Photo Friday 2: City Life (the runner up)

Fire hydrant check/playtime, August 2006

Leo Facts

A few things about Leo that I've learned the past 5 1/2 weeks:

Leo is a squeaker. He lies in bed at night and makes little squeaky noises. He does this in the car, in your arms, etc--anytime he isn't crying or fast asleep, he squeaks.

Leo is an eater. He's gaining so well and is efficient when he wants to be. He also doesn't seem to notice let-down, keeps nursing vigorously, and then starts choking and sputtering. Classy. He's messy when he eats and should have a sign on him that says, "Do not top off" because it'll come right back up. He's also the only baby of the three I've had to burp.

Leo has no patience for any kind of personal discomfort. If he is crying, he is hungry or has a diaper problem. Or you've put him down. He demands to be held unless he is asleep.

Leo defies cloth diapers. Yeah, the girls had blowouts as they got older--in disposables, too--but this one is the master of the drenched outfit. We have several different kinds, too--bum genius, trifolds in bummi wraps, a few fleece ones--and he manages to find a way to wick out of all of them. The only thing that's worked thus far is a size small bummi with a double layer of tri-fold (the traditional cloth diaper) at night. I love the all-in-ones but I have to be diligent about changes. See, above, no patience for personal discomfort.

Leo is driving Maeve crazy. She is adjusting poorly to middle child status.

Leo is making Sophia jealous. I am "neglecting" her in favor of the other two. Those two are fighting like proverbial cats and dogs. Our cats and dog get along better, in fact. It's been a fun month. But not really about Leo.

Leo looks like Maeve. Except his face is a little rougher-hewn. I keep thinking I see Blake in him--not my uncles, but my grandfather. But then I'm reminded that all babies look like old men. I've been told I look like that grandfather, too, though, so maybe. Poor guy, but really, between my nose and Mike's? What kind of choice is there?

Leo has sharp little nails that I fear at night.

Leo likes cat naps during the day. Good and bad, of course.

Leo is falling asleep on my lap as I write this. Aww.

Photo Friday: City Life

Ok, this one was hard to narrow down. I wanted to use the fire hydrant photo from this same day (National Night Out 2006--it was a legal fire hydrant opening, the firemen came over and opened it to clear the line and let the kids play), but this one is much more charming.

Trinity

The Other Mary's Album

770 Alert

The phone rang this morning, just as I was walking out the door with the girls. "Hey Bridgett!" was the voice. I didn't recognize him, but once he said, "This is Ian," I felt bad. I hadn't talked to my brother since December--we communicate mostly through gmail chat and forwarded youtube videos (like the lovely Amet).

He had a job for me. Go up to the computer and google this phone number for me, was the request. 770-783-1965. He explained that it Ashley had answered it, on the phone at home, and was totally freaked out. Kind of like a collection agency, but not quite--references to a lawsuit against him in his local municipality, for instance. Even had a court case number. Kinda threatening on the phone. Her name was Lynn Deatrix, she told her, but when Ashley tried to call her back, it was disconnected. Seemed fishy to Ian--he even looked up the area code, which is Fulton County, Georgia. Called their sheriff department, who told Ian that there weren't enough numbers in the court case reference to be one of theirs. But Ian, who is a small business owner with previous horrendous credit (college plus credit cards, you know...) thought he'd better just be sure.

Sure enough, you google the number and it goes to several message boards. Total scam. Trying to play on folks' fears--after the phone calls get more and more threatening, letters get sent demanding money for this court case (or sometimes they take the position of debt collectors). Seems they buy information, because they knew Ian's name and phone number (their land line is listened in Ashley's maiden name), but it's all out of date and just a little off-kilter.

I told Ian to maybe pull his credit reports, forgetting that he's not a car salesman anymore and this is more complicated for a layman. He figured he would, just to be sure. I let him go and quickly took girls to school and went to coffee. When I got home, Ian had left a message: the sheriff's department was apologetic. Please disregard all that nonsense. They get at least 10 calls a day from around the country asking about Ms. Deatrix and her friends.

Ian and I considered the current economy, how people even with good credit can't get loans. He figured times must be tough for identity thieves, too. So, are they switching tactics to "collection agencies"? I just can't quite feel bad.

A Few More Albums From My Non-Existent Collection

For some reason, I think about Canned Heat when I see this one.

Rap. Or something annoying like the Beastie Boys.

Sultry-voiced piano playing twenty-something with long blond hair.

Paul Howard tries too hard.

Definitely Eastern-European hard rock.

I'm thinking irony. Like Beck.

Well, anyone who would name their band Karl Wagner and use that font, I'm thinking it's not happy music.

Put your shit-kickers on and let's go dancing.

Clear-voiced (not sultry) guitar player with spiky brown hair.

Early U2 style British or Irish rock.

There. That gets it out of my system--I made these a long time ago but never got into the habit of posting them...the rules?

1 - Go to "wikipedia." Hit “random... Read More”
or click http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The first random wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.

2 - Go to "Random quotations"
or click http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album.

3 - Go to flickr and click on “explore the last seven days”
or click http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days
Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover (I always go to creative commons...this may be the same).

4 - Use photoshop or similar to put it all together (I use GIMP).

Albums You Can't Listen To #7

More here, and in the tag "gimped photo."

Thanks to Kaylen for reminding me.

I think Fuse is obviously heavy metal. Or maybe gritty country. Perhaps at the intersection of those two.

Only Living Boy in New York

I get the news I need on the weather report.
I can gather all the news I need on the weather report.
Hey, I've got nothing to do today but smile.

And nurse baby and sit at the computer. But otherwise, Paul Simon's lyrics are highly applicable these days. I have no idea what's going on. And I'm glad. The other day, I got a phone call from Mayor Slay's campaign. Could I support them March 3rd? I told the woman on the phone, honestly, that I didn't even know he was up for reelection already. A far cry from the moment to moment anxieties the election produced in me last fall.

Half of the time were gone but we don't know where,
And we don't know where.

Kept waking up last night, not to baby (although I woke up for him too) but to nightmares. I don't tend to have them--I mean the kind where you wake up shrieking, sitting up already, freaking out. Playing on basic fears--seeing movement in the mirror and realizing it's the glint of a knife held by a man come to murder us all. Or, my favorite, careening off cliffs while driving recklessly with friends and family going down into the trees with me. Yummy stuff. The second wasn't so horrible as the first--it was obvious as I woke up that I wasn't falling down a cliff in the driver's seat. But the first one was based on the idea that I saw the movement in the mirror above our fireplace, sitting up in bed. It's harder to tease out truth and reality in that case.

Decorated church (or, really, undecorated) for Lent; wasn't even that clear on the idea that Lent starts tomorrow. Really, kind of living in a fuzzy haze. But I don't feel like I'm in a haze. Just when it comes to life outside this house.

