File this under "awesome"

Gabriel slept 7 hours straight last night !!!

Happy Birthdays!

Happy shared Birthday to Terry and Solana today!

(I know that's Valerie, not Solana, but I don't seem to have any pictures of Terry and Solana together, strangely enough!!)

Two months!

Gabriel is two months old today! Does his right cheek look bigger than his left to you? It does to me. He has a dimple although you can't see it in this picture.

We're in the midst of packing up our house to move out for two years, so stressed and exhausted. But having two little ones means we're also forced to stop and enjoy life. This morning we all took a walk to Red Front for a few groceries - Valerie in the stroller, Gabriel in the Bjorn. He fell asleep instantly as soon as we set out and slept the whole walk there and back. We had to go the long way around too, so Valerie wouldn't see the playground...

Gabriel is such a sweetheart. When I change his diaper he looks into my eyes and grins. He sleeps soundly at night, though he's still waking up every 3-4 hours or so (sometimes more) to nurse. But he goes back to sleep quickly. We've sort of started sleep training in that I'm working on establishing regular nap times, and putting him down still awake. It mostly works. Some days he's just fussy and takes a lot of wrangling, and he often wants to eat much sooner than my schedule says he should. But the fact that he CAN fall asleep on his own without any props or without being rocked or nursed to sleep is such a blessing, and I want to reinforce it as much as possible.

We've been using cloth diapers off and on, and the funny thing is that even with the disposable ones, he really hates being wet!

He's holding his head up really well and although I don't have proof, I believe he's over 13 pounds now - meaning he's about doubled his birth weight in two months!!! He's incredibly efficient at nursing - usually under 5 minutes. Still swallows air, but is burping better and hardly spitting up at all (with a few memorable exceptions). The gassiness is much improved. Whether it was the chiropractor, the probiotics, evening out our supply-and-demand, or a combination of all three, I'm very glad. I have learned the hard way, however, that I really MUST avoid dairy. The past 2 Friday nights I ate lots of cheese and the past 2 Saturday nights were pretty miserable, on into Sunday. So no more cheese. Or ice cream, or milk. Sad. Well, it won't be forever.

Valerie is doing much better with him as well, although if she's tired or hungry or both, she can't tolerate the smallest noise from him. But if she's happy and content she doesn't mind him, and will now even say "Beebee!" when she sees him, which is cute.

He's so soft and fuzzy and squishy and huggable, I'm trying to remember to soak up all the delicious baby-ness of him while it lasts, to kiss those adorable cheeks and rub his downy hair against my face. Such a sweetie.

Teeth

I think Valerie must be cutting her 2 year molars, for real this time. She's been sucking on her fingers constantly the past few days and last night was awake for 3+ hours (from 2 a.m. til well after 5) sucking on a pacifier and crying off and on. Poor thing!

Gabe stats

Length: 22 1/4 inches = 25th percentile

Weight: 12 lbs. 8 oz = 75th percentile

His happy smile is the best thing ever!

Gabriel update

Two firsts today, at 7 weeks: 1) a real laugh! A wonderful little chuckle while looking up into my eyes, and 2) first visit to the chiropractor. Afterwards he slept and slept.

Addendum

A couple things I forgot to include about Valerie:

• While she's doing her twirling/dancing/running/stomping thing, she admires her own performance with a frequent "Wow!" She must hear us say it a lot... (actually she says "Vow!" It's pretty cute)
• She is still also enamored of the alphabet, and will recite to herself at random moments. She skips a few letters, but she's also learning the sounds they make as well as their names.
• It's been really fun lately seeing her expand her playground horizons, going down the big slide by herself, getting on and off the little horsies by herself, etc. It's fun just watching her have fun.
• We went to the County Fair one morning last week and caught some of the visiting circus - which included a GIRAFFE! It was extremely cool. Valerie: "Aff! Aff! AffEEEE!" She got to feed him a carrot. She also thoroughly enjoyed seeing baby ducks and all kinds of other farm animals.

This past weekend we traveled to Lancaster for a Leaman family reunion, and the previous weekend we went camping (!!!). Both trips went well overall, although we learned that V does a lot better if she's not right next to her brother. We see these as sort of trial runs for the big move coming up in... less than a month!!!

the Fam

Stealing a Minute

I'm stealing a minute from my own work time to write a quick Valerie post. She's at Grammy's right now, and Terry took Gabriel with him (after a ridiculous cluster-feed, every hour from 7 - 10 a.m. Seriously - he's now 10 lbs 14 oz, having gained another 13 oz in a week, can he really be that hungry??? Apparently, yes!!)

So, Valerie. She is growing so much. She loves to move and dance and tumble - she's mastered the somersault, and loves to run and jump and dance just for the fun of it. I love her delighted grin when we play "chase" around the house.

She's still not really talking, although her vocabulary continues to grow (she only rarely combines words into phrases). But she's really, really into numbers. She knows all the numbers up to 10, and *tries* to count to twenty ("free-free, four-four, five-five, six-six... ten-ten!") She has trouble pronouncing seven ("eppie" or "sefee") and one ("wu" or "mm") but the rest are pretty clear. She counts steps, toys, bottles in the bathroom, and so on. She can also count backwards from five down!

She's still a bit stressed out by Gabriel, and her new coping mechanism is to bang her head - well, her mouth, really - against our shoulders. This really is hard to deal with. And now she shrieks not only when she hears him make a noise (although not all the time), but when other children get within 4 or 5 feet of her. This makes playground visits a little less fun.

After several months of sleeping through the night, she started night waking again in the week after my parents left. I don't really anticipate this getting better until, oh... maybe 2011?

She's becoming a bit more picky about foods but has a new love - KETCHUP!! Anything dipped in ketchup (even grapes - ugh!) is automatically better. Definitely a Jantzi.

Quick while he naps

Saturday Gabriel - or Gici, as we call him here - it means Piglet in Albanian - was one month old, and I meant like crazy to write a nice blog post about him but, well, it's been a little hectic around here.

He's been gaining A POUND A WEEK. Fat rolls have developed around his thighs, his wrists are creased and his hands dimpled. He's about to bust out of his newborn-sized onesies. He feels like a huge chunk of baby in my arms so it always takes me by surprise when people see him for the first time and say "look, how tiny!"

Our main saga this first month of life with Gabriel - apart from Valerie's angst - has been his gassiness. About 10 days ago it got to the point where I feared he had acid reflux, and we took him to the doctor, who said no, with that kind of weight gain it was more likely overfeeding. He was nursing every hour or hour and a half round the clock - ok, maybe 2 hours at night - and spitting up after every feeding and often in between.

