Tag Archives: shanna

busybusybusybusy

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I have been very industrious this week. I have been working from when I get up till late in the evening. I’m exhausted. Of course there is more to do. Every so often I get into these cycles of freaking out about the fact that there is Always More To Do!!! Then I decide I don’t care and I ignore allmost of it for a while. I wish I could get to that part already but I can’t. The big thing left to do in the garage is dismantle the shelves that are attached to the walls and I’m afraid that is going to be difficult work because pieces of it are very heavy. Taylor is coming on Tuesday (!!!) so we can get started on figuring out the garage stuff. I’m terribly excited. Yes, I’m aware it will take multiple days. 🙂 But Taylor unlike certain other people I could name but won’t isn’t a flake and will actually follow through when he says he will do a project with me so I’m not stressing. 🙂

We’re going to have a playroom! And I’ve started a fund for a play kitchen. 😀 I think that the play kitchen money should come out of my personal entertainment/fun money because I want it so bad. 🙂 Shanna really doesn’t care at this point.

I went to the orthopedic orthopedic? maxillofacial? surgeon today to discuss getting an implant. This is going to be expensive. 🙁 I briefly read the propaganda they had on the subject but I left it at the office cause it pissed me off. No, this will not magically make my life better. I am, however, quite interested in the procedure because it can help prevent bone loss/decay issues later. So yeah. And once I get the procedure done it is like three months until the next step. So I guess it’s a good thing we decided to wait like six months before trying to get pregnant. oy.

And I went to a physical therapy thing today for my knee. Shanna was remarkably good. She sat on the chair and drew on a piece of paper and played with my sweater for an hour. Ok… probably 45 minutes and then she wanted to nurse. 🙂 I’m once again impressed with my wonderful baby.

Boy howdy is she getting willful. I thought the ‘nononono’ didn’t start till more like two. Oy. When she’s not in the mood for something she is really not in the mood. It’s interesting. Of course I override sometimes when it is a safety issue. I try really hard not to override just because “I’m the mom”. I find myself having to fight my temper more now and that’s difficult for both of us. Like when I’m cleaning up the Cheerios she flung all over the floor. It’s ok that she made the mess but when I’m cleaning it up, don’t come in the middle and throw stuff again! Dude! So rude! I find myself talking about manners, rudeness, politeness, and consideration constantly. I’m sure there are a good many parenting gurus who would describe my system as awful. I’m very very judgmental of her behavior. It seems to me that if I’m not she won’t learn how to evaluate behavior. I never ever tell her she is bad. I do tell her constantly that she is good and sweet and generous. I tell her, “It is rude to yell inside because it hurts peoples ears.” I know she doesn’t ‘get it’ yet but I figure starting young will help ingrain these lessons. She does seem to understand, “Please stop” and respects it more often than I would expect at this age.

Maybe that’s enough babbling for now. 🙂

Appreciation

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Today I am feeling very happy with the world and everything in it, so I’ll talk a little bit about what I appreciate today. 🙂

I appreciate that my wonderful Marcie let me have huge blocks of wood for my yard. Soon I will get around to finishing that project and I will have the coolest sandbox ever!

I appreciate that my darling husband tolerates my ongoing projects and obsessions. 😀

I appreciate that my daughter loves books so much. And that she is picking up words at a prodigious rate. It is getting so much easier to communicate with her.

I appreciate that my house is small enough to be easy to clean. The older I get and the more stuff I have to get done in a day the more I appreciate this. 🙂

I appreciate that Taylor offered to come help me finish the garage. It is almost entirely cleaned out! It will be done by Friday! This is so exciting. (At this point there is probably about an hour of moving stuff and an hour or two of cleaning left.)

I appreciate the heck out of the chest freezer. Man that thing makes my life better. I have a whole mess of (organic) beef and chicken. I have a huge stash of raw milk, butter, cream, and cheese. I have a freak-ton of ice cream (I buy it on sale and stock up). And then there are the ’emergency’ tv-dinner lunches for Noah’s lunch when we have nothing else. It’s so awesome. I think I have enough meat to last me the next six months and maybe longer. This pleases me immensely. We will need more ice cream and milk before then. 🙂

I appreciate the wonderful variety of food available to me here in the bay area. I like that my taste buds have been expanded in ways they wouldn’t have if I lived in middle America.

