Saturday, August 29, 2009
OW
I was standing behind Barak in the kitchen this afternoon, barefoot, watching him do a puzzle, when he shifted his chair slightly and one of the feet of the chair (is the bottom of a chair leg a foot?) landed smack on the base of my second-to-smallest toe. I heard a weird little crunch, which might have been, um, my toe breaking. It's been about five or six hours. It looks fine, just a little puffy; it hurts, but I can walk on it. Nothing I can do about it anyway, broken or not--but tomorrow I need to walk two miles thisaway for Barak's lice check and then two more miles thataway for him to meet his rebbe and then almost a mile home. MHH is working so there's nobody to do it for me; if he doesn't go to lice check he doesn't start school, and although I guess he could technically miss "meet your rebbe, see your classroom" he's really looking forward to it. Wonder if I can get someone else to check his hair for me...
Friday, August 28, 2009
Many and various
1. First off, the tzitzis party. It was a blast. Venue, of course, was the Doughnut Store, the kosher doughnut-and-other-junk place that we make a point of never ever going to, because, well, slippery slope and all. The only time we EVER go there with kids is when we are on our way to the airport, because they're open really early. Otherwise, just tzitzis parties, of which this is Party the Second. The only problem of course was that their doughnuts are milchig, so I had to stop by at the bakery in the morning to pick up doughnuts for Iyyar. I got two, and it was a good thing; I got a dozen chocolate-frosted doughnuts for the members of our party (three adults and eight kids) and since none of the adults had and the two babies didn't really either, most of the kids ended up having two, so Iyyar of course wanted a second one too. The ones I'd bought looked exactly like the ones we got there, so much so that he didn't realize they were different--when he helped himself to a second I just caught him sinking his teeth into a nice milchig one. Clearly he didn't eat any of it, though, because he was fine the next day.
Presents included, of course, the chicken tzitzis. And no, there is absolutely zero religious significance to this; in fact, these may very well be the only pair of chicken tzitzis ever in the history of the world. But Iyyar is into chickens these days, so that's what he wanted, and that's what he got. He also got a toolbox with worker-man hat and safety goggles; Avtalyon's kind of appropriated those.
2. Holy cow, soy is in EVERYTHING. Keeping a totally dairy-free diet is a pain but doable. Weeding out every little bit of soybean oil or soy lecithin is another story entirely. Earlier this week, after lunch, Iyyar got really quiet and climbed into bed with his blankies, as he hasn't done for a couple of weeks; closer inspection of lunchtime ingredients revealed "or soybean oil" halfway down the list of ingredients on the tomato sauce. The only other things he ate were plain pasta and allergen-free rice milk (and a plum, I think) so it's hard to see what else it could have been.
Cooking healthful meals for everyone every day has always been kind of difficult, logistically--I try my best but it's hard when the only way to keep an eye on the baby is to have him in the high chair while I cook, and once in the high chair the baby starts screaming to eat (understandable, but problematic when the food's not cooked yet!) So historically there has been a heavy emphasis on really simple meals (doodles cheese), things I can make at least partially the night before (pizza, carrot pancakes, chicken soup, hummous), and prepared foods (TJ's chicken nuggets, jarred tomato sauce, fish sticks etc.) Now, between Iyyar's diet and MHH's diet (he's been doing the IBS diet, which has really been helping with his own tummy issues) I find myself having to cook pretty much everything from scratch and/or making three different versions of every meal. I can't use prepared, well, anything, and I can't use cheese, and MHH can't eat any meat but white meat, and Barak won't eat any meat but bologna, and only eats about four vegetables, and... oh well, here's the rundown right now:
MHH: Soluble fiber at every meal; no red meat; no dark poultry or poultry skin; no dairy; no high-fat anything, or egg yolks; no fruit or fructose; limited whole grains; all legumes fully cooked and mashed, and vegetables have to be cooked and peeled.
Iyyar: No dairy or soy, but otherwise not too picky
Barak: No cooked vegetables except for carrots and spinach; no meat; nothing with sauce or (here's the kicker) ingredients that are not immediately identifiable upon inspection.
Avtalyon, B"H, will still eat anything. But you see my dilemma? What's left that everyone likes? Oatmeal, fruit, and Rice Chex, that's what. Logically I would say, Barak needs to learn to adjust to new foods--and he has been, somewhat--but it's not fair to him to take away all his favorite dairy things and make him eat a bunch of things he doesn't like when there are plenty of healthy things he does. He's picky but not insanely so, and I just don't feel like making mealtime into a battle right now, especially since he is gradually expanding his repertoire--he'll eat pizza with sauce now, for example, which is a pretty huge development.
Oh, and to make all this more interesting? BOTH IYYAR AND BARAK HAVE PEANUT-FREE CLASSROOMS THIS YEAR. So no peanut butter, and for Barak, possibly no tree nuts as well--we're not sure yet. And he's not supposed to have fleishig lunches either. AND he's supposed to have motzi every day. Seriously, what's left?
Probably what I'll do for Iyyar is send him with a lot of snacks--crackers and hummous and red peppers and a hard-boiled egg, and let him have his sandwich when he comes home at 1. Barak can have PB and crackers for breakfast if he wants. For motzi at school, I'll have to start sending him with bagels and cheese, which he won't eat in sandwich format but will eat separately (whatever!)
The hardest thing is dinner though. Last night, we had:
-peas with lemon-garlic dressing
-scrambled eggs with spinach and garlic
-baked sweet potatoes
-cold leftover noodles from lunch, which Iyyar found in the fridge
-sliced apples, cucumbers and plums
Sounds OK, doesn't it? Barak ate an apple and cucumbers. Iyyar ate leftover noodles. Everything I actually cooked? Avtalyon ate some, and then MHH came home, ate the eggs and un-peeled peas with olive oil, and was sick this morning. EPIC FAIL.
3. Okay, that was way too long of a #2. So I'll stop with #3 (this should have been "long and various" instead of "many and various.") #3 concerns the moderately noteworthy occasion of my entering my third trimester. I'm due the very end of November, which, precedent would indicate, means a reasonable ETA of mid-November. This I am happy and excited about. What I'm worried about is the logistics. Two other guys in MHH's kollel have had new babies in the last year. Neither took more than a couple days off. One had family come in for a few weeks; another has family already in town. We will have neither. Avtalyon was born on a Friday morning; MHH took off Friday and Monday and was back to work on Tuesday. And that was with the best possible timing--if I have a baby midweek he's likely to go back to work the day I get home. Assuming, IY"H, that all goes well and I come home in two days with a healthy baby, which, well, wasn't the case the last two times.
Nearly everyone who helped out in the past is either no longer in town or not available; Ada is in nursing school AND working full-time (don't ask me how she does this, I have no idea), Yehudis has moved across the neighborhood, Racheli is back in Israel and CB is married and in New York. Asnat is back, but has two other jobs and not much flexibility. Grandma E is turning 80 in a few weeks and Savta is teaching, so visits from either are out of the question.
I have no idea what I am going to do here. I am a planner by nature, but on this one I think I'm just going to have to hope for the best.
Presents included, of course, the chicken tzitzis. And no, there is absolutely zero religious significance to this; in fact, these may very well be the only pair of chicken tzitzis ever in the history of the world. But Iyyar is into chickens these days, so that's what he wanted, and that's what he got. He also got a toolbox with worker-man hat and safety goggles; Avtalyon's kind of appropriated those.
2. Holy cow, soy is in EVERYTHING. Keeping a totally dairy-free diet is a pain but doable. Weeding out every little bit of soybean oil or soy lecithin is another story entirely. Earlier this week, after lunch, Iyyar got really quiet and climbed into bed with his blankies, as he hasn't done for a couple of weeks; closer inspection of lunchtime ingredients revealed "or soybean oil" halfway down the list of ingredients on the tomato sauce. The only other things he ate were plain pasta and allergen-free rice milk (and a plum, I think) so it's hard to see what else it could have been.
Cooking healthful meals for everyone every day has always been kind of difficult, logistically--I try my best but it's hard when the only way to keep an eye on the baby is to have him in the high chair while I cook, and once in the high chair the baby starts screaming to eat (understandable, but problematic when the food's not cooked yet!) So historically there has been a heavy emphasis on really simple meals (doodles cheese), things I can make at least partially the night before (pizza, carrot pancakes, chicken soup, hummous), and prepared foods (TJ's chicken nuggets, jarred tomato sauce, fish sticks etc.) Now, between Iyyar's diet and MHH's diet (he's been doing the IBS diet, which has really been helping with his own tummy issues) I find myself having to cook pretty much everything from scratch and/or making three different versions of every meal. I can't use prepared, well, anything, and I can't use cheese, and MHH can't eat any meat but white meat, and Barak won't eat any meat but bologna, and only eats about four vegetables, and... oh well, here's the rundown right now:
MHH: Soluble fiber at every meal; no red meat; no dark poultry or poultry skin; no dairy; no high-fat anything, or egg yolks; no fruit or fructose; limited whole grains; all legumes fully cooked and mashed, and vegetables have to be cooked and peeled.
Iyyar: No dairy or soy, but otherwise not too picky
Barak: No cooked vegetables except for carrots and spinach; no meat; nothing with sauce or (here's the kicker) ingredients that are not immediately identifiable upon inspection.
Avtalyon, B"H, will still eat anything. But you see my dilemma? What's left that everyone likes? Oatmeal, fruit, and Rice Chex, that's what. Logically I would say, Barak needs to learn to adjust to new foods--and he has been, somewhat--but it's not fair to him to take away all his favorite dairy things and make him eat a bunch of things he doesn't like when there are plenty of healthy things he does. He's picky but not insanely so, and I just don't feel like making mealtime into a battle right now, especially since he is gradually expanding his repertoire--he'll eat pizza with sauce now, for example, which is a pretty huge development.
Oh, and to make all this more interesting? BOTH IYYAR AND BARAK HAVE PEANUT-FREE CLASSROOMS THIS YEAR. So no peanut butter, and for Barak, possibly no tree nuts as well--we're not sure yet. And he's not supposed to have fleishig lunches either. AND he's supposed to have motzi every day. Seriously, what's left?
Probably what I'll do for Iyyar is send him with a lot of snacks--crackers and hummous and red peppers and a hard-boiled egg, and let him have his sandwich when he comes home at 1. Barak can have PB and crackers for breakfast if he wants. For motzi at school, I'll have to start sending him with bagels and cheese, which he won't eat in sandwich format but will eat separately (whatever!)
