Six Months

Baby Rex is six months old now. What. It's hard to believe but at the same time it's not.

When my sister was born, I was four and my brother was two. We were duly excited for the new baby, and there is grainy home video of us running around excitedly and begging to hold her and watching her get her first bath.

But after a few weeks, we approached our mother, hand and hand, and said, "It's time for Baby to go home now. Her real mommy is missing her."

Mom tried to explain to us that no, Baby wasn't going anywhere, that she was Baby's real mommy and this was Baby's real home. But we were insistent. "No, you're our mommy. She has a different mommy and it's time for her to go to her real home."

Sometimes I feel like that about T-Rex. I'm wondering when his real mommy is going to show up, and if it's time for him to go to his real home yet. Even after six months, it's hard to wrap my mind around the fact that this is his home, that I am his mother, that he's not going to just go away, that having him around is not going to end (or not for a good eighteen or so years, anyway).

I love him fiercely. He's a funny little guy and a joy to have around most of the time. But I love a number of people--my husband, my parents, my siblings. This is different. Not because the love is greater (maybe it is, I don't know), but because it's less...independent, or something. Maybe that will change as he grows. But right now he's his own person but also kind of an extension of me, all at once.

It's perplexing. That's how I feel about him most of the time. Just sort of confused, like I'm not exactly sure how to feel about him.

He just started crying and I guess no one else is going to come and pick him up, so I will. Because I am his mother and maybe someday I'll feel like I am.

An Ode to Doing Laundry

I love laundry. Perhaps I won't be saying that in a few years when I have the clothes of multiple and older children added to my loads, but for now, I really do.

There's a comfortable rhythm to it, the familiar cycles, the meditative act of folding.

I love figuring out the most efficient way to run the loads, the best settings for each kind of cloth.  Diapers on hot, towels on warm, clothing on cold. Balancing hot water against dishwashers and showers, following a bleached load with a load of something that won't be harmed if there's bleach residue left in the tub. Which loads get soap nuts, which get my homemade detergent, which run on Bulk or Delicate or Regular.

I love the loose predictability of my laundry schedule: Diapers on Sunday, adult clothes on Monday, baby clothes Tuesday, diapers again Wednesday, special/extra items on Thursday, towels on Friday, swimsuits on Saturday, and back to diapers again. Every day its load to wash, dry, fold, put away.

I love sorting, separating the differences and joining the samenesses. Collating. Keeping fuzzy socks away from the DDH's work shirts because he hates getting fuzz on them.

I love warm fluffy anything from the dryer (in this, at least, I'm sure I'm not alone).

I love watching Jayne examine every basket of clean laundry for possible stowaway tennis balls (I use them in the dryer instead of dryer sheets; one of these days I'll invest in actual wool dryer balls but for now tennis balls suffice.)

I love the Tetris puzzle that is hanging clothes and diaper covers to dry on the drying racks, packing the racks full with every item laid out just right.

I love folding most of all. The matching memory game of socks. The neat piles growing, the unfolded chaos shrinking. The sorting and stacking. It's peaceful. It's meditative, a mind-clearing action my muscles have memorized.

It's worship, this daily blotting out of stains, this offering of fresh starts, this service given in love. However else I might fail, as a mother, as a wife, as a person, this I can do. The clothes are made clean again; my soul is, too.

I'm not a hater of chores. I don't mind vacuuming, though I refuse to mop. I take a certain pleasure in dusting. I grit my teeth and clean the bathroom because it must be done.

But laundry. Laundry I love.

Smart Phones and Dumb People

Ok, kids, change of pace.

 

A friend of mine posted this story about smart technology on Facebook a couple weeks ago. 

 

It's interesting reading, and I think the author makes a good distinction between technologies that enable you to overcome problems/be informed vs. those that try to force you to behave a certain way or share all your information with others. One size fits all, doesn't. Anything that tries to conform people to the same mold and limit individual liberty--including the liberty to make mistakes and do stupid things--worries me. We don't really have a paradigm for dealing with these types of problems yet and deciding how far is too far. 

 

However, from the headline of the piece ("Are Smart Gadgets Making Us Dumb?"), I thought the article was going to be about something somewhat different, as did my friend, so we ended up discussing what we thought the article was about rather than what it actually discussed.

My friend said, "I think there are 'smart' things that are making us dumb, or less able to think on our own, but the article doesn't cover that much. Math teachers having been arguing for years that calculators are encouraging students to never learn basic math."

 

Yes, yes they have. But that leads me to one of my pet rants. I thought I would post it here and see what you guys think. ^_^

 

Smart gadgets are not necessarily making us less smart so much as changing our intelligence. 

 

The same thing happened when we switched from being an oral culture to a literate one. Smart stopped meaning memorizing lots of things and started meaning knowing how to read well. We no longer memorize and recite The Odyssey, we read it in a book.

 

Now being smart means knowing how to use machines to help you get answers that were once found in books, and which before that had to be memorized.

So it's not necessarily less smart, but differently smart. In all cases it matters not so much what you know or know how to do, it's what you do with that knowledge. 

Lots of people can remember things in an oral culture, but only a few create that which is worth remembering. Lots of people read in a literate culture, but only a a few write what's worth reading or read what others have written about discoveries and use it to make new discoveries. Lots of people use calculators and smart phones and computers, but only some use them to expand mathematics or create art or cure diseases.

