don't trust the shrimp

mike and i are recovering from a horrible food poisoning experience on friday night, and i have to say that i found food poisoning to be one of the most miserable experiences ever. we went to an asian food restaurant near our house that we had been to many times before, and have always liked. we didn't get sushi this time, but the chinese. it was piping hot, so unlikely to be undercooked. but 6 hours after our meal, we both got violently ill at the same time. mike had it worst than me; he actually vomited about 20+ times by the time we "got up" in the morning. i had some vomiting, but my probem was...on the other end, i guess we'll say. thank god jack slept like an angel the whole night, so we didn't have waking baby to juggle along with our misery. and thank god we have two bathrooms within running distance of our bed. needless to say, our weekend off of "no plans" turned into a weekend at home, full of fatigue, dehydration, and nausea.

on the happy side, we decided to tread into solid food territory again today for lunch at the drake diner, where i ended up receiving one of the most treasured compliments i've ever been offered. as a woman and her husband were leaving the restaurant, she stopped at our table and said she had been watching us from across the room. she said, "and i just have to tell you, i just loved watching you with your baby." she went on to say something about it being apparent how much i love him, and that his face shows he knows he's loved very much. mike thought it was a little weird; i thought it was beautiful. i've been feeling very exhausted with life in general lately, but it's hard to feel okay about talking about it. when other people complain about their jobs, it's usually seen as normal or par for the course. but when a stay-at-home parent expresses feelings of being overwhelmed or the need for a break, she or he is often the receiver of "suggestions" from others that maybe it's not for them, or maybe they should try daycare a couple times a week. of course i'm speaking from personal experience only, but it seems to me that popular perception is that a full-time parent has to love their "job" every second, or at least portray it that way, or else they are seen as falling short. like they aren't appreciating the opportunity to be at home, or that they are sending the message that it's not fulfilling. i'm starting to find that every job, even that of a parent, is overwhelming at times, and people just need a break once in awhile. i wouldn't have it any other way, and i absolutely love being jack's primary caregiver. some days are harder than others, and many are tiring. but when he runs to hug me, or looks at me in certain ways... or when a total stranger professes to see how much love i have for him, it makes it 110% worth while.

anybody else hate bureaucracy?

today i am reminded of the reasons i do not miss being a part of university life. the politics, the competition, and the bureaucratic hoops students (and faculty) jump through in order to survive there are too stressful to take for long. yesterday i received a letter from the university of iowa graduate college reminding me that "a considerable amount of time" has passed since i completed my comprehensive exams, and "reminding me" that the graduate college stipulates a maximum of five years from the completion of comps until a student must finish and defend their PhD. this was surprising to me, as i remembered it being 8 years. i looked through the graduate college manual on academic policies, and cannot find any writing about this 5 year maximum rule. nevertheless, i'll work with it. i email the grad college and point out that i was on an *approved* leave of absence for the entire year of 2006 (broken arm, NICU stay, maternity leave), and questioning whether this year of leave qualifies me to extend my 5 year maximum by one year; thus, giving me the same amount of time other students are given when we take out that year off. i hear back; it does not. i'm still expected to graduate by the end of this year. if i cannot? my adviser must ask our department to petition the grad college to allow me to extend my stay. minor problem: my adviser left UI last year to go to U. of Illinois. hmmm. now, my goal for the past 2 years has been to graduate in december of this year. that's still a dream, but now with a 2nd baby coming i'm hesitant to lay any guarantees on that line. if i do, then none of this will matter. if i don't, i'm worried about the process to extend my student stay.

my 2nd problem is that in the time it has taken me (and many, many other students) to finish my PhD in anthropology, many of the faculty members who have been on my committee have since moved onto other universities. of the 5 people on my doctoral committee, only one is still a current faculty member in our department. youch. i have no idea if this will affect me when it comes time to defend the diss. if it will, i'd like to know now so i can start adding new people to the committee before having to scramble at the last minute to find professors who like my project enough to sign off on it (who have no previous knowledge of the past 5 years of work i've done on it).

sigh. and all this administrative b.s. is keeping me from actually working on the diss., to get it done. this crap makes poopy diapers and sleepless nights seem like a good deal in comparison. i don't even want to consider the publish or perish mentality i'd be facing if i were teaching in a tenure-track position instead of staying home with my babe.