The hardest thing is dinner though. Last night, we had:
-peas with lemon-garlic dressing
-scrambled eggs with spinach and garlic
-baked sweet potatoes
-cold leftover noodles from lunch, which Iyyar found in the fridge
-sliced apples, cucumbers and plums
Sounds OK, doesn't it? Barak ate an apple and cucumbers. Iyyar ate leftover noodles. Everything I actually cooked? Avtalyon ate some, and then MHH came home, ate the eggs and un-peeled peas with olive oil, and was sick this morning. EPIC FAIL.
3. Okay, that was way too long of a #2. So I'll stop with #3 (this should have been "long and various" instead of "many and various.") #3 concerns the moderately noteworthy occasion of my entering my third trimester. I'm due the very end of November, which, precedent would indicate, means a reasonable ETA of mid-November. This I am happy and excited about. What I'm worried about is the logistics. Two other guys in MHH's kollel have had new babies in the last year. Neither took more than a couple days off. One had family come in for a few weeks; another has family already in town. We will have neither. Avtalyon was born on a Friday morning; MHH took off Friday and Monday and was back to work on Tuesday. And that was with the best possible timing--if I have a baby midweek he's likely to go back to work the day I get home. Assuming, IY"H, that all goes well and I come home in two days with a healthy baby, which, well, wasn't the case the last two times.
Nearly everyone who helped out in the past is either no longer in town or not available; Ada is in nursing school AND working full-time (don't ask me how she does this, I have no idea), Yehudis has moved across the neighborhood, Racheli is back in Israel and CB is married and in New York. Asnat is back, but has two other jobs and not much flexibility. Grandma E is turning 80 in a few weeks and Savta is teaching, so visits from either are out of the question.
I have no idea what I am going to do here. I am a planner by nature, but on this one I think I'm just going to have to hope for the best.
Sunday, August 23, 2009
Who is that masked baby?
I feel the pacifier and the slightly drooly shirt just complete the look. Don't you?
Friday, August 21, 2009
Friday
This afternoon, post-tzitzis party:
"Iyyar, how does your tummy feel?"
Iyyar, grinning ear to ear: "It just feel okay! It not hurty me!"
Stay tuned for tzitzis party roundup. Sneak preview: Yehudis embroidered his tzitis. With his name. And a whole family of chickens.
"Iyyar, how does your tummy feel?"
Iyyar, grinning ear to ear: "It just feel okay! It not hurty me!"
Stay tuned for tzitzis party roundup. Sneak preview: Yehudis embroidered his tzitis. With his name. And a whole family of chickens.
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Thursday
So far, so good. We are now at one full week without any tummyaches from Iyyar. And, I hope, counting.
We went to the allergist yesterday, to get her take on all of this; I'd made the appointment a couple of weeks ago, when I thought of it more as one last thing to do before starting more invasive testing. She thought we should still do an endoscopy, since so much of what's going on with Iyyar doesn't make sense; the most likely thing is a gut allergy to dairy and/or soy (since I completely eliminated dairy at the same time that I took out soy, I don't really know which it is), but that usually shows up by age 1 and in Iyyar it didn't show up until he was well past two; also, he tested negative for dairy, which he "should" not have done. She was also concerned about his nutritional needs, so sent me home with a can of hypoallergenic baby formula and instructions to give him two 8-oz glasses a day.
I got home and read the label on that and saw both dairy and soy on the ingredient list, along with the line:
"Nutramigen Lipil with Enflora EGG is a hypoallergenic, lactose-free formula for babies who develop cow's milk allergy." It goes on to say that allergenic ingredients have been specially modified to be better tolerated in allergic children.
Sorry, but no. Butter is pretty much lactose-free, and we all know how well that went over; the second ingredient is soybean oil. With only a week of Iyyar feeling OK, there is NO WAY ON THIS GREEN EARTH that I am going to give him this stuff in the name of healthy bone growth. He can have calcium-fortified oatmeal and OJ and he can have spinach and salmon patties with the bones ground in; he's not going to get osteoporosis or rickets or scurvy on a few months of chicken and potatoes and vegetables, either.
Anybody need a can of Nutramigen? I hear it's pretty expensive stuff, and I'd hate to just toss it in the garbage.
So far as the endoscopy, I'm holding off. It's only been a week. If a month or two months go by (please please please) with no problems, then I don't see any need to put him through that. If this doesn't last, then that's a different story, but right now I can't see any good reason to go ahead with it.
Tomorrow, at great long last: the Tzitzis Party. Iyyar is getting tzitzis, a Spiderman t-shirt and the fabulous box of worker-man toys; Barak has a 100-piece Iron Man puzzle; there will be doughnuts for everyone, and Morah and her kids are coming too. I mamash can't wait.
We went to the allergist yesterday, to get her take on all of this; I'd made the appointment a couple of weeks ago, when I thought of it more as one last thing to do before starting more invasive testing. She thought we should still do an endoscopy, since so much of what's going on with Iyyar doesn't make sense; the most likely thing is a gut allergy to dairy and/or soy (since I completely eliminated dairy at the same time that I took out soy, I don't really know which it is), but that usually shows up by age 1 and in Iyyar it didn't show up until he was well past two; also, he tested negative for dairy, which he "should" not have done. She was also concerned about his nutritional needs, so sent me home with a can of hypoallergenic baby formula and instructions to give him two 8-oz glasses a day.
I got home and read the label on that and saw both dairy and soy on the ingredient list, along with the line:
"Nutramigen Lipil with Enflora EGG is a hypoallergenic, lactose-free formula for babies who develop cow's milk allergy." It goes on to say that allergenic ingredients have been specially modified to be better tolerated in allergic children.
Sorry, but no. Butter is pretty much lactose-free, and we all know how well that went over; the second ingredient is soybean oil. With only a week of Iyyar feeling OK, there is NO WAY ON THIS GREEN EARTH that I am going to give him this stuff in the name of healthy bone growth. He can have calcium-fortified oatmeal and OJ and he can have spinach and salmon patties with the bones ground in; he's not going to get osteoporosis or rickets or scurvy on a few months of chicken and potatoes and vegetables, either.
Anybody need a can of Nutramigen? I hear it's pretty expensive stuff, and I'd hate to just toss it in the garbage.
So far as the endoscopy, I'm holding off. It's only been a week. If a month or two months go by (please please please) with no problems, then I don't see any need to put him through that. If this doesn't last, then that's a different story, but right now I can't see any good reason to go ahead with it.
Tomorrow, at great long last: the Tzitzis Party. Iyyar is getting tzitzis, a Spiderman t-shirt and the fabulous box of worker-man toys; Barak has a 100-piece Iron Man puzzle; there will be doughnuts for everyone, and Morah and her kids are coming too. I mamash can't wait.
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Wednesday
It's been a week since I gave Iyyar anything with soy or anything processed on dairy equipment (that I'm aware of, anyway). The difference is incredible. First off, he appears to be toilet trained now. Well--he is. He hasn't had any kind of an accident in days, stays dry at night and uses the toilet unprompted. He doesn't say anything about his tummy hurting or crawl into bed miserably after he eats. He's just... fine. And no diarrhea anymore either. He just says he needs to poop, goes into the bathroom, and a couple minutes later I hear a little voice requesting sorbet now, please.
Thinking back, I've been saying for a while, "but he was fine at Pesach!" And now that I think about it, well, there's NO SOY AT PESACH. Not much processed food, either. No rice milk. No funky nondairy yogurts. And when we were in Ithaca, he told me his tummy hurt a lot. What was he eating almost every day? Soy yogurt, which is processed on shared equipment.
I'm still sort of holding my breath, waiting for him to start saying his tummy hurts or that he can't poop. But... so far so good.
Thinking back, I've been saying for a while, "but he was fine at Pesach!" And now that I think about it, well, there's NO SOY AT PESACH. Not much processed food, either. No rice milk. No funky nondairy yogurts. And when we were in Ithaca, he told me his tummy hurt a lot. What was he eating almost every day? Soy yogurt, which is processed on shared equipment.
I'm still sort of holding my breath, waiting for him to start saying his tummy hurts or that he can't poop. But... so far so good.
Monday, August 17, 2009
Very very quietly
A warning: this post is almost completely about poop. Continue on at your peril.
Last week, after we got back from Grandma E's, I had to either schedule an endoscopy or come up with something else to do next. It was a great visit, but it was clear that Iyyar wasn't feeling well for much of it. I was giving him Pedialax strips (senna-based), which were making him go, but also clearly hurt--not surprising, since unlike Miralax, which acts by reducing reabsorbtion of water into the large intestine, Pedialax acts by strengthening intestinal contractions. He was going, but he wasn't happy, and there was a lot of "my tummy hurty."
An endoscopy is so invasive--at Iyyar's age it means general anaesthesia and most of a day at the hospital. So I decided to schedule another appointment with the allergist first, and retest him for pinworms just in case. We've been to the allergist already--it was one of our earliest stops--but she hadn't done that much testing, and when we went I thought that dairy was the one and only cause and the problem had been solved. In fact, taking dairy out of his diet only moved the situation from "crisis" to "chronic issue." So it makes sense that, since dairy was clearly the chief culprit, maybe other allergies/food sensitivities might be involved. I made the appointment, and mentioned it to some friends, two of whom made suggestions: one was to try taking out soy, and one was to be a lot more careful about possible cross-contamination with dairy than we had been. I'd been reading labels, but not worrying about "produced in a facility that also handles dairy." So we ratcheted things up there.
It's impossible to say what's really done the trick, but Iyyar seems to be, well, toilet trained now. He just kind of did it himself over the last week. In five days, he went from screaming for a diaper every time he needed to go (and then being miserable for a few hours until he actually went) to jumping up saying "I needa poop!", running to the bathroom, and just... well... pooping. And getting sorbet. With sprinkles. The first time this happened was last Thursday and the party we had was quite impressive. I pulled out all the stops. There was singing, there was dancing, there was Sesame Street, there was sorbet, there was serious candy. As Barak said, happily, "It's almost like Purim!"
Then Friday night it happened again, and Abba came home from shul at 9 PM to find everyone in the kitchen with chocolatey faces, playing with a brand-new toolbox toy I'd bought for tzitzis party presentation--but Barak had been selling Iyyar on the "worker man toys" he was going to get when he got his tzitzis, and then Iyyar thought he was going to get them that night, and I wanted nothing but positive reinforcement so I handed them over. Woohoo! The positive reinforcement has now been scaled back to one treat per, um, performance, but nobody seems to mind. Today's Monday, and for the last five days it has been nothing but good. Iyyar's happy, and he's informed me that I can give his diapers to Avtalyon now. He won't be needing them any more.
Wow.
