Good toys for the car

You'll think it's a joke when I tell you. John and I were packing up to leave for a short road trip and Ecco wanted to pack an activity bag. John thought it was a good idea so he helped her put it together.

We left without much delay and in a while Ecco starts pulling things out of her bag.

I hear her playing with one thing or another, when she asks me if I'll help her "put them all in the same way". I'm driving so I'd have to crane my neck to see what she was trying to hand me, so instead I reach my hand back and she puts a small box in my hand. It's the "toy" John proudly packed for her; a box of matches!

DID YOU HEAR ME!?

My husband packed our not yet three year old daughter a box of matches to play with. AND he's proud! Seriously, he's pleased at his own ingenuity! Like matches are maybe as much fun as Polly Pocket, but without the expense or wasted plastic.

He's told me several times that he thinks they're good fun because she organizes them and because they're basically compact dolls she can create little scenarios with.

Fortunately, our daughter isn't (knock on wood) accident prone and she almost always asks before she does anything new. But still...matches?

I know that most people in my shoes would be angry or worried or scared or at least a little miffed, but I can't seem to muster any of that. I think it's one of the most ridiculous things he's done but it's not really that big of a surprise. Matches are probably too cute to be only for adults and who doesn't love sliding the little drawer in and out left to right, right to left?

John may have finally walked over the line of reasonability, but it seems that this time (although I took away the matches) I'm right there with him!

Break the tension

We were having a little tense moment in the car (nothing big; I just wasn't being direct enough about asking to stop at one grocery store over another) when Ecco chimes in. Now, I don't know how she could know that this would break the tension, so I have to think that she just said the first thing to came to mind.

This is how it went...

Eve: "Do you just want to go to this grocery store and I'll nurse Gray in the car?"

John: "I prefer the other grocery store"

Eve: "But we're passing this grocery store now...aren't you stressed out about Gray crying?"

Ecco: "Excuse me Pop...when we get out of the car, can I see your nose hair?"

I'm still laughing!!!

Major Potty Progress

(Although not the kind you may expect)


I wanted to paint the tile.
"Paint the tile" he shrieks.
"No, no, no. You can't really mean paint"! You must mean "rip out the entire ugly bathroom so we can replace it with something clean and new...yes, I'm sure of it...rip it out! It's the only thing that will do!"

It all happened so fast that I didn't even catch a single picture of our bathroom before this happened:



















Then Ecco, Gray and I went on a lovely trip to the east coast. When we came home, the bathroom looked like this:



MAJOR, MAJOR progress as you see...but nothing you could actually use for bathroom purposes. We did have a solar tube however. Very important detail!



We have been working like crazy (we even hired people to help!) and somehow the project goes on! There are too many in between photos because there were too many "in-between" steps.

But I am proud to announce that we can actually take showers in our bathroom now and GET THIS: We are seriously thinking about moving our many stacks of toiletries from the dining room to the...ohmigod, this is too good!!!...THE new CABINETS in our BATHroom!!!

Wonder of wonders!!!















Gray supervising as we instal the sink!!! (Stay tuned for the latest photo)

Gray's new suit

Brain Caps

We participated in a cognitive development study at UCSD last week. We had to wear special devices on our hands , as well as sensors on our eyes and ears (to track movements) plus the lovely EEG caps. Each of those little holes gets gel injected into it with a big syringe...Ecco almost lost it, until they gave her a big bowl of goldfish crackers.

Gray la la la

Ecco's new pants

John spent 25% of his birthday gift card on these very exciting pants for Ecco:

My birthday is only 2 short months away...

Can you imagine a better gift?



Click here to see what it is:

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.geeksdiy.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/final-button-code-entry.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.geeksdiy.com/&usg=___DXvZn1yPrXVhN4mH82DKV4Aq2c=&h=300&w=450&sz=16&hl=en&start=36&um=1&tbnid=uatb_1SjuaAOVM:&tbnh=85&tbnw=127&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dhome%2Bdoor%2Bbutton%2Bentry%26ndsp%3D21%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26sa%3DN%26start%3D21%26um%3D1

Vote for your favorite blog gadget

I'm just learning about gadgets thanks, in large part, to help from my cousin Evan. I knew that I could add features to my blog from a list provided by the blog host (like calendars and clocks and weather information) but now I know what to do with the HTML I've gathered from other websites.

