| Long update because they don't happen often enough. |
[11 Jan 2012|10:27pm] |
Thoughts from Visit Of Titans: December 2011.
My parent's visit really made me think about/understand why people with babies move back to their home city/state. If Michigan was a place I could consider living in I think we would be considering it for a few years from now. Once Matt's schooling is paid off (we're $100,000 in debt y'all) we could move somewhere. With how much Matt earns here I don't think we'd want to move until his debt is paid off. But at some point we could live more cheaply away from the Pacific Northwe$t and therefore earn less.
But anyhow, it's all just sad talk because we can't live in Michigan because we would die of cold and sadness. I said to my dad that it's okay that we live far away because he and my mother are too busy to see us often anyhow. My dad said "well... well nevermind" after some goading he said that it doesn't matter, because we'll never move back, but that if we lived in Michigan he would make a point of seeing Zelly every day. EVERY DAY. That is so often. More often than The Daily Show airs, even.
Zelly, Ran, Squidbert, Shosh, and I went to the Experience Music Project/SciFi Museum (now merged into 1 museum that is called... something probably?). It was my first time traveling this far afield with Zelly minus Matt. While there we saw the BSG and Avatar exhibits I've seen both and was not heartbroken that between bathroom visits, feedings, and rocking to sleep I didn't see much of those. Then they wanted to see the horror movie exhibit. It was down a dark spiral staircase. There was also an elevator. We were there as the museum was closing at 5:00 (gift shop open until 5:30) and after that we were going for iced cream and then back over the water so it was going to be a while until the next convenient diaper changing location. I popped into the bathroom in the exhibit to give her a fresh diaper. She was only pee-wet. I can't have been in there for longer than 5 minutes. While we were alone in the bathroom, the museum closed and the 30 or so people in the HORROR MOVIE exhibit, including the ones I arrived with, left and Zelly and I were alone in the exhibit, at the bottom of the spiral stairwell hoping the elevator was still working. See, in movies you're all like "oh yeah right everyone would have just cleared out that fast" and "yeah right, why would they have just left the lady with the tiny baby". Take Away: movies are realistic after all.
Also, while they were here Zelly went in a pool for the first time and it was fucking cute. I'll have to remember to post pictures on my facebook. We're facebook friends aren't we?
Also, I'm going to try to be more positive about my MIL. Try to resent her deficiencies less. Try to get caught up in Matt's feelings about her less. I should at least give her the leeway I give strangers, if not more. I just need to keep Matt out of it, so as to not add oxygen to that combustive baggage. Mending their relationship is not my job. My job is to have the relationship with Matt that I want and the relationship with my MIL that I want (very different relationships I hope!) and that's all. ////Like a Leaf on the Wind////
Zelly is 7 months old (and 2 days) and still no signs of turning front to back or crawling. She is getting much closer to being able to sit up from a position of laying on her back. She also stands while holding onto things pretty well. She enjoys walking while holding our fingers. So maybe she'll be an early walker because she's certainly not interested in early crawling. At this point it wouldn't be early. Um. Crawl already!
We've realized that we have an adventure baby more than a snuggly baby and so sleep snuggles are it for snuggles, so now we go for maximum snuggles during sleep.
Aside: My physical therapist, Dr. Craig Burns is funny and awesome and it will be a little weird to not have chatty times with him anymore once PT is over. I feel like we're buddies.
Time to feed a greaby, braby. <3
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[26 Nov 2011|12:12pm] |
Pleasant thought: I love how content Zelly is to just play with my hands and touch my face.
Unpleasant thought: Lately I feel crushed by my own mortality. A lifetime used to seem like a lot but lately it feels like so very little.
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[07 Oct 2011|11:54pm] |
It's been a great year for me. I wish you all a happy and sweet new year!
I also hope to become a more patient and understanding person this year.
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[19 Sep 2011|06:28pm] |
my mother: I'm also against arranged marriages.
me: Wait. Are you saying that internet dating is like an arranged marriage?
my mother: yes!
