Neighborly Etiquette

It has been raining here in NJ for about a month. We've had 6 inches of rain, and the weather folks are saying it could be a record month. Unfortunately for us, a month of rain = mosquitos the size of your head. We've made sure to empty T's kiddie pool and water table after each deluge to keep the backyard as mosquito free as possible.

Our neighbor? Not so much. Last summer she installed a giant inflatable pool. It's about 3 feet deep and is one designed to be taken down each winter. She didn't. The pool cover has since sunk a good 8 inches into the pool and is covered in what I can politely call fetid brown mosquito-orgy liquid. She doesn't use her backyard much, but everytime we go outside, T and I end up with big mosquito bites. My solution is to start chucking those pool chlorine tabs over the fence and into the mess. Ry thinks we ought to discuss with our neighbor. What would you do? I never see her, so to have a conversation, I would have to knock on the door. How, exactly, does one begin this conversation? I'm still rooting for chlorine tabs ....

Old McDonald: Chicken Farmer

J&T, Singing: Old McDonald had a farm. EIEIO. And on that farm there was a ....

T: Chicken!

J&T: EIEIO. With a cluck cluck here, and a cluck cluck there, here a cluck, there a cluck, everywhere a cluck cluck. Old McDonald had a farm. EIEIO. And on that farm there was a ...

T: Chicken!

J: Horse, EIEIO

J&T: With a .... EIEIO. And on that farm there was a ...

T: Chicken!

J: Cow, EIEIO. With a

T: Chicken!

J: Moo moo here and a

T: Chicken!

J: Moo moo there, EIEIO.

T: The END!

Baby N'in It

T: Baby in Mommy?

J: Yes, the baby is in Mommy's tummy.

T: Baby in T?

J: No, no babies in T. Only Mommy.

T: Baby in Daddy?

J: No, no baby in Daddy. The baby is only in Mommy.

T: Baby in there! (Points to my belly).

J: Yep, baby in there!

T: OK

20 weeks, 1 day

Paging Dr. Pavlov

Today T was outside, taking his Cozy Coupe out errand running. First he went to the Bagel Store, where he got he and I a bagel (Daddy got two). Then, he decided to go the Target. "T, what will you get at Target?" I asked. He looked up at me with a big grin on his face and said "A pretzel! Yum!" Perhaps I need to reevaulate snacktime at Target.

Partial Redo

You may remember that this is what our bathroom used to look like. It's perfectly serviceable, but the vanity was pretty cheap and starting to buckle/come apart at its cheap little edges. We knew a new vanity was on the list in the next year or 18 months, but came across this terrific little deal.

Eh, voila! Isn't it perty? We replaced the vanity, painted and hung a new shower curtain. We still have some mudding and painting to do on the ceiling since it started peeling off when Ry attempted to smooth and patch.

We also bought a new shower head and water thingie for the tub, but when we take down the tub surround (which I hate) we'll retile. That is a project for another day. Still on our shorter term list is a new medicine cabinet and light. The current cheap pair look even cheaper now that we have a real, grown up vanity and sink. Still, it looks better, no?

Happy Friday!

18 weeks, 2 days

Last weekend.

More happenings

1. I just took what was, perhaps, the most difficult exam of my (recent) college career. I have to wait until Friday to see if I stuck the landing. There were more than 1000 data points to memorize for this test. Ug.

2. I made pesto with basil from our garden last night. It was good. It's the first of the garden fodder for the year. I'm actively soliciting recipes involving basil, tomatoes, cucumbers and zucchini to use the summer bounty.

3. Tucker's memory is getting scary good. He won a fish (stuffed animal) at Sesame Place last weekend. He carried it around for the entire next day. When Ry dropped him at school, he had a hard time convincing him that fish had to stay in the car. Then, Ry left the state. This morning, T asked for the fish. I had to tell him more than once that Daddy was bringing it home tonight and that fish would soon be his again.

4. T has a stuffed dino that we made at Disney in October. It's been one of his favorite toys. When it came time to name it, we let T type whatever he wanted into the computer. What we ended up with was "Ib." And Ib he's been until recently, when T has started calling him "Hibby." I think this is the first animal T has named independently. Hibby has also become part of the night time menagerie and must make the trek upstairs every night.

5. My sister is in Argentina. My mom is in Ireland. I'm in New Jersey. :(

6. We went into Home Depot this weekend expecting to pick up a few items for around the house. We ended up buying a vanity, marble top and vessel sink. The next day (different Home Depot) we bought a shower head and temp controller thingie. Wrap cost: $125. I love clearance. And I luuuurve my new vanity. We had to buy the faucet seperately and it ended up costing as much as everything else combined. I'm not sure when we'll get around to the project, but it's also going to involve a new coat of paint on ceiling and walls and baseboard behind the existing vanity.

