My sweetheart is back (an update on the ear tubes)

Ear tubes are in! We were at the hospital at six am on Friday and surgery happened around 7:30. By 8:00, E was sipping apple juice in the recovery room, and we were home by 9:30. (Unfortunately, the apple juice came back up all over her and her car seat about five minutes into the ride--not pleasant for any of us!) she was a little groggy until 11 or so, but then she perked up, started smiling nonstop, and seemed back to her usual self.

Well, her usual self except that the shrieking, demanding, whiny side of her is gone. Since Friday, she's been whiny and demanding at what I'd consider a normal level. Every toddler has moments like those and I didn't expect her to transcend toddlerhood. But now, we can redirect. Now, the whining stops pretty quickly after we remind her to use her words. Before tubes, the whining turned almost immediately into shrieking and demands to be picked up and carried around.

It's early,  but I guess what I'm saying is that these tubes have done something to relieve E from pain. And without the low-grade constant pain, she's able to cope much better and recover from little challenges far more quickly than pre-tubes. We should have done this months ago. Seriously. I don't feel too bad that we waited--it's actual surgery with general anesthesia--and I think we did the best we could to follow current advice to watch and wait and see if she'd grow out of it or if summer would be better. I'm glad we finally got to this point, though, and I certainly hope that I was right and that the pain was low-grade, not excruciating. The doctor said he didn't think she was in constant pain either, but he agreed she probably was bothered by ear pain from time to time between abx rounds.

I'm recording all this in case someone else is on the fence about ear tubes. I googled ear tube experiences over and over last week so that I felt prepared and am grateful that others wrote such reassuring things about it, too. So this is our story. If it changes or if the experience sours in so e way, I'll write about it again. In fact, today is her first day back to school, and I'll be curious to see if the stress of the long day brings back the clinging and the yelling tonight. I'm betting no, but I'll keep you posted!

Ear infections and "quality of life"

We have an appointment on Friday to put tubes in E's ears, and I'm both excited and terrified. I've read up on them, I've talked to other moms (all of whom said: do it!), and my DH and I have debated it from all sides. I'm scared out of my mind about the anesthesia, but I know the risks are tiny. Still, when the doctor goes through the consent form and says there's a risk of stroke, heart problems, or even death, any parent is going to hesitate.

The reason we are finally doing it is that she's had eight infections (and thus eight rounds of antibiotics!) since November. I have a great pediatric practice in a crunchy area, by which I mean that they're very much a wait-and-watch conservative-about-antibiotics group of doctors. Unfortunately, E's infections never clear up and the fluid is always bulging out and causing her to be miserable. By extension, we are miserable. The most recent ear infection cycle started last week when she got a normal toddler virus, but because of the ear involvement, she became a clingy mess and would only sleep or be semi-peaceful in my arms. I wasn't able to sleep for three nights, and so I be ame a clingy mess.

The good news is that her hearing is fine. But this all leaves us medically in a gray area. Our ENT recommends the tubes more for "quality of life" than out of medical necessity. Ugh. Do we really take these minor risks with anesthesia and ear drum perforation because the infections make us all miserable every now and then.

It's also hard to sort out how much her personality will change for the better after this surgery. I'm hoping well see more of the sweet, or at least, the more even-tempered side of her. I haven't written much about how difficult she can be because I attribute it to this long string of infections. Much of the time, E is clingy, demanding, fussy, and she spends much of our time together shrieking at us. I occasionally cry with relief when she goes to bed at night because I am just worn out. Normal toddler behavior? Sure, I imagine some of it is. But I've often wondered if her fussiness is because she has low-grade pain in her ears. I know ear pain is bad. I've read online that some parents report similar behavior issues that ear tubes solve--they say they enjoyed their child more once the ear pain resolved.

I guess we'll find out after Friday. I don't mean to portray her in a negative light. She's one of the funniest, sweetest, and dearest people I've ever known. She's my wonderful baby girl and even with all the shrieking, I wouldn't trade her for anything in the world. I just hope that we're doing the right thing with this surgery and that maybe our collective quality of life improves.

being three

Being three must be hard. I try to imagine what's going on in my W's little brain sometimes, and I can see why Mommy's rules make no sense. Why do we have to go sit on the potty even if we don't have to pee? Why can't I yell loudly when I see an older person and it reminds me of Nana? What's wrong with taking E's blueberries if she's not eating them quickly enough? Why can't I go to the park even though you're in a hurry to go to work? A three year old's job is to test limits, go over boundaries, and watch Mommy's reaction to see what's acceptable and what's not. Since most of those limit-crossing experiences are NOT acceptable, it makes sense that W is melting down all the time and appears not to listen. Ever. I know his hearing is fine because in quiet moments, we'll marvel at the fact that we can hear the airplane flying several thousand feet above us (almost imperceptibly so). But at three, hearing Mommy's commands and listening to rules must just be impossible. Like Charles Schultz's parents: "wah wah wah wah, wah wah wah!"

Being the Mommy of a three year old is also hard. I sometimes want to throw my own temper tantrum or set down rules that are more than illogical. Today, for example, we took both kids to the grocery store. Yes, I realize that was a dumb move on our part. When W and E decided it was a good idea to run down the aisles screaming at the top of their lungs, I really just wanted to leave. Leave the cart, walk out the door, get in the car, come home, and put him in time out for several hours while I got a bottle of wine and calmed the fuck down. Obviously, I didn't do that. Hours-long time out is certainly counterproductive and it was only 8:30 a.m. And a Mommy temper tantrum wouldn't work either if I'm trying to model what a reasonable person is. So instead, we rushed through the end of the shopping trip, we came home, and since the storm had passed by the time we unloaded the grocery bags, we mostly let the aisle-screaming episode pass.

