« January 2010 | Main | March 2010 »
Tomorrow I'm getting in a car and driving an hour with a friend so we can attend a belly dance boot camp. Why we're going to anything that has the words "boot camp" tacked onto the end of it is beyond me. To prepare myself, this evening I'm going to drink lots of water for hydration and I'm going to eat lots of Ginger Snap Ice Cream to bolster my fortitude.
I just got back from the first belly dance class I've been able to attend since before Holly was born. It felt really good to get back to something that's become so important to me. Thank goodness I signed up for that first class a few years ago. Not only did I accidentally stumble upon something I absolutely love to do, but I also met two women at that class who have since become close friends. As someone who's fairly awkward at the friend thing, that's something I'm very grateful for.
Speaking of bellies, amazingly those four boxes of Girl Scout cookies I bought on Sunday lasted until today. Unfortunately I ate ~ 90% of them. What do they put in those things?
Before Holly was born, I knew that I wanted to go down a different diapering road than the Pampers one I had travelled with Henry. Don't get me wrong: I loves me some Pampers! Disposable diapers are so convenient. However, for a while now I've been experiencing post-disposable guilt over the hundreds of diapers that are sitting in a landfill somewhere filled with, well, you know, and there they will sit for another 500 years. After doing some research (read: asking my friend Megan what she does and deciding to do that, too) I decided to go the gDiaper
Twice Megan told me she has been using cloth inserts in the gDiapers for her second kid and that they work great, but I was only ready to really register and digest that fact the second time she mentioned it. After doing a bit of online research (for real this time), I decided to make the switch. I picked up a couple of packs of Gerber trifold cloth diapers
The breakdown is: After I wash (great washing instructions here) the cloth inserts and liners (which you can usually wash and reuse at least once), I assemble a days worth of diapers so I don't have to worry about it during diaper changes. At first I was a bit of a dope in the way I was folding the cloth inserts. They're a bit longer than the gPants, so I was folding them under a little bit on each end, until I read somewhere that you should fold them under where the "wet zone" is for extra absorption. Totally obvious solution, however, my brain didn't go there for whatever reason. Per Megan's suggestion I use an old pillowcase, which I put in the Diaper Dekor
we used for Henry, to hold the soiled diapers. When it's time to wash the diapers, which I do approximately every three days, I throw the pillowcase in as well. So far we haven't had any issues with smells because the poop goes right into the toilet, but I have read in a number of places that a few drops of tea tree oil, which has natural disinfectant qualities, in the diaper pail would help. I've ordered some just in case.
At night we still use disposable diapers, either Earth's Best (which I prefer for the fit), 7th Generation, or Full Circle diapers, depending on where I happen to be shopping. We generally only use one disposable at night so one bag lasts us a long time.
All in all it was surprisingly easy to make the switch to cloth.
Today I'm trying to catch up on everything I couldn't be bothered to do last week because I was both sick and lazy. Mostly picking up the house, which, technically, I did last night with Henry, and vacuuming.
This weekend was great because although we had no plan, which is usually bad for us, we did manage to get out of the house. We walked to the park and had a lot of fun running around, although Henry was a little bummed there were no other kids there. We headed to Lowe's where Dave and Henry picked out materials to make a big xylophone, which they immediately got cracking on when we got back home. I scored four boxes of Girl Scout Cookies, so you know I'm happy. Holly went with the flow with a smile on her face, per usual.
Since the weekend was a bit willy-nilly, we didn't get any bread baking done and we didn't roast the chicken I bought for last night's dinner, both of which are crucial elements for one of the other dinners I'm making this week, so I'm getting all of that done today. I'm trying out this honey wheat bread recipe. The Friday my parents were here I dropped off a meal for a friend who recently had a baby. They're vegetarians, so I made vegetable soup. I thought rolls would go nicely with it so I tried out this recipe for Cloverleaf Honey Wheat Rolls and thus a honey wheat obsession was born. Hopefully today's bread will be just as delicious as the rolls turned out to be.
