Good-bye, NaBloPoMo...hello, Christmas!

 

O waiting patiently for Daddy to bring in the tree

Currently on heavy rotation at our house...

Guest blogging by Olivia...

 

 

 

 

"And what are you thankful for, Olivia?"

"Mommy and Daddy and Sawyer. Oh, and fairies and princesses. And reindeer."

 

Olivia had her endo appointment last week. I was dreading her A1c. Her numbers haven't really been out of control (except for the post-bedtime high that seems to arrive every night when her Humalog wears off), but I feel like diabetes management has not been top-of-mind recently. Her A1c had gone up, but only slightly from 6.9 to 7.1. I know that we have been the cause of that and I know that we can get it back down.

I was also dreading the appointment because they were going to take blood this time. We have talked about doing it for the last couple appointments, but it got pushed back each time. They would take three vials for the celiac screen, cholesterol, etc. The last couple of weeks have had O at the doctor a lot for general unpleasantness and I didn't want to put her through this, but I did want it out of the way. She cried a lot but held very still and got it done. We were glad it was over and I almost didn't give it another thought once we got out the door.

But the nurse practitioner called yesterday. Four out of five of the antibodies for celiac were positive. Four out of five. Positive. Celiac disease. And the numbers are so out of whack, so high, that there is almost no question, even though Olivia has been exhibiting no symptoms.

Part of me is just mad as hell. Just pissed. It all just seems so ridiculous. Like a cruel joke.

Another part of me is just trying to get on with it. Accept it and start thinking about how to get Olivia to eat more vegetables.

We still have to see a GI doctor in a couple of weeks and I have a lot of research to do. Apparently we are not supposed to change her diet until she has a biopsy, but since the treatment is the same regardless of whether or not the bowel has been damaged and we hope we have caught this early, I intend to question the need for the procedure.

It feels like I have all these pieces scattered all over - O's diabetes, this celiac panel, immune system issues that have come up for Marc and me - I don't know how to put everything together and keep us all healthy. And in the back of my mind, there is this: what about Sawyer?

I'm empty tonight.

This seems to be how Olivia remembers the party.

 

So that's good.

I just wanted her to be able to be a normal kid having a normal time at a birthday party. I wanted her to play and not be afraid. I wanted her to not have to worry about what she had eaten or how much insulin she had taken. I wanted to be able to stand around with the other parents as she ran and slid and jumped. But instead I made a rookie mistake and didn't give her enough snack. She ran and played until she started to go low and then she stopped and cried. She spent most of the rest of the party feeling clingy and afraid.

I know that she doesn't get to be a normal kid, but sometimes it just hits harder and hurts more.

I realize that I haven't really talked that much about Sawyer. All the standard baby stuff applies: he's cute and most of the time he smells good. But this little guy has a special sweetness that's all his own.

 

He's a cuddler and a full-body smiler. It starts with widening eyes and a big, gummy grin and then spreads to his tips and toes. Very charming.

He's nuts about Olivia, though I have been on the receiving end of several "Help me out here, Mommy, I fear she means me harm" looks when she was swooping in on him.

Sleep problems notwithstanding, when he opens his eyes to check and see if I am there, gives me a sleepy smile, and then falls back to sleep, I get pretty swoony.

 

 

Wait...what's this?

 

Changing clothes?

 

No, just adding an extra pair of socks.

 

We actually spent the better part of the day making snowflakes.

 

It was pretty awesome.

Can't type. Too busy with laundry. One of Marc's co-workers gave us two huge bags of clothes that his daughter had outgrown and I am under strict orders to have everything washed by the time Olivia wakes up in the morning. Sigh.

Don't get me wrong. The clothes are adorable and we are grateful to have them, but Hair and Wardrobe have become a bit of an issue lately. Olivia has long held firm opinions about what she wears and I am a big-time "pick your battles" kind of mom, so it has not been a problem. Perhaps you have seen the child with the headband AND the three pigtails AND the barrettes wearing her pajamas underneath a dress? Yeah, she's with me. As long as it is weather-appropriate, I am almost always cool with her picking out her clothes. What I am not cool with is helping her into one of these get-ups, only to have her decide an hour later that she was wrong...this is not today's get-up. Today's get-up was to consist of tights, socks, two skirts, something with a hood and that one barrette with the ladybug that she had that one time. I used to indulge this when it didn't involve the elaborate coifs, but I am over it now.