7. My class is over in 2 weeks! I have 3 more exams before it's done. Wash your hands.

They're everywhere!

As most of you knew, there are over 100,000,000 microbes on your average kitchen sponge. The range is more like 15,000,000 to 200,000,000, but either way, ew. We also tested water from bagged lettuce (around 100,000 microbes) and a gram of raw, ground turkey (around 1,000). The day we did this experiment, I came home and cleaned my kitchen like I've never cleaned before.

There are a couple of things you can do to keep the microbe count down, like wash your sponge in the dishwasher or microwave it in a bowl of water for a couple of minutes. Since we all aren't sick all the time, it's pretty obvious that most of the microbes aren't pathogenic. Something like 75% of raw poultry in supermarkets is contaminated with camphlyobacter (causes food poisoning) and about 25% is contaminated with salmonella. If you use your sponge to clean up after preparing raw meat, make sure to decontaminate your sponge, or you could be spreading all around your kitchen the next time you wipe your table.

Happy cleaning!

And more cuteness

Can of soup + foot = ow

We are now 4 days in. My foot is fugly. Here's the lesson I learned: never let your toddler build can towers in a shopping cart.

Toddler cuteness

I realize I haven't posted T pictures in a while, so here you go, our last few weeks in pictures:T in his pool in the backyard. I don't bother putting the swim shorts on him at home, because look how cute he is the in swim diaper!
T and our friend's son. They were riding the skateboard at his dad's welcome home from Iraq party.
Obsessed with Dad's shoes lately.
Waiting in line at Sesame Place. He's actually getting really good with the "taking turns" concept.

Once upon a time ...

Happenings

• T dropped a can of soup on my big toe from the shopping cart.  It hurt a lot and bled profusely.  As I'm limping around the store, vainly trying to finish my shopping while keeping the toe from bleeding all over the floor, T kept saying, "Owie Mommy. Feel better now?"  Yes babe, I'm feeling better.  Today it is promising to become a lovely violet color.
• My check engine soon light came on this week (just in time to have the car inspected!)  Ry took it to an autoparts store to read the code on the light to be told that it was a "manufacturer specific" code that they had never seen before.  Undaunted, my hubby scoured the internets to learn how to count the flashes the code made to figure out what it meant.  Last night, he took some time in the car to do just that ... and killed the car battery.  We don't own jumper cables.  Enter one late night trip to Lowes and a battery-jump start thingie and my car is alive and well (with no check engine soon light!).

Fun Things I'm Learning in Micro

1. I suck at preparing T-smear petri plates.  I gouged every one of mine.

2. I'm pretty good with a stain and a microscope.

3. Staph is actually really pretty.  It looks like lots of teeny tiny purple dots.

4. There are a lot of things that cause diarrhea.

5. I never want to be immunocompromised.  There is a fungus that will eat your face off if not caught and treated.  It's found everywhere, but you won't get it unless you're immunocompromised.

6. Fungi is a fun word to say.  Fungi fungi fungi.

7. Pinworms crawl out of your butt at night to lay their eggs. 

8. Wash your hands, there are microbes everywhere!

16 weeks, 5 days

No puking today. 

Pushed: A must read

I just finished Pushed: The Painful Truth About Childbirth and Modern Maternity Care, by Jennifer Block.  It is an extremely well-researched book about maternity care in the U.S. and how it came to be.  This is a must-read for anyone who is a mother, who wants to be a mother someday, who loves a mother or who is interested in how our medical system is failing childbearing women.

This is a fascinating read.  I finished it in 3 days.  I know a lot of you have already heard me harp about our country's high rate of cesarean section (over 30% this year).  This book clearly articulates how childbirth in our country is seen as a pathology, instead of the natural end to a pregnancy.  The U.S. ranks 32 out of 33 in maternal mortality among industrialized nations.  Countries with the best infant and maternal outcomes have most of their births attended by midwives and have between a 14% and 18% cesarean rate.

Pushed also takes a close look at how mothers are treated during childbirth.  Statistics are hard to come by, but anecdotally, I know of several mothers who had procedures performed on them or their babies without their consent.  Block writes about women who had court orders forcing them to have cesareans.  Other women are trying to file assault charges for procedures they  expressly denied.  

Many hospitals require women to stay in bed.  Many hospitals have an official or defacto ban on VBAC (vaginal birth after cesarean), caused primarily because of malpractice insurance. I certainly don't think women should be forced to have a "natural" childbirth, if it's not what they want. I do, however, don't think that interventions are adequately explained to women.  Picotcin, a drug given to women to speed their labors often leads to an epidural.  Epidurals require catheters.  Epidurals and the use of pitocin are more likely to lead to cesarean sections.  The term "casade of interventions" is apt.  It's a term I had never heard before T was born, but one I wish I had known.

