Mandajuice

Brought to you by balogna brain

I've been meaning to post all day, but admittedly, I've been enjoying a craptastic mood.  I don't want to actually DO anything, but god forbid my children interrupt my NOT DOING THINGS.  Snappish much?  Also I'm not sure, but it feels like something is wrong with me.  It took me all morning yesterday to complete the simple task of filling out and mailing Alex's birthday party invitations.  This morning I was equally dumbfounded simply figuring out our meal plan for the rest of the week.  It's like my brain is filled with cotton balls.

I'm going to just blame hormones and move on.  [Speaking of hormones, have I mentioned that it really REALLY feels like I'm having a monthly cycle?  I have cramps and achey legs, crabbiness, every single telltale sign of my cycle, except the cycle itself.  Anyone else with a Mirena experiencing this?  It's weird, but I'll take it!]

Astute readers will notice a new item in my sidebar: CONTAGIOUS DISEASES WATCH 2008-2009!  Genoa already caught her first cold of the school year (even though she's not even in school yet!) and with it came my idea to start actually keeping track of the snot factor.  It seems like we spent half of last year sick, so I might as well document it someplace, if for no other reason than to make everyone else with perma-sick kids feel better.

Does anyone have a good recipe for an apple crisp?  I used a ladder today to reach some of the bigger, prettier apples off our tree and now I can't wait to eat them, but I'm not in the mood (see above) to bake an apple pie. Any ideas?

Ladies I love

So it turns out that afternoon preschool is rocking my world.  We fart the morning away however we like and JUST at the time Alex starts getting crabby/bored/tired/pissed off at me for not feeding him a diet of 100% Trader Joe's pop tarts, it's time for school!  The new school is close by and the entire round trip drop off/pick up takes 12 minutes.  I'm usually back home at five past one, at which point I immediately put Genoa down for a nap and get about two hours to myself.  Lately I've been using that time to catch up on my own sleep, but in theory, once Genoa is more consistently sleeping through the night, I should be able to get a lot more done with this schedule than I ever could before.

On Wednesday, I dropped off Alex and then took a sleeping Genoa to Kate's house (to help her work on her blog, woot!).  I always forget how much easier it is handling only one kid.  It's a phenomenon you rarely get to appreciate because you don't feel that way the first time through.  It isn't until you get used to the insanity of two that you realize the sweet merciful bliss of an afternoon spent not breaking up fights. 

On Thursday we made lunch for Annagrace and her girls.  It's not like I'm looking for more reasons to love the Internet because obviously I have more than enough, but meeting Annagrace has only served to fan the flames of the love affair.  AG is so present in her life that it's hard not to watch her with awe.  That and I can think of very few people who could keep up with the two of us in a conversation.  Never a minute of silence between us!  (Which is also a sign we need hang out more often!)

On Friday afternoon I hosted playgroup (with cocktails, naturally).  We ate chocolate chip cookies and filled some water balloons and in no time at all, we solved the nature vs. nurture debate simply by watching the boys chase each other around in a water balloon death match while the girls pleasantly dropped the balloons on the grass and made sure not to splash each other. 

I've been HORRIBLE about taking pictures lately, which I'm starting to think correlates positively with my mental health.  The more pictures I take, the better I'm doing.  It could also be the iPhone and that since buying it, I pretty much always already HAVE something in my hands, so why bust out the big camera? Anyway, at one point on Friday, I handed off the big camera to Alejandra and she snapped this great shot of Tonya and I (which I've edited using Picnik and love):

I am doing better, by the way.  My anxiety has been gone for over a week, which has given me some much needed perspective.  In hindsight?  I can tell you that my anxiety was 10% my actual life and 90% the fact that it's an election year.  At the time I couldn't figure out why I was so upset, but now I have this vivid memory of vacuuming my entire house while FUMING about the very sexist response women had to Sarah Palin's nomination for vice president.  I don't want to start a political discussion again, but let's just say that I had been HOPING she'd get nominated for a couple weeks before it happened and to then sit here and watch everyone (meaning other bloggers/writers) whom I respect and admire and LIKE literally rip her to shreds, well, it BOTHERED me.  It felt like a personal attack on everything that matters to me, my values, and looking back, it's no wonder I couldn't breathe.  The fact that I didn't want to blog about it only served to make it a million times worse.