I appreciate the awesome cookbooks available to me that have taught me how to cook some of the amazing food I enjoy so much. And the baking. *swoon* The baking! I’m pretty good at baking, I have discovered. I really enjoy it.

I appreciate being comfortable financially at a time when many people aren’t. It’s a luxury. I have the luxury of staying home with my kids as long as I want to. It’s really nice.

I appreciate my new roof. Holy crap on toast do I appreciate my new roof. And I really love that we are basically off grid for our electricity usage. That makes me feel good about my impact on the planet. I’m wasteful in other places (like travel and eating meat) so I try to do what I can elsewhere.

I appreciate our wonderful car. It is fantastically efficient and well functioning. It is still pretty through absolutely no effort of mine.

I appreciate having the luxury to sit around and think extensively about what is best for my family. My life is non-stressful and non-traumatic. I get to think about family planning in a safe and comfortable environment where many options are possible. That’s amazing.

I appreciate having yards big enough to worry about. 🙂 It means that Shanna has lots of room to play and explore. And I appreciate how much she loves being outside. That bodes well. 🙂

I appreciate Ikea. My house is turning into an Ikea showroom. It’s kind of funny. But man is it useful and cheap! And I think all the stuff we bought there looks perfectly decent. Yay Ikea!

I appreciate that when I have computer problems I always find a friend to help me fix them. 😀 Man living in the valley rocks. 😀

Consider the needs of the child you have

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That’s a phrase bandied about in full-term breastfeeding circles. Full-term meaning at least until two years old. Two years is the minimum recommended time for nursing as stated by the WHO. Ok, so I’m not exactly one to follow all the guidelines as set down by the WHO so why do I pay attention to this one? If you look at biological studies comparing brain size/development humans should nurse for 2-7 years if compared to our nearest primate relatives. That’s a long time. Milk is necessary for the development of most mammals and no other mammal in nature weans in order to give the milk of another species.

At this point Shanna is physically developed enough to be able to digest milk from other species and I’m certainly not opposed to dairy (mmmm ice cream) but nursing is different. My milk not only is the absolute perfect blend of nutrients for my species, my milk is specifically calibrated for my child. That cannot be duplicated by a bottle of cow milk.

Why am I talking about this? Because when you are pregnant most women lose their milk. There are some women (I’ve seen this as 30%) who maintain supply all the way through a pregnancy. It is also possible to dry nurse through a pregnancy and then move on to tandem nursing. The reason behind dry nursing is that nursing is not just about physical/dietary needs, it also fulfills important bonding/psychological needs. I already have a hard time with unnecessary nipple stimulation. It will be much worse when I am pregnant. I’m nervous about dry nursing. I’m also worried about Shanna losing out on having milk solidly until she is two. That is the biological minimum humans should have. I’m not sure I’m willing to compromise on giving her the minimum.

But that means spacing our kids out more than I really wanted to. That means probably waiting at least another seven months. I have mixed feelings about that. The Meniere’s has been progressing quite a bit just lately and that makes me nervous. It looks like we definitely won’t be trying for three kids so spacing out Shanna and Little TBD is less of a problem than it otherwise could be. I’m not sure how I feel about spacing between kids in terms of potential future getting along/competitive stuff. All of that is guesswork anyway.

So yeah. It looks like the mature, responsible decision is to wait. It’s only seven months. The problem is that I don’t wanna.

worth asking

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So… would anyone like to spend some time with Shanna on the 28th? It would be best if it were at our house because the event we would like to go to starts around bedtime and it would be easiest on Shanna if she didn’t have to deal with being moved after she falls asleep. 🙂

Slightly paranoid

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Once again I’m obsessing about weight. This time, luckily, not my own. Shanna hasn’t gained a full pound in the last nine months. If she doesn’t gain some weight this month she will have fallen from the 89% to the 9%. If I stop and think about that real hard I feel like I must be doing something wrong. I’m not sure what I am doing wrong. I am giving her as much food as she wants. I nurse on demand (sometimes half the night). Should I stop letting her have water and replace that with something that has calories–like more milk? Should I stop giving her vegetables because they have almost no calories? She doesn’t really eat meat. At this point she is probably up to ten bites of meat in her life. She poops and pees well above what is considered the minimum for this age. She is getting taller like mad–that is still up in the 70-something%. She runs all day. She is meeting all of the developmental milestones months early, some of them as much as four months early.

