mother’s day.

House, updated.

We worked hard this last weekend!  I think that we now have every box in every livable situation unpacked and in order.  Books are on shelves!  Office is CLEANED OUT.  It is great.  Our house is now ready to be lived in.  It is now our home.

Bare canvas:

Filled room!

Basement:

office:

It is nice to have more seating options than an old couch and an exercise ball.  Looking forward to having my family over during the Easter weekend!

Um, no.

 

This is not what I was looking for.

Whirlwind

The past days have been crazy.  Little Katja has been sick, which has been incredibly stressful.  She spiked a fever of over 104 on the 10th and has basically been sick since. She had an ear infection (diagnosed the 10th), had a high fever and vomiting that entire weekend, finally seemed to kick it enough during the week of our move, and then spiked another fever of 104 last Monday, the 20th.  We took her to Urgent Care that evening, and they said that it was still her ear and that if it wasn’t better in two to three days, we should take her to her clinic. She stayed home all week from daycare, and was not getting better.  On Thursday, I called her clinic, because she was not getting better and I was getting worried. She spent that entire day in my arms, lethargic, feverish, coughing and vomiting.  It was…..tough.  Hard to watch her like that and just hard to deal with as yet another day at home with a needy, clingy baby.  Steve took Friday, the 24th, off to come with me to the doctor, where we found out she has RSV.  This definitely explained a lot about why she wasn’t getting better.  SIGH.

It’s been a pretty rough go.  We thought she seemed better over the weekend, so we tried to take her to daycare on Monday.  Well, she spiked a low grade temp (101) while there, which prompted me to go get her and she has been home the past two days.

On top of that, Rowan also felt bad last night, so after spending all day with a sick baby, I had to spend all last night with a crying Rowan at the minute clinic and CVS.  Super fun.

I just want everyone to be healthy!  It is really hard not being able to get into a new routine in the new house and all. I just want to figure out our new normal, and that is impossible when you are housebound with a sick kid and unable to do your normal things, like work.

Steve was home with both girls today, and said that they both seemed better.  Katja was a little ball of energy when I got in and her breathing seems good….but, she still seems feverish to me!  Ugh!  She seems to be running a temp of about 101, so I don’t know what that means. I worry most about her breathing, but why can’t she just kick this thing?  It is so hard to handle. Seriously. I just worry too frigging much, I suppose.

It has just been rough. It does make me appreciate how healthy we usually are, I suppose. For as good a this month has been with the house and all, it has pretty much sucked on every other level. And, of course now, I am worried that I will have to stay home yet again tomorrow.  I mean, there are worse things, but I just want to fast forward to when this is all over.

random hits

School started yesterday for Rowan.  She had a good day.  She told me that it was a little boring, though, because they had to go over the rules.  At one point, according to her, “I was looking at the clock and just listening to Mr. Campbell talk and then I looked at the clock again and ONLY 15 minutes had passed.  I was like, ‘C’mon, Mr. Clock!  Why are you letting me down?’ “  A hahahahaha, Rowan.  So funny.  She was lamenting that back in Kindergarten, her days would go by like THAT (snap fingers) and now, they do not. 

Oh, Rowan.  She has a lot to learn about life.  Time crawls at work and school and flies everywhere else.

Last night was Mexican Monday, which means that we have tacos.  It is a fancier way of saying Taco night, but is also maybe a little racist, now that I think about it.  We don’t mean it that way, but there you go.  Anyhow, we had beef tacos with beans and rice.  Instead of giving little Katja strips of food, like we had been with the Baby Led Weaning, I just plopped some ground beef, shredded cheese and smooshed up black beans on her high chair tray and let her go to town.  Little girly legitly ate quite a bit of her food.  Well, that is, I thought that she was devouring it, until we realized that it was all up in her hair and down her back and in her diaper….but, even with that, she still ate quite a lot more and did a great job of using her PINCER grasp to pick up food.  It’s kind of amazing to see how much her little skills have developed in just one month of eating solids.

She still has not been eating a ton of solids.  I am not forcing her to do it, as I really want to maintain the milk thing (my milk anxiety, of course), and I know that that is the most nutritious thing for her right now.  But, she does love to eat solids.  She eats some of my oatmeal in the mornings, eats rice cereal during the day at daycare, and then eats a bit of whatever we’re eating for dinner or other meals when she is with us on the weekends.  She ate pancakes and hash browns on Sunday morning.  She ate guacamole and prime rib on Saturday.  It’s great to just be able to let her eat what we eat, even if she is not eating a lot yet (she IS still a little ‘un, after all).

On the milk front, today I hit 1600 ounces pumped since I returned to work on April 25.  That is pretty good!  Yay for me.

