September 2007

Despite all its glory, pregnancy and child bearing can really do a number on a womans body. Since having Liam, I often feel as though my body just isn’t as tough as it used to be. Like it can’t endure as much as it used to. I often have unexplained random pains in places. The skin on my face just looks so tired and patchy all the time. I go through these strange dizzy spells a lot. My eyesight is worse, I sit wearing my glasses on the couch and the subtitles of a movie still look blurry. Last week, many of these symptoms were really starting to annoy me so I decided to look some stuff up on the internet. Now, one of the most important rules you learn in library school is that you should always discourage a patron from trying to self-diagnose themselves according to what they read online. Unfortunately, I self-diagnose all the time and for a short period last week I was convinced I was dying from either a) Addison’s disease or b) a very rare form of cancer known as Adrenal cancer. In fact, the latter is so rare it only makes up 2% of cancer diagnoses each year. Rare or not, I was dying of it.

I was actually in hysterics for about a day over this. Dying before Liam was born wasn’t such a major big deal. We all die sometime. But the thought of dieing before I had seen my son grow into a adulthood was really getting to me. I managed to get into the doctor the next morning. I’ve switched doctors to a lady my dad often goes scuba diving with. She’s a character, sorta of looks like the sort that should be on a ranch in Wyoming ropin’ horses. As I started riddling off all my symptoms she stopped me half way and told me to slow down because she couldn’t write that fast. At that point, I realized what a hypochondriac I sounded like. She was very thorough, something which my dad had already indicated, and I appreciated that. She asked a bunch of questions back and eventually we got around to exercise. “Yes, I run.” “Outside?” “Yes.” “Hello, there it is. With the heat and all, you’re sweatin’ out potassium. Just eat a banana every morning.” So, I’m eating bananas and feeling much better.

However, I am still having some foot problems. There’s something going on with my heel. I called to make an appointment with the podiatrist yesterday but the secretary said that the earliest opening was October 23rd. That’s like a month away. I’m having problems walking here. I can’t wait a month. Can you believe in a town with an estimated forty thousand people, most of them over the age of fifty, we only have one podiatrist?

I’ve been rather giddy the last few days, not sure why. They came to install our new windows on Monday. They look amazing! Mike took pictures, he just hasn’t uploaded them yet. We’ve both been kind of lazy lately. It’s really hard to get things done around the house when you’re in temporary possession of The Office season three DVD set and Willy Wonka’s secret stash is stocked in your kitchen pantry. Priorities folks. Some things are just more important. I’ve had chocolate everyday since last Wednesday and I’m not aiming to stop soon. It’s amazing what an insane amount of high quality chocolate can do to a womans personality.

I’ve spent a lot of time lately anticipating Fall. I don’t know why I’m so excited about the holiday seasons coming up but I think it has something to do with having a kid. I can’t wait to dress Liam up in Halloween costumes and take him to the pumpkin patch to choose a pumpkin, or put up a xmas tree and see what his reaction is when we have it all decorated and the lights are turned on. As adults, we’re so bad about letting these activities loose their appeal and excitement. Decorating trees and such actually become more of a house chore than anything else. Having Liam around is making me feel like a kid again, I really can’t wait. The weather outside yesterday was much cooler than usual. It rained most of the day and it really felt like Fall weather. I had a very twisted urge to play hookie from work so I could stay at home and watch Anne of Green Gables. There’s just something about that story and that red headed chick that just screams Autumn time.

Mike and I have always talked about how we would like to settle in the country. Most of the places I’ve lived growing up were in the suburbs. Still my brother and I always managed to find some hidden path somewhere that would take us to some place more remote, open and wooded. I had a rotten habit of following my brother and his friends around. I know they didn’t want me there but I guess they figured out early that it was easier to just let me come with them then it was to tell me to leave since I would surely storm off whining “I’m tellin’ Mom” and that would just ruin everything. Sometimes we didn’t have to go far to find these places. They were usually easy to find in Norway. In fact, my grandmother’s house had a great yard with this really neat area of pine bushes where we would build little huts out of branches and stuff and run around pretending we were elves or warriors or something. In Scotland there was an area behind one of the schools in our neighborhood that we used to go to. I remember we picked blueberries there once.

