The Sad Demise of the Fancy Camera

Remember the Fancy Camera? The one we got shortly after Hannah turned 1? The one that takes awesome pictures with almost no effort? It's blinking "ERR" which means... call Nikon and see how much it would take to fix it. But.... I can get the same camera body on Amazon for less than $150 (yes, it's an old model, but I really don't care because I'm not a "photographer" by any means), and it will likely cost at least that much to tinker with the one I have, if not. So I want a new camera but I'm not getting one right now because it's just not happening right now. And the lack of nice pictures has put a damper on my blogging aspirations. I'm just not inspired, haha!

Now I have my phone- still much better than the point and click we replaced with the fancy camera. Plus, it takes video, so that is a plus.

One of the reasons I am not getting a replacement camera body right now is because I have a new sewing machine. This story of the new sewing machine comes with the rest of the story of what we've been up to the last few weeks.

It goes like this:

The girls started preschool at a Montessori school a few weeks ago, which allows me to pick up some extra home health visits for a while. They go 3 days a week, and Ellie takes a nap while she's there. She needed a nap mat. All the affordable ones had Disney princesses or Dora plastered across them, and all the ones I liked were not what I would consider affordable. So I decided to make one from some old sheets, because... it shouldn't be that hard, really.

Now, I like to sew, but my machine is decades old, basic, and quirky. It got progressively worse as I tried to sew these few simple seams, and I was in tears by the third night of what should have been a 3 hour job. So my neighbor gave me her second-hand machine that she didn't want anymore, which was rusty but sewed a seam... but the bobbin winder didn't work. I therefore had to keep 2 machines out, one to wind bobbins and the other to sew seams, and I kept fantasizing in my head about all of the things I've always wanted in a machine and isn't it high time to get a new one?

I finally churned out this (please don't zoom in and examine the seams- it's painful):

Passable, but it could have been much, much better. Then I started researching machines. I checked out Craigslist, but nothing available fit the bill. I looked at Berninas (My mother has one that I learned on), but they are soooooo expensive. I looked at Brothers, but have always been unimpressed with their quality track record and didn't want to sort through which machine might be worth it it and which models were probably junky. I finally visited a local sewing store and found the Babylock. Yes, similar to Brother structurally (but not, I found out, the same company- despite some claims that it is). 

I bit the bullet, and bought the one I wanted new, and I rarely buy things new, but this one was worth it. I sat down the next evening and made Ellie a skirt for her uniform. Do you know nobody makes Khaki skirts or scooters in any size smaller than 3T? Why don't they think 1 year olds want school uniforms too? Really now. So, to sum up, it took me 3 days to sew a silly nap mat with the old machine(s) and 1 evening to tailor a scooter skirt with the new one (and I even modified the pattern to suit my needs). 

Well, Hannah is absolutely loving preschool. Ellie adapted quickly, but Hannah can't wait. Every day she asks me if it's preschool day, and she has been picking "pre-school hair" for me to do on her from my new favorite website Babes in Hairland. Ellie has only had 1 accident for them in the last 2 weeks, so I'd say she's good and potty trained even with a change in location and routine, and that makes me happy too.

Preschool babies!!

The Other Love

My husband might have been my first romance, but he was not my first love. In fact, we still have an "open relationship." I've never lied to him. It's not that he's second fiddle, it's just that he can't be everything, and there's something else I need that he just can't give me. There's something else, and there has been ever since I can remember.

It's the Library. I can't help it. I might have backed off a bit in college when our school library was mostly academic snoozers and I wasn't a resident so I couldn't have a county card, but I started right back with it as soon as I was out. It was already a weekly occurrence, but then I bought myself a Kindle with some old visa rewards points, and discovered that libraries lend e-books. Just when I thought I could't love the Library any more, it goes and melts my heart all over again. Because it is so much easier to read on a Kindle while nursing than having to hold a book open and turn pages.

