undesirable

I’m pretty sure I haven’t mentioned it here, but I found a tick on me a few weeks ago. Talk about undesirable.

It was pretty surprising to find a tick in November, but we’ve had some pretty unseasonably warm weather up here in the Northeast of the US. We live in a heavily wooded area, so ticks are pretty common. I was pretty skeeved out, but not too concerned otherwise. I thought it was a small-sized dog tick, and not a deer tick. (Deer ticks can carry Lyme Disease, but dog ticks don’t.) I also thought the tick had only been on me for a few hours anyhow, and apparently ticks need to be attached for at least 36 hours before they can transmit Lyme Disease. However, about a week and a half after removing the tick, and well after the initial trauma from the tick removal had healed, I started to get a rash at the site of the bite. So either the tick had been on me longer than I’d realized, or our clumsy removal of it had caused the tick to transfer the bacteria faster.

My doctor prescribed a 2-week course of antibiotics for me. I just took the preantipenultimate pill. I’m happy that I’ve only got another day left to go, because the antibiotics have done a number on me, and I have been feeling pretty wiped out and was actually pretty sick for a few days. On the other hand, I’ll gladly take 2 weeks of feeling awful over the longer-term feeling awfulness associated with full-blown Lyme Disease. The rash cleared up right away, so it seems that the antibiotic is working.

But you know what? It really sucks taking care of 2 small children when you are feeling awful. I have found myself being (even) crankier than usual. It’s hard to be patient and cheerful when you just want to curl up in a ball on the floor. I don’t know how I would have coped if I hadn’t been able to take the kids to daycare some of the days, or if John hadn’t been around. (How do stay at home parents manage when they are sick? Or single parents?)

It was such a relief when I felt better, but then Theo has been sick the last few days. I’m not sure whether he’s got the intestinal bug that a couple of other kids at daycare had, or whether he’s also reacting to the antibiotics getting passed on to him through me. (He’s still nursing.) In any case, he has been sleeping worse than usual. And now it seems he’s getting a cold. Phoebe has seemed a bit under the weather, too. Or perhaps she’s just been more needy in reaction to my crankiness.

Life has generally been more than ordinarily crazy the last couple months. John has been working pretty much around the clock, 7 days a week. I’ve had work deadlines, too. And did you know that there’s some sort of major holiday coming up soon for which we’ll be expected to do things like decorate and purchase (and even mail) presents? We as yet have no tree, and I haven’t even started Christmas shopping.

(If it’s any indication of the craziness of our household, I took the above photo on Saturday for the PhotoHunt theme of “undesirable,” and started drafting the post. And I still have yet to get it finished. I decided not to actually submit this as a Photohunt entry, anyhow, because I doubt most people participating in that really need this much detail about my life. But I figured I might as well still use the title.)

A Toddler’s Guide to Tantrums

Preface – The Fine Art of the Tantrum

Chapter 1 – Know before you Throw: Planning ahead for Optimal Tantrums

1.1 Timing: How to choose when to have your tantrum
1.2 Motivation: Why should you consider having a tantrum?
1.3 Location: How and where to get yourself noticed

Chapter 2 – Warm Up: Revving Up for a Tantrum

2.1 Whining: A time-tested precursor
2.2 Pouting: using the lower lip
2.3 Tears: when to let the waterworks start

Chapter 3 – Vocalizations: what to say, and how to say it

3.1 “I WANT,” “DON’T” and “NO”: Three standards of tantrum verbiage
3.2 Repetition: No matter what you say, make sure you say it a lot.
3.3 Repetition: No matter what you say, make sure you say it a LOT.
3.4 REPETITION: No matter what you say, make sure you say it a LOT.
3.5 Wailing, Shrieking and Howling: piercing or eardrum shattering, you’ve got to be LOUD

Chapter 4 – Throwing yourself into things: using your body

4.1 The Limp Noodle: perfecting your boneless body
4.2 The Flail: using arms and legs to express your feelings
4.3 The Foot Stomp: a classic expression of anger
4.4 The Throw: Tossing objects for greater impact
4.5 The Throwdown: Throwing your whole body down for added affect

Chapter 5 – Personal Style: Making the Tantrum Your Own

5.1 Lessons from the Greats: The Tantrum Hall of Fame

Chapter 6 – Consequences: What will happen when I have a tantrum?