We are doing all the things other parents do--time-outs, taking away favorite toys, asking W to use words to express himself instead of randomly hitting his sister or yelling nonsense words at us at the top of his lungs. Baby E (1.5 years old) is not an instigator of these behaviors, but damn it if she's not right in the "imitate everything W does" stage. So if he screams, she screams. If he yells, she yells. If he cries, she often cries. Excellent. Our house is a whole lot of noise these days. As loud and rude as the punk clubs I used to frequent in my 20s, but without all the alcohol and tattoos.

I get that this is all normal three (and sometimes four) year old behavior. I know it's a phase and it will pass like all the other phases. It's kicking my ass, though, and some days it feels like there is not enough wine in the world to ease the stress of a three year old tantrum.

As I typed that last sentence, I heard the pitter patter of his little feet coming down the stairs. He'd just woken up from his afternoon nap. He greeted me with a huge smile and a long sweet hug. I'll keep this three year old after all (though I still want my wine, even though its' only 3:45 in the afternoon).

being a mother on the non-tenure track

I was headed to the library yesterday to do some academic research, and thought I might get a book for myself. So I searched the lib catalog on motherhood and academia because I really could use some comfort and maybe some tips on how to maintain this tricky balance of working and mommying. I found two books, both of which focus solely on the challenges of being a tenure-track mother. One of them explains that yes, there are mothers on the non-tenure track, but for the purposes of their book, they're excluding those women because the issues are different. Ugh.

My first thought: I should try to collect some experiences of full time (or part time--no need to be exclusionary here) mothers who are in academia and publish my own damn book (or edited collection of essays). We're here, too, you know, and we could use the same kind of support that the tenure track mommies need!

My second thought: why is it that non-tenure track experiences seem (especially to the tenured people) so different and alien from the tenured ones? Yes, tenure is a huge deal. I have several friends who've been through it and I see the immense stress and frustration that results from a process that demands tons of work and time and political acumen. But you know what? Being on the non-tenure track has plenty of stresses, too, but they're different ones. And at least in my department, the non-tenure track has grown exponentially (esp. the full time one) while the tenure-track has stagnated. That means that the non-tenure track stresses have essentially multiplied and the tenured ones have more or less stayed the same. Why no love?

I haven't had a chance to read those two books on (tenured) academia and motherhood, but I will. I'll see if there is anything useful to report back in case another non-tenured mommy wanders onto my blog.

I wonder if there are any writings in the medical community about different tracks and women's experiences? I ask because at my institution, it seems that the med and pharmacy schools have a much more accepting and progressive attitude toward teaching faculty. I worked on a committee with a teaching-track (non-tenure track) pharmacy professor who seemed to think that he was treated well and that his practicing pharmacy professor colleagues did not look down on him in any way. He was just seen as doing a different thing than they were doing. This is just not the case in my field, in the humanities. Teaching track (non-tenure track) professors get paid significantly less than tenure-track professors and their work is seen as far less valuable (and far more replaceable) than those on the tenure-track.  Am I mistaken about the medical academic community? Are there different castes, in a sense?

I don't mean to turn this post into a rant about tenure, which I do think is an outdated and unworkable system in many ways. I'm all for maintaining academic freedom (which is really what tenure protects, or should protect), but I would argue that there should simply be two tracks of tenured (or non-tenured) faculty at an institution like mine (R1, major urban university): teaching faculty and research faculty. We should have the same level of respect and the same pay and retirement.

And if that were the case, there would probably be many more books about academia and motherhood and they wouldn't feel so exclusionary.

Anyone want to write an essay about academia and motherhood that isn't exclusively for women on the tenure track? I'm halfway serious about approaching a publisher and seeing what we could do. I'd even include essays on tenured women or tenure-track women to be fully inclusive of the academic experience. I absolutely get that tenure-track motherhood is hard. But so is non-tenure track motherhood (and adjunct instructor motherhood, and grad student TA motherhood, and so on...).

I am (not) a runner

Or maybe I should say: I am a runner trapped in a non-runner's body.

It all started in my 20s when I discovered that I had early osteoarthritis in my knees. The right knee was worse than the left, but it was present in both knees. Ugh. I asked what I could do about it and the guy casually said, "eventually you'll need a knee replacement, but until then, just ice it occasionally and take nsaids when it gets too painful. Stay off it when it hurts." Seriously? I was probably 27 or 28 and this was a low blow. I had been pretty active and was about to test for my black belt in karate, so yes, I had been using my knees pretty heavily. But still. It sucked.

Even though I had this osteoarthritis, I figured out a way to work around it and for most of my 30s, I was an on and off again runner. I've written about it here from time to time. I was a slow runner (10, 11, sometimes 12 minute miles) and I practiced a form of running that was less interested in endurance than in just plain running. I did a walk-run sequence where I'd run for a minute or two and walk until my breath caught back up with me, then I'd run again for a minute or two.

And honestly, I loved it. I knew I wasn't "good" at running in the sense of being able to train for a race or in improving my times. I was happy when my mile speed was around 10 or 11. My body felt strong and I felt good about what my body could accomplish.

I am no longer a runner. At least, I'm not a runner right now. I know this because over the last few weeks, I had started to run again at the gym. Just two or three times a week. Slowly (not even a 13 minute mile--it was probably closer to 15 because I was just starting again after being very inconsistent with my gym walking for most of fall 2012. On monday of last week, I had what felt like a great workout. Just a little bit of running (probably 5-6 minutes max out of the entire 35 minutes), but at a nice speed. I felt invigorated.

A few hours after that workout, my left knee started to stiffen, and by the next morning, I could barely walk. I spent most of last week hobbling around instead of continuing to run a little bit here and there. In fact, I didn't get to the gym at all last week.

