Random Sunday – Sleeping, Drafted, and Heart Surgery

I know.  It’s not Sunday.  It’s Tuesday.  But, Random Sunday got delayed a little.  The big reason is that my father-in-law had to have heart surgery just over a week ago.  The surgery went well and he is doing just fine.  Between that, though, and a major project due for school, Random Sunday got delayed a little.

I've been drafted.  Not literally as in drafted into the military.  But, I got conned into doing a work presentation.  I will be speaking in front of about 300 people on Thursday night.  Several major news outlets may be there as well.  I am not impressed.  Not because I don’t like speaking in front of people, though 300 does make me a bit nervous.  I just don’t like being the center of attention like that.

I had a random observation late last week.  I was watching my one year old sleep for a moment or two because he’d squeaked a little and I wanted to make sure he was staying asleep.  Then it struck me.  How on this green earth could he be comfortable sleeping the way he was.  And he had to be because he’s slept like this many, many times before.  He’s on his tummy, his legs and arms curled up in the fetal position under him, his head cocked to one side and his little butt up in the air.  I just don’t get it.

Random Sunday – Daylight Savings Time, Thanksgiving, and Purses

I have decided.  I don’t like Daylight Savings Time.  I like having more daylight in the afternoon after I’m off work.  That way I can still do stuff.  Besides, switching the time around messes with my sleep schedule.  And that’s off enough considering I have a one year old who is getting molars right now.

I can’t believe it’s almost Thanksgiving.  I took all my Halloween stuff down and traded it for the Thanksgiving decorations.  It just seems way too fast that we’re at this time of year again.  I am thankful for many things and I love this holiday.  I think it gets overlooked when retail stores go straight to Christmas this time of year.

I have discovered something.  It was something I already knew but relearned it again over the last week.  I hate shopping for purses.  I don’t like big purses.  I like purses that zip shut.  I also have discovered I like purses that do not have any outside pockets.  The last is because my son has been into stealing things out of my purse lately.  Do you know how hard it is to find a purse that fits all of those criteria and isn’t God awful ugly as well?  Trust me, they’re a rare breed.

August 2012

Trifecta's 33 word weekend prompt put me in mind of my subject right away.  Feeling brave after some feedback from one of the last prompts I responded to on another site, I decided to write another poem.  Let me know what you think!

Pain

Then numbness

A tug or two

Then a cry

Such a beautiful cry

Sending tears down my face

Tiny and wet

Wrinkled and a bit blue

Delicate fingers

Steel blue eyes

Perfection

Random Sunday – The Weather, Exhaustion and Zucchini

Yep.  You read that title right.  This week’s Random Sunday will hit on the weather, exhaustion, and zucchini.  So, hold on to your hats cuz here we go!

I’ve decided this just isn’t fair.  Today the high was about 77 degrees Fahrenheit.  Tomorrow it is supposed to hit 100 degrees.  Come on, people!  It’s September!  A – we’re not supposed to have 100 degree weather in September.  B – who ever said the high was allowed to swing that drastically in one day!  I just hope the air conditioning in all of the various locations I need to be in tomorrow holds out.

Wow.  I’m tired.  I’m wrapping up another class for grad school this week.  That involves a fifteen to twenty page paper.  I’m not done with it yet and it needs to be turned in by Friday.  Trying to finish that, keep up with my one year old son, and manage the rest of the daily household chores is about killing me this week.  I just gotta make it ‘til Friday.  Then I’ll get a break for a few weeks.

And here’s the zucchini.  I was grating zucchini tonight.  The plan is to be able to make zucchini bread as soon as it is cool enough to actually be willing to turn the oven on.  In the process of grating it, I’ve discovered zucchini will dry into an odd skin on one’s own skin.  It feels rather odd and I’ve washed my hands several times trying to get it off.

And there you have it.  The weather, exhaustion, and zucchini all in one post.  Now I’m off to wash my hands.  Again.

Random Sunday - Chocolate Chip Pancakes, Work and Spiders

It’s Random Sunday again.  I love this post.  It’s so easy to write because I don’t have to think.  I just write whatever comes to mind.

Like, for example, I learned today to be much more careful about feeding my son chocolate chip pancakes.  We were out for my husband’s birthday and I ordered my son pancakes.  The chocolate chips were nice and gooey.  However, my son would occasionally spit out his bite of pancake for no apparent reason.  By the time we were done eating he had chocolate in places that looked really bad.  As in diaper issues really bad.  My husband wouldn’t take him into a store until we changed his onsie and wiped the chocolate off of his legs and arm.