It was at one time a major battle to get a brush near O's head and I am grateful that we have moved beyond that. I am not very good with the ponytails and the pigtails and the braids, but I do enjoy spending the time with her each morning as I put her hair up. Once it's up, however, the hair can't just be up; it can't be disturbed and it can't be "shaky." "My ponytails are SHAKY!" We hear a lot of this - meaning that her ponytails aren't tight enough and that she needs to take everything out and have you start over again. And she has gotten pretty neurotic and tyrannical about it. I find myself constantly checking my pockets for hair accoutrements. Heaven forbid she want a pink rubberband when I only have a blue.

So. We had to have a little sit-down last week. We gently suggested that perhaps too much time was going into all of this prep each day and that there was going to be a limit to how many times a day she could change her clothes and how many times a day she could take her hair down and expect someone to put it back up. And it went over pretty well.

But then The Bags showed up. You should have seen her...there were so many stripes to be paired with dots. Several pieces had kitty cats all over them! And fruit...she loves fruit! And does that one have an ice cream cone on it? She was over the moon. Guess I know what we'll be doing tomorrow.

This tickles me.

Olivia and her father today on speaker phone...

O: Hi, Daddy. What are you doing?
M: Getting my oil changed. I'll be home soon.
O: Oh, ok. I love you.
M: I love you, too.
*click*
O: Who was that?

baby boy in the bath

 

O seems to be feeling much better, though we are still getting a lot of "Huh? What did you say?" She hasn't complained about any pain and has stopped pulling on the ear, so I think that the antibiotics are already working. Sawyer is a bit stuffy, but seems to be feeling better. I am ashamed at how late we kept him up tonight. We had friends over for dinner and I just couldn't get him to sleep.

It's eleven and the house is quiet. It was as close as we have come to a nice, relaxing day in a long time. It was a rough week all around and I am looking forward to next week being something different. If it isn't, I'll keep it to myself. I'll make up some stories or tell you more about that bok choy.

Madcap Dash to the Pediatrician, Take 2

OK, this time Mom, why don't you play it frantic?
Wait no, let's try stoic and you can just allude to frantic. Maybe something like in the way you are chewing your lip or the fact that your hair has obviously not been brushed.
OK, OK, and you can be sick too. Maybe you've lost your voice. Yeah, and so when you are driving down the road, we can have the baby screaming and the toddler crying about her ear and asking you questions over and over again, but she won't be able to hear your answers because you have no voice! And she just keeps asking and asking.
And then we'll cut to the waiting room and the baby's in the stroller and he's fallen asleep, but this wild little kid comes in and starts goofing off and you can start throwing beseeching looks at the father as he signs in, but he'll be all oblivious and then the kid will wake the baby up. Yeah.
So then they take you back to the room and the toddler is crying now and the baby wants to nurse and you are just waiting and waiting and then as soon as you start to nurse, the toddler's going to say, "Mommy, I have to potty."
So finally, we'll have the doctor come in and he'll check her out and say, "Yep, that's a raging ear infection."
OK, action!

Who's a big boy?

 

Dear Friend/Loved One/You:

I am sorry that I haven't called you back/returned your email/sent you a text. Get on Facebook and we can have a real relationship.

I would love to go to dinner/have coffee/attend your art opening. But I can't because I have kids/a cold/no clean clothes. Maybe some other time.

I am thinking of you though. Rest assured that next week when things are smoother, I will send you that thank you note/return that thing I borrowed/pay you back.

Your friend/ex-roommate/girl you knew from somewhere,

Paige

Things I could be blogging about today...

I've been sitting around trying to put together something other than complaints about my kids' sleep habits or links about the election. I haven't come up with much, so instead I'll just list the things that I am not going to blog about.

1. What a crappy job I feel that I have been doing lately as a parent
2. How badly Marc and I need a evening out
3. Which pieces are missing and need to be replaced from my breast pump
4. Christmas
5. Bok choy

Probably should have just posted some pictures, huh?