Peggy Stein's Rum Cake

I would have taken a picture of the whole cake, but I was too slow to get it done before it was half-devoured. I thought perhaps, even though I do not usually post recipes, I would post this one....brought to you by St. Pius V Catholic Church Fish Fry circa 2006 (when I first encountered this):

Peggy Stein's Rum Cake

Oven 325 degrees
Ingredients:
1 c chopped nuts (I used walnuts)
1 box yellow cake mix
1 box instant vanilla pudding
4 eggs
1/2 c cold water
1/2 c oil
1/2 c rum

Put nuts in bottom of greased bundt pan or 10" tube pan. Mix other ingredients and pour into pan. Bake at 325 for 45-55 minutes (or until toothpick comes out clean, you know how to do this, right?). Remove from pan when cool--onto a plate that can handle the glaze (not onto just a wire rack, essentially...).

Glaze: 1/4 c butter
1 c sugar
1/2 c water
1/2 c rum

Simmer over low heat for 5 minutes. Punch holes in cake and pour glaze over. Cake will soak it up.

For the grandmothers: Leo at 1 month

I don't want time to get so far away from me that I don't take any pictures of this third baby. So here are the one-month moments from yesterday. First up: Mike figuring out the mei-tai baby carrier (successfully--and he could never get the maya-wrap/ring-sling how he liked it).

And then this series, taken right here in front of the computer (he spends a lot of his eating time there on that denim pillow thing). Mike says it reminds him of the Prisoner episode "Arrival" when Number Two shows Number Six various scenes from his former life...Now where can you go? Ireland? A bit too cold that time of the year. Paris! Maybe not. What was that? Sounded like a click. Something in the mirror? Or was it over there? Yes, over there too. Ok, you kind of have to know the show to get it.

Fifty Percent

Last night I did play mah jongg--there was a group of four of us only, which is good because you play the whole night, but it is also bad because the four in question, Mary, Janine, Trisha, and I, were all totally fried from our week and therefore we had more wall games (nobody wins) than anything else. But it was a nice break from baby and family and house. Yes.

I got there first, and Trisha was busy making chocolate chip cookies. Except she was using a different kind of oil and a different kind of flour. She was worried that they wouldn't bake up right, and we debated what temperature and time changes she might need to make. She lowered the temperature and decided to increase the time--but by how much?

"Should I go up to 12 minutes?" she asked. "The recipe calls for 8, but the last time I made them, it went longer than that--"

"But that's an increase of 50%," her husband pointed out.

"No it's not," she corrected. "It's not 6 minutes going up to 12, it's 8 going up to 12."

I did the math in my head. "Actually, he's right," I told her.

"Whatever," was her casual response.

It got me thinking about that phrase: fifty percent increase. It doesn't mean "double" but rather "half again," or, algebraically, 1.5x. In Trisha's cookie case, 1.5(8) = 12. But Trisha isn't the only person who confuses fifty percent increase with doubling--I have heard this error in conversation often.

I think part of it is bad math education (duh), but a good chunk has to be blamed on the opposite function--if you want to go from 12 to 8, you don't say "decrease by 50%" because that would indeed get you to 6. 8 is 2/3 of 12 (or 66 2/3%). "Half" and "decrease by 50%" mean the same thing, but when increasing, the language doesn't hold up.

This sort of thing is why, when I taught middle school math, we learned via word problems. The homework wasn't a sheet of rote work with one applied word problem at the end--it was a page of word problems, and if you had trouble with the rote math, there was a section in the back that could help you work that out. Life is filled with applied math--it is not often that one is asked to divide polynomials, but one might find cause to work out compound interest with one. It only makes logical sense to learn how to translate math into English, and back into math. Teachers who don't do this do a disservice to all the future cookie bakers sitting in their classroom.

The cookies were good, by the way. Turned out just fine at 12 minutes.

Mr. I

Well, Cardinal Glennon had its act together better today. We went in for Maeve's MRI and surprise surprise, our insurance knew who we were. Maeve was so funny--they put in an IV because kids need to be sedated for MRI tests--and gave her some kind of loopy medication that had her all giggly and silly right before they took her in. I did some knitting, Leo slept, and all went as well as could be expected. We'll have results next week, but of course we can't get results until April because the doctor doesn't know us and won't give us results over the phone. Unless I hear differently, I'm going to assume all is well.

To make things more complicated than they need to be, Mike was out of town all week until last night. I don't like to say those sorts of things while he's gone, just to be safe(r), but now I can. It was an intensely horrible week. Sorry, Babe, but it was.

But now we're done with the business trip and the annoying expensive hospital trips (hopefully). I'm going to make a rum cake and play mah jongg tonight.

Ten favorite poems

I guess I'm just a fan of ten. Last night, trying to go to sleep, I thought about poems I know, about how nice it is that I had the sort of education that encouraged poetry, even though most of my favorites are pretty mundane. I even had to memorize a few, including two of my faves here. I've already listed my ten favorite bible passages, books, words, and concepts, so I guess it's time for poetry.

When You Are Old by William Butler Yeats
A poem from high school that didn't grab my attention until I started noticing the sorrows of my changing face and realized how lucky I was.

Mending Wall by Robert Frost
I think it's the line:
'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.
I find myself quoting that more often than necessary: isn't it where there are cows? But here there are no cows...it's become a sort of shorthand for Texas vs. St. Louis.

let it go--the by e.e. cummings
Not one of his more popular--but a lovely treatise on forgiveness:
let all go--the
big small middling
tall bigger really
the biggest and all
things--let all go
dear
so comes love

Stopping by woods on a snowy evening by Robert Frost
Of course. But I remember reading this the winter after Sophia was born and seeing in it not a Christmas story, not someone going home to a cozy place, but someone deciding not to commit suicide (from a cursory look on the internet, this seems to be a typical interpretation, one that Frost denied intending). The woods are lovely, dark and deep. And then, no.

Reflections on a Gift of Watermelon Pickle Received from a Friend Called Felicity by John Tobias
During that summer--
Which may never have been at all;
But which has become more real
Than the one that was--
It's all about childhood memory, the amalgam of memories that build up based on retellings and photographs and sibling recollections.

Somewhere I have never traveled, gladly beyond by e.e. cummings
The first poem I memorized, back in 10th grade (no, I take that back: I had to memorize part of a Shel Silverstein poem when I was 7, but this one was by choice--we just had to pick one and recite it in class). It's a love poem, of course, and if you let yourself ignore cummings' nontraditional punctuation and capitalization, you realize how traditional it really is.

Afternoon on a Hill by Edna St. Vincent Millay
My second grade teacher, Mrs. Chott (who made us memorize Silverstein), was big into poetry. We wrote class poems based on experiences from our lives. We illustrated famous poems. She was an artist, too, and she gave me a watercolor illustration to this poem with the words on the back. It's long gone, but I still remember the last stanza by heart:
And when lights begin to show
Up from the town
I will mark which must be mine
And then start down

The Dream Keeper/Dreams/Youth by Langston Hughes
I had this children's CD of Library of Congress recordings from the library. Mostly folk songs by Pete Seeger and Odetta, that sort of thing. But there were three poems read by Langston Hughes, all in a row as if they were one poem. It started with Bring me all of your dreams, you dreamer/Bring me all of your heart melodies...and ends with We march/Americans together/we march! Maeve was a baby, I played it in the car. And, because I'm just that kind of person, I would tear up just listening to his words.

