See you next year

I'm worn flat out.

I composed the first paragraph of a terribly profound blog entry as I drifted off to sleep last night for the final time (at about 4am, I believe, after getting up with the baby several times). I can't for the life of me remember it, or even what it might be about.

It's been a hard week. The baby has had a fever every day since Monday, diarrhea for several days after that, and then yesterday, the piece de resistance: Vomit. For the first time in almost three years of parenthood, I had to deal with vomit. That's a pretty good track record, sure, but it doesn't feel so great when I'm scooping half-digested oatmeal and stomach bile off the carpet with a spoon.

The poor kid. I felt so sad for her yesterday! She'd been more or less her regular self all week long, despite her obvious illness, maybe running at 90% instead of 100%. But yesterday she just lay around. Literally. In my arms or, if I needed to put her down, she'd find a comfortable spot, lie down, and stare off into the distance. She wanted nothing to do with the Pedialyte DH brought home for her, but luckily I haven't tackled the project of weaning her yet so she stayed hydrated by comfort nursing all day and all night.

(Tangent: She's 17 months old. I'd planned to BF for a year, but here we still are. Sometimes I think it would make life easier to wean her completely -- DH says he'll write me a scrip for Paxil when I do, to help my anxiety and anger issues -- but I just don't have the mental energy to listen to her cry as she paws at my shirt. I don't think I'm comfortable BFing indefinitely, though I don't mind others who do.... 2 years old might be pushing it for me. 3 years old, absolutely. But if she doesn't self-wean before that, what? Just readjust my comfort level as I've already done, and keep on keeping on? Who knows. In any case, to bring it back to the topic at hand, I'm glad we're still BFing now because it really helped out yesterday when she felt so sick.)

She whined a lot, too, in between the nursing and the vomitting and the lying around in a daze. That wore thin. Am I a bad mother to admit that? I felt terrible for her; I know she was miserable. Her vocabulary is limited to things like "waffle" and "Daddy" and "Ganga Gauze" (Santa Claus), so she can't articulate how much her tummy hurts or if she has a headache or that she's so exhausted she doesn't know what to do with herself. But she's a championship whiner, and it really started to grate on my already thin nerves.

Bad, bad mommy.

She looked and acted much better today, thank goodness. I'd say she's running at about 75% -- not cured, but not listless and lifeless and miserable, either. I hope this trend will continue.

Meanwhile, I'm getting sick. I've got the toddler's cold already (did I mention she had one? Yeah, we're all on our deathbeds) but now I suddenly feel extremely weak on top of that. I hope I don't catch what the baby's got. No fever for me yet, knock on wood. No vomit. I'm probably just paranoid. Or tired.

Worn flat out, I tell you.

Obviously, we have no grand plans for New Year's Eve. The girls are both in bed, hopefully for the whole night (though I doubt it), and DH has parked on the couch to watch I Love the 80s on VH1. We may or may not stay up until midnight to watch the ball drop. (I'm usually up that late anyway -- and several hours after that -- but I just don't think I can tonight.)

Tomorrow will be better. Next year will be better. I resolve to get more rest; I think that will help a lot.


~RCH~

Two more shirts

Just a reminder, the holiday coupons are about to expire! If anyone planned to order, say, a bunch of Awesome Like a Possum shirts from http://leonine.spreadshirt.com for a hypothetical group of sisters, you need to do so on or before Saturday, December 31st to get the discount.

Or maybe that idea is a no-go now that some people won't be their regular size for a while?

In any case, just thought I'd mention it. :-)

While we're on the subject, I also have two new designs to showcase! The first, sadly, is not my own; a fellow shop owner was kind enough to make this design available to the rest of us. Because it uses three colors (and therefore extra fabric to produce) it's a little pricier than other short sleeve styles, but I think it's worth it. Eat More Meat is super cute.



The second new design is mine, made for my "lactivist" mommy friends. I don't know what the eventual feeding plans are of my newly pregnant sisters, but I recommend BFing if you can! (This from someone who initially found the whole idea quite creepy, lol.) It's easy and convenient, it's super duper cheap, it's the best nourishment for your baby, and -- best of all -- it comes in the cutest bottles.



All right, that's all for now. Thank you for shopping with Leonine Designs!


