Gabe: Mama, when I get older, I’m gonna marry you.
————

After bath time, which Gabe loves, he does a little dance.  It’s the Cold Air, Fun with Pippers Dance.  See, the bath invigorates him, makes him hyper.  The cold air makes him dance around trying to stay warm.  He hops from one foot to the other, pinwheels his arms, and then soon, he takes off.  He uses the opportunity to run naked through the upstairs rooms, laughing all the way.  Then, he’ll stand on my bed, turn his back to me, bend over and show me an angle of himself that later he’ll only show to a proctologist.  I can finally wrangle him into his jammies and he’ll start to calm down, at which point I try to comb his hair. 

Lately, he’s been grabbing the comb from me, announcing that he “wants to get the nuts out” himself.  Nuts instead of knots.

I can’t help but think, “Son, you already did.”
————

Anna’s personality is shining through now more than ever.  (I know, I know, more pictures.  I’m working on it.  I got a new camera [yay! and p.s. lildb, aren't you jealous of my parenthises inside parenthises?] and I’m still trying to learn the features to take the pictures.  Soon, you’ll have more pictures than you know what to deal with.  Promise.)  She smiles and wiggles and churns her fists in excitement and sometimes anger.  She’s a fairly calm baby but sometimes has bouts with crankiness.  Hey, don’t we all? 

The weird thing is that she seems like a wise old woman to me.  I know she’s just a baby, and I’m very likely biased out of my brain and/or projecting my thougts onto her, but I look at her sometimes and I get the feeling from her that she just gets it.  She looks wise, all knowing, and I keep waiting for her to start bending spoons á là The Matrix.  Or maybe she’ll say her first word, which will be onomotopoeia or something.  She’ll be staring at me while I coo and giggle with her, and she seems to be thinking, “You look stupid, Mama.”  And I probably do to anyone with three I.Q. points to rub together.  Maybe it’s wishful thinking to have a prodigy child like Jaelithe’s.  Maybe it’s just bias on my part because I birthed her.  Maybe it’s that she’s releasing silent farts and it feels good, so she’s calm and appears omnicient.  I don’t know.  I guess when she spells something like “concupiscence” in fridge magnets and can use it properly in a sentence, I’ll know for sure.  I’ll also know to limit her exposure to TV and the Internet, because no baby should know how to use that word properly.

It might rub off.

There’s been a general malaise surrounding my demeanor the last few weeks, and I haven’t been able to put a finger on it, squish it dead, and sweep it off my countertops and into the trash.  It’s manifested itself in a short temper (sorry Mom and Dad!), a raised voice, and much eye rolling.  I’m pretty disgusted with myself over it, and I’ve tried in the last few days to just calm the righteous feck down.  It helps that the weather’s finally turning a corner and we’re seeing the storms I love to watch though fervently hope do no damage, feeling the warm breezes I love to close my eyes against and smell, hearing the sounds of spring chirp forth from the muted tones of winter, and the grass is finally blooming back to green life again.  God, but did winter hang on forever or what?!  It’s still breathing around our necks a little bit, with last Saturday only being in the low 50s and extremely windy, making Gabe’s second soccer game in a row completely miserable.  It’s MAY for crying out loud.  Get out of here, Winter!

I still don’t know what the problem is, but I have a general guess.  It’s not just me.  I read about food crises across the globe with the rise of wheat prices in response to short supply and I ache at the stories of children crying in hunger; I see my dollars getting me less and less during the month and we’re already scrimped and pinched to begin with; it’s ridiculous that it costs me $200 a month just to go to and from work, and that’s with good gas mileage in my normal sized car.  Maybe last November when we were looking to replace my twelve year old tank when the transmission bit the dust, I should have taken a cue from my sister and gotten a Mini.  Not that I could’ve fit two car seats in the car.  Where does one put groceries?  Or a purse?  Or luggage, for that matter?  It’s not a family car, cute and economical as it may be.  I considered a hybrid briefly, but Mike was worried about the technology being too new and prone to problems or even being obsoleted by the next new thing in the energy market.  He and I disagree somewhat on the benefit of ethanol.  I’m skeptical of it, not sure if trading a dependence on oil for a dependence on corn is the way to go.  With the effect of introducing a new demand into the global food market for more corn, resulting in the diverting of wheat crops to corn in favor of government subsidies (that go less toward helping small farmers as they were originally intended and more towards big agribusiness which adds to global warming, bad bad bad) and contributing to the world’s shortage of wheat, which is partially responsible, along with years long droughts in Australia,  for the raising of food prices and rising hunger throughout countries dependant on food imports that are now being denied as exporting countries shut down their exports to conserve the food for themselves… big breath in… Needless to say, I’m not all that impressed with the corn as fuel approach.  That argument gets out of hand quickly.  Can you tell I’m a little passionate about it?  I’ve really been pushing the buy local and fresh aspect, and I’m finding that pleasantly, it’s no more expensive these days to go to the weekly farmer’s market in my town than it is to go to the big grocery store and get my produce there.  Not only that, but I get it fresher and without contributing to the high cost of transporting the food and therefore fuel emissions.  The veggies last longer without having to compensate for distribution as well.  $25 of veggies is probably going to last me two weeks as opposed to a few days.  With my new eating plan in place, fruits and veggies are staples for me, a giant part of my diet, and it’s nice to know that I can get better food while helping the local farmer and keeping from adding to the problems food transportation causes.  Not to mention the woman at the farmer’s market who helped me out gave Gabe a free banana and she teaches all her employees to count back change the right way.  As in, they don’t really need the registers, except to add the total up.  Astonishing, and totally impressive.