Love is not all by Edna St. Vincent Millay
...I might be driven to sell your love for peace,
Or trade the memory of this night for food.
It may well be. I do not think I would.
I've long loved Millay's poetry--and when Rob and Janet got married last year, this was one of the readings. I went home that afternoon and made a photocopy transfer print of this poem illustrated.

Summons by Robert Francis
I guess it is my favorite. Keep me from going to sleep too soon.I quote the last lines in my head a lot, almost just as a reminder to make it so. I look up at the night sky and think about clouds doing things to the moon they've never done before. I look at my kids, at my friends, and want to be half awake as they are.
Not only tell me but persuade me.
You know I'm not too hard persuaded.

For Mary, Not Leo:

It's kind of cold out.

Our front windows are almost 5 feet across, single pane, double hung. In 1905 this probably sounded like a fine plan--big open spaces, let the breeze in, let the sun in. They were the first windows we tried to replace, since they were single pane and leaky. My dad rebuilt some of his larger windows, but Mike doesn't have the expertise or interest to undertake a project that big. But when we got estimates back from different window manufacturers, we started thinking about alternatives. We didn't want to replace these old wood windows with vinyl--we wanted them to be wood--and we didn't want to fill the hole where they'd been with two small windows, breaking up the look in the room and from the front. Marvin Windows were the only ones who could do it the way we wanted. For $2000 a window. And that was 4 years ago.

I sit right now in the room we call the library--it's a little loft above the front hall. Its window covers almost the entire front wall. It's mid-February. The window bangs against the frame with every gust of wind. The house might face south, but it doesn't matter when it's 30 degrees and gun-metal gray skies. The black oak tree on our front tree lawn bends in the wind, and there's no keeping this draft out. I can see the curtains move.

There are advantages to living in an old house. No off-gassing carpets and building materials. Things are built to last (at least this long...). I like the plaster walls. Worn wood floors. Nine inch baseboards. Things like that. I wouldn't want a new house in the suburbs--it wouldn't match me. But I could go for some new windows.

Night Office Again

Today's reading from the Rule of Benedict:

Chapter 14: How the Night Office Is to Be Said on the Feasts of the Saints

On the feasts of Saints and on all festivals
let the Office be performed
as we have prescribed for Sundays,
except that the Psalms, the antiphons and the lessons
belonging to that particular day are to be said.
Their number, however, shall remain as we have specified above.

Night Office. I don't do this--I'm kind of a bare-bones benedictine, frankly. I always do some kind of compline (night prayer, before bed) and a lauds (morning prayer). When I think of it, I try for a midday and a vespers (evening) but frankly, my track record isn't so good, especially for midday.

But night? Not even the nuns at the monastery I'm attached to get up and say prayers together in the middle of the night--and they are perpetual adoration sisters, meaning, they don't go to jobs outside the monastery during the day, but instead their work is prayer and keeping the monastery going. Semi-cloistered. Anyway, I figure if they don't get up...

Now, of course, I do get up. I'm 4 weeks into this little guy's life and nursing career, which means night feedings. And, as opposed to the girls, he sometimes likes to stay up between 3 and 5. Early on, I'd watch Law & Order on Netflix. Sometimes I'd read--I just finished Going Nucular by Geoffrey Nunberg and have just started Verbatim by Erin McKean. But I'm finding that turning on a light is like inviting Leo to play. Or at least fuss.

So maybe I can pray in the dark a bit. I don't know the breviary by heart, though, and therefore couldn't manage, really, to follow this exactly as written. there's a little caveat in chapter 18 that I love, that sort of sums up the rule's gentleness and flexibility for me: if this distribution of the Psalms is displeasing to anyone, she should arrange them otherwise, in whatever way she considers better.

Perhaps in this situation, I'm fine doing as I please. I've been here before. I'll be here a long time. And then, I probably won't ever be here again.

Indoctrination

Maeve has been indoctrinated. Mike received Batman: The Animated Series (volumes one and two) for Christmas--these are the cartoons from the 90's that we used to watch in the dorm. Maeve and he sat down at some point in mid-January and started watching them. Now she knows not only episode plots and characters, but back stories, secret identities, pet names, vehicles, current locations of the bad guys, and what the bad guys claim as specialties (Cat Woman steals things, but isn't interested in brainwashing the whole city, for instance).

She's totally hooked.

And now Leo. Already, he's starting on Leo. Not with Batman--I think that will happen regardless--but with jazz. I'll get on the computer and youtube will be an open tab with a Dave Brubeck clip, for instance. Mike's not watching these for himself. He's holding Leo on his lap, while I do essential things like shower and eat, and making him listen to it. That's all fine and good. But I'm not going to let that be all.

Today while I nurse him a bit, let him snooze on a pillow on my lap, I've got seeqpod up. My playlist this morning? Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Tori Amos. Led Zeppelin, Fatboy Slim. Figure that together, we'll either screw him up good or make him nice and well-rounded.

Rearranging Furniture In My Head

I'm not a good sleeper. I stay asleep, for the most part, but I don't get to sleep easily at all. My grandmother used to say it was because I had nose trouble--meaning, I thought I'd miss something. But that only counts if there are other people still awake in the house. I am almost always--I'd say 350 days out of the year--the last person awake in my house. So it's not nose trouble. It's head trouble.

I think a lot, worry some, plan some. Make mental lists that I forget by morning. So many nights, I do things to keep from thinking. I play alphabet games, or math games. I count. I think of birds that start with the letter J. Shit like that.

Lately, the last week or so, I've been rearranging the furniture. I'm trying to figure out what to do with our living room, with the attic, with the dining room. So, just like I'm playing the Sims, I take furniture out of this room, stick it in that one. Think about how that might look. How it would fit. I've got a pretty good spatial eye (for a girl, my father would say) and I don't think I over or underestimate sizes.

So I think I'm going to put the dining room table on the diagonal. Remove the old vestment cabinet from one wall. Or maybe not--there's a church pew in that room, too, might as well keep it liturgical. The living room rocking chair has got to go, and Sophia has dibs on it for the attic. Or maybe the guest room. There's a hope chest waiting at my parents' house for Sophia--but no way am I putting a handmade walnut chest in the attic for Sophia, Maeve, and their friends to play hide and seek in. So, where?

That's been the last week.

I need a new game. Or a clearance from my doctor so I can start moving the furniture for real.

Apparently

Mary Helen (mother-in-law) was in this weekend to see us and Mike's brothers. She brought more diapers (we use cloth and have fallen in love with (gotten spoiled by) all-in-ones, which are essentially disposables that you wash--no wraps, no covers, no pins, etc) and also a little plaque with a quote on it from Mark Twain that summed up not only the last few weeks but actually most of our life:

Apparently there is nothing that cannot happen today

It could be our family motto.

Hallucinations, Anyone?

I went to bed early tonight. Not to sleep, mind you, but to bed. I took Mike's laptop and went to lie down in my wonderful bed. How you learn to appreciate the simple things.

Mike brought Leo up to change his diaper and hand him over to me for a little while to try to get him to nurse a bit, maybe start on a night's sleep. He took the sleeper off him (damp) and went into the next room to get a change of clothes. Coming back in, he mentioned to me, casually: "Have you noticed the mole he has on his arm?"

