Category Archives: Brain Dump

Well, I can’t hope to sit here long enough to give the full update the blog deserves, so I’ll just cover the highlights.

The last couple months of pregnancy were miserable.  I couldn’t sit for more than 5 minutes comfortably, and at the end, I would have liked to live in my deep tub, where the bouancy of the water gave some relief from the discomfort and pressure.

Following the advice of the diabetes nutritionist piled on the pounds.  I’ve always needed about half the calories of a normal person to maintain my weight, so that should have been no surprise.  No one that hasn’t been here for the past 5+ years ever believes me, they think I am making excuses or something I suppose.  My OB finally agreed that I should disregard her advice and stop deliberately trying to up my caloric intake with (healthy) fats and oils to counter my low-volume intake brought on by the lap band — but not until I actually topped over 300 pounds, a sight I had hoped to never see again.

I ran over term, and my OB scheduled me to induce labor.  They attached monitors to me when I arrived at the hospital and discovered that I was in very early labor (couldn’t even feel the contractions yet), and that the baby was in a lot of distress.  I was whisked off for an emergency c-section where they delivered her safely (the cord had been wrapped around her neck).  Yes — her!  It’s a girl!

She's here! All 6lb 5oz of her!

C-section recovery is going well.  I’ve been suprising the docs and nurses with how well I’m bouncing back from the first day after surgery, so I guess I’m fortunate.  I know my SiL was on pain pills after her C-Sections for weeks and took a couple of months to even feel normal — so I’ll say I’m *very* fortunate 😉

Baby L has no regular schedule yet, and sadly I can’t just fall back asleep after being awoken from a 2 hour nap like she can, so as you might imagine and is normal, I’m pretty much exhausted all the time so far.

the Kidlet welcomes Baby L to the world

Posted by Kristen in Brain Dump

In baby news — I had what I imagine will be the last ultrasound on Thursday (given that I’m due in 6 weeks!), and they STILL couldn’t give me better than 49% / 51% on gender.  So while I’m the LAST person that would ever have chosen to keep it a suprise — mystery baby, here we come.

Given the upcoming birth, I took this weekend as a bit of a last hurrah for the kiddo and mommy, and we went out of town.  He’s been wanting to go out to the beach for a while, and altho the weather was due to be uncooperative, I figured if I waited any longer, I’d be too worried about the baby coming early.  The hubby really needed to stay home; his work major work project for the year (at least) is in full throttle, so it was just the kidlet and me.  We drove down to Newport (it’s not the closest coast town, but the one I know best) and luckily is stayed dry enough on Saturday that he was able to get lots of digging in the sand time. 

We also went to the aquarium, as we hadn’t been for over a year.  We stayed the night at the Hallmark Inn (I love the chowder bread bowl from the restaurant attached to it!) and then the next day we drove to my mom’s (a little out of the way for the way home, but not too much) for Easter dinner. 

 

Posted by Kristen in Brain Dump

Portland’s first Saturday Farmer’s Market opened a couple weeks ago.  The weather was due to be beautiful this weekend (well, beautiful if you’re an Oregonian living in perpetual chill and rain for months, and anything over 60 is shorts weather if the sun peeps out), and so we decided to head over to the PSU market and see what there was to see.  We hadn’t taken the kidlet to one at all last year, so it was re-new to him, and a good excuse to get out, get some sun, and burn off some energy.

I wasn’t expecting to do much shopping for myself.  There isn’t much in season right now in Oregon.  The ground’s only been thawed a short time, and the torrential rains aren’t exactly crop-friendly.  Even if we’d had a perfect late winter and early spring, you wouldn’t see much this early in April.  There were (naturally) daffodils, but even the tulips weren’t popping up as you’d normally see right now.  So, as expected, there were a lot of booths with non-produce — locally produced honeys, meat products, dried flowers, starter plants for hopeful gardeners, things like that. 