What can I do? I am passing along this obsession to the girls. They will be library princesses if I have anything to do with it!! This is from the "good manners tea party." Where Hannah refused to wear her Tea hat. Ellie is off camera trying to eat it.

My passion is being fed like mad these days. We moved from podunkville, USA where the library with the good preschool program was 45 minutes away (and YES, we made that drive every week!) to a Big County System, where the central library has 4 stories and our local branch is 10 minutes down the road.

The kids programs are awesome. Not only is there story time every week, but now there's a weekly language class for pre-schoolers (Spanish for now- French in the fall!), with short videos that I can access from home, a craft, and songs to learn. Then a couple of times a month, they do a themed story/ craft with decorations and the whole bit. THEN, they have a "Mommy and me" pre-school ballet class once a month- could it get any cuter?

And they deliver books directly to my house. And they have live music events. And they have adult language learning online. And, and, and.... it goes on! I love the Library, and I just can't help it! Oh, and if I check out 10 books, I get a free movie to download. This is not a problem. Date night on the Library!

So, right now, I am reading The Never Ending Story for the first time- anybody remember that movie? Strangely, they changed the name of the imagination world from "Fantastica" to "Fantasia." I am halfway through and still having trouble not saying "Fantasia" in my head every time I read the name of the book world. And Sam and I are reading(me)/ listening to(him) the Inkheart series, which is wonderful. I finally found a way to get him to read with me, thanks to the Library!

Happy Nurses/ Teacher's week!

Thursday was my day. Until I babysat the cousins last minute. And Friday was my day. Until Ellie fell asleep 2 hours early and didn't take a nap during Hannah's quiet time. So Saturday is my day!

Now let me tell you a story. Several years back, I had a bad day at work. And was 7 months post miscarriage and not pregnant again. So I had a sudden craving for Cinnabon, because, it was necessary. I looked it up. Not only was the closest Cinnabon about 10 minutes from our apartment, it was Nurse's week, and Cinnabons were FREE with a name badge. 

NO WAY!

So, I took advantage of the deal. And from then on I tended to associated Cinnabon with nurses week,  and with sugar palliation of disappointment. 

Last week, we redeemed that association. For the first time since that episode, I went to Cinnabon. This time, I took my girls. I got to give them a special treat off-budget because I am a nurse! It was heavenly. Heavenly tasting, yes, but more so it just made my heart burst to share the moment with my two girls. Here they are, eating my Cinnabon. 

And the home health agency I take jobs for was giving away cheap stethoscopes to their nurses, so now the girls have a "real" toy stethoscope to play nurse/doctor with. And they are quite cute. 

If you look closely, you can see Ellie's cast on her little arm. She had a tumble in which I caught her, but her arm hit the side of the bench as she fell. Earned herself 2 weeks in a cast for a fracture, poor little princess! Hannah picked the purple for her. It's off now, and no further follow up needed, so we're all back to normal now.

So, of course, it was teacher's week too. I painted the back side of the kitchen cabinets with chalkboard paint, and now the girls can play school too. Hannah has been getting check marks for doing little chores like making her bed (with help) and staying in her room at bedtime. Yeah for teachers and nurses!

In which, I am Goo.

Staying at home with two little ones is a daily balancing act. Most days there's a lot of redirection, screaming for no discernible reason (them, not me!), and back and forth between the never-coordinated needs of a 3 year old and a 1 year old. I love it, I wouldn't trade it; I'm not so rose colored that I think it's fun and easy all the time.

The other day though, we had one of THOSE days. The rare ones. The one in which everything you imagine happening, happens. 

First, we all slept until a decent hour. Then, we made our beds, got dressed brushed our teeth, and got breakfast ready without any meltdowns. Then, we had nothing planned, so we walked to the park with our strollers. The weather was perfect, not hot, but not at all cold. There were flowers to pick, so we stopped to pick them. We mood at cows. I even had a plan for dinner.