I hadn't. I didn't believe him, but then he turned Leo's right wrist over and there it was, a small brown mole, slightly raised but not alarming looking. Surely, I thought, it's some kind of dirt or food one of the girls got on him. Or from our big day out and about. Something. But there it was. Huh. A mole.

Concerned because I hadn't noticed it before, I called my parents. Mentioned the mole--should I worry? My father, as usual, told me some equivalent of "how the hell should I know?" Ah well. Then my mother got on the phone and talked about how Bevin had a mole at birth and it struck her as odd, but the pediatrician wasn't worried. She asked me to describe it.

So I pulled Leo's sleeve up. No mole. Wait, I thought, maybe it was the other side. No mole. I took off the sleeper--had I only thought the arm, but really it was on his leg? No friggin mole anywhere.

"This is the strangest conversation," my mom observed while I hunted for the missing mole. It was gone. Dirt? I don't know.

Mike came back upstairs a little while later and I pointed out the change of circumstances. He accused me of switching babies on him.

"Maybe it's time for another bath for this kid," I suggested. "And maybe some sleep for the two of us."

Feis for Valentine's Day

Sophia competed in her first feis (Irish dance competition) as an Advanced Beginner, the first group you have to place out of to move into the next level (Beginners and "first feis" age out of their groups). The last feis she attended, she was in a group of 6 and came in 5th in one dance and 4th in another. This time, she was in a group of 12, and I don't know where she placed--the folks who ran it only listed the top 4 on the results page. Somewhere below the top four, which is what we all expected considering her relative expertise and practice time.

But what was interesting to me was that she was just fine. No disappointment at all. I had told her she was in a group of 12 and that many of the girls had been dancing a full year (or more) longer than she had. I explained that this category, she would stay in until she came in first, second, or third in a given dance. She knew this--the neighbor down the street attends the same school she does, and has been an Advanced Beginner for a whole year already.

The only thing that bothered her was that they only listed the top 4--she wanted to know if she was, say, 7th, or 12th. It might have made a difference to her if so, but somehow I doubt it. I think she just likes putting on the outfit and curling the hair. Showing up and dancing. Which is why we're doing shows this spring (no competition, just dancing as a school).

What strikes me about this laid back (clueless? lackadaisical? dreamy?) response is that not very long ago, this was the girl who would not compete, even in a game of checkers or junior monopoly. "I don't play 'winning' games," she would tell her friends or their moms. She likes cooperative play. A feis is all about "winning" games. Maybe she just tunes it out.

I'm glad of that, let me tell you. I've watched girls throw tantrums or act like beauty pageant winners. Not cool. At age 7, better to be clueless and happy.

Laughs

Last night, Leo would not lie down to sleep. This was ok--I was at that sort of learned helplessness state where it didn't matter what happened anymore, I was so tired it was never going to be ok. I'm over it, by the way, he did eventually calm down.

Sitting on the bed, holding him post-nursing, his eyes closed, he started doing that newborn test pattern thing where they go through all the facial expressions they know how to do--tight little mouth, smile, grumpy sad, and so on. I love watching this because it doesn't last and it is so newborn.

And then his face broke out in a wide smile and he laughed in his sleep.

And I'm not so post-partum anymore that I burst into tears or anything, which I might have done with Sophia if she'd pulled that kind of cute sweetness. I just smiled and tried to relax my shoulders a bit, ride it out until he got tired enough or old enough to sleep lying down.

Not Thirty-four: Forty-three

I may be focused on the number 34 lately. Maybe this is another reason why...

Maeve had her quick dinner. I hung out in the kitchen with her, helping her finish her valentines.

I took down one of our manhattan glasses. Well, I call them manhattan glasses because that's what my dad drinks out of them. I guess they're technically old fashioneds or on-the-rocks? Don't know why I care about that precision.

It's a lovely glass, very thin at the rim, heavy on the bottom, a light blue tinge with a sunburst design on the base. We had a set from our wedding but the thin rims chip easily and this is the only one I have left.

Eight ice cubes.

A bit of water.

Wished I had some half and half that wasn't expired (decided not to even try the stuff I found in the fridge). Thought about squeezing an orange or some lemon juice or maybe opening one of the drink box lemonades that our school director sneeringly wrote about in the latest newsletter: please don't send drinks with your child's lunch, we provide soy milk, 2%, and water...well, I'm going to keep sending them because damn it, Sophia doesn't eat her weight in empty calories or bring Jack in the Box like some of those kids--she can have a lemonade in her lunch...

I sighed and decided it was best on its own anyway.

Liquor 43 smells like vanilla citrus and tastes like alcoholic candy. Thought about the first time I had it, thanks to my aunt Gracemarie; about how happy I was to find it at a liquor store a few years later; about downing about half a bottle after a Worship Commission meeting one time (I had help). About how long it's been since I've had anything alcoholic. I'm off the narcotics. I'm pretty much healed up. And today? Today was a hell of a day. It was time to break fast.

I'm savoring it.

Bridgett Wonders If There Could Be A Better Way

Short version for those who skim (Ann): Maeve is fine. EEG seemed fine--a neurologist will have to interpret it officially, but the tech seemed to think all was well. We'll get the results soon--they're sending them to our pediatrician as well as the neurologist.

Longer version:
Bevin went with me, which was awesome because our first stop was at admitting/registration. Remember our ER trip? Remember how our insurance company supposedly didn't have Maeve listed? And how that wasn't really so and Blue Cross totally knew she was there? Ok, second verse, same as the first.

The registrar called a woman in billing--the same woman I left messages with the morning post-ER but had an underling call me back who obviously didn't do her job. She talked to me about our situation. Some gems from our conversation:

"This isn't something you can get done today." --Billing

"Like hell I'm going home, I've had my 4 year old up since 5 in the morning to take this test. You knew we were coming. If there was a problem, you should have called us." --Me

"Well, I understand. You're caught in the middle between your HR department and the insurance company." --Billing

"Blue Cross Blue Shield sends us EOBs about Maeve. One from last October." --Me

"You could put a down payment on the EEG today, and then have Blue Cross reimburse you." --Billing (my favorite suggestion from the conversation)

"I can't call Blue Cross. Your HR department has to." --Billing

"Ok, well, it isn't Cardinal Glennon's fault." --Billing

"I understand. Is there any way we can fix this?" --Me, realizing that I had her attention and it was time to negotiate.

"I'm going to write her down as approved for today only. And I will call your HR department and figure out what's going on." --Billing

So we went on to the EEG lab and went back to the room--a technician drew on her head and attached electrodes. Maeve fell asleep within 2 minutes of the lights turning off. And...that was it. They flashed strobe lights in her face after she woke up, and then took the electrodes off, which was the most traumatic part because they taped the electrodes down. To her hair. Couldn't there be a better way?

But the best part was during the lights-out phase. The woman from billing came down to the room. She'd called Blue Cross (even though she said she couldn't...). Maeve was, of course, on our insurance. We had a $9.07 co-pay for EEGs (huh?) but she told me not to worry about it for now. No shit. Then she told me that we'd still get a bill from the ER visit--I was right, they hadn't followed through on our first information that day after--but that I should call her when I got home and she'd give me the super-secret phone number to get that bill removed from our account.