Further evidence of the ills of internet dating: A daughter of a friend who met a guy online, dated him for a while, almost married him, but broke up with him instead. Evidence!
Note: my mom has tried to set up a friend of Ran with a man my mother has never met and who lives halfway around the world. She claims that it's different. The man is Jewish, you see.
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[15 Sep 2011|09:28pm] |
Update: Gallbladder removal surgery on Thursday the 22nd. Return to work on the 30th from maternity leave.
I have mixed feelings about returning to work. I am excited about actually going back to work but nervous about leaving Zelly. Will she drink from a bottle? Will she be happy? Will she feel abandoned? Will Matt and I function well as a parenting team when I'm no longer the primary care giver? Will Elise ever be tossed from Hell's Kitchen? None of those people seem like they'd be good at running a kitchen. Will Amber and Kelly ever get over the fact that I now have a baby but am the same person I always was?
I'm slightly nervous about things to come.
Also, should I fast this Yom Kippur? Zelly will be 4 months old. She's breast feeding exclusively. Advice please!
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[10 Sep 2011|10:08pm] |
OK so the one handed typing version is I have gallstones and need surgery for that. I had a gallstone get stuck in my bile duct while in Kalamazoo. It was massively painful. I ended up in the ER Sunday night and missed my flight home on Monday. We finally made it home late Thursday night after I had an endoscopic procedure to remove the stuck stone.
Do you know anyone that's had their gallbladder removed? What was their recovery time like? Did their eating habits permanently change?
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[18 Aug 2011|08:04pm] |
Today Zelly showed a little interest in a toy. I've been waiting for her to like toys in hopes that car trips might be easier.
My dykey haircut has me wearing makeup again and I like it.
Christine O'Donell comes off pretty well in her CNN interview. Did we unfairly focus on her past during the election?
http://www.cnn.com/video/
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| Shots Fired |
[12 Aug 2011|01:53am] |
2 month appointment today. Zelly is 12 lbs 8 oz. She's doing well and developing well, etc, BUT the immunizations were heart breaking. Then she had a few rough hours of tears and sadness. :(
Ran + parents visited. was nice!
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| Typing One Handed |
[26 Jun 2011|07:46am] |
I got 4.5 consecutive hours of sleep. I feel refreshed as a new bay. Lately life has been too good for words. Zelly is such a good baby. She's happy and rarely fussy. She's healthy, the jaundice is almost all the way gone.
I'm constantly on LJ while breast feeding her and the slowness of one handed typing makes me often choose not to comment/post but I want you to know that I read every post you guys write, and happily, and usually at approximately 4am. At some point I want to write about labor and delivery and the recovery period after. I failed to write about pregnancy really and I think I'll regret that at some point. Next time I'm pregnant I'm going to want to remember what helped the most in my somewhat difficult delivery (Zelly was facing up instead of down, OP position I think they call it). I was able to do the whole thing naturally, no drugs, no vacuum extraction or forceps (although the doctor wanted to use vaccum). They were talking about how rare it is to do a drug free delivery at Overlake hospital, maybe fewer than 5% of deliveries and I think a large part of my being able to do it was with the help of Matt and two amazing amazing nurses, Heather and Emerald. I want to remember how I did it and their help in case next time I don't have such champion nurses and such a chill delivering doctor (she never asked about interventions twice, no pressure at all, she just offered things. She also told me that she could have never done what I just did at the end and that's nice of her to say right after delivery because you certainly FEEL like you've accomplished something intensely difficult).
Anyhow, more to come, I hope. I'll probably just keep throwing little bits and pieces into LJ rather than going for a coherent timeline. I just hope to record a few things before I forget everything in the haze of new baby fun times.