For example, Flickr.com provides HTML which allows me to post a slideshow of all my photos OR something called a badge which is a rectangle with a bunch of tiny thumbnails of my photos onto my blog.

Right now I have one of each on the right side of the page.

So here's my question to you: Which do you prefer?

I've titled them "more photos1" and more photos2" for the time being so you can send me a comment to let me know which you prefer. You don't have to say why, but if you have an extra minute to write it out I'd love to know!

ABCs or OOOs?

Her version:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/evenovak/3910885989/

The lip/dance sync:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/evenovak/3910190258/?addedcomment=1#comment72157622339076308

Nuk-meistress

My Aunt Marilyn takes pride in her ability to convince babies to take pacifiers, and she has succeeded yet again!
Gray shows big signs of being a thumb-sucker, which is worrisome to me, so a pacifier looks like a great option.
It was really nice for Ecco (who stopped using it just last week) and not hard to get rid of when we finally decided it was time, so we tried with Gray. Gray wasn't having it! We tried several different pacifiers at several different times, and all he did was gag and push it out of his mouth.

Then along comes Marilyn...

Splashy little bath

Check out the way he tries to sneak a sip halfway through.

Houseface

Ecco says this house has teeth

I think it looks like happy Japanese anime

Tonight, I tried to outsmart a migraine headache

Otherwise known as: Don't try this trick at home!
Well, maybe...

If you know me, you know that I have a migraine problem.

I'm more fortunate than many migraine sufferers because I have medicine (however dangerous) that works for me (a class of drugs called triptans - I usually take one called Imitrex).  Unfortunately, while I can calmly slip in the words "however dangerous" when talking about risks to myself, I'm afraid I cannot do the same where my kids are concerned.

The risk of harm to nursing infants seems too little understood for me to take safety for granted, so I worked VERY HARD to outsmart this migraine without Triptans today.  I've done it before with these new stretches that a really good massage therapist taught me, but today stretches alone didn't work.  In addition to the stretches, I tried tylenol and advil and massaging/cracking my back by getting down on the floor and rolling on tennis balls, I took meditative breaths, I walked around, I drank water, I took naps, I thought good thoughts, but alas 6 hours later I still wound up taking Imitrex.

Before I took the medicine I pumped some good milk for Gray, then after taking the medicine I pumped some milk to throw away (always a sad thing for me) but I'm still a little concerned about what might be in my system ... or his!

I gave it my best shot, which is a really hard thing to do while suffering, so I'm proud of myself.  During migraines I experience a lot more than pain.  I also feel a tense kind of unhappiness and I feel both hyper-critical and unable to think.  It took me a while to figure out that these symptoms were part of the migraine ( I've had them since I was 6 years old or longer) but now that I know, I work hard to protect myself and others from my misguided emotions.  I take a lot of deep breaths and remind myself that I won't feel this way once the headache is over.  I haven't figured out how to make confident decisions when I have a migraine so that makes it very difficult to decide how far to go with my experiments with non-triptan solutions.

There were several times when I wanted to throw in the hat, but I'm glad I kept trying because I'm never sure whether the amount of triptans I take will cause long-term harm.  There have been many weeks and months in my life when I have taken quite a bit more than is recommended by the manufacturer.

I still haven't learned when alternative methods will work, so I'm sure this isn't the last time that I beat my head against the wall to cure a headache [sic].  I wish there was an easy way to tell if things weren't going to be resolved, but I'm not sure there is.  I try to pay attention to my mood and my pain level, but I always have to consider other things too like whether I am able to effectively care for my kids. 

I'm super happy that effective migraine drugs exist, but I'll continue my quest for the exact combination of activities and lower toxicity medicine that may eventually allow me to be Imitrex free.


I'm open to suggestion!

Don't take your guns to town...

Do you think John is impersonating Gray or is it the other way around?

Read the second line aloud...

John and I were cracking up about this label for a long time today. I think you have to read it aloud to find it funny. I hope it'll tickly you the way it tickled us. It's also possible that we are delirious with heat exhaustion, but it seems to me that that sentence is funny in so many ways.

The way that John read the word "messy" was enough to get me going but I also thought that "messy" was another item in the list. It sounded like he was saying that you should keep this product away from hair, eyes, messy and skin. Add John's tilted head and raised eyebrows for effect.