And I thought again, couldn't there be a better way? When BCBS looks like it's denying coverage, it's obviously not hard for a phone call to come from an official source (and that's what BCBS told our HR department to have Cardinal Glennon do--CALL THEM for approval). The mysterious "you talk to your people who will talk to my people" method isn't working.

So my thought? If the EEG results are negative and are to my pediatrician before the 20th, I'm not taking Maeve to the MRI that day. I'm not having this conversation with the hospital yet again. And I'm not seeing their pediatric neurologist either. I've had three recommendations from other parents. I'll do a follow up with someone else if the EEG results are back in time and they are negative.

Now, if they're positive, I'll go ahead with the MRI and the follow up at Glennon. But I see that as a pretty big if at this point.

Maeve slept all afternoon after a stop on the way home for ice cream. She woke about a half hour ago and took a bath--I'm going downstairs to find her something more substantial to eat here in a second.

I feel like I can press the pause button to put us back into play again.

What I Want

Tomorrow is Maeve's sleep-deprived EEG. Mike is downstairs with her right now watching the Batman cartoons from the 1990s--her favorites. I'm upstairs, supposed to be asleep because I take the morning shift. Like that's going to happen (the sleeping). She has to be up at 5 a.m. and kept awake until the appointment. Which is at 10. Think of me (and her) tomorrow morning. At least the drive to the hospital is about 5 minutes long. Not really long enough to really fall asleep. I think we'll make cookies after taking Sophia to school. Take a walk if the weather doesn't suck. Play mancala game after mancala game.

What do I want? I want, obviously, for the EEG to be as inconclusive as my two were in 1999. I want the technician to say to me off-handedly afterward that nothing seemed amiss. Like the technician said to me in 1999 with the caveat that the neurologist would have to say for sure ("But nothing showed up," he shrugged).

More than that, I want this pediatric neurologist to have more to say than the on-call neurologist in the ER did. Unfortunately, I have to sit on my hands until April 1 when we see her. In the ER, the neurologist shrugged a lot. The young DO resident mentioned febrile seizures without fever coming first, but the neurologist said it was all a mystery until the EEG and MRI. She gave me nothing to go on.

The phone call to Neurology later that evening gave me something to cling to, but I want to take that resident to coffee and have him explain it all to me. My neighbor the physical therapist told me how relieved she was when she read my email that Maeve had spiked a fever. My dad blew it off when my mom told him. Oh sure, fever hits the brain first. The friends with children who have had them have mentioned that they sometimes didn't notice the fever until after the seizure--but 3 hours after?

I really need someone to hand me a medical textbook with proof. I guess I've been in Missouri (the show-me state) too long. I am going to hold my breath for the rest of my life together with Maeve without proof.

Then again, maybe I won't. Maybe it will be enough to just not know--to have the carrot of febrile seizures held in front of me and the stick of genetics and doom behind me. Maybe it will be enough to just hear that pediatric neurologist say probably. Because that's probably the answer, unless Maeve runs out and gets another fever to test the theory--only 30% of children who have a febrile seizure ever have another, and hers are so late-onset that it's unlikely. It will probably remain a probable mystery. Unless she has one unprovoked.

All I know for sure is that 2 weeks ago, I thought I was going to show up at the ER after the ambulance and find that she'd slipped into a coma. I thought she was dying. It's been 2 weeks of no repeat (the second milestone I was given by the lackadaisical neurologist in the ER) and I'm feeling stronger about our chances. Which makes me want to run, run, run from this EEG tomorrow. Don't try to induce a seizure in my child to prove the worst case scenario to me. Leave me with the hope that it's benign.

What I want is to be able to stand inside her childhood again instead of viewing it through a window.

Adulthood

I've been thinking a lot lately about the number 34, which is how old I am for another 8 months or so. It is twice 17, which was a pivotal year for me--I graduated from high school, got my license, got deeply involved in a relationship, went 900 miles away from home to go to college, held my first job. It's hard to imagine that as long as I had lived up until that point, I have lived since that point.

Things are easier now. I don't screw up as much. Stability really is the name of the game at 34 (for me, at least) as opposed to the rocky 17. There isn't much room for drastic sweeping changes in my life like there was at 17--and I don't really want drastic sweeping changes anyway, although I did back then.

Mike's birthday was a couple weeks ago. His brothers and their girlfriends came over the next night (remember, his actual birthday was spent in Cardinal Glennon's ER) and his mom made dinner. My sister Bevin was even over, doing laundry and hanging out. We were enjoying turtle cake (Sophia's favorite) and vanilla ice cream when the phone rang.

It was Glennon's billing department, because our insurance was all wacky when we were in the ER the night before, and Mike's HR department (funny to say "department", since it's one person) had to fix it the next day. Many messages were left with a Tonya in the billing department, but they weren't returned. Turns out, this woman, whatever her name was, was the person we should have been talking to, not Tonya. Whatever. I handed the phone to Mike and he started spouting insurance-ese into the phone.

From the dining room, Pete's girlfriend Kaylen (I think it was Kaylen and not Mary, but I could be wrong) mentioned that she didn't know anything about what Mike was talking about and that all that kind of intimidated her. Bevin agreed that it wasn't that long ago that she knew nothing. It was so foreign and part of a different world. Kaylen has a year and a half left at SLU, but she will be part of that world soon enough.

I remember knowing nothing. I remember when that used to be true. When I was too shy to call for Chinese food, much less argue with the phone company or insurance company or internet service provider. I recall easier days when my tuition problems were solved by my father, for instance. When planning for retirement wasn't a tangle of headaches and worry. When I didn't have to figure out the right questions to ask the doctor to get the answers I needed instead of just shrugs or maybes.

But at some point, I learned them. Some happened when I got married. Others crept up on me when Sophia was born. Or when she started preschool. I'm pretty competent at adulthood now, and although new details arise (like febrile seizures, for instance, or charter school lotteries), it's all pretty much the same--negotiating one's way through modern life with wisdom and enough cunning to not show one's hand too early. It is tiresome, I thought when Kaylen said that, arguing a Explanation of Benefits or finding cheaper ways to get vaccinations or discovering why, in fact, the MSD bill is late every time.

But it's a hell of a lot easier than 17.

Quick One-Handed Post About Nursing

Greens are now yellow (all this obsession over poop). Staying on one side for 4 hours seems to have helped. I'm still going to watch and wait before I do anything about my milk consumption, which isn't huge anyway--as a family we go through a gallon and a half in two weeks. Cheese is another question....

But the big news? Last night Leo slept from 11 until 3:30, and then 4:30 until 6:45. I feel like a different person. Of course, tonight we have to sleep-deprive Maeve for her EEG, so that will probably ruin it. Ok, maybe not ruin--but it won't help.

A Good Thing About Newborns

A good thing about newborns is that there is always something to do. There is no long dull afternoon. There are no moments to fill. Nothing. Time slips through your fingers. Suddenly you realize you haven't finished that project...you have to pick up the kids...laundry can no longer wait. I get to blog only because I can type one-handed while nursing. Otherwise, there would be no way I could indulge this compulsion, not with naps I have to take and beds I have to make and errands here and dishes there (would you could you in a box? Would you could you with a fox?).