6.1 Frazzled Grown-ups: a guaranteed outcome
6.2 Time outs & Loss of privileges: What have you got to lose?
6.3 Will I get a puppy? Debunking the myths of tantrum outcome

This post is for the Monday Mission, hosted by Painted Maypole. This week’s assignment was to write a post in the form of a table of contents.

baking bread

Last month, Magpie wrote some posts (and even a nonet) about baking bread. I left a comment saying that she had just about inspired to give bread-making a try, as soon as I got some yeast. She replied by sending me a link to Laurie Colwin’s recipe for oatmeal bread.

The idea with this recipe is that you can fit the steps of baking bread into a busy schedule, investing only 15 minutes of active work. You make the dough at night before going to bed, do a bit with it in the morning, and then bake it when you get home in the evening.

Once I finally got around to remembering to buy yeast at the grocery store, and after an additional wait for another shopping trip because I’d forgotten that the recipe also called for wheat germ, we were good to go.

I thought that making and kneading the dough would be a good activity to do with Phoebe, since she really likes to help. (I’m eager to train the kids for hard labor, which should free up more of my time for blogging. Or maybe I should just train Phoebe to blog for me.)

The recipe suggests that the whole process should take only 15 minutes. I figured that the first step shouldn’t take much more than 10 minutes. With my cluelessness, I planned to tack on another 15 to 20 minutes. And then with Phoebe’s help, we knew to expect things to take at least an extra half hour.

I’ll let you decide whether Phoebe liked the process.

Phoebe smiles for the camera. (“That was a really big smile,” she said afterwards.)

The next day, I “knocked down the dough,” which was a new expression for me, and split the dough. The recipe said to use 2 loaf pans. We have only one loaf pan, so I figured I try to make a “boule” on a cookie sheet. (As the dough spread more than rose, I think the shape of the bread could be better described as a “frisbee.” )

The resulting bread was tasty, but not quite what I expected. It was very dense. The recipe called for leaving the dough out to rise during the day, covered with a tea towel. My guess is that the air in our house is too dry this time of year for such prolonged exposure. It did seem like there was already a bit of a crust before I even put the bread in the oven, so I wonder if once that crust formed, the dough stopped rising. (I wonder if the tea towel used to cover should have been damp. I’m open to other suggestions, too.)

We had the “boule” (or “discus”) for dinner. The loaf bread, also quite dense, worked really well for slicing thin to make toast.

The flat-topped loaf, which worked to make tasty toast.

What was left of the discus could have been used as a weapon the next day.

hellfire and dalmatian

Hellfire and dalmatian.

As I mentioned, Phoebe wanted to be a firefighter for Halloween this year. Her costume turned out to be a cinch. She’d gotten a freebie fire hat at a recent daycare field trip to the firestation, and then our daycare provider had some other firefighter costume gear to lend us. A totally free costume.

Seeing as he doesn’t yet have a say in the matter, I figured I would dress Theo to go along with Phoebe’s firefighter. (As you may have noticed, I’m all about going with themes.) At first, I thought, “Theo can be a fire!” As I thought about the costume, however, I realized that there was a good chance that he would end up looking like a baby on fire. Um…perhaps a tad more disturbing than I had in mind.

So, the plan was to go with a dalmatian (the traditional firehouse dog).

For the pre-Halloween party on Tuesday, I hadn’t managed to get a dalmatian costume together. Theo went as a (very cute, and still black and white spotted) cow, instead. On Wednesday, I stopped by a used children’s store (where they sell used things for children, not actual used children). I had plans to get some white clothes, a white hoodie if possible, to which I would affix black spots, a tail, and some ears.

As it happened, the store had a rack of Halloween costumes. Which were additionally marked down. And there was a dalmatian costume. In Theo’s size. For $4.00. Suddenly, the whole home-made costume idea seemed like it would be a big ordeal.

Apparently, though, I still had a hankering for assembling a Halloween costume, because I decided to put together a costume for myself. I would be the fire to go along with the theme. I wore a red shirt layered over an orange shirt, along with an orange and red swirly-patterned shawl that I happened to have picked up for 1 euro at a Sevilla flea market. I fashioned a hat out of fleece left over from Theo’s carrot costume from last year, and attached flames of red and orange tissue paper to it with staples. (I was in a hurry. I made the hat this afternoon while Theo napped.)

I was quite pleased with the end result, especially considering that I bought nothing new to make my costume.

Of course, wearing this hat around our neighborhood reminded me of something: the fact that I have no dignity.

John, on the other hand, has some. He totally ignored my suggestion of a costume for him. Because you know what would have gone really well with both the firefighter and the dog costumes? A fire hydrant.

getting carried away

Last Saturday, we went to a music festival, and met up with a couple friends. It was a great festival, and I really enjoyed the time with my friends, wandering around taking pictures, listening to music, and just generally being at a festive event.