the democratic process (oh yeah, and bags)

it's 7:45pm and since i'm sitting at the computer, you can guess that i'm not caucusing. i'm bummed about that. i had every intention too, but then life happened again. i've never been, and was looking forward to participating in the process for the first time. i was even willing to forfeit my status as an independent. mike's work schedule changed and he had to work tonight, so it was going to be me and only me taking jack. seeing that his bedtime is usually 7/7:30ish, and the doors to the caucus closed at 7, i had to make that decision between taking him and dealing with the sleep consquences or skipping. i skipped. now that i watch the live coverage on t.v., i am glad i made that decision. talk about a madhouse. i see no kids there, either, even though i was told repeatedly that people bring kids. i see people sitting and reading magazines, waiting for the time to end and the votes to be counted. that would not have gone well for me and a 16-month-old. so, once again, i'm at home waiting to see the results of everyone else's decisions. i guess that means i have to give up bitching rights if i'm unhappy with the results.

on the happy side (i should provide a warning right now, the remainder of this post will be greatly uninteresting to all but a few women who are new or expecting mamas), i received my long awaited diaper bag today. when i found out i was pregnant again, i knew i would need very little in material terms, especially with having a second boy. so i made a small list of "luxury" items i wanted to get before baby#2 arrives. i received one at christmas: a Moby D wrap in black with black and red Asian brocade silk (ooh). one of the other top items was to get a new diaper bag that would be large enough to carry around sets of cloth diapers for 2 kids, but sleek enough that it wouldn't feel like taking a bulky suitcase on short trips to target or grocery shopping. this is a hard compromise to make in the world of diaper bags. i researched well (not quite to the extent of researching i did on cloth diapers, but it gets an honorable mention in the research category), and finally decided between a skip hop bag and a ju ju be bag. price was a major difference, but ju ju be had some of the extras i really wanted. until skip hop came out with the new deluxe editions to their bags--ahhh, all the upgrades i wanted. no more loud RRRIIPPINGG velcro, and instead, new magnetic snaps throughout. bonus. no more black lining on the inside of the bag so you feel like digging through a black hole to find little crap; new light lining to make it easier to find stuff. and finally, my biggest concern with skip hop, the new edition is 30% larger than the old, so i finally have a bit more room for packing, but still get the sleek design that won't bounce off my hip when walking with kid(s) in arms, like our current boxy shaped bag. yeah! and being that we confirmed we are having a 2nd boy, i was able to get my coveted blue camoflouge bag. i think if we are going to build a rowdy, testosterone-filled family, we might as well do it in style :)


(see, i told you that would be waaaay more info. than anyone other than a new or expecting mom would find interesting).

happy eats, terrible sleeps

hi everybody. i'm using up the last few minutes of jack's naptime today for blogging. i should probably be sleeping, but i needed some downtime that doesn't involve a bed. our lives have been hectic lately, and just aren't getting better. nightime around here has turned into a battle ground, with jack refusing to sleep for unknown reasons. last night, for instance, it took me an hour and a half to get him to sleep, and then he woke up 1/2 hour after being put to sleep. once we got him to sleep again, he woke up another 1/2 hour later. this went on till 2am, when mike got him to sleep next to him on the matress on the floor in his room. i'd like to think it's teething and thus will pass, but he's fine during the day and it doesn't seem likely that it could be teething every evening. nothing seems to work--not sleeping alone in his crib, not sleeping with us, not rocking in the chair.... it's insane. i haven't had more than 3 hours of consecutive sleep in a month. i'm worried about how unhealthy this is for my pregnancy, knowing that good rest is essential to avoiding another preterm labor. i just hope we can kick this soon.

on a happy note, my darling husband surprised me with some wonderful little gifts at christmas. we had agreed to not do gifts for one another, and instead just buy a king sized bed. he broke the promise, but i had to forgive him since i got such great stuff out of the deal :) two of my gifts were things that i miss from new york: junior's cheesecake and alice's tea cup tea. i received a sampler cheesecake from junior's (gone as of yesterday) and a year subscription to the tea of the month club at alice's. so now i can eat and drink and think of what i miss about new york.