Things I bought today

1.  Four pairs size XL Jockey mid-rise briefs for Dave.  This should hopefully make up for the three pairs of holey drawers I've thrown away this week.

2.  One giant Disney princess toddler book, on sale for half off, just to reward my own princess for sleeping through the night TWO TIMES in a row.

3.  One Disney Princess lunch bag, only because it was $3.49.  I plan to save it for future bribery.

4.  A strawberry huller (Oxo), because I've wanted one for YEARS and finally saw one today at Macy's.

5.  A set of Martha Stewart brand Halloween-themed cake stencils because Halloween is my own personal Christmas and I would love to have a big fat mandajuice party with all our friends this year.

6.  A 10x18" nonstick griddle (Analon) mostly because I am in desperate need of larger cooking surfaces (see 4th of July!) and had some major couponage to use.  (Originally $119, mine for $45!).

7.  A really cute picture frame that I will use to display the proofs from Alex and Genoa's professional photography session in April.  I've been looking for something with multiple 3x5" spots and couldn't find anything, so I bought this instead.

8.  A present for Carol since her birthday is on Saturday.

Things that totally owned ME today?

(Video of Genoa singing the ABC song)

PARENTING IS SUCH A BREEZE!

Monday night the final tally of times I got up and put the child back to bed (without speaking! which is the hardest part for me - not comforting her or telling her again to GO TO SLEEP) was 25 times.  Not too bad, except for that many of them took place in ten minute intervals starting in the middle of the night.

The good news?  The insanely good news that I'm almost scared to report?  Last night I only had to put her back to bed ten times, the last of which was before 11:00.  And then?

Drumroll please....

GENOA. SLEPT. THROUGH. THE. NIGHT.

I know!  I can't believe it either!  And I know it's just ONE TIME and tonight we may very well go back to getting up 25 times again, but still!  She didn't get up until just before 7AM (no 5AM nursing session even!), which in and of itself is a total miracle. 

So there we have it.  Let the record reflect that Genoa slept through the night, alone, for the first time on her 810th day of life.  Six months AFTER her last diaper.  That's two years, two months and 18 days since mommy's had a decent night of sleep, people. 

Feel free to read this post to your teenagers!  It makes a great case for the use of birth control.

That Girl

I'm standing outside of Genoa's bedroom door right now while she screams. The past few nights have been torture. I swear this child has some serious future career potential in getting terrorists to talk. She's PERSISTENT, this girl.

Last night after 90 gruelling minutes of off and on screaming wherein I'd sit next to her bed, wait for her to fall asleep, then sneak off to my bed only to have her wake right back up and start screaming again, I gave up and shut her bedroom door, letting her cry. I didn't lock it and we basically did the Super Nanny routine of silently putting her back to bed, a million times over again until she was too exhausted to get up anymore at six AM.

It's been ten minutes of the same business tonight and I've put her back to bed six times already. I should have known earlier when things were going well that it wouldn't last. Basically she finally figured out that I wasn't staying in her room all night after she fell asleep and boy, did that ever piss her off.

(seven)

(eight)

(nine)

(ten)

Damn I should have brought a chair!

Could motherhood be any more exhausting? If you had told me BEFORE I had kids how much sleep I'd be losing this FAR into it, I'd have kindly suggested you lay off the crack pipe.

It's finally quiet in there, so I'm going to go join Dave downstairs. Tomorrow I'll report the final tally!

On anxiety

I hate to even write this post mainly because I don't want anyone to worry about me.  I swear, I'M FINE.  Seriously.  FINE.  Totally FINE. 

I just have this little problem where sometimes I can't quite fill my lungs all the way up with air.  Have you ever had that feeling?  Like you absolutely NEED a big deep cleansing breath and no matter how hard you try, you can't get one?  It's almost exactly the way a bladder infection feels, only it's your lungs.