There was one brief event, though, that leaves me feeling unsettled, even a week later.

We were sitting around in a little park where one of the festival’s many stages was set up. The last set for that location had finished, and lots of people were just sitting around enjoying the late afternoon sun. Our group had more-or-less camped out at the foot of a statue, the large stone base of which provided some much appreciated shade and a cool place to lean against.

After having been strapped in to a carseat and then a stroller all day, Theo was happy to be crawling around the grass in the park. He’d take off in one direction or another, and one of our group would follow along for a bit, then scoop him up and bring him back to our base. Theo got a lot of friendly smiles, and we’d get the occasional casual question about Theo’s age and whatnot. So I didn’t think much of it when a smiling man walked towards Theo as he was gleefully crawling away from me. I scooped Theo up, held him up high, smooched him on the cheek, and smiled at the stranger who was admiring my baby. The man stepped closer and asked about Theo’s age, and we started the usual chitchat. Then he reached for Theo and lifted him out of my arms, exclaiming over how friendly he was. I was completely taken aback by this. Then he started joking that he would take Theo home. Even though he was joking, I wanted to scream “give me back my baby!” I reached for Theo, and the man, still seeming to joke, made as if to walk away with him. I kept my hands on Theo and said, “I need to take him back. I was just going to change his diaper.” The man got a sort of blank, sort of startled, look on his face. “Really?” he said. He loosened his grip, and allowed me to reclaim my baby. I walked quickly back to our little group, and the man walked off another direction, disappearing fairly quickly into the thinning crowds.

I found myself quite shaken. It all happened so fast that John and my friends, who were sitting with Phoebe, didn’t even see the exchange. While the man seemed to be joking, it wasn’t clear to me how far he might have carried his “joke.” Would he have really walked away with Theo? Clearly, there must have been something somewhat off with this man’s mind, as most people know that it’s not okay to pick up a stranger’s baby without permission. He didn’t seem drunk, though he may have been. He may have been mentally ill. Neither of these possibilities is particularly reassuring to me.

In retrospect, I’m really glad I mentioned the diaper. I think it cut short the exchange, which already had gone on too long for my comfort. Perhaps it reminded the man that babies are not just smiley, cherubic playthings, but that they involve work and messiness.

I’m not one to spend a lot of time worrying about protecting my children from predators. I tend to focus on worrying about keeping them safe from cars and household accidents, worrying about how much they eat and sleep. But this incident, minor as it was, reminds me that there are people out there who will take advantage of that moment when you let your attention drift.

driving home

So, um, yeah. I have another bad driver’s license photo.

I didn’t end up going to the RMV on Wednesday, and went this morning before John had to go to a meeting. I wasn’t sure there would be time, but I thought I should give it a try. In the end, my number got called just at the point that I’d determined would be the latest time I could wait before heading back home. The transaction went fine, except I had trouble getting a decent signature with that stupid plastic fake pen dealy. By the time it was time for my photo, I just really needed to get out of there. I went with the first photo. I look bedraggled, disheveled, and weary.

In other words, just how I felt.

I guess I’ve been feeling rather run down. I just hadn’t really realized how much. I’ve been falling asleep while working at night and waking up bone tired in the morning, I’ve been so fatigued the past few weeks that I was actually convincing myself that I must be pregnant. The last few days had me practically at the point where I was choosing names for the twins (as surely it must be twins).

But I’m not pregnant. I’m just really damn tired.

Yesterday was a particularly tiring (and trying) day, with rushing around and a long commute and meetings, and trying (not all that successfully) to fit in pumping. I ended up getting stuck in traffic, being late to meet with the friend who was kind enough to be my subject, late to my scheduled lab meeting, getting a parking ticket, rushing out of my meeting, and having a really long uncomfortable drive back to pick up Phoebe and Theo from daycare. And I was late for that, too.

So today, I should have probably just taken it easy instead of rushing around some more. And now I’m stuck with another awful photo for up to ten years. I was amused when I left the RMV with my new temporary license, and drove home feeling mildly victorious for having gotten that dealt with.

But by the time I got home, I was hating the photo, and feeling like crap. I’m actually pretty comfortable with my looks in general. I mean, I’m not thrilled with them all the time, but my appearance is just not all that important to me. Until I see a bad photo, that is. And it reminds me that I haven’t managed to get my hair cut in over a year, and that I’m tired and busy and rushing all the time and that most of my clothes don’t fit me all that well. It reminds me of how little time I have to take care of my own needs, let alone my appearance.