So, yes, relying on a calculator makes you less able to do basic math in your head, but that only matters if you think doing math in your head is of some intrinsic importance and that being able to do it makes you smart. Because a calculator also makes it possible for you to perform longer and more complicated equations. Remember in Tom Stoppard's Arcadia, one of the characters in the nineteenth-century timeline discovered some important mathematical concept, but it couldn't be proved until computers were invented. The character filled page after page with hand calculations, but an entire lifetime was not long enough to make all the calculations necessary, calculations that a computer could do in a few minutes.

Many great mathematicians and scientists are terrible at doing basic math in their heads, but that doesn't make them stupid. In a way it's intelligent to not allocate brain space to remembering basics if it means you then have brain space available for advanced thought.

Machines are, or historically have been, tools. You still have to know how to use them. The problem is, we're starting to enter territory where we no longer have to know even that, because the tools tell you how to use them and what to do. 

This loops back to the actual topic of the article and the importance of being allowed space to make mistakes. It's one thing to ask a calculator to calculate twenty divided by five for you and learn it's four, and another for the calculator to tell you that the number you want is four because that's the number all your friends wanted you to know.

I don't necessarily disagree that technology often atrophies brain functions that I, at least, consider important. But I don't think the changes it makes to our brains are always and only a bad thing any more than they are always and only a good thing.

 

After all, you can use smart phones to say "omg c u l8r" and watch Jersey Shore, and you can use them to read The Wall Street Journal and discuss the impact of technological changes on human intelligence (I tapped out the entirety of my side of this conversation on my smart phone while nursing T-Rex). The phone you use doesn't make you more or less smart. It's a tool you can use to exercise your brain as well as one that can let your brain be lazy.

My friend then pointed out, "I just see kids learning ways to 'cheat' and not understand what division is by relying on their calculator so much, instead of just using it as a tool to not have memorized all the division tables.

"Most common example is the need for parenthesis in using the calculator where they were 'understood' when written on paper. For the students who never understood exactly what was written, they were using their machine incorrectly for the problem and getting the wrong answer. It frustrated me to explain it over and over when they just wanted a quick fix 'so just tell me when I need them, ok mrs friend's name?'"

I agree that you still need to learn those basics in your head when you're young. That's part of understanding how to use the machines for other purposes once you're older. So I'm actually in favor of forbidding calculators until maybe high school or late middle school math classes (my younger self would NOT have agreed; I'm terrible at math! Also, it's only now that I'm older that I understand why my dad (who's a physicist) would check my math homework with a calculator but wouldn't let me use one to do it in the first place).

Then, there's also the fact that a lot of technologies change and affect our brains in ways we don't yet understand. Staring at screens has been shown to make itharder for you to sleep because the artificial lights stimulate the brain, and I do think the screens have given us rather shorter attention spans, which is a problem. So I mean. I'm pretty ambivalent about a lot of it, personally. But I suppose change always comes with costs as well as benefits, and we need to learn how to manage those costs, not stop the changes.

I'm definitely addicted to my smartphone, and am making a conscious effort to distance myself from it a bit. I can tell it's shortening my attention span, and I'm trying to negate that effect by making sure to read non-fiction in book form. But I don't think I would argue it's making me or anyone else less smart. 

What do you think? Are smart gadgets making us dumber, smarter, neither, both? 

What do you think about the actual topic of the article?

More importantly, what are you supposed to do with kids in this gadget-saturated world?

I am happy.

Do you remember the Roald Dahl novel Matilda, about the smart little girl whose abusive, neglected family situation led her to have magical powers?

Spoiler alert if you've never read it, but at the end, when she's been adopted and skips ahead five grades in school and is happy and loved and challenged--her powers fade away. They served her well when she was in distress, but she no longer needed them once everything was going well in her life.

Well, sometimes I feel like writing is that way for me. When I'm anxious and overwhelmed and depressed, I write a lot. All the time. The words come pouring out, processing all those Big Emotions.

But when I'm happy and content with my life...nothing.

And I'm happier now than I have been since I was a kid, I think.

It's not that I have nothing to say, but the impetus to put words on paper (or the screen) just isn't there.

But let me tell you how happy I am. For the last several years, I've doubted myself. See, I never had a plan for What I Want To Be When I Grow Up. Because I knew, I just knew, that I would stay home with my children like my mom did (in retrospect it was quite naive of me to assume that I was guaranteed a husband and children at all, but that's youth).

So I majored in English and German (with a history minor because why not?), which I enjoy greatly but which don't necessarily prepare you for any particular career.

I never expected to get married so early. I intended to go on to graduate school, maybe work at something (I had vague notions of a career in academia, I think). But I never put much thought into a future career, because there was nothing I was passionate about, nothing I really wanted to do despite being good at many things.

So, when the reality of finding work and working jobs hit, I was lost. I hadn't had a plan or a destination, and so I just sort of wandered aimlessly from job to job, all of which I was grateful to have at the time I had them, but none of which I ever enjoyed. And the longer I saw that future stretching in front of me, the more lost I felt. Apparently I had been wrong in thinking I would be a stay-at-home mom and everything would work out. Apparently I should have trained for something, because now I did nothing.

Eventually I ended up in the job I had been working. It was a very good job, making a reasonable amount of money, intellectually challenging, different and interesting and with a good title. But the boss is emotionally abusive. And it still wasn't really what I wanted to do.

