Birds, update

We have found good homes for the two hardest birds to place, Magpie the goffin cockatoo, and Kyri the Umbrella cockatoo. The house is SO much quieter! Homestead Mama is still interviewing people to adopt Baron, the African Grey. He'll be gone by next week. We'll keep Peaches, the bald goffin cockatoo, since she is very tame and pretty ugly since she plucks out all her feathers. She and Pequita are developing quite the mutual admiration society. Hopefully they'll be good buddies and no one will sustain injuries.

We're off tonight for a weekend in the Adirondacks to let H-Mama's dad see the baby again. We sleep in their 30' camper which is parked in the driveway when we visit, so it is like having a very compact B&B room to ourselves, which is far, far preferable to sacking out on the leather couches in the living room, especially with the baby. I never realized how important it is to have a guest room! We had two in our house, but one turned into a nursery. When we do the last stage of renovations (currently scheduled for summer of 2009) we'll be creating a family room / guest room, so we'll be back up to 2 places for guests to sleep.

I have many new pictures, belly shots and other things, but haven't had time to post them. Hopefully this weekend, if I can get internet access. If not, early next week. Pequita is changing and growing so much! (As am I, I suppose.) I haven't had time to return phone calls, letters, emails. I'm sorry! If you're waiting to hear back from me, I'm working on it & thinking of you.

28 week OB appointment

I saw my lovely sweet OB doc this morning. I have 12 weeks to go until my due date, which is starting to sound like less and less time.

As expected, my frequent and increasingly intense Braxton-Hicks contractions aren't the best thing at this stage. Since I'm having so many strong ones, I have been instructed to cease and desist from all activity that brings them on, which means no more stairs, walking fast or long distances, carrying Pequita in her carseat, amongst a couple other more personal activities. Bother. He said that once I hit the 34 week mark I can do windsprints if I want, as getting Monita/o out at that point is just fine, but to do what I need to in order to keep it in me for now. Makes sense - the fetus is only 2 lbs, and at fairly significant risk of complications if I went into labor now. So I will increase my water intake (even if I weren't pregnant I'd be peeing every hour given the quantity I drink), triple my magnesium dose, and rest more. Darn. I KNEW we should have budgeted for a butler to help out.

At the next appointment I get my initial glucose test and Strep-B test. I'm allergic to both meds typically used to treat Strep-B, so if I end up having it, we could face a challenge. Also, if my nosebleeds continue I get to have the inside of my nose cauterized - whoopee, eh? Since breaking my nose in a car accident, and then years later breaking it on a softball, the framework of my nose is decidedly non-standard. I always get nosebleeds in the winter, but since getting pregnant they have been coming fast and furious. It is not unusual for me to be up for 45 minutes in the middle of the night trying to quell the deluge. Most disconcerting.

On the plus side, the fetus is already head down, and the heartbeat was 136. My doc always points out that low heart rates are associated with boys, but Pequita hovered in the 130's until she got out, so maybe it is just a family thing. Also, despite the several gallons of chocolate ice cream I have consumed since my last OB appointment, plus the lime sherbert I have been utilising as a palate cleanser, I have only gained a half pound. This will, I imagine, begin to change as I decrease my exercise level to stop the B-H contractions. Plus, the little bugger in me has to gain another 5 or 6 lbs, at least. (And please goddess, let that be all it gains!)

Parrot update

Twenty-three emails awaited me about the birds were awaiting me at work. 23! This means that we don't have to toss them out the door to the first taker, but Homstead Mama can interview people and select a new owner. Oh, happy day for all.

Freecycle love

Some of you have met the 20+ year old parrots that Homestead Mama has owned since college. Others of you may just have heard me bitch about how loud, dirty and under stimulated they are. They have a sad life since we are too busy to tend to them and give them the attention they deserve. I have been trying to get them a home with better prospects (out of my house) for over 5 years, much to Homestead Mama's dismay. It is true that one of the things I fell in love with was her sense of responsibility, which extends to her pets with a vengance. She has acquiesced, finally, that they need a better situation in life, and has been trying to get her mind right about giving them away since I started pushing hard. This hard pushing coincided with her getting pregnant and I (accurately, it would seem) predicted the end of our free time, extra house space, and extra mental space.