I'm not convinced that it's all OK and over with his stomach, though. For one thing, he's still having diarrhea, and the pattern over the last year has been spells of constipation, which are miserable, followed by spells of diarrhea, which he doesn't really seem to mind. I think it is possible that he just connected using the toilet with less painful elimination--we had a few conversations about how pooping on the potty doesn't hurt, etc. If, as the GI thinks, he's been deliberately withholding--which I really doubt is the case, but I'd be very happy to be wrong about that--it really could be problem solved. But if this is just part of the same cycle, well, we'll see in a few days, I guess. In the meantime, I'm keeping the soy and dairy completely out (which is harder than you'd think--many of the foods he likes and is accustomed to, like Rice Dream, soy yogurt, parve chicken nuggets, and rice milk cheese, are now out, along with every margarine that isn't loaded with trans-fatty acids). He's been getting way more apple juice than usual, and he's quite pleased about that--it's probably moving the diarrhea along, too.
Tzitzis party is tentatively scheduled for Friday. I asked Iyyar what he wanted on his tzitzis (my friend Yehudis does embroidery and has machine-embroidered trains and boats on other tzitzis for Barak). He asked for a chicken (I told you chickens had gotten big around here, didn't I?) I asked for a second choice. He thought Superman. Yehudis nixed that one. "My fingers couldn't do it." Then he said, well, maybe a steam engine like Charlie's? I hope he's happy with the train...
Last week, after we got back from Grandma E's, I had to either schedule an endoscopy or come up with something else to do next. It was a great visit, but it was clear that Iyyar wasn't feeling well for much of it. I was giving him Pedialax strips (senna-based), which were making him go, but also clearly hurt--not surprising, since unlike Miralax, which acts by reducing reabsorbtion of water into the large intestine, Pedialax acts by strengthening intestinal contractions. He was going, but he wasn't happy, and there was a lot of "my tummy hurty."
An endoscopy is so invasive--at Iyyar's age it means general anaesthesia and most of a day at the hospital. So I decided to schedule another appointment with the allergist first, and retest him for pinworms just in case. We've been to the allergist already--it was one of our earliest stops--but she hadn't done that much testing, and when we went I thought that dairy was the one and only cause and the problem had been solved. In fact, taking dairy out of his diet only moved the situation from "crisis" to "chronic issue." So it makes sense that, since dairy was clearly the chief culprit, maybe other allergies/food sensitivities might be involved. I made the appointment, and mentioned it to some friends, two of whom made suggestions: one was to try taking out soy, and one was to be a lot more careful about possible cross-contamination with dairy than we had been. I'd been reading labels, but not worrying about "produced in a facility that also handles dairy." So we ratcheted things up there.
It's impossible to say what's really done the trick, but Iyyar seems to be, well, toilet trained now. He just kind of did it himself over the last week. In five days, he went from screaming for a diaper every time he needed to go (and then being miserable for a few hours until he actually went) to jumping up saying "I needa poop!", running to the bathroom, and just... well... pooping. And getting sorbet. With sprinkles. The first time this happened was last Thursday and the party we had was quite impressive. I pulled out all the stops. There was singing, there was dancing, there was Sesame Street, there was sorbet, there was serious candy. As Barak said, happily, "It's almost like Purim!"
Then Friday night it happened again, and Abba came home from shul at 9 PM to find everyone in the kitchen with chocolatey faces, playing with a brand-new toolbox toy I'd bought for tzitzis party presentation--but Barak had been selling Iyyar on the "worker man toys" he was going to get when he got his tzitzis, and then Iyyar thought he was going to get them that night, and I wanted nothing but positive reinforcement so I handed them over. Woohoo! The positive reinforcement has now been scaled back to one treat per, um, performance, but nobody seems to mind. Today's Monday, and for the last five days it has been nothing but good. Iyyar's happy, and he's informed me that I can give his diapers to Avtalyon now. He won't be needing them any more.
Wow.
I'm not convinced that it's all OK and over with his stomach, though. For one thing, he's still having diarrhea, and the pattern over the last year has been spells of constipation, which are miserable, followed by spells of diarrhea, which he doesn't really seem to mind. I think it is possible that he just connected using the toilet with less painful elimination--we had a few conversations about how pooping on the potty doesn't hurt, etc. If, as the GI thinks, he's been deliberately withholding--which I really doubt is the case, but I'd be very happy to be wrong about that--it really could be problem solved. But if this is just part of the same cycle, well, we'll see in a few days, I guess. In the meantime, I'm keeping the soy and dairy completely out (which is harder than you'd think--many of the foods he likes and is accustomed to, like Rice Dream, soy yogurt, parve chicken nuggets, and rice milk cheese, are now out, along with every margarine that isn't loaded with trans-fatty acids). He's been getting way more apple juice than usual, and he's quite pleased about that--it's probably moving the diarrhea along, too.
Tzitzis party is tentatively scheduled for Friday. I asked Iyyar what he wanted on his tzitzis (my friend Yehudis does embroidery and has machine-embroidered trains and boats on other tzitzis for Barak). He asked for a chicken (I told you chickens had gotten big around here, didn't I?) I asked for a second choice. He thought Superman. Yehudis nixed that one. "My fingers couldn't do it." Then he said, well, maybe a steam engine like Charlie's? I hope he's happy with the train...
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Processing time
Sunday, Monday and Tuesday of our trip were, it is fair to say, composed of fairly nonstop new experiences. Even the whole day at Philadelphia airport, which was not a whole lot of fun, was at least exciting--lots of new things to see, a lot of stimulation for the kids. Then new beds to sleep in, new people to meet (only Barak really remembered Grandma E and Grandpa M from their last visit a year ago), a different environment, so many new things to see and do. They handled it great, in general.
But Wednesday morning did not start out well. Everyone, with the possible exception of Avtalyon, got out of bed acting like they already needed a nap. Kvetch kvetch kvetch, fight fight fight. You want me to do what? I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that. You want me to come? Um, no, I'm busy. Iyyar seemed to have noticed that there was nowhere for him to have a time-out so decided to push things until he got one, to see what happened; I exiled him to the base of the stairs. That worked, but as he was calming down, Grandma M came along and, not knowing why he was there, told him to move because nobody could go up and down the stairs. More hysterics, &c.
The original plan for Wednesday had been to play in Grandma E's yard/pasture in the morning and go swimming in the creek with a friend at lunchtime. By 9 am it was clear this was not happening. I was OK with taking three small kids creek-swimming with another friend with similarly-aged kids, not in tow; two responsible mothers to three kids I thought was OK. But not when the kids were not being cooperative. I called and we changed plans to having a picnic near a (fenced) waterfall, a good 20-minute drive away; I thought the drive might calm them down, and the environment would be a lot less dangerous. That was fun, and the kids enjoyed running around, but Barak spent most of his time with the copy of Strega Nona and the Magic Pasta Pot he found in the back seat. Behavior improved marginally, but not all that much.
Then my friend, who had to get back to work, dropped us off at Saba and Savta's house, where we'd arranged to spend the afternoon and then have dinner (spaghetti and meatballs, possibly Iyyar's favorite food ever. Actually, he can skip the spaghetti--he just wants the meatballs.) We walked in and discovered that she had pulled out three or four great big boxes of toys from when her kids were little--all those great old Fisher-Price toys I remember from the 70s, like the airport and the airplane and the baggage carts and all of that. And the barn, with the animals, and lots of little cars and tractors. The kids went straight from the door to the toys, sat down, and started playing. There were some minor altercations (the airplane, oh the airplane) and Iyyar's tummy was not in the best shape until he finally pooped after an hour or so, but basically they just played. After Iyyar was feeling better, he got in on the action in earnest and they played. And played. And played.
Savta and I had planned to go to the local supermarket, which has acquired a kosher section since I last lived there, and pick up snacks for the flight home. I had assumed we'd bring the whole contingent, since ordinarily nobody would have any thoughts about turning down a ride in the car to the store. But today? No interest at all. "Do you want to come in the car to the store?" They barely looked up. "No." "Do you just want to stay here with Saba?" "Yeah. I just want to stay here and play." Iyyar had about the same answer. I looked at Saba. He suggested we sit in the driveway for a minute before pulling out. Barak is now more OK with being places without me but Iyyar generally likes to go where I go, so I thought this was a good suggestion. Savta and I went out to the car, buckled in Avtalyon, and waited. Nope. We pulled out and went shopping. I kept checking my cell phone, but nobody called. Avtalyon promptly fell asleep in the carseat and stayed asleep the whole time we shopped.
We got back home and the scene was completely unchanged. Barak and Iyyar on the floor playing, Saba standing there, amused, observing. They'd barely noticed when we had left and they barely noticed when we got back. Saba went off to the bus stop to pick up Abba, who'd been gone for going on three days. They hardly registered when he walked in. Dinner went on the table and they ate--Iyyar his meatballs, Barak his plain noodles, Avtalyon a little bit of everything--and promptly went back to playing, until it was finally time to go back to Grandma E's at around 7. They'd been playing for five hours straight. Except for stopping to eat--and with an early lunch and no afternoon snack, they had to have been hungry--they'd barely looked up the whole time.
And not only did they play nicely, but when we left they were children transformed. They were happy. They were cooperative. They went to bed nicely. They woke up the next day perfectly delightful, which was good because that was our big day to visit the fire station and the farm. It was clear that what they'd needed hadn't been a good night's sleep--it had been a good afternoon of quiet, uninterrupted, left-to-their-own-devices, familiar play. They needed processing time for all the new experiences.
I can't tell you how much this struck me--how clear it was that they had needed, really needed, that time to play. It made me think about how I feel about knitting. When I'm really really busy, what upsets me the most is not so much the lack of sleep--although I don't love that--or time to see friends or anything like that. What I hate is when I am really truly too busy to knit, even a little. I need that knitting time. I need the time to sit and let my hands do their thing and let my mind wander. I need it so much that sometimes, even when any sane person would go to bed, I sit down and knit for half an hour first--and we are talking about late at night here, when I REALLY should be asleep. But I need the knitting time more. It's not just time to veg. It's time to let my brain catch up to where it needs to be.
Next Sunday, I'm meeting up with Sarah to go to an all-day fiber event. I'm leaving here at 5:30 am and won't be back till 7 PM. I'll have hours and hours and HOURS to knit. I can't wait. :)
But Wednesday morning did not start out well. Everyone, with the possible exception of Avtalyon, got out of bed acting like they already needed a nap. Kvetch kvetch kvetch, fight fight fight. You want me to do what? I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that. You want me to come? Um, no, I'm busy. Iyyar seemed to have noticed that there was nowhere for him to have a time-out so decided to push things until he got one, to see what happened; I exiled him to the base of the stairs. That worked, but as he was calming down, Grandma M came along and, not knowing why he was there, told him to move because nobody could go up and down the stairs. More hysterics, &c.