I'd always heard that you can't overfeed a breastfed baby, so this was surprising to me, but we followed the recommendation to use a pacifier to space his feedings slowly further and further apart with the goal of 3 hours apart in the day and 4 hours apart in the night. And it worked, as far as the spit-up goes. For a good 12 hours after our visit to the doctor he was even fairly gas-free. But the gassiness started up again in the form of grunting and fussing every time I laid him down to sleep. I knew from our first peds appt. that he swallows a lot of air when he nurses - very noisy eater, lots of clicks and whistles - so I was just working on burping him as much as possible, and we also started using gas drops to try to get the burps out better.

So Thursday I went to an "ask-a-nurse" group for new mothers; the nurse there is a lactation consultant as well and very knowledgable. It was GREAT - I can't wait for the next one. :-) As an LC, of course she said "you can't overfeed a breastfed baby," and instead confirmed what I'd been reading online - that the problem was an oversupply of milk. He wanted to eat constantly because he was only getting the thin sweet foremilk and not enough of the richer hindmilk. She recommended pumping off the excess after feeding him, seeing how much it was, and then pumping that off before feeding him the next time, slowly tapering down the amount of excess milk pumped off, until we reached an equilibrium. Well, I did what she suggested and got an astonishing 4 oz. of milk off AFTER he'd nursed! Just on one side! The odd thing was, though, that was it for excess. The very next time I nursed him I had just enough to fill him up, with less than 1/2 an oz after. So we have reached our equilibrium there.

The other thing the nurse said is that Gabriel has an unusually high palate; the roof of his mouth is domed quite high. This is not a problem per se, it just means it makes it hard for him to maintain a tight latch and that's why he swallows so much air. She said we could try using a nipple shield to help his latch. I finally went and got one and figured out how to use it, but he doesn't like it - he bites down now when I use it so I'm not sure it's a solution.

So that leaves us with just burping him. During the day it's easy; I'm up and about and I can carry him around in the front carrier (either the baby bjorn or the ella roo wrap) and in that position he eventually burps it all out on his own and is quite happy. Nights are harder. I can spend an hour after nursing him getting all the burps out, only to have to get up again a half hour later to get another bubble out. I think also at night I'm just not as patient or as alert and so we end up doing this up-and-down dance for up to five hours. I'm pretty exhausted.

Valerie never really needed burping so it was a cinch to nurse her lying down and then we'd both drift off to sleep.

oops - he's awake. More later.

Big Sister

Baby G. has been home with us for three weeks now. At the end of the first week I was all ready to write a post about how well Valerie was coping. But now that it has become clear to her that he's here to stay... she's struggling.

The first time she saw him up close (rather than through the nursery window), Terry was holding him and she responded exactly as we'd predicted - "no no no no no AAAAAAAAAAAA!" But he passed G. to someone else and she calmed down. Even when I held him, she pretty much ignored him - unless we directed her to say "hi" or to point to his eyes, nose, ears, etc.

But then the shrieking started. She'd been shrieking before, and I'd tried giving time-outs to get her to stop (it worked to quell the biting), but it really took off during the week when her cousins were here. It was hard for her to have other kids in "her" space, playing with her toys, getting attention from her parents. Someday she'll look forward to seeing them and will follow Solana around and imitate everything she does, but right now sharing is very hard. So she'd shriek every time G. or her cousins would make a noise - any noise at all - so you can imagine it was starting to get on my nerves. It's hard to see her unhappy.

I've realized that it helps not only to make a point of spending time with her, but to really give her my focused, undivided attention, even to the point of ignoring G's little grunts (he's very gassy, so they're quite frequent) and waiting to respond to him until it's clear he's ready to eat or needs to be changed. I try to validate her feelings - "you don't like it when Gabriel makes noise" - and reassure her that she's still my baby and I love her very much. I've even stopped referring to Gabriel as "the baby" and just call him Gabriel or "your brother." Someday they will appreciate and be thankful for each other - it might be 30 years, but it will come (hopefully sooner than that!). Right now I figure that what I can ask of her - and of him too, come to that - is that as they grown into social beings they treat each other with respect and kindness. The love and affection will come in time.

I'm missing my mom tremendously right now - realizing in full just how much she was doing for us here, as well as the emotional support. Thankfully there's still another grandmother in town.

Growing Boy

Today was Gabriel's due date - we had a check-up and learned he has gained a whopping 13 oz. in one week! He now weighs 7 lbs. 4 oz. Typically they expect newborns to gain 1/2 - 1 oz a day, and he's gaining almost 2! His jaundice is less too. All good news!

One Week

Gabriel is one week old today! Our angelito is sleeping on my lap as I type. He's doing really well. We had a check-up on Monday, where we learned that he'd gained 2 oz. since we left the hospital Friday, which was great news to me since I'd been worried about his sleepiness while nursing. He tends to fall asleep after just 5-10 minutes, although then he'll wake up an hour and a half later for more - especially at night! They had us check his bilirubin levels, which are 13 (22 or higher needs treatment); just to get the blood drawn we had to wait TWO HOURS at the hospital lab which was pretty much NOT our first choice for how to spend the day... but oh well. It worked out.

Our first night home was rough, but we seem to have evened out a bit. Terry re-organized our room (he's sleeping in a bassinet next to our bed) and put in an A/C unit so it's been quite nice, and the system seems to be working well (of course, at this point the system also hinges on Grandma Irma doing a ton of laundry...)

I've found that my recovery has been much easier and faster this second time around, which isn't to say it's been a breeze - I had quite a bit of back pain, especially the first few days, and could only manage to sleep sitting upright. I felt quite like I'd spent the night on an airplane. I can lie flat now and it's heavenly. Yesterday I went to the chiropractor, and today I stopped taking my pain meds altogether and feel quite achy, but nothing unmanageable.

We've also managed two family outings already - a brief foray to our Star Trek group Monday night, and last night to a DREAM Act fundraiser at Qdoba. It felt good to get out and sniff the air - especially since we've been getting rain!

Baby pictures!

Mom and baby Day 1!

All this and the World Cup too...!

He's here!!!!!

Sorry for the long delay in the announcement- but he's here! We're home, resting and recovering, learning our way around parenting a newborn AND a toddler simultaneously. More on that later... and I promise pictures too...

For now here are the stats:

Gabriel Tobias
born at July 7, 2010, 11:07 a.m.
6 lbs. 12 oz, 19 inches long*

came home Friday July 9, 2010, 2:30 in the afternoon.

Happy day!

* plus a fraction but I'm not sure what the fraction was.

48 hours

Not to make anyone nervous or anything (Terry!), but I just looked at the clock and realized that 48 hours from now - unless I go into labor before then - we'll be in the OR about to meet our son. This ever-present awareness has made it hard to sleep the last few nights as we lie awake thinking about names... deadlines (Terry)... to-do lists and the physical recovery ahead (me)...