I am very very tired.

In fact, Mike is home a few minutes early and it's time he held this baby--he didn't wake up 5 times last night, for instance.

But that's beside the point. The point is that I will not run out of things that need to be done (or that I want to do) for many, many weeks.

Mary's tornado

So after my post about tornado alley, Mary sent me an email with links to photos from the tornado that destroyed her grade school. Here are some links and her notes:

Fascinating NOAA site where they take apart bad weather and try to figure out how they could have predicted it better. My two favorite parts (being only slightly macabre) is the section on victims where they take the time to humanize them ("She had just been married on Saturday, May 10th"), and the fact the Dr. Fujita himself came to town afterwards to do an assessment. It was an F3 until it hit my school.

This was our gym. It's upside down in this picture. The near roof behind is the defunct high school, and the far roof is the church, which only had roof damage. The stained glass windows somehow made it through intact.

This is a color picture of the upside-down gym. In the back of it to the right you can see what's left of the school. (For perspective, the church is now far to the left and not visible. The building you see to the left is the defunct high school, which survived and became the new elementary school. The old elementary school became a playground.)

Fresh out of the 70's, but not yet part of the go-go 80's, Kalamazoo people wander the streets wishing they lived in a city with a nicer downtown so there'd be something to loot.

Caffeinated

Not overly so. Just enough.

Last night I sat up for just a moment before forcing myself to sleep and I read the short section on food allergies in the Breastfeeding Answer Book. It's a LLL publication that is really quite good--any average mother's breastfeeding questions can be answered there (and pretty much anything else can be answered by Hale's Medications and Mothers' Milk). Leo's been spitting up a bit, and neither of the girls did, like, ever. That combined with consistently green stools, and I was starting to think maybe something was going on.

Sophia had a milk protein allergy that lasted most of the first year, but she had different symptoms (gas, diarrhea, and a diaper rash from hell). I cut milk out, of all sorts, and she was better about 2 weeks later.

Maeve, of course, the easiest baby in the world, had nothing going on of that sort. I remember she had one green diaper. One. No spit up, rare diaper rash (and it was always my fault, no mystery there).

Well, I read through the section and I'm not convinced--green stools are a minor symptom, and his spitting up is all still milk, nothing is digested at all. I think he's spitting up because he gulps. I can hear the desperate swallows at the beginning of every feeding when milk lets down. Poor thing. And so I think we might have a bit of foremilk/hindmilk imbalance, which is no big deal and I can fix it easily if that's the trouble. So I'm going to give that a try before I drastically switch my diet.

Anyway, this is a long introduction to the point. In that same section was caffeine. Fussy baby? What sort of caffeine intake does mom have? That's one of the first questions to ask once it's established that basic problems are not going on. Babies can become over-stimulated quickly. Caffeine is actually the most likely culprit of breastmilk problems in the average mom-baby couple. And there were a couple of interesting facts.

The half-life of caffeine in an adult system is 5 hours. For newborns, it is 96 hours. That's a long time to hang out in your system. But only about 5% of mother's caffeine load passes into breastmilk. So that's not so bad. And the author estimated it would take about 5 cups of coffee a day to start causing a problem. Five cups. A year and a half ago, that would have been a problem. But I've cut way down since then.

So I picked Maeve up from school (after my hour and a half nap this morning) and we went to Starbucks. I prefer a couple of local coffee places, even St. Louis Bread Company, to Starbucks, but they have a drive-through. I got an iced tall nonfat vanilla latte.

It's working.

Blur

The girls just left for school--my mom is taking them a couple of mornings this week to give me a break. Mike went back to work (after staying up until after 3 in the morning working on work). Leo gave me, oh, a little sleep--probably about 6 hours but non-contiguous and with a big fat break around 3:30 in the morning. Still, though, better than the night before. A little bit at the beginning/a little more later on.

This morning was a total blur. Girls up and out of the house, fed, lunched, dressed. At least it's supposed to be 65 today and they didn't have to be completely bundled up to go. And I put Leo in the sling and cleaned the kitchen and living room while they got ready. The living room is what bugs me--if it's clean, I can handle the day better. That and the kitchen sink. I didn't polish it, but it's empty and clean (yes, I polish my sink--weird, considering the general state of the rest of my house--I just like knowing the sink is very, very clean).

He's asleep on my chest in the sling. I'm going to go sit in the rocking chair in the living room, eat breakfast, and snooze.

Tornado Alley

You grow up some place, you don't think too much about risk. Like Mali down in New Zealand and the earthquakes, I remember her writing about. It seems like part of life. Here, we get an earthquake every 20 years or so, I guess, but they are rare enough to freak me out. But tornadoes? They just don't scare me too much. We have a siren a half block from our house, I have a weather radio, we have a basement. It's like that passage in The Haunting of Hill House: this house has stood for a hundred years; it will probably stand a hundred more. Likewise, I don't worry about floods even though the Mississippi River is within biking distance of my house. We live so far above flood stage, almost the whole city would be underwater before we'd notice.

Then today in the Post-Dispatch, our local paper, they ran a story about the last devastating tornado to hit St. Louis City--fifty years ago today. And the outside circumstances sound familiar to this week's weather forecast: temperatures up and down, high hitting at midnight, crashing into the 30s in the afternoon. February isn't tornado season--June is, for instance--but this one hit and hit hard. Twenty-one people died, and more stunning are the photos from the paper's archives of houses.

Houses identical to mine. Two and a half story whatever-these-are (foursquares? Queen Anne Revivals? I've heard them called several things--basically, they are houses that look like little kid drawings of houses with door and window downstairs, two windows upstairs, and a third story dormer). Houses that were only 50 years old and came crashing down on themselves, crushing the occupants.

I'd already heard about this tornado from my parents--it tore down a local TV antenna (crashing into apartment buildings), it ripped a hole in the Arena roof and twisted the Highlands' Ferris Wheel. But I guess I hadn't thought about the residential areas--neither of my parents' sets of parents were the type to go rubbernecking through black neighborhoods afterward, so they didn't see what happened to Delmar.

It makes Delmar make more sense, the huge expanses of empty lots, the blocks with only two houses left on them.

The worst hit house looks like just a roof sitting at sidewalk level, the rest of the house pulverized beneath it. A rooming house. My house was a rooming house in 1959. Huh.

My friend Mary ("the other mary" in the comments) lost her grade school to a tornado growing up. Even though I lived here on the edge of Tornado Alley, I never lost anything to a storm. I saw a funnel cloud when I was living in Columbia, Missouri, but never here. I always figured that the heat island effect of city geography would protect us somehow. A major tornado hasn't hit the city since 1967, after all. But those pictures made me pause. Thinking back to the straight line winds that cut up all our trees two and a half years ago. And the mini tornado that swept down South Grand that same year...while I stood in Janine's doorway hoping I wouldn't be sucked away. That one hit without siren warning.

My healthy respect has been renewed.

Really Making It

Post script: Yesterday was warm as well, and I got to sit out on the stoop. Talked about the cookie sale situation a bit. Talked about kids. Talked about...I can't even recall. It was wonderful. I can't hardly wait for spring to be here for real.