This is when Hannah came up with a new game. It's the renaming game. It went something like this:

"Mommy, you are Goo!"

"Oh, I'm Goo, huh?"

"Yeah! And Ellie is Bugga Boo Boo! And I'm Gigi!"

"What do you think, Ellie?"

"Not Ellie! Bugga Boo Boo!"

"Oh, sorry. What do you think, Bugga Boo Boo?"

(Bugga Boo Boo giggles)

"She likes it Goo!"

We played like this all day. I was, in fact, "Goo" for weeks. For some reason it makes Hannah and Ellie break into giggle fits. 

Then we came home and Gigi and Bugga Boo Boo played with water, got drenched, got muddy, then got to play in the bath. I don't actually remember what we had for dinner, but I know it got made at a decent time. And that Daddy didn't get a special name for whatever reason. It was just me. 

Daddy gets a lot of privileges, you know. He's gone all day, so when he gets home, it's fun hour. He gets the daily recap, the tickle fest, and the dance time while I cook. But this was a Mommy special. Those other days, the ones where I wonder how many times I can repeat the same set of directions, or try to figure out why the hysterics started, or clean up some kind of staining spill, I remember this one. I get tired, I get grouchy, I get overwhelmed, no doubt. But I must be doing something right.

Because I am Goo.

Mother's Day

Mother's Day is a day of very different emotions for me. This is my second mother's day, and I'm finding myself viewing it in a mixture of thankful awe and remembered grief. I feel a heightened sense of awareness of those around me at church, women who have had failed infertility treatments, miscarriages, husbands who won't agree to children yet, couples who are going through the homestudy process as they hope to adopt. Infertility is supposed to affect 15-20% of couples, and yet in our small church, there is only 1 couple who hasn't been touched by unfulfilled dreams of expanding their family.

I love being a mom, but I am finding myself wishing this day didn't have to be thrust upon us as a population, and that I had something more to say than just "thank you" when everyone wishes my a happy Mother's Day.  If we could just stay home and "celebrate" it in private, I would be so much more comfortable. I don't like being singled out for some sort of honor seemingly above other women because I now have a child. As you go through this day, don't forget about those on the grief side of the fence, who have maybe lost their mothers, or long for motherhood that seems so far out of reach. And please, don't needle anybody about when their first Mother's Day will be, because each woman is significant for her own sake, and suggesting that motherhood is a task to be accomplished diminishes her intrinsic worth.

That being said, I did have a nice day! In Hannah's Easter Basket, I had put some soap crayons, thinking that they were a brilliant idea. Of course, she loves them. Then I realized that I was teaching her to love coloring on the walls.... maybe that wasn't so brilliant. However, when I got up this morning, I had the following message waiting for me; it seems she is brilliant after all:

And I got breakfast in bed, although I might have to talk to Mr. Myth about letting her play with the stove.

And here's the sweetie herself! Of course, this is before she threw a fit while Sha-Sha was on speaker phone. Who can resist making Mommy look bad in front of Grandma?

In which Mommy Loses an Adjective

If you've spent any time with online "motherhood" communities, you may have noticed that we love our adjectives. Forums, especially, are a great place to advertise how many adjectives we have. You may see a short response to someone else's topic (i.e. "me too!"), followed by what's known as a "signature." This signature includes things you want everyone to know about you. We love our signatures to be longer than our "me too" replies, so we make them something like this. Bonus points if there is a graphic "blinky" associated with each adjective:

I am a...

(*ahem*)

Cloth diapering, home-birthing, exclusively breast-feeding, organically clothed, local grass-fed beef eating, non-circing, non-vaxing, home-schooling, vegetable growing, stay-at-home mom.

This is just a sampling of the adjectives that seem to be popular around where I've read, and no, this is not my "signature." After all of the adjectives, it's hard not to compare ourselves as moms against the adjectives preceding it. Does this person think I'm inadequate for choosing differently from her in these areas? Am I still accepted if some of these adjectives apply to me, but not all? Or we take pride in these labels, saying to ourselves, that we are good moms because of them.