~RCH~

"The reason for the season" didn't sink in for the toddler, I guess

Item #1: As I put the toddler to bed last night, she snuggled into her covers, clutched her new Big Bird doll, and asked me sweetly, "Is Santa going to come again tonight and bring me more toys?"

Item #2: We went out to eat this evening, and as we drove home all full and happy, she broke into song:

You better watch out,
You better not cry!
You better not pouch
I'm telling you why:
Santa Claus is coming
To bring us more presents!

Oy vey, lol. What kind of monster have we created?


~RCH~

Not quite the home run I'd hoped for

DH asked for two movies for Christmas: Miracle, about the 1980 US Olympic hockey team that beat the Russians (which he insists was one of the greatest moments in American history -- sorry Gen. Washington, emancipated slaves, and sufferagettes!), and The Rookie, about a middle-aged high school baseball coach who tries out, and then plays for, the majors. Both have recently been added to the pantheon of sports movies that make him cry.

Neither of those titles was at Walmart, the easiest place to haul the girls, so I had to make a trip to an actual movie store. Oy. I put it off for a while, but finally trudged off to Hastings on the morning of Christmas Eve where I found Miracle right away, but not The Rookie. I had no shopping cart. The baby dangled precariously from one arm and my death grip on the toddler's hand was loosening, leaving her poised at any minute to careen wildly in a random path of destruction. I figured screw it, The Rookie is really freaking boring anyway.

I picked up Fever Pitch instead. Neither of us had seen it before, but I thought it looked cute -- who doesn't like Jimmy Fallon? -- and at least it was in the same sports genre! Baseball is baseball is baseball, right?

Except that I forgot the cardinal rule of gift giving: Apparently it's not nice to get your husband a movie that glorifies the team that beat his hometown ball club (to a pulp, I might add) in a recent World Series.

It took me a few hours to figure out his lack of enthusiasm. But then I did, and offered to take it back. "No, no," he said, a single tear staining his manly cheek (okay, I made that part up). "This is fine. I'm sure it's a good movie." (Heavy sigh from him.) He watched Miracle twice (big eye roll from me) before he screwed up the courage, but we did watch Fever Pitch this afternoon while the girls napped.

The verdict? I loved it -- it's a sweet and funny romantic comedy (with enough sports to make up for the romantic part, as far as boys are concerned). DH laughed out loud several times. And, luckily, the World Series win that eradicated the Curse of the Bambino at the expense of DH's beloved Cardinals was only mentioned / shown very briefly at the end of the show.... I think in the future we could watch the entire movie up until about the last 40 seconds, and it would be a perfectly satisfying entertainment experience for him.

So it wasn't quite the home run gift I'd hoped for, but it didn't turn out too badly despite my thoughtlessness, lol.


~RCH~

"This is why my pants don't fit,"

said the girl who decided to blog at 2:00 AM.

From the December 2005 issue of Psychology Today:

Unfortunately, mounting evidence suggests persistent sleep debt -- being just shy of optimal rest each morning -- can not only weaken immune response and cognitive abilities, but it is also linked to the onset of adult diabetes. Now comes word from scientists that skimping on sleep may make a person fat.

According to a study at Eastern Virginia Medical School, people who sleep just 16 fewer minutes per night than the average person are significantly at risk of being overweight. As inconsequential as those moments sound, it adds up to nearly two hours of lost sleep per week. After controlling for other lifestyle and health factors, researchers calculated that missing two hours of sleep each week is associated with a 10-point increase in body mass index -- or the difference between a healthy weight and obesity.

As you can see from the fact that I'm blogging in the middle of the night (and for no good reason; the babies aren't keeping me up tonight, at least), I get significantly less sleep than the average person. 16 minutes fewer? Puleeze. 16 minutes is for sissies. I'm hardcore, baby.

But I'm also having trouble squeezing into my pants lately. How depressing. I used to think I ought to start exercising, but now I wonder if I shouldn't just try to sleep more. Sleep sounds like the more appealling option -- you'd think I'd jump at the chance! -- but honestly, I think it would be equally difficult to overcome inertia in either case: Exercise is no fun at first; it takes a few weeks of consistent work for those endorphins to kick in enough that I look forward to it. Sleep is lots of fun, but so is a quiet house where I'm the only one stirring and my life and my thoughts are truly my own. If I give up my nocturnal "me time," I won't have any "me time" at all. (That's a slight exaggeration, since the kids usually do nap simultaneously and I'm alone then. But in the middle of the day I have the obligation to be productive around the house -- whether or not I actually am, lol -- so it's only in the wee hours that I feel truly free.)