Just yesterday, someone at Homestead Mama's office got her all excited about Freecycle (via a free breast pump offering) and I took the opportunity by the horns to get her to dictate an ad for the parrots last night while she was trapped under a nursing baby. I submitted a post about the damn birds at 7:30 or so, it hit the web after we went to bed at 10:30 pm, and we started getting calls at 7:30 this morning. Huzzah! There is a lot of interest - we already have a short waiting list. The first caller is coming on Thurs night for the African Grey and the Umbrella Cockatoo, the second woman is interested in the Goffin Cockatoo. I'm thinking that even Peaches, our bald feather plucking Goffin could find a new home at this rate, bald and all. but Margie has to think on that a bit more, as that is the one she is still close to.

The lovely alcove next to the dining room that currently houses the huge bird cages is one step closer to being what I designed it to be - a kid's nook, with a reading chair, bookshelf, activity table and all the colorful plastic toy detritus housed there that is now cluttering up our living room. I am positively giddy with optimism. (To illustrate why, for those of you who haven't stayed overnight chez nous and haven't experienced it, the parrots awake at dawn and salute the sun like roosters. Loudly. And further, the African grey is very smart and has learned to mimic EXACTLY our smoke detector alarm, his current favorite salute. I'm hoping we get rid of him before he perfects his cry that mimics the baby screaming. What a catch he'll be then!)

By the way, if you live in the US and don't know about Freecycle, you should check it out.

www.freecycle.org has local chapters in many cities, and is a place to give away and acquire things for free. We've given away computer monitors the size of my car engine, hundreds of planting containers, and several bags of packing peanuts. We've gotten a pressure cooker, baby swing, children's books, a shelf, and now my alcove back!

Pequita's 4 month checkup

Yes, she's 5.5 months old now, but there was a huge snowstorm last month and the doc's office closed, and she missed her appointment. We are most pleased with her progress. She is now 17.32 lbs and 25.5" long (tall?), which puts her in the shocking 90th percentile in weight and 75th percentile in height.

On the other hand, we WILL be switching doctor's office, because Homestead Mama & Pequita have been at the docs office for an hour and a half so far and STILL hasn't received any vaccinations. They're 'running a bit behind'. I told H-Mama to stop nursing and comforting the baby and go stand by the check-in desk with a squalling bored infant and let them revel in their scheduling ineptitude. If we switch, it will be to the downtown hippy pediatric office which is lovely, there is never a pile-up in the waiting room and the docs are highly recommended. They don't take our insurance, so we'll have to pay out of pocket & then get reimbursed, but good lord, what kind of office makes you wait w/ a baby for over 1.5 hours? Sheesh. They are lucky it isn't me there with the kid.

A banner day

Finally, as it warms up and I am not wearing a bulky sweater for the first time this pregnancy, it is clear that my belly has gotten big enough so that my butt looks downright dainty.

Glory be!

Brain dump

Lack of posting doesn't mean lack of activity or things to stew over/ rant about. I am clearly behind on the posting. With many topics and too little time, I'll do the best I can to catch up. My exhaustion continues, but now I've added leg cramps - charley-horses the likes of which I have never experienced. Definitely pregnancy related - I'm all hopped up on magnesium,. potassium & prenatal vitamins, and am still limping during the day from the last incident on Sat night. One bonus is that my left leg, with the fused ankle that is the source of so much pain and annoyance, seems to be exempt from the cramping. An unexpected bonus.