I was downright depressed during my pregnancy thinking I would have to go back to that job (or any job, but especially that one), abandoning poor little T-Rex and, so far as I could see, ramping up my stress levels to eleven to no purpose except a financial one. \

(I still can't imagine how working moms do it, how they get up and get themselves and one or more kids ready and drop them off and go to work and are on on on all day and then go and get the kids again and come home and feed them all and somehow in there also do at least a minimum of laundry and cooking and housecleaning and quality time. I don't understand how they do it. I get burned out just thinking about it, and was spiraling deeper and deeper into a burnt-out depression contemplating that future while pregnant.)

Maybe if I enjoyed my job, if I had some sort of career ambitions or passion for my work or believed I was making a difference in the world, maybe then it would be different. But I didn't and don't.

Then somehow, miraculously, my boss agreed to let me work from home. I assist with some paperwork and record maintenance and other things I can do from my computer at home without being in the office. It's just a few hours here and there, but it pays our car insurance and some groceries and that's enough.

And so now I'm happy, truly happy, relaxed and content with my life, for the first time since college. I can keep on top of laundry and house cleaning. I get to nurse and play and watch my little guy all day. I go to exercise classes and funerals and all sorts of things I could never do before. I truck T-Rex around to grocery stores shopping the sales. I cook dinner. I pet the dogs.

It is still work--T-Rex is not really always a happy baby, and I still have a short temper. I'm taking seriously the responsibilities of having hot food on the table for us in the evening, of doing the various household chores that I used to split with the DDH.

But this, finally, is work I'm passionate about. Work I enjoy as well as excel at. The worst part of the day is the time I spend working for money, though at least I get to do it from home, when convenient for me.

Not everyone would be happy here. But I am. I don't know how long it will last; at some point my old boss is likely to get irritated and demand I either come in to the office or quit completely. At that point, if nothing has changed with the DDH's salary, I'm not sure what we'll do.

But for now, I'm treasuring this time, and I'm happy, and I'm sorry if I'm not on here much. I always wanted Matilda to be happy and have magical powers. Maybe I'll manage to make that happen in my own life.

This was a strange and rambly and not entirely coherent post, so here's a cute picture of T-Rex so it's not a total waste of your time ;-):

In a funny snow sack.

Three Months

I can't believe T-Rex is three months old already. Is it possible?

Baby burrito at four days old.

At the same time, it seems like it's been much longer. It's been an action-packed three months: Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's, Houston. Crazy.

Dressed for church at five days old.

I look back at the newborn pictures of him and it's amazing how much he's already changed. Where did my little newborn burrito go? Now he's this big old baby trying to sit up.

Baby hugs, almost two weeks old.

I drove him out to Norman yesterday to see my brother, who was auditioning at OU for their doctoral music program. Uncle Misha last saw T-Rex at his baptism in early January. He said, "He's starting to look like a little person now, and not just a baby."

With Kaylee, one month + two days.

And he is a little person, or starting to seem like one, with his own personalities and preferences.

Santa Baby.

 He's mellow and happy almost always but gets grumpy in the evenings--I guess he's a morning person.

Suave.

He likes to talk to his parents and his toys but clams up around other people. Still, he has a smile for everyone.

In his christening gown for his baptism.

He always has to be able to see everything; he loves observing and watching the world go by.

Almost two months old.

He's so much happier now that he's big enough to be carried facing out in the Moby wrap.

Happy traveler on his way to Houston.

He loves to travel. Usually he falls asleep, but sometimes I'll look back in the mirror and he's sitting there with eyes wide open, quietly watching the world go by.

Dr. Pepper baby at Pops.

I'm excited to meet the little person he's becoming. I miss his little newborn self. Sometimes I want to stop time, to grab him and say, "Freeze! I need time to soak in who you are right now before you get to move on to being someone else!"

Little man.

But I can't. And he doesn't. He goes right on growing (he weighed in at fifteen pounds today!) and changing--changing himself, and changing me. Because I'm not the same person I was three months ago, either.

With Uncle Misha at OU.

 I think, on balance, that's a good thing.

A snow day for his birthday.

Linking up with the Tuesday Baby Link Up at Every Breath I Take.

Sorry this kind of turned into a photo dump. I figured out how to get photos into Blogger again. Apparently it just doesn't like the ones from my real camera.

It's a T-Rex! (T-Rex's Birth Story, Part III)

The oh-so-thrilling conclusion! Read Parts I and II.

We arrived at the hospital at 5:30 a.m. and completed Round Two of paperwork, cervical checks, the works. I was not any more dilated than when I left the hospital on Friday, but everything seemed softer, apparently, which meant it was more likely that the induction drugs would take this time.

The nurse gave me another dose of misoprostol and the DDH spent a couple hours pacing the halls, to no avail. Not only was I not dilating further, but I wasn't even having the mild contractions I had been having before.

So we got yet another dose. We watched A Knight's Tale, which apparently the DDH had never seen before (how is that possible?).

At about 2:30 Monday afternoon, the nurse checked me again. I was dilated to about a two now, but not having any contractions. She did, however, think that things were ready for the next step.

My doctor came in and broke my water about 3:30 p.m. This was it--one way or another we'd have this baby within the next twenty-four hours or so now. At this point they also hooked up the pitocin to get the contractions going.