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| 7 lbs, 4 oz. 19.5 inches long |
[15 Jun 2011|12:28am] |
So I realized that I have neglected to mention on LiveJournal that Zelly Zipporah was born on her due date, June 9th at 4am. She is healthy and warm and cuddly and adorable. She has a nice head of fuzzy hair. She is pinky. This is has been the best week of my life. Labor and delivery were quite difficult. She was born in the OP position, "sunny side up" as the nurse said, so she was born facing up instead of down. The back labor was intense. I pushed for almost exactly 4 hours, 3 hours and 45 minutes of which was after the first part of her head was showing. They offered to use a vacuum suction to help pull her out. I was able to turn down drugs and the suction, but said yes to the episiotomy that cut through some muscle (level 2 I guess). It was pretty painful and I'm still quite uncomfortable.
The happiness of holding her and looking at her, though, far outweighs the pain. At 4 days she was back to 2 oz shy of her birth weight.
The nurses at Overlake were amazing and heroic and awesome. They said that fewer than 5% of Overlake births are natural and the they were impressed with how alert Zelly was out of the womb. Seriously though, without awesome nurses I don't think it's possible to have a good birth experience.
It's hard for me to explain how much I think everyone should own a baby because they are the best.
More when I can keep my eyes open...
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| Today I'm 32. |
[04 Jun 2011|10:44pm] |
I've been writing less than I once did partially because of you people. People on my friends list that actually post nowsie days are good writers who craft entries, whereas I prefer to crap entries.
The baby is due sometime between Monday and Thursday.
Republicans have taken a turn from last election when they were evil to this election in which they are hilarious and harmless.
Why does anyone own basset hounds, they are so ugly?
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[20 May 2011|06:54pm] |
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Ok I had another appointment today. My blood pressure is still good. My feet and ankles are still huge. They found (only) trace amounts of protein in my urine. Babyzam's bp is good. I gained (only) pounds since 2 days ago. So, they are not super worried, but I still have an appointment on Wednesday and another on Thursday (which is the normal appointment). Both Amber and Jeri heard that I was worried about Preeclampsia and started to mention friends of theirs that had it before saying something like "well, we'll talk about that after your pregnancy is over". So, let's hope preeclampsia doesn't happen to me and babyzam. They recommended that I stop spending 8 hours a day on my feet. So while I'm not at work I'm probably going to be trying to elevate my feet, making me the lamest friend in the world.
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[19 May 2011|10:27pm] |
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Stress. Fat ankles, fat feet. Protein in my urine. Ten pounds of weight gain in the last 2 weeks after 4 weeks of slight weight loss. But my blood pressure is normal. Hopefully not preeclampsia. More tests tomorrow. An added appointment on Wednesday. Stress. I want babyzam out so I can look at her and see if she looks healthy. Why don't abdomens have windows?
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[23 Apr 2011|01:30am] |
Babyzam news:
She is kicky tonight. And weighty on my cervix. It makes me feel old and tired but it also fills me with a contented feeling that babyzam is healthy and moving about the cabin (I remembered to turn off the fasten seat belt sign).
I'm approximately half done with homework for this week. I have to write up my case study. The twice exceptional gifted kid (vision issues plus giftedness) and his mom were both amazingly good interview subjects. Writing is up will be easy. Deciding to do it might be harder.
I've decided what I want to do for my 'final creative project'. I want to make a website for homeschooling parents of gifted or potentially gifted students. I want it to have some help with 'diagnosis' as well as resources and information, etc etc etc. I think it will be a good was to pull in lots of information from the semester. I've never webcited, though, so I'll gladly take suggestions. Matt recommends google's sites, a lady at work today recommended WordPress. Any thoughts?
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[13 Apr 2011|05:47pm] |
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Also, Babyzam has been less responsive to Matt's chattiness lately. Turns out she's now head down and he's been talking directly to her butt.
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[13 Apr 2011|03:52pm] |
Babyzam is 4.4 lbs. 62 percentile for size and hanging out in plenty of amniotic fluid. She is moving less because she has less space to move than she used to.
All of my worries have been calmed for the time being.
BABYZAM!
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[23 Mar 2011|10:12pm] |
I passed my sugar test "with flying colors". I asked the doctor if that meant I could eat a candy bar and she said it means I can eat three.