Thus ends a pretty mundane post.
Henry: I would like to watch some TV, please.
me: Okay. Wait a minute, I don't think so. You watched a lot of TV this morning.
Henry: No I didn't.
me: What do you mean "No you didn't." You watched an episode of SpongeBob while you were doing your fish medicine (aka his nebulizer) and then later on you watched Wall-E. I think that's enough TV for one day.
Henry: *thinking* I would like to watch a *real* lot of TV today, please.
I gave him credit for trying and for being polite, then had him practice writing his H's. I'm such a mom.
Last night tomato soup and grilled cheese were on the menu, except between being sick and taking Henry to his various pre-schools, I had no desire to go to the grocery store to procure cheese or soup. This is one of Henry's favorite meals and he was greatly looking forward to it, probably because there was little to no chance that carrot or any other food of the vegetable persuasion would show up on his plate. When I broke the news to him that we didn't have any tomato soup, I happened to be holding a can of crushed tomatoes. He asked what it was, I told him, and he asked me to make tomato soup out of it. So I did. I used this recipe. It was absolutely delicious. I made two adjustments: the first was, I didn't have any carrots so I didn't put them in; the second was, I grabbed what I thought was black pepper from the spice cabinet, but realized after I had already sprinkled it somewhat liberally (~ 1 teaspoon) over the tomatoes that it was actually a bottle of cinnamon. Oops. It was serendipitous because it definitely added to the flavor of the soup; I will be making that mistake again. I skipped the optional cream and dumped the works into a regular blender because I'm not cool enough to own an immersion blender. The finished texture was along the lines of a bisque. It was easy to make and absolutely delicious. It took a bit of coaxing to get Henry to try it, and what I'd really like to tell you is that he absolutely loved it, but instead I get to tell you that he threw up. He drinks his soup with a straw and the thick texture triggered his gag reflex because he wasn't expecting it. I'd also like to tell you we were disappointed, but Dave and I told him how proud we were of him for trying it, then proceeded to hover over his uneaten soup like vultures.
After the meal was over, I told Dave how cool it was that we had just had homemade tomato soup and grilled cheese with homemade bread. He agreed. Then I said "If only we could start making our own cheese." That sound you heard last night around 6:45 was the sound of Dave rolling his eyes. He can be *so* dramatic.
My parents came up for a visit this past weekend and between all of the things we got up to while they were here, as well as all of the coughing and sneezing and nose-blowing, I didn't have much chance to update. Actually, I didn't get online very much at all, which is always refreshing, considering the amount of time I spend aimlessly wandering the web, hoping against hope I'll come across something interesting, but generally always failing. Once upon a time (as in last Summer and Fall) I put into practice a "No internet after 8PM" rule because of all of the time-wasting that was going on. (This rule applied to exactly no one other than myself because Dave is a lost cause what with all of the facebooking failblogging youtubing work he has to do at night.)
Anyway, over the weekend we: delivered a meal to a friend who recently had a baby; delivered birthday presents to the most angelic 3-year old you've ever seen; had hot dogs, chili fries, onion rings, and lots of root beer at A&W; went bowling; ate sticky buns from Mr. Sticky's; attended a Hafla; put together an amazing Valentine's dinner; stuffed ourselves with chocolate dipped strawberries courtesy of Dave; came down with colds; squeezed in a late-evening, girls-only trip to Target; played an addictive game of Solitaire that turned out to be a fun group game; spent a day at home watching the snow fall. Not bad for a three day visit.