So yeah, I’ve had some heavy things on my mind lately.  When I’m not reading about the food problems around the world, I’m reading up on the presidential primary and I’m getting thoroughly disgruntled.  What’s with the mudslinging?  I want to hear more about what the candidates will do when they take the Oval Office out for a spin rather than what faux pas they committed.  I totally dug the MOMocrats post wherein Barack Obama’s campaign answered questions from the momosphere on his stance about things that concern families right here in the trenches, such as the credit crunch, health care, beefing up maternity/paternity leave programs and the like.  It was like being given a clean towel after watching a mud wrestling match from the front row.  I don’t care who said what about whom.  What do you plan to do for ME and my fellow Americans living with difficulties every day, without health insurance and facing debt to their hairlines?  Not only that, but this infighting is giving McCain the chance to sneak up and snag more voters over to the dark side. 

It’s depressing.  I didn’t mean to get all political on you, especially since I’m not such a political person.  It’s just that these topics have become a weight on my shoulders.  The uncertainty of the American future leaves me worried.  Worried about the month at the end of our money; worried about the tuition bills in our distant future; worried about the cost of living in 2043 or thereabouts when it’s time for me to consider hanging up the calculator tape and the pumps; worried about the state of the planet we’re leaving for our children; worried about my own carbon footprint and its contribution to global warming.  Frankly, I want to see progress somewhere, beyond just the blooming of colors in my flower bed.  Because it feels stagnant right now, the stench of politics tamping down the sweet smelling promise of the future.  And it puts me in a bad mood.

Luckily, I know I’m not a lost cause.  I have a Tow Mater band-aid on my thumb, which makes me smile.  Mike came through for me in a huge way with my Mother’s Day/birthday/anniversary/Christmas gift this year, something which I hope to take from hobby to passion that could potentially morph into something more, maybe a new sideline to help with the money, if I prove to have the eye some have said I have.  I just need the practice and to read up on the technical details.  And observe the pros.  Raquita, Toyfoto, I’m looking at you.

There is promise, yet.

No really, a house near mine exploded this morning. 

It was around 4:30, and I had been hitting snooze for Mike for about half an hour. 

Aside: aren’t I an awesome wife?  I have the alarm on my side of the bed, and it has settings for two different alarms, so we share the same alarm clock.  Since it’s on my side, it’s my duty to hit snooze enough times for Mike to fully wake up.  His goes off at 4, mine at 5.  So essentially, even though I roll out of bed between 5 and 5:30 every day, I’m awake starting at four.  It’s also a safety net for him because he can sleep through alarms and he at least has me to nudge him awake.

So half an hour of snoozes and we were stirring around.  Suddenly, there’s a noise like thunder and the bed started to shake.  Mike rose up on an elbow, an urgent, “What’s that?” on his lips. 

“It’s just another earthquake.  Go back to sleep.”  Ever the calm one, aren’t I?  Especially considering we’ve only had two earthquakes in the last four years big enough to be felt, and it’s been decades since a big one hit that did any significant damage.  What happens if there’s a serious calamity in the middle of the night for which I might actually have to get out of bed?  I’ll have trouble getting up fast enough to get the kids and pets to safety.

Tornado sirens in the middle of the night?  I probably won’t stir unless the freight train noise is on top of my house, and maybe not even then.

So let this serve as a PSA to my neighbors:

Your house alarm going off?  Don’t rely on me to call the cops and see if you’re okay.  It won’t rouse me any more than that first alarm on my alarm clock in the morning does.  You have a suspicious person hanging around, peeping in your windows?  I won’t notice.  I’ll be sawing logs.  You have a natural gas leak and your house is on the verge of explosion?  Not only will I not smell it, the explosion itself won’t even cause me alarm.  Sorry about that.  But if you’re attempting to blow up your house on purpose for whatever crazed reason comes into your brain, you’re in luck with me as a neighbor.  I’ll just pull up the covers and roll over to resume my beauty sleep. 

From page 23-24 of the Eat to Live text:

Poor nutrition induces [food] cravings (addictive drives), and nutritional excellence helps normalize or remove them.  My experience with thou-
sands of patients following my healthful, high-nutrient eating plan is that
most of these people no longer get the discomfort that they formerly
mistook for hunger.  Even when they delay eating and get very hungry,
they no longer experience stomach cramps, headaches, or fatigue
accompanying their falling blood sugar.  They merely get hungry and
they enjoy this new sensation of hunger in the mouth and throat,
which makes food taste better than ever. 

Oh my word, I’m in some serious junk food withdrawal right now.  I thought before that I ate fairly healthy.  I like veggies and I really like salads.  For the last few weeks, I’ve been taking baby steps to get back into the full pseudo-veganism of this eating plan.  More brown rice, veggies, no bread/pasta/meat/dairy if I could help it.  Apparently, I couldn’t help it.  Last night, I fell off the wagon, with a bologna sandwich on white for dinner and later, a piece of white bread with peanut butter.  Hell, if I’m going to cheat, I’m going to pull a G-Dub move from the Florida presidential election debacle in 2000 and really CHEAT.  Bologna?  That’s even questionable as to whether it’s food.  The peanut butter was okay, although I need to switch to a more natural organic brand that doesn’t have high fructose corn syrup in it, just peanuts and peanut oil.  I’m just trying to eat up what we have before buying more.  Besides the bologna, the bread is a big no-no.  