1. Homestead Mama and I celebrated a belated Valentine's Day to make up for the one we missed due to illness by going to see Solomon Burke in concert.

http://www.thekingsolomonburke.com/ He's been one of my favorites for years - I wooed my sweetie to some of his music, so it was fitting to go see him for V-day. He's aging, and I hope I remember to write up a piece on his concert; we were awash with both exhilaration and joy and a little pity. Very interesting. Bottom line? He performed his butt off. Hottie friend babysat for a few hours. She is the BEST babysitter - how many parents get regular text-messaged updates & pictures of their happily playing or sleeping babe throughout the night, plus a handwritten log of activities awaiting them upon return home? Yup. We're lucky. Funny thing about novelty, though. Pequita can stay in one outfit for a couple days (or more, if Homestead Mama is supposed to changer her clothes). If it is clean, we aren't opposed to her staying in what she has on. Hottie friend changed her while we were gone just for the fun of it. Very cute. (And she picked out a winner outfit!)

2. My parents came for a visit from Boston for a long weekend, and what a grandparent joyfest it was! They wanted to keep up with Pequita's growth & development, as well as the belly I am sporting. They expect to come for another visit before I deliver in June(ish), aiming for a visit every 6 weeks or so. They are very concerned with giving equal time/attention to both their grandkids, which is pretty noble given that one lives 30 mins away and we are six HOURS away. Much fawning happened all around. My mother is getting over a knee replacement surgery, and amazingly after only 3 weeks was up and walking a bit with no crutches. She did great with the baby. She still remembers (most of) the songs she sang to us when we were little - it was lovely to hear them sung to my kid.

3. We allowed Pequita to accidentally tumble off the couch and hit her head, luckily on the colored foam playmat we now use as a living room rug. Still, the thump was heard around the house, as was the screaming. Horrible. Afterwards, when we had watched for concussion, checked for damage & injury, and nursed her into oblivion, the stories of other folks kids being dropped came our way and helped assuage the guilt we felt. I had hoped to have NO falls, but clearly that is no longer a goal. Homestead Mama and I are permanently traumatized. Pequita seems ok, still drooling out of both sides of her mouth evenly and still chipper and tracking visually quite well.

4. Something weird happened to Pequita, probably in daycare, that we have no explanation for. Pequita came home on Friday with a rash of broken blood vessels around her eyes. We took her in for a checkup on Sat to confirm that it wasn't something we have to treat, and the nurse confirmed my worst fears, that she probably cried/ choked/ strained hard enough to cause it. It is very worrisome in the big picture, although all seems ok on the whole. Our daycare lady told Homestead Mama upon drop-off this morning that Pequita just hasn't been crying lately, and she is unaware of any incidents that could have caused it. I need to further investigate the possibility that a fill-in caregiver might have been there when it happened when I do the pickup tonight. *If* it happened at daycare. All I know is that in her 21 weeks with us, Pequita has screamed her head off, pooped her little heart out, and had more than one incident of choking on breast milk/ bathwater/ etc., not to mention FALLING ON HER HEAD without developing broken blood vessels. What the hell happened this time? I'll figure it out, but being a SAHM (stay-at-home-mom) is looking better and better, and soon.

I don't like Mondays.

Sleep, sleep, perchance to dream...

Fine, fine. While Hamlet's anguish is at its height in that soliloquy, I am merely exhausted. I took Wednesday off from work with a bad headache & nausea & such fatigue the likes of which I haven't had since the first trimester. I slept all day, waking up at 7pm, and happy to go back to sleep at about 10pm. It must be the hormones, which is better than the stomach flu, which was my initial diagnosis. Except that the flu would be gone by now and I'm still flat out exhausted. I fell asleep at my desk yesterday. That's a touch embarrassing, I might point out, when someone barges in needing something. Blink blink - stammer stammer. Yup, no way to coolly cover that up. Homestead Mama is outwardly very supportive and understanding, and is happy to take Pequita after work - all I have to do is pick the baby up on my way home from work & entertain her until H-Mama appears. We do this in bed w/ many toys and me laying flat. Secretly, Homestead Mama must be thinking how much better she had it - she has no recollection of any hormonal effect on her at all for the duration of her pregnancy. *I* remember her momentary lapses, fits of pique and rageful stomping. Hindsight is fleeting - maybe I'll forget all this in time.