*Sigh.*

So, my little minions.... The New Year is approaching, and with it all those silly resolutions. Which one should I make? Assuming I only have energy to commit to one (and even that may be stretching it, lol), what should I pick? Exercise or sleep?

I have to do something. I can't afford new pants.


~RCH~

I'll give you the finger ... update

Welp, two weeks later and my finger is almost completely healed! I have a lovely dark purple stripe along the side of my nail, but the pain is almost all gone and I'm slowly but surely regaining sensation in the part that went numb. (Apparently I messed up some nerves very nicely.)

Can you imagine if I'd done any real damage to my finger? If it's true that you're only given as much as you can handle, then the Lord must know how squeamish I am. This is probably the wimpiest finger-in-door story of all time -- hardly worth mentioning, really -- and yet I was thoroughly traumatized by the experience. And it's taken two weeks to get mostly back to normal. (Only mostly, because there is still that small numb spot. Not that it bothers me, but it's weird.) Doesn't that seem like a long time for a finger that didn't get broken, for a nail that didn't even need to be drilled or cauterized?

Obviously, I'm not cut out for serious injuries. (KNOCK ON WOOD.)


~RCH~

Better not pouch!

Following in the tradition of other mis-heard phrases, I give you the toddler's rendition of "Santa Claus Is Coming To Town." Apparently she doesn't know the word "pout" -- she does, however, know about pouches because kangaroos are cool. Substitute one for the other, and voila!

Sing it for me, baby!


~RCH~

Oh give me a home....

So we'll be moving next summer. I've skipped ahead in my daydreaming, past the part where we have to make this house presentable and sell it for a reasonable price, to the part where we find somewhere to live in our new town. Frankly, I don't know if we'll be able to afford to buy a place right when we get there. We have no savings whatsoever, and I understand there aren't as many creative financing opportunities for second-time homebuyers as for first. Sure, we'll qualify for bigger loans based on DH's new income, but we'll still have jack squat for a downpayment. I imagine we'll have to rent for the first couple years.

Still. A girl can dream.

I troll the local real estate web sites about once a week to see if there are any new listings. I don't really know what we'll need, in terms of space. The 3 bedrooms we currently have are sufficient for our needs, though an extra one for an office (or makeshift photo studio!) would be nice. Not necessary, but nice. I definitely want a family room in addition to the living room, so I don't have to entertain visitors in the same space wherein the toy boxes have recently vomitted up all their goods. I like having 2 bathrooms, though DH grew up in a house with just 1 and he turned out all right. (And hey, that would be one less bathroom to clean!) I have no sense of space, though, or any idea how to visualize square footage. We currently live in ~1200 sq ft, I think. Add that family room, maybe an extra bedroom, and where does that put us? 1500? 1800? 3000? (I'm fairly sure we don't need 3k square feet, whether I can picture that or not, lol.) I don't know when what I'm looking at is a reasonable upgrade and when it is an extravagance (online, that is; I'd know it in person, but right now all I have is information on a screen).

I don't want us to buy too much house (especially considering my rotten housekeeping skills, lol). I don't want us to have the biggest or the fanciest or the showiest house on the block. Still, I want quality. With any luck, whether we buy something when we get there or a few years down the road, this will be the house we stay in for the rest of our lives. I want to plant roots, dangit! I long for permanence!

I want brick. Brick is solid; it requires no upkeep; it's pretty (especially red brick). I want a fence, as I've got one child who loves to run away and another who would follow her sister anywhere. I want that family room, for sure, and a kitchen with enough counter and cupboard space.

I prefer older houses to new ones. Well, no, let me qualify that: I love brick houses from the 1950s. That post-WWII era optimism and newfound affluence led people to build homes that were simultaneously modest and generously proportioned (not a lot of wasted space) with quality materials. (I'm no expert, of course, and when we were house shopping the first time around and I mentioned that to my realtor BIL, he laughed. But in my experience that's more often true than not.) After the 1950s homes, my next favorite are the pioneer houses! I don't know whether they're hard to live in -- are they drafty, broken-down money pits filled with asbestos and lead? -- but they have so much character and charm and craftsmanship!