The original plan for Wednesday had been to play in Grandma E's yard/pasture in the morning and go swimming in the creek with a friend at lunchtime. By 9 am it was clear this was not happening. I was OK with taking three small kids creek-swimming with another friend with similarly-aged kids, not in tow; two responsible mothers to three kids I thought was OK. But not when the kids were not being cooperative. I called and we changed plans to having a picnic near a (fenced) waterfall, a good 20-minute drive away; I thought the drive might calm them down, and the environment would be a lot less dangerous. That was fun, and the kids enjoyed running around, but Barak spent most of his time with the copy of Strega Nona and the Magic Pasta Pot he found in the back seat. Behavior improved marginally, but not all that much.
Then my friend, who had to get back to work, dropped us off at Saba and Savta's house, where we'd arranged to spend the afternoon and then have dinner (spaghetti and meatballs, possibly Iyyar's favorite food ever. Actually, he can skip the spaghetti--he just wants the meatballs.) We walked in and discovered that she had pulled out three or four great big boxes of toys from when her kids were little--all those great old Fisher-Price toys I remember from the 70s, like the airport and the airplane and the baggage carts and all of that. And the barn, with the animals, and lots of little cars and tractors. The kids went straight from the door to the toys, sat down, and started playing. There were some minor altercations (the airplane, oh the airplane) and Iyyar's tummy was not in the best shape until he finally pooped after an hour or so, but basically they just played. After Iyyar was feeling better, he got in on the action in earnest and they played. And played. And played.
Savta and I had planned to go to the local supermarket, which has acquired a kosher section since I last lived there, and pick up snacks for the flight home. I had assumed we'd bring the whole contingent, since ordinarily nobody would have any thoughts about turning down a ride in the car to the store. But today? No interest at all. "Do you want to come in the car to the store?" They barely looked up. "No." "Do you just want to stay here with Saba?" "Yeah. I just want to stay here and play." Iyyar had about the same answer. I looked at Saba. He suggested we sit in the driveway for a minute before pulling out. Barak is now more OK with being places without me but Iyyar generally likes to go where I go, so I thought this was a good suggestion. Savta and I went out to the car, buckled in Avtalyon, and waited. Nope. We pulled out and went shopping. I kept checking my cell phone, but nobody called. Avtalyon promptly fell asleep in the carseat and stayed asleep the whole time we shopped.
We got back home and the scene was completely unchanged. Barak and Iyyar on the floor playing, Saba standing there, amused, observing. They'd barely noticed when we had left and they barely noticed when we got back. Saba went off to the bus stop to pick up Abba, who'd been gone for going on three days. They hardly registered when he walked in. Dinner went on the table and they ate--Iyyar his meatballs, Barak his plain noodles, Avtalyon a little bit of everything--and promptly went back to playing, until it was finally time to go back to Grandma E's at around 7. They'd been playing for five hours straight. Except for stopping to eat--and with an early lunch and no afternoon snack, they had to have been hungry--they'd barely looked up the whole time.
And not only did they play nicely, but when we left they were children transformed. They were happy. They were cooperative. They went to bed nicely. They woke up the next day perfectly delightful, which was good because that was our big day to visit the fire station and the farm. It was clear that what they'd needed hadn't been a good night's sleep--it had been a good afternoon of quiet, uninterrupted, left-to-their-own-devices, familiar play. They needed processing time for all the new experiences.
I can't tell you how much this struck me--how clear it was that they had needed, really needed, that time to play. It made me think about how I feel about knitting. When I'm really really busy, what upsets me the most is not so much the lack of sleep--although I don't love that--or time to see friends or anything like that. What I hate is when I am really truly too busy to knit, even a little. I need that knitting time. I need the time to sit and let my hands do their thing and let my mind wander. I need it so much that sometimes, even when any sane person would go to bed, I sit down and knit for half an hour first--and we are talking about late at night here, when I REALLY should be asleep. But I need the knitting time more. It's not just time to veg. It's time to let my brain catch up to where it needs to be.
Next Sunday, I'm meeting up with Sarah to go to an all-day fiber event. I'm leaving here at 5:30 am and won't be back till 7 PM. I'll have hours and hours and HOURS to knit. I can't wait. :)
Saturday, August 08, 2009
Jiggity-jig
We are home after most of a week visiting Grandma E and Deb and various other friends in the town where I went to college and then grad school and then stuck around a little longer after that. It was great--lots and lots of kid-centric fun, followed by evening knitting on the couch, and with the added bonus of other adults around to do baby-chasing duty occasionally. I want to blog about it all more fulsomely, but right now I have a kitchen to clean up, and I want to upload all the pictures first. So, in the meantime, this, b'kitzur, is what we did:
Sunday: Woke up at 3:45 am to get a 4:30 cab to the airport for a 7:00 flight, with a connection in Philly that was to have gotten us to our destination by around 1 PM. Instead, spent the entire day at Philadelphia airport, with occasional calls to local friend K, who would have let us sleep on her floor if we'd gotten stuck overnight (but, nice as it would have been to see her, we are still glad it didn't come to that). We were supposed to have a 2-hour layover; thanks to a thunderstorm that closed the airport, it turned out to be 11 hours. The kids behaved better than many of the grownups we saw. This is not saying as much as you might think.
Monday: The beginnings of serious Small Boy Fun. Grandma E's son-in-law Charlie came over with an honest-to-goodness functional steam engine. He fired it up and drove it around the house and let the boys ride on it. Then he let Barak drive it. They both worship him now. The next day, when Charlie pulled into the driveway (sans steam engine), I heard Iyyar say, dreamily, "I want Charlie to come back. I want him to come back wif his steam engine."
Then Grandma and Iyyar and I went down to the local natural-food coop to get various kosher and dairy-free items, plus the popsicles I had promised the boys in reward for their relatively spectacular behavior the day before. We put Abba on a bus, because he was going to visit his own grandma for a couple of days, and then came back up to Grandma's, where we then loaded carseats and kids into friend Deb's car for an afternoon at her house spent splashing in water barrels, eating blueberries directly off bushes, harassing cats, bonding with bunny rabbits and, finally, building with Lincoln Logs. More on all of this later.
Tuesday: Morning at farmer's market, including a visit to the Twisty Balloon Man, who made a dog on a leash for Iyyar and a pirate sword with belt and holster for Barak. The dog, sadly, did not even survive the trip back to the car; the pirate sword made it to lunch but not beyond. Alas. Lunch of fabulous farmer's market corn (cooked in the pot Grandma E bought and kept new just for us--we are not worthy), green beans, peaches, and the cucumber we'd brought back from Deb's garden the day before.
Afternoon included a trip to the park with sprinklers, checking out the playground equipment, and general running around; then back to Grandma's for a dinner of yogurt, and then bed for the boys and a visit from some members of my old spinning guild for me. Lots of fun and a sleeve and a half knitted on current baby sweater.
Wednesday: morning spent running around Grandma E's enormous backyard with pasture, collecting walnuts from the tree and driving toy cars in the grass. Lunch at the waterfall with boys and a friend from a short-lived Job from Hell I had in New York (only good things to come out of job: said friend, and the discovery of an awesome kosher vegetarian Chinese place). Then we went over to Saba and Savta's house (TWO sets of honorary grandparents--my kids are doing pretty well, wouldn't you say?) for spaghetti and meatballs and playing-with-toys. I really want to blog about this further--much to say there, mostly about the workings of the busy mind. Saba went to pick up Abba at the bus station in time for dinner.
Thursday: left Abba, who did not fit in Grandma E's car, at home with his books while we went to Deb's local fire station for a privately guided tour of same by her brother-in-law. He opened all the bay doors, drove a truck out into the parking lot, and let the boys climb all over it--and try on fireman coats AND hats and even showed off his thermal camera. Boys were so stunned and awestruck they barely managed a thank-you at the end. I heard all about it later, though.
Back to Deb's, by request of boys, but by way of her friend up the road who has sheep AND goats AND chickens to feed. My own grandmother kept chickens until I was well into my 20s and one of the great highlights of visiting her as a child was getting to feed them and collect the eggs, so it was really nice--and a little melancholy for me--to watch the kids entranced by these ones. Then back to Deb's for a lunch of blueberries, directly off the bushes, hard-boiled eggs (including one from a chicken of our recent acquaintance), peanut-butter sandwiches and what Iyyar calls "tomato chips" (Bearitoes, which you can't get around here but I really like).
Off to the university campus, via the local yarn store (I got a magazine and a ball of sock yarn), where we met my friend Zhenya (old friend from my very first Russian class there). Ice cream for the dairy-tolerant and a popsicle for Iyyar, a walk around the gardens, and a visit to the Echo Tunnel. A very loud visit.
Then home to Grandma's, where we discovered Abba with meat tenderizer plastered on his face from a yellowjacket sting incurred while reading outside at the picnic table. Dinner of the last yogurts in the fridge for the boys, then baths and bed; Grandma E and I shared the box of tomato soup I'd bought on our first day, then there was laundry and packing and bed. Another 4:45 am departure, but a much smoother trip home; everything was on time, it could not have been easier, and we were back in our own home by 1 PM. I took a solo trip to the rarely-visited supermarket for supplies, then made bagels for Shabbos, with Barak watching from the kitchen table.
"Imma, when are we going back to Ithaca? I want to go back there. Can we go back soon?"
Can't imagine why he'd want to do that. Can you?
Sunday: Woke up at 3:45 am to get a 4:30 cab to the airport for a 7:00 flight, with a connection in Philly that was to have gotten us to our destination by around 1 PM. Instead, spent the entire day at Philadelphia airport, with occasional calls to local friend K, who would have let us sleep on her floor if we'd gotten stuck overnight (but, nice as it would have been to see her, we are still glad it didn't come to that). We were supposed to have a 2-hour layover; thanks to a thunderstorm that closed the airport, it turned out to be 11 hours. The kids behaved better than many of the grownups we saw. This is not saying as much as you might think.
Monday: The beginnings of serious Small Boy Fun. Grandma E's son-in-law Charlie came over with an honest-to-goodness functional steam engine. He fired it up and drove it around the house and let the boys ride on it. Then he let Barak drive it. They both worship him now. The next day, when Charlie pulled into the driveway (sans steam engine), I heard Iyyar say, dreamily, "I want Charlie to come back. I want him to come back wif his steam engine."
Then Grandma and Iyyar and I went down to the local natural-food coop to get various kosher and dairy-free items, plus the popsicles I had promised the boys in reward for their relatively spectacular behavior the day before. We put Abba on a bus, because he was going to visit his own grandma for a couple of days, and then came back up to Grandma's, where we then loaded carseats and kids into friend Deb's car for an afternoon at her house spent splashing in water barrels, eating blueberries directly off bushes, harassing cats, bonding with bunny rabbits and, finally, building with Lincoln Logs. More on all of this later.