One of the major premises of the plan I’ve picked is to get back to eating food with ingredients as opposed to contents, getting back to natural food without preservatives and chemicals.  If I know what the ingredient is, likely then it’s okay.  Bread is probably one of the worst things I could go for unless I make it myself.  Everything in it is refined and preserved.  

Same with the Coke I had this morning.  And the donuts. 

Yeah, I fell off the wagon hard, but I’m getting back on.  And I’m owning up to it because I’m not perfect but I’m not giving up either, and if someone’s reading that just ate a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup, they’l know I get it.

I don’t remember this last time, going through some serious junk food cravings.  I think I was so shocked by the gems I read in the book that my motivation stomped on any cravings.  I was so disturbed by the findings and the apparent ignoring of those findings by the FDA that I was pumped up and able to get through the withdrawal period relatively unscathed.  This time around, though I’m rereading the book and getting my momentum going again, I’m not as shocked as I was then.  I’m not as disgusted by what I found out.  I have seen SuperSize Me and its disturbing but something I’ve incorporated into my knowledge base and it’s motivational factor is reduced somewhat.  My ability to say no is weakened.  Thus, the bologna sandwich.  At least I haven’t slipped far enough to have had any fast food.

But never mind those slip ups.  I’m not going to stop doing this plan.  I’m going to keep going, keep from letting a few mishaps become a reason to quit altogether like I have so many times in the past. 

You won’t get me, cravings.  I will win.

My wedding ring doesn’t fit.  Well, I can cram it on my finger with the judicious use of lotion, but then the skin under the band doesn’t breathe and looks like the white underbelly of a fish, and I end up with split skin and cracked sores and it’s not worth it.  I’ll shoulder the dirty looks of the grocery store busybodies who glare at me while I wrangle my two monkeys in the cart (well, one’s a monkey and one’s sort of slug-like right now, until she learns her body’s capabilities) over painful skin irritation.  They (the busybodies) stare pointedly at my naked left ring finger and then at my children.  Really, in this day an age where single parents abound is it that much of a stigma to be unwed with children?  I know I’m not unwed, but without the ring, that’s hard to gauge.  But what about those who are?  I personally think those people who do it all on their own are heroes.  Day in and day out, taking on the monumental task of raising children by themselves, alongside the responsibilities of adulthood and housekeeping.  They are heroes.  I am on my own a lot with the two kids lately while Mike tries to earn some extra cash and help his sister out all in one fell swoop by rehabbing a house, and I can barely breathe sometimes.  And that’s with Mike coming home and keeping up with the yard work and doing a big chunk of the cleaning.  Holla to single parents out there.  You are phenoms.

But that’s not exactly my point.  My point is that my wedding ring doesn’t fit because my finger has become too fat for it.  My whole body is too fat for it.  I’m fat.  (And no dissenting opinions on that, peeps, for I will not listen.  You’re just being nice anyway, and the mirror, while not nice, is honest.  I value honesty every day of the week and twice on Sunday, even if it’s considered unkind.)  I am about 85 pounds overweight, so there’s no way around it: I’m fat.  And I’ll own it.  I let myself get this way and it happened over a lot of years, slowly, a pound or five at a time.

I’ll own it so much that I’ll tell you my weight, as I did once before.

214.

Weighed myself this morning.  Am thoroughly embarrassed.  It’s time.  I promised myself when the second pink line showed up last May that I would merely suspend my Eat to Live lifestyle changes, and I’m also embarrassed to admit to a certain amount of sinful eating while I would plop my fat ass down in front of the tube and watch The Biggest Loser, I was also inspired by that show.  How’s that for ironic?  But I am ready.  I started last spring on a plan that I found in a book and it was working.  I found the plan principles to be solid and it doesn’t seem like a fad or something I can’t sustain, though it will be something to which I’ll have to get accustomed.  I was down 15 pounds before finding out I was pregnant and decided that to try to change my eating habits that drastically would be a little dangerous for the baby in terms of the learning curve and my protein intake as a new vegan, protein necessary for a healthy pregnancy and newborn.  But she’s here now, and I’m healed now, and the weather’s getting nice now and I don’t want to be stuck wearing my maternity shorts again this summer.  Not only that, but I OWE it to my kids to be the best mom I can be, and that includes the mom that can run behind her four-year-old while he learns to ride his bike without training wheels, or crawl tirelessly on the floor with the baby as she learns what her body can do, or provide both of them an example for what is proper eating, the kind of eating that will not rob them of years off their lives in the long run.

I debated about writing about it here again.  Not because I’m shamed by that number (even though I am) or afraid to overshare with the Internets (even though I am), but because who wants to read about weight loss strategy on a parenting blog?  I’ve seen in others’ comments sections where people mention not being that interested in the topic because it strays too far from the whole genre of the blog.