We started our birthing classes tonight.
1. Matt asks really good questions and is really funny in birthing class.
2. Everyone else has a much bigger belly than me. I'm due Jun 9th and I have a belly the size of the lady due in the end of July. I decided to not freak out about it. Then I altered that plan and decided to ask Matt about it. He agreed that everyone else has a bigger belly. Then I decided to ask the teacher about it. She said that it's about the length of your torso and how much room that baby has to go directions other than out. So maybe since I'm 5'10" and have wide hips babyzam just has other places to lay. The other ladies are shorter than me and thinner than me. So, I'm back to not worrying (for now).
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| 1 year anniversary |
[15 Mar 2011|11:01pm] |
Today I wore some actual maternity pants (I don't know if you want to count the Heidi Klum stretch pants that go below the belly, I wore those one time). I have to say that over all, maternity pants are very comfortable and I don't think they should only be for the pregnant. I'm not 100% sure, though, because I am approximately 30 weeks pregnant, so I have a belly and I didn't try on any maternity pants pre-belly.
Also, I scared the crap out of the baby the other day. I woke up and was groggy and was freaked out by some loud pounding sounds upstairs. I was too sleepy to register the sounds as non-threatening and so it freaked me out, my heart was racing, etc and then I would fall back asleep and be woken up by the sounds again and be freaked out in my state of grogginess. Every time I woke up freaked out, babyzam starting moving around furiously. I'm not sure if she gets some of the adrenaline, too, or if she's responding to heart rate or something. I pictured her saying "what? what is it? I'm in a uterus I can't see anything, are we in danger?" And I tried to relax so she'd stop freaking out.
Unrelatedly: I can't believe that our 28 year old co-worker's wife had to have surgery for cancer. I'm getting older and the thought of real sickness being for the old isn't as comforting as it used to be. She's too young to have to think about her own mortality. It's scary. And it's strange how she still has to go about her daily life. She still has to go to work, grocery shop, whatever. In movies you always get to stop the world and focus on yourself and have a freakout if cancer happens to you. I wonder if that would be better or worse.
Matt and I had our one year wedding anniversary last night. We went to Typhoon! and had a fancy dinner, then we came home and watched Taste of Tea, a Japanese movie that I liked but don't recommend because it was 2.5 hours long and it felt that long. It was a very pleasant and relaxing anniversary. It was nice to not get embroiled in homework right after work. I did about an hour of homework or less and promised Matt the rest of the evening. We got a lot of time to just talk and cuddle and enjoy each other. It makes me think we should celebrate quarter anniversaries, too. How often do you promise an entire evening to someone you love? I can't imagine regretting it.
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| Talked to my dad |
[10 Mar 2011|10:04pm] |
I talked to my dad for about and hour and a half yesterday. This week is murdering me with homework, so I was only going to call for a quick 'happy birthday' to him and then telling him that we're giving our daughter a middle name from the other side of the family (my mom's side) and making sure he was cool with that. But then we chatted for a super long time and I kind of forgot how pleasant my dad can be to chat with. He's a nice and funny guy and we don't agree politically at all, so avoiding those issues is preferable.
He gave me a bunch of advice about kids in general that sounded a lot like advice specifically about raising me and my sister. Apparently kids can be very willful and will get offended even at a young age if you try to tell them what to do. They will let you know if they don't like their babysitter by 'firing' her. I'm happy that my dad takes all lessons about us as if they were general lessons. This may be why my dad doesn't think we were assholes as kids. He just thinks all kids are little disasters.
Anyhow, call your dad, because maybe he'll tell you stories from when you were a baby.
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[18 Feb 2011|09:08pm] |
So Justin Bieber is against abortion and Sarah Palin is angry at Michelle Obama encouraging breast feeding.
Thanks for taking sides on issues that seem shocking unrelated to you!
Next I can't wait to find out what Christopher Walken thinks about reebok vs. Nike and I think it's about time that Brian Boitano spoke out about global climate change.
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