I’m having a hard time feeling confident that her body is doing what is right. I want to believe it, but I feel really bad right now.

She’s a kid

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Not a baby anymore. She can now follow directions, sometimes with more than one step. Granted she doesn’t always want to but I think that is the battle of a lifetime. If she bangs on the door to go play out back I tell her, “You have to get dressed and put shoes on first” and she runs back to the bedroom and starts pulling out drawers or she hands me her shoes. When she is tired at night I tell her that we need to brush our teeth before we can go to bed and she heads straight to the bathroom. Oh, and she loves brushing her teeth. I think that is a little weird.

She’s dancing. It is the cutest thing ever. She likes dancing best when she can hold on to something like the table because otherwise she rocks her hips so hard she falls down. She likes to spin in circles.

She is starting to have dislikes about food. When she heartily rejected the eggplant I couldn’t blame her because I wanted to do it as well. 🙂 She is super into fruit. We are now having to deliberately limit sugar because she gets really hyper. I don’t do that with sugar so it’s kind of weird for me. We are now giving her meat occasionally because it was becoming too much of a pain in the ass to keep her vegetarian. Here come the smelly poops! It’s ok we’ve got a good system for dirty diapers.

She went through a potty pause and I haven’t gotten back on the wagon with EC yet. I’m starting today. She knows what her potty is for. She knows how to ask for pottying. It’s time to focus on that again. We are going through way too many diapers. I’m tired of the laundry.

She can sign: more, food, water (used for drink as well), milk, potty, all gone (she isn’t good with this one), and she’s trying hard for dessert. She can say: up, something that sounds a really lot like out (like outside), dow (down), and she mimics sounds a lot.

I’m having trouble with Picasa. I’ll try to upload pictures later.

{milestones} Shanna at one

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So I never posted acknowledging the fact that seven days ago Shanna turned one year old. I continue to be impressed and delighted with her. The day after her first birthday she decided, “Enough of this crawling business–that’s for babies and now I’m a toddler.” It’s been remarkable.

She is now saying something that sounds a lot like “up” when she wants to be picked up. When she eats food that she thinks is especially tasty she goes “Mmmmmm!!!” She babbles pretty much non-stop when we are home alone but she is somewhat more shy when around people she doesn’t know well. She now understands and correctly follows the command, “Gentle” when touching people or animals; it’s quite sweet.

She is nursing substantially less though her last round of teething screwed up her sleeping through the night and she is back to at least one nursing session in the middle of the night. We are unlikely to stop nursing any time in the foreseeable future as the continued benefits of nursing far outweigh the fairly minor inconveniences of nursing (for us–I am not judging other people who choose to wean I swear).

She is only up to five teeth and I have no idea when she will be getting more. Lack of teeth doesn’t seem to slow her down much in eating just about everything she wants to eat. She has favorite foods, of course, namely: bananas, dried cherries, ice cream (duh), mini-meringues, sharper cheeses, and all things bread.

She is playing with her toys more and more. She cuddles her dolly. She adores the dump truck that sings a song when you push a button. I kind of want to throw it out the window, but she’s having a blast so instead I just pray for the batteries to die. 🙂 She loves her xylophone and ball smacker thing.

She noticeably recognizes Sarah the best and she treats her as a perfectly adequate mommy-substitute in crowd situations. This pleases me enormously for many reasons. I love that her monkey sphere is expanding because it means that she is developing actual attachment to someone other than me and that shows me hope that she will stop being as dependent on me soonish. 🙂 At this point I’m not sure she has “stranger anxiety” but she no longer eagerly goes to all people she meets as a matter of course. She has a strong preference for people who are familiar and it takes her a bit to warm up to new people.

