I could kill a vampire...

... with my breath.   In the last 48 hours I have consumed not one, not two, but almost three bulbs (whole bulbs...not cloves) of raw garlic in a desperate attempt to stave off mastitis.  And this is where I insert a warning about the rest of this post containing delirious post partum confessions probably not suitable for a mixed audience.

I had recurring mastitis with Robbie, so it's a familiar albeit somewhat hellish deja vu.   I really really don't want to take antibiotics for a whole host of reasons that mostly revolve around me not wanting to start a catch-22 like I did last time where the antibiotics wiped out my immune system so much, I just immediately got another infection.   So here I sit with what basically amounts to a painful game of whack-a-mole where I have so many clogged milk ducts, I feel like I get rid of some of them, and more pop up somewhere else.   The list of alternative remedies I've tried include but are not limited to, hot showers, castor oil packs, lecithin, the aforementioned raw garlic (yum...gag),  anti-inflammatories, probiotics, probiotics on my nipples, essential oils on my my breasts, cabbage in my bra, nursing upside down...in a football hold and every other contortion I can think of or make up.   It's been a full time job. 

Today I woke up and decided I needed to have a new bra....as in, do not pass go, do not collect $200, head straight to the nearest mall despite the fact I'm not exactly mobile right now.   I have plenty of perfectly wonderful nursing bras that aren't working for me.   Normally nursing bras are these huge, hideous things that look pre WWII era and come in sizes like 32GGG.  You'd think with them being so stoic and industrial by nature, they would work for me, but no... they seem to exacerbate my problems, and I'd decided they were the root of all evil.  Last time I found the perfect nursing bra at...Fredericks of Hollywood *cough cough* and so that's where I dragged my slept in hair and breast milk stained shirt self this morning.   I was like a coke addict desperate for some relief.  I finally got to the dressing room with the appropriate size and sighed with relief when sure enough...the second I put my miracle bra on, all pain eased.  

I wasn't about to take the bra off after all that just to pay for it, so I went looking for a store associate to ask if I could leave it on.   She said that was fine, I just needed to give her the tag.  No problem, I ripped off my tank and started to get the tag off right then and there when she suggested I might be more comfortable doing that in a dressing room.  Ah..right.  I'm still in that post-modesty-less zone where I'm so sleep deprived and so completely desensitized, I forgot it wasn't appropriate to undress in a store filled with giant pictures of hawt nearly naked women.   I probably wasn't really good for business either.  A haggard shell of a human...newly post partum... walking around dragging her leg like a zombie.   It doesn't exactly inspire someone to buy any of the sexy lingerie (which is all 40% off right now in case anyone is interested).    I kept saying "I'm so sorry, I just had a baby."  as if that would explain it all to the tiny 18 year old trying to steer me to the nearest dressing room.

   As she opened the door for me, she picked something up off the floor and said "is this your shirt".  Um yup, I'd left my shirt in the dressing room in my exuberance.   At least I had gotten the tank back on?   All I could say was,  "I'm so sorry, I just had a baby." 

Lord have mercy.  This child is so precious and worth it, but I'm not sure how much longer I'm going hold out.

Upside-down World

I'll ever forget the look on Jim's face when I asked him quite honestly "I just don't understand how the baby got poop on his diaper...I mean, where did it come from?"  

Between the leg thing and the meds, I'm sure he thought I'd lost my mind.  There was a completely reasonable explanation for why I asked...but I don't remember it at the moment. 

Jim just sort of blinked at me and said really slowly like he was talking to Charlie in the middle of the night after finding him trying to pee in the bathtub, "um babe...the poop came from his butt."

Then we laughed. Which then made me cry because you can't laugh when you've just had a c-section.   Then the crying caused a letdown, which then meant I soaked my shirt with not only my tears, but with breastmilk as well.

And that my friends is what you call being post-partum.  The crazy mixed up world where you're as deliriously happy as you are sleep deprived and crazy. 