But in the end, I have decided my blog, my content, my choice, and I am not only a parenting blog.  Okay, well, maybe right now I am, but I reserve the right to branch out at any point in the future.  So I am reviving the Step on the Scale, Please category, not only for a place to write about it, but to also keep myself accountable, as well as provide a narrative as I take these first steps to what I hope will be a successful weight-loss/healthy lifestyle journey.  Maybe it’ll be something I can look back on and say, hey, look what I achieved.  (If it’s something you’re interested in, and you weren’t around last year for the previous posts, I would recommend starting with the few posts, about ten or so, that are in the Step on the Scale Category.  That will explain the changes I’m making, though I might end up explaining it all over again anyway.)  I will be totally okay with it if you skip anything that I put in that category if the weight loss posts aren’t your thing, but I also realized something else that played into my decision to write about this stuff again:

I have just had a baby.  I don’t know a mother alive who has not, at some point in the early post-partum period, felt bad about their post baby body, the crepe paper skin on their stomach, the fold over skin of the lower abdomen, vag birth or c-section be damned.  Therefore, I think that it’s perfectly within the parenting genre to have a bit of weight talk now and then.  I know I’m not writing a diet blog, and I’ll keep that in mind if it gets to where I’m too talky about my endeavors.  But parents, and especially mothers who have had to deal with the ramifications of carrying a baby to term, DO have weight issues.  And time issues as well as logistical issues: who’s going to watch the baby while I’m at the gym?  I figured there are a few people who will be interested in this topic, so while I’m working on my own lifestyle change, I can chronicle it here in case anyone else wants to follow along.  If you don’t, if it’s not your area of interest, please, by all means, skip those posts.

Now, I’m not blaming the baby for my weight problems, just so we’re clear.  I only gained 17 pounds with Anna (19 with Gabe) and that’s my body’s disposition when pregnant.  I’m not bragging, and I’m not judging those who gain more.  Everyone’s different, and everyone’s needs are different.  There’s no judgment on my end.  But that also means that I don’t have a convenient excuse to explain away the extra 85 pounds.  I was 213 both times I got pregnant.  If I recall correctly, I was in a size 8 jeans when I met Mike back in 1995, probably about 135 or so pounds.  So between 1995 and 2003 when I got pregnant with Gabe, I gained 85 pounds.  I think when I had my reduction in 2001, I weighed 190 or thereabouts.  Which means that while I was in college between 1995 and 2000, I gained the 85 pounds.  Sad too that none of those pounds are beer and having a good time with friends and making memories (because I didn’t do much of that, boringly enough), but simply the product of a lot of fast food and a suddenly sedentary lifestyle spent studying and also recovering from a 1998 car accident that left my right foot broken and sporting permanent nerve damage.

There’s my convenient excuse.  I can’t couldn’t exercise because my foot’s messed up.  Well, that just means now, I’ll have to find a way to do exercises that don’t aggravate the foot injury.  Swimming, maybe.  Or yoga and other things with no high impact.  I will also say that most of my changes, at least in the beginning, will be dietary.  This isn’t out of laziness but out of sheer volume of information.  I’ll be switching to a mostly vegan diet.  I say mostly because the general premise of the eating plan I’m choosing is to keep the following food items at no more than ten percent of my entire caloric intake ~ meat, dairy, non-essential fats like oils, and any kind of enriched/bleached/blanched flour.  I will be able to eat bread, if it’s made with unenriched, unbleached, unblanched flour.  Which means either I will have to make it myself or buy it from St. Louis Bread Co (Panera to the rest of the country), who doesn’t use altered flour in any of their breads.  The thing I like about this plan is that it will allow me to have those things, now and then.  10 % of the time.  If I feel like having a steak on rare occasions, I can.  But the sheer amount of time it’ll take getting used to this diet that I remember from last time will leave me with no time left over, and I’ll say right now, I will NOT compromise my time with my kids to do this.  I get about 4 waking hours a day with them during the work week, and while my health is important to my future with them, so is my spending quality time with them now, as they are growing up.  Hopefully, I can figure out ways to incorporate exercise into our activities, like taking a brisk walk on that pretty bike trail I’ve been meaning to get to or running around with them at the playground or taking them swimming a few times during the summer.  Those kinds of things are great exercise as well as fun.  And as the eating and learning curve of how to cook vegan improves, then hopefully there will be some time for me to increase my exercise and really get moving in the direction of shedding this excess weight, my 85 pound tumor.

Because I’m sick of looking in the mirror and hating the way my butt looks in every pair of pants I own.  I hate putting on clothes and have them constrict me in the belly area.  I hate being subconscious of how my arms and chins look in pictures.  I hate how out of shape I’ve let myself get.  So instead of whining about how much I hate the way I look and feel, I’m going to get to fixing it.  Slowly.  It took 6 years to gain the weight, so I doubt it will fall off overnight, and I wouldn’t want it to.  That to me is just a harbinger of failure, and inevitable return to fat.  I’m more interested in a lifestyle change that I can sustain for the rest of my life.  No more gimmicks.  No more fads.  No more starving either.  It’s going to be nutrient dense food for me from now on.  No more empty calories.  Good bye Cheezits.  Goodbye Coke (ooh, that hurts).  Goodbye chocolate and chips and garlic bread and cheese.  Pass the carrots.  Yes, the whole bag.

So if you want to, join me.  Read what I have to say.  Tell me your stories, what inspires you, what tricks you’ve tried, and by all means, share recipes.  Even if they don’t fit into my new vegan repertoire of foods.  Maybe someone else reading would enjoy them.  And I would love to have a few buddies along for the ride, if you’re interested.  My goal?  Healthy living and long-lived weight reduction.  Oh, and sizing my ring DOWN to fit my finger again.