I often think about my childhood and compare it to what I imagine Liam’s will be like. Like all parents, I want Liam to have a childhood filled with happy memories similar to the ones that I have of my own. But having said that, I can not imagine every letting him roam as far away as we were allowed to roam when we were kids. All I can think about is all the sex offenders and nut jobs out there. I get so upset when I see all the young kids who come to the library after school, just waiting around for their parents to get off work. If you’re fourteen or fifteen, ok, maybe. But we had a kid who was ten at the library the other night. He was there until closing time. He had ridden his bike there. We close at nine. It’s dark outside. This kid was going to bike home. At the age of ten. Downtown. In the dark. Am I wrong to think that’s insane? I’ll get Liam a bike. Bikes are good, exercise, fresh air. Good. But until he’s about fifteen, I’m biking everywhere with him. What about all the crazy drivers out there, what if he gets hit by a car? I’m going with him, that’s all there is too it. That’s not crazy, is it?

Ok, it is crazy. In fact, there are plenty of studies out there indicating that “hyperprotective parenting” could leave children at risk for more anxiety. I mean, Liam will never want to go outside or go anywhere on his own if I’m constantly scaring him about the potential “boogy man” lingering on the street corner or all the crazed drivers behind the wheel. I really have no idea how I’m going to balance this because there are so many legitimate reasons to be scared to let my son out of my sight yet, I’m going to have to eventually. Then there’s the whole nature thing. Part of the reason I don’t like living in suburban neighborhoods is the whole “pretty garden” stuff. I mean, I like pretty gardens. I want some prettyness to my garden but I also want a yard where my child can play without having to worry about accidently trampling the petunias. I want a garden of potted plants. The rest just needs to be open space with green grass and trees. With a rocking chair on the front porch and a picket fence in front. Wait a minute, nevermind. I’m thinking of that country song.

And Mike’s an uncle. Sydney Teresa was born last Friday, 6lbs 10oz (I think that’s right). Mom, Dad and baby are doing well.

Here’s Grandma Pat holding her. I love this picture. She looks so peaceful…and you can see her cute little nose.

When my brother and I were little living in Norway we used to eat a cookie that was the shape of a man..kind of like a gingerbread man but not with ginger, more like a sugar cookie. My mom sent some from Norway for us and here’s Liam eating it. He giggled when I first gave him the whole thing, after which he proceeded to tear off the heads and arms. Didn’t eat much of it but certainly enjoyed playing with it.

This is a scant half (!) of the candy that was brought back by Carl, from Norway. Siri is still there, so I’m suspecting that more will be on the way.

So, I totally missed the fun because I was at work but last week Liam got to chat on iSight with my parents (in Norway) and Mitch (in Korea). Technology is freakin sweet!

I’m catching up on blog reading and I just got to Chrissy’s post about “perfection” and dealing with the “lulls” in life. She just recently finished her MLIS too (in addition to several other accomplishments). I like how she questions “well, what’s next? Is this it?” because I’ve done a lot of this myself lately. We spend a lot of time trying to accomplish things and despite how rewarding the achievement may feel there’s this initial coming down period afterwards. It kind of reminds you that the best part is often the process, not the result. I think sometimes we grow up thinking that happiness is a state of being. Something that just happens but only after a certain mixture of ingredients or specific variables have been combined. The media certainly makes us feels this way. Buy this, be this, look like this. Maybe it’s better not to think about happiness as a state, but as a learned skill that has to be practiced. Continuously. Not that I’m an expert on this but it would seem to make more sense if we thought of it that way more often so we’re not constantly looking for something external to create that specific state of being. On the other hand, it’s also very likely that it’s almost midnight and I should probably go to bed. Either that or waaaaay to many of those Buddhist focused self-help books.

