Angry Old Married Lady Makes All the Brides Cry and the Bouquets Wilt

ugh. romance. emiright? 

i am such a stick in the mud about grand frivolous romantic gestures. it's a huge turn-off to me in movies and shows that they focus so much on the insipid meet-cutes and then, even worse, the drama-filled dating that follows. they show so little of fun long-term relationships. new relationships are a necessary hassle to get to the good stuff later, right? (i know! i know! says the old married lady).

i've long been bitching about how few great long-term/married couples are portrayed in film and on TV. couples who deal with life's dramas together, but rarely make their own drama between them. not because they're boring....on the contrary, they have the MOST fun. they also don't make each other crazy. (i'm thinking like marshall and lily in HIMYM, jamie and paul buckman in 'mad about you,' maybe eric and tami taylor 'friday night lights'? who else? the conners.  i think all three marriages on 'modern family' are pretty good). 

to me, that's where all the meat of a relationship is. not when you're just getting to know each other, but when you've been best friends, lovers, business partners, and maybe co-parents for a bunch of years. those conversations are so much juicier! the jokes are so much funnier. the sex is so much more satisfying. the fights are so much more valuable and at the same time, less meaningful.

it's the same with friendships. i enjoy my BFFFFF's more than my new friends just because i'm less anxious around them. i KNOW they like me, i trust my heart with them. we have shared experiences we can reference without a bunch of work. same with any relationship. time should make it better. 

anyway. that's the rom-com i want to watch. 

i have marriage and weddings on the brain because my sister and her fella are getting married this summer and i get to be the matron of honor. they're a very cool couple who make each other more awesome versions of themselves and really have fun together, but are also very real and can get the heart of issues and know each other, get each other, and don't rely on drama. they are relaxed, real, and easy. 

so i'm down with their wedding, because they are awesome and very focused on their relationship. but in general, the drama and romantical impermanence of the WEDDING thing is bleh to me. it's the people who seem to be all about the wedding and none about the marriage who have me all in frets. i feel like the intent to celebrate a tried and true love by throwing a big party makes a lot of sense. but the perfect, surprising, dramatic and climactic expectations of typical wedding seasons are unecessarily stressful and sentimental. 

i am genuinely concerned for the integrity of my occular muscles with all the rolling they've been doing lately over the "i said yes!" or "she said yes!" wedding crap that's bobbing to the top of the internet.

it's driving me crazy. i just don't get it. was there a doubt that you would? did you have multiple offers? did he shock you with this question? had you not discussed it and negotiated your terms? you SAY YES to a boss offering you a job, not a partner merging businesses with yours. you know what i mean? it seems, at best, schlocky and at worse, like a lop-sided agreement. 

i do think that tv and movies have impact and influence in how we view normal human behavior and expectations of relationships. maybe if we saw more strong, fun, resilient couples and fewer first kisses or weddings as pivotal plot points (they should just be part of a couple's story! not the end goal! not the obstacle), maybe, i don't know. maybe i'd gag less. i don't want to be presumptive and say it'll effect the divorce rate or anything silly like that. but a strong, dynamic couple who faces the world together should be sold as exciting and sexy and not seen as beige infinite.

robb renewed our family zoo membership because he saw it and knew it needed to get done and figured he could check it off my list. he also refilled the humidifier tub without my asking. 

these are incredible romantic things that have me all in swoon of him right now because it shows he's thinking about me. not looking for credit or glory or anything, just trying to make my life a teeny bit easier and trying to accomplish shared goals. 

but i guess you can't put that in a movie because there's no orchestra or waterfall or crying. 

ok. end rant. 

Might As Well Eat Some (Veggie) Worms

one of my slew of new year's resolutions this year was to not complain. i'm part of a group online, it's a short-term committment, for a finite amount of time. but it came at a really...perfect time for me. 

because, wowza would i be whining right now otherwise. 

instead, i am trying to stick to the facts and keep perspective and stay critically aware of my blessings.

i am thankful for my committment not to whine.  

ok. so i have shingles. shingles is herpes zoster, which is like a wicked bitch cousin to varicella (chickenpox). they're all part of the same viral complex and once you have it in your system (i had a light case of chicken pox as a kid) in can lurke waiting to pounce when your immune system is weakened like when you're sick or stressed or on steroids or have an autoimmune issue. i do not know why i have it. i'm not any more stressed than usual and, thankfully, i am otherwise well. 

i am thankful for my chronic health. 

instead of like chicken pox where your whole body is affected and it itches like mad, with shingles, only individual nerve areas are affected and it hurts. it always only affects one side of the body in a limited area. i'm lucky it happens on my torso and not my face. 