But, of course, that's not what he was laughing about because he could see that messy wasn't in the list; it was parenthetical. The reason he cocked his head to read the word "messy" is that it's the only word in that's not all in caps.

We started laughing as soon as he read that word because it just didn't seem like it belonged on the warning label, but we really cracked up when he went on to read the words "and skin" because evidently epoxy is "messy" for the hair and eyes, but not so much for the skin.

Okay, so now I've spent 4 paragraphs describing something funny, I'm sure they advise against that in humor school but I wanted to at least try to share it with you!

I'm laughing still! :)

YUMMMMM!!!

I had a lot of fun searching around other peoples' blogs and websites today.

The cupcake image on this page is inspiring to me:
http://laurabrownart.wordpress.com/

Many other images and words I saw inspired me too. So I got up and started drawing!

I've been stalling a lot, in recent years, so I often feel critical of myself when I see inspiring things on TV or the internet because I'm looking at the inspiration, but I'm not doing anything about it.

I still haven't figured out how to balance the search for inspiration with its utilization. For me, every time I do some little thing rather than just thinking about it, it's a triumph.

I always want to know how to do something perfectly before I begin, so I often resist beginning. But I know that I can be satisfied with first steps. And maybe some of the other ones between the first ones and perfection too.

Today I did some work on my merit badge project. That's something that I've spent a lot of time thinking about this year, that I write about in my journal but I haven't made it happen yet.

More later (I hope).

Right now I've got some doing to do...

Days and days...

Something new happens every day. I think about posting entries here...but I also think about sleep, and the few moments of distraction I get each night. I'm not proud that I'd rather watch TV than write, but that's the way it is right now.

Tonight we went to the pool at my Mom's house with my Mom, Asia, Astra, Bobby, Penny and Kiki. It was GREAT! Earlier, I spent a lovely day with my Mom, Ecco and Gray at UCSD. It's beautiful there! We went to the bookstore, the Price Center and generally, followed Ecco around the grounds as she explored sticks, puddles, seeds and clumps of grass. I kept saying "this is SO pleasant!" , "I'm so happy that we're here right now".

Yesterday and the day before were pretty hard for me.

I'd like to explore what it is that makes a good day good and a hard day hard, but I don't want to commit all that time right now.

I can say that two days ago I got a good workout and it hurt my body. Maybe I didn't get enough sleep the night before, but I didn't see how it was different from all the days prior to that one.

I thought I'd get a migraine, but instead I just had a hard day. That night, Ecco suddenly started being obstinate. It lasted through the next day too, but fortunately John came home early and I was able to take a much needed nap. Because of that, I recovered.

It's always nice to be reminded that tiny breaks/treats/kind words/bits of humor can result in major relief!

Every day is chock full!

Today my day was filled with activity. But even when it's not, it's filled with ideas and fears and people and stress and excitement and great always great conversation with Ecco!

I always think I'll have just one or two great moments to blog about, and I usually notice the especially good bits throughout the day, but I often forget by the time I sit down to write.

I'd like to have a running list of Ecco (and later Gray's) amazing quotes...but what the heck did she say this week!?

Right now, I remember just this one:
Pop beeped his horn because someone wasn't paying attention to him.

Smiles and Scares

It's late so I'm just going to give a summary.

SMILES
Today we saw Gray smile quite a bit. He may have smiled before but I'm going to remember August 17th as the first day he smiled (approximately).
It's so nice to see him smile. He's so cuddly and sweet and I like the idea that he's feeling well.

SCARES
One day not so long ago I mentioned to John that Gray doesn't look into my eyes the way Ecco did. I don't know when we noticed that Ecco loved to look into peoples' faces, but it seemed immediate.

I hadn't been thinking about it too much after that (not that I wasn't thinking about it - just not too much) until John brought it up again today. After he mentioned it, I became obsessed. Gray looks almost at your eyes all the time, but usually just above or over your shoulder. Sometimes he strains his head to look to the side.

Suddenly, this became the focus of my evening.

The main thing I learned while intermittently staring at him and scouring the internet for info is that it's not fun to look at anyone that way! He suddenly became a possible victim of something. It's not a nice lens to look through, but I couldn't stop looking for data.

There's a lot to say because there are several things I'm wondering about (reflux, grunting and groaning, lack of direct eye contact and the fact that he's ridiculously easy - all potential symptoms of conditions on the autism spectrum) but the bottom line is that I finally found some information that calmed me down somewhat.