When I was very young, my dad used to come home from work tuckered out & be met at the door by three small kids totally bored with their mother, having spent all day doing nothing with her but making puppets, forts, assorted craft projects, playing outside, you know, boring stuff. Then wonderful, magical, novelty DAD would appear and we'd start clambering for his attention. One of our favorite games was "Sleeping Giant". He would take off his coat and tie, lie down in the middle of the living room floor and pretend to be a sleeping giant, complete with fake snoring and grunting. We'd giggle, creep around him, working up our brevity to approach and poke at him - at the first touch, he'd rear up and roar loudly, flailing his arms, baring his teeth, and make ineffectual grabs for our limbs. We would run screaming and laughing from the room, delightfully frightened and very pleased with this game. It would take us a few minutes of planning to work up to another assault, and the same thing would happen. This could go on for a long time, and we never got tired of it. On a few rare and special occasions, our uncle would be visiting and would play "Sleeping Bear" right alongside the giant. Oh, the paroxysms of joy.

As a parent, I now know that the snoring wasn't fake, the 'sleeping' was really happening in fits and spurts, that poor tired dad was in need of a nap and this was the best way he could fit it into his day. I think it was an ingenious adaptive game. I just wish that Pequita was old enough to enjoy a little terror in the name of fun.

Downward Facing Dog (now with more grunting)

I am 25 weeks along and the size of my ute is definitely beginning to be an impediment. I had a burst of energy on Sunday morning, and since Pequita was willing to amuse herself in her neglectosaucer, her jumper and her bouncy seat for almost 4 hours (with short nursing breaks), Homestead Mama and I got a very thorough cleaning of the first floor of the Homestead done. I scrubbed the floors on my hands and knees, which felt OK at the time. I haven't done this for over a year, and you could tell. The floor now sparkles and the house smells great. However, I am now moving around the house, and particularly on and off the bed/couch, like I am 90 years old. I may have overtaxed myself unknowingly - I am not used to having to take it quite as easily as this. Seriously, I am so uncomfortable that I can't just stand up and walk, I have to grunt to a standing position and then wait until I get settled back in my skeleton.

In order to remedy this little problem of feeling like I've just had a double hip replacement, I decided that prenatal yoga was just the thing. I spent an hour this morning in a huge, drafty, fluorescent-lit room with 5 other pregnant women and a teeny tiny birdlike yoga instructor. It was great. I haven't taken yoga in a few years, and my body was more than willing to get back into the poses. It is all a little different than the last time because I fused my ankle into a 90 degree angle a couple years ago to eliminate arthritis. I need a few extra wedges & supports to keep in posture, but it felt wonderful. Now I'm all jazzed up and ready to go twice a week until I can't get up off the floor anymore. I'll just have to see if I can get out of bed tomorrow.

Namaste.

Gentle water aerobics class starts tomorrow morning at 7am. Wish me luck!

The Ravioli Incident

We have to eat, and sometimes the baby is in the way. We usually prepare easy food, food that clumps and is non-staining, when we are eating around the babe. Sunday night, Homestead Mama was enjoying a particularly tasty batch of ravioli in red sauce and we were watching a movie while Pequita slept on her lap. Then the ravioli slipped. It hit Pequita with such a splat that I could hear it across the room, and it woke her up. You can see the forehead bounce point, and the offending pasta on the floor. Moody the dog quickly took care of the mess - how do people without dogs keep their floors clean? We now have a rule about eating over the kid. Basically, don't.
I was relating the story to our daycare lady the next day - ha ha, so funny. She was chuckling as she told me that explained the sticky spot she had f0und in Pequita's hair. Ick. Sauce we had not seen in our desire not to turn on all the lights and wake her with the bath she so deserved. Parenting award, here we come.