The first time I felt like I couldn't breathe, I was in my twenties and I thought it was because I was getting too fat and I had somehow squashed my lungs.  It only ever happened while I was laying in bed at night and like almost everything that was ever wrong with me, I blamed it on my obesity.   I bought one of those pillows that helps you sleep sitting up and eventually it went away.

For years, it kept happening off and on.  I would lay in bed at night and feel like I couldn't breathe and the terrible part about it was that the harder I TRIED to breathe, the more I focused on my breathing, the worse it got.  I finally asked my doctor about it during the months leading up to my gastric bypass surgery.  I asked him if it would go away when I lost weight and he said, "Well, what you're describing is called ANXIETY.  It has nothing to do with your weight."

I was shocked. 

You see?  I am not a worrier.  I can't consciously recall the last time I was WORRIED about something.  (Wait, actually I can.  I was CRAZY WORRIED about Alex when he caught pneumonia and we had to go to the ER last year.  INSANELY WORRIED.)  But I'm not a person who wastes time worrying about ANYTHING.  Worrying doesn't do a DAMN BIT OF GOOD so it's something I never waste my mental energy on. 

Or so I thought.

At that first diagnosis, I just chocked it up to being nervous about the surgery.  That was logical.  That made sense.  If I was a character on Star Trek, I'd be Dr. Spock.  All logic.  This mental health business did. not. compute. 

After my surgery, it first seemed to get better.  But then it didn't.  I would still have weird episodes of late night breathing issues, but since I officially had a word for it, anxiety, I could usually figure out why I was feeling stressed.  I had a big project due at work.  I had a fight with Dave, etc.  And it would always blow over and I'd feel better.

Then Hello Surprise Pregnancy!  I felt like I spent half the nights of my pregnancy with Alex not being able to breathe for some reason or another.  I was actually worried about my weight and my health and my job and also worried, somewhat irrationally, that Dave would fall asleep while driving, get into an accident and I would have to go down and identify his body, thus being left to raise the baby alone.  All that rational logical VULCAN business? Yeah.  Not so much with that after I began growing a real life human inside me.

[Guess what I had an impossible time with?  LAMAZE breathing.  Didn't happen for me.  Any time I focus on my breathing, my anxiety magically appears.  Also why you'll probably never catch me in a Yoga class.]

And now that I have two kids, it seems my anxiety level has at least doubled.  Usually when I feel my breathing getting tight again, I can figure out why.  I can label it, work it out, move on.  It usually goes away within HOURS, not days.

But this summer, it seems to be getting worse.  If I could tell you WHY I can't breathe half the time, well, then I'd probably be able to breathe just fine.  This time I can't figure it out.  I'm happy.  Things are good in my life.  The rational side of my brain sees absolutely NOTHING wrong.  The Vulcan in me is A-Okay.

So then why can't I breathe?

I finally talked to my doctor about it yesterday.  His first suggestion was counseling and yeah, that's certainly an option.  I don't know why, but it's not one I'm fond of or even remotely interested in.  My mental health has always been solid.  I'm not even remotely depressed.  I don't have any issues.  I'm in a remarkably healthy long-term relationship with a man who I tell EVERYTHING.  Dave is my talk therapist, so I don't feel like I need another one.

The doctor, incidentally, also suggested that my anxiety might just have something to do with constantly being responsible for the needs of two small people all the time.  He and I were trying to talk and Genoa was pretty LOUDLY attempting to get my attention and he noticed.  And he might have a point there.  I rarely get a break.

Then he wrote me a prescription for Xanax, which is all fine and good and I'm not opposed to the idea of taking it when I really and truly can't breathe and it's interfering with my life.  But I can't take it while I'm nursing Genoa, which means I basically have an Rx for nothing.  I could do it, but I hate the idea of weaning my daughter just so I can pop a chill pill (literally).  The doctor WANTED to put me on Zoloft, since it prevents anxiety and is apparently safe for nursing, but it's an anti-depressant, a fairly strong one, and I'm SO not ready to go there.  I'm happy enough most of the time that I would worry an anti-depressant would cause me to have depression.