On Friday, Holly was showing signs of having caught Henry's cold. By Monday it hit her sinuses and she was absolutely miserable. We brought her to the Dr's Monday morning for a quick checkup since Henry had been diagnosed with bronchitis the week before and she seemed to be working at having to breathe. The Doctor said it seemed like it was just a really, really bad cold, which was good news. Holly had a nice long nap when we came home, then was sort of in and out of it the rest of the day. We put her down around 7PM and she cried and cried and cried. I brought her downstairs and we spent some quality time on the couch watching the Olympics. It was very sweet having a cute little girl tucked under my chin. We had to wait until 8:30 to give her another dose of Tylenol after which I nursed her and put her back to bed. That seemed to do the trick. She woke up twice that night which surprised the heck out of me because she seemed pretty miserable; I was certain Dave and I would be switching off comforting her all night. She's feeling much better now. Tomorrow she has her 6-month checkup. Between well-baby visits, emergencies, and sickness, I feel like we're spending a ton of time at the Doctors. Ah well, soon it will be Spring.
...bronchitis. The doctor spent a long time listening to Henry breath, checked his ears/nose/tonsils, then went back and listened to his lungs again, then said he thought most likely it's bronchitis. He asked what we had been doing for his cough, and we told him albuterol, which is what we're supposed to give him as a rescue medication when his asthma flares up, and pulmicort, which is a very low dose steroid that we give him twice a day every day during cold/flu season so that when he does get sick, he doesn't develop asthma. Twice this year we've used the albuterol for Henry when he's developed a wheezy-sounding cough, and both times I've felt like it wasn't doing anything for him. Our instructions are to get it going when he starts wheezing, except those are surprisingly ambiguous instructions when it comes to reality. So whenever he develops a cough, we think it must be his asthma from the way it sounds, we crank up the albuterol, then when we have a doctor check him out, they say it's not and that it's not necessary to keep using the albuterol. It's very frustrating.
Anyway, we left with a prescription for antibiotics (his first in over a year, which I mention only because that's how long it's been since he's had an ear infection: hooray!), a recommendation for Robitussin CF, and a better attitude about doctors in general because someone didn't get a "pinch" (aka. shot). I told Dave I didn't really want to give him the cough suppressant/expectorant, mainly because I don't take the stuff myself, and it seemed like we were loading up his system with a lot of medicines. Dave felt like we should, so we did. Henry had a huge coughing fit about forty minutes after taking it, got a lot of junk out of his lungs, and then settled down for a very quiet, restful night of sleep, during which I don't think he woke up once coughing.
Today we're snowed in, with another 4-6 inches expected. It's going to be a quiet day. Tomorrow I expect he'll be heading off to preschool in the afternoon. He's very anxious to get back. He's been bemoaning the fact that he's missing "V" week. Tomorrow he'll be participating in his very first Valentine's Day card exchange. We spent part of Sunday making them, which was a lot of fun. I think I may be more excited about the exchange than he is, because I used to LOVE opening up my Valentine's Day mailbox and seeing all of the cards from my classmates. Good times, good times...
...the young man has pneumonia. We have a Dr's appointment this evening at 5, and I'll be a bit surprised if they don't order chest x-rays. Then again, what do I know? Henry has a low-grade fever and a hideous cough which doesn't seem to be asthma-related. The cough went away for a brief period this morning, but is now back with a vengeance. I was tossing around the idea of giving the cough another day to see what would happen, but after listening to him hacking almost non-stop when we first woke up this morning, then seeing that we've got 8-12" of snow on the way tonight and tomorrow, we decided it would be best to get out to the pediatrician now while it's not a nightmare. After his cough dissipated a bit later in the morning, I called Dave and asked him what he thought about canceling the appointment, but he suggested we go ahead and keep it anyway. The last time we had that exact conversation for the exact same reason was last Spring when, in the end, it turned out Henry had strep throat. So, err on the side of caution it is.