Surprise ~ Gabe’s: 

I knew my parents were coming into town for the weekend, but I didn’t tell Gabe.  Just a few days before they arrived, when their trip was still tentative, Gabe said to me completely out of the blue, “Mama, I want my grandpa and grandma to come stay the night with us.”  I clarified which grandparents he meant, and then promptly made a phone call.  “Well,” my mom said. “How can we NOT come after that request?”  But I didn’t tell Gabe because there was still a slight chance things wouldn’t work out.  I didn’t want to crush him with disappointment if plans fell through, which happily, they did not. 

Trying to act normal (which was hard given how excited for Gabe I was, knowing he would get a weekend full of attention unlike any I could give him) I picked up the kids from daycare on Arrival Day and headed home.  Gabe ran inside to get his kite and come back out and I knew in his excitement to play he’d completely bypass the room where my parents were patiently waiting to see him, so I told him to check the living room where I thought there were kite pieces in there that we needed. 

He ran into the living room, stopped short and said, “Oh.”  Then he turned to me in the kitchen and said, “My Grampa and Gramma are in the living room.”  He sounded surprised, sure, but was quite subdued in his welcoming of them.  He went back to them and said, “Hi,” and then grabbed his grandfather’s hand and said, “Let’s go fly my kite.”  It was a little anti-climactic.  I was expecting him to yell and then run to them to be swallowed up in overeager grandparent arms.  He simply got them to play with him pretty much from the moment he realized they were there. 

This stage lasts for the first hour or so. 

Elation ~ Gabe’s: 

Within minutes, my dad was breathing hard and Gabe was wound up tighter than an overweight woman in an 80s work out leotard and thong ready for yoga.  His giggle was infectious, echoing up and down the street while I tried in vain to get the kite with a design flaw (not enough tail or weight on the tail) that Gabe won’t let me rectify up in the air.  Anna was squirming contentedly in my mom’s arms and sticking her tongue out to taste the wind.  Gabe was nearing hiccups he was laughing and screeching so much.  His nickname for the rest of the weekend was Ping Pong. 

This stage lasts for most of the visit. 

Irritation and profound joy ~ Mine:  

Within hours of their arrival, my parents’ unintended effect on Gabe was his complete transformation into wild child, unthinking about his actions and off the wall excited to the point where he was bounding from couch to floor to ceiling and back again.  I wished for a paddle to whack him out of bounds, if only for a split second of quiet before the next serve of four year old crazy careened across the room.  It’s a glorious thing to behold, and I love that he gets so thrilled to see them, but at the same time, I get irritated because Gabe plows his little hands into my dad’s doughy stomach and I’m sure it hurts a little bit; he jumps on the furniture which he knows is a big no-no in our house; he runs around the room like a chimpanzee on speed having a banana hallucination.  He requires so much attention when he’s that excited to simply make sure he doesn’t hurt himself or Anna, let alone destroy the house.  I can’t help but roll my eyes and sometimes snap for him to calm the bloody hell down. 

But I bite my tongue as much as I can.  The visits are only every couple of months, and they are good for both him and my parents.  Hell, they’re good for me because I can actually check my email without hearing, “Mom!  I need you to come clean my butt!”  For a moment anyway, I am free from the butt wiping.  Even my mom got in on the act, changing all of Anna’s poopy diapers this weekend.  That’s love, right there.  Anna’s diapers are glow-in-the-dark toxic and the fumes can burn through nasal passages.  I’m not kidding.  I invite you over to change one of them any time if you think I’m kidding. 

It also gives me tremendous joy to see my parents playing with my kids.  Without getting too Hallmark on you, it’s one of the sweetest things in the world to see.  Gabe loves them so much and they love him and Anna to the point of near heartbreak, and to see how happy they all are makes me feel All is right with the world.   It’s almost as if I have passed on a torch.  I have stepped out of the limelight and made way for the kids.  It makes me happy to have done so.  It’s good to be the spotlight in someone’s world, and it’s their turn. 

This stage also lasts for most of the visit. 

Trepidation ~ Gabe’s 

At some point over the weekend, he starts to ask when his grandparents have to go home.  This time, it started Sunday morning as we sat around the table for breakfast.  Gabe, with a mouth muffled by biscuit (no not the cat), asked, “Are you staying until tomorrow?”  This was a lucky guess, since he doesn’t usually have a clue as to the days of the week, when tomorrow is, or how long an hour lasts.  We told him yes, they were staying until tomorrow (Monday) and not to worry about it.  He had all day to play with Grandpa and Grandma had all day to snuggle with Anna.  For awhile, he relaxed.  But the thought crept back in and by the afternoon, he asked a few more times for reassurance that they weren’t leaving just yet.  He fought bath time, and later, bedtime.  He knew that when he got up, it would be time for goodbye, and he hates goodbye.  I hate it, too.   

But finally, his tired body won out over his willpower.  Also, Grandpa went to sleep and was no longer around for him to play with.  That put him out of commission faster than his overtired little legs. 

Sadness, anger, denial ~ Gabe’s and Mine 

The morning of their departure sucks.  There’s no two ways about it.  I try to let Gabe sleep as long as I can, but it’s a balance.  The sooner I get him up, the more last minute play time he gets with his grandparents.  If I wake him too soon, he has more time to get upset that they’re going.  A couple times, I’ve let him sleep too long and he gets mad that he only gets to hug and kiss them goodbye before we have to leave for the babysitters’.  This morning actually went pretty well.  There were no tears, mainly because I assured Gabe that we are going to Kansas to see them in a few weeks and he’ll get all the time in the world to play again.  If he starts crying, then my mom starts crying, and then I start crying and it’s a free for all of tears and sobs and throat lumps.  My dad is the only one who manages not to leak like a generic diaper and even he has a few suspect throat clearings.  We headed off the waterworks today and everyone got their three hugs a piece.