We’re trying to teach Liam sign language. Although he hasn’t done them on a repeated basis, he has signed “dog” and “bird”, also “milk”, however I don’t think he really understands that he can use these signs to communicate with us. He just copies. I think he just sees it as playing. He has, however, created his own sign. We have a DVD of nursery rhyme songs that he loves to watch. His favorite is Wheels on the Bus. Whenever we pass by the DVD player or he’s playing around it he’ll do the “swish swish” motion for the wind shield wipers. I got him another DVD for his birthday of animal cartoons…all based on famous children’s books. But he won’t sit still for those, I think, because there’s no music.

Liam’s new thing nowadays is getting into the pantry and pouring cheerios on the floor. He then proceeds to eat the cheerios off the floor until the dogs come running…the dogs love Liam. They follow him virtually everywhere, especially during and after feeding times. He’s great at sharing, constantly dropping pieces of his own food onto the floor for the dogs to enjoy. We’ve had a lot of trouble getting Turbo to eat his meals here lately…for obvious reasons, who wants dried kibbles when you can have pumpkin and applesauce, or chicken and rice.

In other happy news, this time next week I’m going to be an aunt for the first time. Mikes sister, Kim, is due on Friday. She’s having a girl. They’ve chosen a really snazzy name…I love it. Syndey Theresa…I have no idea if I spelled that correctly but hopefully Kim will correct me. Mike is getting real excited about this too. It’ll be so neat for Liam to have a cousin around his age.

I had to go to OSU Stillwater for a workshop on Friday. I prepared meticulously for this trip, printed out three different maps, two to get me to Stillwater and another of the campus. I got lost. Twice. Once on my way to Stillwater and again on campus. Didn’t help that there was construction everywhere and nowhere to park that didn’t require a permit. I felt pretty traumatized by the time I made it home. I am hopeless when it comes to reading maps and following directions. On the first day of our honeymoon, it was Mike who got us from our hotel in Oslo to the port to catch the boat to the island where the Viking Ship Museum was supposed to be. This would be a city I have visited a total of three times in my life. Mike had never even been in the country before. And it’s not like finding the port in Oslo is all that difficult. You can see it in the distance, you can smell it. Just follow your nose…I just don’t understand how I get so disoriented. I think it’s just the map thing. I do a lot better when people just give me landmarks and tell me “right” or “left”.

It’s so fascinating to see what people in the past thought the future was going to be like. Here’s a view from the 1960’s on what shopping was going to be like in 1999. Think internet shopping…not too far off. I love how the bill automatically gets sent to the husband.

There’s also a really neat blog called Paleo-Future where you can see futuristic illustrations and prints made in the past. His most recent post has a neat picture of what some french guy in the early 1900’s thought firefighting would be like in the year 2000. Really dig those wings.

I think I’m going to designate Mondays as my official blogging day. I never blog anymore, I just can’t seem to find the time. It doesn’t help that I spend eight hours a day staring at a computer screen. The last thing I want to do when I get home is stare at one some more. On a similar note, I think to help with the whole techno stress thing, I’m gonna designate Sunday’s No Technology Day. That is, no computer, no t.v. and no car. If I need something at the store, I’ll walk to Wal-Mart. Chances are I’ll be too lazy to do that so whatever I need will have to wait. I may, however, make an exception with the t.v. thing in case Mike wants to watch a movie. I’ll claim that as me and Mike time.