By the way, if there are typos, please forgive me.  One of my contacts ripped today at work, so I am half blind and my screen is a little weird looking.  It looks like a 3D movie if you’re not wearing 3D glasses, know what I mean?

I have been journaling online (no, I will not say where) since 2003 and sometimes, I like to go back and look at my old entries and either laugh or cry (depending!) at my old self.  It is weird that so much of my life has been online.  This entry from August 11, 2003  is a really great entry and sounds like something I would still write today:

my back hurts, and i’m paranoid, so i am thinking that it must be bone cancer. i am basing this on the fact that my joints have hurt lately, too.

Good reasoning, 23 year old me!

Work is busy, and I am tired.  Also, half-blind.

I am pretty sure that I made the deal of a lifetime last night.  Rowan was walking around being goofy before dinner and was playing with her sister.  I commented that Katja was going to love her SO MUCH when she was older and that Rowan was going to love her sister so much, up until a point where her sister would annoy her (younger siblings can, after all, be irritating!).  Rowan was like, “nahh, I’m not going to be one of those MEAN teenagers” and I asked her what she meant by that.  She got up and hunched over, put her hair in her face and said, “You know, one of those teenagers who has their hair in their face and walks around and says things like, ‘I’m going to go to my room now’ and doesn’t talk to anyone.  I’m not going to be one of those.”

I told her that that would be great if she wasn’t like that.  She then said, “If you pay me $5, I won’t be a mean teenager” and I was all, “DEAL!”

So, hopefully, I have bought some sanity during those years for the mere price of $5.

We shall see.

I was not a miserable or “mean” teenager.  I was really easy.  I just wanted to play sports, read, and sleep.  Two of those activities are still two of my favorite things to do (take a guess at which one has fallen by the wayside….).  I hope that Rowan is not miserable, but one never knows.  I have always planned on showing her my junior high journal when she hits that age, so that she can see that everyone (even amazing people like ME!) is awkward during that time.

I like having an age gap between my girls, though 8.5 years is not what I would have wanted.  I did figure it out, though, that by the time we get to the good age for Katja (around 4ish, I would say), I will be entering into the hell years for Rowan.  It will never end.  When one gets easy, the other will be difficult.  C’est la vie, I suppose.

SIX MONTHS!

2 days

1 month

2 months

3 months

4 months

5 months

6 months!

Life

My grandpa passed away thirteen days ago.  I am lucky in that I am 30 and this is the first grandparent that I have lost.  We knew that he was near the end, but it didn’t take away the sadness that I felt when I got the call from my mom to let me know that Grandpa Eddie was gone.  There was a whirlwind trip to South Dakota for the funeral and all that that entails, and I feel like we’re starting to get back to some sort of normalcy.  Most of my sadness does not come so much from the fact that he has died, but that any possible relationship to him is gone.  We do not have as good of a relationship with my paternal grandparents as we do with my maternal side, and even my dad, who spent almost every day for the last three months helping my grandma and grandpa get to appointments and talk to doctors, doesn’t have the best relationship with his parents.  And it is sad that now my grandpa is dead and that will never happen.

That is my grandma, centered, alone.  Alone after almost 64 years of marriage.  Alone despite having ten healthy, living children.  Alone.

I suppose, though, that we are all alone in some ways.

The fact that my grandpa died just reminds me of how precious and precarious it all is.  Life.  The life growing inside of me.  The lives of my loved ones.  We’re so lucky to be here and to have each other and I am so lucky that I have this little person who is growing and kicking and squirming inside of me and that I have another little person who is growing and kicking and squirming outside of me.  I have Steve.  I have my family.  I have my friends.

My sister and I drove back together, and on the way back home (to this home, not that one), she asked me if I believed in heaven or God, as she thought that Grandpa Eddie probably was kicking it somewhere in the spiritual realm.  I really don’t believe that and told her so, and told her that I wished that I believed in the Catholic (or other religious view; we just happened to have grown up Catholic) idea of the afterlife, as I think it would give me more comfort and I would be less afraid.  But, I don’t believe it.  I believe in life in the here and now and I think that once we’re gone, our energy returns to wherever it is that it came from.

I have been feeling a little off these past few weeks, and part of me was worried that it was the pregnancy, but I am pretty sure it is just stress and anxiety and worry and emotional overload.  I have been on an emotional overload.  Part of me just wants to cry.  I feel FINE.  But, there is this part of me that is not okay.  I am going to keep a check on myself, as I will want to talk to someone if it gets worse.  The thing about being pregnant is that there IS no normal anymore.  I used to know what was normal for me and what was my head getting the better of me and what was actually something to worry about.  Now, my body is all jacked up (and, really, for the most part, it is in perfect health and I have very little to complain about) and I don’t know if what I am feeling is something that is SUPER BAD or if it is just, maybe, my normal reaction to stress.  It’s so hard to tell.  That would be my only complaint about this pregnancy – that I just don’t trust my instincts about me anymore and I question far too much.