I've got this vague awareness that life is going on at breakneck speed around me, and I'm supposed to be participating instead of sitting here counting neck wrinkles and new fat rolls on my baby.  I'm getting a million and one emails from the kids charter school about all kinds of truly important things...testing they're supposed to be at this week... curriculum that needs to be picked up ASAP and meetings I can't miss.   Jamie starts three different kinds of therapy this week for issues I can barely remember exist when I see him cuddling and singing to his baby brother.  Robbie starts speech therapy next week which I've set three reminders for because goodness knows I'm never going to remember it any other way.  I'm also supposed to harass Robbie's medical records out of Kaiser which...ha... Kaiser and I don't have the best relationship at the moment, and right now I'm picturing myself having to break into their medical records office at midnight in a wheelchair. 

CC started yesterday without me, and it was strange (albeit a bit satisfying) to watch Jim make breakfast and pack lunches while Robbie bawled, Charlie freaked out about his shirt collar bothering him, and Jamie flooded the bathroom trying to comb his hair (he looked like a cross between a wet dog and a slicked up salesman before Jim rescued him).  It confirmed my suspicion that mornings just suck.  Particularly mornings where you have to get everyone out the door early.  I don't know how non-homeschoolers do it.  I think most of our problem revolves around the fact that we have one super chipper morning kid, and one complete wreck of a night owl, and the poor middle one ends up at the mercy of both.  Meanwhile I am enjoying my spectator status (and brainstorming) because it will very shortly be my challenge to deal with.

But seriously....neck rolls! 

Cloud Baby

Conversation I'm overhearing right now between Jamie, Charlie and Jim.

 "William's all mine."
"No, he's all mine!"
 "Well he's my brother"
 "He's my brother too!"
 "Well he's my son, so both of you stop it."
"But I want to hold him."
"I asked first!"
"But I'm the oldest." 
Ensuing sounds of smackdown. 
"I'm the dad and neither of you can hold him while you're wrestling."
"What?"
"I said STOP FIGHTING, you just hit William in the stomach" 

~ ~ ~

Oh William.  You have no idea what you've been born into.   I feel like I need to bequeath you a special sword or magic trumpet or something.  I hope you survive. 

I've always enjoyed doing my own newborn photoshoots, but this is the first time I've been physically unable to do it very easily.   I thought it was going to be completely impossible, but my mom and I did it together in a sort of two pronged approach where she was my hands and feet. 

I need to do another one with the boys, but this way if I never get to it, I've at least captured the magical newborn stage that disappears so fast.

 He's a very awake baby...not unhappy like I first thought he'd be, just way too awake for a kid on vicodin.  So this sleepy picture was a hard shot to get.

 This is normal Will. 

 Jim calls this "the cloud picture" but I'm very proud of this blanket.  I saw something similar at Anthropologie for $350, then I saw another one on Pinterest, and like the girl I am...I had to have it.  Except I bought the raw yarn off of Etsy, dyed it and knit it myself.   The dyeing part was the most fun, the knitting part was horrendous.  I daydream too much to knit anything.  I think I took this blanket apart at least five times and started over because I lost track of where I was. ho hum

  

 You have to admit, William looks very much like a little monkey. 

 Pointy butt.

We call this his sleepy puppy face.  It's funny how newborns can look totally different one second to the other.

My mom and Julia are here from Guatemala...which I didn't originally think I would need.  Ha.  It apparently takes two adults and a teenager to take care of three kids, a wounded mother and a very awake infant.   It doesn't help that it's hotter than Mars in San Diego right now.   I cannot wait for Fall weather.  I don't think I've ever spent a more miserable Summer in my life.   Thankfully, some friends had pity and loaned us a small window air conditioner that we installed in our room.   So now there's a little slice of coolness in our tiny apartment.  Our bedroom now doubles as my throne room, school room, slumber party room and the room of requirement.   I'm a bit like Rapunzel though, in that I'm stuck up here in my tower, so if you want to say hi...please feel free to come over!

 

Hello Grandma  

Big Expectations

It's funny... Usually, the more you anticipate something, the more you set yourself up for disappointment.   If you have a particularly above average imagination, then letting it run away with visions of your wildest dreams usually means you suffer a lot of crushingly dramatic disappointments.   I'm sure there are exceptions, maybe some people always get their deepest hearts desires, I don't know.   Mine recently, have revolved around fantasizing about air conditioning this Summer.  I'm pretty sure I can't remember the last time it was legitimately chilly enough to drink the now disparaged Pumpkin Spice Latte, but it certainly wasn't last Winter. 