So for right now, for this next five or six months, I need to not run. I need to get my walking program back. Elliptical is fine (I can push myself there, I think, without aggravating the knees). Walking is fine, even relatively fast walking (like 4.0-4.5 on the treadmill). But I need to stay away from running. I am not a runner at the moment.

I did my workout this afternoon and felt a serious envy for the woman on the treadmill next to me. She was running, slowly, but she was doing it. I wanted to stop and tell her how lucky she is. Hopefully I'll get back there, back to my slow walk-run cycle. I just need to take it even slower than I've been taking it, which is so slow I've been bored out of my mind. The reason I had started running again was to keep away this boredom and to get back my love of working out. Walking just doesn't do it all that well, but until my body is used to the movements again, until this 30 minutes 3-4 times a week thing is fully part of my regular routine, and certainly until this left knee feels no twinge at all after a hard elliptical workout, I am benched from running.

It's amazing how closely connected one's intellectual sense of self is with one's body, and I sometimes marvel at this connection. I am my body but I'm not my body, you know? I see myself in the mirror when I'm out doing errands and sometimes, I don't recognize myself. Who is that middle aged woman with the beginnings of lines on her face? Who might be developing age spots from so much sun damage over the years? Other times, like this morning, I see my face and smile because it IS me. I know me and I'm there. Still. Always. I usually see myself as I was in my late 20s when I was a runner, a real one, and when my body was strong and faithful and capable. This new middle aged body is strange. This new post-two-babies body is strange. It's me, but it's not me, if that makes any sense. How do we even know who we ARE in mid-life, when so much has happened and we're on the precipice of so much change and mellowing (like a fine wine maybe? hopefully?)? And what does it mean to be a mother and have a body that reflects that equally strange identity, because sometimes I feel like a mother and then I'm shocked ("Am I really someone's mother? How the F did that happen?").

hooray for spring break!

l love spring break. It's one of the perks of an academic career. Today is the official first day of break and I have an entire week stretching out in front of me in which to relax.

NOT.

I have a list a mile long of little tasks to do, including taxes (we're going to do them ourselves after using a tax professional last year--it seemed to not save us any money and we think we'll go it alone again for a couple of years until things get complicated again). Other tasks on my list:
- organize our paperwork, which is currently shoved into drawers in no particular order (pathetic)
- set up wills (we don't have them, which is ridiculous and will be remedied asap!)
- set up dentist appt for W (three years old, never been to see a dentist yet!)
- set up routine mammogram for me (side note: little lumps are gone. phew!)
- get back into gym routine
- organize books, which are randomly shelved in our den and in painfully ugly order
- go through kids' clothes and start figuring out spring wardrobes (what do I have that is hand-me-down? What do I need to fill in on my own?)
- grade papers from last week
- develop at least one new recipe that we can use in our regular dinner routine
- catch up on email correspondence with friends
- write a thank you note to outgoing day care director who left a few weeks ago (need to express how grateful I am that she was so trustworthy and reliable over the last three years)
- return earrings that my husband bought for me for Valentine's Day (cute, but not quite my style and too expensive to keep and never wear)
- visit friend who had new baby two weeks ago to bring food, do her dishes, clean her bathrooms,do whatever other tasks she'll let me do, and most importantly, meet her long-awaited last-chance IVF baby girl (I'm over the moon for her!).

So see? Spring break will soon be over and I'll hopefully have gotten some stuff done. I'm also hoping to do some blogging, too! I have lots of drafts going, but I have to finish and finally hit "post." 

In which I ramble about the state of things in my little world

It's the beginning of a new semester and I am busy, busy, busy. In the administrative part of my job, I hire all the part time instructors for my department, I cancel classes that haven't filled and add news ones that students need, I make sure all classrooms are assigned properly, I help with photocopying of syllabi, I handle last-minute crises, of which there are many, and just generally, I try to make sure that the new semester starts without a hitch. I see all the messiness behind the scenes so that other people (instructors, students, parents) only see a smoothly functioning university department. This work-related business is why I haven't posted recently.

I had a full-on mommy fail this week. E has an ear infection. Again. We finished a round of amox. a couple of weeks ago and it seems that it didn't fully kick the infection out on the right side. So we're now in the midst of a round of augmen.tin (sp?) to try to finish the job that amox. couldn't. The failure was that I didn't read the label properly and left this new antibiotic round out on the counter for the first few days. It turned brown, I called the pharmacist, and what do you know? It needed to be refrigerated. Unlike amox., this one is sensitive to temperature and goes bad quickly. Poor baby E took a couple of days of useless icky liquid that wasn't helping her ear at all.

The kicker is that my insurance company won't pay for the new 10-day round of aug. that we started yesterday because the old one wasn't finished yet, which meant that I had to shell out $75 for the new round. I swear: I always read bottles. I'm compulsive. I even read the bottle I left out on the counter, but the pharmacy had printed "Always refrigerate" on a little flap that was folded under, and I just didn't see it there.

This may sound like a funny anecdote, but when I walked out of Wal.greens, I had tears in my eyes because it just felt so, I don't know, stupid. How could I have been so stupid? What was I thinking? Now we're going to be $75 short, and we're already on a tight budget. I even felt a little bit shamed by the pharmacy staff--the same staff that could have told me when I picked up the first bottle to remember to refrigerate. They gave me sad eyes when I explained the situation and asked if there was anything we could do about the $75 charge. They said, more or less, that it was my mistake and that I should always read the literature that comes with prescriptions. The good news is that the brown icky liquid didn't hurt E at all. It just tasted gross and let her ear infection continue to fester.

Wah.