Nothing like a bad photo to drive all of that home.

dam

We have some foam letters that Phoebe plays with at bath time. We’ll often talk about and name letters, and sometimes spell a few words on the tub walls.

A couple of nights ago, Phoebe picked up a D.

“What words start with a D,” John asked.

“Dog,” says Phoebe, quite quickly. We are impressed, and feel quite pleased with our parenting.

“Right! What else?”

Phoebe thought a bit. “Um…”

“Door,” I suggest.

“Dandelion,” says John.

“Daddy,” I say.

“Damn!” Phoebe suggests. John and I pause. Crap, we do swear too much in front of her.

“Oh…dam! Right! Like the dam where we go for walks sometimes!” I say, gladly remembering the dam where we go for walks sometimes.

“And dammit!” Phoebe says proudly.

Phoebe on the dam where we go for walks sometimes.

Photo by John.

file under d for distraction

Yes, I admit it. This post is an attempt to distract you from the recent utter lack of content here. But look! A baby!

File under c for cute. Or would that be b for baby?

I brought Theo into work for a meeting. Here we are in the little library of the lab where I work.

Theo, Mommy, and lots of old issues of JASA.

As you can see, having a baby along with me can sometimes be a distraction from work.

In related news, I’ve made some progress towards starting Theo in daycare. He starts Tuesday. I’m still trying to process that information. (And maybe file it. Under p for progress? Or maybe p for pants. Just because.)

falling off the moving sidewalk

Traveling with small children is challenging. Aside from keeping physical needs met and tempers in check, you need to tote a lot of stuff. On top of your own clothing, laptops and personal items, you have to pack clothing, diapers, toys, books and gear for the little ones, who aren’t able to transport this stuff on their own. And depending on their size, you also have to be able to lug along the actual children.

At the start of our trip, we parked in the Boston airport central parking garage, where, for whatever reason, it is impossible to find baggage carts. It was going to be tricky just to get to the terminal.

We put Theo in the stroller, had Phoebe walk with her little Hello Kitty suitcase, strapped one carseat to a suitcase, and put various backpacks and other shoulder bags (including the other carseat) on our backs and shoulders. John pulled two wheeled suitcases, and I pulled the third suitcase with one hand and pushed the stroller with the other. We were an awkward caravan, but somehow we got moving, down in the elevator and over to the pedestrian walkway to the terminal.

We got on the moving sidewalk, which moved us along at a nice pace. John and Phoebe were a few paces ahead of me, and stepped off at the end. I was ready to do the same.

Then the front wheel of the stroller turned as it went over the bump, and jammed into the base of the stationary railing just over the threshold. The stroller stopped, with its back wheels still rolling along merrily on the conveyor. The stroller blocked my way to step off, and I couldn’t manage to dislodge it with my one free hand. I had to run backwards in place to avoid being propelled into the back of the stroller, while trying to get the stroller unjammed with one hand, and keep my suitcase from hurtling forward with the other.

It wasn’t pretty.

Such is my life these days, especially since having kids. There I was, smoothly rolling forward, carrying on at something I’ve done dozens of times before. Maybe my hands were a bit full, but I never questioned that I was in control. Then one little snag hits, and wham! I’m flailing awkwardly, dropping my load, caught in the machinery. Trying not to be crushed by my baggage or to crush my offspring. Running clumsily in place to avoid falling on my ass.

These past few weeks I’d been moving along quite well, accomplishing things. And now all the other things I’d been letting slide are starting to come hurtling back towards me, but my hands are too full to get a good grip. Our house continues to be chaotic, and I have work, home and family obligations to attend to. Missed bills. Taxes. Wedding gift for the wedding we already attended. Birth announcments for my 7-month-old. Thank you notes. Home repairs and car repairs and yard work.

Meanwhile, I’m feeling pretty wiped out from the efforts of travelling, my push to submit the abstract, and the damn stomach bug. I’ve had this low level headache that I just can’t seem to shake. Things have also been rocky with Phoebe, who is adjusting to being home after the trip, sleeping in her own room and the 3-hour time difference. She’s still traumatized by her recent bout with the stomach bug.

She is also showing signs of being a three-year-old. There have been tantrums. Basically daily. And maybe not just Phoebe.

So, I continue to not be caught up with my blog reading. To make things trickier in that respect, my feed reader (Safari) has gone all wonky on me, and my laptop apparently keeps going into overdrive because of something related to that. I can’t access my feeds, so my blog visiting has been rather erratic. Once more, I apologize for being generally absent.