Tuesday: Morning at farmer's market, including a visit to the Twisty Balloon Man, who made a dog on a leash for Iyyar and a pirate sword with belt and holster for Barak. The dog, sadly, did not even survive the trip back to the car; the pirate sword made it to lunch but not beyond. Alas. Lunch of fabulous farmer's market corn (cooked in the pot Grandma E bought and kept new just for us--we are not worthy), green beans, peaches, and the cucumber we'd brought back from Deb's garden the day before.
Afternoon included a trip to the park with sprinklers, checking out the playground equipment, and general running around; then back to Grandma's for a dinner of yogurt, and then bed for the boys and a visit from some members of my old spinning guild for me. Lots of fun and a sleeve and a half knitted on current baby sweater.
Wednesday: morning spent running around Grandma E's enormous backyard with pasture, collecting walnuts from the tree and driving toy cars in the grass. Lunch at the waterfall with boys and a friend from a short-lived Job from Hell I had in New York (only good things to come out of job: said friend, and the discovery of an awesome kosher vegetarian Chinese place). Then we went over to Saba and Savta's house (TWO sets of honorary grandparents--my kids are doing pretty well, wouldn't you say?) for spaghetti and meatballs and playing-with-toys. I really want to blog about this further--much to say there, mostly about the workings of the busy mind. Saba went to pick up Abba at the bus station in time for dinner.
Thursday: left Abba, who did not fit in Grandma E's car, at home with his books while we went to Deb's local fire station for a privately guided tour of same by her brother-in-law. He opened all the bay doors, drove a truck out into the parking lot, and let the boys climb all over it--and try on fireman coats AND hats and even showed off his thermal camera. Boys were so stunned and awestruck they barely managed a thank-you at the end. I heard all about it later, though.
Back to Deb's, by request of boys, but by way of her friend up the road who has sheep AND goats AND chickens to feed. My own grandmother kept chickens until I was well into my 20s and one of the great highlights of visiting her as a child was getting to feed them and collect the eggs, so it was really nice--and a little melancholy for me--to watch the kids entranced by these ones. Then back to Deb's for a lunch of blueberries, directly off the bushes, hard-boiled eggs (including one from a chicken of our recent acquaintance), peanut-butter sandwiches and what Iyyar calls "tomato chips" (Bearitoes, which you can't get around here but I really like).
Off to the university campus, via the local yarn store (I got a magazine and a ball of sock yarn), where we met my friend Zhenya (old friend from my very first Russian class there). Ice cream for the dairy-tolerant and a popsicle for Iyyar, a walk around the gardens, and a visit to the Echo Tunnel. A very loud visit.
Then home to Grandma's, where we discovered Abba with meat tenderizer plastered on his face from a yellowjacket sting incurred while reading outside at the picnic table. Dinner of the last yogurts in the fridge for the boys, then baths and bed; Grandma E and I shared the box of tomato soup I'd bought on our first day, then there was laundry and packing and bed. Another 4:45 am departure, but a much smoother trip home; everything was on time, it could not have been easier, and we were back in our own home by 1 PM. I took a solo trip to the rarely-visited supermarket for supplies, then made bagels for Shabbos, with Barak watching from the kitchen table.
"Imma, when are we going back to Ithaca? I want to go back there. Can we go back soon?"
Can't imagine why he'd want to do that. Can you?
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Productive
I didn't get much actual writing today, but I did get a lot of other stuff done.
1. Had meeting with HR regarding planned maternity leave.
2. Had meeting with main client regarding same. He was, surprisingly, unperturbed.
3. Finalized arrangements to have friend cover leave for me, for which she will get paid 2.5 times what I do. I don't think I'm getting any kickbacks, though. Ahem.
4. Called heating/cooling company to schedule clean and check of furnace/AC, which we haven't done for almost two years. It's all working fine, and the system is less than five years old, but it's a good idea, etc. They'll be here Thursday.
5. This isn't exactly productivity, but spent fifteen minutes happily scoping out the yarn store near work. I don't go there often, just because I don't have the time, but sometimes I get to indulge. Didn't buy anything.
6. This is not my productivity, but yesterday and today MHH made some phone calls regarding our hoped-for move to Israel next year. All were positive, and he'll be going to NY to discuss some aspects of this further. I'll know in a few weeks if there's what to talk about there, but so far, so good.
7. Cleaned kids' room and put away laundry. Yes, I still had un-put-away laundry from before the Nine Days.
8. Paid a bunch of bills. Where does the money go? I know where it goes. Food. It all goes on food. And none of it is eating out. It goes on milk, cheese, vegetables, grape juice, nondairy substitutes for milk, and rice. Many hundreds of dollars a month. Every month. And nobody is even a teenager! How is this possible? We are so not extravagant in our food purchases. I even make my own hummus, because it's so much cheaper (and, okay, tastes better). But still. We spend SO MUCH MONEY on food! And diapers, although right now Iyyar isn't going through nearly as many of those...
In other news, Iyyar threw up this afternoon, massively. I'm hoping it's because he drank too much prune juice this morning. That could do it, right? Right? He hasn't thrown up in months, so I'm hoping it's not part of whatever is going on with him GI-wise.
1. Had meeting with HR regarding planned maternity leave.
2. Had meeting with main client regarding same. He was, surprisingly, unperturbed.
3. Finalized arrangements to have friend cover leave for me, for which she will get paid 2.5 times what I do. I don't think I'm getting any kickbacks, though. Ahem.
4. Called heating/cooling company to schedule clean and check of furnace/AC, which we haven't done for almost two years. It's all working fine, and the system is less than five years old, but it's a good idea, etc. They'll be here Thursday.
5. This isn't exactly productivity, but spent fifteen minutes happily scoping out the yarn store near work. I don't go there often, just because I don't have the time, but sometimes I get to indulge. Didn't buy anything.
6. This is not my productivity, but yesterday and today MHH made some phone calls regarding our hoped-for move to Israel next year. All were positive, and he'll be going to NY to discuss some aspects of this further. I'll know in a few weeks if there's what to talk about there, but so far, so good.
7. Cleaned kids' room and put away laundry. Yes, I still had un-put-away laundry from before the Nine Days.
8. Paid a bunch of bills. Where does the money go? I know where it goes. Food. It all goes on food. And none of it is eating out. It goes on milk, cheese, vegetables, grape juice, nondairy substitutes for milk, and rice. Many hundreds of dollars a month. Every month. And nobody is even a teenager! How is this possible? We are so not extravagant in our food purchases. I even make my own hummus, because it's so much cheaper (and, okay, tastes better). But still. We spend SO MUCH MONEY on food! And diapers, although right now Iyyar isn't going through nearly as many of those...
In other news, Iyyar threw up this afternoon, massively. I'm hoping it's because he drank too much prune juice this morning. That could do it, right? Right? He hasn't thrown up in months, so I'm hoping it's not part of whatever is going on with him GI-wise.
Monday, July 27, 2009
Wow
Last night Iyyar decided he wanted to sleep in underwear. I wasn't worried about any impending poop and he'd been keeping his pullups dry, so I said sure. And what do you know--he woke up in dry underwear! On backward, but he didn't seem to care. Then I took out his clothes, and after the mandatory 15-20 minutes of running around naked giggling, he got out a pullup (?!), put that on, and then put on his own clothes! Shirt backwards, pants on straight--easier to see which is the back when you're not pulling it over your head.
Wow! Red-letter day. Two firsts!
Oh, and yesterday Avtalyon said "thank you" for the first time. Barak and Iyyar always said some variant of "ta tum" so I was expecting that, but no. It came out, "keeyoo!" Reminded me of my grandfather's one English phrase. "Tank ee-yoo!"
Wow! Red-letter day. Two firsts!
Oh, and yesterday Avtalyon said "thank you" for the first time. Barak and Iyyar always said some variant of "ta tum" so I was expecting that, but no. It came out, "keeyoo!" Reminded me of my grandfather's one English phrase. "Tank ee-yoo!"
Monday, July 20, 2009
A Very Short List
1. I got Iyyar's celiac results last night. His IGA quant was 80, which is well within the normal range. This test is by no means infallibly accurate, but it would indicate that no, he doesn't have celiac disease. This is great in that a) he won't have to live a gluten-free life and b) I won't have to start cooking for three different diets at every meal, but it does mean that there is no quick fix in sight.
Iyyar has also, almost overnight, started staying dry. He wears underwear, he goes to the bathroom unprompted, and, unbelievably, keeps his pullup dry overnight. Even Barak doesn't do that. I took him to the ENT (more on this in a minute) in underwear on Thursday and he did have a rather dramatic accident in that big fancy ENT chair, but really, it was my own fault--if I'd taken him to the bathroom on the way in he'd have been fine. At home he now wears underwear all the time, and even gets up at night to go pee on his own. Totally amazing. However, also really problematic, in that he now can and does control where he pees--and does it in the right place--but can't do it for pooping. And he's decided that he wears underwear now. And he is still cycling between miserable constipation and diarrhea on a weekly basis. So... yeah. Problematic. We have a followup visit to the GI on Tuesday.
2. Iyyar had his ENT followup on Thursday. It took all of about five minutes. The doctor looked in his ears, in his nose, in his throat, and pronounced all great. This was after an audiologist visit where his hearing was also pronounced great--he was obviously hearing things that I was not hearing at all, which I found a little freaky, but if I only notice a hearing problem in the audiologist's booth it's not much of a problem, right? (I do have a mild hearing loss in both ears, which was irritating in high school and large lecture classes in college, but frankly I'd almost forgotten about it--unless I'm on a bad phone connection I never notice it anymore.) Anyway, the ENT said, cheerfully, "That was a much better resolution than I expected!" I chose not to ask what he'd been expecting.
So far as the not-quite-normalness of his sleep study, I was advised to continue following up on the GI problems (which obviously we're doing--and it was the GI problems that brought us to the ENT to begin with), because perhaps the GI troubles are causing the breathing disturbances. But otherwise, nothing need be done. Great.
3. We went to the zoo today--"we" being me, Barak, and Iyyar, without Abba, who was home with Avtalyon, who slept for FOUR HOURS while we were out. I think he must have been just hanging in his crib with the pacifier for at least some of that time, but whatever the case, Abba got an awful lot of peace and quiet with his sefarim in the kitchen. Meanwhile, the three of us were taking a bunch of buses, eating graham crackers, and watching gorillas, penguins, and gibbons do their thing. Iyyar was totally into the primates, Barak mostly wanting to climb on things. We had fun, although Iyyar starting melting down halfway through the first bus trip. It's two buses and close to an hour each way--a long time to sit when you're three.
