contentedness

I have had the best day today! First of all, I got a good night’s rest last night. for the 3rd night in a row. which is unheard of in my little world. My mom left this morning, and then K and I made play dough. The children played together relatively well during the morning. The television was off (which always makes me happier), although K watched a little while E napped. Lunch went well — T stayed with the children while I went next door to get my hair cut. Then this afternoon we drove around and found a new park, well the park isn’t new, but it was a new place for us to play. Took me waaay too long to find it, but now that we know where it is, we’ll be able to get back there fairly quickly. Then I went out to dinner with one of my college friends who lives nearby. All in all, a very nice day. I do love these days where we have nothing on the schedule. It helps, of course, that it is unseasonably warm, and we’ve been able to have the doors open all day. Also, my throat and eye are on the mend, which dramatically improves my mood. A little sleep, a healthy body, and my world outlook is much rosier!

Oh, the nicest thing happened to me today. A good friend of mine asked me to be her doula! I’ve never done that before and don’t have any formal training. But I truly enjoyed both of my birthing experiences (pregnancy may nearly kill me, but I can “stand and deliver” like nobody’s business), and I had a fantastic experience with my own doula (same doula for both children). I have thought about being a doula from time to time so it’s neat that I’m going to get a chance to try it out, so to speak. My friend knows I am not official or anything and she isn’t expecting that, she just wants another advocate and helper in the delivery room with her. She’s due in mid-March. I’m so excited!

diagnosis

I have tonsilitis. So, one antibiotic later and hopefully I’m on my way to feeling better. Tonsilitis, vertigo, and an eye infection. This particular bout of illness doesn’t make any sense.

a good thing

Finally. I have a had a good night’s sleep. and now I have a doctor’s appointment. and I just got a nap. Let’s hear it for mothers who take care of their children who are also mothers. and for uninterrupted sleep!

help arrives

in the form of my mother, who has travelled down here to spend the night and help me with the children (mostly while I go out and hunt for a doctor for myself tomorrow). and in the form of Betsy, a neighbor and friend from church, who brought over some homemade chili. yum. I often have trouble asking for help, but I’m always glad when I do.

for the Joseph obsessed among us

K: Mom, I wish there were Joseph pajamas.
Me: Me, too, sweetheart. Me, too.

so, what other four year olds are obsessed with Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat? really now.

abundance

I just used up the last bottle of baby wash that we were given. at our first shower. for K. in October of 2001! Now, THAT is a lot of baby wash!

oh, and my mom informed me that she still has two bottle of it at her house! wow!

the pace of growing up

This article about the age of 10 being the new 15 is scary for me as a parent. I made T read it and said, “if 10 is the new 15, then 5 is the new 10. And K is that 5 who thinks she is 10.” One of the things I struggle with the most as a parent (not in general terms but very specifically as the parent of each of my children) is the fact that K is incredibly mature. but only in certain ways. She is very verbally advanced, capable of having meaningful, lengthy conversations with adults about very adult subjects. I don’t mean about “adult” topics like sex, rather I mean that she has asked women how they were doing following the death of their husbands before. She has talked at length with various older persons about the state of their health. She carries on conversations with many adults at church about the adult’s life, not her own. Now to be fair, she hears her father do this kind of thing in his role as a pastor, but having her adopt it as a way of living and being in the world has been weird for me. I knew back when she was 3 and began putting her hand on her hip and tossing her head and saying “duuuh!” that she had been hanging out with the church youth group waaaay too much.

On the other hand, K is still four and fully capable of throwing a temper tantrum along with the best of them. She still melts down when she is too tired, she still tries to wheedle her way out of cleaning up her room or her toys from the living room, she bursts into tears when she can’t watch something on television for whatever reason I have given at the time. In other words, her brain (at least the verbal and logical aspects of it) is mature, but her emotions aren’t. She’s still just four, at least for another month. I can easily see K as a child who will want to act and look older. I want to slow her down. One thing I’m doing at the moment to follow through with that is that she only gets to watch commercial-free television (PBS, Noggin, the various videos and DVDs we have, etc.). I am also working to get her into a playgroup with MOMS Club that consists of girls her age. Our current playgroup is mostly of boys, who are younger. That leaves K in a mothering, bossy, in-charge role with her playmates. I need to curb that. She is in a preschool setting with girls and boys her own age, but that is only 2 days a week for a total of 8 hours. Not much time when compared to the week as a whole.

One of K’s classmates at preschool is in our MOMS Club. He’s a quiet, shy little boy. At the preschool Thanksgiving Day “dinner” his mom and I were talking and she told me that K was talking to her at our recent MOMS Club Open House. She said that K mentioned that N (the little boy) was kind of quiet and didn’t talk much at school and that she (K) would often talk to him or go play with him. C (his mother) told me that she said, “that’s nice of you” to which K replied, “well, I’m good with children.” I was astonished. and didn’t quite know how to react. Yes, I’m glad she is willing to go talk to the shy child in class. But it is a little strange to hear her talking about it like that. Sometimes I just don’t know what to do with her.

a sick Sunday morning

K’s fever was so high last night (102.8 in one ear and 103.2 in the other ear) that the oncall nurse said we needed to have her seen this morning. So I call the doctor’s office and, naturally, we have to go to the other branch office. which is 30 minutes away. So, while I’m running a fever myself and feeling horrible, I have to drive an hour to get my child seen by a doctor. Hell, back home that would be the equivalent of driving to the next county to a totally different town. I’m not happy about this.

sister, update

After reading the comments I realized I never really gave a full update on my sister. She had a stroke in her 11th week of her pregnancy, last Spring. She gave birth to a healthy baby boy the second week of October. I didn’t blog about it at the time because we were on vacation, and I was away from a computer. Her pregnancy turned out to be an HG one as well, but she received much better health care than I did. She spent most of the pregnancy hooked up to an IV and with a PICC line in her chest, which enabled her to hold down her job. and she didn’t nearly die — like I did — although she did have a very difficult time of it. She has been on maternity leave and goes back to work next week. I recently flew to see her and meet my nephew. I must say that she looks great, really absolutely terrific. There have been no residual effects of the stroke, and she is not at any increased risk of having another one. The baby was 7lbs., 10oz. and very healthy. I’m so very blessed that she is still in my life and that she has this wonderful new little baby boy who is so close in age to my own little boy.

ack, I’m a blogging idiot

I just switched to the new Blogger, albeit in beta form, and realized right away that I have dozens of comments that needed to be moderated. I swear I thought they were on track to be published automatically. Anyway, I am working through them now and will have them sorted out and published shortly. My apologies. Especially to dawn who faithfully responded to so much I wrote without one single acknowledgement on my part. I swear, if I had known you were commenting (or if I had taken the time to figure out this whole comment thing), I would have published them and/or responded. Eeek. I feel so bad.