In other news, I have no update about the little pellet lumps on my chest (mentioned in my previous post). They're still there, but they're smaller and less pronounced than they were when I first noticed them. I had trouble finding them at all yesterday, and I suddenly pictured going in to my Dr. and saying that I was concerned about these little lumps on my chest that I can't find to even show her. She'd think I lost my mind. So I'm waiting.  I'll give it the weekend and if I can find them again, I'll call for an appointment. Now that I've lived with them for a month or so, I think they're something skin-related and not something nefarious, but yes--I'll go in and show her my almost-invisible lumps, just in case. She probably won't think I've lost it, will she? Between the heart palpitations a few months ago (that have since disappeared and never happened when I was in the office, of course) and these invisible lumps that I even have trouble finding, I'm sure she'll think I'm a sane person. Seriously, I will not be surprised if she sends me for therapy for anxiety. And I'm actually feeling pretty good otherwise--not much free-floating anxiety at all.

Wah again.

Lastly, just to bum you out completely, there are some other, more serious, health issues going on with my mother. She recently had a chest xray because she's had pneumonia for the last two months and nothing seems to cure the shortness of breath and the general breathing issues. She's had several rounds of steroids and antibiotics, and usually, these would solve the problem. They saw a granuloma on the xray, which I think is not a big deal on its own in a healthy person (according to Dr. Google). But my mother has sarc.oidosis, an autoimmune disease in which her lungs have developed scar tissue. It's been in remission for many years and the scarring has not progressed since she was in her 30s--she's now 70 years old. Maybe it's out of remission? Or maybe something scarier is going on, like pulmonary fibrosis (again, thanks Dr. Google for scaring the shit out of me with possibilities). Or maybe she's just getting older and the existing scarring (including this granuloma) is just catching up with her?

She was a little freaked because when she left the radiologist said she'd get results in 48 hours, but the doctor called her two hours later and told her to get a CT scan within the next week. I told her if he was really worried, he'd have said to get it asap. And maybe he just looked at the xray sooner than usual because there weren't that many patients to see?

Normally, I don't worry about my mother. In fact, I have a post in my drafts folder in which I complain that I never get to see her because she works 60+ hours a week. That's a true story: my 70 year old mother works two jobs, one 40 hour a week office job and another in which she puts in at least 20, but often more like 30-35 hours, a week, too. How could someone so lively and busy be getting seriously ill? She's not working so much so that she has lots of money. She works all those hours because she LOVES what she does. She's a hospice chaplain in the first case and a church rector in the other. Both are her dream jobs and she has no interest in giving either of them up.

(Not to belabor the point about her vim and vigor, but she also has a brown belt in karate and goes to practice at the dojo twice a week...I'm lucky if I can get to the gym three times a week and I only work 40 hours a week!)

When we spoke about the xray a few days ago, she joked that she didn't want to be on oxygen when she came to E.'s fifth grade recital (which would be in approximately 9 years), and I laughed so that I didn't think about the other possibility, which is that she won't be here in 9 years. I'm sure she was thinking the same and the only possibility was to joke to keep from crying.

Wah. Wah. Wah.

Sorry to bum you all out. I realize this isn't light reading. But it's all real and it helps to write it out, hopefully to leave it here where I can't obsess about it too much. I'll keep you updated on my Mom. And on my invisible lumps that will make my Dr. think I need mental help. And on E's ear infection, which I'm not really worried about at all and am sure that the *refrigerated* augm.entin will finally cure. The semester? Well that part will be fine. I've done my job well there. Thank goodness for feeling competent at work! It's the rest of life that is unpredictable.

2013: a year to embrace life

Happy new year! I have good feelings about 2013. This is hokey, I know, but I feel like odd years are often better for me than even ones. Many happy things have happened in odd years: I met my husband in 2005, W was born in 2009, E was born in 2011, I started college (happy years, for the most part) in 1987 and graduated in 1991. I finished grad school in 2001. I was even born in an odd year (1969). I suppose I could just as easily trace some happy events in those even years--this year had many high points!--but I'm sticking with my theory. Go 2013!

This optimism leads me to my next item, unfortunately, and it's something I'm writing about because I have to get it out of my head, I can't really talk about it in real life, and it's on my mind every minute of every day.

About two weeks ago, I found two little pellet-like lumps on my chest near my underarm. Not exactly on breast tissue, but you know--lumps near a breast that aren't nipples are scary business. I went to the doctor on Monday (yes, on New Year's Eve, mostly because I was starting to lose sleep) and she was optimistic that it was nothing. She said it seemed dermatological and told me to put a prescription hydro.cortisone cream on twice a day. Told me to come back in two weeks if they're still there.

They don't hurt, they're not fluid-filled, and they're not causing an orange-peel like appearance on my skin. All of this is probably good. The doctor is great--she really got me. I was describing how nervous I was and how I had blood work several weeks earlier for a GI visit that showed a few markers for inflammation (very minor elevations in sediment rate and something else...can't remember what...but they both were barely out of range) and she said, "Oh, you're worried about inflammatory breast cancer?" I said, "absolutely--that's all I can think about." She said, "Stop worrying. It doesn't look like that to me at all." I sort of wish she had sent me for an ultrasound or a biopsy, but she said she was so unconcerned about these little lumps that such things seemed like overkill. If I come back in two weeks, we'll talk about ultrasound. She did a full breast exam while I was there, too, and said everything else feels okay.

I'm scheduled for a mammogram in February and she also said there was no need to move it up. I finished breastfeeding in August, remember, and she thinks 6 months after bfing is the earliest they'll see me anyway, so not to worry. Her theory is that the area has gotten irritated and a little infection has arisen, but that it will go away. She also reminded me that after pregnancy and bfing, the body takes a while to go back to "normal," so changes like these aren't out of the ordinary.