I’m getting a little nervous with my new job.  I still think the program could end up really cool.  The powers that be, though, don’t seem to totally understand what it’s going to take to run the program.  They keep thinking they can put things off.  We keep telling them that it doesn’t work that way but they have not yet listened.

Holy crap for the spiders around this year!  I don’t know about where you live, but around here there have been a ton of spiders.  I notice these things because I can’t stand spiders.  Almost to the point of panic attacks I don’t like spiders.  So, when the local spider population increases, I will see it.  I’ve managed to get to the point of a truce with the creepy things.  They stay out of my house and they get to live.  In my house means they are dead as soon as I find them.

Random Sunday - APA Style and More

Here’s something that I ran into today that really makes me wonder.  In APA style formatting, you have an abstract, an introduction and a conclusion (among other things).  All three of these elements say pretty much the same thing.  Why is that?  If I am to use this format in a graduate program in psychology, wouldn't one think that the people reading this are smart enough to figure out what I’m saying without having to repeat it three times?

My son has learned to climb things.  This is not a good thing.  He now attempts to scale most anything he can find.  The chair, the couch, people, boxes, the dishwasher and the refrigerator are all fair game as far as he is concerned.  This goes right along with trying to explain to him (remember, he’s 11 months old) that chewing on the dishwasher is not permissible.

Is there something going on with spiders this year?  I hate spiders.  With a passion.  There isn't much that will totally creep me out like spiders and similar creepy crawlies.  And it seems like there are more spiders this year than there have been in the last several years.  Yesterday I had to kill two spiders in my kitchen before I could make breakfast.  All while my son is sitting in his high chair banging on the tray with his hands yelling because he’s hungry.

There’s my randomness for this Sunday.  See you next time!

Swimming Pools and Grad School, Oh My!

I had every intention of coming up with some brilliant response to Write at the Merge’s prompt this week.  Instead, all I could come up with was basically the scene out of the beginning of The Avengers where Natasha Romanoff, a.k.a Scarlett Johansson, was conducting her interrogation while tied to a chair.  I didn’t figure ripping that scene off would constitute a brilliant blog post.  Then I got distracted playing with my son in his swimming pool at my mom’s house.  What can I say, cute baby in the water on a 90+ degree day – how can it get any better than that?

So, instead you’re getting a little more of my ramblings instead.  Besides, my brain is fried from reading a ton of responses to a discussion question for grad school.  It amazes me how poorly some of these people in grad school write, at least for these posts.  Some of them have basically copied straight out of the textbook with no original thought.  Others have written such short posts it makes me wonder if they even understood what they wrote.  I’m not trying to imply that I have these uber-intelligent posts and am blowing people away with them.  But, I mean, come on people!  Show some effort and some smattering of independent intelligent thought!  It is a master’s program, not undergrad.

Okay.  I’m off my soapbox.  For now.  We’ll see what tomorrow brings.

Random Sunday: The Color Run and Other Things

While I am sitting here distracted and not doing my schoolwork, I figured I’d write a few blog posts.  That way I can schedule them to go up throughout the week and it doesn't look like I’m neglecting my poor blog as much.

I ran in The Color Run today.  It’s a 5K run where they throw colored powder at you at various points along the way.  It was a blast.  If I could find runs and things like this to do on a regular basis, staying in shape would not be nearly as much of an issue.

While my husband and I were at The Color Run, my dad took my son to Sea Life Aquarium at the Mall of America.  I would have loved to see my son’s face.  He’s 11 months old and is totally in love with tropical fish.  The bummer is that he didn't take a good afternoon nap.  Thankfully, bedtime ended up early tonight as he crashed.

Is it just me or does housework feel like a continual losing battle, one that never ends?  I did the dishes so there was not one dish in the house dirty the day before yesterday.  We were gone all day yesterday so the only dishes we had were like three plates in the evening.  Tonight, I’d swear they multiplied or called all their friends over for a party or something because the whole sink and part of the counter are full.  I don’t even remember using most of them!

What has your Sunday been like?

Getting Back On Track

Yeah.  I've let this slide for way too long.  Then, of course the sometimes brainless wonder that I am, I started to compose this post at work on a notebook there.  Guess where the bit that I had written is...