Goodbye is hard, but it makes the next hello that much sweeter.

First of all, I wanted to say thank you so much to everyone who commented on my last post.  Your thoughts and prayers and the, “Oh that happened to me too and it was scary” comments really lifted me up in some seriously stressful moments.  I love you guys.  Srsly.

Given the seriousness of what happened the other day, I’m finding myself looking at Anna through new eyes, and I’m awed and party disturbed.  I’m awed at this tiny human Mike and I created who smiles at me and kicks her feet like a really bad white break dancer from the 80s when I come into the room.  I pick her up from daycare and she is enamored with my face.  She’s also enamored with my hair, which is a dark contrast from my skin, but also intensely pullable.  I feel her wind her fist in the short hairs at the back of my neck and I know in a few minutes, she’ll yank and I’ll cry.  What?  It hurts.

I’m partly disturbed by the new eyes through which I’m looking at her because she’s only three months old (four months next Saturday) and apparently I’ve already become desensitized by her presence.  I guess it can be looked at a couple different ways, too, because one could say that instead of desensitization to her, we’ve become familiar with her and as such cannot imagine life without her, so when that was threatened the other day, we were newly awakened to a life we couldn’t nor want to imagine, even though just a few short months ago, life without her was our norm.  I’m choosing the second way of looking at it because at some point, the newness does wear off and that’s not necessarily a bad thing.  We are comfortable with her and her changing needs.  We know her expressions.  We can read her grunts and cries now.  She’s comfortable with us, shushing when we pick her up during a crying spell and falling asleep more quickly when we cradle her.  Familiarity with one another is one of the most phenomenal things of parenthood that I wasn’t expecting when we had Gabe.  I can visualize every hair on his body.  He knows my different tones and when to shape up his mess making or laugh because the mess is funny.  I wouldn’t trade that back for the newness and awe at having him (or Anna) as a newborn.

So the gratitude I feel that Monday didn’t turn out much worse (and my mind kept trying to go there, to the devastation that we’d have to deal with had the worst happened, but I worked hard to keep it in the safe zone and I don’t want it to go there now either) is so profound that it’s made me appreciate so many things in the last few days that I likely wouldn’t have noticed otherwise.  Tuesday I was outside with Gabe blowing bubbles while Mike helped his parents mow the grass on their steep hill.  While I usually make a point to notice Gabe’s laugh and cherish the tinkle it makes, I let myself see the laugh light up his face.  It was then that I’d wished I had brought the camera.  If I’m going to make a point to start taking better pictures like I promised myself, I’m going to have to start bring the camera everywhere, even to the grandparents house when we go over to cut the grass.  The light was right about sunset; the bubbles were twinkling; Gabe was smiling huge and showing the bubbles to Anna; Anna was happy and smiling in her pumpkin seat.  It would’ve made a helluva shot. 

Anyway, I’m meandering, and while I don’t have much of a point to this post other than a profound thanks and to remind myself to stop and appreciate more, I wanted to express what I’ve been feeling in the days following our bad scare.  Anna’s doing fine; the antibiotics the doctor gave us seem to be clearing up the mucous she was choking on; the x-rays came back clear as a bell; the appointments are all set up and the faxes are all requested/sent.  All that’s left is the wait to see the specialist, and the list of questions to ask once we do get there, not the least of which will be something about asthma, because several people have emailed me their similar stories and there were a few suggesting asthma as a possibility because their son’s/daughter’s asthma started out this way.  But the wait may be the hard part since we’re still scrutinizing her every gurgle and coo. 

I wrote a new post at St. Louis Bloggers Guild, if you’re interested.

“Accounting, this is Andrea.”
“Andrea, this is [babysitter].  Um, there’s something going on with Anna.”

Heart, meet Throat.

“She’s spitting up large amounts of phlegm and it’s really thick like string cheese, to the point where we’re having to stick our fingers in her throat and pull it out.  She’s choking on it a bit, and she’s also having trouble breathing.  She’s turning a little blue so she’s not getting enough oxygen and she needs to be picked up and taken to the hospital.  If you want, we can call an ambulance.”

Heart, meet Stop.  Oh. My. GOD.  My baby isn’t breathing very well.

After determining that yes, she was breathing, just labored, I said hold off on the ambulance, and I’d see where Mike was.  Turns out, he was done with work and had just gotten home, a mere five minutes away from the babysitter’s house, and he could get there quicker than an ambulance could.  As he was rushing to the babysitter’s house, I was on the phone with the doctor’s office trying to find out what to do, which sounds dumb, but would later turn out to be a smart decision on my part.  Ah, dumb luck, how I love thee.

“Take her to the ER,” the receptionist said.

I called Mike back, who assured me that while Anna was a little pale and glassy eyed, she was certainly breathing okay and no longer choking on glue-like spit up.  When he got to the ER, he realized that the wait to see a doctor would be longer there, since Anna was no longer blue and not as emergent a case as the babysitter described.  He called the doctor’s office back and they remembered the situation, said if she can hold off for another hour, they could get us in.  As soon as I heard that, my heels made echoing noises down the halls as I ran through the building and out to my car, turning a 45 minute drive home into a 30 minute one.  When I got there, she looked pale and glassy eyed, just like Mike described.

