Andrea's Adventures in Binkyland

Weekending

Three things of note happened this weekend. The first, and most exciting, is that we had Sasha's follow-up appointment for her string of illnesses. Not only is she sickness-free, but she's put on nearly a pound and a half in the last three weeks. (And you can tell, she's getting that second chin back).

Second, and very nearly as exciting, I went to Old Navy and bought a skirt. It was size 10. When I tried it on at home, it was too big. Go me!

Finally, I broke my preternaturally long pinky fingernail on Saturday. This led me to the observation that I have disproportionately short pinky fingers.

My kitchen is: Sticky. This morning, I gave Sasha an ounce of Orange Plus Calcium in an open-topped cup. She lifted it a little, but no juice. She tipped it up a bit more... no juice. She brought the end WAY UP like she does with her sippy cups and was very, very surprised when the juice came out all over her face, in her nose, down her chest, and onward to parts south. She was so surprised, in fact, that she was completely unwilling to try it a second time, with a refilled cup.

Sleepless in Binkyland

This morning, Sasha woke up a bit before 4am, as she usually does. Matt brought her back to me, where we snuggled up so she could nurse for a bit and fall back asleep with us until a more reasonable hour, as we usually do. It's a very good system, and one that has given us few problems.

Naturally, last night was different.

Sasha has become a, shall we say, very active sleeper. After she's done nursing, she flops around for a bit like some sort of landed sea creature, trying to find a comfortable position. What she has not yet learned is that no position is perfectly comfortable, and at some point, you need to pick something and just stick with it. So she lies across my neck, face up, face down; she sprawls across my stomach with her head hanging off the side of my hip; she crawls to the foot of the bed and splays herself there. Generally, this process of hers takes between five and ten minutes, and eventually, she falls back asleep (as do we).

Last night it took her a particularly long time to settle. She was all over the place. Nothing like a near-toddler to make you feel like a jungle gym at 4am. FInally, she flopped down and stayed down. It was only mere moments when the unfortunate occurred: Matt had to get up. As he left the bed, she lifted her head up, and then dropped it again. I had a tense moment, but still hoped she would sleep through this minor disturbance. Matt returned. Sasha lifted her head up again. "Hi, da!" she crowed.

Now, if Sasha is awake enough to talk, that means Sasha is very, very awake. She flung herself at daddy. She draped herself across his back. She hugged him and bit his shoulder. She rearranged his pillows. She sat up. She stood up! She told him very many exciting things that could not wait until, say, daylight. Matt and I tried very hard to repress our giggling, because it would only encourage her. "It's not time to talk, it's time to sleep!" we told her. "You should just lie back down!"

Eventually, she snuggled up with me and began the lengthy process all over again. She tried lying on the pillow above my head, with her feet kicking daddy's head. She tried down by our knees again. She tried head-butting daddy and kicking me in the ribs. (typically it's opposite that). I looked at the clock. She had been up for about an hour! So I stood up, took her back to her room, and tried to put her in her crib, where at least her restlessness would only disturb her. She began wailing.

I picked her up again, and sat in the rocking chair. We rocked. She tossed and turned and threw her limbs around in my arms, but her eyes closed, closed. After a short time, I put her back in her crib. She turned onto her stomach and was still. I lifted the gate; no sound out of her. I hurried back to bed.

And she was blissfully, quietly, peacefully asleep again, as were we all, for a shining and beautiful two hours. And then the alarm clock went off, and she was up like a jack-in-the-box.

My kitchen is: Surprisingly clean, but strewn with dirty dishes. I am unsure how this came about, since we have not had dinner at home since Tuesday.

Lunch Time

Lately, I have found myself purchasing fancy vegetarian organic foods, for reasons I can not entirely explain, but that might have something to do with being fed these foods as a small child. In that spirit, I bought some "Lemon Pepper Tofu with Mango Chipotle Dipping Sauce." It bills itself as a finger food, ready straight out of the package.

The words are just bursting with flavor! Spicy chipotle! Succulent mango! Exotic lemon pepper! You can taste it just looking at the name!

Unfortunately, you can not taste it by eating it. This stuff is, in fact, kind of slimy and bland and unappealing. I expect this is what Soylent Green must taste like. This has shattered my illusions of being a closet organic eco-crunchy vegan. Now excuse me as I go microwave my organic vegetarian whole-wheat-spinach-feta hot pocket.

My kitchen is: Tidy, and just waiting for the cleaner to put on the shine. Life is pretty good!

Data Junkie

I have a problem.

An addiction.

No, I haven't been hitting the bottle. No sneaking late-night cigarettes in the back yard for me. And although I do love a good piece of pastry, I don't have a problem with carbohydrates, either.

I am an information junkie.

For my birthday, Matt has given me a very fancy and exciting heart rate monitor. Heart rate monitors are supposed to be phenomenal, and change the way you exercise. You can more carefully monitor your performance and progress, resulting in a more concrete idea of how you are improving (or not) and how healthy you are. No more off days! No more wondering if you're working as hard as you should be!

Well, my heart rate monitor is changing the way I exercise, but not in the typical way.

