It's so wee!

My gigantic extravagance arrived yesterday afternoon - a 4 gig Ipod Nano. It is seriously the coolest thing I have ever owned and the only reason I haven't made at least two cozies for it is because Michael and Alex have been on almost opposite schedules today. I'm a bit touched out since they both have been a bit high-needs today, but I'm so looking forward to getting some quality time with some sock yarn and the Nano after Alex goes back to sleep for the first part of the evening.

Of course I still have thank you notes to write, birth announcements to design and assemble, and a let us not forget that I should be sleeping when the baby sleeps especially when I have John home to take care of Michael. That said, it's been months since I've been able to listen to my music cranked up to the point that it almost hurts my ears but blocks out the rest of the world so nicely. All those things will still be there tomorrow and some music therapy will make them so much easier to do.

*sigh* Off to make dinner...

Job's got nothing on me

The biblical Job that is.

Michael sprayed himself in the face with carpet cleaner. Noow that the worst of the hysterics are over, we are heading out to the ER.

Seriously - was I Hitler in a previous life or something?

Note to Self

When you are sick and sweat so much that you soak your clothing it would behoove you to remember to drink a ton of fluid so you don't get dehydrated and your supply goes down. Cranky, hungry babe and sick mom are not a pretty combination.

House of Plague Stand Alone Complex

Yes, I am a tremendous geek and due to the fact that Alex has a pretty consistent nursing schedule, I've been catching up with my anime.

Michael has strep. This means I most likely have strep as any requests to not drink out of mommy's cup are pretty much ignored. Aside from my questionable strep status, I also have the nasty virus that's going around. Full-on malaise which is being beat into submission with Emergen-C and ibuprofen, and alternately shivering and sweating buckets. Man, does it ever suck.

On a completely different note, it's amazing how the sound of your infant screaming pretty much erases any trepidation you might have about nursing in public. When we got to the peds office, I filled out the sign-in sheet, wrote a check and practically threw them at the receptionist so I could get to a chair and latch Alex on. We nursed in the waiting room, in the exam room, and at a window table at Starbucks. I will say that at Starbucks I did have the presence of mind to drape my stole over my shoulder so I could cover my midriff - did nothing to cover my gigantic breast as I fervently stuffed my nipple in my incredibly pissed off child's mouth, but I spared everyone the sight of my pale belly flab - must have my priorities straight.

Home again, home again, jiggity jog...

Not that much has changed frankly.

We have heat but can only keep the water on for short periods of time since the water pipe for humidifier is completely shot. The fireman's estimation of the damage was not quite as dire. The problem now is that my landlord is searching for someone to fix things which means a friend who will do it for nearly free or himself which is why things we are still dealing with this shit (yes, this is a swear-worthy situation). We are all home since staying at my mom's would be a logistical nightmare - Michael's already not too stable right now with being sick and his new sibling, explaining to him why we are sleeping at Nana's house tonight would be way more than I could handle.

It's been a really long day and frankly I'm still trying to recover from being woken by the smoke alarm at 6 in the morning. This was not helped by the fact that it looked like Alex was face-down in his crib when I went to check on him. Speaking of Alex, he has just woken up and is expressing his extreme displeasure at not having a nipple in his mouth so I must dash.

To any of my friends reading - I'll give calls in the morning. Just want to hug my boys tonight and this is all the re-hashing I can handle right now.

When it rains, it pours...

Too fried to even think right now, so here's a cut 'n paste from my message board...

Woke to the smoke alarm going off in my house this morning. Didn't smell smoke but the two back rooms were hotter than hell and full of condensation. After a visit from the fire department to make sure all really was well, we found out that our furnace is shot - the humidifier has been leaking for lord knows how long and finally gave up this morning - they told us the bottom of the unit is completed rusted out. So now we have no heat, and no water (they couldn't find the shut-off for the humidifier so ended up turning off the water for the whole house). Thankfully, my sister picked up me and the kids and took me to my mom's while my husband is hanging out at the house waiting for our landlord and the heating guy.

Michael still has this fever to pops up pretty high about once every 12 hours and I have full-on malaise that is being kept at bay with Emergen-C and ibuprofen because I need my wits about me. Knock on wood that Alex is symptom-free, just a bit of congestion.

Pushing the envelope

Mr. Man is fussing downstairs and I'm starting to feel a let-down so this must be short...