In my defense (shaky as it is), I have been chasing my now 9 month old son around.  He has learned to crawl quite well.  It's pretty impressive, to me at least, how fast he has gotten.  T has also figured out how to pull himself up on things.  He's working on the walking while holding on to something.  However, T can be rather ADHD and forget he can't stand without aid yet.  Yep.  You guessed it.  Then he crashes.  Most of the time it isn't a big deal.  However there have been a few instances that led to a bloody lip, a bloody nose and a scratched cheek.  Thankfully not all at once.

So, besides working full time and attempting to keep up with this disaster called my house, that's what I've been doing as of late.  But, Angela's post over at Write On Edge today reminded me I need to shake the rust off that has all but rendered my writing skills unsalvageable and start putting pen to paper again.  Figuratively or literally.  Hopefully I'll be able to carve out some time and you'll see more of me around again.

Beautiful Boy

I got a bit behind on my book reviews, so keep an eye out here as I am hoping to get caught up over the next few days.  On that note, here's the next one.

Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction by David Sheff

This was an interesting book.  I read the companion book, Tweak by Nic Sheff, a while ago.  Tweak is Nic's story about his battle with addiction.  Beautiful Boy is his father's side of things.  One of the more intriguing points I found in the book is that it doesn't read like a typical memoir, though there are elements of that present.  Sheff tends to focus more on what was going through his mind as the events occurred.  Now, I have read reviews that were critical of that, and I can understand why if you go into reading this book expecting a typical memoir.  But, working in the addiction field, I can tell you Sheff's mind set as he conveys it in this book is common among the parents I work with.  In that respect, I found this point of view fascinating.

David Sheff was a writer prior to this book.  He was writing non-fiction magazine articles when his son started the family on the emotional roller coaster of addiction.  So, when Sheff wrote Beautiful Boy, he did so armed with a significant amount of research into addiction.  Much of that research is added to the book.  This research does break up the story a bit, but he fits it into the story in a way that I think lends strength to the emotional aspects of the story.

In the end, I found this to be a great book about one family's experience with addiction.  I would recommend reading Tweak first.  By doing so, you will get a better picture of the events so, when you read Beautiful Boy, the emotional side of this book will make more sense and come through clearer.

That Smell

Trifecta gave us a fun 33 word weekend challenge:

We want you to give us a 33-word example of personification.  Wait.  What?  You forget what that is?  It's the practice of attaching human traits and characteristics with inanimate objects, phenomena and animals (http://literary-devices.com).

I don't think I have to explain what I am personifying here...

 

Reaching out

Tickling your nose

Knowing it will

Slap your face

When you look.

Could someone tell me

How something so small

Could produce that smell

 

Do I have to change your diaper?

The State of Me Address

Okay, so it isn't going to be anything as formal as the State of the Union address, but I thought I'd try to catch everyone up on what I've been doing (and yes, I know the State of the Union address isn't happening currently but the whole idea of playing off the Inauguration seemed a bit conceited to me).

I think the biggest thing is that my son just turned 5 months old.  He's proving to remain a handful.  He doesn't think he needs nap time, he tries to take his spoon to feed himself and if it isn't what he wants, he isn't shy about letting me know that, too.  And forget about crawling.  He's much more interested in standing.  My mother wished a child just like me on me.  I think she got her wish.  The part I laugh at is she helps provide daycare for him so I don't think her revenge is working out quite as well as she hoped.

I still work with my teenagers and, while I really enjoy working with them, they have been enough to drive me up the wall lately.  My heart always breaks for them.  They've seen such rough and difficult things, things no kid should ever have to deal with.  The ones that make it through all of the bull with a great sense of humor and end up doing well make it worth it.

NaNoWriMo 2012 was a total bust.  I think I got about 3000 words of the 50000 goal written.  But, my son turned 3 months old then, I'd just gone back to work not long before and the holidays, yes I'm counting Christmas in there, happened instead.  But, I kept the ideas and plan on revisiting them.  Hopefully soon.

And, to me, the biggest accomplishment so far is that I've officially been blogging here for 2 years.  More people are stopping by (at least as far as I can tell they are - and if that's not true, please don't burst my bubble, just let me pretend...) and I'm still here!

Anyways, that's about where things are at.  Hopefully I can keep the routine T and I are on going and I'll be able to get a few more posts up more often.

My Man T

Write at the Merge gave us two words today - gossamer and affinity.