And get going they did! I managed fine for awhile, watching an NCIS marathon on TV and trying to get a last bit of rest.

As afternoon turned to evening, however, the contractions became more intense--and more frequent. I couldn't find a comfortable position on the bed, so I got up and paced the room, but the contractions were quickly too intense to walk. I bounced on a birthing ball--that helped for awhile. I could get a good position, bent over and hanging onto the bed.

The contractions got worse and worse. They were lasting about forty-five seconds with only thirty to sixty seconds between them. We asked the nurse to review my pain relief options, and she did--not pressuring me at all one way or the other, but letting me know what was available.

I held out until eight o'clock before I knew that I needed something. We opted to get a narcotic drip first. This, the nurse said, wouldn't stop the pain but would help take the edge off so that I could handle it better. Unfortunately, it did mean that I needed to stay in bed in case I had an adverse reaction to the drug.

That helped for a little while. The drug, whatever it was, kind of put me to sleep, a sort of semi-lucid dream state, where I felt the pain but was sort of sleeping through it. I remember thinking really hard about whether or not I was talking and saying anything to the DDH--I knew I wasn't all there, and I didn't want to say anything stupid, but I felt the need to convey information. It was very weird.

Speaking of the DDH--he was amazing through this whole thing. He rubbed my back, held my hand, told me I could do it, watched all the monitors for me, talked to the nurses because I couldn't focus on much other than the pain. He was great.

My contractions were now constant. One would begin, the pain would ramp up, peak, and then as the pain from one contraction subsided the next would begin. I was only ever getting halfway back down the little pain mountain, with no chance to catch my breath or regroup or steel myself for the next one. I was half sitting up, clinging to the bedrail and the DDH's hand, still not entirely lucid because of the pain meds and just screaming and crying.

Luckily, those constant contractions were finally accomplishing something! The nurse checked and I was dilated to about a seven. This was about 9:30 p.m., maybe? Five plus centimeters in six hours; I don't know if that's good, but after taking five days to get the first two, I was happy with the progress.

Still, with three centimeters to go, I knew I wouldn't last. Maybe I'm just a wuss, but the pain was incessant and terrible. So I gave in and asked for the epidural.

It took another hour or so for the anesthesiologist to come, so the nurse gave me another dose of the other drug in the meantime. It really did nothing for the pain this time, and I was very happy when the anesthesiologist arrived.

I could barely sit up and move to the other side of the bed. I kept having to stop and scream as the pain got too bad. But I managed it, the anesthesiologist did his thing, and finally the pain stopped. My legs went numb slowly, but the pain in my abdomen stopped almost right away. My right leg and a patch of my lower right torso never numbed completely, so I could still tell when I was having a contraction even though it didn't hurt very much, which was nice.

The DDH and I took advantage of this time to get some sleep. It was very nice, really, to be able to relax and sleep while my body did the work, even though it was uncomfortable to have my legs be asleep and not be able to move.

Between about 1 and 1:30 Tuesday morning, the nurse came in, checked, and bam! I was a ten. She called the doctor and came to help coach me through pushing, since she thought I could start doing a little of that until the doctor arrived.

About this time, we noticed that T-Rex's heart rate dropped with each push. The nurse had me roll onto my right side and coached me through pushing from that position, as it didn't seem to send T-Rex into distress.

I pushed maybe five or six times before the doctor and other nurses arrived. Things moved quickly now, as they set up all the equipment and got everyone into position. At some point the nurse had them bring out a mirror so that I could see. This helped me focus the pushing on the right spot, since I could only partially feel it, and it was awesome to be able to see T-Rex being born!

With the doctor there in case T-Rex went into distress again, they had me return to my back. The nurse and the DDH helped hold my feet up in the stirrups and I pushed a few more times. T-Rex's heart rate was definitely plunging each time, but he was also crowning.

Everything moved so fast. It only took about three pushes after the doctor arrived before T-Rex's head popped out. The doctor was yelling at me to hold on and not push for a moment, but I could see his head out and I just wanted to get it over with and was determined to push him out now. I learned later that the cord had been wrapped around T-Rex's neck, but luckily the doctor was able to slip it off quickly, because one more push and there he was!

He was so squished and wriggly and covered in slime and adorable and mine. They handed him to me and I held him while the DDH cut the cord. I couldn't stop saying hello, over and over. It was 2:23 a.m. Tuesday, November 20.

The DDH went with the nurses over to the baby cart and watched them wipe him down and do the Apgar tests and things while the doctor stitched me up (I had a second degree tear). He weighed 8 pounds, 2.9 ounces and was 21 inches long. The doctor checked him out and though he lost a point or two for blue lips or something, really, he was perfect.

They gave him back to me and the nurse helped me position him to breastfeed. We sat there and he ate for 117 minutes--apparently the longest they've ever had a newborn eat! The DDH's mom and stepdad came in to meet him and hold him once he finished; then he was bathed and wrapped up. He had to hang out under the heat lamp for awhile since he had gotten too cold, but eventually he warmed up. The in-laws left and finally the three of us were moved to a recovery room.

We slept and ate and fed and marveled and entertained visitors all Tuesday.