Making It

Took a preemptive nap this afternoon after our walk at Tilles Park. We are sadly limping along on our Saint Louis County 30/30 program. We've done, I think, 4 of the 30 walks (under 30 minutes, thus 30/30) the parks department have highlighted for this pro-walking program. If we finish all 30, we each get a patch, which, as a girl scout leader, you know is an incentive for me, at least. The Tilles Park walk is only a mile, with only one gradual hill, so it was a good first step out into the world for me--I was cleared for light activity on Thursday. But still, I got home and took ibuprofen.

It was in the mid-60s today, which is a typical St. Louis pattern, a sudden warm spell after a cold January. We couldn't stay inside, no way, since the other typical St. Louis pattern is a bitterly cold snowy March.


We stopped halfway on the walk so the girls could play on a playground for a minute. There was a little altercation where a young lad pointed at Maeve and said to his older brother, "Look at the baby in the middle."

"I'm not a baby, I'm four," Maeve said in her best Ramona impression ever. I don't know what the boy said to her after that, but she replied with dark nasty looks. Mike and I shook our heads, looking at the five year old.

"I think she could take him," Mike pointed out. "In his khakis and..."

"His sweater," we both said with contempt. Who dresses their five year old like a frat boy and then take him to a playground on a snowmelt day in February?



We finished the walk, but first, Mike spotted a red-tailed hawk in one of the big trees above us. I caught him just as he took off.

Quickly Losing His Standing

First week and a half? Easiest baby of the three.

Last 5 days? Not so much anymore. Maeve takes her place back as easiest.

He's nursing well, but killing me on the right side even with all the correction I've done to his latch on. And sleep? Typical day and night mix up, but worse than that, he won't lie down and sleep. We gave in and brought the car seat inside. He likes sitting up to sleep a bit better (I think he has a teeny bit of reflux, nothing to worry about, but this seems to help the air come up without the milk).

So now my days and nights are upside down, which is fine while Mike is home, but he goes back to work Monday. I expect next week will be one big blur. Can't wait.

Linger On, Your Pale Blue Eyes

I have blue eyes, with a bit of yellow around the pupil in the summertime, a little more dull gray in the winter. Mike has blue, a little towards the green. Sophia's are crystal blue; Maeve's are like mine without the yellow. Don't know what Leo's will be like yet--he's still newborn dark gray--but they will, of course, be some version of blue. Blue is recessive and that means there's no hidden depths behind Mike's and my blue eyes, as opposed to both our brown eyed mothers who had all these blue eyed kids.

Ann came over earlier this week to chat and distract, and she mentioned something she'd heard or read recently--that all blue eyed people, all over the world, are descended from a single ancestor. Sometime between 6 and 10 thousand years ago, a mutation occurred in the all-brown eyed world population, switching off the ability to make eyes brown. According to an article I read as follow-up, scientists tested mitochondrial DNA in blue eyed folks all over the place, and found that all of us have the same switch in the same spot to turn brown eyes "off", as opposed to brown and green eyed people, who have a wide variation in where their melanin switches are located, DNA-wise.

Little connections everywhere.

28. Twenty. Eight.

More numbers. But this number doesn't have to do with cookies. Really.

I went to the doctor today for an incision check. All is well; I'm cleared for driving and light housework--but still no heavy lifting or swimming, no boxing. You know. Strenuous activity. Dr. A seemed to think everything was fine. I think so too--I haven't had incision pain in over a week; nothing hurts except my bruised tailbone (and that was from falling, not surgery). I'm getting enough rest, even if it's not at traditional times (night). I don't seem to be manifesting any depression like I did with Sophia (I didn't with Maeve, either, but I was expecting it this time due to the time of year on top of baby blues. So far, so good).

And the best news of all is that I gained a total of 16 pounds with this pregnancy, and today, two weeks out, I have lost all of that plus an additional 12. Twenty-eight. Now, I have about 30 to go to get back to where I was before my thyroid started to fail again last winter. And it's not like my pre-pregnancy jeans are getting any use yet. But after I had Maeve, I weighed in at two weeks THE SAME as the day before I had her. And that pregnancy, I'd gained almost 50 pounds. That was devastating.

This was fabulous. Mostly because I wasn't even trying yet--neighbors are bringing me chocolate chip cookies and yummy dinners and Peggy Stein made me a lemon meringue pie. I have not been careful. That starts soon enough. And now I have a good start. Yay for big babies.

900. Nine. Hundred.

Girl scout cookie sales ended tonight here in St. Louis. I have 16 girls in my troop; 15 sold cookies, which means, my estimate, that the troop should expect sales of, say, 1200 cookies. We get 55 cents per box, so probably around 600 or 700 dollars to the troop--this defrays costs for field trips, badges, supplies for meetings. Last year the troop earned about $500 and we had a nice time. If we get a little more or less, no big deal.

My cookie manager, whom I've known since before our daughters were born, called me last night. We had a problem.

She called to tell me that one of the girls in the troop, I'll call her Cassie, was the problem. What now, I wondered. This troop I run--the girls come from my parish, Sophia's school, and our block, which means I try to balance, not very successfully, 5 different schools, parents from each school, getting communication out in a timely fashion, planning the actual meetings and field trips, and communicating with the mother ship, aka, Girl Scout Council of Eastern Missouri. Last year's cookie sales were not without their problems, although in the end all was well.

Cassie, she told me on the phone, sold about 100 boxes. All fine and good. But her mother decided she deserved the I-Pod, which was one of the incentive prizes for the girls. Now, Sophia looked at that prize list and set her goal reasonably--110. She surpassed it and, on her own, sold over 160. This means she gets a patch,a bandana, a coin purse, and a stuffed elephant. She's thrilled. But you can imagine--if 160 boxes gets you a stuffed animal, it's not likely that 200 or 250 boxes merits an I-Pod. No, you get an I-Pod if you sell a thousand boxes.

So Cassie's mom wrote herself down for 900 boxes of cookies. There. Cassie "earns" an I-Pod and she gets to roof her garage with thin mints.

You know, I don't have an I-Pod at this point, and that's fine because I'm happy with my CDs...so I didn't know for sure until I did a quick search...Target seems to sell them for between $50 and $400. I don't know what a $50 I-Pod can do, versus one that costs 8 times as much, but the way I figure, Cassie's mom could go to Target and buy her daughter one of those expensive ones, and each of the other 15 girls in the troop one of the cheap ones, and still spend about a third of what she will owe for 900 boxes of cookies.

Really.

So I called Council, and a very reasonable person there, the cookie guru, told me that the troop is responsible for the funds--they won't go after Cassie, but after all of us. She suggested I put Cassie down for, say, 250 boxes (a number that the troop could handle at a booth sale if need be), and if she came through with the money, let her have 250 more, until she finally earns all 1000 (100 legit and 900 crazy). Sounded reasonable to me, frankly (we can pick up an infinite number of boxes, it seems, after the sale itself).

Cookie manager called Cassie's mom, who wasn't keen on this plan. In fact, she went a little apeshit on the phone. She could handle it. She could sell that many--she used to be a leader, she knew how. She wanted all 1000 at one time. My cookie manager thinks she's going to go ahead and cave, and really, I can't blame her. Council put a red flag on our troop, whatever that means, and I guess we hold our collective breath until the cookies get here.