She now shows a decided preference for going in the potty and will hold her bladder/bowels for a bit trying to get a chance. Unfortunately she isn’t signing consistently yet so we still have a lot of misses because I don’t offer enough. I should start working on this because she shows all the signs I can see of wanting to be done with diapers. It’s really cool.

She shrunk back into 12 month clothing. This is cute and kind of neat only… I sent pretty much all we had to Texas for the arrival of Noah’s brother’s child because I thought we were done with it. Oops. Luckily I have friends with kidlets and we received another batch and some of hand-me-downs so she is certainly not running around nekkid (well, at least not more than she would be any way).

She starts vaccinations next week. Of course I am nervous about this, but I’m going to hope that the universe sees fit to keep her out of the group of kids who has side effects. Before the hysterical pro vaccination people start harping on me about mercury and autism (neither of which hit my radar in terms of worry) I will point out that the package inserts for vaccinations mention Guillain-Barre syndrome, Encephalitis, Encephalopathy, SSPE, and death. There are other serious reactions to vaccinations like Lupus, MS, arthritis, blood disorders, seizures, diabetes, pneumonia, life threatening rash, paralysis, and a few others mentioned on the package inserts. None of these things are hysterical reactions from ill advised people reading faulty medical information. Yes they are by and large rare; I don’t think I will feel comforted by the thought, “Well it’s only about a 1 in 100,000 chance that a child will have a severe reaction to a vaccination” if my kid is the one damaged by a vaccine. So I’m nervous. It’s time to start though. She is starting to get out and actually interact with the world and that means she needs more protection than just my milk. Though my milk continues to be awesome for her, of course.

She loves to “read” her books and she goes back and forth between her board books and older picture books. She is rather gentle with our books at this point so I don’t feel cranky when she pulls down a grown up book or two to play with.

I think that is about all I have the gumption to write about right now. Maybe I’ll put up pictures later (and hopefully I will be sent pictures from the birthday party. 🙂

Good people and Shanna update

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Yesterday I went to a birthday party and got to feel out of my depth in a really good way. The conversations were almost entirely on topics I find interesting (gardening, religion, law, taxes, human interactions, books) but they were all complex and complicated and going into specifics and examples I’d never heard of. Noah called it “deep humanities geeking”. I think I had a nerdgasm. I don’t think I impressed anyone at the event with my intelligence because I mostly listened with my mouth open in shock at how freakin cool the conversation was. 🙂 I think that was one of the best gatherings I’ve attended in years. I am rarely in the room with that many extremely smart people where computers were not a focus.

It was also interesting because I sort of knew a bunch of people there but didn’t know almost anyone well. That’s kind of awkward feeling to me. I keep rediscovering how socially awkward I am when I am not using sex/bdsm as an introduction to people. I’m not sure if it is a sign of low self esteem that my primary way of getting to know people is, “Hey–wanna fuck?” 🙂 It’s just awkward because I can’t use it anymore and so I don’t know how to get to know people. 🙂 Uhm, yay for learning experiences? It’s freakin hard to get to know people. One person that I knew at the party but whom I haven’t seen in years said, “So what are you doing with yourself these days?” I pointed at Shanna and said, “that.” “Oh, you’re a housewife.” See, this is why I feel like I am not very interesting these days. There is a world of scorn for how I spend most of my time. Oh well, I like it.

It feels repetitive to say, but Shanna is becoming more and more interesting. I have no worry about her liking books because she is really interested in them and she will sit and ‘read’ and talk to herself while Noah and/or I read. She’s also paying a lot more attention to her doll and the bigger apes lately. I’m not sure why, but she really likes going through her toys if they are all put away but if they are on the floor they are not as much of a draw. This drives me sorta nuts. It feels like she needs to go through stuff in the house creating as many messes as humanly possible. I’m pretty sure this is developmental though so I try not to let it get to me. Instead I have made it really really easy to clean up her toys and I do that about fifteen times a day.