T-Rex's hemoglobin numbers were high on his 24-hour bloodwork, so he had to be under the billirubin lights. They put tiny little baby sunglasses on him and set up a hood of lights over the cart where he slept. He was also lying on a blanket of lights, and he had to remain strapped to that when we took him out to breastfeed him, which was awkward. But after twelve hours with the lights his numbers were back up and we were allowed to go home.

My parents had arrived from Albuquerque Wednesday afternoon and helped us pack everything up. We were discharged about 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, in time to go home, eat Indian food takeout, and for everyone else to get some sleep before Thanksgiving.

I had intended to try to go without the epidural, but I'm glad I got it. Being able to rest for a few hours allowed me to focus and I believe helped me push more strongly and quickly. Sometimes I still wonder if it was the best idea to go in to be induced, but I think that was the right choice, too. He did not want to come out, and though I'm sure I would have gone into labor eventually, I'm not sure how much bigger he could have gotten before I wouldn't have been able to birth him. I was able to avoid a c-section and he arrived healthy and strong. It all worked out, and now he's here, my handsome, happy little T-Rex whom I love.

Intermission (T-Rex's Birth Story, Part II)

Read Part I here.

Friday, November 16. The DDH and I had been in the hospital for two nights, expecting to have this baby. But despite a slew of different cervical ripening treatments, nothing was happening. We were sent home and scheduled to come back on Monday to try again.

At this point, I was deeply depressed. I was experiencing frequent and painful cramps thanks to the second medicine the nurses used, so I was in pain, but to no purpose--they weren't contractions. They weren't helping T-Rex out into the world. I just hurt, for no reason.

The whole venture seemed pointless. Why had we even bothered? We should have just waited and left well enough alone. We had both missed two days of work--the DDH falling behind on his trial prep, me losing two more days of pay--and here we were, still sans baby.

I started writing Part I that day, but was too disheartened to finish it or post it. I wanted to curl up and hide. I hated still being pregnant, and yet I was scared of actually finally having this baby, too. I didn't know what to do or how to feel.

The DDH's mom took us out to a nice lunch on Friday, then we spent the rest of the day at home, miserable. A warm bath finally made the cramps go away, and we woke up on a beautiful sunny Saturday feeling better.

We went to the farmer's market. We had brunch. We spent an hour or so wandering around Bass Pro Shop, looking at talking fish and fancy dehydrators. We went to Target. We came back and relaxed at home.

We skipped church on Sunday, unable to face everyone's questions and comments. We met up for lunch with some friends who were in town on their way home to Iowa. We took the dogs to the dog park.

Really, it was a lovely weekend. We were able to deliberately enjoy this last bit of time alone.

And by Monday, we were ready to try again.

To be continued again...

When it rains, it pours. (T-Rex's Birth Story, Part I)

T-Rex was due November 12, but showed no interest in leaving. The doctor was concerned that he was starting to get too big and wanted to try and get things moving so a C-section would be less likely. We were scheduled to be induced on Wednesday, November 14 at 7:30 in the evening. Here's that story.

When Laura of the Hollywood Housewife announced her Day in the Life challenge for November 14, I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to photodocument the last day of our lives before T-Rex came along. You know. This is what the house looked like, where Mommy and Daddy worked at the time, what the weather was like and what we ate and wore.

So it started out great. I did a little photo tour of the house, photographed the dogs and the rabbit and the DDH dressed for work. I'll spare you all the boring photo details (though if you're curious about the famous yellow plaid wallpaper, check it out on Instagram, where I'm @ktindeed).

Anyway. Then, on my way to work, a big SUV tried to cross the four-lane road on which I was traveling. She made it across three lanes...but not the lane I was in. I slammed right into her rear passenger wheel-well.

I think I spent about two minutes sitting the car where it landed, screaming, before I managed to pull off onto the side street where her car had ended up, climb out, and start taking care of everything. I called work to let them know I'd be late and called the DDH to come rescue me, and neither of them could understand what I was saying--I was shaking so badly I couldn't talk clearly. My throat hurt for days from the screaming.

But, my ridiculous overreaction aside, everything was apparently fine. She had three kids in the backseat, and they were all ok. I wasn't experiencing any cramping or anything, so T-Rex was probably safe.


Everyone was okay, though her car was not driveable. Subie was in the shop for almost two weeks (that's the thing about Subarus. They're tough little cars and they last forever, but when something does go wrong, it takes an absolute eternity to get the parts--shops don't tend to keep them on hand).

I finally made it in to work after taking Subie to the shop and picking up a rental car. I then proceeded to work like mad to leave everything in order before I left, which I think I actually managed to do (except I think I might have left a flash drive of photos in my computer there, because I can't find it anywhere at home. Hmph).

Came home and putzed around putting everything in order. I wrote up directions for caring for the animals, made sure everything was packed for the hospital stay, that the guest beds were made up for when my parents arrived. Took a nap.

The DDH came home and we had a celebratory "last meal" at McAllister's, then headed off to the hospital--excited, nervous, but thinking that either way, this was it.

Yeah. As Mom told me later, "I knew when the wreck didn't send you into labor that there was no way you were having that baby yet." Sigh.

The nurse checked me into the hospital. I signed all the paperwork, donned the hideous gown, accepted the little IV valve in my wrist. I still was dilated not even to one. The nurse dosed me with misoprostol and said she'd check back in four hours.