Not that I’m claiming clairovoyance or anything like that, but I had a feeling that morning when I dropped her off.  It wasn’t something I could put a finger on or describe, but when I nestled Anna into Nana’s arms, I felt unsettled.  She was fussy, not quite herself, and she looked at me with listless eyes.  She didn’t look right, but there was no fever, no diarhea, no shakes or vomiting or anything I could point to and say she wasn’t feeling well.  With uncertainty in my voice, I left and told them to call if they needed anything.  Call it Mother’s Intuition or whatever you want.  I didn’t want to leave her there, but couldn’t come up with a good reason not to.

“She’ll be fine, Mom.”  I know she is in capable hands, or I wouldn’t have left her there.  I’ve no doubt Nana saved her life yesterday by pulling out the yuck with her fingers.

Diagnosis: unknown.  The doctor took a good thorough look at her and said she sounded okay in her lungs.  Dr. S couldn’t see anything in her throat.  There was a bit of mucous in her nasal passages, for which we were given an antibiotic.  She referred us to a pediatric gastrointerologist, a fancy name for baby belly doctor, and sent us to the hospital for chest x-rays to see if Anna’d aspirated any of the vomit.  She didn’t.  They just called and said her lungs are clear; it was a perfectly normal chest x-ray.  Thank God. 

But we still don’t know what happened and why.

I think my heart has finally restarted.  We set up Anna’s Pack N Play next to our bed last night, and she slept elevated by a pillow, one designed for babies to keep them from rolling and suffocating.  I woke up every hour to check her, sometimes every half an hour.  She had a bottle around 2 am, finished most of it, and promptly went back to sleep.  The rattle we’ve noticed in the back of her throat, the one the doctor said was just formula from her recent diagnosis of reflux, wasn’t as prevalent.  Maybe the antibiotic is already kicking in.  I don’t know. 

Right now, I feel so scared, so helpless, and so limited in what I can do for her.  I watch her, sleeping, laying down, eating, and I listen to the rattle in her airways.  It’s not always just formula.  I’m afraid to lay her down flat, even if it’s on her side.  I’m afraid to let her out of the sight of an adult for even a second.  There’s a monster in the room now, one that, as they once said about cats, may steal the breath of my baby.  But I’m watching.  And I’m waiting.  There won’t be a next time.  Not if I can help it.

This morning, I was rudely awakened.  

Calypso, the puppy that’s not so much puppy sized anymore, reared up on our bed with her front paws and dug them into my left side, scratching me.  She then nosed her snout into my armpit and started to moan.  Dog moans that sounded like Chewbacca, like our old dog Maximus.  For a second, I thought Max had come back to pay a visit.  I peeked with one eye at the alarm clock and it said 4:23 am.  Only a couple minutes after the last snooze slap for Mike’s alarm. 

“Calypso, lay down.  Daddy will take you out in another 20 minutes.  Go back to sleep.”   I patted her head, and she nosed further into my armpit, an annoying habit I hope she grows out of. 

Then I noticed our other dog, Chewie, was softly moaning to herself, occasionally chuffing and she was actually pacing.  Chewie doesn’t pace.  She’s not a nervous dog at all.  She only acts that way when she’s scared.  I perked a little bit, telling her to calm down.  I figured the thunderstorms we’ve been forecasted to have today were making an early appearance.  

They lay back down on their pillows and I fell back to sleep.  Mike sat up startled a little bit later, the bed shaking.  “What’s that?” he asked urgently. 

I threw an arm around him and tried to pull him back down for a snuggle.  Then I felt the bed shaking.  I thought Calypso had rested her 50 pound bulk against the bedpost and the shaking was from her scratching her neck or something.  “It’s just an earthquake,” I joked.  “Go back to sleep until the next snooze.” 

Turns out, I was right which I realized when the shaking didn’t stop and I didn’t hear Calypso’s collar jingling like it would be if she were scratching. 

Sometimes people say they don’t want to move to California for all the mudslides and earthquakes.  Well, take a gander at this.  And we have tornadoes to boot. 

As I was writing this, there was an aftershock.  Mild, so much so that it didn’t register to me as an aftershock.  It felt like a low flying plane going overhead, which is a common thing near my office, so I didn’t think anything of it, until my cubicle neighbor looked over at me and asked if I felt it. 

Should I be moving to Montana?

For someone whose life is as crazy busy as mine, I have very little to report.  What time I haven’t been devoting lately to getting ready for what I’ve termed the Yard Sale of the Century (at least until around this time next year when we do it again), I’ve been working on the St. Louis Bloggers Guild I mentioned the other day.  When I’m not working on that, I’m working on stuff I can’t talk about yet.  I know, I know.  I hate it when bloggers allude to things they can’t talk about, too.  You have my permission to smite me.  If you can catch me that is.  Which is pretty much a foregone conclusion because I’m fat and slow.  

When I’m not doing yard sale or Guild or unmentionable stuff (get your mind out of the gutter ~ that stuff is totally mentionable), I’m trying to learn more about photography.  It’s my new hobby lately.  Because I don’t have enough going on with the crazy summer schedule, my side projects, my newborn and my four year old.  Except that I have no idea where to start in the photography quest.  I bought a book that I thought would be a good guide, but it assumes you have the “right” equipment, and I don’t even know what the right equipment is.  Let alone have the money to rush right out and buy the right equipment to get started.  I have looked at Ken Rockwell’s site, which I think is a great resource but I haven’t had much of a chance lately to really dig in and learn from it.  Yet.  