Now that I’ve gotten myself all organized I guess I should blog about something interesting for once, and what could possibly be more interesting then my son. I’ve had some time to reflect on this past year, which has been full of changes both personal and professional. So far, I think Mike and I have it pretty good when it comes to finding the balance between work and home life. We’ve been doing the mom work full time, dad stay at home thing for about two months now. We’ve worked out a flexible schedule (note the emphasis on flexible). Liam still wakes up at night. I have a feeling this probably won’t change until he’s finally got all of his teeth. There are dozens of different schools of thought on this. Most people say he’s supposed to be sleeping through the night by now and that we shouldn’t respond to his crying/whines because this will help teach him to self-soothe and put himself back to sleep. Although there are times when Liam will wake-up and fuss himself back to sleep without any assistance, there are other nights when he simply won’t and needs help. Sometimes he just needs some rocking and a sip of water. Other times he needs a full bottle, especially here lately since he hasn’t been eating to well (probably a combination of teething and growth spurt). When nothing else works, we bring him into bed and co-sleep with him. Those nights are cozy, sometimes too cozy…for some reason he likes to sleep sideways so I usually end up with a foot in my ribs by morning. To help each other out, we rotate the night time responsibilities every two nights. That way we can ensure a few nights a week where one of us can sleep through the night without interruption.

I always come home for my lunches. Depending on how Liam’s nap schedule is, I’ll get at least forty minutes to see him before heading back to work. Mike will often email me throughout the day with short little updates. This helps since it makes me feel like I’m still participating in his daily routine even if I am at work. Most nights I get off at 5:30, drop my stuff at the door, change clothes and eat dinner. I have about three hours with Liam before his bed time routine starts. Most people might consider this a tiring task after eight hours on the job but it is honest to God the best way to unwind from work for me. I love it. I miss him so much throughout the day, I can hardly wait to get home and see him.

I think, maybe, the only time I have difficulty is on the weekends. Because I work all week, I feel a little guilty about taking time to do things for myself. I feel like I should be spending every waking moment I have with Liam. Not only that, but Mike has Liam all week. He needs his breaks too. Then of course, Mike and I need time together. There’s only two days in a weekend, it’s hard to fit all of that in. But all in all, I think we’re doing pretty darn good. If we could just keep our house from falling apart, we’d be in really good shape. I’m still trying to work on Mike with the whole yurt idea. I have a feeling I can swing him when he finds out that plumbing is completely optional.

This video/song has to be spread far and wide:

Mike and I have an ongoing argument about butter. I love butter. I’ll butter almost anything. Bread, potatoes, rice, steamed veggies. I also love to put butter on my sandwiches. I’m just not into the whole mustard and mayo thing, I never was. For instances, I’ll have a turkey sandwich with butter. I also love butter under my peanut butter when I have a peanut butter sandwich. This really gets Mike, he thinks it’s disgusting to put more butter where butter simply isn’t needed. I beg to differ. Peanut butter and butter are two separate things and one compliments the other perfectly in my opinion. Jam and butter on toast is another one that makes Mike scratch his head. It’s especially good if the bread is toasted and the butter is melted.

Do I have weird butter habits? Does anyone else out there put butter on their peanut butter sandwhich?

The last few days have been a little brutal for Mike and I. Yesterday was our five year anniversary. After paying for our car insurance ($300), paying to fix our car ($500), our plane ticket to New York in October ($500) and various other medical bills ($150, give or take), we have practically no money other than what we need for food right now so we weren’t able to celebrate in the way we had planned. This will likely be the last anniversary we have in Oklahoma so we had planned to spend the night at Jarret Farm, the same ranch hotel we we stayed at the night of our wedding. No way we could afford that now. Instead we were just going to do a casual dinner and a movie thing. I took Liam over to my parents house while Mike worked on installing our new tub in the guest bathroom (a topic which requires a entire post for itself). We were to meet up around dinner and finish watching Rome series 2, only nothing seemed to be going right for either one of us yesterday. Liam seems to be teething all of his teeth at once and has some sort of strange allergy/cold thing, probably cold since it would appear that I’m coming down with it too. His moods alternate from wild and happy to cranky, hold me/don’t hold me go away wait don’t move, I don’t know what the hell I want. Mike had his own issues with the bathroom. We ended up being too exhausted by the end of the day to even care that we had made it to our fifth year of marriage. With a cold coming on I decided to sleep in a seperate bed last night. I downed some Benedryl and Tylenol and fell into a coma like sleep only to be startled by Mike at around 4am in the morning. “@*#%! We’re flooding!” We were in the middle of a major thunder/rain storm and water had seeped in through the bathroom wall into Liams’ room, down the hall into our bedroom, soaking the carpet (not a big deal) and our new laminate floors (very bid deal). Our sunroom roof was also leaking, which it does persistantly no matter how often we try to fix it.