So, among the adjectives I could use to build my signature, it is time to admit that one of them will no longer apply. You can take "stay-at-home" off the list. I got a job, and am starting Monday. This has been a big decision, though not as difficult as I would have thought. I am lucky, because I am a nurse, and can work 3 nights a week and call it full time. We have a private sitter whom we know and trust to watch Hannah on the mornings after I work so that I can get some sleep. She is mostly weaned, and is sleeping all night long in her own room now, so she may not even miss me much while I'm at work.

Now, I think I've done an exemplary job of being a stay-at-home mom. I have kept my baby clothed and fed just fine, like here for example:

I do such a good job that she never has to beg for more:

Hehe.

Joking aside, we have taken a hard look at our goals for the future and decided that it will be best if I work and save my salary for a while, at the end of which time, hopefully, we will be ready to welcome home another one of Hannah's siblings (no! This is NOT an announcement!). I am looking forward to the professional development personally, and have started to get out my equipment and uniforms. Hannah has joined in the fun, playing doctor for the first time:

In all of this, I have had to take stock of my adjective comparisons. I used to be very adamant that I would *never* work outside the home with children in the house. Now, I can look at our situation with peace, because "stay at home" or not, I am a mom. I love that title most.

Moments

When I think back, my life of childless infertility seems measured in moments, defined by specifics that seared themselves into my brain.

• It was baking in deafening silence, while my heart could hear a small voice asking to lick the spoon, feeling a little hand in mind as we made thumprints in the cookies.
• It was dying inside while a family member (clearly thinking as a potential "Grand") went on and on about how natural I looked with a baby after I had made the mistake of holding a newborn in front of them at church.
• It was escaping the church ladies on the way out the door on Father's day, as they kept asking when Sam's first Father's day would be. Little did they know that this *was* his first, but the baby had died, so there was no celebration for us, and I couldn't bring myself to voice that fact, so we just ran.
• It was realizing how everything in my house was for adults as I cleaned.
• It was realizing that I still had a baby blanket in my closet as I avoided cleaning that closet.
• It was hearing my ministry leader tell us that we weren't open to God's plan for our family if I was still sad about being infertile, weeks after we had told them about our plans to adopt.

Then everything changed, and suddenly my life as a mom is measured in moments, each seared onto my brain in stark contrast to the moments of loss.

• It is knowing the smell of my daughter, recognizing it on her blankets within hours of her birth.
• It is feeling her arms around my neck, and experiencing her relax against me when I respond to her cry in the middle of the night.
• It is seeing a laundry line full of diapers or baby clothes, papering the sky with its joyful presence.
• It is hearing "mama" and watching her face light up when I walk into the room.
• It is watching her cry her eyes out when her daddy leaves, then get to the door as fast as she can when she hears him coming back, dragging him to the bed for a round of tickles.
• It is watching her grandparents eyes as they cherish her and knowing that it is finally my turn to bring them this delight.

Does motherhood erase the years of infertility? No. They're not gone, and the new memories make the memories of those years more acutely painful, if possible. But, the memories of those years also make the new memories more acutely joyful, and the frustrations seem very small in comparison. I am so thankful for every moment of the life that gave me my daughter. If I had to do it over again, I would chose every painful moment for the baby we have right now.

In which we visit the library and Mommy gets angry over a book

I finally realized, now that I'm not working 7:30-4 every day, that I can go to the library!! I don't know why I didn't think of this before- I practically lived at the library growing up. Of course, it was a 5 minute walk from my house, and now it's a 25 minute drive, and this library is about 1/4 the size of the small library I grew up with, but this is still worth it. So, I packed Hannah up and went to get us a card!