It sucks that my mind immediately went to cancer. I admit that I say a prayer every night that go something like this: I pray that W and E are safe, sound, happy, and live long lives, like into their 90s at least. I also pray that they far outlive me and that I, too, have a long life, going somewhere into my 90s as well. I know this prayer means nothing. I know that G*d or whomever I'm praying to isn't looking out for little old me. To believe that G*d cares about me and my day to day life would mean that this same G*d allows other people to suffer, even though they send up similar prayers, and I just can't stomach that idea. So I send this prayer up knowing that it serves mostly to make me feel better. I know that I can't control when I die or how safe my children are.

We all know that, now more than ever.

I'm sorry to be so serious. I'd like to be writing a fun new years resolution-filled post about how I'm going to spend 2013 having fun and getting in shape and being more organized around the house. Instead, here's what I resolve: I resolve to enjoy 2013, whatever it brings. I resolve to embrace it fully, with no reservations. I resolve to really live. To pay attention to the world around me and to really be here. Full-hearted and real. I resolve to jump in.

no words. but hopefully, there will be action.

I find myself out of words. What has happened in CT is unimaginable. Horrific. Devastating. 

I'm not going to repeat others' wonderful lists of things that might help the Newtown community. You've seen them and are probably doing something, too. For my part, I've called the President, I've signed some petitions, I'm going to send a donation to the Newtown Youth and Family Services, and I'm hugging the kids extra close.

I also just read Nicholas Kristof's excellent op-ed in the NYT in which he argues that guns are a public health crisis, not an issue of freedom or privacy. He asks why we don't regulate guns as strictly as we regulate cars, and he's right. So many Americans die from gun violence--we cannot allow our otherwise responsible and democratic society to continue this madness. Let's step up, together, and get the courage to stand up and demand change.

Three. Three!

Yesterday, my baby boy W turned three. He got one big gift, a little purple sparkly bike (a hand-me-down from a friends' 6 year old girl). We're trying hard to raise him so that gendered gifts aren't an issue one way or the other; i.e. it's okay to like trucks and dolls and it's silly to think that boys and girls can't share interests.

He LOVES the bike. My favorite moment yesterday happened after all the family members had gone home from our little party, after all the food was put away and the cake was eaten, and while M and I were just talking quietly while W was quietly admiring his bike. W interrupted to us to ask, "Mommy? How does it work?" and I turned to see that he had, in fact, been playing with the bike chain and trying to puzzle out how the chain related to the wheels. His hands were completely covered in black grease. We quickly ran over with wipes to make sure that the grease didn't spread all over our carpet (!). But I was mostly so proud of him. He was not only enjoying his gift, he was being curious about it. He was really interested in how it all worked together. I picked up the back of the bike and moved the pedals to demonstrate how the pedals move the chain and how the chain moves the back wheel to move the bike forward. I know he didn't understand it. He's only three. But the look on his face was absolutely priceless. I would be thrilled to raise a child who is curious about the world around him.

I am so honored to be a mother, and so grateful to have been given the chance to get to live with and learn from this sweet little boy.

the long dark night of potty training

Indeed, the diaper rash is yeast! My ped has an interesting protocol. Lotri.min, of course, but then he also wants us to abstain from wipes and to use kleenex and baby oil at diaper changes. For three weeks! The goal is to keep her as dry as possible. He warned that even after symptoms are gone, the yeast may flare back up unless we go about three weeks being very careful the entire time to keep her dry.

What's interesting is how little I miss those wipes. The baby oil and kleenex thing sounds like it wouldn't work, but in fact, she's much cleaner than with the wipes, in some ways.

In other news, we've entered what a friend of mine calls the long dark night of potty training. W is wearing underwear over his diapers at all times (he LOVES his Thomas the Train undies!) and is sitting on the potty regularly. It's only pee so far, but I'll take it. At school, he's even better. No diapers at all--just underwear, though accidents have happened quite a few times, so I bought a bunch of cheap targ.et pants to keep around in case he doesn't make it to the potty on time.

This is where I am at the moment: knee deep in diaper rashes and potty training sticker charts. Other things are happening, of course. W turns three in a few days (wha?) and I'm in grading hell because it's the end of the semester. I'm also finally feeling healthy--I've had a string of headachy episodes and minor colds that are all but gone. It's a common end of semester thing for me. I almost always get sick or just physically unwell (you know, that feeling that something is off, even if you're not demonstrably sick). But it's clearing out. I'm feeling more like myself.

I also think that the last of the breastfeeding hormones have settled down. I find that the end of breastfeeding throws me for a real loop, and maybe that's what's been going on, too. I have no science about what kind of havoc weaning plays on a woman's body, but I bet it would be interesting. I suspect the answer would be that every woman is different and that the body adjusts in its own time, right?

Anyway, knee deep. I'll update on how it continues to go. I'm really posting this because I've been reading lots of other parents' protocols on potty training, and I'm always interested to see how it played out. Maybe someone will find my potty training attempts useful.

One last thought about potty training. My aim, in all of this, is to go at W's pace rather than my own. W is one of the last kids in his class to be working on potty training, and some of the kids younger than him (2.5-3) are already day potty trained. I just haven't pushed it because I wanted W to feel like it was his success, not mine. I think this is the right approach, though I'll have to reassess when we get farther along. My evidence so far is just that he's so freakin' proud of himself when he does pee on the potty or get stickers from his teacher for successfully telling her when he needs to go. That's what's telling me that we're on the right track.

three year olds and fear; diaper rash from hell (a combo post!)

1. This weekend, we went to a three year old's birthday party at one of those places that has big inflatable slides and bouncy houses and other dangerous looking structures. It was terrifying on many levels, even for me and my husband. The noise! The bright colors! The screeching of three year old boys going down crazy inflatable slides!