Iyyar has also, almost overnight, started staying dry. He wears underwear, he goes to the bathroom unprompted, and, unbelievably, keeps his pullup dry overnight. Even Barak doesn't do that. I took him to the ENT (more on this in a minute) in underwear on Thursday and he did have a rather dramatic accident in that big fancy ENT chair, but really, it was my own fault--if I'd taken him to the bathroom on the way in he'd have been fine. At home he now wears underwear all the time, and even gets up at night to go pee on his own. Totally amazing. However, also really problematic, in that he now can and does control where he pees--and does it in the right place--but can't do it for pooping. And he's decided that he wears underwear now. And he is still cycling between miserable constipation and diarrhea on a weekly basis. So... yeah. Problematic. We have a followup visit to the GI on Tuesday.
2. Iyyar had his ENT followup on Thursday. It took all of about five minutes. The doctor looked in his ears, in his nose, in his throat, and pronounced all great. This was after an audiologist visit where his hearing was also pronounced great--he was obviously hearing things that I was not hearing at all, which I found a little freaky, but if I only notice a hearing problem in the audiologist's booth it's not much of a problem, right? (I do have a mild hearing loss in both ears, which was irritating in high school and large lecture classes in college, but frankly I'd almost forgotten about it--unless I'm on a bad phone connection I never notice it anymore.) Anyway, the ENT said, cheerfully, "That was a much better resolution than I expected!" I chose not to ask what he'd been expecting.
So far as the not-quite-normalness of his sleep study, I was advised to continue following up on the GI problems (which obviously we're doing--and it was the GI problems that brought us to the ENT to begin with), because perhaps the GI troubles are causing the breathing disturbances. But otherwise, nothing need be done. Great.
3. We went to the zoo today--"we" being me, Barak, and Iyyar, without Abba, who was home with Avtalyon, who slept for FOUR HOURS while we were out. I think he must have been just hanging in his crib with the pacifier for at least some of that time, but whatever the case, Abba got an awful lot of peace and quiet with his sefarim in the kitchen. Meanwhile, the three of us were taking a bunch of buses, eating graham crackers, and watching gorillas, penguins, and gibbons do their thing. Iyyar was totally into the primates, Barak mostly wanting to climb on things. We had fun, although Iyyar starting melting down halfway through the first bus trip. It's two buses and close to an hour each way--a long time to sit when you're three.
Monday, July 13, 2009
Score
Abba is off now, for the next five weeks, and I have every intention of taking advantage of his presence to do lots and lots of things--more excursions with the kids en famille, and also more 1:1 parent-child time. Today Abba took Iyyar to the pediatrician for a blood draw (the celiac test) and I went with Barak and Avtalyon on the bus to go to Trader Joe's. By all reports the blood draw went amazingly well; I called ahead to find out when Marlene, the Good Phlebotomist, would be around, and Abba says the whole thing took under a minute: she hit the vein on the first try and that was that. Barak and Avtalyon and I, meanwhile, went to TJ's to pick up tons and tons of oatmeal and high-soluble-fiber food (as we take a stab at the IBS diet--can't hurt, anyway, while we're waiting to see what the celiac results are).
Going to TJ's with Barak qualifies as a full-on Trip, partly because of the joys of bus-riding, partly because of those fun little shopping carts and the promise of a helium balloon and granola bar, and partly because of the close proximity of a most excellent thrift shop with bins of toys marked 25 cents, 50 cents, and $1. Our haul for today: one Little People train engine that plays a tune when you press the smokestack; one Evil Robot; three miniature Beanie Babies, specifically koala, cat, and leopard; one worker man helmet, and one blue plastic hammer. Total cost: $3.25, plus tax. Barak was in transports of ecstasy the whole way home with said Evil Robot ("Imma! Look Imma! He has a claw hand that opens and closes like this! He has an engine on his back! He's gonna fight the Hulk, Imma. I think he's gonna beat the Hulk.") When we got off the bus, I spotted Abba and Iyyar on their way home from the pediatrician's, and Barak got to present Iyyar with his worker man ensemble. He was, needless to say, delighted, and much high-volume banging (nothing to bang on? No problem! just bang into the air and yell "bang! bang!" really really loudly) ensued.
Speaking of high volume, have I mentioned--I'm sure I have--Iyyar's earsplitting firetruck impersonation (intruckation?) Lately I've heard another version of it--from Avtalyon, while driving his own little cars around the floor. It's pretty amusing, watching this potbellied little person squatting on the floor, engrossed in his plastic concrete mixer, sounding its siren.
One other thing about the trip--the "promise of granola bar" part. I let Barak put a box of peanut butter chocolate chip granola bars in his little cart, as I always do, and then put them in his own backpack for transport. Once we got outside, he started asking me, "When are we going to have our snack?" and pointing out convenient locations. "There's a bench right there, Imma. There's a park. Can we go play in the park? We could have our snack in the park." I said I thought we should save our snack for when we were waiting for the bus, a time of enforced and otherwise boring bench-sitting. He didn't really want to wait that long, but just as the preoccupation with the granola bar got really overwhelming, we were at the thrift shop and the Evil Robot discovery distracted him. Anyway, once out of the store we did sit down on the bus stop bench, and Barak requested his granola bar. "It's in your bag," I told him. "You're in charge of snack." "Oh!" he said, a little surprised. "I forgot." He opened his bag, pulled out the box, opened it, and took out a granola bar--and handed the first one to me.
Am I allowed to say it? So sweet. And on the way home, as Avtalyon got more and more irritated with his prolonged confinement in the stroller, Barak played with him so nicely. I had Avtalyon's stroller facing sideways, so that he was right next to a seat, and he had his little train in his hands. All he did, for at least half the trip, was put the train on the edge of the seat, let go, and let the slope of the seat bottom take the train to the other edge of the seat--out of reach. Then he'd look beseechingly at Barak, who would hand it back to him. Again. And again. And again. A few times he'd say, "This is the last time. If you drop it again I'm not giving it back to you any more." But then, you know, Avtalyon would look very sad, and give him this very winning look, and he'd relent, and give him the train again, and Avtalyon would giggle, and Barak would giggle, and the next thing you know, well... Barak was playing another round of Drop the Train and Get It Back.
I think Avtalyon is training him well for future Abba-hood. Don't you?
Going to TJ's with Barak qualifies as a full-on Trip, partly because of the joys of bus-riding, partly because of those fun little shopping carts and the promise of a helium balloon and granola bar, and partly because of the close proximity of a most excellent thrift shop with bins of toys marked 25 cents, 50 cents, and $1. Our haul for today: one Little People train engine that plays a tune when you press the smokestack; one Evil Robot; three miniature Beanie Babies, specifically koala, cat, and leopard; one worker man helmet, and one blue plastic hammer. Total cost: $3.25, plus tax. Barak was in transports of ecstasy the whole way home with said Evil Robot ("Imma! Look Imma! He has a claw hand that opens and closes like this! He has an engine on his back! He's gonna fight the Hulk, Imma. I think he's gonna beat the Hulk.") When we got off the bus, I spotted Abba and Iyyar on their way home from the pediatrician's, and Barak got to present Iyyar with his worker man ensemble. He was, needless to say, delighted, and much high-volume banging (nothing to bang on? No problem! just bang into the air and yell "bang! bang!" really really loudly) ensued.
Speaking of high volume, have I mentioned--I'm sure I have--Iyyar's earsplitting firetruck impersonation (intruckation?) Lately I've heard another version of it--from Avtalyon, while driving his own little cars around the floor. It's pretty amusing, watching this potbellied little person squatting on the floor, engrossed in his plastic concrete mixer, sounding its siren.
One other thing about the trip--the "promise of granola bar" part. I let Barak put a box of peanut butter chocolate chip granola bars in his little cart, as I always do, and then put them in his own backpack for transport. Once we got outside, he started asking me, "When are we going to have our snack?" and pointing out convenient locations. "There's a bench right there, Imma. There's a park. Can we go play in the park? We could have our snack in the park." I said I thought we should save our snack for when we were waiting for the bus, a time of enforced and otherwise boring bench-sitting. He didn't really want to wait that long, but just as the preoccupation with the granola bar got really overwhelming, we were at the thrift shop and the Evil Robot discovery distracted him. Anyway, once out of the store we did sit down on the bus stop bench, and Barak requested his granola bar. "It's in your bag," I told him. "You're in charge of snack." "Oh!" he said, a little surprised. "I forgot." He opened his bag, pulled out the box, opened it, and took out a granola bar--and handed the first one to me.
Am I allowed to say it? So sweet. And on the way home, as Avtalyon got more and more irritated with his prolonged confinement in the stroller, Barak played with him so nicely. I had Avtalyon's stroller facing sideways, so that he was right next to a seat, and he had his little train in his hands. All he did, for at least half the trip, was put the train on the edge of the seat, let go, and let the slope of the seat bottom take the train to the other edge of the seat--out of reach. Then he'd look beseechingly at Barak, who would hand it back to him. Again. And again. And again. A few times he'd say, "This is the last time. If you drop it again I'm not giving it back to you any more." But then, you know, Avtalyon would look very sad, and give him this very winning look, and he'd relent, and give him the train again, and Avtalyon would giggle, and Barak would giggle, and the next thing you know, well... Barak was playing another round of Drop the Train and Get It Back.
I think Avtalyon is training him well for future Abba-hood. Don't you?
Sunday, July 12, 2009
With a feather
My phone just rang, at 9:24 on a Sunday night. I picked it up, and it was Iyyar's ENT.
"Hi, this is Dr. ENT!"
"Hi. Uh-oh. You're calling me on a Sunday night. This can't be good."
(I know, friendly, aren't I?)
"Actually, no, it is good. I'm calling because I just read the sleep study and it's good news."
"Really?"
"Really. I have the report right here and I can read it to you."
"Um... but why are you calling me at 9:24 [I was in the kitchen looking at the clock on the stove] on a Sunday night?"
"Because I knew you were worried."
WOW.
How's that for nice?!
Remember how annoyed I was at this doctor the first time I met him? We still have pretty incompatible personalities--I don't deal well with any kind of jokeyness where my kids are involved--but I hereby fully and finally retract anything negative I might ever have said about him.
Wow. So so nice!!!
Results, he said, showed "resolution of severe obstructive sleep apnea." AHI (obstructive episodes per hour, overall) was 4, down from 24 before. (Anything over 5 is a problem.) He spent all but one minute of his study with oxygen saturation over 90, and one minute below. He said, "This is what I would call borderline normal. It's not perfect, but as long as he feels okay, is waking up well rested, and seems okay to you, it's good enough." We talked a little bit more about his GI issues, and he mentioned that the GI tract and the airway are related, so if his GI tract is inflamed that can cause airway tract inflammation as well. But if anything, he thinks it's the GI causing the airway inflammation, not the other way around.