Scroll down if you're interested in what that was.

In the meantime, I'm going to try to remain patient. More importantly, I'm going to continue adoring and oggling this kid who I'm just absolutely and totally in love with!


http://www.cnn.com/2007/HEALTH/parenting/06/07/par.baby.milestones/index.html

Eye contact

(between 6 and 8 weeks)

This is one of the first milestones you'll notice, and it's a big deal not just because your baby is finally paying attention to you, and following you with her eyes, but also because it indicates that her neurological growth and ability to communicate are on track. She's demonstrating that her brain is registering a familiar face. In a sense, she's saying, "Hey, I know who you are."

Laura Weber was worried when, at 4 weeks, her infant, Nicole, never met her gaze. "Whenever I tried to make eye contact with her, she'd look over my shoulder instead," says the mom of three from Fredericksburg, Virginia. Fueling her concern was the fact that her first daughter, now 4, hit all the milestones on the early side of "normal." When Weber voiced this at Nicole's checkup, her pediatrician stressed that with milestones, there's a wide range of normal. Indeed, Nicole reached this one at 3 months, the late side of normal. If Nicole hadn't begun to make eye contact after 3 months, her doctor would have suggested vision testing to rule out eye disease. The next step would have been to look for signs of attachment or behavior problems. But experts urge parents to refrain from jumping to the worst-case conclusion. "You have to be very cautious about assuming your child has a certain condition. It has to be taken in context with so many other things," says Martin Stein, M.D., director of developmental-behavioral pediatrics at Rady Children's Hospital San Diego, California. The more likely reason for no eye contact is that you're looking at the wrong times. "An infant needs to be in a quiet but alert mental state to respond in this way, and most of the time an infant is awake she's tired or hungry," says Dr. Stein. The lesson? Be patient, and keep your eyes open.

11p2oz

Gray is growing quickly!
We'd heard about these kinds of things ... but since Ecco grew at her own petite pace, we'd never seen it first hand.
Gray weighs about 11 pounds and 2 ounces now and I think he's closing in on 23 inches.
For us, that's big!
We saw Gray's 7 day old friend Jayden, yesterday. I don't have the pictures, yet, but Jayden is SO adorably tiny next to Gray. Ecco was that small but we'd forgotten what it looks like. In their first pictures, Gray looks like Ecco but now I realize that he's a mega version of what she was.
At one month Ecco was just beginning to grow out of the newborn sized clothes where Gray has grown out of most of his 0-3s and isn't too small for most of the stuff that says 3-6m.
Holy Crow!

Outrageous thoughtfulness!

John asked me to help him, so I did.
He was cutting a door for our kitchen cabinets and he needed me to hold one side.
Ecco ran up to see what we were doing and we asked her to move back until we were done.
She stood on the stoop and watched.
I held the particle board door as the saw sprayed me with dust from waist to face. I was wearing my only good nursing shirt so I felt badly when it happened...I don't think sawdust is one of the approved foods for newborns.
I looked at John with sad eyes and said "it sprayed all over me". :(
I was looking for sympathy and maybe even an apology, but what I got was so much better!
Ecco calls back without missing a beat "I will help you brush it off Mama!". She is so thoughtful! And it's useful to have such a pragmatist around. I thought I needed an apology, without realizing it, I was trying to make John take a little bit of blame, but the truth of the matter is that the sawdust was spilled milk; already done. What I needed was a little kindness. And unexpected kindness like that is some of the sweetest medicine I know!

Planning

Everything requires planning.
Sometimes I like to plan (things like parties and travel) but mostly I don't.
Right now I'm trying not to eat cow's milk because some friends have said that cutting dairy out of their diet while nursing helped their babies with tummy troubles.
Gray sometimes seems like he's having stomach pain so I'm giving it a shot.
But here's the thing...I eat a lot of dairy.
I didnt' realize it, but now that I'm trying to cut it out I see that it's true.
At the same time, I'm trying to cut back on calories because I still look pregnant 4 weeks postpartum.
It seems like these restrictions should go well together, but I'm feeling overly restricted.
But I digress...
The point of the story is that I'm often thinking about how my life with kids may go smoother if I felt more comfortable with planning and today I realized that now I even need to plan food better. The fridge is filled with healthy snacks that are made of dairy products and the only way I'm going to change my diet is to get rid of those things, and replace them with something else.
Somehow I thought this post would be more interesting.
It's not that i thought anyone would really want to read about my grocery list but somehow it seems profound to me that planning niggles its way un-invited into every area of my life.
I often find myself wondering whether I should finally just let it in. And when it comes to groceries...I will. So maybe this is the beginning of something new...?