I asked my doctor if he thought exercise would help and that was a bandwagon he was enthusiastic to get on.  It could help.  And so instead of stopping at the pharmacy on my way home, I stopped off at the gym.  I checked it out, looked into the classes, and found out that they have a salt water pool.  Alex loved the play area (as usual, Genoa only lasted five minutes without me before she realized I was gone and started crying for me).  The weirdest part was answering the Gym Dudes' questions.  "What are your fitness goals?" 

Uh... Avoiding Xoloft?  Now that was an awkward conversation.  I just explained to him that I was perfectly happy with my body exactly as it is, but that I need to work out for stress relief.  I might be the only size 14 on earth who wants to spend time exercising but couldn't care less about the physical outcome of the endeavor.

And the funny thing is, I think it might work.  Never one to beat around the bush (I'm a do-er, not a thinker), I had Dave put the kids to bed last night and I ran off and used my free gym pass to go swimming.  I couldn't breathe all day and the evening was no better, so I figured there was no time like the present to see if exercise would help.

So I swam ten laps.  I exercised!  At 9:00 on a Friday night.  And it felt pretty good.  I think swimming could be a big help and the fact that the salt water pool didn't muck up my hair was a huge perk.  When I first got out of the pool, I felt like I was breathing better, feeling more relaxed and then while I was in the shower, I got that rushed feeling I often get when I leave the kids home with Dave and I worry that Genoa is screaming and I'll get home and he'll be all fed up and stressed out, etc, etc, etc.  It's ME, not him, but it was kind of an epiphany moment.  Maybe some of Dave's work stress is wearing off on me.  Maybe it really IS the kids.  Maybe taking a break every night and letting Dave take over for an hour while I go swimming is just the Rx I need. 

We'll see.

[But seriously, folks, I'm FINE.]

As for Alex...

He's doing really well!  Yesterday he read his first ever BOOK, a simple reader from Hooked on Phonics. 

(You Tube video of Alex reading)

So how am I sleeping these days?

We're well over a week into Genoa's new sleep routine and I'm happy (and a little apprehensive) to report that things seem to be going fine.  I nurse her, give her a kiss and a hug and then sit against the wall next to the bed while she falls asleep.  She mostly goes along with the plan just fine, often asking me in the middle of the nursing session, "When we done with milk, you gonna sit next to me?"  She gets it, which is nice, and when she has a hard time and starts screaming, I just tell her that it hurts my ears and I pretend to leave the room.  It works every time.

A week ago was the first night I spent in bed with Dave and it was pure and complete torture.  The mattress!  It killed me!  It took me 48 hours to unkink my neck.  The very next morning I dragged Dave to the mattress store, where I immediately picked out the same mattress we have in Genoa's room, the mattress I love and want to make babies with (or at least on).  Fortunately, it's also just about the cheapest mattress you can imagine.  Even more fortunately, after testing all the beds in our price range, Dave decided on the same darn one. 

So instead of two twins, we have one King and it all worked out.  We've been sleeping on the new bed for almost a week and it's still a winner.  Problem solved!  I even managed to get $150 for our OLD mattress on Craig's List.  (I realize I gave it away, but I wanted it off my porch).

Now if I could just get Genoa to give up her early morning wake up call!  She does fine all night and mostly stays in bed until around 5:30, at which point the sun is up and that's her cue that it's okay to nurse again.  So she barrels out of bed, usually screaming, tracks me down in bed with Dave and I have to take her back to bed, nurse her and do the routine all over again.  If I'm lucky, she sleeps another two hours, if not, like this morning, I just turn the TV on and let her watch Dora in our room until I'm ready to face the day.

The hardest part is that I'm getting less sleep.  Kind of a lot less sleep.  Two out of five of past nights, Genoa has been up at least once or twice in addition to the 5AM call.  Repeating the routine more than once a night gets unbearably tedious, but I'm slogging through.  I've explained to her that I'm not sleeping in her bed anymore and I'm not going to eat those words.  I feel like we've made amazing progress, but it hasn't been without work and unfortunately, I'm the only one who can do it. 

Sad green tomatoes

Summer is over and normally I would not mind it in the least.  Summer is usually my least favorite season and I'm never too sad to see it go.  This year there is only one exception and that exception is all about MY TOMATOES.  My precious beautiful tomatoes.  SIX bushes of them, all with rotund, robust, GREEN tomatoes all over them.  Green tomatoes which might never turn red. 