Henry came down with a cough on Saturday and has been at it ever since. No other symptoms. Just a cough. Lots and lots of coughing. By yesterday it was making me a bit twitchy, all that coughing. We decided to keep him home from school today and after the first couple of hours, I finally gave him a lollipop and told him not to crunch it, just nurse it for as long as he could. After a minute he crunched it anyway, the temptation being far too great. So I gave him another one and made it VERY CLEAR he needed to suck on it, not crunch it. So he did, and it helped stem the coughing tide for the duration of the pop plus a few hours. He's starting to cough again, so there'll probably be another sucker in the not too distant future. I wish I knew what was causing it. I'm secretly holding out hope that he'll develop a full blown cold because at least then we'll know what it's all been about and that an end is in sight. I might try some buckwheat honey next.
dave: Argh.
me: What?
dave: I just tried to put a dish in the dishwasher and part of the dishrack broke off.
me: Uh-oh.
dave: Yeah
henry: We should just buy a new house.
Yesterday Holly worked very hard at cutting another tooth, and when I check this morning, there it was, nice and sharp. The appearance of teeth is every nursing mother's dream come true. Trust me.
She's been restless the last few nights. Mostly I think it's because she's anxious to get a move on. Yesterday I put her on her little gym mat and she got herself up onto all fours and started to rock back and forth, getting a feel for balance. Almost every time we go to her room to get her up from bed, she's on her hands and knees. When Henry was a baby, he enjoyed the novelty of being able to sit up on his own for a while before he decided to think about becoming mobile. It was great. I could plop him down on a blanket with some toys and he'd sit there and play, happy as a clam. Holly, meanwhile, has, in a few short days, completely mastered the art of pushing herself backwards and gets extremely grumpy when she finds herself lodged around a chair leg and can't go any further. I have a feeling that Dave, Henry, and I will be spending a great deal of time fearfully watching Holly from betwixt our fingers.
We have been making an effort to make small changes in our life that reflect our somewhat slow-to-come realization that not only is our family not the sole one living on the face of the Earth, but that we are surrounded by a community and world full of great kids who would probably like to inherit a planet that's in somewhat good shape in terms of sustainability. It's taken us a bit too long to get to this point, but with dawning realization comes the strong desire and commitment to actually research and put changes into action.
Now, I can't plead total ignorance about water conservation. As a child of the '80's, I was taught in school that if things kept going the way they were, there'd be a water shortage, and that it would happen very soon. I even remember a Cosby episode that mentioned water conservation, and how all the Huxtable kids had to turn off the water faucet while they were brushing their teeth, which I also got into the habit of doing (behold the power of television). I also tried very hard to take shorter showers, but that one was really tough.
My best friend in high school lived in an older house. I don't recall if she had a dishwasher, but I do remember hanging out in her kitchen and talking, talking, eating Ben and Jerry's Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough, and talkingtalkingtalking while she washed dishes in her sink. She had a flow regulator on her faucet that allowed her to stop the water with the flip of a lever instead of having to turn the water all the way off and on. Every once in a while, since moving in with Dave, I would get on a humbug and search high and low for one, never having any success, until finally, last month I found some
I was playing around with my ukulele on Sunday and Henry asked if I could play the song "Daylight". I found some chords and practiced a little bit, deftly raising my ability to somewhere between "Hideously Bad" and "Not Very Good At All". Today after school Henry wanted to play it along with me on the drums, so naturally, I recorded it:
As you can tell, we consider ourselves to be total rock stars.
Holly has been diligently practicing her push-ups. This afternoon, she was hanging out on her activity mat, batting some toys around, and when that got old, she flipped over onto her tummy and played with a blanket. When that got old, she pushed herself up, then shoved herself backward. Then she did it again and again and again until she found herself in the middle of Henry's pot-and-pan drum set, halfway across the living room. She played there for a while, then loudly declared that she deserved a nap after all of that hard work. One (albeit backward) step closer to upright mobility.
Speaking of push-ups, I did some yesterday and today I've been very aware of the fact that I have arms.
Let's talk about food. Tonight I made oven-baked sweet potato fries to go with the amazing trout Dave whipped up. They were crazy good. At least Dave, Holly, and I thought so. Henry licked one and called it a day.
Meanwhile, I've been dreaming of Spring, compost, and backyard gardens...