i am thankful i don't have crusty eyeballs. 

so this is my third (3rd) time having them as a young adult person. once, 16 years ago when i was a freshman in college (WHAT. THAT CANNOT BE RIGHT. STOP IT. WHAT.) during the stress of final exams, i went into the campus clinic with pain at my bra line thinking it was crabs or lice or death bites or something (i didn't go directly into medicine) and was told it was shingles. they probably treated it, i don't really remember,  i do recall only kind of half believing them because 1-it was the campus health clinic and i figured they said EVERYTHING they saw was some sort of herpes, just to be safe, because pretty much everything they saw WAS herpes and 2) it's an old lady disease! surely that can't be right! it's probably just that i hadn't washed my twin bed sheet in 6 months and we were both growing mold! come on!.....but eventually it went away and i forgot all about it. 

but then AGAIN, when i was working as a social worker in a hospital in the south some 12 years ago (I AM SO OLD. OY MY BUNIONS. ARGH MY HEMORRHOIDS), i felt the same tingly burny feeling near my bra and i suspected it was shingles and so i flashed our pharmacist who (choked on his coffee and then) agreed with me and gave me some Valtrex. and it went away and i forgot all about it. 

so this weekend, i felt that same ping-y, sun burned, tingly ouch feeling down by my belt on one side and i got me some Valtrex just to be safe and then had it confirmed by my doctor. it hurts. but, thankfully, it's not contagious like chicken pox and i can keep it easily contained and not ruin anyone else's day with it (including anna, who is still breast feeding, so her face is dangerously close to the affected area....which is at my waist....that's right, hella looooooong boobs. i don't want to talk about it. i'm not complaining, remember? but anyway. she's fine. she is fully vaccinated against varicella).

i am thankful for vaccinations. my kids hopefully won't have to deal with shingles as an adult. 

and since paris hilton existed, i feel like carrying around Valtrex is a shameful secret. i want to take it out of the Valtrex bottle and put it into something less embarrassing like an anti-diarrheal medicine bottle or something. 

i am thankful i don't have diarrhea. 

oh, but i do also have pharyngitis (sore swollen throat/tonsils) and am on an antibiotic for that. my throat has been burning every time i swallow since last week. 

i am thankful for motrin. boy, am i thankful for motrin. it is my best friend and the wind beneath my wings. Dr. Motrin should have a statue erected to her in the park. 

also, it's still hovering around no degrees fahrenheit outside. 

i am thankful for my warm house, even the parts that get frost on the inside, at least overall, this is a very cozy environment in which we find ourselves. 

the rest of the family is getting better. they've been sick-ish, too. fevers on both kids late last week have resolved and only the snots remain. i am....thankful.....for that...

anna is also getting four teeth and not sleeping....

the end. i'm afraid if i say anything more it might sound like complaining. i wonder if it counts if i do it in pig latin.

i am thankful for you, my friends and readers, who allow me to (NOT WHINE)....explain everything that is happening and give me your cyber hugs. not too hard. ouch. 

 

The Cornerstone to Every Fully Balanced Diet: Red Dye

it has occurred to me that i feed my kids way healthier than i feed myself. they are tripping over fruits and vegetables, but i tend to grab for other less fresh, less healthy, quicker (more chocolatey) stuff myself and save all the fresh produce for them. i do ok, don't get me wrong. but not as great as them. 

so tonight, i was deliberately consuming an apple while preparing their food for daycare tomorrow. then i came upon henry's valentine's day stash of swedish fish candies on top of the fridge and stuffed 1 (five) in my mouth hole before anyone could catch me. 

so as i'm pouring the flax seed into the vitamix for their smoothie, the chewy red delicacy slips from between my lips into the blender. and i tried to 'fish' it out. i really did. but i absolutely could not find it. as if the coconut milk and plant based protein powder had dissolved it instantly. 

so i just turned the blender on high and am going to consider this smoothie fortified with swish. 