John and Michael both have the flu. This far I seem to have escaped it (fingers-crossed).
Alexander is done his growth-spurt, thank God for small favors.
I've managed to do two pattern repeats on my toe-up Monkey Sock (yay me!).
I've been invided to participate in a sock-knitting pentathalon on ravelry in honor of the upcoming olympics. I definitely have to think on it.

Must dash - breakfast must be eaten and babe needs to be fed! TTFN!

Postponed

Mr. Man is in the midst of his second growth spurt, so I'm going to have to put off my bit of alone time and the trip to the chiro until Monday since I don't want to screw things up with a bottle of pumped milk while he's trying to increase my supply. If he's amenable, I'm thinking of popping him in the sling and going into to town to check out one of the LYS's that my gem of a sister got me a gift certificate for. I'm thinking of getting some Malabrigo in the Stonechat colorway for a neck warmer and maybe a Quant headband from the winter Knitty. Of course, this would mean having time to actually knit, but I can dream...

Yay!

100 grams (3.5 oz.) over 4 days!!!!!!

Lest we forget thee, Mary Stuart....

Who on this day was beheaded.

Yes, I love the fact that I was born on the day that Mary Queen of Scots was beheaded - so much cooler than sharing it with James Dean and Nick Nolte.

John brought me home a gyro and a Greek salad from South Street Souvlaki which for once was not closed when I was craving the joy that is their tzatziki sauce. He also stopped at Wholefoods for some tiramisu as well. My sister brought me my favorite coffee from Starbucks and tomorrow I'll be picking up a bottle of my favorite merlot to enjoy with dinner at my mom's tomorrow night.

Life is good (and yummy).

Pictures!

Enjoy...

Michael, hamming it up



Alex's favorite place to hang-out



Brothers



In the park

Well, that might explain things...

Alexander has been regaining weight very slowly - between the last two weight checks, he dropped to a little bit more than an ounce over the course of three days. Other than the poor weight gain, he does seem to be doing well - output is good, he's having a few quiet alert times a day and he seems to be well hydrated. After leaving the ped's office with my bag of formula samples which will be given to S who actually has a use for them, as much as I hate pumping I'll be using my own milk to supplement, I thought about the last several days. I know my fluid intake had tanked on Tuesday and I was just starting to play catch-up on Thursday so that was very likely a contributor. While talking to S on the phone, I also realized that I had been skipping lunch most days this week and aside from dinner my eating had been really scant. S asked me if I had weighed myself recently and I admitted no, it was too depressing towards the end to even think about getting up on the scale as my body held onto every last bit of water it could. After I got off the phone, I pulled the scale out and imagine my surprise when it told me that I was back to my pre-pregnancy weight. Granted a good portion of the 40lbs I gained over the second half of the pregnancy was water and baby, dropping all of it over the course of two weeks was pretty scary.

Michael and I went grocery shopping this afternoon and my kitchen is getting better stocked with foods that I like to eat and are easy to prepare. S will be hitting the wholesale club for me and my sister is going to take me to Trader Joe's so I can round everything out. I also managed to eat three good meals and a good-sized snack today in addition to the 3 litres of watered-down Gatorade I drank. I'm already seeing a difference - he definitely seems more content. Between my eating and the 20-30cc's of supplementation I'm going to be giving after each feeding I'm hoping to get him up to the 20g/day the ped wants to see in no time. Then I can figure out how much I need to be eating to maintain my supply. I never ran into any problems like this with Michael (it took me forever to loose that weight and I still have a bit of it), but I also know I was snacking almost constantly with him and I wasn't caring for a very active 3 year-old.

Here's hoping for 3-4 ounces of weight-gain by Monday!

On the fly

Alexander is stirring, so I need to make this fast...

• made it out of the house to the LLL meeting yesterday morning. Realize that I have to have everything laid out the night before and I need to be fully dressed before John leaves the house. Mr. Man does not like to be out of arms most of the time and goes from calm to screaming in nothing flat.


• The above in regards to planning applies to food as well - I need to get snacks laid out the night before so I'm not going crazy trying to get myself and Michael something to eat while Alexander is rooting.


• This is only your second day solo and the baby is just two weeks old - you'll get the hang of it.


• Yay for pouches! I found the one I made a while back for Michael and it's so nice to have something that I can just pop Alex into without any fussing.