I am so thankful that we made it to this date, given the scare we had in May. 7 weeks of bedrest has been both a blessing and a marathon of waiting. But here we are. For me at least it's a lot less scary than last time. I feel more confident, knowledgeable, and prepared. I'm SO glad that I was able to do bedrest at home and not in the hospital this time. I am so thankful that my parents were able to be here taking care of me and Valerie and for all the help we have had from my in-laws and our babysitter! Thankful to all the people who have brought meals over - some more than once - and taken the time to check in and see how we're doing.

It's hard to believe, as I feel Baby Boy kicking around inside, that so little time is left in this gestation. I want to make sure to be mindful of these moments and enjoy them.

Soon and Very Soon

... we are going to meet our son! Hard to believe. He's wiggling away, an active boy, but there are no signs of labor so I'm pretty much assuming we're going to keep our cesarean date at the new hospital Wednesday morning.

Today I dressed V. in her patriotic 4th of July outfit so that people will think she's a local:

Vote!

We are still on the fence about names... although the poll so far (see sidebar) has a pretty clear front-runner... you can write-in suggestions in the comments as well! I temporarily changed the sidebar background color so you can read the names better.

The thing is, I'm not a huge fan of trendy/popular names, and we'd also like a name that's interesting or somewhat unusual, but not too "weird." It's all very subjective, I know. We like Tobias because it's a family name (Leaman branch), although I really don't like the nickname Toby - negative association from a kid I knew in grade school - and we like Oscar because of Oscar Arias and Oscar Romero - and I like how it sounds in Spanish and English. And we like the nickname "Oz." Although most people are first going to think of Oscar the Grouch.

Boy names are hard.

Favorites

Valerie has developed some very strong preferences for certain things, including the number 9. She looks for the 9 on the digital clock in her room, on the CD player display (although her favorite song is track 8), and among her magnetic number set. In fact when she sees the 9 on the clock her whole face lights up with a big smile and she claps her hands. This developed about the time she learned the word for the digit. (She can now name them all except 1 and 7, and counts to five.)

She also looooooooves this book. Especially the "very fine animal called the Iota," and the heart-shaped "Proo." Although I find some of the illustrations (and the overall theme) somewhat disturbingly colonialist (publication date is 1950), it's a fun book to read and I've memorized enough key lines that I can recite it while she flips violently through the pages looking for her favorites. For a while there we were reading it easily more than 10x a day!

Homecoming

Today is also the day Terry comes home!

These pictures are from his last trip but I'll let them stand here emblematically (especially since that's not even the plane he left on last time). (But note the cool reflection captured in the glass. Artsy, no?)

Dave

Today is a day to remember my uncle, Dave Sparks. We miss you.

Sleep update

Soooo.... I'm almost nervous to jinx it, but I right now we're in a good place with the sleep thing. THANKFULLY. We're at the point where I now go to bed expecting V. to sleep through the night...!

In April, while T. was away, I held my breath and took the plunge of leaving the room before she was asleep... and it worked! I was astonished that she didn't cry at all, and at most I only need to go in maximum 2x before she goes to sleep on her own. This was... huge. I was so scared to try it, remembering how much it DIDN'T work last year - at least not well. Five months of CIO and she cried every. single. night. But I guess now she was ready!

Then almost by accident I discovered last month that she was able to sleep through the night when she was in the room alone by herself. After Terry left for Albania, before my parents got here, I had my sitter stay with us overnight to help with the night duty. The 2 nights Rachel slept in the next room, V. didn't wake up. The 3 nights Rachel slept in the room with her, she woke up. So ever since then we've let her sleep by herself... and the ratio of night waking to not reversed itself - instead of sleeping through the night 20% of the time, it flipped to 80% of the time - and as of today, she's gone a full week without night waking. WOW.....

We'll see how long it lasts; I'm kind of assuming that with Terry coming back, then the baby being born, my folks leaving, etc. etc., we still have a long road ahead of us. But for now it's an enormous blessing that she's sleeping well at night.

(Sadly, I still have insomnia from time to time - plus having to get up to pee every 2 hours - but it could be, and has been, so much worse.)

Growth Spurt?

I'm wondering if Valerie is going through a growth spurt? She was uncommonly clumsy yesterday evening - cut her lip on a water bottle, then fell off the lazy boy, and seemed to be tripping over her own feet with unusual frequency. She's been eating and sleeping a lot. And TALKING so much more - a lot of babbling, and a lot of echoing what we say, but generally using about 20-30 more words than she was a few weeks ago. Some big leaps there.

After supper last night I noticed a bunny sitting on the lawn across the street, so my mom and I went over with V. and I sat on the sidewalk while she (Valerie, not my mom) hop, hop, hopped while the bunnies (a second one showed up then) just stared at her :-) It was super-cute.

Friends

Valerie is not the most social of toddlers. It takes her a looooooong time to warm up to new people, and she mostly ignores other children her age. (Except, of course, when she's being required to share toys or Mommy with them.) There is a small handful of kids she tolerates and even at times acknowledges, sharing food and space with them, waving hello and goodbye. These are the kids she sees on a regular basis - usually weekly - and it's really nice to see her learning to play with others.
I wonder sometimes if her introversion is linked to her slowness in starting to talk? I mean she talks, but she's not really linking words into phrases yet, and there seem to be a lot of other kids much younger than she is who are talking much more. I know she'll talk when she's ready but sometimes I get impatient.

She did do something cute last night while I was singing "Old MacDonald" to her (the lullaby of choice) - she said, as she often does, "amamamamam" in a growly voice, which in her lexicon means the animals in the song are eating. And then she said, very clearly, "Fat!"

Pictures!

I've been getting pointed hints from certain members of the household currently abroad that there has been a dearth of recent updates in this space. Yesterday I finally got around to downloading some pictures, so here are some recent shots of the V.


Here she is in our neighbor's yard, looking for their dog (who coincidentally has the same name as our mayor - it's an unusual name, which in the northern Germanic languages means "keeper of the keys" and in Khmer means "dog." Anyway, I'm guessing by the look on her face that Kai the dog was not in sight.


Playing with water on a hot Sunday after church.


My dad ordered a whole bunch of vitamins and supplements - look at the pretty colored bottles! V. organized them in this symmetrical arrangement and spent maybe half an hour arranging and rearranging them in rows - until she got tired, knocked them all over, and ran off to do something else. (Yes, she was closely supervised, and all the bottle tops still had the manufacturer's seal on.)