Peaches

Peaches is Homestead Mama's Goffin cockatoo. She is almost 25 years old, and has her sweet moments. Much of the time, these are overshadowed by her squawky moments, but she is with us for the long haul. (Since parrots can live up to 80+ years, I'm not kidding about the long part.) Peaches and Pequita have a mutual fascination going on. They can gaze at each other for quite a while - Pequita will watch the bird in her cage flapping around and playing, and loves it when she comes out for a snack and flies around. Peaches will sit with her head pressed between the bars of her cage, one beady eye trained on Maya as she plays and giggles and talks.


Above is Peaches eating walnuts from the jar, and Pequita clearly admiring her manual dexterity. Thank goodness for the studies that cite that healthier and less asthmatic children are the ones raised in a healthy germ/allergen environment. We are counting on that being true.

Used Baby Goods Score

Homestead Mama got a picture over the weekend of the Maya wrap sling I found last week. It was such a great price, and in a fabric I might have chosen myself. So much better for carrying around a 16+ pound baby for me than the Bjorn - she now sits happily off to the side of the pregnancy bump, which beats the heck out of most other carriers at this point. I

We went back the next day as a family to vote on a huge bag of jumbo Legos that Pequita isn't really ready for yet. Of course, with Homestead Mama along, the vote was yes. She got them all stacked in a huge cube on the coffee table so I can see how big to make the stuff sack they will live in that I decided was required for them to stay in our house. It is hard to tell just how big these are, but we'll be able to make a good sized house out of them. I'll have to be careful with Legos; I get a little, um, possessive about them when I am playing with them - I mean, supervising little kids playing with them.

I always expected to have all wooden, non-toxic toys for my kids. Seems a no-brainer. And then, like most purist parents ahead of me, I saw how my kid responded to hideous plastic toys and I caved. We caved with this set of soft plastic blocks, which are perfect for teething on - grabbable for a 4 month old, and the perfect texture to sooth sore gums. Pequita may not have anything breaking *through* her gums, but she's clearly working on some teeth. The salivating is reaching epic proportions. I am going to have to custom make some bibs for her with a cotton terry top layer, an absorbent wool lining, and a polypropylene backing. I may make and market them - we can't be the only people who cycle through new dry bibs every hour. Anyway, we got home and I started thinking about PCBs, phthalates, and the myriad toxic things that these bright blocks must be spewing into our house. I had just talked myself into returning them when I walked into the living room to witness the scene below. Homestead Mama had decided to try them out on Pequita, who was a very satisfied customer. I hope we can make up for the toxic exposure elsewhere in our lives. I've started by ordering a bunch of lead test swabs to check our old house & antique furniture for toxicity. For now, the blocks stay.

Six degrees

Today, in the course of doing my job, I had to email the father of my best friend from high school to get some materials from him. He is a professor at MIT, and one of his students has applied for a job at the university at which I work. In his email response he extended his greetings. (And as a reference, my 20 year high school reunion is coming up this summer.)

I have such an odd set of memories about that time. My friend and I were drawn together because we had a similar outlook on life at that point - fairly miserable, depressed and lacking family support. Her dad was just awful to her, to me, to everyone in so many ways. Now that I am an adult, and largely a happy one, my perspective is a little different. I remember how his grad students used to hang around their house & were very engaged with him, delighted to be working with him. At the same time, his daughters were all running away from him physically and mentally. He clearly had a lot to offer, but didn't offer it to his own kids. Right after we graduated, my friend was driving the car during the accident in which I broke both my legs, my nose, and suffered many other smaller injuries. While we held on to the friendship for a year or so after that, we grew apart as I started to work hard to make my life into what I wanted it to be - happy, productive, full of positive relationships. I don't think she fared as well, and is still back in the same town working for a family business which must suck her soul out a little more each day.