One Fab Chica

So it's been a rough day. Jack has been getting up 4-5 times a night, and not going back to sleep without rocking/being held. He must be going through a tough period of separation anxiety and needs the extra comfort, but it's hard on us. I was awake with him from 3:45am till 5:15am last night. I got him to sleep at 5:15, and he got up at 6:30am with Mike. Mike and I have been having heated discussions on how to deal with the sleep issues. Sleeping with us wasn't going well (for us; he's a thrasher and we couldn't get any sleep) and sleeping in his crib isn't going well for him. And discussing parenting strategies on little sleep is an emotionally-charged thing. I was in tears several times today. However, in the late afternoon, as I was awaiting Mike's return from work so I could get a little reprieve from keeping tired baby happy, we found a package on our front doorstep. It's one of those things that comes right when you need it just to brighten your day. My fabulously sweet friend Sarah in L.A. sent us a care package with such great, great stuff. We opened it downstairs, which allowed Hawkeye to chew up the wrapping paper: i.e., happy dog. Then we took out the first thing-- a handknit Christmas stocking for Jack that is stunningly gorgeous. The colors, the size, the detail are all amazing. This is one talented chica (yes, folks, that's why she's teaching the stars to knit). Observe:


This was going to be the second year Jack was going to have no stocking because I didn't want to buy him one, but rather wait until he'd have a homemade one he could keep forever, like I have. Unfortunately I have little to no crafting skills and had yet to figure out how to make him one myself, so I figured we'd wait another year before tackling that (he doesn't "get" this holiday stuff yet, anyway, so I didn't feel too bad). And yet here we now have a gorgeous stocking made with love from Aunt Sarah: i.e., we have a happy mommy. Not only that, but I found some wonderful chai tea bags and a book on baby/toddler food. This also comes at a perfect time, as I was just telling a friend today that I'm running out of ways to cook vegetables that I can get Jack to eat and am sorely in need of new recipes to try. Voila! Sarah reads my mind and here we have a fun book for baby recipes. Not only that but it's filled with giant photos of babies, which happens to be Jack's first word ("Bee-bee."), so he sat on my lap and looked, wide-eyed with glee, at all the babies, saying "bee-bee, bee-bee, bee-bee" all the while; i.e., happy Jack. Sarah, you sure know how to send a box of joy at just the right time. Thank you, you rock. Everyone else, if you are in need of a good friend, I suggest you look her up: Sarah O., Hollywood. :) She also has a little blog, which has been feeling a bit lonely lately, listed on my blogroll. Cheers to you Sarah dear!

lump of coal?

as expected, jack's first meeting with santa did not go too well...



however, the indoor snow went over quite well.

Oh Boy!

We ventured out into the ice storm today for our ultrasound. Luckily it was early in the morning, when it was still rainy and slushy and the roads weren't too bad. After we got home, things the snow picked up and it got colder, so we were lucky we still had the appointment. Everything looked good as far as the tech could see, and we counted 5 fingers on each hand :) And it's another boy. I'm excited to have two of the same gender since they'll be so close in age. I hope that gives them an edge on friendship, though I know there's never any guarantee. Just like with our last pregnancy, we had the girl name all picked out, but haven't narrowed down the boy names yet. We've got a good short list, but still need to decide. It's fun knowing now so that we can say "he," and start getting ready to refer to him by name. We do have a big discussion ahead of us though, as I don't want to circumcise and Mike does. It may take us the entire last half of the pregnancy to come to a decision on that. Unfortunately there is no way to compromise on it, so we have to decide one way or another. Sigh. But we are very happy that everything looks good and we have another little guy on the way!

snow

Jack's first experience with snow was a hit:






As you can see, he was all smiles. Yep, we are raising an Iowa boy!