She's really into arranging her toys in rows these days - stuffed animals, plastic animals, matchbox cars. Then she'll knock them all down.

check-up

I had another check-up today with the specialist at Martha Jefferson, and he said he's "amazed" at how well we are doing! My proteinuria levels are basically back to normal, and my blood pressure is under control with the bedrest and medication. I'm supposed to continue as I am with frequent monitoring until delivery. We are now at 34 weeks and the baby looks great - estimated to weigh in at 6 lbs. 6 oz. Yay!!!

no news is good news

We're holding steady here, nothing new to report, monitoring my blood pressure, taking my pills, resting. I'm beginning to get a wee bit bored but I think that's probably a good thing!

My folks got here last Wednesday and we are settling into a homey routine. I feel very loved and well cared for!

I am so thankful to be able to be at home with Valerie, even though I can't do as much with her, there are still a lot of little games we can play while I lie on the couch. One that always makes her grin: I show her a toy and say "You think this is yours?" When she reaches for it I say "It's mine!" and snatch it away. On the third reach I let her grab it but don't let go and we play tug-of-war for a minute or two. Then we do it again. For some reason she finds this hilarious.

toddler talk

Over the past 3 weeks or so, Valerie has made a big jump in her talking after a long plateau. Between her 18-month and 2-year checkups, she really didn't add very many words - maybe 5? Now all of a sudden she's trying to say a lot more - it's really fun :-) She's not enunciating very clearly, but she is trying to say:

fix
fork
ouch
three
tree
pee
puppy (sounds more like "pough," rhyming with "dough")
woof
bow wow
...and a bunch more I can't remember right now but will come back and add to the list as I hear her say them. And other words she's been saying for awhile, she's enunciating more clearly.

She's also finally learned how to jump with both feet off the ground! She loves to dance around the living room, pointing to the CD player as each track changes - she'll say "two!" or "free" (three), "sic," (six), and "eight" when she sees those numbers. She likes to "stand like Daddy" with her legs wide apart and knees flexed.

She is so much fun!

non-stress test and biophysical profile

Welcome to the world of prenatal monitoring! Here are two terms you may or may not be familiar with:

Non-stress test, or NST: The name of this test sent me to Google to find out what a "stress test" might be. There isn't such a thing, per se, but the non-stress test is in contrast to the contraction stress test (CST) where mild contractions are induced to see how the baby responds under those conditions. During an NST, there are two monitors strapped to the mother's belly: one at the top of the uterus to measure spontaneous contractions, and the other lower down to pick up the baby's heartbeat. I had a LOT of NSTs when I was hospitalized with Valerie, and now I'm to have them twice a week. Basically they graph the heart-rate in conjunction with movement, and want to see the baby's heart rate speed up and slow down as s/he moves more and less vigorously.

Our NST today earned a 10/10 rating, which is perfect - BBJ did great with the moving around and kicking and heart beating etc. The machine picked up one contraction, which I felt also - I don't always feel them because at this stage they are very sporadic and mild. They're called Braxton-Hicks contractions when they're not actually labor contractions. I was having a lot more of them earlier before going on bed-rest.

Biophysical Profile: this is a specific kind of ultrasound - not in terms of how it's done, but in terms of what they are measuring. They're looking for three markers of healthy baby: good amount of amniotic fluid, lungs moving (they practice breathing by inhaling amniotic fluid), and practicing sucking. They also measure head, femur, and abdomen to calculate weight (although this can be somewhat inaccurate). BBJ is measuring around 4 lbs 5 oz which is great for 32 weeks, and he's doing everything he's supposed to be doing in utero. And he's still a boy :-)

I'll be having these ultrasounds once a week until we deliver. And I'll be doing repeat urinalysis each week as well.

And if I needed proof that bed rest is where I need to be, I got it Saturday evening - we had a friend visiting from DC and even though I tried to suppress my hostessing urges, my BP was really high that night and then down again the next day to the range where it was before her visit. So, visitors are great - but I really do need to keep quiet and keep visits short, especially in the evening when combined with dinnertime and bedtime for Valerie I tend to expend more energy than I should.

birthday

My sister put together a great set of photos for my dad's birthday which I will shamelessly link to here - happy birthday Dad, love you!

Great news!!!

We got the lab results back - proteinuria down from 1,716 to 284!!!! Incredible! So thankful and glad and amazed. I'm to stay on bedrest at home and drink lots of fluids, keep monitoring blood pressure, and they'll see me on Monday.

still waiting

I took my re-do sample to the lab this morning, and they said they should have results "by the end of the day." So meantime, I'm just going to rest. It's been hard to sleep at night because I wake up to go to the bathroom, and then sometimes I have a hard time falling asleep again because my mind is spinning thinking about everything. But I thought to myself this morning, "I guess this is my labor." I will probably never have the chance to experience a normal labor and delivery, but this processing, preparation, and trying to work with my body is the closest I will get. And it is "work."

Overall, the emotional journey has been easier this time than last. I have a better idea what to expect. I'm not as terrified of the idea of a cesarean as I was last time (even though it wasn't what I wanted either time, and I was hoping to try for a VBAC with this one...). I like my doctors. What is most distressing to me is the idea of being away from Valerie for a long period of time (well, that and concern that Baby Boy Jantzi - aka BBJ - will end up in the NICU) and worrying about how she'll cope with me not being here for the morning and evening routines. But at the same time I know she will be well and lovingly cared for - we have a veritable village coming together with both sets of grandparents going to be here plus our very capable babysitter who V. is quite attached to as well.

There has been an overflow of loving support through the friends and family networks that I appreciate so much. People I haven't seen or talked to in years sending good wishes and praying for us. Thank you all so much. Your love is palpable.

Laury

Public service announcement:
By the way, the Preeclampsia Foundation has a very informative web site if you want to learn more about this condition.

***

This morning I called my therapist's office to see about either canceling my Monday morning appointment, or doing it over the phone. The office receptionist said she had bad news. Dr. G. passed away two weeks ago, just three days after I last saw her.

I'm kind of in shock, it really doesn't seem real. I have such a vivid memory of sitting in her office, the needlepoint pillows, the way she would always hand me a tissue. I never got a chance to ask her about the whales and dolphins that populated her space - figurines, sculptures in glass and metal and wood, pictures on the walls, on coffee mugs, even her earrings. Obviously they meant something important to her and I never found out what.

She has a 7-year-old daughter.

I wanted to state here, since I can't tell her in person, how much she has meant to me over the years since I first started seeing her in 2004; how much she has helped me, and how specific things she said to me still stick in my mind like mantras and help me cope with daily life. It really doesn't seem real to me that she's gone.

Limbo

Disclaimer/warning: This post is all about me and my jug o' pee, so if you are of delicate sensibilities and prefer not to read about bodily fluids, feel free to skip this one! I'll just give you the bottom line up front: we are still in limbo and don't know whether I'll need to go on hospital bedrest or not.