Yesterday I get to hold one of the little twins for a few minutes before she was unhappy with me and she felt much like Kidlet–super solid. Shanna feels so mushy and soft compared to other kids to me. It’s really interesting feeling how much difference there is between different little kids in terms of how muscle/fat feel on the body. I know this variation is normal and to be expected but I have so little experience with babies/little kids that I’m continually surprised. 🙂

Shanna is eating like mad. It’s really interesting to me how much food she can pack away in that tiny little body. Sometimes when she is eating off of my plate I have to get more food because she has eaten enough that it makes a serious dent in my portion size. We make a whole extra egg now for breakfast because I think she eats a bit more than an egg and it was sucking to have that come out of my share. 🙂 I like watching how her eating is starting to be ruled by mood. There are times when she is just not in the mood for specific foods even though she will happily eat them at other times. She eats a wide array of foods that surprise me. She eats basically everything we eat except nuts, honey, and meat. She is fine and dandy with spicy and super strong flavors. I love watching her face when she eats pickles. 🙂

It’s also neat watching her start to have relationships with people other than me. She recognizes people now and goes to them. She loves Aunt Sarah and Aunt Marcie. She sees them more than anyone other than us and she responds to them. I think she would be even warmer towards Marcie if she saw her more. She doesn’t see my family enough to have a bond with them and that’s bugging my family members. They think she ‘should’ go to them more easily but I’m completely unwilling to push that. She’ll warm up at her own speed. When she’s around other babies/kids she is fascinated. I always feel kind of nervous because she really likes to flail and whack people pretty hard and I feel guilty when she does that to someone else’s kid. On one hand I know it is normal and developmental and not in any way mean. On the other hand–dude, my kid is smacking the hell out of other kids. I go back and forth between feeling like I should intervene (which mostly means keeping her far enough away physically that she can’t hit) and feeling like I should let her figure out how to interact. Especially when she is with an older kid I wonder if letting the older kid defend him/herself would be better. I’m not quite sure I’m up for treating it like Lord of the Flies and just letting them fight it out amongst themselves, but I do wonder about a certain amount of non-parental influence being better. I haven’t figured this out yet. I keep telling myself, “At least it isn’t biting.” But I shouldn’t say that cause who knows what she’ll be doing in a year. oy.

Overall this is still the best gig I’ve ever had. I’m really glad I get to stay home with her. And here are a few new pictures: Continue reading →

{milestones} First sign

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I missed a little bit of poop, I could hear it, and I took her in to the diaper changing table. It was only a tiny bit so I asked her if she needed to go more or if she was all done using signs. She signed more! So I took her in to the bathroom, put her on her potty, and she peed and pooped lots!

It wasn’t a picture perfect, text-book ASL sign but it was really close. I would accept that as her sign for more. When she finished peeing/pooping she started clapping. I think that clapping is her ‘all done’. 😀

EWWWWWWWWWW

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I just looked over and Shanna was leaning down trying to pick something up off the carpet with her mouth. It looked vaguely Cheerio shaped so I went to investigate. Nope, it was cat food. Cause my cat threw it up on the carpet. My daughter was trying to eat vomited up cat food.

EWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW

(needless to say I pulled her away and cleaned it up.)

More erf

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I woke up at six and can’t get back to sleep. Too much going on in my brain. Physically I’m kind of off and I can’t figure out exactly what is wrong. I’m obsessing about all the deaths that have happened in the last year and some. I feel very anxious about life. The comp exam is in 18 days. I should probably review poetry. *sigh*

I can’t get driving directions online to the place we are going in Oklahoma. All the mapping software basically knows that the road exists but that’s it. Awesome. I have to wait until a more sane hour then call them. I’m sure there are tiny little motels in the town we are going to, but there is zero online presence for any hotel there. I lived in this town for a little while as a kid. I remember feeling very superior because I was from the big city. Now I find it almost charming in a severely inconvenient sort of way.

I still haven’t decided if I am going to deal with dragging the carseat around in the airports and gate checking it or if I am ok with actually checking it. I’ve heard some horror stories about baggage handlers destroying carseats. They are somewhat delicate and if you throw them too hard they are no longer useful in a crash. And they are so fucking expensive. But I’m not going to have much in the way of help. *sigh*

They don’t sell good travel potties that fit over elongated toilet bowls. Fuckers. You’d think that this would be a reasonable thing to have given that almost all public toilets are elongated. Shanna does not appreciate sitting precariously on a grown up toilet while being held up. It makes the whole pottying experience much more stressful. I think I’m going to bring her potty and disposable anti-bacterial wipes for cleaning it out. Not my first choice, but better than not being able to potty her. At this point I’m only having a couple of misses a day and I don’t really want to back slide a lot. I think it is funny that by volume more than half of what I am bringing on this trip is diapers. People still ask me when I am going to switch to disposables (not for traveling–just in general) because “Aren’t you sick of washing diapers?” The washing really doesn’t phase me in the slightest. However I was really really really tempted to not deal with lugging the volume on this trip.