Bringing him back in on Thursday for a followup checkup (as already scheduled), and a hearing exam (ditto). And tomorrow, Abba's going to take him to get his blood drawn for the celiac disease test.
In other exciting news, when Iyyar woke up this morning, I asked him, very casually, if he wanted underwear or a diaper. He wanted underwear. Fine. Breakfast came with juice, and after breakfast I asked him to go sit on the potty. He didn't want to, but a dramatic reading of Commander Toad and the Space Pirates (formerly Barak's favorite book, now Iyyar's, and I could probably read it in my sleep) convinced him. Just as the door of the Star Warts whooshed open for the pirates to come whooping hopping slithering sliding in, he looked up, startled. "I pishing!" And indeed he was. Chocolate chips all around. And another round of juice, too, to keep things, ah, moving along.
Forty minutes later or so, I suggested another potty trip. He said no, but then I found him in the bathroom, tugging at his pants while peeing on the floor. A step in the right direction, surely. I went to get clean underwear and pants and in the meantime stood him on the stool and asked if he wanted to try pishing standing up (which he's never managed before, despite multiple attempts under Barak's enthusiastic tutelage.) And then--eureka!--"Imma! I pishing!" I'm sorry if this is a little too graphic, but the look of total delight on his face as he watched the pee arcing into the toilet bowl was something to be seen. It was absolutely, hey! Look what I can do!
He went three more times today, twice actually getting his clothes out of the way first, and then once more at bedtime--earning himself a pullup to sleep in, for the first time ever. You cannot imagine--or maybe you can--just how exciting this was. Of course, he then promptly pooped in it, and then when I changed him pooped in the next one. But I am not worrying about that. One thing at a time.
"Hi, this is Dr. ENT!"
"Hi. Uh-oh. You're calling me on a Sunday night. This can't be good."
(I know, friendly, aren't I?)
"Actually, no, it is good. I'm calling because I just read the sleep study and it's good news."
"Really?"
"Really. I have the report right here and I can read it to you."
"Um... but why are you calling me at 9:24 [I was in the kitchen looking at the clock on the stove] on a Sunday night?"
"Because I knew you were worried."
WOW.
How's that for nice?!
Remember how annoyed I was at this doctor the first time I met him? We still have pretty incompatible personalities--I don't deal well with any kind of jokeyness where my kids are involved--but I hereby fully and finally retract anything negative I might ever have said about him.
Wow. So so nice!!!
Results, he said, showed "resolution of severe obstructive sleep apnea." AHI (obstructive episodes per hour, overall) was 4, down from 24 before. (Anything over 5 is a problem.) He spent all but one minute of his study with oxygen saturation over 90, and one minute below. He said, "This is what I would call borderline normal. It's not perfect, but as long as he feels okay, is waking up well rested, and seems okay to you, it's good enough." We talked a little bit more about his GI issues, and he mentioned that the GI tract and the airway are related, so if his GI tract is inflamed that can cause airway tract inflammation as well. But if anything, he thinks it's the GI causing the airway inflammation, not the other way around.
Bringing him back in on Thursday for a followup checkup (as already scheduled), and a hearing exam (ditto). And tomorrow, Abba's going to take him to get his blood drawn for the celiac disease test.
In other exciting news, when Iyyar woke up this morning, I asked him, very casually, if he wanted underwear or a diaper. He wanted underwear. Fine. Breakfast came with juice, and after breakfast I asked him to go sit on the potty. He didn't want to, but a dramatic reading of Commander Toad and the Space Pirates (formerly Barak's favorite book, now Iyyar's, and I could probably read it in my sleep) convinced him. Just as the door of the Star Warts whooshed open for the pirates to come whooping hopping slithering sliding in, he looked up, startled. "I pishing!" And indeed he was. Chocolate chips all around. And another round of juice, too, to keep things, ah, moving along.
Forty minutes later or so, I suggested another potty trip. He said no, but then I found him in the bathroom, tugging at his pants while peeing on the floor. A step in the right direction, surely. I went to get clean underwear and pants and in the meantime stood him on the stool and asked if he wanted to try pishing standing up (which he's never managed before, despite multiple attempts under Barak's enthusiastic tutelage.) And then--eureka!--"Imma! I pishing!" I'm sorry if this is a little too graphic, but the look of total delight on his face as he watched the pee arcing into the toilet bowl was something to be seen. It was absolutely, hey! Look what I can do!
He went three more times today, twice actually getting his clothes out of the way first, and then once more at bedtime--earning himself a pullup to sleep in, for the first time ever. You cannot imagine--or maybe you can--just how exciting this was. Of course, he then promptly pooped in it, and then when I changed him pooped in the next one. But I am not worrying about that. One thing at a time.
Wednesday, July 08, 2009
Wednesday
I have a few minutes of work time yet--not enough to really get going on something new. I'm waiting for someone to return a phone call, anyway, and don't know what to do next until he does. So... a few updates.
1. When Barak was three and a half and Iyyar one and a half, Grandma E came to visit. During the course of her visit, Barak devolved from a reasonably pleasant and civilized small child to a three-foot-tall monster toddler. He threw a tantrum in Target, spent more time out than in, whined, nagged, ignored me and... yeah. It was lovely. I thought, okay, he's trying to get attention--he'll get back to normal after the visit. Nope. He didn't really get back to normal until, oh, a few months after Avtalyon was born. When he turned four.
Iyyar is not yet three and a half. He's not even quite three and a quarter. But he seems to be entering That Stage. The I Don't Want To Do Anything You Tell Me stage. The I Don't Have To Listen To You Stage. The Let's See What Imma Does If I... stage.
Did I mention we're going to visit Grandma E in about three weeks?
It's really good that I have the blog, because when I look at how Iyyar is behaving (and let loose a primal scream that makes the neighbors wonder if they should call 911) and how Barak is behaving (generally speaking, nicely) I wonder what I am in for. Then I look back at the blog two years ago and remember how difficult (read: awful) Barak was at more or less the same age.
It's not him. It's the stage. I just need to keep telling myself that for the next six months...
2. Speaking of Iyyar, I truly do not see how I am going to toilet train him. He has the general idea. He often tells me he needs to poop on the potty and even runs to the bathroom. But pooping hurts him. A lot. And so he cries and wiggles off and, an hour or more later, poops in his diaper. What to do? Once I tried, physically, to get him to stay on when it was so obvious he was going to go any second. But he held it in, and that set off a few days of constipation that ended in a suppository and a lot of screaming. Lesson learned--I won't do that again. But if he's not in underwear in SEVEN WEEKS, he's not going to school next year. His slot will go to someone on the waiting list. I can't have two kids at home all day, every day, all winter, especially not when I am due in November. I don't know what to do--I don't really have a Plan B here.
3. Avtalyon, for all his snuggliness, is not, at the moment, a super-snuggly baby. If I want snuggles, I have to carry him around; if I try to sit down and get some quality cuddle time, he'll usually slide off and go play. Last night, for the first time in months, he wouldn't settle down. He'd been constipated for days (can I write about ANYTHING but poop?!) and then had a day of raging diarrhea caused by the blueberries and cherries I'd given him to help move things along. He was crying in his crib with yet another dirty diaper, which I changed; he was happy to go back into his crib, but cried and cried as soon as I left. So I came back in, picked him up, and sat down in the rocking chair, fully expecting him to take this as an opportunity for further playtime. Nope. He actually flung his arms around me, gave a happy sigh, burrowed into my armpit, and fell asleep. Bliss.
4. Four has to not be about poop! That means... um... well, work is safe! Four can be about work!
Work is crazy. Work is super crazy. People at work are crazy. People outside work are crazy. It's all just... all kinds of crazy. I'm trying to think of something else I can say that isn't identifying but I can't, so let's just leave it there. With CRAZY.
5. I am so into knitting right now it is hard to describe--probably because I have so little knitting time. My ravelry queue is stretched out to THERE and unless I quit my job and hire a full-time babysitter, there is no way on earth I'll finish it before I'm due, or even in this lifetime. And, predictably, what does uberimma do when she has no time to knit? She scratches the knitting itch by buying knitting things, of course. I just got two new knitting books AND put in a small Schoolhouse Press order (a little bit of Plotulopi/Icelandic Unspun to round out what Jasmin brought, so I can make a sweater with it). Pattern for said sweater is in one of the new books. In the meantime, I have on the needles:
-an Eris for me, out of green Ultra Alpaca
-a newborn baby sweater, in green and yellow sock yarn
-a pink hat for Shanna's daughter
-a green hat for Shanna's son
-mittens for Barak (mittens themselves are done, just need the second liner)
I also have, in the Want To Knit Right Now category, yarn and pattern for a Lett-Lopi vest, which I plan on making A-line for a postpartum belly-camouflaging fall garment. With all three of my kids, I woke up the morning of the bris realizing I had absolutely nothing I could possibly wear and look civilized in. This is an attempt to avert that crisis situation. Think I'll get a girl this time?
6. MHH finishes work this Friday and is up for a five-week break. One of those weeks will be spent visiting Grandma E and Deb, and there are many local daytrips planned (there is so much to do locally that we never do, simply because I can't wrangle everyone on multiple buses alone).
One of the planned highlights, however, is a trip to a fiber festival with my friend Sarah. Yes! With Sarah! Without children! I will pack my bags, get on a train, go several states away, and knit and knit and knit.
If I remember to pack my passport, that is.
1. When Barak was three and a half and Iyyar one and a half, Grandma E came to visit. During the course of her visit, Barak devolved from a reasonably pleasant and civilized small child to a three-foot-tall monster toddler. He threw a tantrum in Target, spent more time out than in, whined, nagged, ignored me and... yeah. It was lovely. I thought, okay, he's trying to get attention--he'll get back to normal after the visit. Nope. He didn't really get back to normal until, oh, a few months after Avtalyon was born. When he turned four.
Iyyar is not yet three and a half. He's not even quite three and a quarter. But he seems to be entering That Stage. The I Don't Want To Do Anything You Tell Me stage. The I Don't Have To Listen To You Stage. The Let's See What Imma Does If I... stage.
Did I mention we're going to visit Grandma E in about three weeks?
It's really good that I have the blog, because when I look at how Iyyar is behaving (and let loose a primal scream that makes the neighbors wonder if they should call 911) and how Barak is behaving (generally speaking, nicely) I wonder what I am in for. Then I look back at the blog two years ago and remember how difficult (read: awful) Barak was at more or less the same age.
It's not him. It's the stage. I just need to keep telling myself that for the next six months...