As I've said, I'm a data junkie. I fiend for news. I obsessively research topics ranging from baby development and breastfeeding to types of diseases found in tropical fish aquariums. If I don't have a topic to be researching, no data to be analyzing, I truly feel cast adrift.

So now I have a heart rate monitor. How has it changed me, you ask? Well, now I actively try to find opportunities to exercise. Not so I can have buttocks you can bounce a quarter off of, no. Not so I will achieve washboard abs, or supernaturally low levels of triglycerides and cholesterol. Not even so I can eat all of the doughtnuts and guacamole my heart desires. No motivation as pedestrian as that has ever so firmly grasped my imagination. I look forward to exercising so that I can have a new set of data points.

I have created a spreadsheet. This spreadsheet keeps track of my weight and measurements, my body fat percentage, moving averages of aforementioned weight and body fat, hours of sleep a night, exercise sessions, average and max heart rates, time spent in my target heart rate zone, if I'm running, my pace and distance, and before too long, probably another half a dozen statistics I have not yet thought up.

Before much longer, I will have enough data to start really having a good time. I will generate charts and graphs. I will monitor my heart rate versus how much sleep I am getting, my body fat versus my max heart rate, my weight versus how much total exercise I have recorded. My spine tingles and toes curl at the prospect of all of this exciting data and the fascinating insights I can mine out of it. No, I am not joking.

Of course, if I become skinny and smoking hot as a result of all of this geeky joy, I won't exactly be upset about that, either.

My kitchen is: A bit sloppy, but the cleaners come tomorrow, anyhow. And now that I've run for tonight, there is a Pepperidge Farms apple turnover calling my name...

News and Nostalgia

Last night, we visited Sasha's allergist to get the formal lowdown on her peanut situation. First, she is allergic to milk, but only barely. The doctor didn't think we would need to go to any extreme measures to avoid it, but in light of her overall improvement in health and disposition since we've stopped, I think we'll carry on as we have been. Goldfish crackers and the odd mac & cheese won't hurt her, but we'll stick with soy milk and soy yogurt for now.

As for peanut, she isn't a Class 3, as the nurse told me over the phone, she's a Class 2! This means it is a milder allergy than we had thought. She is, in fact, in the category of children most likely to outgrow the allergy, and the doctor said if she were older, he would consider doing a food challenge now. As it is, for now, we should avoid giving her peanuts and peanut butter by any means, but we don't need to worry too much about manufacturer cross-contamination or peanut residue. When she's three, we'll have her blood retested, and consider doing an oral challenge then. Meanwhile, I think I'm going to order some Sunbutter. I've heard great things about it.

Through the course of my research about the allergy, I've learned about other children her age who are deathly allergic, not just to peanuts, but to any nuts or legumes, milk, soy, eggs, wheat, fish, corn, berries, AND a few other things, besides. My heart really breaks for those poor kids. What on earth do you feed such a child? What kind of a life can you lead when your main focus is on what kinds of food you have to avoid? It makes me feel like we've been unbelievably lucky to get off so light.

On a different note, I've had this photo knocking around in our office for a bit, and I wanted to preserve it before something baby-related happened to it. This was taken the day my dad and stepmother got married, so I think in this picture Matt and I are 21 and 20, respectively. Don't we look like middle-school children?

Amazing to think how far these two little kids in the picture have gotten, isn't it?

My kitchen is: Messy, but really quite nice. I even plan to make dinner tonight!

Timing is Everything

This morning, my boss displayed a rare piece of good timing, and called me while I was still waiting for my train to tell me that I needn't bother, since there's been a train derailment in NJ and he couldn't get in to meet me anyhow. I was due for something like this, though. I've been trying to get some software working on his laptop since early Friday.

Friday afternoon, I ran into some big problems with various versions of software not playing nicely together. Once I knew what he wanted to happen, I planned to work until late on Friday, and perhaps in bits and pieces on Saturday and Sunday. He didn't call me until Sunday morning. As this was the weekend I spent alone with Sasha, I am profoundly impressed with myself that I got it working not long after her bedtime last night.

I was expecting my weekend alone with Sasha to be stressful and lonely. But Sasha is in such a terrific humor now; she's eating better, she laughs more -- it's wonderful. In ten and twenty and thirty years, when I'm sad that she's growing up, this is one of the times I will cherish most, I think. We ran some errands and cleaned the house. I had friends over to watch girly movies (How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days and Bridget Jones' Diary, to be precise). We snuggled a lot, practiced walking, blew bubbles outside, and got new library books.

She has a new word: "Yeah." This is a huge leap in development, since previously she could only say no and shake her head, and she does not yet know how to nod. She has also been known to shake her head "no" when she means "yes." This method of verbal assent is, therefore, a critical new milestone for her. I expect a vast improvement in her perceived quality of life as a result.

I also let her feed herself some soy yogurt with her own spoon, with remarkable success. She definitely knows about the part where you put the spoon in your mouth. The part about putting food on the spoon is a little more shaky; she inserts the spoon into the container and then rattles it around. The part about getting the spoon to her mouth without anything happening to it along the way is, well, it's not her strong suit. I've also introduced her to the fork, which she finds enthralling, but she is not yet capable of stabbing her own food with it.

