Misc. Stuff

Random Bullet Points - FTW!

• 26 Weeks on Tuesday (or something like that). I had to find the calendar I was using to count the weeks - I'd lost track. Guess that's one of those first/second pregnancy differences.
• DH and I staycationed last week while LO vacationed at my parents house. It would have been a lot more relaxing all round if DH hadn't had to do a few hours of work EVERY FREAKING DAY! Sorry for the shout there - what he was doing had to be done but it's the company's fault for dragging their heels on approving more hires so that there was no one else to do it.
• Took LO for ice cream post-dinner today, seemed like a good way to end the "summer."  At least until she went into full not-listening meltdown mode after we returned home. To be fair she'd spent an hour or so swimming with DH mid-afternoon so was tired from that (and her 6:30AM wakeup, ack!) but it pissed DH off that we'd done this nice thing and she "repaid" us with crap behavior (even if it wasn't related at all).  I was hoping to get pictures but the ice cream was soft and the temperature too warm to do much except lick and pray.
• The blackout shades mentioned 2 posts ago came in and are everything I hoped they would be. Completely recommend the product & company!
• Went through the first saved tub of baby clothes and despite the ~6 month difference in arrivals it doesn't look like there's much to replace there. Maybe add a couple more swaddles and sleep sacks (but those might be in the 2nd tub.  I wasn't the most organized about keeping like sizes together! Oops.) but there are plenty of long sleeve footy sleepers so I think we'll be good.
• Since there really aren't any other big equipment purchases, I'm contemplating getting a better stroller to supplement the umbrella stroller & crappy old Peg Perego. I'm hearing lots of good things about the Bob, especially since when we'd want to use it would be outside and not limited to sidewalks or other hard surfaces, but not sure I can justify the $$$. Maybe there will be one on Craigslist locally? Or would we be just as happy with a lower-cost version for the amount of use I project...such a quandary!
• And related, we still use LO's glider every night for bedtime stories. I know things are going to change but do we get a 2nd glider for the new baby or move the one we have over to the other room? I really like the motion and it still seems to help settle LO out of the day. We have a wooden rocker in the other room right now but unless I stuff it with cushions, and even then, it's not going to be as comfortable. I just don't know!
• In better news, DH and I have started talking names and have a few we agree are possibilities. So that's fun. :) & No, I'm not sharing. ;)
• I'm going to go fill my water glass, again. Glug chug blugh.

I [heart] my broken children. (edited because Blogger hates me)

What the fuck does that mean?

It was a sticker on the back of a mini-van with at least one other sticker on it: NICU Mom.

I saw the "NICU Mom" sticker first and since I've been there myself (no, not for months or years on end, but did my time none-the-less) it caught my attention.  Not quite a warm and fuzzy reaction, but still a feeling of comradery, mutual survival, and so forth (along with thinking it must have been a long stay to commemorate in that way).

And then, then I saw the sticker with "I [heart] my broken children" and I almost literally heard the record player in my head screech into dead quiet. I fail to understand calling your children broken in the public domain.  Perhaps uttered in the darkness of the blackest night when the world feels heaviest upon your shoulders but to put it out there for all, including your children, to see?  I fail to even come close to comprehending how that could ever ever ever be considered okay.
 
Why not take responsibility for that where it lies: your broken body screwed up your children.  Uncharitable, I know.

More charitably, I can only hope it is meant to be a joke, a poor joke that in the end isn't very funny to those who only see the potential for hurt.

Can someone please explain...because I just don't get it.

More Stuff I Like - Household Edition

And we're back to our regularly scheduled programming. Thanks to everyone who commented and/or silently sent good vibes my way over the past week.

• Nalgene Tritan Grip & Go Water Bottle - I bought one of these for 50% off back before the L.L. Bean outlet departed.  I've been kicking myself ever since for not grabbing a half dozen.  It doesn't leak, it's easy to run through the dishwasher, and it doesn't hold odors. Best sippy we have. I'm about ready to bite the bullet, toss most of the others with straws and stock up on a few more since it's one of the ones LO asks for the most.
• The next goes with the Suave Tropical scented deodorant I mentioned in my last things I like post, but for washing dishes: Dawn Ultra Hawaiian Pineapple Scent  I'd moved away from Dawn because I was tired of the original blue fragrance (and having everything washed smell like that, gak) but one day I was perusing the dishwashing liquid shelves in search of something different and figured I'd give it a try.  It seems like I need to use more of it than the Mrs. Meyers I had been using but I also pay less for more of it, so I guess it evens out in the end, especially since the scent lets me pretend I'm doing the dishes someplace other than my own kitchen.
• Dishwasher Pods.  Doesn't matter what brand, it's just so nice to be able to toss one in without worrying about measurements or slopping excess about the door.  90% of the time the dishwasher is jammed full so I don't need to worry about portioning for smaller loads.
• Liquid fabric softener by Mrs. Meyers. Leaves clothes feeling soft but not waxy like the dryer sheets I grew up with (ahem, Bounce).  The fragrances are subtle too, so you don't get smacked in the face with scent - something I didn't realize bothered me until I stopped being bombarded! And like the dish washing soap I mentioned above, a little really does go a long, long way.
• Liquid soap in a foaming pump. Such a little luxury.  I just wish more companies would give up the "antibacterial" products in their liquid soaps since it just serves to help build super-bugs.