Here's a house I kind of like in our new town, though we definitely don't need "room for a horse," lol.

I like the kitchen cupboards on this one, but it's probably more space than we need. (Though DH keeps lobbying for more kids. I'm holding firm, but maybe I'd change my mind after living nearer to my family. Who knows. Maybe someday we will need more space.)

How fun would this be if I knew anything at all about renovation? LOL! Get Bob Villa over here, stat!

Being such a small town, of course, I don't have endless real estate options. So after trolling the listings for a while, I began to wonder about building a house from scratch. I found a house plans site and saved a few of my favorites; apparently I was on an old-timey kick that day, because they all have some of that pioneer flair:

• The long porch house


• The house with the turret


• The rounded porch house

Huh. I just noticed they've all got siding. What in the world happened to all the good brick houses? Sheesh. Still, these are fun. I wonder if they'd stick out like sore thumbs, though, lol. I don't want a house that seems out of place in its surroundings.

Anyway. It's late and I should go to bed, but for the record, those are my rambly thoughts on what I'd like in a new and hopefully permanent home.


~RCH~

Shine On

For those of you who haven't checked it out in a while, I've made some improvements to Leonine Designs, my shop at http://leonine.spreadshirt.com. I've added some pull-down menus on the left to help you narrow your search by the design name, the color of the shirt, or the type of shirt you're looking for. I've also re-ordered the selection to show a wider variety of designs on the front page.

As always, I'm open to suggestions! Thanks for looking!


~RCH~

Right on schedule

The toddler has learned to count! She's known how to recite the numbers from 1-20 for a long, long time, and she can recognize the written representations of at least 1 - 12. But when asked to count objects, say, a pair of shoes, she'd just point to them over and over and recite numbers until she felt like stopping. (How many shoes? Pointing back and forth from one to the other, "Wan, two, flea, four, five! Five shoes!")

I noticed on Sunday, though, that she's made the transition into real counting -- associating objects with their actual corresponding amounts. She counted the flowers on the baby's shiny black church shoes, pointing to each one only once, stopping at four because there were only four flowers there. She's done it with other things, since. I don't know if a light bulb switched on in her head, or if she's been secretly and gradually getting better at it for a while -- but the fact is, she can count. :-D

Unfortunately, she seems to have stumbled onto another developmental milestone, as well. I've read that children first begin experimenting with lies at around 3 -- their experience with pretend play makes them wonder if they can pretend their way out of trouble. Well, the toddler will be 3 in about a month; she's right on schedule.

She and the baby had a slight altercation yesterday that resulted in a bloody scratch on the baby's face. Although I had a pretty good idea of what transpired, I did what moms do and I asked anyway. "What happened here?" I said, pointing to the baby's scratch.

The toddler avoided my gaze, looking slightly down and to the side, and said, "A shark!"

Yeeeeeaaaaahhh. Sure.

So she's not a very good liar, lol, but I'm guessing she'll get some practice in these next few years....

Hooray for milestones.


~RCH~

I didn't need that finger anyway

The way I screamed and sobbed and moaned and carried on, you'd think I had amputated the finger entirely. DH couldn't understand me at all when I first called; he was in the noisy, crowded hospital cafeteria and I was in near hysterics (well, no, complete hysterics).

"Hello?" he said when he picked up.

"I (*sob, sob*) slammed my finger (*sob*) in the doooooor (*wail*) and it huuuuuuuurts! (*Sob, sob*). Not just a little nick, but my whole finger was just stuck in the door and the door was closed and I couldn't pull it out and I was holding the toddler in my other hand and I couldn't just drop her so I had to twist and reach around to open it with my other hand while still holding her and now my finger is purple and huge and it's bleeding at the nail and it's throbbing and it hurts sooooooo much! (*Scream of pain for emphasis*) I don't know what to doooooooo!!"

"Can you drive up to the hospital with the girls, or do you need me to come home and get you?" he asked.

"Why?" I asked, panicked. "Do I really need to come to the hospital? Do you think it's broken? Will my fingernail fall off?"

"I can't answer any of that until I see it," he said, "but I may need to drill into your nail to relieve the pressure."

"(*Long, protracted, freaked-out wail*)"

"Can you come, or do you need me to come get you?"

We decided I could probably make it. He told me to take 4 Advils, put some ice on it, and then head up to the hospital with the girls.