***

One of the three markers for pre-eclampsia is the presence of protein in the urine. The other two are high blood pressure and swelling (edema) of the hands and feet. I have high blood pressure, although now I'm not meds that are keeping it in a better place. Last week I did a 24-hour urine catch and this week I'm doing one again.

The benchmark they are looking for is 300 milligrams of protein total in the sample. Anything under that doesn't count, and anything over that is considered a red flag for pre-eclampsia. Mine was 1,700. Yes, you read that right: almost six times the benchmark. Anything over a gram is considered Bad News and some doctors, I learned yesterday, will just go right ahead and deliver the baby immediately with that kind of result. I appreciate that my doctors are a little less alarmist and are willing to wait and see what the results of the second test might be.

If they are still above 1,000 milligrams, then I will be put on hospital bedrest - probably in Charlottesville, about an hour away from here - because they have a NICU and I'm only 31 weeks. If it's lower than that, I may have the option of bedrest at home (oh please oh please!) or at the local hospital (also preferable because easier to see Valerie). My biggest concern is being away from her...

Anyway, so this is how the 24-hour urine catch works: You get a plastic jug, and what they call a "hat" or "bonnet" - a plastic cup with sort of like wings on it, that you put on the toilet before you void (that's the term they use for peeing) your bladder, and it catches all the urine, which you then pour into the jug. The jug needs to be kept chilled. We used a small cooler packed with those frozen blocks that you keep in the freezer. That's it. You collect all your urine over a 24-hour period and then deliver it to the lab.

The convenient thing about the cooler is I can take the jug with me discreetly if I have to go out and about somewhere and continue the urine collection even if I'm not at home.

The inconvenient thing is I have to remember to put the cap back on the jug, which I am very prone to forget. It seems like the act of putting the "bonnet" back in the cooler feels to me like capping something and I feel like I've already packed up what I need to pack up. Or something.

So, today, just as I was arriving at the lab, I heard a slosh from inside the cooler and thought "uh-oh..." and indeed, when I opened it up, I found that I had left the cap off and spilled about a cup of fluid. I know, I know, GROSS. But also, hugely inconvenient. I feel like a prime idiot because now I have to do the test all over again, AND delay getting back the results. They said it wouldn't be accurate if they didn't have 100% of the fluid from the 24-hour period.

The thumping sound you hear is the sound of me banging my head against the wall.

Since I had to register as an outpatient for an accompanying blood draw (which we didn't do either), I kept the hospital band on my wrist in hopes it will remind me not to be so stupid again tomorrow.

So the wait continues.

Again

So here we go again... I've been tracking my blood pressure over the past couple of weeks, and it hasn't been great - flirting with the 140/90 line that raises red flags. So we did a 24-hour urine test and they found significant protein, which is another red flag. Luckily I do not have any swelling in my hands and feet, or other symptoms of pre-eclampsia, but the other two factors are cause for concern.

The plan at this point is to continue monitoring, to rest as much as possible, and to drink lots of liquids (something I never do enough). Today we got a look at the bambino via ultrasound and he's doing great, developing exactly as he should, heart rate and everything else right on track.

Pray I can hold out for another 6 weeks at least...

Valerie is 2!

She loved the birthday pinwheel and balloon

Yes, we did have some friends over, although our little introvert was just as happy running around the neighbor's garden by herself...

After singing "happy birthday" one of the toddlers present asked for "itsy bitsy spider" so we sang that too!

Foggy

So I've been away from the blog for a few weeks - did you notice? :-) It's been hectic the past couple weeks and I'm just starting to catch up with myself. I have ten weeks (give or take) left in this pregnancy, research to finish, a house to organize and pack up, and then all the daily stuff... like taking a shower, eating, that kind of thing. I haven't downloaded Valerie pictures in for, like, ever, but hope to get to that soon too.

What I want most right this minute though... is a NAP.

To party or not to party?

I've simply been too tired to post anything here. I realized today though that Valerie's birthday is a week from Saturday and I need to make a decision about what to do to celebrate - we'll have a family celebration later in the month but I'd still like to mark the day of in some way. Last month we attended her first child's birthday party which she quite frankly did not enjoy very much (my little introvert!) so I'm inclined not to go that route. But cake and balloons at home with a few friends would be nice... she'd like that.

Two years ago

I've been thinking it was today, but when I looked it up saw that it was actually yesterday - two years ago, that I checked into the hospital in Ithaca with symptoms of pre-eclampsia. I was there for 3.5 weeks until Valerie was born, wiggling and weeping with her worried little monkey-face. She was so small!! And has been turning our lives upside-down ever since. I love her so much.

Just for the record...

I love rainy days, and I LOVE having my own office away from home... one small compensation for Terry being away is I have use of his office space.

And V. slept 10.5 hours straight last night! So why am I so groggy that I left my wallet at the coffee shop this morning???

Single Mom-ing Begins

Terry is out of the country for the next 3 weeks, and I'm relaxing in the support network of friends and family. It's been interesting to see V. handling the change. For a week leading up to his departure, we let her know he was going to be gone for a while. I think this actually made her kind of anxious because, being not-yet-two, she doesn't have a very clear sense of time, so she wasn't sure when he was going to be going away. Once he actually left, she seemed a lot more settled, although Sunday morning she was certainly in a MOOD during the time when we normally hang out with Daddy, and he wasn't there - seemed sad and out of sorts.

The main place this anxiety (as I'm diagnosing it) showed up was, of course, her sleep. Terry's last 2 nights here were awful. She resisted bedtime for two hours +, then did her night-waking thing for 2+ more hours and slept in til late. But the first night he was gone, she went down more easily (just 1 hour) though she still did a 2.5-hour waking. The second night, last night, she actually slept straight through! I was ECSTATIC. Even though she woke up for the day at 5:30 a.m., I'd gladly take that anytime over being up with her from 2:00-4:30 a.m. or whatever ungodly hour she chooses.

It has also helped me to hear from her doctor that she's not being willful when she kicks her feet and slaps her hand against the mattress in the middle of the night; she's trying to soothe herself back to sleep and cope with her feelings of insecurity. So instead of getting mad at her I'm able to just be there with her and try to soothe her as well as I can. Rubbing her feet seems to help A LOT, and a friend who does reflexology suggested some pressure points that stimulate seratonin. We've also found that gently massaging her hands calms her down, and I've heard that this specifically helps alleviate negative emotions like anger and anxiety/stress.

Our one untoward event so far was Saturday night; she hadn't eaten much lunch and I think she was pretty hungry at dinnertime. I made some of her favorite foods - rice and beans with shredded cheese, and green beans. The problem was, she ate too fast and didn't stop to chew her green beans, which caused her to gag, which caused her to throw up a little, which then led to throwing up everything she'd eaten since her nap. :-( We got cleaned up though, with a minimum of fuss (I was very proud of myself for staying calm and containing the mess pretty well). After I got her into her clean jammies she ate a bowl of applesauce and some plain white rice with some milk, with no problems. Poor little thing.

