• Bad Mom,  Bug,  domesticity,  half assed posts,  the great illness of 06

    stuff and stuff*

    Is it normal for a nine month old to eat more than an adult? Baby Bug has a huge appetite! She just shovels the food in. She keeps me hopping trying to think of new things to let her eat. My favorite foods are things that she can pick up with her fingers because this slows her down a bit. Pasta is great. So is buttered waffle and toast and really slippery pieces of banana. But the problem with letting her feed herself is that she just inhales the stuff. She has no teeth so I can’t really tell her to chew her bites but is it normal to gum it twice and then swallow? She worries me, this baby. I’m afraid I’m raising one of those hamburger swilling pigs from a Carl’s Jr. commercial. Her appetite is voracious!

    She can eat a whole cup full of macaroni and cheese, some bits of leftover chicken, a fourth of cheese sandwich, two cubes of squash mixed with rice cereal, about a zillion sips of apple juice mixed with water and the crust off a slice of pizza! (Broken into baby pinky sized pieces of course).

    Yet she has no appetite for anything pureed. Still. I can only get her to eat her homemade baby food squash by mixing it with plain yogurt. She loves yogurt. Good thing too because back during the great illness of 06 I wasn’t producing much milk and I was really worried that Baby Bug might not be getting her vitamins. But things are working again now.

    But I didn’t really want to blog about food. That’s just the picture I had handy. I wanted to blog about how I didn’t listen to you all about taking it easy. I worked like a mad woman yesterday and cleaned my house from top to bottom. It felt so good. After letting things go haywire for three weeks straight it felt good to have a clean carpet again. The laundry is done (thanks to my mom), the groceries are bought and put away (also thanks to my mom), the beds are made, the bathroom is clean, the cat litter and cat food is vacuumed up off the carpet… all is well again. Sigh……

    And I’m fine! I am! Really! I thought I might have pulled a stitch trying to put away a 20 pound bag of rice in the cupboard where the water heater is (I know! But I have no other place to stow it!!!) but I’m fine. Just a little twinge and it was gone. I lift Baby Bug all day long and sometimes I even hoist her onto my hip that is dangerously close to incision number four. But it’s fine! It barely hurts! Maybe I didn’t even have surgery. Maybe it was all a scam. Maybe they just cut some surface cuts on my skin and charged my insurance a whole whopping lot of money. Cause I don’t feel anything.

    I’m thanking God and moving on. It’s good to be healthy again. For a time there I thought I might have to live the rest of my life with pain. It was something I had to consider. I have a friend who has had serious back surgery and pain is a daily thing for her. I am in awe of that. I couldn’t do it. I hate the thought of being dependent on medication just to get through. But this is how it really is for a lot of people. So if anything this whole ordeal has taught me to be thankful.

    I’m thankful but not necessarily smart. I didn’t rest a bit. We even went to the park yesterday. I had to put Baby Bug in the sling for a few minutes too (on top of my stitches!!!) just so I could get the stroller out of the trunk without having to put her down on the cement to play with oil stains and broken glass. It was a tiny bit uncomfortable but not that bad.

    I miss the sling. The stroller is great but I don’t get to see her moving her arms up and down when she gets excited. She’s way out there in front of me behind the massive collapsing shade thing. If I want to look at her I have to stop walking and walk around to the front of her. I loved the sling because she was close to me. Like my own personal little friend, listening to every word I said as we ambled down the street. My mom thinks I’m nuts that I like to harness a sack of potatoes to my chest and take a walk. But I do. It’s just easier. Maneuvering a stroller up and down curbs, in between people is kind of a pain. It just doesn’t fit everywhere. Also it’s a pain in the neck to push up a hill. I’m much better at hiking up hills with something strapped to me than I am pushing something that wants to roll back onto me.

    So maybe I’ll have to look into some kind of back pack. Or maybe I just need to find less hilly places to walk.

    Sigh… I know this is a boring post. I wish I could hire a babysitter so I could have more time to be witty. But I guess that’s not really a high priority on the list of things to budget for.

    *I think I used that title before… but again, no time for wittiness…

  • the great illness of 06

    The Quick Road to Recovery

    I think I might be part super hero. I’m almost healed from my surgery already. Or maybe it’s just a really easy surgery. I was so worried that I would be doubled over in pain for days. I thought for sure I’d be in bed for a week. I was freaking out about taking pain killers and drugging Baby Bug through my breast milk. I even asked the anesthesiologist if I could skip the pain killers and he shook his head, no. “No way,” he said. “You’re going to need those pain killers for a good while.” And he looked like he meant business. He was wielding the long sharp needles after all. I figured he knew his stuff.

    But he was wrong! Ha! Ha hah! I haven’t taken a single pain pill! Toby picked up my months worth prescription of vicodin and I’m not going to take one pill! I hardly hurt at all. You know how they have that zero-to-ten pain scale where ten is the pain of having a baby and zero is no pain at all? Well, I barely got up to a three. A measly three! Nothing that three advil won’t take care of in a jiffy.

    I admit I’m uncomfortable though. My right shoulder hurts sometimes (a strange side effect they told me might happen.). My back aches because I’m using different muscles to avoid using my abdominal muscles and I don’t feel like I can take a deep breath properly. It’s the breathing that’s bothering me the most but it’s not really painful. Just annoying. Oh yeah, and I can’t laugh. So don’t send me any joke emails. Cause I won’t read them. Of course Toby has been making me laugh all day which is fun but hurts.

    I gave myself quite a scare in the shower this morning. I was trying to wash all the orange iodine off my body parts (that stuff won’t come off) and I inadvertently let some water splash on my bandages. You’re not really supposed to get them really wet but I was a bit careless. Well, suddenly blood started oozing out and down my abdomen. Blood! My insides are coming out!!!! Oh no! I’m never going to heal! I thought. I was so scared that I quick hopped out of the shower and never completely washed the shampoo out of my hair. I’ve been walking around all day with half washed hair. It’s not a look I’m proud of.

    So anyway, unless I’m jinxing myself by being so proud of the lack of pain, I think I’m doing fine. Finey fine fine. Isn’t it weird that you can take a body part out and everything seems to continue to work? In fact I’ve eaten some foods with fat in them today and nothing sent me to the bathroom. I had a bagel with cream cheese this morning (CREAM CHEESE!!) and house special chicken from Pick-Up-Stix (CHICKEN WITH FAT!!!) this afternoon. Those aren’t exactly fat free healthy meals. But nothing happened. I’m good as new. This is really really strange. I’m just waiting for the pipes to work and I end up in the bathroom hating life.

    I’m just really really thankful that everything is working out. Maybe it’s all the well wishers from this blog. Maybe you guys are magic. I think that’s it. So you deserve a big fat THANK YOU. I really needed to get better quick and all your comments and good thoughts and prayers worked. So far so good. And it’s a good thing too because you all know what it’s like to take care of a nine month old. My mom left today and I’m going to miss her.