We hung out in the room, watching Hulu. We napped. Four hours passed. Nothing. I was now maybe a one. The nurse gave me another dose. After waiting the requisite hour, we got up and paced around the hospital. I walked laps around the labor and delivery floor and then around the deserted main lobby. I set up an Instagram account and uploaded all my Day In The Life photos.

I was having contractions now. They were short and not super strong, but also really close together. When we returned upstairs, the nurse put the monitor on and said she couldn't give me another dose of the medicine yet because the contractions were coming too close together. Yet I was still only dilated to maybe a one and a half. This was getting frustrating.

We hung out some more. Tried to get some sleep. Eventually the monitor said the contractions were far enough apart and the nurse gave me another dose of the medicine. We did sleep then, for awhile.

Morning came, and another nurse, and ineffective contractions too close together. The DDH left to feed the dogs and get some breakfast. He returned with the news that some Amish people were having a bake sale in the lobby. We petitioned the nurses to let me eat (supposedly I was only allowed clear liquids this whole time), and they agreed. We trekked down to the lobby and bought cinnamon rolls and pumpkin bread and brownies (and some for the nurses as well).

This pretty much continued all day: mild, ineffectual contractions. Lots of walking. More doses of misoprostol. Continued lack of progression.

That evening, they decided to give me a different cervical ripening agent. This one eventually caused really severe cramping, but proved to be no more effective than the misoprostol. My body just was not in the least interested in giving birth yet. So they sent us home.


To be continued...

Advent of a T-Rex

I need to write up T-Rex's birth story soon, before I forget it. But in the meantime, in case you hadn't heard:

T-Rex was born November 20 at 2:23 a.m. Eight pounds, three ounces and 21.25 inches long.


Mostly he's a quiet and curious (and hungry!) little guy, long and skinny with big blue eyes.

He hates the Moby wrap and ring sling because he wants to be able to look around and neither of them let him until he's strong enough to hold his head up. His favorite is being carried around with his head flung backward over your elbow so you look like you're about to drop him.

I'm having problems with all the cloth diapers gapping around his skinny little legs. Hopefully he'll grow into them a bit better, because right now he practically lives in wet onesies, which is gross and uncomfortable for everyone involved.

Jayne is more or less indifferent to him since he can't throw the kong, but he likes to say hello and lick T-Rex's face a couple times a day. Kaylee took a few days to get adjusted. She was freaking out with jealousy and anxiety over having been left alone for several days while we were in the hospital. But now she's very protective, following him around everywhere and getting upset when he cries. Jayne and the DDH were playing fetch while the DDH held T-Rex; T-Rex let out a squawk as Jayne tried to give the DDH the kong and Kaylee lunged and growled at him to BACK AWAY FROM HER BABY. Pretty cute.

I have a terrible chest cold that doesn't want to get better because I can't actually get more than three hours of sleep at a time. We're all tired, though I'm letting the DDH sleep through the night as much as possible since he has a huge trial going on right now (good timing, right?).

In conclusion, T-Rex is pretty much the best baby ever and we're mostly having a good time, though it's only just now I'm starting to feel like I'm adjusting and able to get things done.

Happy December, everybody!

(For some unknown reason Blogger's not letting me add photos. But I have Instagram now and there are some there as ktindeed.)

I am morbid, but I come by it honestly.

One of my favorite possessions is a little book my grandma gave me this summer. A friend had given it to her, and Grandma thought I might like it to use with T-Rex, or at least find it interesting.

I do plan to use it with T-Rex (though because of the book's age and condition, it will, as Mom says, "be one you read to him, not one he gets to read"), but it is fascinating in and of itself.

Prayers for Little Ones

 

The book is called Prayers for Little Ones (Gebete fuer die Kleinen = Prayers for the small), and it was published in 1909 by the Lutheran Book Concern of Columbus, Ohio.

Little Prayer Book for Children

"Ask, and so it will be given to you all."
(Did you know that both the command "Ask"
and the you are plural in that verse?)

It categorizes prayers by time of day and topic, beginning with Morning Prayers, moving through the day to Evening Prayers, and hitting several other topics.

Morning Prayers
Upon Getting Up
The Holy Father (Lord's Prayer) and the Creed
(I guess this indicates you should say them, since they're not printed.)

Most of the topics are the sort of thing you'd expect to see in a kids' prayer book: table prayers, prayers for the end of the week, prayers for school and studies and for church.

Contents

 The table prayers section includes prayers for before and after eating:

Table Prayers
Before the Meal
Bless, Father, this food
For our nourishment and your praise. Amen.

The second of those eating prayers may be familiar to many of you: "Come, Lord Jesus, be our guest...." The second line here translates to, "And bless, what you have given us. Amen," which is the same sentiment as the usual English line "And let these gifts to us be blest."

As I paged through the book, however, one prayer caught my eye:

Upon the Pre-commitment of a Corpse
Lord, teach us to remember that we must die,
that we might become wise. (Psalm 90:12)

As you can see, the book uses an old-fashioned sort of print, and sometimes it's hard to make out the words. So at first I thought I had misread that word: Leiche.

Because I was pretty sure I knew what Leiche means.

Leiche means corpse.

But I read through the title again: Beim Voruebergeben an einer Leiche. By the...pre-over-giving?...of a corpse. Uebergeben means, literally, give over, i.e. commit. Vor- is the prefix pre-.