Other than that it's been pretty smooth sailing. It's been cold but sunny out and she just loves running around in the yard, in the flower beds, in the neighbor's sandbox. It's great to see her so happy.

23 Months, 2-year check-up

Yesterday Valerie had her 2-year check-up, which we did a month early because we had questions about her sleep issues. Rather than have an extra appointment, we combined the two.

First, the stats:

25 lbs

33 inches

50th percentile

We were surprised that they didn't measure any change in height from our last appointment 5 months ago, because she's been outgrowing her pants and is also able to reach things she couldn't reach before (doorknobs, stuff on top of the table). We were also surprised she hasn't gained more weight - only 1.2 lbs - because she really feels heavier. Maybe our house is shrinking and our arms are getting weaker!

As for the sleep, basically the doctor said that it's a phase she's going through, that she'll eventually outgrow... in a couple of YEARS. Probably. Oh Dear. Their advice to parents is to do whatever is easiest for getting her to sleep, try introducing or encouraging a comfort object (she's more or less abandoned the toothbrushes in favor of kicking her feet against the mattress, which is very annoying to us), and just be as consistent as possible with not only the bedtime routine but her daily routine as well. Sleep disturbances are linked to feelings of insecurity, and routine and ritual help her feel secure in knowing exactly what is going to

happen next (of course this is also constantly tested by her growing desire to be in control).

And he said we're probably in for a real storm when baby brother comes along, not

to mention moving to Albania... He said it will be important for Dad to spend a lot of time with her around the time of the birth, she'll like that.

Finally, we're going to cut back on her screen time. I added up that she's been watching 2-3 hours of Elmo a day most days - a little bit with the sitter, a little bit with us, a little bit with Grammy - it adds up. The recommendation is maximum 30 minutes a day. Boy she's not going to like this...!

In good news, she's been napping pretty well and really enjoying playing outside. Here are some pictures of her in front of our house - I'm not sure if she's smelling or kissing the flowers but it's pretty adorable either way!

pretty

Easter Sunday dress:Good Friday, our daffodils were at their peak:
She had so much fun running around on the grass at the arboretum, looking at ducks and turtles:
In our back yard:

Easter Sunday

I will have to upload my pictures soon because I got to dress up my little living doll and take her picture with ducks and daffodils. I don't dress her up too often because she kind of HATES IT... and her new red shoes match nearly nothing else that she owns. But she's still cute. And I can crop the shoes out of the pictures if need be :-).

She loved the music at church but was very confused by the non-standard service - no children's time? WHAT?!?!?

The real (mis)adventure, however, happened in the late afternoon. And had nothing to do with Easter.

Since before the last big snow, our '89 Accord has been sitting in the driveway, undriveable. Apparently a certain member of the household (not the male one) didn't close the driver's side door all the way after driving the car the last time, and the battery was dead. So this gorgeous spring day seemed like the time to jump-start the car.

Yay, it worked! So we spontaneously packed ourselves into the car for a little drive in the country to charge the battery up again. Unfortunately, at the first real stop light (in Bridgewater, for you locals) it died, just past the intersection, on a low-grade uphill. I jumped out to switch places with Terry so that he could push the car into the gas station that was handily right next to the intersection, but because of the slight hill he couldn't take his foot off the brake. But, also because of the hill, I was able to give the car a little push and roll it easily backwards into the gas station.

This scenario resulted naturally in a truly tragic missed opportunity for a fabulous MAN OF THE YEAR photo shot - visibly pregnant wife pushes stalled car while husband relaxes behind the wheel!!! Toddler looks on, bemused! When one of the gas station attendants ran over to help me, Terry felt led - for some odd reason - to lean out the window and try to shout out an explanation about how he couldn't get out of the car - whatever. I don't think the guy heard him.

So then Terry went to call his dad to come rescue us while I ran across the street to the fast food place to get V. something to eat. There was a bit of an interlude while a passing friend stopped to give us a jump start, Terry drove across the street, and the car died again in the fast food parking lot. Then we just waited for Vern to come get us - and follow us home.

It was actually kind of relaxing sitting and waiting, watching V. stuff herself with french fries (look mom, BOTH hands!). But the relaxation did not last long.

We were on the way back, Vern following close behind, when ONCE AGAIN the car stalled at a light, right next to a big poultry plant (the Dayton Cargill plant, for you locals). Vern jumped us again, and we made it all of, oh, half a block, before the car quit for good. Just as we passed, what do you know, a fire truck that had just arrived with lights flashing. We coasted onto the shoulder, looked to the right, and saw ominous white smoky clouds of who-knows-what rolling across the ground, coming from the plant towards the road. Vern pulled up behind us just as a fireman strolled over and told us we couldn't stay there. Yeah, it really didn't look like a good picnic spot.

So Vern got in the van, we got into neutral, and he pushed our car with his car down the road. And then the wheel locked and we started drifting into the left lane... well, we got that corrected and eventually limped into the parking lot of the Hair Corral, where we left our car to eventually get towed.

It might be time to say goodbye to this old car.

Wake To Sleep

For three weeks since my trip to Ithaca, V's been waking up at night. Not every night, but probably 2 out of 3. After a while I figured out the pattern: she'd sleep six hours, wake for about two, then sleep about 3 more. The nights when she did sleep straight through it would be for 11 hours straight - like she was making up for lost time.

So Terry remembered the old "wake to sleep" trick that we learned from Dr. Sears last year for habitual night waking: anticipate the night waking by an hour - gently wake your child up an hour before their habitual time (so this really only works if your kid is waking up at about the same time every night), then put them back to bed. Do this 3-4 nights in a row.

Well it worked before, and it looks like it's working again! We've done it two nights running - when she falls asleep, we set the alarm for 4.5 hours from that point. When it rings, Terry gently picks her up, talks to her quietly, changes her diaper, gives her a drink of water, and puts her back in bed. So far she's gone back to sleep and completed her typical 9.5-10 hours without a peep.

10

(Photo by Jodi Read, 2005)

"What? We've been married for TEN YEARS?!?!?!?!"

Happy TENTH Anniversary to the man who never fails to make me laugh.
I'm glad you plan to live to be a 1,000 (at least)
I love you!

1 lb 1 oz

Yesterday we had our big anatomy ultrasound. I was happy that Terry was able to come with me since he missed all but one of the scans for Valerie. He marveled at the amount of research time and dollars invested in the development of this technology - it really is something else.