Here she is, enjoying the fruit of community-sponsored literacy:

Now, to be fair, I didn't actually open the books for her, because she is currently obsessed with crinkling and trying to eat paper. All things in good time. She does have books at home that she can eat with abandon. I hope this is the beginning of a long an very fun tradition.

For me, I checked out the third "Hunger Games" book, praying that they'll find the second one and call me to come get it before this one is due. I also perused the parenting section, and decided to check out On Becoming Babywise, since I've had several people recommend it to me. I intentionally hadn't read it yet, because I knew it was about scheduling and leaving your baby to cry themselves to sleep, neither of which I was comfortable doing. Now that Hannah's 6 months old and I feel confident that we're doing well together, I wanted to see what all the fuss was about.

It's hard for me to say this knowing that it might alienate some other moms, and I want to preface my opinion with the caveat that I harbor no judgement towards those who find that some of the things in Babywise work well for their families. I firmly believe that every baby is different, and if yours is hungry every 3 hours and you have the breast storage capacity and milk supply to feed that far apart, great! If your baby sleeps best without you, who am I to say that you should teach them to sleep with you? (Actually, Hannah won't sleep with me, or even go to sleep if I am holding her. It makes me kind of sad, but I do understand how nice and easy it is that I can lay her down and go do something else for her nap time.)

That being said- I HATED the book. I couldn't find anything good in it. I can't even say that I "took the good and left the bad." The whole thing reeks of superiority based on absolutely no expertise whatsoever, and flies in the face of everything we know about lacation, parent/child bonding, and infant psychological development. Let me say that there is NO evidence that I'm aware of even that it's best to "eat-play-sleep." Who decides that it's bad for babies to have a nice, full tummy and the comfort of a parent's arms to feel comfortable enough to sleep? Gary Ezzo? With a degree in.... theology, and a wife whose couple of years as a practicing nurse in a hospital (not even a primary care clinic) can't be confirmed to have had anything to do with pediatrics? Don't even get me started on the doctor who got so brainwashed as to ignore all of his medical training and add his name to this book because he wrote the forward.

If you haven't read it, be prepared to be guilted and threatened the whole way through. If you have read it, try reading it with new eyes, because the whole thing is about insulting others' intelligence and puffing yourself up with pride at doing things the "right" way and reaping the formulaic child. Notice the fictional babies that drive the story- you know, the ones where the babywise baby is perfect, and the other one is a selfish, living terror who grows up with no friends because of her anti-social personality disorder? This is a "straw man fallacy", and the rest of the book that attacks anybody who chooses any different path as stupid or emotionally unstable, or living in chaos, is a "black-or-white" fallacy.

That's just the reasonable/ think-it-through logically side of me reacting to propoganda presenting itself as good reasoning and research. The other side of me that reacts violently is the nurse, because unlike Mrs. Ezzo, I really do have a background in pediatrics, and have seen multiple cases of failure to thrive, and have spent a lot of time doing one-on-one teaching and observing mother-baby couples in primary care clinics as they grow. This book is dangerous. Maybe you or your friend didn't have a poor outcome, for a variety of reasons, but the ideas can cause serious damage physically, emotionally, and developmentally. I find it best not to play with fire, myself.

Many, many babies need to eat more often than every 2 1/2 hours (Ezzo's minimum), and not just during growth spurts. It's not appropriate to ignore a baby's cry for 45 minutes at a time, because it's "sleep time" and they shouldn't eat before bed. And it is definitely harmful for a book to tell you to ignore the advice of the certified lactation consultant who tells you differently, and to demonize her and warn your other Babywise friends (who are also struggling to maintain their milk supply) to stay away too. Babies are also known to have no sense of "others," and that's something they grow into, not something they have to be taught. They don't even know that mom is a separate person for the first few months. It's not fair to a helpless infant to be "taught" that they're not the center of the universe, because it's a lesson they're not capable of learning. All they learn is that communicating a need doesn't result in that need being met, and that it's easier to just give up than to continue to let everyone know that they're lonely/hungry/bored.