So. Here was a prayer to say before committing (resigning? surrendering? this isn't a term we use much these days in English) a corpse. A prayer, basically, before a funeral.

In a children's book.

Let's just pause for a moment to reflect on the fact that, a mere hundred-and-three years ago, we were routinely teaching children prayers to say for dead people. Prayers that would probably be recited while you sat up all night with the corpse in your living room, the corpse washed and clothed by family members and laid out before it would be collected in the morning, taken to the church and then the graveyard.

In some parts of the world, corpses are still a part of every child's life.

I've mentioned before that I'm something of a worrier, and there's plenty I fret about with T-Rex even now, before he's even born. But then there's this prayer, beim Voruebergeben an einer Leiche.

I need to remember that kids are tough, and resilient, and if children can survive hanging out with dead bodies, they can probably survive the occasional diet soda or Disney movie.

I look forward to reading these German prayers to T-Rex, to teaching him a bit of Deutsch. At some point, we'll probably even say the prayer beim Voruebergeben an einer Leiche. Because people are born, and people die, and though we've sanitzed and sterilized and distanced ourselves from the entire process, there's really no hiding death from anyone.

Donkeys, Dogs, and Worst Case Scenarios

The dogs and I dressed up for Trunk or Treat at our church Sunday evening:

Mary on the road to Bethlehem with her
donkey and a stray sheep.

Jayne made an astonishingly patient donkey. He not only did not attempt to remove his blanket, but he stood nicely at the DDH's side, stretching out his head for the kids to pet but not jumping up and attacking them with friendliness. Everybody loved him.

In the alternate universe where I have lots of free time, I am getting him his therapy dog certification so he can heal people through the power of animal awesomeness.

In the real universe, he's going to waste all that talent playing fetch at home.

Kaylee hid behind my legs most of the evening but tremblingly allowed several toddlers pat her head. This bodes well for her interactions with T-Rex. I hope. She also tried to kill the DCE's little Bichon Frise dog, but that dog probably had it coming. It was probably making fun of her sheep costume, since it already looks like a sheep, and Kaylee was clearly a beagle with some spiderweb wrapped around her head.

The other dog is at my MIL's house, though whether this arrangement is temporary or permanent I'm not sure.

Two weeks left until the due date! There's a lot left to do but I simply can't muster up any sense of urgency about any of it. I can't muster up much of anything that requires energy right now. The DDH cleaned half the garage yesterday (a herculean feat, I assure you). I fell asleep while folding socks. That tells you something.

I started packing a bag for the hospital on Saturday. I have a little list of recommended items that the hospital gave me. Going down the list in random order, I put in three T-Rex outfit choices, a toothbrush, some CDs (the DDH gave the go-ahead on the Christmas music!). Then I got to the bullet point "Important phone numbers."

"What do they mean by that?" I asked the DDH. "I think this list predates cell phones."

"You might want to write a few of the numbers down anyway," he said. "Just in case something happens."

I think by "in case something happens" he meant "our cell phone batteries die." My mind, however, jumped immediately to, "in case I die." So I wrote down our parents' numbers, the number for our church, and that of our elder. Because, clearly, if I die, the DDH will probably sit there in shock and possibly never inform anyone, but probably the church has a little protocol for walking people through funeral arrangements or whatever and I bet Don would come over and make sure the DDH continued to feed himself for at least the first few days.

By that point, I had decided that obviously I was going to die while in the hospital and so there was no point in packing shampoo or clothes for the trip home and I might as well go do something else, like watch an episode of Castle.

So I did.

The end.

I am all over the place.

The DDH found a figurine of a Tyrannosaurus Rex breaking out of an egg. It's going to be the cake topper for the cake at the baby shower his office is throwing us. Because it's not just a T-Rex, it's a BABY T-Rex being BORN. Aaaaah, so cute.

Also? The fact that his office throws showers for the "pregnant" dads who work there and not just for the moms. It's such a great idea. He loves working there (and not just because they give him presents) and loves the people he works with. It's a real blessing for one of us to love his job, anyway. ^_^

Is it possible we're going overboard with the dinosaur theme? It's possible. Yeah.

Hey, but look at what happened to the nursery Saturday morning while I was at work:

Paint! The magical hobbit door blends right in now!

And I don't have before or after pictures, but the DDH made miraculous progress on the office last night. We may be able to clear all the extra stuff out of the guest room and once again have two guest rooms by the end of this very week. Which considering we're having a pile of people coming to our house in eighteen or nineteen days and expecting to have somewhere to sleep, would be a good thing.

The fact that he made a bunch of that progress by moving things into my finally!clean craft room is less awesome. But oh well. Priorities, I guess.

We spent all Saturday afternoon and evening at the Tulsa State Fair with the DDH's mom and step-dad. It was incredibly nice to hang out doing something with someone other than just the two of us. Also, I love fairs: fried food and fluffy animals and all that. I may have overdone it on the walking around, though. Ow.

Cake tree of cakes.

Tired cow is tired.

Sunday I took a small friend to a birthday party at this place filled with bouncy things (you know, those inflatable jumpers and races and slides and stuff). It looked like a great deal of fun, actually. But. Oh dear. The chaos. The noise and the disorder and the not-listening and the noise and the grabbing and the rapacious greed and the NOISE. Is it too late to say "just kidding" to this whole parenting thing? Ow.