You guys!  You have no idea how much I've been looking forward to my heirlooms!  My most gianormous bush is chock full of branch after sprawling branch of brandywines and it makes me cry that the summer wasn't hot enough for me to get to actually EAT them after all that work.  Unless we have a super sunny and hot next few weeks (which is doubtful), my garden is totally screwed.

[cries]

I guess it's time to rehash the big summer list I've been keeping on my sidebar.  We did pretty well slogging through it!

Check out some free movies for families at the local theater.     We did this once and saw a Veggie Tales movie and I realized how impossible it is to take both kids to the show.  Alex is an ANGEL, but Genoa can't sit still that long, not even for a short kid-friendly movie.  Next summer!
Go to the library and then lay on the grass reading books.  Done!
Check out the Farmer's Market in Camas.     Done!  It was sadly tiny and had almost no food.  Too bad! 
Pick our own berries at a local farm.   (NOPE and I really wish we HAD done this!) 
Go to the Zoo.     (NOPE and I really should've gone since I think Genoa would enjoy it.  Maybe this weekend!)
Go to the OMSI (Oregon Museum of Science & Industry).  Twice!
Have a tea party on the lawn.  Yeah.  I guess we did this.  We had lunch out there a couple times.
Make slime.     (NOPE)
Make silly puddy.  (NOPE)   
Rent a projector and watch movies in the back yard after dark.  This one turned out to be a huge disappointment!  I was really looking forward to hosting some kind of backyard party and setting up a big sheet screen for the kids to watch movies on after dark.  I had no idea it would be SO expensive and I was even thinking we'd RENT a projector.  The cheapest one I could find was more than $100 per day, plus shipping! 
Take the bus somewhere in town.  Well, I didn't do this, but my mom took Alex to the Discovery Museum on light rail, so that pretty much counts, right?

We also did a bunch of stuff that never made it on the list: we took a trip to California, we had play dates at the park and friends over for dinner.  We had the best 4th of July in the history of fourths of July.  Alex played t-ball and went to Mad Science Camp and Superhero camp and seemingly endless weeks of sports camps.  I feel like we had a pretty good summer.

"All the furious paddling underneath"**

Today was Alex's first day of pre-kindergarten at a new school.  Time for the annual photo op!

It all started off okay,  Alex with his usual smirk and Genoa with her smushed-face grin.

After approximately ten seconds, they both started fidgeting.

So I suggested maybe they look at each other, which was cute, no?

Then I grabbed another shot when they turned back again.  Sadly, I think this is the best one I got.

Then, stupidly, I suggested a hug!  Brother + Sister + Big Hug = Cuteness squared!

Then Genoa said, "Here, Brother, hold my super special princess purse!"

"Okay, I'll put it right over here."

"And then I'll give you another big (UNWANTED) hug!"

"GIVE ME BACK MY PURSE!"

Cue tussle.

And finally, right after she head-butted him, I captured a photo that seems to me to belong in the dictionary right next to the words: Little Sister.

To say I've had a long day is an UNDERSTATEMENT.  Alex may have been at school, but Genoa decided to scream away the afternoon instead of napping.  I'm not proud, but I actually screamed back at her more than once.  ANYTHING, people, JUST MAKE THE SCREAMING END.  If she wakes up tomorrow morning covered in barf and/or with a raging fever, at least I'll have a reason for her behavior other than TEMPORARILY POSSESSED BY THE DEVIL.

** Today one of my favorite bloggers (okay, so maybe she's not just ONE OF them, but actually my absolute favorite) Linda Lee of All & Sundry wrote the following passage and I thought these photos pretty accurately described the daily churn of which she often speaks:

"Somebody left me a comment once about how family photos are like looking at ducks in the water, how you only see part of what’s really there — all the furious paddling underneath is hidden. I love that, it’s so true, and it’s one of the reasons I love taking so many pictures. It helps me remember and focus on the good moments, and let the memories fade of the churn it took just to make it through the day."