Circumcision?

We knew it was going to be a boy from the start.

I figured it would be, then when I was pregnant I guessed that it was, then the ultrasound tech guessed that it was.

It was an early ultrasound, but we knew that little girls didn't have those things because we have a little girl already. And she doesn't. Just ask her. She's always happy to list off the people she knows who have penises and 'ginas.

So this one had the former, and we were going to have a choice to make. At first I thought I'd leave it up to my husband. He thought it'd be simpler to have a son with the same features as himself so we were planning for a circumcision. Leaving things up to him made my life easier because although I lean away from circumcision politically and emotionally...the aesthetics of it do appeal to me. I did a little research about the pros and cons, but basically I was just happy that someone else was making the decision.

Then he was born.

Something about meeting this perfect little, tiny person made me feel totally unsure about the whole circumcision idea. I checked with my husband and he agreed that we could forego.

Then we talked to the Rabbi.

We planned to have a Jewish naming ceremony for both of our kids when our son was born, and when we met with the awesome rabbi who was to perform the ceremony, she brought up the issue of a bris (Jewish circumcision).

We like everything about this rabbi so this was just one of the many cool conversations we had with her. Her perspective is that people like to argue against circumcision with modern logic and that there really isn't any place for that in the discussion. Apples and oranges. You can decide that you are more interested in modern logic than cultural tradition and religion, but the modern logic doesn't negate the tradition.

"We're a tribal culture" she said. I wish I remember how she phrased the next part, but basically she left me with the feeling that this is a rite of passage that may be painful for the baby, and it's definitely difficult for the family, but you're making a pact between your child and g-d and it's designed to be this way.

And I was won over.

So just one short week ago, we had a fabulous naming ceremony for our son and daughter and we had a bris.

Our fabulous Rabbi created an awesome ceremony for both kids and since our son would have his own special rite later that night, she created a special foot washing ceremony for our daughter.

Our daughter loved the experience (calling out to each person as they approached and inviting fence sitters to join in) and people who participated are still calling to say what a special experience it was for them.

The bris was much less scary than I expected, the procedure went well, and the after-care was totally manage-able.

My husband and I are both happy we did it (perhaps for different reasons?), and now we're wondering what the next rite of passage may be.

---TO BE CONTINUED---

Gray is almost a MONTH old now!

We had a very quiet first month, and now he's getting pretty talkative. I can't expect any kid of mine not to be talkative...but I wish he would limit the majority of discussion time to the hours between 9am and 10pm. Alas...he talks all night. And as far as I can tell, he's not asking for anything in particular. He's not crying...just making sounds. Although half the time his face looks upset so I spend my time split between trying to figure out what he wants and falling asleep rather than figuring out what he wants.

Last night was particularly tough; I don't know whether I could have quieted him, but I was too tired to do more than nurse and a little half-hearted back/belly patting.

I shouldn't really call it a "tough" night though, but I wasn't particularly upset. If I can keep my attitude positive, I can handle all kinds of things. This morning I stayed in bed until after 8:00am (pretty late for us) because Ecco was at Grandma's. I would like to have slept more...but we went out for a hike and I don't feel too tired.

So the next thing is to figure out how to get more exercise. I'm thinking I'll start 'stroller strides' in a few weeks ... I'm not totally sure. But what else? Ecco isn't into hiking yet.

I've had John or family in town since Gray was born so I think I'll spend the next few weeks trying to figure out what its like to be a Mom of two.

Sometimes I think I'm spending too much time in front of the TV, but the TV can be a very useful tool! I don't want to be ungrateful to the TV gods, but I SERIOUSLY want to figure out what else I/We can do.

It seems like Gray nurses constantly...but maybe this is just a growth spurt period...I'll just have to wait and see. How do people nurse on the go? My nipples still hurt a lot sometimes so I'm not inclined to move. I keep thinking how easy it would be if I only had one kid...too bad you don't really feel that way the first time. Although, I was quite productive when Ecco was tiny, so there's hope!