Everything looks good; they estimate the baby's weight at 1 lb. 1 oz. which is right on track for this point in the pregnancy. They measured the head, arms, legs, looked at the heart, kidneys, spine, and confirmed that yes, we ARE expecting a BOY! Terry was convinced that he counted seven toes but the tech and I only saw 5 per foot :-). His head is up behind my belly button and feet are moving all around, up by his head, then down kicking my bladder. We got a nice profile shot that shows a very recognizable Jantzi profile - a miniature Terry, just like Valerie (I know people say she looks more like me, but the profile is all Dad!).

Yesterday we also had the fun of seeing some old friends from Bolivia days and catching up on all the MCC Bolivia alum news (from the '90s anyway). Their youngest daughter is checking out EMU for college next year. Terry remembers when she was a 2-year-old who fell asleep on his lap on a road trip and then peed on him :-). A little forerunner of his future as a dad!

Today we're going to sign the papers to refinance our house so that we can charge a reasonable rent while we're gone and still cover the mortgage. Then in the afternoon I'll be interpreting for parent-teacher conferences at the local elementary school. I hope I still remember how to do that!

It really feels like spring this week, with balmy, sunny weather and crocuses popping up all over. You can see a faint reddish haze spreading over the bare branches of the trees as they begin to bud out. The snow is all gone, and the ground is mushy and wet. The sunshine feels WONDERFUL.

5

Five years ago today, we lost Aaron. Thinking of him today, and Anita, Solana, and the whole Kane/Hernandez clan in FL. Miss you, man.

22

Valerie is 22 months old today!
(And little brother is 22 weeks!)
I give you, her hat tricks.












At some point this past month Valerie decided that she HAD to have a hat on her head at all times, 24/7. Fortunately I have a lot of knitted hats lying around - some I made for myself - and she doesn't seem to particularly care which one she wears as long as there is something on her head. She learned how to put them on by herself and it's just very cute to see her doing so.

The down side is that when she's very tired and trying to go to sleep, she can't seem to get the hat adjusted to her liking, and it goes something like this: Lie down. Hat gets crooked. Sit up, take hat off, put hat on, lie down. Hat gets crooked. Sit up, take hat off, put hat on, lie down. Saturday night she did this for AN HOUR AND A HALF. Finally we took all the hats away. She cried and cried like her heart was breaking, desperately signing "hat hat hat hat." At that point I was so tired and frustrated I started to cry too! The minute she heard me, she stopped - lay down, and fell instantly asleep.

I'm not sure if we're going to take the hats away permanently at some point - especially as the weather gets warmer - sometimes she wakes up from her nap with her head all sweaty from the warm wool - we'll see how it goes over the next few days.

37

Home again, home again

The trip went well, but it's good to be home! V. did well while I was gone although apparently she didn't eat much. She's in this funny phase right now where she has to have a hat on her head at all times, 24/7! It's very cute and I have a ton of pictures I need to download. At the same time it's kind of a pain at night because when she lies down the hat often goes askew, and she has to sit up and re-situate it before she can lie down again. Sometimes 6-8 times in a row which gets annoying when we're trying to settle her in for the night.

It's so nice having warmer weather now. V. loves to play outside, stepping in the leftover piles of snow, throwing gravel around, poking at things with sticks.

I think I've cracked the code on her hand-to-nose/mouth gesture - I think it means "moon/sun." She often does it when looking at a book with a picture of the sun or moon in it.

Road Trip

So tomorrow morning I'm heading to Ithaca for a grad student workshop on im/migration studies. We're all presenting works-in-progress in panel format with different professors as discussants. I'm really looking forward to it; a chance to run some ideas by a group of people interested in the same topics. According to the schedule, I got the very last slot of the day... 4:30 p.m. on a Friday... I told a friend I'm going to have to borrow an outfit from Lady Gaga just to keep people awake...

I'll be driving up alone, staying with friends in Trumansburg, then driving back home on Saturday. Two nights away from the little one. I'm a little nervous about what it's going to do to her sleep patterns but since my entire advisory committee is involved in this event it seemed like a good idea to go.

Name Game

Terry pointed out to me that if you take the first letter of each name in the poll and put them together, you get INGOT. Which means bar of gold.

In case you can't read the yellow font (sorry I haven't figured out how to fix that in the formatting), the names are:

Ivan

Nathan

Gabriel

Oscar

Tobias

So far Gabriel is the front runner in the poll!

By Popular Demand

So a few people have been asking me to post more about the baby, so I thought it fitting to do that today, when we officially mark the halfway point of this pregnancy (!).

Actually I don't know all that much about what's going on with the baby, other than the daily kicks and wiggles I get periodically, which is always fun. Actually a few days ago Valerie was lying across my torso and, whereas I usually have to tell her, "don't kick your baby brother," this time I had to tell my belly, "Don't kick your big sister!" I doubt she noticed anything but it amused me.

In two more weeks I go in for the full anatomy scan, where they measure all the major body parts and check that the internal organs are developing properly. Hopefully we'll get some good pictures :-) That's usually the scan where you also have the option of finding out the sex, but since we had a fancy schmantzy 3D scan at 13 weeks we already know!

We have a short list of boy names in mind, which I plan to put up in the sidebar as a poll - so you can actually submit a vote for your favorite! Not that we'll use the results to choose a name (I have a pretty strong feeling for one of them in particular) but I'm kind of curious what people think.

As for the pregnancy from my point of view, it's been uneventful so far. My blood pressure readings have been lower than they were at this time in my previous pregnancy, which is reassuring, and chances are slim that I'll develop hypertension again. I had very mild symptoms in the first trimester, and even though I still seem to need a daily nap I think that has more to do with Valerie's night-waking than the pregnancy. This trimester I've been adapting to the growing belly, and feeding it well :-). I've not had really strong cravings, per se, although I've developed a greater-than-usual fondness for ice cream. Normally I'm pretty indifferent to ice cream, I could take it or leave it, don't really care, but now I'm going through a pint a week. And not really interested in the chocolate flavors. My favorite flavor right now is Ben & Jerry's Strawberry Cheesecake. Cheesecake being another dessert that I'm normally indifferent to. So, Dairy! Yes, this baby is definitely a Jantzi!

I've sorted out all Valerie's old clothes and set aside the ones that are neutral or actually boy clothes, and we've got quite a lot for the first 6 months or so. After that it's pretty much all pink, or embellished with hearts and flowers. I'm working on a couple knitting projects - a purple sweater and a sky-blue hat - and soon plan to start a newborn set in green (socks, hat, and possibly vest if I have enough yarn). The green yarn I bought in Savannah right after finding out we were pregnant, for the new baby, before knowing the sex.

So that's a quick update.