(this reminds me of this video i was recently shown from jimmy kimmel making white rich farmers' market type people look bad. i do not find it funny. i do not find it funny at all). http://youtu.be/75b2hTl2T2E

This Weekend Was a Suck Sandwich: Illness, Injury, AND Poison Control, Oh My

i'm a prisoner to sick children this weekend and it's put me in a foul mood. i think of the 60 hours i was home over the weekend, i was out of this claustrophic sick house for a total of 5, and 2.5 of those were spent with sick baby in the emergency room. 

all is fine. or all will be fine. but i am an underslept, worried and angry, milk machine. i'm guilty about neglecting henry while tending to anna and guilty about being absolutely over anna's constant crying. especially considering that last night i was praying for her to just PLEASE cry....

and this is after months of cough and snot more often than not.

it's normal for a baby to be sick some 13+ times in their first year of life. mostly little bugs, with varying degrees of annoyance/danger. but if you're really good at math, you'll see that that is > 1 illness/month. and some of these bugs last a few weeks. so, you might get 5 or 6 days of wellness a month. this is especiallly true in cold weather states where people are stuck inside all the time in the winter. so, pretty much, our kids are sick-esque from novemeber through march/april. ILLNESS.

neat.

as an added perk, and a really great item to catalogue in the Working Parent Guilt Log, daycare kids are more likely to catch all the ills. this makes sense, since they hang out all day in the lab that grows Swine-Hoof-Whooping-Influenza A through Z-Dystentery-Consumption-Pox and the monkeys in the lab all cough deliberately into each others open throats. hand washing is mandated by the scientists in the lab, but the monkeys find disgusting ways to apply germs to one another anyway. (but i will say it gets better over time. henry has gotten progressively fewer illnesses each year. surely by next year, his 5th year around the sun, his immune system is a fortress with a moat full of sharks with laser beams on their heads).

i'm not getting into the topic of vaccines today. i'm too tired. i'll post on it later, if anyone wants me to, but the data is pretty clear. read reliable sources and you'll draw the same conclusion that i have that the benefit greatly outweighs the risk. any preventable bugs that have vaccines should be prevented. it's all these other sumbitches that are getting me down. 

ANYway, so we had a long night. i'm pretty good about not overreacting to my kids' malladies, but this freaked me right out. anna had been coughing with a runny nose for a few days and actually had a decent fever friday afternoon, and she was pretty clingy and fussy all day saturday. we changed our plans for a date night to a friend's birthday party and i went alone. when i got home around 11pm, anna was up with robb and visibly shaking, despite not having much of a temp. in the light, we could see that her lips were blue and she was breathing really fast. her lungs sounded fine, but she was acting really weird for her- really quiet and still. i'm in medicine (adult, female medicine) and TRY to be reasonable, clinical, and rational when it comes to my kids, but i fail. (plus, i know about as much about pediatric medicine as i do about veterinary medicine- although, incidentally, i think the two are pretty much the same thing). 

but this combo of symptoms had me worried, so i decided to take her in. well, about half way to the ER (only 10 mins away, blessedly. i could never live anywhere more remote. my nerves couldn't take it). she was silent. not fussing, not thrashing, barely fighting me when i poked at her from the front seat. i started to think maybe i should have gotten an ambulance, and oh my God, oh, my God....

^big bummer selfie in the ER holding sad, sick anna

they got us right in, we were practically the only people there. they checked her ears, lungs, urine, and brought down the fever she had, which took about 2 hours. 2 hours of that glossy-eyed, barely moving, not crying worrisome version of anna. at one point the ER resident said something like, 'well, you know her best. you tell us.' which is basically a parent panty-dropper, and i think means medical education has caught on that parents like to feel included and not talked down to by their kids' docs. (success!!) then BAM she was back to laughing and shouting and trying to fling herself off the ER cart. but that was a long, scary 2 hours. they decided she had a bronchitis/early pneumonia, maybe early ear infection and gave us a steroid and an antibiotic (her lifetime first). 

^there she is. finally.

so as hip as i am to being in the hospital around sick people, i kind of really hate it when the sick people are mine. it's a totally different experience. 

so today, she's acting normal-ish. feisty and active, throwing her body into everything she does. including, as she came running/crashing across the room, sliding head-first into the bottom of the couch and giving herself a really nice black eye with a few scrapes. INJURY.  

^you should see the other guy

AND THEN. apparently she chewed threw the eye mask/ice pack thing i used on her swelling eye, because i found her in a corner, quietly enjoying a snack of the little blue balls that it (had) contained. so POISON CONTROL tells us not to worry, she'll just be able to keep beverages chilled for us under her armpits from now on. 

she fought sleep all day today and the only thing that kept her quiet was nursing, and it was all me because (well, because i'm the one who nurses) we were trying not to ruin henry's life with all this, so robb took him out a lot while i stayed in with anna. 

now it's their bedtime sunday night and since i know she'll be up most of the night and i got less than 5 hours of sleep last night, i'm going to sign off and make my way to bed, since i have to wake up and go to work at 5am. my sainted mother dropped everything to come rescue us so we could go to work. (again. #best)

fml. sometimes i just want to primal scream and weep. (and to everyone with older kids, THIS GETS BETTER, RIGHT!?!?)

thanks for listening to my whining. after i sleep i'm sure i'll feel peppier.

oy.