In other news, it's October. Eek eek eek it's October. Help.

In other other news, ostensibly I joined Pinterest (username SingingPenguin) to help me learn to dress good. I was supposed to use it to help me discover the sorts of looks I like and learn to invest in pieces I will actually wear or learn how to style the pieces I own differently. All the stuff all the fashion blogs and books and things say to use Pinterest for.

That lasted about three days before I turned it into a giant electronic recipe file. I don't even look at anything people post anymore unless it's food. Or maybe a little household tip or craft project. Turns out, pictures of clothes bore me.

Food > fashion every day of the week.

I am worried.

We have six-and-a-half weeks left until the due date. The DDH has made impressive progress on the nursery. Almost the only thing left to do now is paint, and we even bought paint.

I wish I were being as productive and making as much progress on my own projects. Mostly I'm just tired, and anxious, and freaking out about everything. And we end up eating fast food every night because I spend the afternoons curled up in bed instead of cooking, and I can barely drag myself out of bed early enough to make coffee for the DDH, much less get a chicken into the crockpot.

I'm worried because T-Rex measured a week small on Monday. The doctor isn't worried; he said there can be a lot of variation in the measurements based on how the baby is lying in the womb and the measurement is not that far off anyway. But it could be there's not enough amniotic fluid and he'll be brain-damaged. So I worry.

I worry whenever I don't feel him kick for awhile. Most days he's active, but some days, like today and yesterday, he's quiet, and I just don't know enough to know what's normal. And sometimes I worry when he is moving around, in case he's having some sort of epic death throes or something. So no matter what I worry.

I worry about what people think about the baby things we registered for.

I worry about sundry things at work.

I worry that I'm going to be a terrible mother, that I'll snap and yell and be tired because I will be and do all those things, and I guess in the end it won't matter, but I still worry.

I worry about balancing schedules and sending him to daycare and never being able to get anything done because if I can't keep up with it now, how will I do it with T-Rex around?

I worry that I complain too much. Because I do.

I don't really worry about traffic accidents or natural disasters or germs (though I do worry about the house burning down. I never got over the burning-lava-coming-down-the-chimney nightmares I had when I was little).

I used to get exasperated with my mother for worrying so much. She is a champion worrier, the kind who can't sleep if she knows we're traveling (and told me, when I was away at college, not to tell her if I were going anywhere until after I got back, because there was nothing she could do from two states away but she'd worry anyway, if she knew).

Now I'm exasperated at myself for worrying so much. But knowing everything will be okay and feeling it are two different things, and so I worry still.

Maybe that's just what parents do.

I am dressing the baby.

This weekend managed to be both restful and productive, which was what I needed.

Baby updates!

I don't have a What I Wore Wednesday post, but here's some pictures of cute baby clothes for you instead.

We went to the local Just Between Friends sale Saturday night and picked up:

• a spare playpen (for downstairs, since we plan to use the one we requested on our registry as a bassinet upstairs).
• a breast pump with all the little accessories (including a car charger) that appears to have never been used. Or maybe used once. For fifty dollars. Which is pretty much nothing.
• two diaper bags (don't worry, Jessi, yours will be the favorite! but the DDH wanted a manly black one, and I got a nice one so I'd have two--the heir and the spare, if you will).
• some random toddler-proofing items.
• a ring-sling. I plan to practice slinging my stuffed koala bear, Croc, in hopes I can get this skillset down before the actual, more breakable baby comes along.
• a lovely stash of cloth diapers (mostly Green Bees pocket diapers, but there are a couple of small FuzziBunz in there and two Thirsties covers as well as a pile of prefolds and lots of inserts).

Mostly Green Bees one-size pockets, but also two Thirsties
wraps and a stack of prefolds.

• adorable tiny baby clothing. The first baby clothing we've purchased. I was telling the DDH that I didn't necessarily understand the appeal of baby clothing, that all the gadgets were much more interesting, but we walked down the Infant Boys aisle anyway. And there were fluffy dinosaur sleep sacks and tiny dinosaur footie pajamas and a matching puppy outfit of long-sleeved onesie, bib, and hat. The end.

I caught Kaylee trying to eat the foot off the sweatpants on
the left...not sure what to make of that.

Puppies and dinosaurs!

• a stuffed dinosaur.

I washed all the clothings and diapers and have stocked the drawer in the living room where I plan to have our impromptu changing station with the diapers. Now if only I had a dresser to put the clothes in. Or a closet. Or even a room....

But! There has been progress on that front, too. The DDH finished all the sanding:

And we cleaned up the walls, ceiling, windows, etc. of all the sawdust:

Clean me!

Cleaned.

Cleaned and holes filled.

And filled in the holes in the floor and spackled the walls.

Next step I think is to tack the floor (which is apparently using these special sticky cloths to pick up all the sawdust that the broom and shopvac left behind), then we can stain! And stain some more. And sand more. And seal. And sand more. And eventually we'll be able to paint the walls (we're doing the floors first just in case the brown we picked for the walls ends up clashing with the stain color) and at some point there might even be some furniture to go in there. Miracles happen.

Still. Progress!

Oh, and then I went back to that sale yesterday and found this:

Dinosaur hat.

And best of all, this:

Dinosaur diaper.

That kid will be themed from head to butt.

He's going to hate dinosaurs so much.