I am grateful I had the stregth to extract from that whole state of being. I had the strong support of my sister, and as time went on, from my parents also. I feel lucky as hell, but also proud, as it was awfully hard work. I have chronic ankle injuries that will plague me my whole life to remind me of the bad choices I made in the past, but also to keep me focused on where I am now. And I have some gratitude to that high school friend who helped me get through some very rough patches. I'd love to ask her if her dad ever shaped up and started being kinder to her, but I'm pretty sure the answer is no. Maybe she'll email me, now that I've had contact with her father. Maybe I'll ask her. She certainly deserves a little kindness from him.

Waist-be-gone!

Goodness gracious, I have arrived at 6 months pregnant. Still going strong. I have finally started the spread, having put on 3.5 pounds. While I am still on a grapefruit kick (I'm seriously considering adding Ruby Red to the names list) the broccoli craving has morphed into a love of garlic gnocchi, and the siren song of Breyer's chocolate ice cream gets me out of bed nightly.



The relaxin I'm producing is making my hips feel like they are separating, making it hard to get in and out of bed or up off the couch. My face is blotchy with pimples and red spots (??) that don't go away. I am still peeing too much and I am starting to have trouble carrying Pequita comfortably. Regardless, I am loving this, all of it. There is a lot more movement these days, and I have a quiet smile on my face much of the time as I feel Monito/a swishing around inside me. My OB today said that she never felt lonely when she was pregnant. That hits the nail on the head - it is like having an invisible friend, always with you and no one else has a relationship with them but you. Rather special. I feel quite glorious.

I popped into the used baby store on my way back to work after the OB appointment today and scored a couple of very snazzy things for Pequita to wear and a cheap ring sling. I've been meaning to make one for the last few weeks so I can be comfortable with her on me, but have had no time. Hopefully the hip carry will satisfy her, since I can't move around comfortably anymore with her perched right atop the bump that is her sibling - ouch! Perhaps my lovely sister will loan me her Ergo carrier for the duration of the upcoming parental visit so I can try it out and cut a pattern to make one if it works for us. (Hint hint, Sis.)

Neglecto-saucer

The pall of sickness is starting to lift at the Homestead. This might have been our first daycare illness, but Homestead Mama and I were down for the better part of a week with a bad cold. The baby got off the lightest with just nasal congestion, thankfully, but her spirits were great.

This was helpful, as I'm not sure how we would have handled both adults being sick AND Pequita being miserable. As it was, she was going through one of her most delightful stages yet - lots of bouncing & giggling & much flashing of the big toothless gummy grin.

She has figured out how to really laugh, and will do it when we tickle her belly - it is very different from her screechy giggle. We also were noticing that she hasn't done some basic things we expected her to have mastered already - she hasn't really cared about her feet, for example. Well, here in upstate NY under a foot of snow there hasn't been much call to leave her feet (or any body part on her) bare. As an experiment, we left her shoes & socks off after her bath and within minutes she had her toes in her mouth. Apparently her shoes - the cutest ever - can't hold a candle to actual live wiggling toes. Oh, the glory.

We received a lovely gift of nice hand-me-down toys from a friend, and now Pequita enjoys her very own neglecto-saucer. She cannot figure out what to play with first. She is a little short for it yet, and most of the toys don't reach her mouth, the overarching fate for all things she encounters. This caused some anxiety.

We ended up having to actually ADD more stimulation to the neglecto-saucer by strapping on more toys that she can chew on while staring at the myriad bouncy/ shaking/ squeeking/ spinning things already on there. Oh, happy day. Hottie Friend was amazed at the difference in Pequita from a mere week ago - she is growing and changing awfully fast.

The other toy, a cube w/ wooden shapes that slide over wires, is very fun to watch her moms play with, but requires a lot of oversight since she seems dead set on whacking her forehead into the corners if we'd let her.

Thanks to Julie for posting the link to Hallmark's new line of cards - I needed a good indignant snort this morning. "