On Tuesday, Olivia and I spent the better part of the day at her doctor's office trying to find out why she couldn't pee. The morning started off rough with me edgy and impatient, just wanting the election over and in the bag, and then moved straight into Really, Really Bad with her having to be catheterized after the doctor was unable to get any urine to test for infection. By the time we got back to my mom's house - in what was my smartest move of the day, I had picked my mom up and taken her with us to the pediatrician's - Olivia was worn out and I was weepy. My step-father was - how shall I say? - less than excited or gracious about the turn the election was taking and very vocal about his feelings. It was not exactly what I had in mind for Election Night. By the time we got home and got the kids to sleep, I was done. I stayed up (of course), but it was more of a relieved "whew!" than an ecstatic "WOO HOO!!!"

Tonight, I found this link and as I watched, I felt tears come to my eyes and I got excited all over again. This video, of course, led me to many others similar in spirit and I spent about 15 minutes watching people in Seattle, California and Kenya celebrate a new beginning.



Olivia has been feeling much better and the pediatrician called on Thursday. She doesn't have an infection.

I'm shredded. Olivia dropped a spoon on a dish last night and I nearly screamed, it startled me so badly. I need a vacation/massage/drink/xanax drip.

Sawyer is not sleeping. Not.Sleeping. I am starting to get that edgy desperation that I used to feel about Olivia's inability to sleep when she was a baby. Looking at this baby's little red-rimmed eyes stresses me out.

Where Olivia did not sleep from the get-go, Sawyer started off pretty well and then got even better. A couple of weeks ago, he was pretty much sleeping through the night. He is still doing pretty well at night, waking around 1:00a and then again at 5:00a. But his evening and daytime routines are shot to hell. Yesterday and today both, I think he napped for less than an hour.

When he's not sleeping, he wants to be held. This is going over famously with his sister. I can't do anything that she wants me to do except watch movies or cartoons. Playing is hard, fixing her hair over and over again is out. Even fixing her snacks and meals is difficult to do while he screams from his seat.

Now, Olivia seemed to come ready-made this way, but I don't know. She was my first. Sawyer seems to have developed it. The common thread though is us. Have we done something to bring this on? I never was able to "fix" it with Olivia. And it is making me feel a little bit despondent to think that we have several more years of serious sleep issues ahead of us.

Olivia has started asking when she won't have to take insulin anymore. I tell her that people are working very hard for a cure and when they find that cure, she won't have to take her medicine. If she seems in the mood for more, I talk about the pump.

At any given time on any given day, I might call Olivia's name, only to be told, "I'm Hannah." Hannah is her alter-ego. Hannah is a mom or Hannah goes to school. Olivia asked me again today about not taking medicine and when I finished my answer, she said, "Well, I'm Hannah. And Hannah doesn't have to take insulin."

President-Elect Obama's new website.

November 4, 2008

I keep sitting down to try and write something about yesterday, but I am distracted by the remnants of dinner on the table, a pile of laundry on the couch and a baby who will.not.sleep. Real life goes on.

I am excited, though, and hopeful and it feels so good to be able to say that. It's been a long time coming.

Go vote!

Image by Callie Shell. More here.

holding my breath

inept

OK, technical question. I am trying to add a NaBloPoMo badge to my sidebar that will link back to the NaBloPoMo page. Directions are here, but I cannot make it work.

I saved the badge to my desktop, then uploaded it to Blogger. I got the address and pasted in it the code in my template. Nada.

Can anyone add anything to the directions?

And yes, Alish, this does count as a post!

 

The run-up to Halloween this year had a new intensity. Olivia has developed a different relationship to sweets now that she has had more exposure. Not a day goes by that there isn't some mention of cake, or perhaps some cake and ice cream, or maybe just the ice cream. Treats are still treats; we don't eat them daily, but she would like to. By now, she has been to enough birthday parties to know that she has never met a cupcake she didn't like.

 

Thankfully, in the end her excitement yesterday was more about the costumes and the decorations and the trick-or-treating. She had a great time and paid no attention to what was in her bucket until she got home. Marc and I did some quick editing and she ate a couple of Dum-Dums and saved some for today. She's been clutching one in her hand since about 8am, asking incessantly when it would be time to eat it.

 

And Sawyer? He doesn't care at all about sweets yet, but he was the yummiest peapod ever.