Still, there were a suprising number of booths with veggies.  Though little of it is commercially grown, its the (super) short harvest season for the foragers – morels, fiddlehead ferns, stinging nettles and the like.  None of which I have ever personally used, and I was tempted.  I love trying new things!  But I could see the faces of the kidlet and hubbie if I served them a plate of fiddleheads or unfamiliar greens.  And morels?  11$+ for a bare handful, when the two of them refused to eat just plain ol regular sauteed crimini mushrooms not two days ago?  Naaah, we’ll pass 😉

So we mostly let the kidlet lead the way, wandering around and seeing what caught his attention, occasionally steering him away from the center quad which was still a teeming mass of mud.  He wanted to buy a bunch of daffodils (and in true Charlie Brown fashion, picked the most bedraggled bunch in the most bedraggled booth we’d seen all day), and accosted the balloon animal man for a light saber, but otherwise was content to roam around.  He even passed by the booth with elaborate and delicious looking cupcakes without a single tug on my sleeve! 😉

Posted by Kristen in Brain Dump

Pet Peeve:  People that put music players on thier blogs/sites. 

Nothing like opening up a page to have your ears blasted by tunes – probably a genre to which you would never willingly listen. 

Just say no.

Posted by Kristen in Brain Dump

The kidlet lost his first official tooth already!  (The one that got knocked out when he slipped and fell into a coffee table doesn’t count! ;))  He is only just barely five, and while that falls in the normal range for first tooths to go, its about a year ahead of the average.  Being ahead of the curve isn’t something we’ve seen much of, given his first six months of neglect before he was taken in by DHS.

The top hole is the face smash into a coffee table hole — its the bottom one that is the new and “official” one! ;) 

It had been loose for a few days.  One night he went in his room with the tooth still there.  He came out an hour later to report that his tooth was missing.  I suppose it just finally slipped out and that he swallowed it because he had no idea where it went and said he didn’t pull it out.  We had to write a note to the tooth fairy and explain what happened.  He drew her a picture of the tooth so she couldn’t get confused.  Of course, confusion might reign as his drawing would lead you to believe that the tooth was bigger than a peson and bright red!

Posted by Kristen in Brain Dump

The kid was unbeliveably cute yesterday.  He had to stay home from preschool because of the weather.  We’d had hail that didn’t melt the night before, and then snow all morning, and I wasn’t about to risk the hills around here.  (Last time it looked like this, even just a thin layer, I couldn’t get all the way there, and then couldn’t even get back up the hill to home and the poor kiddo and I had to hike back 2 miles to get home!)   So he was stuck at home, and bored, and wanted to bake cookies.  So I told him that I needed to go get a recipe from my computer and we’d see what we could make.

I’m browsing my recipes (and I think I’ve mentioned I’m a recipe freak.  I could make something different every day for at least 2 lifetimes and not run out, and always wanting new cookbooks and browsing the internet for more!) and he brings me his own recipe!

We ended up not baking anything, but we did get what we needed from the store so we can follow his recipe on Friday when he is home again. 😉

Posted by Kristen in Brain Dump

In a follow up to yesterday, I do think that I am too hard on myself at times.  I am doing well on my List, given the whole nearly 7 months pregnant thing.  I suspect that what makes me feel like I’ve accomplished less than reality is that while I am getting some things done, I am doing it in the midst of a home that is really a mess.  There isn’t one room in my home that is clean and tidy, not one room that is really peaceful.  It’s difficult to feel serene and to cultivate an attitude of gratitude while being surrounded by the lack of organization, the dirty dishes, the pile of laundry glaring at me from across the room, the kidlet’s fingerprints across the dusty TV screen, my desk top that is barely visible under the piles of papers, books, kidlet’s toys, and recipes.  It’s hard to recognize that I’ve just spent 2 hours with my child fostering the attitudes in one of my more recent book purchases (The Creative Family), when I look away from the smiling face of my child, away from the pleasant clutter of paper clippings, glue smears, paint splotches around us and see the floor that needs mopping, the counters that need scrubbing, the trash that needs taken out.

I need to spend a little more time on those basics each day, aside from whatever project I am tackling in my Life Improvements.  And hopefully the hubby can help me a little more with those daily basics as well.  For today, I cleaned off my desktop.  Looking past my desk — well, I won’t go there yet, but for this moment I have a small isle of clean.

Posted by Kristen in Brain Dump