As always I have not been compensated for these opinions, nor have any products been provided, dammit.  

Down the Rabbit Hole

Every so often I get the itch to check the statistics - see where people are coming from, what they are looking for.

And in my view, the current crop of results is downright boring. For your agreement, in order of appearance over the last month the top 5 search terms have been:

• copperosity/copperrosity (variations)
• behr orange / apricot light
• gunpowder punch
• recessed tv (variations)
• mini lupron with menopur

Where are the searches for poo, dirty diaper stink bombs and vomit? Apparently I need to up my game...or change my blog name.

And visitors have come from:

• United State
• Germany
• Netherlands
• Brazil
• Canada

Also Russia, United Kingdom, Australia, and France.

I also looked at the lifetime top posts, which is what took me down the rabbit hole: Number one was the post about Little One's surprise arrival, another was about her first bottle, and I was off...(especially after checking out some FB picture's of a college friend's one month old - I had forgotten how tiny they are to start!)

So, if you landed here through one of the above searches, and stuck around, or are reading from a foreign (to me) country - please say hi! Or say hi! anyway and tell me what brought you.

Oh, and Happy Thanksgiving! to all my US readers. I hope your celebration is as enjoyable as the inevitable post-turkey haze.

The Starred Items

I just dumped over 160? posts that had been languishing in my starred items for weeks, months, years.

And you know what? I feel okay. A little sad that I didn't make the effort to comment in a timely manner as I had intended when I starred those posts to come back to later, but by now many of the situations have resolved. For those which have not, commenting on a earlier post just felt weird.

In those posts there were pregnancy announcements, birth announcements, and other records of the ups and downs of the lives of many people I've never met in person. Some were even the last posts written on what seem to be blogs gone dormant, waiting for the next life-event trigger to be revived.

Anyway. I'm sure that despite my best intentions in the future, those starred posts will again accumulate. So for that, I do apologize in advance for my lack of timeliness and/or the proper words to communicate my thoughts and please be assured that the lack of comments is not due to your content.

And then...I saw DH more excited than in a very long time

Work's been kicking his ass recently (see prior post re: 2/3 life at work...), and the mega huge project that's been eating his time will be ending in the next 6 months (hopefully!), and that means he's not sure what's next for him at work. After all the excitement of this big project, thinking about going back to what he was hired to do just feels like a let down or something.

For my part, I've been imagining him getting home at a reasonable hour so maybe we could try eating dinner as a family, more time together, extra energy to get to some of the projects around the house which have been backing up, perhaps even going for #2....all very good things.

Thanks to the level of work related frustration (big project=big issues) which has built up, he was doing a quick job search last night and found a position that has him giddy up and over the moon with the possibilities.

Where is it? Back in my hometown, where we met, where I said I don't want to move back because it's gotten too big, too congested, too not like the place where I grew up.

Thing is, I have to admit it'd be a pretty great position for him - and it would still allow him to be home for dinner, more time together as a family, all the items I mentioned above - but GAH! the moving back to the place I didn't want to move back to.

So, while he's been working on updating his resume, putting together a cover letter, and completing the annoyingly tedious online application, in an effort to wrap my mind around the possibility that we could be leaving the house I (mostly) love, the town I've finally made friends in, and the outlet shopping conveniently nearby, I decided to look at the housing possibilities.

And managed to narrow it down from 180+ to oh somewhere in the neighborhood of 25, some of which need serious TLC (of course it's the one I really like!), and some of which just need a coat of paint or new kitchen counters and/or a slap of paint on the cabinets. (Formica tops and oak cabinets were apparently really popular in the area. ::shudder::) And one needs a garage since it appears to have been turned into living space. (Why do people do this?)