second pregnancy musings

jack is napping and it's snowing. this gives me time to sit and muse for a little while about things, and i've come to some conclusions about subsequent pregnancies. i've been trying to focus more on this pregnancy lately, since i feel i did little else during the first, and this one has been more of an afterthought. it always bothered me when friends would make comments that they kept first year calendars for their first borns, and paid close attention to sterilizing bottles and such for those first kids, but when second or third children came along they didn't bother. i had always told myself that i would try hard to make sure each child of ours got equal attention, got plenty of photos taken of him/her, and never got short-changed for being a subsequent child. i've come to realize during this pregnancy, though, that it's going to be harder than i had hoped. i have less time to revel in the joy of being pregnant or think too much about the coming baby simply by virtue of the fact that jack takes up most of my time and energy. for this reason the pregnancy is flying by and i feel at times like i'm missing it in some ways. most of the time that i do spend thinking about the new baby's arrival is focused less on the anticipation of what he or she will be like, and more on how we will survive with juggling two kids under two. a lot of things change from the first kid to the second. for example, the wish list. for my first pregnancy, we set up two registries with an infinite number of baby gear "essentials" to make jack comfortable and happy. it was about cute outfits, cozy infant seats, and trendy diaper bags. as we compile the list of wants and needs for baby #2, we realize that the things on it are no longer baby-centered as with jack, but they are now parent-centered: gift certificates for take and bake meals, cleaning service, dog-walking service, larger and more practical diaper bags (that can handle packing cloth dipes for 2 kids, sippy cups, bottles, changes of clothes, cheerios.... we may have to start toting around a suitcase.) i think with our first pregnancy, everything was exciting, and the anticipation was more of bliss than of worry. with the second, we are in some sort of survival mode; anticipating with both pleasure and anxiety. i'm sure everyone goes through this, and just learns to manage. i keep thinking, "what am i going to do when mike returns to work after those first 2 weeks of leave?" it will definitely be an exercise in multi-tasking. until then, i'm still making as many plans as possible to do all the things for this baby that i did for jack. i have a baby book and a first year calendar, and within both i've already entered some information. i'm going to be sure that this baby gets some photos alone for his/her baby book, rather than always having joint photos with jack. i'm going to try and be good about photos of milestones, etc. i'm sure it will be a learning experience!

a little hello

Hi everybody. It seems these posts are getting fewer and farther between, but Jack is keeping me so busy these days that it's hard to sit down for more than a minute. I can't imagine what it will be like with TWO! According to the baby gaga ticker, we have only 147 days until that happens. I'm thinking that it may be April instead of May, though, given our history of earlier birth plus the fact that subsequent babies tend to come before rather than after the due date. Who knows, but either way, 100some days seems short! Our ultrasound is in a week, and we are really hoping everything will look developmentally normal and healthy. I still feel fine, and the pregnancy is progressing well, if not quickly. The little one is moving around now as I type.

Jack is going through a tough time. Teething is partly the culprit, but beyond that he seems generally frustrated with life most of the time. He's become very determined to do things, and when they don't work out ("no, Jack, we aren't going to play with the thermostat anymore," "no, Jack mommy is currently on the phone so you can't play with the reciever," or even things like trying to walk across the room and tripping and falling) he melts into a tantrum and uncontrollable emotion. I'm sure it's normal for his age, but it's very frustrating for me. His most worrisome trait is the headbanging that accompanies most tantrums. Usually it's on the carpet, but at times it lands against my chin or chest, or sometimes the door frame. He's a wild man. I think it's partly age, and partly the fact that he's like his dad: if he can't do something perfectly, it's not worth doing at all. :) So we have been losing a lot of sleep at night as he wakes up with teething pain frequently, as well as a lot of patience during the day as he needs constant entertainment to remain relatively happy. I keep trying to find things to get out and about and do, to keep him distracted, but it's hard when it's so cold. This past weekend we had to cancel a lot of fun plans due to the ice storm. Even little trips like packing up and going to the play area at the mall seem labor intensive at times. But we are surviving the winter, so far.

We got our holiday tree this weekend and Jack helped decorate. It's a little more sparse in the ornament department this year, since we had to pack away all the metal balls after he got a hold of one and shattered it all over the floor. But he had fun helping hang ornaments, and our living room is very festive.





On the dissertation front, I have 13 interviews left to get through (all in Spanish). Once that is done, and I'm really having a hard time motivating myself to just get through them quickly, I'll be able to sit down with ALL my data, interviews, newspapers, fieldnotes, and all, and figure out what the heck this paper is going to be about. That's scary and exciting at the same time. I hope to have a big Ah-HA moment, where it all makes sense, but I know it may be awhile before that happens. My goal of starting my writing in January is plausible, but not definite. I will have the interviews done by then, but I don't know if I'll have the outline made up yet. Still, it's nice to think about finally finishing the data analysis, and moving onto the real writing process. Again I kick myself for not doing the interview transcripts while in the field, but hindsight is 20/20. At the time I thought I could easily do them at home, and spend more of my research time just being there. But now I realize how much time I wasted.

Mike is gearing up for a bunch of new patients to come to his pharmacy at the end of December. Another Hy-Vee pharmacy is closing and sending all their records to his pharmacy. So things could get very busy, very fast. They are going to have a lot more staff to offset things. One of the pharmacy technicians he hired from the closing store has my name: Brandyce K. isn't that strange??!
Hope all is well with all of you readers!