But there is one huge glaring exception to the whole "don't get your hopes up" rule.  Having a baby.   Jim and I have been wondering for months what William would be like... what color his hair would be...his eyes (which is completely meaningless considering our babies hair and eyes rarely settled on a color very long).   We've spent months taking care of someone we desperately love but hadn't met.   It would seem to me a recipe of disaster... counting on someone being so amazing when people are so often disappointing.  But then we laid eyes on our little Will.   We held his tiny little bones in our arms and thought he was even more amazing than we were hoping for. 

 

And it's a good thing, because while we're all gushing over his soft elbow dimples and fighting over who gets to hold him next, I've got a troupe of evil phantom elves trying to saw off my left leg with a red hot iron poker.   I'm not sure what went wrong during the surgery.   There was apparently a lot of scar tissue and a super thin uterine scar that was about to burst?  But we both came out of recovery fine, and it wasn't until a day or so afterwards that I got up and about fell over from a weird shooting pain in my left leg.   It's gotten worse since then, and nobody can figure it out.  My nurses weren't familiar with "help my leg is burning" complication from a c-section.   The surgeons say it's got to be anesthesiology's fault, and anesthesiology says it's got to be something the surgeons did.   They kept me another day scratching their heads over it before sending me home with vicodin and a walker.  (the PT guy they sent down with the walker looked a little lost to find himself in Labor&Delivery lol).   The c-section part of my recovery looks and feels great.   I'd never guess I'd just had my abdomen sliced open and sewed shut.  What I would guess is that I got shot in the leg and there's a bullet left in there somewhere.  The pain is excruciating...topping any of the other traumatic incidents in my life.  Up until now I would have said the broken foot or the tonsillectomy was the most painful thing I've ever gone through, but they've been knocked off their pedestal by these evil phantom elves and their chainsaws (...or was it red hot pokers?). 

Hopefully it's all just temporary nerve damage caused by all the tissue trauma to that general area.  Because I'm not sure how much longer my family is going to last with me in bed coming unglued every time someone barely touches my left leg. 

Praying next week brings healing and answers... 

Four Years Past The Seven Year Itch

Happy 11th anniversary to us!  We've officially been married so long Jim and I were having trouble remembering what we've done for our anniversary each year.  Ahem.  Luckily (but probably inconsequentially) for us, I recorded everything on here which means if I ever want to tell my great grandchildren about being married for 11 years, I have to eek out some sort of cave scratching regarding yesterday.  

This is the first anniversary I've been pregnant, and whoosh am I pregnant.   So pregnant Jim promptly ordered me fried pickles as soon as we sat down at the little pier cafe in Seaport Village while I chewed on ice and fanned myself like I was in the Sahara instead of a breezy cool balcony on the bay. 

Our ten year anniversary last year seemed so...anticlimactic and twilight zone-ish.   We spent year zero to ten saying silly things like "We'll renew our vows for our tenth!", "We'll take a cruise...go to Europe...do something extra special".  Instead we spent it frantically trying to move our family from the only home they'd ever known,  and we wouldn't have celebrated it at all if generous friends hadn't of sent us out for a fancy dinner.  This year though I just feel incredibly lucky.    According to Facebook we should have never "courted", we should never have gotten married so young.   We should have kissed before we got married, we should have grown up and matured a little more...seen the world...experienced life.   I'm not so arrogant or naive to presume anything we did or didn't do was the "secret" as to why we're still happily married...I'm just grateful.   Grateful I still have a husband I respect, am attracted to, and who I think is amazing.   Grateful he feels the same way about me.   Grateful I've never had cause to second guess or regret my wedding vows.   Desperately hopeful that the future holds more of the same.  I hope eleven years only represents a small fraction of our marriage...that Jim doesn't kill himself on his motorcycle and I don't have a heart attack from trying to homeschool and keep four boys alive.

Meanwhile, I enjoyed reclining lazily on the grass while listening to the San Diego symphony.  The cruise ships leaving the bay didn't strike so much as a small chord of jealousy in me...although that may have been because I was too busy moaning about my aching back and swollen feet.   

At least I can look forward to chasing an almost one year old around for our 12th anniversary?