I am reading a book about the poet Edna St. Vincent Millay, and out of all her poems that I’ve read so far, the one that put her on the map at the age of 20 or so (and I am now at Edna, age 40 in the book), is the one that sticks with me the most.  It is kind of long, but I will paste it here, because it has resonated with me, right now, at this weird time of life and death.

ALL I could see from where I stood
Was three long mountains and a wood;
I turned and looked the other way,
And saw three islands in a bay.
So with my eyes I traced the line
Of the horizon, thin and fine,
Straight around till I was come
Back to where I’d started from;
And all I saw from where I stood
Was three long mountains and a wood.
Over these things I could not see:
These were the things that bounded me;
And I could touch them with my hand,
Almost, I thought, from where I stand.
And all at once things seemed so small
My breath came short, and scarce at all.
But, sure, the sky is big, I said;
Miles and miles above my head;
So here upon my back I’ll lie
And look my fill into the sky.
And so I looked, and, after all,
The sky was not so very tall.
The sky, I said, must somewhere stop,
And—sure enough!—I see the top!
The sky, I thought, is not so grand;
I ’most could touch it with my hand!
And reaching up my hand to try,
I screamed to feel it touch the sky.
I screamed, and—lo!—Infinity
Came down and settled over me;
Forced back my scream into my chest,
Bent back my arm upon my breast,
And, pressing of the Undefined
The definition on my mind,
Held up before my eyes a glass
Through which my shrinking sight did pass
Until it seemed I must behold
Immensity made manifold;
Whispered to me a word whose sound
Deafened the air for worlds around,
And brought unmuffled to my ears
The gossiping of friendly spheres,
The creaking of the tented sky,
The ticking of Eternity.
I saw and heard and knew at last
The How and Why of all things, past,
And present, and forevermore.
The Universe, cleft to the core,
Lay open to my probing sense
That, sick’ning, I would fain pluck thence
But could not,—nay! But needs must suck
At the great wound, and could not pluck
My lips away till I had drawn
All venom out.—Ah, fearful pawn!
For my omniscience paid I toll
In infinite remorse of soul.
All sin was of my sinning, all
Atoning mine, and mine the gall
Of all regret. Mine was the weight
Of every brooded wrong, the hate
That stood behind each envious thrust,
Mine every greed, mine every lust.
And all the while for every grief,
Each suffering, I craved relief
With individual desire,—
Craved all in vain! And felt fierce fire
About a thousand people crawl;
Perished with each,—then mourned for all!
A man was starving in Capri;
He moved his eyes and looked at me;
I felt his gaze, I heard his moan,
And knew his hunger as my own.
I saw at sea a great fog bank
Between two ships that struck and sank;
A thousand screams the heavens smote;
And every scream tore through my throat.
No hurt I did not feel, no death
That was not mine; mine each last breath
That, crying, met an answering cry
From the compassion that was I.
All suffering mine, and mine its rod;
Mine, pity like the pity of God.
Ah, awful weight! Infinity
Pressed down upon the finite Me!
My anguished spirit, like a bird,
Beating against my lips I heard;
Yet lay the weight so close about
There was no room for it without.
And so beneath the weight lay I
And suffered death, but could not die.
Long had I lain thus, craving death,
When quietly the earth beneath
Gave way, and inch by inch, so great
At last had grown the crushing weight,
Into the earth I sank till I
Full six feet under ground did lie,
And sank no more,—there is no weight
Can follow here, however great.
From off my breast I felt it roll,
And as it went my tortured soul
Burst forth and fled in such a gust
That all about me swirled the dust.
Deep in the earth I rested now;
Cool is its hand upon the brow
And soft its breast beneath the head
Of one who is so gladly dead.
And all at once, and over all
The pitying rain began to fall;
I lay and heard each pattering hoof
Upon my lowly, thatchèd roof,
And seemed to love the sound far more
Than ever I had done before.
For rain it hath a friendly sound
To one who’s six feet under ground;
And scarce the friendly voice or face:
A grave is such a quiet place.
The rain, I said, is kind to come
And speak to me in my new home.
I would I were alive again
To kiss the fingers of the rain,
To drink into my eyes the shine
Of every slanting silver line,
To catch the freshened, fragrant breeze
From drenched and dripping apple-trees.
For soon the shower will be done,
And then the broad face of the sun
Will laugh above the rain-soaked earth
Until the world with answering mirth
Shakes joyously, and each round drop
Rolls, twinkling, from its grass-blade top.
How can I bear it; buried here,
While overhead the sky grows clear
And blue again after the storm?
O, multi-colored, multiform,
Beloved beauty over me,
That I shall never, never see
Again! Spring-silver, autumn-gold,
That I shall never more behold!
Sleeping your myriad magics through,
Close-sepulchred away from you!
O God, I cried, give me new birth,
And put me back upon the earth!
Upset each cloud’s gigantic gourd
And let the heavy rain, down-poured
In one big torrent, set me free,
Washing my grave away from me!
I ceased; and through the breathless hush
That answered me, the far-off rush
Of herald wings came whispering
Like music down the vibrant string
Of my ascending prayer, and—crash!
Before the wild wind’s whistling lash
The startled storm-clouds reared on high
And plunged in terror down the sky,
And the big rain in one black wave
Fell from the sky and struck my grave.
I know not how such things can be;
I only know there came to me
A fragrance such as never clings
To aught save happy living things;
A sound as of some joyous elf
Singing sweet songs to please himself,
And, through and over everything,
A sense of glad awakening.
The grass, a-tiptoe at my ear,
Whispering to me I could hear;
I felt the rain’s cool finger-tips
Brushed tenderly across my lips,
Laid gently on my sealèd sight,
And all at once the heavy night
Fell from my eyes and I could see,—
A drenched and dripping apple-tree,
A last long line of silver rain,
A sky grown clear and blue again.
And as I looked a quickening gust
Of wind blew up to me and thrust
Into my face a miracle
Of orchard-breath, and with the smell,—
I know not how such things can be!—
I breathed my soul back into me.
Ah! Up then from the ground sprang I
And hailed the earth with such a cry
As is not heard save from a man
Who has been dead, and lives again.
About the trees my arms I wound;
Like one gone mad I hugged the ground;
I raised my quivering arms on high;
I laughed and laughed into the sky,
Till at my throat a strangling sob
Caught fiercely, and a great heart-throb
Sent instant tears into my eyes;
O God, I cried, no dark disguise
Can e’er hereafter hide from me
Thy radiant identity!
Thou canst not move across the grass
But my quick eyes will see Thee pass,
Nor speak, however silently,
But my hushed voice will answer Thee.
I know the path that tells Thy way
Through the cool eve of every day;
God, I can push the grass apart
And lay my finger on Thy heart!
The world stands out on either side
No wider than the heart is wide;
Above the world is stretched the sky,—
No higher than the soul is high.
The heart can push the sea and land
Farther away on either hand;
The soul can split the sky in two,
And let the face of God shine through.
But East and West will pinch the heart
That can not keep them pushed apart;
And he whose soul is flat—the sky
Will cave in on him by and by.