I envision myself in small claims court with a bunch of cute little girls earning a citizenship badge while we sue for $3500. The alternative is that we divide up the unsold boxes--about 60 boxes apiece, assuming she can't pay for any of the 900, which seems unlikely, frankly. Still, I'm bracing myself.

Or maybe it will work out and she'll earn our troop $550 on top of the $600 or so the other girls will probably bring in. What we will DO with a thousand dollars, I don't know yet....but I'm not going to burn that bridge till I come to it. I feel I've done what I can--alerted Council, gave my cookie manager alternatives, and tomorrow I will call her and see what she decided to do.

Ups nd Downs

I woke up this morning feeling pretty up. Leo slept well and the little breastfeeding problem (clenching) had been resolved. Mike took the girls to school and Leo nursed and went back to sleep for a few minutes.

Then the look on Mike's face. Instant down. The preschool teacher had told him that on Friday...she didn't want to alarm anyone so she didn't mention it till now...Maeve kept sticking out her tongue. Never done that before. Now, that was one of the weird things she did on Wednesday as I was calling 911. So of course, immediately upon hearing this, all the other evidence supporting febrile seizures went out the window. Plummeting 2 stories and crashing into smithereens on the gangway.

It didn't matter that Maeve had been totally coherent during this, if perhaps a little subdued. Mike didn't have any other information. I would have to wait until I went to pick up Maeve at the end of the day.

Time slowed to a standstill.

Finally, I left 20 minutes early to go pick her up, hoping to talk to her teacher. Got there, and she was very happy to talk to me. Maeve hadn't continuously thrust her tongue out. She just stuck it out a lot and left it there. I called Maeve over and asked her about her tongue. She showed me, and right on the tip was a tiny little sore spot. I figure she bit it when I was trying to do a finger-sweep, thinking she was choking on something. It hurt, so she kept sticking it out. I told the teacher more details about the incident and we both felt better. Crisis averted. Back to the febrile theory with, really, strong evidence supporting it the whole time. Back up.

I pulled Sophia from school early so that we could go over to Renee McMahon's studio to take Leo's pictures. We did this when Maeve was born and they were just beautiful. We also took pictures in the park Summer 2007 with my brother and his family--she is really good at her job and very patient with newborn clients. Girls found the clothes they were supposed to wear and I got everyone's hair reasonably arranged. We were packing up to go and I asked Mike to run up and get my wedding ring. He couldn't find it. I went up. It wasn't there.

There wasn't time to destroy the house looking for it. We had to go. I retraced my steps in my mind--when was the last time I wore it? Probably Christmas, I figured, because after that, my hands got a little puffy and it was uncomfortable. So, it could be in a suitcase. Or the cosmetic case. Or the camera bag. Or...it was a major down.

While I was thinking of that, I realized Maeve had fallen asleep rather quickly in the car. It's only a 20 minute trip and she was out pretty fast. So I immediately began to worry, shaking her ankle, asking her where she was, who I was, and so on. She answered questions fine but at this point, I don't know what normal sleepy Monday Maeve looks like anymore. I know that she's a big sleeper and instantaneous and likes her sleep...but was that what was going on? About 4 blocks from Renee's I turned and told Mike that my life was really starting to suck lately. This made us laugh, but it was still very much down.

Then we got her out of her car seat and she was able to put weight on her legs, no problem. Renee's dog and a neighbor's dog, both tiny and reasonable as dogs go, ran up to greet us. Maeve went after them with typical gusto, trying to pet all of each dog at once. She would have tackled (and crushed) them if we hadn't stopped her. I looked at Mike. "It was just a damned nap," I said, shaking my head. So that was the beginning of an incline, at least.

The photo session went well. The girls were adorable, although they got bored during the Leo moments and Mike had to corral them. We got about 7/8 of the photos she wanted to take, and when I go to pick up the proofs next week, without girls, she's going to finish with Leo (hopefully sleepier). So that was positive. We got a late lunch on the way home and Maeve didn't fall asleep or do anything weird.

Neighbors came over to visit briefly, and then the girls cleaned their room and changed sheets on the beds. This always is an up for me, although surely they don't share my opinion. Too bad. I was tired then and went upstairs with Leo to nurse him and try to take a nap (or perhaps a very early start to a night's sleep). He nursed well, it still didn't hurt (major up). Mike came in and told me my wedding ring wasn't in any suitcase or bag we'd taken to his mom's house for Christmas.

This reminded me, oh yeah, I lost my wedding ring. I'd been praying half-heartedly to St. Anthony when I thought about it this afternoon. I was still dumbfounded at losing it. Twelve and a half years and I've never misplaced it, even if its location seemed daft to those around me (it sits in an Irish coffee glass on my kitchen windowsill when I wash dishes, and there have been many times that it sat there patiently for days. Weeks, even). It is not an expensive ring--very thin, white gold, a dark blue topaz instead of a diamond. It did not, hate to disappoint deBeers, cost Mike 6 months salary or whatever the recommendation (marketing campaign) is these days. But it's my wedding ring. I don't have to explain that, I'm sure.

I asked Mike to bring me the camera bag, and when he did, I quickly unzipped the front pocket. There it was, with the necklace I'd worn down to Cairo Christmas Day. I was so happy (and so verklempt about the whole day) I started to cry. Leo was done nursing and mike suggested maybe he'd hold him a while and let me nap. Big up.

I woke up 3 hours later feeling much more clear-headed. The girls were already asleep in their beds upstairs, had a story, all was well. Leo was ready to eat again; I called Ann and chatted with her and then had a piece of cheesecake.

In the end, up. Not particularly down. Leo is now asleep on my lap. Mike is getting whatever it is Maeve had last week which is a major bummer but he'll survive--he's staying home this week as one last ease into normal life.

But I'm starting to feel like Colonel Mustard at the end of Clue (the movie with Tim Curry). He's standing under the chandelier, which is coming undone at the ceiling, twisting, about to crash, and he says, "I just can't take any more scares!" And of course the chandelier crashes to the floor right behind him.

Twelve Days Old

Cairo's Ice Storm

A few photos from the ice storm that hit my in-laws' hometown--Cairo, Illinois--this week. We got snow, like 6 or 7 inches of snow. They got 1 1/2 to 2 inches of ice. Really. So if you're reading me in Melbourne...maybe this will cool you off.

This is the view from in front of Mike's parents place, looking down a side street. I think. It's kind of hard to recognize it (and I'm not from there--I'm sure Mike can correct me)

Facing Mike's parents' house, really the side yard between their house and the place next door. There's a maple tree all the way down on the back porch, the huge magnolia has dropped limbs and the poplar (tulip) tree in the front has shed as well.

This is Mike's mom's childhood home--his grandparents are both deceased and the house belongs to someone else now. There are two ancient gingko trees in the tree lawn in front--this is the younger of the two.

Mike's parents' house is just off-screen--the yard begins near that yellow pedestrian crossing sign in the lower right hand corner. The point, of course, is the pine tree. It didn't look like that at Christmas...neither did that tall sycamore with the missing crown.