September 4, 2011 5:04 pm

Disaster Shower

Most of the time, I try to time my showering while Wesley is napping, because I don’t have to worry about him getting into stuff or hurting himself while he’s awake. Today was a shower day for me, but I didn’t manage to shower before Daniel left for work.

Wesley seemed cheerful, so I told him I was going to hop in the shower and he could play until Mama was done. He saw me get in the shower and then toddled off to find some toys. I got done shampooing my hair and had just applied my conditioner when I heard a scream.

Parents, nannies, babysitters: You know this scream. The HELP I AM INJURED I MAY BE DYING HELP HELP scream.

I quickly shut the shower off, grabbed a towel and ran into the living room, thinking maybe he fell off the couch or something fell on him, but I didn’t see him! He screamed again and I realized he was in my bedroom. I sprinted that direction.

He was sitting on the floor with one hand pinned inside my pants drawer, scream-sobbing.

(Aside: he is ALWAYS messing with drawers even though he knows he’s not supposed to. He’s gotten his fingers pinched before but it hasn’t seemed to deter him.)

I flung open the drawer and looked at his finger. It was crunched. Like, really crunched. As in, he was not bleeding and the skin wasn’t broken but I was not immediately sure this was a “walk it off” sort of situation. His nail had a dent and was purpley where the drawer smashed it, and his finger pad was white and formed to the shape of the drawer.

I sat there comforting him until he stopped crying. His finger had mostly gone back to the right shape and coloring, so I told him I needed to get back in the shower to finish getting clean. (I was still soaking wet and covered in conditioner.) He seemed okay, but once I stepped in the shower he freaked out and started screaming and wouldn’t stop signing “milk.”

So, I did what had to be done: I kneeled on the bottom of the tub with the shower running, and provided a walk-up milk bar. Eventually, he calmed down enough that I was able to stand up and finish my shower, but man. I am going to avoid showering when he’s awake for a long time!

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September 1, 2011 7:08 pm

My First LLL Meeting

I went to my first La Leche League meeting several weeks ago! I had been meaning to go for a while, but the nearest meetings are about an hour away so you really have to make a point of going.

I accidentally left about 30 minutes late because I couldn’t get Wesley ready to go fast enough, and then I had to stop to get gas and it was basically a whole big mess. Fortunately, nobody seemed to mind that I was late and despite being disoriented initially, I had a lot of fun. The moms were really nice and there was a wide range of babies there – everything from a 3-week-old and an 8-week-old to a couple five- or six-month-olds and then Wesley and a 14-month old. Wesley managed to ask to nurse three different times during the hour we were there, but I think that was more because he was ready for a nap than anything else.

The meeting was a lot more about general parenting than I would have expected. The leader passed around index cards with questions on them like, “How do you get a haircut?” and “How do you use a public restroom?” and we would chat for a bit about how we personally manage to get those things done.

After the meeting was over, I talked to the leader about the process of becoming a LLL leader myself. I am now working on a writing assignment that involves talking about each of the ten philosophies of LLL and what they mean to me. I am excited to eventually start some LLL meetings here, since we don’t even have a mother’s group or a breastfeeding group or anything like that and it would be nice to have some kind of support group for new mothers.

The next meeting is a week from today and I’m excited to go again. I have to complete a “series” of four meetings before I am eligible to become a leader applicant, and as I continue attending, I’m hoping to get a better feel for how the meetings are organized and what sort of things to discuss for when I hold my own meetings.

(Also, if anyone is curious about my breastfeeding woes, you will be pleased to hear that I began forcing the use of the nipple shield with every feeding and I am now completely healed. His latch is still dreadful, but using the shield avoids 99% of the pain involved. So I am tied to the shield, yes, but not bleeding and that is a compromise I am more than willing to make.)

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August 30, 2011 9:25 pm

Recent Tidbits

I’ll admit that I was shocked to discover it’s been a month since I updated my site. I actually can’t remember the last time I went so long without an update, and I don’t even know what I’ve been doing instead of writing.

Yesterday, I went to the library by myself (amazing, since I don’t get a ton of alone-time these days!) and got six books. I read four of them yesterday and one today. The last one was kind of an impulse grab, something about small businesses that I thought Daniel might be interested in and that I thought I’d skim through too, but I probably won’t actually look at it. The other five were The Discipline Book by Dr. Sears (because I like his philosophy and was interested in seeing what he had to say about toddlers), Free Range Kids by Lenore Skenazy (saw it on the shelf and remembered I’d heard of it and wanted to read it), Escape by Carolyn Jessop (lady from a fundamentalist religious cult escapes with eight kids in tow), The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls (girl and siblings grow up with flighty mother and alcoholic father, live off the land, etc), and The Baby Thief by Barbara Bisantz Raymond (described as “the Untold Story of Georgia Tann, the Baby Seller Who Corrupted Adoption”). All great choices, for sure. (And yes, I do read that fast!) (But I did stay up until 3:30am last night to finish Escape.)

I had kind of forgotten how much I love reading, and it made me sad that I don’t get to do it very often anymore. I used to read at least 20 minutes a day (split between my to-and-from work commute) which worked out to about an Agatha Christie novel per week, and now I’m lucky if I read a book every two months. The last book I read before that was The Help, which I liked very much.

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I made myself a portfolio site. I redid our local Farmer’s Market website. I made a site to locate city sidewalks, because they are few and far between. I’m kind of trying to get back into the swing of things with regard to development, since I think I might want to take on some freelance stuff.

It’s hard though, because I know I’m not as strong of a designer as I am a developer, and while I am able to come up with nice things, I really honestly do not think I can do it under pressure (e.g., a paying client). My plan is to stick to simple sites that I can develop with WordPress and take advantage of customize-able themes, or do site “fixes” or facelifts to fix issues rather than total redesigns. Unless one of my lovely designery-type friends wants to team up with me? I can work random hours on a part-time basis, haha.

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Last week, we went to the county fair twice in one day. I used to love the fair growing up – if you got a blue ribbon on something you entered, you could get $3 for it, and I often made my “summer money” this way. I got free coloring books about Smokey the Bear, admired the needlework exhibits and vowed to enter something next year, and ran away from the Tea Party booth (!) and registered to vote at the Idaho Democrats booth. Pigs oinked at Wesley and he burst into tears. (He loves piggies but I think he loves the idea of piggies more than real-life ones.) I ate an oversized corn dog and had bites of an elephant ear.

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Daniel made this cola recipe and I can’t say enough good things about it. It’s the perfect summer drink. Light, refreshing, and delicious.

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