Bats!

This morning, I woke up to a not-so-pleasant surprise.  We all have to leave the house at about the same time every morning, and we have a pretty well-established routine of Steve waking up at 6:30, showering, getting the coffee going, and then goofing around on the internet while Rowan and I sleep until 7 and then rush to get ready (I have always been one to sleep as long as possible and get ready REALLY fast so that I maximize my sleep time) and get out of the house by 7:30 or so.  This morning was no different.  The alarm went off and I told Steve that it was 6:30 and was ready to roll back to doze for an extra thirty minutes while Steve got ready.  I heard him go into the bathroom, pause and then say, “Oh my God…”

Assuming that it was a plumbing catastrophe of some sort (just what, I’m not sure, but that is what I thought it might be based on the fact that he was in the bathroom when he OMGed), I asked him what it was and he came back into the bedroom and said, “I don’t think I should tell you.” Um, OKAY, WHAT THE EFF IS IT!? He then proceeded to tell me that we had a BAT in our bathtub.  Apparently, he saw a dark blob in between our shower liner and the tub wall, and then it started to MOVE and he realized that it was a bat.  Now, Steve is not one to really freak out about rodents, but he was shaking a little.  We had a mouse in our house (and, no, our house is not gross at all – it is actually quite nice, which makes rodent issues even ickier to me!) a few months ago, and Steve took it in stride, placing traps and saying, “Well, at least it’s not a bat!”

Now, though, we had a bat.  Which is worse than a mouse, because BATS HAVE WINGS.  And, you know, also the possibility that it was a vampire.

Luckily, this whole problem was solved in less than five minutes, as Steve found some plastic bags and a towel, closed the bedroom doors (so that no bats would escape into our room or sleeping Rowan’s room), and then trapped the bat and ran outside with it.  He then scoured the bathroom to find out where it would have come in from, and we don’t know for sure.  I checked the attic entrance in my closet, and that seemed secure, as did the closet in Rowan’s room.  So, we’re stumped on where this dang thing came from and I just hope that we don’t have this happen again.

Is this normal, though?  Bats in houses?  I feel like it is and that it’s not a sign of being dirty or gross or anything.  Nature has a way of finding its way into homes, RIGHT?  Please tell me I’m right about this and that I should not freak out all that much.

work email

this picture seriously turned up in an email to my office. Very eye-catching and professional!