W knew most of the kids because they're his three year old friends from school. But this inflatable paradise? Not his cup of tea. In fact, W had a full on panic attack (not really, but you know what I mean) when I was lightly encouraging him to climb to the top of one of the smallest slides. I was planning to go down with him and show him that they're meant to be fun, not scary. But he had none of it. He was literally clawing my shirt and screaming, so I went back down the stairs hugging him in my arms and told him that if he didn't want to go, it was fine with me. One of the other parents said, "you should have just made him go down with you--he'd have loved it." I said no way. I wasn't going to betray my son's trust, even on a small inflatable bouncy slide.

Maybe he would have loved it. Who knows. But I was not willing to take that chance. He's just a cautious kid. He watches to see how things go before joining in, and he's not the kind of kid who can be pushed into anything. I respect that about.

2. In other news, baby E seems to have a bacterial rash in her diaper area (though it's really spread out on her upper thighs and is less focused on the usual places). I'm treating it with bactro.ban, prescribed for this same thing last time by my ped. I'm going to call her again and make sure I shouldn't be doing anything different. No fever or anything, but she's really uncomfortable. Lots of little red dots and now, small blisters. I'm also using triple paste.

Does anyone have advice about this kind of diaper rash? My ped called it impetigo last time and it just seems to be back. I've talked to her daycare teacher and she says she's doing all the right things (changing her often, making sure she's really dry before putting on a new diaper, putting on this bactro.ban and triple paste). I even get the rash under control just in the evening and morning, but by late afternoon, her entire diaper area is bright red and she's clearly bothered.

Could this bacteria be something that resides at daycare and she's getting it back on her during the day? I do notice that over the weekend, I'm able to get it very much under control using my bactro.ban and triple paste protocol, but by Monday, it's back full force.

Any advice? Anyone see something like this? Does she need antibiotics (oral)? I know you're not my medical professionals, but the hive mind of blog writers is often better than my random googling powers (which have terrified me about mrsa and I'm having visions of these little blisters becoming antibiotic-resistant boils...). Talk me off the ledge?

What we all share

So my participation in NaBloPoMo crashed and burned. But I learned a really valuable lesson in sticking with it as long as I did. The lesson: it's not that hard to write more frequently and I enjoyed doing so. I hope to keep up more frequent posts from now on--it's rewarding to push myself to think and write and interact. I actually like blog writing, and I'm not sure I did before NaBloPoMo.

I went missing because life intervened and I had no time or words to write.

I had a friend--I'll call her M--who was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2007. She was a fighter. I didn't know her well before the diagnosis because we were just colleagues. I knew her to be a great teacher, a sweet coworker, and a hard worker. After the diagnosis, we became friends. She was encouraging of my starting a family late in life. She told me wonderful stories of her own path through motherhood. I didn't see her often, but I stopped by her house for tea several times and I was part of her email list, the list of friends to whom she sent updates on her fight against cancer and her attempts to rejoin the working world. For six years she fought. At one point, her doctors said that she was most likely cured, that the cancer was gone for good, and that they didn't expect to see her back. A few weeks later her left leg started hurting and it was cancer. Back. Spreading.

I saw her at a party about two months ago and she looked great. She had just had a new set of scans done and they looked really good. No detectable cancer. She talked to me about maybe coming back to work. But things went very quickly downhill and a new set of scans found that her liver was shot through with cancer. She went on hospice about two weeks ago and within a few days, she was gone.

She died on the Monday before Thanksgiving. Her funeral was on Tuesday. It was incredibly moving. I'm not Catho.lic but I found the full mass and even the open casket to be profound. It brought home the point that M was no longer with us. Her body was here, but SHE was gone. And she left us with so much.

I wish I had known her better. I wish she had been able to come back to work on a part time basis. I wish I could see her smile. Her daughter spoke at the funeral and described her perfectly. I sobbed quietly as I listened. For her and for me and for everyone who will have to face the loss of a loved one. Because we all will. We will all bury someone we love, if we haven't already.

I never spoke with her about it, but her daughter said that she had made peace with death and that she believed she was going to serve G*d in a new capacity. I hope that's true. I hope G*d exists and that he welcomed her with open arms. I have no idea what I really believe--my beliefs are all sketchy and agnostic in nature. But really--if there are people who deserve G*d and life after death, M is among them.

In other sad news, another close friend lost his father on Thanksgiving evening. He was at our house when he got the news because he and his partner had come down from NYC to celebrate the holiday with us and M's family (we hosted a big buffet dinner for 13). His father had been quite sick, had just had bypass surgery and was not recovering from it well. But getting the call was a shock nonetheless. One minute we were sitting around the living room having wine and laughing and then in the next, we were comforting a grieving friend who was coming to terms with the sudden loss of his father.

We will all be there. Grief is something all humans share. We owe it to each other to be good at comforting our loved ones in their time of need. I know we're not. I don't feel particularly good at it, though I'm not shy about trying. I'd rather be awkward and present than hiding from grief and pain. I think it's vital to be a witness to people in their time of need and to let them know you're there for them, whatever they need.

I think we need classes. Required. Perhaps at the high school level. To process the fact that we will all die and that we will need to comfort others. Let's see: math at 8:00, physics at 9:00, english at 10:00, and death and dying at 11:00. Sound reasonable?

I'll return to lightness again soon, I'm sure. It's part of the cycle of life: deep sadness, awkwardness, silliness. Laughter is such a normal, real reaction to death. I remember a close friend who told me that right after her father died, she and her sisters started laughing. Giggling. They couldn't stop it and it wasn't disrespectful. It was relief after a long struggle with cancer.