Ignoring babies to get them on a schedule and spacing feedings for the same reason is a recipe for Failure to Thrive. Based on my training and experience, I knew this as soon as I heard the idea, and became more convinced of it as I read the book. Then I found the site http://www.ezzo.info/, which made me sick to my stomach, because it contains multiple stories of just that scenario. Look it up. Read the "Voices of Experience." They're not crazy or uneducated people. They're not people who did it wrong. They're the evidence of rotten fruit produced by a system that can't deliver on its promises.

I was going to outline some things I do believe are good about parenting styles, but this post is already too long. If you want to believe that I am that fearful, exhausted, uneducated mom slaving away to her child's every whim in order to repair the trauma of childbirth... that's a good sign that you've taken most of your parenting advise from the non-expertise of Gary Ezzo and his supporters. In the meantime, I am going to return the book to the library since I don't really have the funds to pay the fine I'd get for burning it, but I'm going to include a "warning" bookmark for the next person who checks it out. May their baby not be the next one admitted to the hospital for FTT because of the mis-guided endorsement of friends who didn't know that's where following the book's advice could lead them.

High Chair Acquired and Squash Ingested

We got a high chair today- $20 on Craig's List! Of course, we had to test it out, since her slight vaccine-induced temperature had gone away by evening and she was feeling 100% again. She looks so tiny in the great big chair! We've decided to forgo spoons and purees and jump straight into real food a la "baby-led-weaning," so Hannah got to test out her high chair and some steamed yellow squash slices at the same time. She managed to mangle a whole squash and swallow at least some of it. I think.

P.S. You see what I mean about her not smiling for my camera shots? Ha!

"You want me to do what? With that?"

"Mmphm, well, maybe I'll try a bit."

"Squash? What squash? I don't see any squash."

6 Month Checkup Stats

Hannah went for her 6 month checkup today, and weighed in in the lightweight category, at 13 lbs on the nose, and 25 inches. This is about the 5th percentile on both the CDC and the WHO growth charts for weight, and the 15th percentile for length. No concerns about either measurement from the NP. I am not a bit surprised considering how much this little girl moves! The new thing this week is pulling up to standing from a sitting position. She hasn't even totally mastered the sitting thing yet, much less the crawling thing, but if I sit her in front of something she can grab, she will grab it and get up onto her feet.

Tomorrow will probably not be a very active day though, because she got her shots, and last time she ran a low-grade fever and cuddled and nursed all day. She also wouldn't put weight on the leg with the tetanus in it, so I expect to get some loving from her tomorrow. As much as I love, love, love her little independent personality, I have at times wished she wanted to cuddle more, so I'm going to have to lap it up while it lasts, because I'm sure she'll be back to her squiggly self very soon.

And because my internet is working pretty well tonight, here is a picture of the apron I made Sam:

And a bonus, because I can't resist the pull of the cute Hannah/ Daddy picture:

"Whaaaat? Are you looking at me?"

Unswaddled Naps

This blog may skip around a bit until I have a chance to re-arrange the timeline. So since I've shared a little background to start, now I'd like to jump to present time and share a little current news in my Non-Mythical Mommy world.

Hannah has slept swaddled since we figured out that she wouldn't hardly sleep any other way somewhere in her 3rd week of life. However, shortly after 4 months, she figured out how to flip onto her belly, even in her swaddle. We decided that was a dangerous way to sleep, and figured we had to unswaddle her. This was the result:

After several days of that, we gave up and reswaddled, at which point she decided she liked sleeping on her back best anyway, and we were all happy again. But really, at almost 6 months, she is just about too big for her little swaddlers, and she needs to learn to sleep without them anyway. We've been successful at nighttime since we first tried unswaddling, but naps are a different story. Until this week. I can now get her to nap in the morning, unswaddled! Afternoons, not so much. Maybe next month.