 

 

It took me a bit to respond to this prompt.  It wasn’t until I saw Kathleen’s thumbnail that the pieces started falling in place.  That photo brought me back to my son’s stay in the level 2 nursery when he was born.  It was both the happiest and hardest week of my life. Two things to understand about this story is that he is my only child at this time and that, when he was born, I realized it was a huge part of my purpose in life to be his mother.

When my son, T, was born, he was only five pounds three ounces – too small to go to the regular nursery - even though he was only 5 days early.  He was born at 7:48 PM.  I didn’t get to see him again until about 1:00 AM.  The next time I saw him after that, he had an I.V. and multiple wires attached to his tiny body because he was struggling to maintain his own blood sugar.  The harsh contrast between his soft, delicate little body and those thick, heavy lines really hit me hard. The doctors and nurses said that wasn’t unusual in a baby so small, but why did it have to happen to my son?

It went downhill from there for a while.  At about three days old, he also got a feeding tube as he wouldn’t nurse and fell asleep part way through his bottle.  The day T’s nurse came and told me he was going to have to stay in the hospital after I was discharged just about killed me.  Unfortunately, that was also my husband’s birthday.  Talk about a party killer.

Once I was home it got a bit easier.  But I knew my place was with him.  It was so natural and right I struggled with not being able to do it.

Thankfully, T is a stubborn little man.  After pulling his own I.V. out twice on the hospital staff, they decided to leave it out.  His blood sugar remained stable without it.  We got to bring him home the next day.  Since then he has remained a stubborn, squirmy and precocious little boy who thinks he should be able to stand at just barely 5 months old

I know I got lucky with T.  It could have been so much worse.  For too many mothers, it is.  I am so thankful every day that T keeps getting bigger and stronger.  I’ll even put up with his penchant for standing and wanting to do things for himself.

My thumbnail this week is a picture of T at less than 24 hours old...

WTH?

Holy crap!  I hadn't realized just how long I've been neglecting this poor blog.  Hence the What The Hell title to this post.  In my defense, I have been trying to learn a whole new routine that just up and switched on me - yet again.  Here's a summary of what's been going on around my house...

I went back to work on October 10th.  That meant I had to learn the new routine of getting my son and myself ready and out the door on time every day.  He had to get dropped off at which ever relative of mine who was providing daycare that day.  Then I had to make it from there to work on time.  Thank goodness all the relatives watching him for us are close by.

At that point my hubby was still on first shift - basically the same hours as me.

We also had the 2 month check up and shots for my son.  While he didn't get overly sick, he did get rather fussy for a few days.  Not to mention he tends to get rather fussy at night due to gas and being overly tired.  See, my little peanut is already more stubborn than he should be for his age.  He doesn't like going to sleep for fear of missing something.  So evenings have been entertaining to say the least.

Just as we were getting used to how that routine went, my dear hubby got switched to second shift.  See, we knew it was coming.  We just didn't know when.  That happened this week.

So now it's time for a new routine again.  At least this one should be more stable, at least relatively speaking, than before.

If I'm posting more sporadically, now you know why.  And I promise - I'll try hard not to neglect this blog quite so bad, I hope.

Nerves

The Stream of Consciousness Prompt from Notebook Sisters this week was "it makes me nervous".  So here's my 5 minutes on that prompt:



I used to think the biggest thing that made me nervous was when the kids at work were quiet.  See I work as a chemical health counselor for adolescents.  So, when they get quiet it just about always means trouble.  That trouble usually equates to calls to parents and/or probation officers.  Sometimes it even means that the police come and take one of these teenagers to the juvenile detention center for a probation violation.

Then I found out I was pregnant.  Please keep in mind, I had no basis for the worries that came next.  I worried that something would happen and I would miscarry.  Then I worried that something would be wrong with my baby.  Then I worried that I would do something to hurt my baby.

When those worries proved baseless, I worried about labor.  The only legitimate worry I had there was that while in labor, my son's heart rate kept dropping.  So I had a C-section.

Now I worry about him - is he okay?  Does this particular sneeze/rash/face/etc mean something more than a sneeze/rash/face/etc.  When I leave him with someone else (yes, even my husband) I worry about whether or not he's okay.  Pretty much all of these fears (especially leaving him with my husband) are baseless as well.

Good thing I rarely ever act on those worries!

5 minutes - stop.

There ends my 5-minutes Streams of Consciousness post. Want to join in? (We'd love to have you!) 

There are just 5 steps...

1. Set your timer and write for 5 minutes.

2. Publish! (No editing. This is rough, unrefined writing.)

3. Grab our SOC button from the sidebar.

4. Sign in with our LinkUP on Sundays.

5. Stop by the other blogs and say hay!

How Do They Know?