If you can say a brief prayer of thanks for the life of M, if you're a praying sort, please do. She was a lovely woman and will be missed.

crawling out from under a rock

Baby E is finally better. The double ear infection is on its way out. But in its wake, I've gotten walloped by a migraine, or something like a migraine. It's a massive headache that is barely eased by a big dose of ibuprofen, and I mostly want to lie in bed and feel sorry for myself. Today is better then yesterday so I can only hope that tomorrow will see some relief.

And now I'm going to crawl back under my rock, or in my bed (supposed to be working from home, which I'm interpreting as occasional email answering and doing not much else). Hope all is well with everyone else.

Oh, and great news about Pam and Blood.signs. I am relieved she's continuing on. Such great writing.

More tomorrow or whenever my brain isn't throbbing.

ghosts

There is a great prompt for Friday's NaBloPoMo and I'm going to jump ahead and answer it. Here's the prompt: Would you buy your dream house if the price was right BUT you also were told it was inhabited by ghosts.

Answer: No. I'd pass.

I'm not a big believer in the supernatural, mostly because the prospect of it is too frightening to imagine. Even so, I wouldn't take the chance, and if my subconscious got too wrapped up in considering ghosts in my new fancy house, I'm sure I'd see things that were not there and hear voices that were mostly in my own mind. Just for my own sanity, I'd have to pass on the dream house.

I do have at least one possibly supernatural experience to share, however, even though it might make me seem crazypants. I don't think I've shared it here before. Many years ago, a family friend (Mr. G) died of a brain tumor. I had known this man since I was in third grade and he died when I was in my late 20s. I hadn't seen him much since high school, but he and my mother were very close, so I had heard a lot about his fight against the tumor over the past few years. When my mother called to say that he had died, I made plans to come home for the funeral and felt quite sad, in large part because I knew he was leaving behind two grown kids, a wife, and his best friend, my mother, all of whom loved him dearly. I loved him, too, even though I didn't really know him as an adult. He was the kind of man I knew I'd someday want to marry: kind, curious, smart, open-hearted.

The night after his death, I woke up suddenly in the middle of the night to find Mr. G sitting on the end of my bed. It felt clear as day and I did not feel at all like I was dreaming. I can even remember the sensation of the foot of my bed being pressed down by his weight, and my blanket tugged a bit where he sat on it. When I awoke, he was in the middle of a sentence, so I'm not sure how long he'd been there. He never moved around the room or addressed me directly. All he did while he visited was talk. It was like he had to get some things off his chest and I was supposed to just listen. I remember nothing of what he said. Mostly, I was annoyed by this visit. I had been happily asleep and wanted desperately to get back to it. I asked him to leave a few times, but he ignored me and kept rambling on. He wasn't upset or angry or sad. He never even looked my way, in fact, but stared off in space or at the floor while he talked. I remember drifting off to sleep a few times, and each time when I awoke and saw him still chatting away, I felt annoyed and hoped to fall back asleep again soon. At some point when I woke up again from one of these little naps, he was gone and it was almost morning. He had been there for hours.

I've had many dreams in my life, some of which felt quite real at the time. But I've never had another situation quite like this one. I don't know how to explain it, but I would swear to you that he was there. He sat on my bed and talked. And then he went away. I've never been visited by him again and have no feeling that his ghost exists or is haunting me or anyone else.

I called my mother the next morning and when I told her what happened and how it felt, she burst into tears. She said she had a strong feeling that it wasn't a dream and it was him. Earlier that night, in fact, she felt like he came to her but left quickly before they had a chance to talk. Her theory was that perhaps he felt like he could talk to me, and that because we weren't close, I was a safe person to process some things with before heading away for wherever (or whatever) the next world might be.

If someone else told me this story, I'd be certain it was just a vivid dream brought on by the intensity of his death and my feelings about it. But I was there. I don't know how to make sense of it. I don't actually believe in ghosts, I swear. I just believe that Mr. G visited me before he was fully dead and after his body had expired.

Other ghosts? They're almost certainly fictional. But I'm not buying a dream house with ghosts in it, just in case.

Derailed and A Note For Pam (two posts in one)

1. I got derailed yesterday and didn't post because E spiked a sudden fever of 104.7 due to a double ear infection. Came out of nowhere. One day, she had a normal runny nose (it had been hanging around for a couple of days--I thought it was on its way out) and then boom. Fever. Pediatrician visit. Amoxici.llin. Feverish baby. Sleepless night.

So yeah. Posting wasn't at the top of my things to do list. Fevers are so strange. I get that they're a productive phenomenon. It's the way the body is actively fighting infection. Yet a high fever in a little child is so scary. I've been alternating tylen.ol and ibu.profen and it's coming down. I think after another dose or two of the antibiotic she'll be on the mend for real.

2. On another note, I'm very sad that one of my favorite bloggers, Pam from Blood.signs, is closing shop, even though I completely understand why it's happening and I respect her need to do what feels right. Unfortunately, her blog went private before I had a chance to post a comment saying thank you, and I don't know her personally to have contact info to say it via email.  I can't imagine that she reads my blog because I was not a regular enough commenter to be on the radar. And I'm not a very consistent writer, so even if she knew who I was, I'm not sure she'd come by a second time to read my sporadic posts. On the off-chance that she stops by here for some reason, I want to say this (and if you know her and can pass it along somehow, I'd be grateful!):

Pam, you were one of the first bloggers I read on a consistent basis and you are an amazing writer. Our paths have been quite different in some ways (not the same kind of IF journey, not living in the same part of the country, not the same family configuration, and so on), but in other ways, your story has often felt so similar to my story, specifically in terms of the relationship between you and your mother. It's been a wonderful thing to read your words these last four-plus years and I am grateful for all that I've learned as a result of your writing. You've allowed me to think about my own mother, my own childhood, in new ways. Such a major contribution to my life, and certainly, to the lives of others.