I wrote yesterday about Sasha's first joke. I have realized that this is wrong. There is another joke she's had with both daddy and I for a week or so, now. We'll be in her room in, say, the late morning, and she'll point at her crib. "Oh, Sasha, you want to take a nap?" we'll say, and plop her down on the mattress. She knows this is silly, because it is not, in fact, naptime, and so she will laugh and laugh and laugh. Up until you raise the side of the crib and say "OK, night night, honey, sleep well!" and start to leave the room. Then is it no longer even a little bit funny. I am so mean.

My kitchen is: in need of a bit of work.

Baby's First Joke

This weekend, Sasha told her first joke. I was changing her diaper and discussing her upcoming snack. What, I asked her, would you like to eat? Blueberries, maybe? Goldfish, perhaps?

She grabbed my arm and pulled my wrist into her mouth, a delighted gleam in her little eye. Mommy for snack! She's just getting me back, though. Matt and I joke about having the baby and/or the kitty for dinner all the time.

My kitchen is: Quite nice, really. Though a bit sticky of floor, what with the oatmeal and all.

Life Just Never Stops Coming At You

Well, some of you may be wondering how Sick Baby is feeling. She finished her course of antibiotics a week ago Monday, and was declared penumonia-free by the doctor. Hurrah! But her ears had fluid in them, so we scheduled a 1-month follow-up visit to make sure she didn't get an ear infection.

Saturday morning, Sasha feels a little warm to me. I take an axillary temperature: 101.6. Hmm. By the time we get to the doctor's office, about three hours later, she feels a bit warmer. They take a rectal temperature: 103.3! Sasha has a double ear infection. Back on an antibiotic, but straight amoxycillin this time, and not Augmentin. Thankfully her stomach is not upset by amoxycillin straight-up, so we haven't had a recurrence of the diaper rash menace.

Since then, she appears to be in good temper, and THANK GOD her appetite is starting to come back. See, Matt and I sneakily weighed her while we were alone in the doctor's office, and found that she weighed less in her diaper and onesie now than she did stark naked at her 9-month appointment. Gaining only very slowly is one thing, and troubling but not panic-worthy, but losing weight over a nearly 4-month period does concern me. It is to some degree, I'm sure, due to her ongoing battle with various illnesses, since she has been eating only very poorly. At least she's been nursing well! But on Monday, we discovered something that put all of this in a new light.

Sasha is, indeed, allergic to peanuts. But she ALSO has a very mild allergy to milk! Not allergic enough to have ongoing eczema, asthma, or diarrhea; no, nothing so obvious as that. But allergic enough to beat down her immune system so that she's suddenly catching one illness after another? Quite possibly. Allergic enough that her rate of growth has been impeded since she started eating cheese and yogurt, at around 9 months old? Almost certainly. In fact, poor weight gain and strings of mysterious illnesses are classic symptoms of a food-allergic child!

We have a follow-up visit with the allergist next Tuesday to explore, in depth, what all of this really means for us. In the meantime, both I and Sasha are avoiding straight dairy products (though not items with milk in them, like baked goods or Goldfish crackers), and anything that might have even trace cross-contamination of peanut in it. I'm already missing my Luna bar breakfasts. It's astoundingly hard to avoid peanut traces in food. Almost no chocolate, ice cream, or baked good is safe; and there are traces of cross-contamination or even unlabeled peanut oil in the strangest places, from sunscreen to Hellman's Mayonnaise.

Since we've made these small changes to Sasha's diet, she seems to be showing some improvement. More active, but less combative and much happier than she's been. More like the baby she used to be. She is, however, exceptionally clingy to me. I'm of the school of thought that if she thinks she needs that much snuggling, then she should get it, so last night I ordered a Maya Wrap.

Aside from all of thse health issues, then, how are we all doing? Really, not so bad! Our lease on Matt's car is about to expire, and it looks like we're going to do something to make all of my Michigan relatives despise and shun us: We're buying Japanese. Matt did a lot of research on what's out there in our price range (and you thought *I* was the only obsessive researcher in our house, hah!) and did some test drives, and has ultimately settled on the Mazda Protege. We will likely get it in the next month or so.

Matt is also going away this weekend to Foxwoods for a bachelor party, leaving me, alas, home alone with the baby. Sasha's gotten used to spending days alone with me when she was too sick for daycare, but even on weekdays, once I get her from daycare, she's all about waiting for daddy to come home. She asks about him, looks around for him, and sometimes fusses until he comes home. We'll see how it goes.

And how about me? I'm starting to feel a little more in control again. I'm gradually trying to get into a weekly rhythm again, but my beat's been so disrupted by the past month or two that it may take a while. But I've felt on the verge of getting it all together again every week for the past several weeks, so my optimism is certainly tempered this time with a fair amount of skepticism. Can the mother of an almost-toddler ever really say she is in control of her own life, really?

My kitchen is: clean. Yes, that's it. A clean kitchen is the first step toward a peaceful life.