You people don’t post on lj enough. I tell you all about my life, where is the reciprocal reading material? 😛 (Essaying–you do well. 😀 And I have no complaints about Rbus.)

My house isn’t clean and I’m trying very hard not to care. It’s a struggle though. I will never again buy black furniture. Being able to see dust 15 minutes after dusting makes me feel like I am the worst, most terrible housekeeper ever in the history of the world. I really don’t need that guilt.

I had a good time at the museum on Sunday. It was nice to see people and play with kidlets. 🙂 Shanna is still not quite to the interacting large scale stage. It’s all about her. 🙂 It’s very cute.

It’s hard balancing things with Noah right now. His job is sucking the life out of him. I am trying as much as I can to be supportive and not demand much of him. I was doing ok for a while. Then I hit an emotional wall and started feeling really upset and crummmy and needing a lot more from him. I’m largely still not pestering him with those needs. He doesn’t have much extra right now. So I’m spending a lot of time crying. It’s interesting how I know this isn’t depression–it doesn’t feel that way. I’m grieving. I’m sad. It feels pretty lonely to feel like this and spend so much time alone. Shanna doesn’t count as a person in this way because she is pretty much a bottomless pit of need with not much to give. I’m ok with that–that is what she is supposed to be. But I’m having a hard time. I’m pretty sure my grieving isn’t impacting her negatively. She seems to be still very healthy and happy and delighted by life.

Oh, and she’s teething again. The diaper rash appeared instantly and is fierce. I don’t entirely understand how she can get diaper rash like that when she is barely wetting diapers at all and she never sits in pee. Babies are a mystery. Good thing they are a cute mystery. She has been asleep for more than 11 hours. This is very very good because it is going to be a long day of traveling and her naps are going to be disrupted. I’m nervous about traveling with her by myself but I’ll manage.

Wow that’s a lot of whining. And she slept through me writing it. w00t.

not good

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Shanna is sick. She has a fever and she is lethargic and tired. This isn’t great but it pales next to being told that someone I love tremendously was raped. I don’t know how to adequately help him. Yes, him. I feel terrible because I didn’t try harder to help him when/before it happened.

Sometimes I feel like I could joyfully take on all the suffering in the world just to protect my loved ones. I’m very strong; I know I could handle it. I don’t really know how he will truly heal.

Needs

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As we do this ‘parenting’ thing longer I spend a lot of time thinking about balancing each of our individual needs as well as Noah’s job. It’s really hard to find a balance. It’s feeling extra hard right now because we have hit separation anxiety like a brick wall. I’m aware that it is possible to walk away and let her scream with someone else but that feels so awful. She’s not going to be in this phase for all that long, why should I make it harder on both of us? I’m feeling kind of fried though. Leaving her with Noah is a less awesome option than it could be because they don’t spend that much time together and his presence doesn’t seem to be that much better than anyone else.

Shanna is getting way pushier about night nursing right now too. In a weird way it’s like we hit a major regression with separation anxiety. She’s extra clingy all the time and sleeping more (and requiring boob attachment through all naps). I don’t think I am feeling the kind of ‘touched out’ that I hear other people talk about but I am starting to want more time to myself than I’m getting right now. Unfortunately Noah is being pushed super hard at work so he has less energy at home.

I know I can get through this. It’s not even *that* bad. I just… something. I want something to be different and I’m not even sure what.

{milestones} First word?

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This morning while holding a book Shanna looked up at me and said, “Booh”. I believe that was meant to be book. She continued saying it when we passed the book back and forth. I’m not 100% positive that she was doing it on purpose but I suspect she was.

I’m so excited I could pee my pants. My daughter’s first word was book. That is SO APPROPRIATE!!!