Yes, I'm a big fat baby, but I've never completely shut my finger (or anything else) in a car door before. And while it's certainly a painful thing to do, the idea of my finger trapped between a two heavy pieces of steel was as upsetting and scary as the actual pain I felt. It took a second, when it happened, for that fact to register: Your finger has just been smashed to bits and you can't pull it back out. Add to that the complication of holding an almost asleep toddler, and it took another few seconds for my brain to register a way to get the door back open and my finger free.

DH and all his little doctor friends gathered around for a gander when we arrived. I got a lot of sympathetic looks as well as a few door and hammer stories from other people. They noted the purply bruise, the swelling, and the lack of any noticeable hematoma under the nail bed. ("Do you think you'll want to cauterize it anyway?" one colleague asked DH. I paled. "Oh, don't worry; it's just a small, really hot needle that'll melt right through your fingernail to relieve the pressure. You won't even feel it." I winced in terror.)

DH sent me to get x-rays -- only my second ever in my life; the first was last winter when I got pneumonia (which, in completely unrelated news, was the first time in my life I'd ever had a fever, and I had one for 5 or 6 days straight! I'm suddenly so interesting, lol!). It turns out I didn't break or fracture any finger bones and that, along with the complete lack of blood building up underneath the fingernail, meant that I got off without so much as a bandage. (The toddler really, really hoped DH would give me one, but frankly I'm glad not to have anything touching my wound.)

I keep loading up on the Advil at appropriate intervals and I'm fine now. The funny thing is that the injured finger is the middle one on my right hand: I keep it up and apart from the rest of my fingers so it won't bump into anything, but that makes it look like I'm flipping people off. But hey, it's been a bad day ... so maybe I am. Tee-hee.


~RCH~

Oh Daddy, proud of your planets! Oh Mommy, proud of your sun!*

Ever in search of new experiences and diversions, I took the girls to the planetarium today and left my post-call DH to sleep the afternoon away in peace. Actually, our plan was to go to the university's free museum -- the toddler loves the dinosaurs, all of them T-Rexes (to her) with big growls -- but the planetarium is connected to it and shortly after we arrived, they announced over the loud speaker that a star show would start in just a few minutes. In addition to dinosaurs, I happen to know that girl loves her planets and sparkly stars. I figured this would be the best outing ever.

Holding on tight to the toddler's hand and awkwardly steering the baby's stroller with its bum wheel, we made our way to the planetarium and waited in line. I tried to prepare them for what they would see: It would get very dark, but there would be a movie on the ceiling that showed a twinkly sky and lots of beautiful outer space things. "Oh boy!" said the toddler. "Outer space! Shake your booty, Mommy!" (Lately she's been inserting that command at random times. Go figure. I did a little dance and moved on.)

We sat toward the back, so as not to bother people, and at the end of a row so we could park the stroller. I pulled the baby out and placed her on my lap, hoping she'd cuddle and fall asleep in the dark since she had stubbornly refused to nap earlier. But as the lights dimmed, the toddler scrambled off her chair and into my lap, as well.

I've only got so much lap.

The baby, already a bit cranky from the sleep deprivation, started to whine and climb Mount Mommy. In doing so, she stepped on the toddler's hand (I think -- it was pitch black at that moment) and the toddler began to cry. I tried to bounce and soothe and distract them both: "Look up there, guys! It's sooooo sparkly!" But nobody cared. And the toddler's cries seemed to be turning from pain into panic at the darkness of the room.

I decided we'd better go, but leaving a pitch black planetarium with two young children and a mildly defective stroller isn't exactly the easiest thing, either. Holding the baby in one arm, the toddler in the other, I felt my way to the stroller, plopped the baby in and fumbled for the straps. The three of us then bumped into the wall and followed it around to the exit. Of course, upon leaving I noticed the baby was missing one of her shoes -- her first pair ever, bought a mere three days ago -- and so I left the girls alone in the hallway (bad mommy) while I went feeling around in the dark under seats for the infant size 3 shoe that had been lost in the scuffle of the lap war.

*Sigh!*

Fortunately, I found the shoe and the girls didn't get abducted while I searched. So I guess something good came out of our trip to the planetarium.

Maybe we'll try again in a few years.


~RCH~

*A prize of five pretend dollars to the first person to name the song/artist referenced in the title of this post. ;-)