I think Mike is about fed up with house stuff and I don’t blame him. If you’re on his Facebook you’ll note his status has been updated to “Mike is cursing his house to Hades”. When I was home for lunch he expressed the hope our house would catch on fire and burn down so we could collect on the insurance and be done with it, but then he realized how bloated the house was and that it would likely not even stay lit. So goes his luck.

This would be my husband at his wits end. If you know and care about my darling Mike, please send him some positive karma in the comments below or give him a sympathetic smile when you see him. My efforts are appreciated but I think he could do with a couple of more “hang in there’s” from friends. Meanwhile, I’m going to fantasize about living in a yurt and cross my fingers that my cold is gone by Monday.

So a strange, quiet little transformation has been happening with our little boy. Actually, it’s just that: he’s becoming a little boy. The past few weeks have been nightmarish trying to get him to eat anything we spoon fed him. We tried various tactics of distraction, from handing him his own spoon to jingling keys in front of his face. It’s ok, though. I’m a parent, I’m slow and dim-witted. What he’s been trying to tell us is, “Quit this mushy crap I got these damn teeth I wanna bite something!” Our biggest concern, however, has always been vegetables and meat. He’s always spit both vegetables and meat out. Fruit he loves, he’ll eat any amount of fruit you put in front of him; bread, cheese - loves ‘em.

Well, the other day, in a fit of desperation over needing to find something ANYTHING for the poor kid to eat, I whipped him up a veritable smorgasbord of food: a Pluot (it’s the cross between a Plum and an Apricot), bread and butter, chunks of cheese, and tucked away in the corner (just in case) some steamed carrots and broccoli. I offered the bread an cheese first, of course, he loves ‘em, right? He takes a few bites and tosses the rest overboard. The Pluot he went for, but I was running out of food. I grabbed the sorry, sad little bowl of vegetables. I looked down at them, I felt like the island Natives offering up Margaret Thatcher rather than Naomi Watts to King Kong. But lo! The carrots went in the mouth and did not return. Surely, though, the broccoli will be tossed overboard. One bite…in the mouth…an ugly face, oh no!…but wait! *chew, chew*, and a swallow!! Now I can’t put broccoli pieces down fast enough - he’s literally popping them into his mouth as I set them down - I even had Carleen cook another bit so would have enough.

My world is upside down. My son…is a vegetarian.

Liam is one. We had a wonderful little birthday party for him yesterday, although his actual birthday was last Sunday. You can see a full set of pics from the events here. We waited to do the party this weekend so Mike’s parents and grandma from New York could be here. It was another far too short visit from them, it’s always hard to see them leave especially now that Liam is getting older. But we had a wonderful memory filled weekend. He didn’t seem to like his cake, sort of poking at it with a lot of suspicion before he actually sucked some frosting off his fingers.

He got some really neat toys to play with, including a xylophone. We took a video clip of him shaking a toy while I tried, emphasis on tried, to play the xylophone. I have no ear for music. Mike, on the other hand, mr. jack_of_all_instruments, already taught himself twinkle-twinkle little star.

Yikes. Ok, that so did not go the way I thought it would. I’ve never even heard of this book.

You’re The Guns of August!
by Barbara Tuchman
Though you’re interested in war, what you really want to know is what
causes war. You’re out to expose imperialism, militarism, and nationalism for what they
really are. Nevertheless, you’re always living in the past and have a hard time dealing
with what’s going on today. You’re also far more focused on Europe than anywhere else in
the world. A fitting motto for you might be "Guns do kill, but so can
diplomats."

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