I guess cross your fingers, but I'm not sure for what. It's nice to see him so excited by possibility, you know? But it's not so nice having the knot in my stomach thanks to how the possibility could affect me. (Just the thought of moving, even if it was to be merely within town, puts a knot in my stomach. Add in all the other negatives and, ouch! There are some positives, like already mostly knowing the area, schools, shopping, etc. and having my parents in town, but that last one's a double edged sword, KWIM?)

It's not like it's out of the blue that we would move, we've been talking about it for a while, but somehow this just seems more real, probably because it really would be necessary, not just convenient, and probably within the next few months not at some point in the future if all goes well for DH.

Hold me!

Snippets

• Cleaning up splattered milk droplets after I knock the sippy cup off the table.
• Little One stacking blocks on her own.
• Little One screeching her versions of doggie and banana.
• Finally understanding yet one more reason "they" suggest getting a dog first - neither is afraid to put their face in your crotch in public.
• Saying "Hello Beautiful" to my morning cup of iced coffee made with coffee from Saturday (refrigerated since then), almost 1/4 c. of sugar and heavy cream. Diet food it is not.
• Wondering how it is that despite being a stay at home mom I can still get very little done around the house.
  

These Are the Days of Our Lives

It still seems like Little One spends the majority of her day eating or having her diaper changed. But with less sleeping compared to where she was a year ago.

I think I'm looking forward to days without diapers, and larger meals with fewer snacks. Of course, I'm sure those days will bring their own challenges.

For now I guess I'll just have to savor the many, many, many times a day she reaches out her arms in the seemingly universal baby body language for up. And the cackles as she and the dog chase each other around the room. And getting clocked in the eye with a block as she rushes over to where I'm laying on the floor to give me a hug and trips over her own feet.

In the meantime though, can someone find me an ice pack? That last one hurt!

To The Mattress! (Now with more info.)

On Wednesday I purchased a new mattress set (which DH and I had agreed on earlier, so it wasn't an impulse buy or anything). It was delivered today and the old mattress set was taken away for disposal.

And you know, I wouldn't have expected it, but letting our old mattress go somehow became a big deal to me. Not because I still loved it, I mean, really, how could I when over the past year I've awoken more mornings than not with my back hurting? But because of the past.

We purchased it sometime in the late-spring of 2003 (we did not get as much life out of it as we should have based on how much we paid) while we were living in the ghetto apartment. It moved with us to the townhouse we were still renovating while living in, and then to our current house.

When we first got it it was so comfortable. At the end of a long day, there was nothing like snuggling down into that cushy pillow-top and relaxing into sleep.

It the mattress upon which we did the deed multiple times while trying to conceive, both on our own, and with help. It is the mattress upon which Little One was conceived, and upon which whose water broke.

I'm not saying it should be plated in gold or anything (what a waste of gold that would be!) but it still feels slightly awful to so callously discard something which has supported us for so long (Sorry for the pun there.) and provided such comfort along the way.

Buying a mattress is a leap of faith. Even when you test them in the store, the 5-10 minutes you spend on them can't compare how they actually treat you for nights on end. I just hope that our new mattress treats us as well as the last (but for longer, of course!).

EDIT to ADD:
The new mattress is, after a week and a half, in one word: awful! We're both waking up every time we turn over and it takes us forever to fall back to sleep. Despite the back pain our old mattress was causing, at least we could sleep on it. I spoke with a company rep. today who wasn't optimistic that we could get any resolution until we'd given it a month to 'break in', but the manager who sold us the mattress is back on the schedule on Saturday, so we'll be going in to see him in person to find out what we can do sooner. Hopefully there is something we can do sooner so we don't go sleepless (in VA) for a month!

Silly Deer, It Isn't THAT kind of bed!

This little fellow (horn buds) casually crossed our back yard, hopped up into the bed, munched on a leaf or twenty, and decided he'd found a comfortable place to rest. Never mind that he was less than a foot away from our basement window (to the left). Perhaps he was a peeping deer?

In the Interest of Full Disclosure...

...we have three, yes 3, trashcans in our Master Bath.

One under my sink in my vanity, on under DH's sink in his vanity, and one next to the toilet.

They are within 10 feet or less (maybe 5 or 6 steps) of each other (like a triangle).

Does this make us lazy or prudent?

500-ish

At least that's what Blogger tells me the last post was.

Hurray?!

I've Been Wondering...

As Little One gets older, I'm aware that this period of bodily peace and tranquility will end, thus I'm wondering...