I walked into the hospital, my water broken, with contractions 5 minutes apart.  I was 3 centimeters dilated, and all indications were that I would likely continue to progress.  I was given an IV, hooked up to a fetal monitor and moved into a labor room.  The doctor (the head of OB/GYN at my practice) came in, introduced himself and said "we're going to start you on some pitocin."  Why?  To make sure that I didn't labor all day, only to have to have a cesarean, because he was concerned that T was too big to birth vaginally (T was born at 5 lb, 13 oz).  Immediately after getting the pitocin, my contractions went from manageable, to hard core, 2-3 minutes long contractions with only 10-15 seconds in between.  I could barely catch my breath before another one barrelled in.  Within 2 hours, I requested an epidural.  It took another 2 for the anesthesiologist to arrive.  What is normally a short procedure took over 30 minutes because I couldn't stop contracting long enough for the doctor to place the epidural catheter.  Luckily for me, the epidural blissfully worked, and I got some much-needed relief.  The doctor came in several more time, each time indicating that if I only said the word, he'd give me a cesarean.  Each time, I said no.  The doctor and nurses told me they weren't getting good heart tones and recommended an internal monitor (it screws into the baby's head).  Initially, I told them no, but finally submitted after being talked into it.  Finally, I was 10 centimeters.  I pushed for 2 hours.  20 minutes before T was born, the doctor was still pushing a cesarean.  T was born via vacuum extraction.  I was given an episiotomy I didn't consent to.

I had a beautiful, perfect little boy.  I was happy, but numb for days after.  I don't know if things could have gone differently, but I certainly would have liked the opportunity to try and have a non-intervention birth.  I can't regret anything, but it still makes me sad and a little angry.  I felt managed, pushed, dismissed.  It is the reason I started reading.  It is the reason I'm going to become a L&D nurse, and eventually, a midwife.  It is the reason I'm having this baby with a midwife.

Read the book, get informed, make your own decisions.

Perched on the horns of a dilemma

Ouch.

I am currently taking prerequisites to start an RN program.  There are 3 nursing programs in my county.  One is offered through the community college, and the other two are offered via area hospitals.  After my crazy 6 week micro course, I will have finished the prereqs for the two hospital program.  The cc requires 3 additional courses.  I am registered for 2 of them during summer  session 2 and one as an evening course in the spring (baby T.2 will be 2-3 months old).

I've been chatting with folk all semester about the relative benefits/downsides of each program.  What I've learned is that people generally think the hospital programs produce a higher quality of nurse and have a more rigorous program overall.  I have also heard that the instructor for the cc program is a nightmare.  Interestingly, I am more likely to get into the hospital programs than the cc program.  The hospital programs are more interested in grades and recommendations/essays than anything.  The cc is more interested in whether you've finished all prereqs before petitioning, how long you've been enrolled (the longer the better), and then grades.  This puts me at a disadvantage because I'll be finishing my final prereq the spring after I actually petition, and I've only been enrolled at cc for a year or so.

So here's the question ... it is even worth it to take the extra courses?  Not only do I have to pay for them, I also have to pay for 2 extra months of T's preschool and then have to take an evening class with a wee infant.  Plus, the rest of my summer is shot (which is lame, but not the end of the world). I also think that if I were accepted at all three, the cc would be at the bottom of my list.  What would you do?

Life, in the way

Yes, it's been an obscenely long time since my last blog post.  I don't feel bad though. Not even a little bit.  My life has gotten a little bit in the way.  In the past two weeks:

• I had finals for my spring semester courses.  I finished the semester strong and am very pleased with my grades.
• I spent a week in Chicago with my dad, who had a kidney removed.  The surgery went well, and he is recovering nicely (if impatiently) at home now.
• I got home and spent a crazy few days with Ry and T before my microbiology class started yesterday.  The upside is that I think it's going to be a really interesting and fun class.  The downside is that they've crammed a 15 week course into 6 weeks.  Each week = 3 normal weeks and I have an exam almost every week.
• T continues to have aggressive tendencies at school.  Yesterday he headbutted some of the kids.  This behavior baffles me, because he doesn't act out at anything near this level when I or Ry am around.  I spent at hour at school today, both in his room and spying on him via video in the director's office.  He must've known I was watching, because he was a complete angel the entire time.  So, I'm trying to figure out how best to deal with the behavior and how to help his teachers deal with the behavior.  I think part of the problem is that he doesn't know how to deal with frustration.  How do you give a 2-year-old an outlet for frustration?  
• Oh, and I'm still gestating, and still hurling in the morning.  It's definitely getting better now, but I'm ready for it to be over.  I've already extracted a promise for a big, diner breakfast on the morning I awake without the urge to puke.

So there you go, 2 weeks in a nutshell.