2. Speaking of Iyyar, I truly do not see how I am going to toilet train him. He has the general idea. He often tells me he needs to poop on the potty and even runs to the bathroom. But pooping hurts him. A lot. And so he cries and wiggles off and, an hour or more later, poops in his diaper. What to do? Once I tried, physically, to get him to stay on when it was so obvious he was going to go any second. But he held it in, and that set off a few days of constipation that ended in a suppository and a lot of screaming. Lesson learned--I won't do that again. But if he's not in underwear in SEVEN WEEKS, he's not going to school next year. His slot will go to someone on the waiting list. I can't have two kids at home all day, every day, all winter, especially not when I am due in November. I don't know what to do--I don't really have a Plan B here.
3. Avtalyon, for all his snuggliness, is not, at the moment, a super-snuggly baby. If I want snuggles, I have to carry him around; if I try to sit down and get some quality cuddle time, he'll usually slide off and go play. Last night, for the first time in months, he wouldn't settle down. He'd been constipated for days (can I write about ANYTHING but poop?!) and then had a day of raging diarrhea caused by the blueberries and cherries I'd given him to help move things along. He was crying in his crib with yet another dirty diaper, which I changed; he was happy to go back into his crib, but cried and cried as soon as I left. So I came back in, picked him up, and sat down in the rocking chair, fully expecting him to take this as an opportunity for further playtime. Nope. He actually flung his arms around me, gave a happy sigh, burrowed into my armpit, and fell asleep. Bliss.
4. Four has to not be about poop! That means... um... well, work is safe! Four can be about work!
Work is crazy. Work is super crazy. People at work are crazy. People outside work are crazy. It's all just... all kinds of crazy. I'm trying to think of something else I can say that isn't identifying but I can't, so let's just leave it there. With CRAZY.
5. I am so into knitting right now it is hard to describe--probably because I have so little knitting time. My ravelry queue is stretched out to THERE and unless I quit my job and hire a full-time babysitter, there is no way on earth I'll finish it before I'm due, or even in this lifetime. And, predictably, what does uberimma do when she has no time to knit? She scratches the knitting itch by buying knitting things, of course. I just got two new knitting books AND put in a small Schoolhouse Press order (a little bit of Plotulopi/Icelandic Unspun to round out what Jasmin brought, so I can make a sweater with it). Pattern for said sweater is in one of the new books. In the meantime, I have on the needles:
-an Eris for me, out of green Ultra Alpaca
-a newborn baby sweater, in green and yellow sock yarn
-a pink hat for Shanna's daughter
-a green hat for Shanna's son
-mittens for Barak (mittens themselves are done, just need the second liner)
I also have, in the Want To Knit Right Now category, yarn and pattern for a Lett-Lopi vest, which I plan on making A-line for a postpartum belly-camouflaging fall garment. With all three of my kids, I woke up the morning of the bris realizing I had absolutely nothing I could possibly wear and look civilized in. This is an attempt to avert that crisis situation. Think I'll get a girl this time?
6. MHH finishes work this Friday and is up for a five-week break. One of those weeks will be spent visiting Grandma E and Deb, and there are many local daytrips planned (there is so much to do locally that we never do, simply because I can't wrangle everyone on multiple buses alone).
One of the planned highlights, however, is a trip to a fiber festival with my friend Sarah. Yes! With Sarah! Without children! I will pack my bags, get on a train, go several states away, and knit and knit and knit.
If I remember to pack my passport, that is.
Tuesday, July 07, 2009
Quality control
I just spent some time looking through posts from last year. And was... a little embarrassed. Not by how bad they were, but by how much less bad they were then than they are now. There were more of them. They were better written.
I do keep this blog for myself. I keep it as a record of my life, of my kids' growing up, of the little things that I know I would otherwise forget. I also keep it as a way of staying in touch with friends, because I am, with very few exceptions, lousy at staying in touch. This way, Grandma E and my sisters-in-law and the friends who are interested can all know the cute things the kids are doing, without my having to email them each individually--which I would never manage to do.
But I also keep it because, as a professional writer who writes almost exclusively as someone else, I want to have a way to write in my own voice. I want to be able to remember what my writing, my own writing, my own voice, sounds like. Lately, my own writing hasn't sounded that great. And it isn't surprising that I'm down to fewer than twenty regular readers. And I can't help but think, is this my writing now? Is this my voice? Do I even have my own voice anymore, or has it morphed into the voices of various men old enough to be my father?
I know that most of it is that I don't have a lot of time. Any time I spend blogging is time stolen from speeches, from housework, from the kids, or, most likely, from sleep. But, to use a quote one of my clients likes, anything worth doing is worth doing well.
I'll try to do better.
I do keep this blog for myself. I keep it as a record of my life, of my kids' growing up, of the little things that I know I would otherwise forget. I also keep it as a way of staying in touch with friends, because I am, with very few exceptions, lousy at staying in touch. This way, Grandma E and my sisters-in-law and the friends who are interested can all know the cute things the kids are doing, without my having to email them each individually--which I would never manage to do.
But I also keep it because, as a professional writer who writes almost exclusively as someone else, I want to have a way to write in my own voice. I want to be able to remember what my writing, my own writing, my own voice, sounds like. Lately, my own writing hasn't sounded that great. And it isn't surprising that I'm down to fewer than twenty regular readers. And I can't help but think, is this my writing now? Is this my voice? Do I even have my own voice anymore, or has it morphed into the voices of various men old enough to be my father?
I know that most of it is that I don't have a lot of time. Any time I spend blogging is time stolen from speeches, from housework, from the kids, or, most likely, from sleep. But, to use a quote one of my clients likes, anything worth doing is worth doing well.
I'll try to do better.
Friday, July 03, 2009
Um... what?!
I took Iyyar for his followup sleep study last night. Sleep study #1, as you may recall, was something of a horror show, with upwards of 80 episodes of apnea per night, in addition to his refusal to go to sleep, keep the wires on, etc. I wasn't there for that one--Abba took him, since Avtalyon was still nursing too much for me to leave him overnight.
We fully expected study #2 to be a formality. I took him, and he was out like a light in less than fifteen minutes. The tech put almost all the leads on him without waking him up, but the nasal cannula did him in, and once he was woken he was restless from that. I'm not sure how much of an impact the wires etc. had on the results, but when I asked the tech how things looked as we were about to leave, he said, "Oh, he still has it." Still has what? "He still has obstructive sleep apnea." His O2 desaturated down to 88, which is better than 72 but still not what you want to see. And while the tech was sure he wasn't rousing 80 times an hour, he also was sure it was "a lot more than 5" which is the cutoff. I asked for a ballpark and he said he hadn't counted yet.
I'm not sure what is next. Iyyar has an appointment with the ENT in a couple of weeks, for both a checkup and a hearing test. I know his hearing isn't quite normal--he does fine mostly but I've noticed him not hearing things and other people have mentioned it to me too. And we also have a followup with the GI doctor the week after that.
I know he's better and doing the T & A was worth it. He visibly sleeps better, doesn't snore anymore, and did have that huge growth spurt right after surgery. But he's still tired, still cranky, still climbing into bed in the afternoon and falling asleep during time-outs. And he's still flying off the walls the rest of the time. But he's a three-year-old boy! Surely they all bounce around sometimes, and get tired sometimes, and nap sometimes. It's so hard to know what's normal and what's not. What I know is not normal is the digestive stuff. It's not normal that he only poops when on Miralax. Which is, so far as I'm concerned, like Tylenol--it makes him feel better but isn't actually addressing the underlying issue.
Anyway. Time for me to leave my lair. Anybody know of any connections between OSA and, um, IBS?
We fully expected study #2 to be a formality. I took him, and he was out like a light in less than fifteen minutes. The tech put almost all the leads on him without waking him up, but the nasal cannula did him in, and once he was woken he was restless from that. I'm not sure how much of an impact the wires etc. had on the results, but when I asked the tech how things looked as we were about to leave, he said, "Oh, he still has it." Still has what? "He still has obstructive sleep apnea." His O2 desaturated down to 88, which is better than 72 but still not what you want to see. And while the tech was sure he wasn't rousing 80 times an hour, he also was sure it was "a lot more than 5" which is the cutoff. I asked for a ballpark and he said he hadn't counted yet.
I'm not sure what is next. Iyyar has an appointment with the ENT in a couple of weeks, for both a checkup and a hearing test. I know his hearing isn't quite normal--he does fine mostly but I've noticed him not hearing things and other people have mentioned it to me too. And we also have a followup with the GI doctor the week after that.
I know he's better and doing the T & A was worth it. He visibly sleeps better, doesn't snore anymore, and did have that huge growth spurt right after surgery. But he's still tired, still cranky, still climbing into bed in the afternoon and falling asleep during time-outs. And he's still flying off the walls the rest of the time. But he's a three-year-old boy! Surely they all bounce around sometimes, and get tired sometimes, and nap sometimes. It's so hard to know what's normal and what's not. What I know is not normal is the digestive stuff. It's not normal that he only poops when on Miralax. Which is, so far as I'm concerned, like Tylenol--it makes him feel better but isn't actually addressing the underlying issue.
Anyway. Time for me to leave my lair. Anybody know of any connections between OSA and, um, IBS?
Wednesday, July 01, 2009
All clear
I took Avtalyon to the doctor this morning to get his ears rechecked and they were pronounced just fine. Yay!
I wanted to take Iyyar in to get his bloodwork done, too, but a) it's raining and b) I had an appointment for myself, too, and it seemed a little more than I could reasonably handle. So we need to go back this week sometime, when the Good Phlebotomist is there.
I wanted to take Iyyar in to get his bloodwork done, too, but a) it's raining and b) I had an appointment for myself, too, and it seemed a little more than I could reasonably handle. So we need to go back this week sometime, when the Good Phlebotomist is there.
Monday, June 29, 2009
Beety
I made picked beets last week. I really love pickled beets. I always thought it was a Hungarian thing, but Avtalyon, who has never even been to Hungary, liked them too. He liked them so much that, when presented with a bowlful, he employed the two-fisted hand-over-hand eating technique in which one hand shoves beets into mouth while other hand grabs more beets from bowl, continuing with this until there are no more beets left, at which time the hand discovering a beetless bowl presents said bowl for refilling (before the other hand has even finished cramming the last few in the gaping beety maw).
He ate a LOT of beets this way. Afterwards, we had this:
And then, of course, the dreaded beet diaper. "Imma! Imma, look Imma! Avtalyon pooped PURPLE!"
He ate a LOT of beets this way. Afterwards, we had this:
And then, of course, the dreaded beet diaper. "Imma! Imma, look Imma! Avtalyon pooped PURPLE!"
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