep on her own. She has come to believe that she is incapable of falling asleep without a boob in her face. So I began the whole stealing-the-boob-just-before-she-falls-asleep, give-it-back-if-she-asks-for-it, steal-it-again-just-before-sleep-etc.-until-she-finally-surrenders-to-sleep-boobless routine. It took over TWO HUNDRED boob-steals and two hours before she finally gave up and fell asleep without the boob. (She began screaming bloody murder after every steal... then she'd anticipate a thievery and begin screaming bloody murder BEFORE I even stole it... and then she decided to give up on a nap despite being tired as heck... and played for a few minutes... and then decided she really did need to sleep... then about fifteen more boob-steals and she finally slept. Woo! What a process.) The next time only took about a hundred times. Once she let go and fell asleep before I even stole it. The last time today probably only took thirty tries. What improvement! I am pleased. After phase one is complete, I will crack down on sleeping alone during the daytime. Le gasp!

Love and thievery,
Jenna and Amelia