• How old was your baby when your period returned?
• Was it better or worse than before the pregnancy (you know, overall after a few months back in the saddle, so to speak) in terms of length, heaviness, pain, etc.?
• If you breastfed your baby, had you stopped or were/are you still nursing?
• Any additional thoughts you have on the topic?
  

On one hand I'm looking forward to the return, because it means, theoretically, that #2 may be possible. On the other hand, I'm really not looking forward to it at all, you know what I mean?

But I'd rather be at least somewhat prepared than caught by surprise!

Spork!

Really.

These Spork Little's by Light My Fire are the top spoons for Little One. I purchased them on a whim, just thinking they were cute, but they shot to the top after just one use.

The obvious difference between them and the Munchkin Safety Spoons we've been using, is that the bowls are wider and shallower. And without that heavy coating of plastic which, frankly, isn't all that useful.

And oh my goodness it makes such a difference in getting the food cleanly into Little One's mouth.

Less food around the mouth means more food into the little tummy and less cleanup afterword.

As we all know, less cleanup means less screaming. (Why is it that cleanup after a meal appears to be such a traumatic event?)

And less screaming is good. As are these spoon/fork thingies.

(This is not a sponsored review.)

Mostly Noth'n

The letter after H keeps go_ng out on my laptop keyboard. _t's annoying.


That _s all.

No Fooling Here!

My body has been playing awful tricks on me this week - waking up before 5:30AM, before the sun is even up. (As far as I'm concerned 5:30 only comes once a day, and that's the PM.) I'm thinking it's my bladder, but since DH's alarm goes off somewhere around 5:45 I refuse to get up at 5:30 (or earlier) just to pee, and then crawl back into bed just as the alarm is going off. So I lay there in the bed feeling grumpy that I'm awake and desperately hoping to be able to return to sleep for even another 5-10 minutes. Thanks to this, the dark circles under my eyes are truly hideous - no glowing sample of impending motherhood am I!

BUT, this morning as I was laying there feeling mildly aggravated with whatever had woken me up so goshdarnfreakin early, I was idly lightly rubbing my belly when suddenly the skin under my palm raised up and was just as suddenly back away. It was like a little good morning kick, and how can you not have a good day after something like that?

Well, that and doing the macarena (sans music) for the dog who was clearly not impressed.

Hmmm.

My MIL sent me this photo of their cat and dog - said it made them think of me.



Isn't that nice?

If you were wondering...

I'm thinking that any Monday that starts out with morning sickness that's more than nausea should be one in which I stay home and become one with the couch.

De-Lurkification

Reputable sources have announced that it is national delurking week.

Who am I to argue with reputable sources?

Have at it.

Weekend Events (Very Ramblish)

I went away for the weekend and forgot my brush.

But I didn't forget my medication or supplies to start the injections.

All in all, I think the more important thing (and more costly thing) made it.

And I came back from the beach with wavy hair thanks to only having a comb. One lives in my toiletries bag, after another such experience in which I had neither and was forced to use my husbands brush. Which, since he uses a lot more product in his hair, the brush tends to be slightly icky. But it's not my responsibility to keep it clean. Even though I do look at it sometimes and feel the urge to toss it. And I have been known to give it a quick scrub while cleaning the bath. (Oops, it fell into the sink with the bathroom cleaner. Gee, what should I do?)

I'm so used to using a brush I forget I have wavy hair. Well, half-wavy. The back is much more wavy than the front, but a lot of that has to do with the way I run my fingers through my hair when I push it off my face, so it gets straightened and doesn't bounce back. But I think I'm going to keep this style for a while - so easy, just comb and let dry, no hair dryer or other effort needed.

I also came back from the beach with more of a tan - amazing what laying around in the sun with(out) sunblock (I know, slap my hand) will do to the color of your skin.

The 4th was spent lazing around (see above re: tan) during the day. The next-door-neighbor, her son, some of her friends, and two baseball players (Adam and John) from the Outer Banks Daredevils staying with her (think Summer Catch, just not so prestigious) came over for drinks and fun and games, going back and forth between the two houses until dark.

We saw some illegal fireworks, but didn't go to see any of the big public displays. I think it was the first time in a long time I've missed fireworks on the 4th. Well, there was the one time in high school when I was seriously jet lagged from a return trip from Germany and drooling on myself while a cute boy was hitting on me, but I'm not sure that really counts.

Overall it was a pretty good, relaxing weekend. Just what we needed after the week DH (and by association) had been through. Hope yours was as satisfying!