Going through our stuff for the yard sale has made me a little nostalgic, though.  Among all the clothes we’re trying to sell, I saw my prom dress hanging up among my sister-in-law’s myriad of bridesmaid dresses.  (That girl lived the real life version of that movie 27 Dresses, although it didn’t take 27 weddings for her to find her man.  She was the first among our group of friends to get married.  And I also realized, looking at her dresses, that I’ve never been a bridesmaid.  That kind of makes me sad, even though the two or three girls that I am pretty sure would have asked me had extenuating circumstances that I totally understand.  I’m not bitter about it.  Just a little curious about if I really missed out on a fun experience.  The wedding parties of all the weddings I’ve been to seem to have a hella good time.  Wow, this is a long tangent.)  I got a little mournful seeing the prom dress hanging anywhere but in my closet, and the $15 price tag smarted a little bit.  Not that it would fit me anymore, snort schickle wheeze, but it has a lot of sentimental value.  Not really for the memories.  I don’t care so much to remember the night itself.  It was a lot of hype that didn’t live up to its potential.  I was asleep by midnight that night, even though I’d negotiated a later curfew.  My date/steady college-age boyfriend hadn’t wanted to demean himself by showing up at a mere high school party, so like a pair of old fuddy duddies, we went to the grocery store for some midnight munchies and after snacking a bit, we called it a night.  How pathetic were we?  So then, why was I sad to see that dress hanging limply on the hanger for sale? 

Well, I made that dress.  I searched out the pattern.  I scouted out the materials and bought them myself after assessing the hang of the black velvet and the density of the lace pattern for the sleeves.  I cut and sewed and measured and made my prom dress to fit me in the most flattering way I could, because none of the off-the-rack dresses would have done me justice.  My chest size would have prohibited me from finding something off the rack that wouldn’t have required alterations, so I pulled a Cartman and said, “Screw you guys, I’m making my own.”  It turned out pretty, if I do say so myself.  It didn’t look like a giant garbage bag anyway, though I don’t know what happened to the pictures to be able to show you.  I managed to make it in a way that flattered the waistline from which my overbearing boobs usually detracted.  I guess you could say I found a way to defy gravity. 

All I can say now is thank God for plastic surgeons and eleven pound boobage removal.  Because OY!  Those babies were heavy, not to mention they entered the room five minutes before I did.  Moving on. 

Thoughts of the prom and all its trappings led me down another path, one on which my sister-in-law commiserated with me.  How fah-reaking SKINNY I was back then!  Yeah, I had a big chest and therefore wore tent sized shirts to hide it all, which made me look like a whale, but in reality, I fit into size 8 jeans back then.  I had good tone to my legs from years of being the catcher on my softball team.  I even had a tan from working my pool waitressing job in the summers, albeit a farmer’s tan from the short sleeve shirts and shorts.  Doesn’t everyone get a little wistful for their “back then” body?  Too bad I didn’t know at the time to appreciate it.  I told Rene (SIL) that I wish someone would have shown me a picture of what I look like now with the directive to appreciate what I had then and do something to maintain it instead of snacking on Totino’s Party Pizzas and Quarter Pounders with Cheese and no onions. 

I promised myself last year ~ after I found out I was pregnant with Anna (speaking of that, the anniversary of her conception was just this week.  Woot for baby making!) and decided to nix the vegetarian diet during the pregnancy because I was still learning how to make sure I ate enough protein and I didn’t want to deprive myself and the embryo of any nutrients because I had a learning curve ~ as soon as I had the baby I would go back on the vegetarian diet I was doing and get back into the swing of it all.  I was succeeding, down 15 pounds from the embarrassing number I disclosed to the entire world should they so choose to find my blog and see it.  I won’t rehash a lot of the diet information I learned back then again for those of you who’ve already read about it.  If you didn’t read about it all last time and you’re interested, all the diet posts I wrote about during last year’s successful yet shortened attempt can be found in the Step On the Scale, Please category on my sidebar.  But I’ve been slow to start it up again and I’m aggravated by that.  Learning a new eating style takes a heckuva lotta time, which I seem to be on the lacking side of right now.  I know I need to make time but when you make time for everything else that has to get done and those things literally take up your entire day, and you have no down time to sacrifice, how do you make that time you need for healthy food preparation appear?  I’m hoping that once the house Mike is helping his sister and brother-in-law rehab is finished and he’s back to being home nearly every night of the week, he’ll be able to help me take some of the load off so I can find the half an hour I need to pack up healthy breakfasts and lunches, and then I can take Sunday afternoons to pre-cook my food for the week.  That’s the plan anyway. 

So I found myself longingly eyeing some of the clothes I used to wear, the size 12s that I would love to get back into, and even the 16s that I used to wear to work, and that promise to myself to return to focusing on making my lifestyle a healthier one renewed again in my heart.  I will be healthier one day than I am right now.  After being inspired by the Biggest Loser finale the other day, I can’t say that I don’t know that I’m slowly killing myself with every trip to the soda machine, with every cookie or French fry I shove in my gullet.  Maybe then, maybe next year’s Yard Sale of the Century, I won’t be eyeing my old clothes with longing.  I’ll be eyeing them with pride thinking I no longer wear that tent.  Hallelujah!