Two Kids: How Do You + Snow + Anna's 12 Month Changes

i'm sitting on the couch, drinking an espresso and blogging. we have a snow day today and we're all home because 

HENRY

^^sorry about that. i was typing and H came and started mashing on my keyboard, so i explained that the letters he pushes end up on the screen where i'm writing my sentences...and he said YOU HAVE TO FIND H FOR HENRY because, obviously, all i'm ever thinking or writing about is henry....not that far off from the truth... and so anyway, he successfully found all the letters to type his own name. and now it's preserved in this post forever because as much as i'm annoyed that i got interrupted in my moment of zen, i'm more totally proud that he typed his name. hashtag genius/doogie howser/harvard next year. you know?

anyway. so the snowday, because we got dumped on because something about a polar vortex and the axis of the world tipped and ice caps were strangled by those 6-pack pop plastic ring things or penguins marched? or...i'm fuzzy on the details of all things earth, but it's safe to say it snowed big and we're much stuck. 

so instead of stressing and scrambling to get projects long-overdue done, i'm taking a few minutes of quiet to catch up with my thoughts and journal the kid stuff. i'm giving more thought lately to the idea of taking a sabboth weekly, or at least carving out deliberate time to be alone and with God. too much chaos and noise all the time and i'm afraid i'll get stuck where i am and my evolution will stall. or that i'm missing stuff i could gain from the silence. 

i've been trying to put into words what it's like to have a second kid, since i have a friend or two about to add to their little triad families and who are trying to prepare themselves and reaching out for my (ahem) wisdom. words like 'bonkers,' 'insane,' and trying to spell the sound EEAHHHEAHAHEHHACHYMAMA come to mind, but that's not very helpful. 

i think the biggest plus so far (they're only 1 and 3, of course, so there's many more phases to come with their own pros and cons) is watching them sibling each other. it's amazing to see henry be so loving and generous. and it's amazeballs that anna will always have a playmate, and so she's learning to play really well, really early. they laugh together, which explodes my head. 

the hardest part is probably that i have less than zero time alone. robb and i both, of course, both have less than zero time alone, and very little time together just the 2 of us. that's a big difference between 1 and 2 kids, because they don't sleep at the same time, so you're kind of always on the hook for at least 1 little needer. 

but now that anna is a year and i'll be weaning from breast feeding anytime now. (anytime. really!? sarah, really? tomorrow? thursday? april? 2020?) and she's getting more independent, i have to believe the quiet moments to myself will come more often as the kids can fend for themselves mo' bettah'.

robb always says, "there will come a day when they can wake up, get themselves a sandwich, and turn the TV on to cartoons all while we sleep in." i think we're about 10 years out from them building their own breakfast sandwiches and not needing our approval/assistance choosing a show, but it's  a nice dream. 

while i'm here, let me get anna's 12 month post in: 

anna went in for her 12 month peds well visit this week. she is walking like a champ. very strong, very sure of herself. she is not saying any words in ASL or english, but she speaks monkey eloquently and with gusto. she was great at the visit. took her shots like the warrior she is. she is healthy and well. in fact, the blood tests that show if she has enough iron in her blood were really high/normal! i always worry that we're hippying our kids into anemia or some other nutritional defecit (despite all the good choices we make and what i know to be true about nutrition, i worry that living outside of mainstream chicken and cheese kids' diets might somehow be to their detriment...which is silly, of course. but i worry.  it's my thing) and we're not! her numbers are stellar. healthy babies and peace of mind. 

all her measurements are right on pace with a constant level of growth. BIG body, tiny head. 

weight: 23#10oz (90th %)

height: 30 1/4" (80th %)

head: 17 1/2" (35th%)

so all is well in our land. we are naturally moving into a less chaotic phase of parenthood. and we're making some deliberate choices to release our life from too many pressures, so we can find time to just be still. and be together. 

two kids is twice as many as one. in all the ways. that's the extent of my wisdom i can pass on. 

twice the fat cheeks to kiss, twice the delicate fingers to entwine your own with and marvel at their architecture. twice the number of people yelling at you. twice the number of people needing to get fed. often.  you're less panicked with round 2, because you didn't totally blerg up round 1. but you're also stretched thinner than you were with round 1, so your resources are wafer thin. 

and now i want wafers.

mazel tov. :)