Off to make us some dinner before Alex wakes. I'll post some pics tomorrow.

Through the looking glass

We made it out to the La Leche League meeting yesterday morning and it was fair. Michael did very well and I enjoyed being in a room with a bunch of breastfeeding mothers. The topic of the meeting was something about the benefits of breastfeeding and there were parts that were a bit hard to swallow. I know they were not made with malicious intent, but listening to sweeping generalizations about women who formula feed (they are obsessed with the numbers, breastfeeding allows you to form a special bond/attachment/connection with your children, formula feeders care too much about the state of their homes, etc.) was a bit hard to swallow. I finally did open my mouth to say that Michael was formula-fed from three months on and I never payed attention to numbers except when we were edging close to the magic 40 oz. mark, and he was demand fed and bottle nursed - the loss of our breastfeeding relationship was devastating to me and I did everything in my power to treat him like a breast-fed child. Needless to say, it went over like a lead balloon and then one of the leaders changed the subject.

Again, I know none of the comments made were malicious and if I had made it through to continue breastfeeding Michael I would have been commenting just like everyone else, although I like to believe I wouldn't go too far in my generalizations (the breastfeeding causes you to not care about the stae of your house just makes my head spin). The other place I disagree is on an advocacy level. If someone mentions breastfeeding or needing support, I'll trot out all of the resources I can think of to help them out. I'm not sure how I'd respond to someone who was on the fence, but I'd probably recommend one of the more accessible books for some good information. From my time on the Lactivism board on MDC, I've decided that my advocacy lies more in doing my part to normalize breastfeeding, doing what I can to protect a woman's right to breastfeed, and boycotting Nestle. Convincing newly pregnant women to breastfeed isn't really on my horizon. It's an interesting place to be - I'm currently breastfeeding my youngest with the eventual goal of child-led weaning, I breastfed my first for three months and then switched to formula, and I've spent the intervening years on a feeding choices debate board and a lactivism board - oh and I can't stand The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding. Not quite your average LLL meeting attendee. I'm definitely sticking with the group because I've been looking forward to it, I just hope things improve a bit because if every meeting involves some sort of formula-bashing it won't be long before I can't hold it in any more.

Fly in the ointment

Michael has been up for the past two nights with various complaints, not the least of which is that nasty non-productive cough he gets whenever he starts getting congested. What's harder to deal with than a 3.5 year-old going trough a sibling transition, you might ask? The same child on Ventolin. His breathing is getting sketchy, but no actual wheezing yet, so I'm hoping we can avoid the true horror that is prednisone and *gulp* albuterol in the nebulizer. Of course I've been dealing with the post-nasal drip cough myself for several days and now Alexander is having sneezing fits and a little bit of a runny nose. I'm really praying it doesn't progress, I have no desire to start the baby torture that is saline spray and a nasal aspirator.

I am so happy that I started a family with the man I did. Alexander naps better in-arms and John just accepts that this is the natural order and not something that he needs to be trained out of. We were talking about how some of our approaches are different, but our core philosophy that children are humans that need to be respected regardless of age is something that we just took for granted that the other held to be self-evident, it's definitely not something that we ever overtly discussed. It's probably more of a reaction to our own upbringing more than anything - being treated like we were *just* children and didn't get any sort of respect for our individual needs planted the seed of what we wanted to do differently. He's also an incredibly hands-on parent - tag-teaming for the past two nights with a hungry Alexander and a semi-hysterical Michael (he *really* doesn't like coughing) was just natural.

All right - Michael needs to be wrangled and then Alexander needs to be fed so I must be off.

Out and about

I just got back from Trader Joe's and it was wonderful. Alexander slept peacefully in the sling while I got to take my time shopping without worrying about the person who was giving me a ride home. The incision pain is almost nil at this point and I'm hoping a visit to the chiro tomorrow will take care of my right SI joint.

After this morning I have no fears about being able to make it to the La Leche League meeting on Tuesday morning. God, it's so nice to be able to walk again.

Alexander seems to be falling into a nice eating routine - he's up about every 2-3 hours at night and I can get him fed and both of us back in bed after about 30 minutes. Day time is a bit more tricky, but I'm hoping it won't take too long to find something that works for all of us.

I'm off to heat up something for lunch and feed Mr. Man. TTFN!