I'd love to know how babies know the second you put them down.  It doesn't matter how hard they were sleeping before you put them down.  They still know.  Not only do they know, though, they wake up.  This isn't always a bad thing.  My son about one quarter of the time wakes up and is in a pretty good mood.  About half the time he wakes up hungry.  This equates to some fussing but nothing overly serious and remedied with ease.

It's that last quarter that drives me crazy.  You know, when they wake up screaming and you can't figure out why.  At least I haven't been able to when my son does this.  Granted, the last few days I know why he's been crabby.  However, seeing as it was thrush, the best I could do was give him his medication like the doctor said and leave it at that.  But that doesn't help in the immediate moment much.  Lucky for me he's just about over it.  I'm hoping that cuts down on the odds of him waking up with a tantrum.

And, trust me, attempting to reason with a 6 week old child just doesn't work.  Particularly when they are sounding more like an air raid siren than a tiny infant.  For you non-parents out there, you're probably laughing at me saying 'No kidding!' right about now.  Anyone who's parented a child through this age understands.  Either that or I have gone crazy.

In the end I've resigned myself to the fact that infants somehow have hardwired sensors that tell them when you put them down.  Each time I put my son down, I pray that when he wakes up, he won't be in a bad mood and that he'll go back to sleep right away.

Sometimes I even get that prayer answered...

Things No One Tells You

Wow. I've rather neglected my blog and writing for these challenges. I had good intentions. However my son has had other plans - and I've found it difficult to reason with a five week old. Anyways, this week's Trifecta challenge played perfectly into a post I've been thinking of. Here's this week's word:

AMPLE (adj.)
1: generous or more than adequate in size, scope, or capacity
2: generously sufficient to satisfy a requirement or need
3: buxom, portly

Please remember:
Your response must be between 33 and 333 words.
You must use the 3rd definition of the given word in your post.
The word itself needs to be included in your response.
You may not use a variation of the word; it needs to be exactly as stated above.

Here's my response:

I’ve decided that if kids would be taught about ALL of the things that go along with having a baby, there’d be fewer pregnant teenagers. Trust me, my son is 5 weeks old today and there are a lot of things I’ve learned the hard way. I was ready for the fussiness at all hours of the night, the multitudinous diaper changes and constant demands for bottles. I knew I’d gain a bunch of weight and have to work to lose it. But, there are some things no one ever told me about.

I’ve learned that, at least for me, my figure is quite enhanced by having a baby. Many people would consider this a good thing. However, I had a rather ample figure to begin with. Therefore, even though I’ve lost enough weight to fit into my pre-pregnancy tops, I still can’t wear them due to the largesse up there.

To go along with that, I’ve also learned that finding nursing bras is next to impossible. You’d think I was asking for someone’s head on a platter by the looks I’ve gotten from sales people when I’ve asked for them.

Sticking with the same theme, I’ve also learned that if you aren’t diligent in pumping or nursing, it hurts. It hurts even in your armpits.

To change the theme a little, I’ve also learned how to diaper a boy. Yes, it’s different than diapering a girl. If you don’t do it properly, not only will you be changing a diaper next time he gets it wet, you’ll be changing his clothes as well. Often that’s about 20 minutes after you’ve dressed him. You’ll also be changing your clothes, the cover on the changing pad and wiping down the wall and carpet as well.

While I could go on about other things I’ve learned that no one tells you before having a baby, I think I’ll save them for some other time. Now it’s time to go check on my son.

He's Here!

He's finally here! My son was born last week. It ended up a much more stressful event than what I anticipated. While I'm not going to go into detail right now, let me just say that the whole delivery was more complicated than anticipated for starters. Then, due to how small he was when he was born dispite only being 5 days shy of his due date, my son ended up in the level 2 nursery - not quite NICU but more intense than the regular nursery. To sum up a long story there (which I may blog more about later), he's doing quite well now. The little guy's biggest issues was just that - he had a low birth weight. He and I are home and doing well. Since then things have been an adventure. From multiple middle of the night changes of clothes due to wet diapers leaking, 4 AM wake up calls where he decided it was a great idea to stay up at that point, to a minor skin infection right near my c-section incision, things haven't been dull. I hope once he, my husband and I settle into a routine I will get back to blogging fairly regularly. I figured between feedings and diaper changes I'd quick post something to let ya'll know I am still around!