And more than that, I've truly enjoyed your writing. It's often beautiful. It's sometimes hard (both in the sense of being difficult and in being rough edged). And most importantly, reading your work has always been worthwhile. Thank you for challenging us readers to keep up. I know you'll continue writing, and if you do so in any public way, please do let me know (contact via rachael623 at gmail dot com). I would be happy to continue reading whatever you have to say in whatever genre you choose to say it.

So thank you. Blood.signs was well loved by this reader, and I hope to have the opportunity to read your words again.

learning curve

My husband and I were talking today about how we've probably learned more in the last three years than we had in our entire lives (except for the amazing first year of life, when we all probably learn more than the rest of the years combined). In three years, we've bought a house and moved in with each other (we lived separately until then). We've had two children and have figured out how to do basic child care (neither of us had ever spent time with a baby until W arrived....I had only changed one or two diapers before 2009, in fact). We've survived a few health crises, including W's week-long stay at the children's hospital when he wasn't breathing on his own properly. We've dealt with a serious decline in my father's health and well-being (a story for another time, but it's taxing, to say the least).

There's a lot left on our plate, of course. We're still learning every day. And we are a bit worse for the wear. But we're still here. We're still attempting to make it all work. We have learned more these last three years that I could have ever anticipated.

generosity

Not much time to write, but thought I'd share a quick experience before heading off to bed (and to make sure I keep up with this month-long posting extravaganza).

We had a date tonight (!) and saw a concert. I won't tell you the musician, but it wouldn't matter anyway because he's not a popular guy. He's a musician's musician, if you know what I mean. Serious guitar players would have heard of him. My husband is the one who knew him, and so that's why we got the tickets. I had no expectations. I've heard about him through my husband and other musician friends, but couldn't recognize his voice or one of his songs if I was being paid a million dollars to do so. I don't even know how to describe the style: maybe blues, maybe a bit of bluegrass, some rock and roll. It was genre-less. In fact, even after the concert tonight, I'm not sure I know one of his songs, and that's a little odd, right?

Turns out, the concert was really great. Sure, the music was good. But what really blew me away was how generous this guy was. He had a backing band of guys with him (two guitarists, one violinist, a drummer, a trumpet player, a saxophonist, and a mandolin player), and essentially, they just threw around melodies. The main guy played the starring role, in a sense, but mostly because he made sure that the other guys all got the spotlight, and when he liked what one of them was doing, he'd keep the spotlight there, he'd yell "play it again," and the younger musician would have his moment in the sun.

As I watched this go on, I realized that this is really what good teaching is. Yes, it involves sharing one's rich knowledge of a subject, and it means controlling the classroom environment. But mostly, it involves being generous and allowing students to be in the spotlight. It means calling out their strengths, forcing them to push themselves beyond where they think they're good, and then stepping aside when they get there.

a mundane Friday

Yo, NaBloPoMo is hard! I don't think I'm interesting enough to post every day. I'll keep going, but seriously...I'm not cut out for this kind of blogging intensity.

I went to the dermatologist today for my yearly checkup. I was blessed (hah) with fair skin and so I have to have someone look over my entire body to make sure that there are no spots or things changing that need attention. I come from a long line of pale people, several of whom have had spots and freckles removed over the years (including both of my parents). This year was the same as usual: nothing to worry about, see you next year.

It was so routine that my palpable relief is a surprise. I've mentioned before that I don't always have great interactions with doctors. I don't know why. I believe in modern medicine, so I'm not the kind of patient that comes in with crazy remedies to suggest or self-diagnoses to push. I follow directions well. I'm relatively smart, so I understand most of what a doctor or nurse is saying (and I'm actually interested in what they're saying--I geek out at how the body works and how medicine addresses problems). Yet I still experience a bit of white-coat syndrome before and sometimes after a doctor visit. It's like I'm clenching internally, and once the visit is over, I finally relax and can breathe again. I don't even realize I'm doing it, in fact. I hadn't really thought about the dermatologist visit until I got there, and yet I clearly had been more freaked than even I realized. Interesting.

Other than the derm visit, I did very little today. I "work" from home on Fridays, which means that I should handle some business via computer and maybe do other things to prep for next week, like grade and read and write up some notes. But the doctor visit kinda wore me out and I spent the rest of the day puttering and doing some grocery shopping. I had many plans (organize photos into albums, do several loads of laundry, prepare meals for the weekend). None of them happened. Why do I set myself up for failure on these Fridays? Something to think about. Maybe next Friday I'll plan nothing. Nada. And then perhaps I'll actually get something done.

keeping my hands full

When I picked up baby E from daycare yesterday, one of the infant room teachers said "you're going to have your hands full with that one." I chuckled and finished packing up her things, but then asked,"wait, what do you mean by that?"

Apparently, baby E has a strong personality and does not easily move away from things she wants. She's not mean or tempermental about it, but she's certain of herself, even at the ripe old age of 13.5 months old. She's insistent.

It's true that this could mean that her teen years will be trying, and this is what the daycare teacher meant--she imagines that E will continue to be a strong personality and that parenting her will be a challenge. For the most part, I think this is an exciting thing. I'm glad that she's strong-willed, as it's something I often wished I was, especially when I was younger. I look forward to knowing this little girl into her young adulthood (G*d willing), and if she's a challenge, so be it.

Ultimately, this brief exchange reminded me again that this parenting thing is an ever-evolving set of challenges. Just when I get to know one stage, W or E will move right out of it, leaving me to adjust and change along with them. Not a new revelation--I've known this since the early and sleepless days of W's babyhood--but it's a truth that never stops catching me off-guard. Parenting is like a mental form of yoga in which we bend and twist, thinking we're doing a great job, only to remember that yoga isn't about "winning," but is about continuing to bend and twist.