Classical Conversations Cycle 3 - Wooden History Figures

Since I have two very active, hands on, visual learners, Classical Conversations is sometimes a bit hard for us because it involves so. many. songs.    I'm always trying to implement creative ways to teach the memory work at home, and I also love handmade, naturally sourced toys.   So when I finally buckled down to go over my school planning for the upcoming year I found myself browsing Etsy for things like "wooden George Washington" and "Christopher Columbus" etc etc.  It got harder when I tried to find a toy Vanderbilt or Carnegie. Ahem.     My mom is an amazing artist, and my dad loves to work with wood, so I grew up with things like a "to scale" Noah's Ark and a wooden Nativity Scene that folded in on itself was easy for little hands to play with.

Now my parents and their awesome abilities are thousands of miles away from me.  They're missionaries to the Deaf in Guatemala and while I occasionally scrounge their U.S. attic for leftover wooden toys from my childhood, it didn't exactly help with my very detailed list of historical figures listed in the Cycle 3 history songs.    Like Etsy, my parent's attic didn't have little Vanderbilts or Teddy Roosevelts lying around among the rafters.    So I asked my mom (begged? pleaded?) how hard it would be for her to design new figurines for me that would fit with this upcoming Classical Conversations cycle, and how difficult it would be to make them.

I don't know what I was expecting, but I was totally blown away when I got a box in the mail with these in it.




This is my set, hand painted with love by my mother.  They include all of the major figures listed in the history sentences.

And the best part is they made quite a few sets, so they're available for sale if anyone else is like me and interested in creative supplements to the CC curriculum. 


They were designed by my parents but are made by deaf students (usually young adults) learning to work with tools in a workshop.   All profits go to the actual individuals who made them (finding a job is difficult in Guatemala if you're deaf).   


Most of them are currently unpainted, and would come with a PDF of rough directions and pictures.  (everything can be painted with a sponge, q-tip and toothpick... no fancy artistry or brushes required. My mom likes to keep it simple so kids can do it). 


I have a few painted sets available, but they will likely be a little different than mine due to the variety of "artists in training" working on them.


You can download an order form here. And email it to estheramsey@yahoo.com
Or send your address and what you want to estheramsey@yahoo.com 

Feel free to pass this on.  There are approx 30 sets available, and I would love for none of their hard work to go to waste. 

Items included in set:  

Christopher Columbus                                       Pilgrims (man and woman)

Native Americans (man and woman)                 Lewis and Clark

George Washington                                           Henry Clay

Davy Crockett                                                   Abraham Lincoln

President Polk                                                  General Ulysses S. Grant

General Robert E. Lee                                     Civil War Soldiers (Union and Confederate)

Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, Carnegie, Swift         Teddy Roosevelt

President Wilson                                             Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin

Out of the woods is worse...

I probably will piss off the fates and regret saying this, but I almost prefer the projectile expulsion of fluids during the stomach flu versus the post illness recovery phase.    When kids are sick you can't help but feel sorry for them, they're all cuddly and hot and for the first time in months you get to see them sit still for more than ten seconds at a time.    Plus, you spend so much time doing laundry, mopping the floor, scrubbing the toilet and disinfecting every surface in sight, you don't have time to get frustrated.    (Side note, how is it that my house is simultaneously the nastiest and cleanest it's ever been?  I swear dwarves could mine diamonds off the sides of my toilet, it sparkles so brilliantly.  Never has it been this determinedly scrubbed ten times a day).    I know it's all hard work, and nobody wants the stomach flu to hit their house, but ohmyword it's the aftershocks that threaten to overwhelm me and send me over the edge.  

Like the moment you kick everyone off of the piles of towels in your room, and send them back to sleep in their own room.  Oh the horrors.   I'd say it was a tear-inducing festival of hysteria, but seriously everything causes drama right now.   It's nonstop, "What do you mean I can't eat jello for every meal now?"   "Why can't I watch TV endlessly anymore?"  "He touched me" "Well he looked at me funny."  "I'm tired."  "I'm hungry...no I'm not hungry...yes I am hungry."     

It goes on and on and on, and quite frankly I'm done.  Peace out, this is where I get off.    

Someone please tell me everything will go back to normal eventually, because right now I feel like someone has switched out my normally good natured, sushi consuming, high energy children with limp impersonations who won't eat anything but plain pasta and complain that swimming is boring.   Bah.