Because I'm a nerd

I had to go back and fix the line breaks in the "Halfway Down the Stairs" poem (observant or, more likely, obsessive readers may also notice that I at one point changed it to "Up", having mis-remembered the words, and then changed it back to "Down").

Here's a fun link to the Muppets' version of this poem set to music - very sweet!

***

And some random Valerie-isms - she has a new sign but I can't figure out what it means: she brushes the fingertips of one hand against her face, almost like pulling something from her nose/mouth/chin area. I'm still trying to figure that one out. It's similar to the sign for "sleep" but that's not how she's using it.

She also has invented a word, "Hmo," which Terry claims is a rude word in Albanian (but it's not actually), which I figured out means "where is it?" or, more succinctly in Spanish, "dónde?"

Another onomatopoeic word she's come up with is "Tlha," with a sort of aspirated "l", which means click or clap - the sound of two wooden or plastic objects coming together.

And, just for cuteness, here's a picture of her wearing a dress that's really for a bigger child but she pulled it out of a basket and asked me to put it on her.

I should also mention that she is sleeping much better now. Not perfectly - she still sometimes wakes for about 45 minutes during the night - but much, much better. She falls asleep between 8:30 and 9 and wakes up around 6. I've been cutting her naps short at 2 hours, even though it makes her grumpy, and I think that helps. The one time last week I let her sleep 3 hours she did the 2-hour night waking again and I decided I wouldn't do that again.

Valentine's Day

I told Terry that I wanted flowers for Valentine's Day (pretty much joking, since I don't really care and I figured he wouldn't remember or get around to it). Sunday morning he came up with this:

"But you said you wanted FLOURS!"

(just for the record, they are corn, wheat, and self-rising). So pleased with himself! It did crack me up :-)

Halfway Down the Stairs

Halfway down the stairs
is a stair
where I sit.
There isn't any
other stair
Quite like
it.
I'm not at the bottom,
I'm not at the top;
So this is the stair
Where
I always
stop.

~ A. A. Milne

The toothbrush has become a near-constant fixture in her hand or in her mouth. It's her new comfort object; she usually falls asleep clutching it in one hand. It's a bit of a challenge maintaining hygiene but it's also kind of hilarious.

21 Months

Wow, just 3 months to 2 years old!

I've been saving up some cute stories for this post. In the past month, Valerie has learned some key new words and skills.

1) "No." (Nancy Reagan would be proud.) When she first started saying "no," it was more like a game - apropos of nothing, she'd just sort of sing "no no no no no no no," only it was more like "ñoñoñoñoñoño." Now, however, she uses it appropriately and with full meaning. I actually prefer it to her previous method of communicating the same sentiment, which was to wave her hands back and forth, shake her head vigorously, and scream.

2) "House." Suddenly, everything is a house. Of course there's the doll-house, and all the pictures of houses in her books, but one day she surprised me by pointing to the space underneath the belly of a plastic toy sheep and saying "houe" (she doesn't pronounce the "s"). A few days later at a department store, she pointed to a space between several boxes of shoes and said "houe!" It's like pattern recognition on steroids!

3) Drawing. She's getting better at handling crayons, as evidenced by the marks on the walls of the dining room... and the sketchbook we've been keeping around for doodles.

Then there's just a cute story from church yesterday. I took her forward for children's time, even though she usually can't really follow the story, and prefers climbing around on the pew to sitting on the story blanket with the other kids. She was kind of sleepy, and was just sitting on my lap with her snack cup, when the pastor pulled an apple out of his bag (it was part of the story). She immediately jumped off my lap saying "Ap! Ap! Ap!" and ran around the seated kids to the steps where the pastor was sitting. She stood at his elbow signing "eat" over and over again, but unfortunately he didn't see her. Luckily at the end of the story all the kids got a few homemade apple chips to eat so that made her happy. That's really the first time she's ever gotten "involved" in story time so it felt like a bit of a milestone to me :-)

Right now she has a stuffy nose but other than waking up and crying inconsolably for about 20 minutes around midnight, she slept through the night. So we're gettin' by.

Albania

I've been meaning to write about this for awhile - over a month, actually - but finally getting around to it now. Life is so full of distractions. I wonder if I could just move into a monastery for a while? (not really)

A lot of people might think we're nuts for planning to move to another country - a country neither of us has ever been to before - just 2 months after having a new baby. Here is some of the backstory - although there is a little more to it that I won't put on a public blog, but if you want to know more you can e-mail me and I'll fill you in privately.

Back about two years ago, when we were expecting Valerie shortly, we started talking about what to do when Terry went on sabbatical. According to our calculations, I would be at the dissertation writing stage at the time when he'd be eligible. Since the writing can be done anywhere - and in my program, it seems like most grads do the writing away from the university, for family or other reasons - I told Terry that we could go wherever he wanted, we'd figure out how to make it work.

So this past fall he started scouting out options for next year. Of all the nibbles he got, the one the appealed to me the most was Albania - probably a romanticized notion of that part of the world - and the position they have for him is a really good fit both in terms of the qualifications they are looking for, his skill set and expertise, and the timing. So even though there were some other options brewing this one sounded really good.

Then we found out that there's another baby on the way... and we had to do some strong thinking and considering. There were two things that really came up for us in this conversation:

1) When we got married, we had the vision of living and working together overseas in some kind of service/development/social justice role. Ten years down the road, we haven't made that happen yet. We've taken a number of students on semester-abroad trips, and Terry has done a TON of consulting work in various parts of the world (including Mongolia!), but really LIVE somewhere? No. How much longer will we keep putting it off?

2) We want to raise our children as global people. Why not start now? What kind of clinched it for me, though, was when Terry said, "who are the people I admire most and want to be like? The ones who say 'oh yeah, we were going to do x and y, but then we had kids, so we never did'? Or the ones who backpacked across Africa with their 6-month-old?"

We did think seriously about taking an opportunity in Colombia, which is closer to my family, and where V. would be able to learn Spanish. But in the end it was going to be too much for me; in that situation, we'd be joining up as a couple and I'd have to work part-time as well as trying to write my dissertation and mother two small ones.

The week that we had to make our decision final, I was able to have a Skype-to-phone conversation with the wife of the program director in Albania and ask her a bunch of questions. They have 3 kids, and moved there when the youngest was 2 months old. She LOVES Albania, says it's a wonderful place to raise children, and answered all my logistical questions such that it all sounds doable.

So now we just have to figure out the logistics of packing up our house and getting it rented out. We're planning to be there for 2 years (actually a leave of absence for T.). It's true that there were some good reasons for postponing this move for a year, but in the balance of things, it felt like defeat to stay here. I think we'll be able to manage it.

One Week

Well, we're 8 days (and nights) into our new schedule, with mixed results. Apart from the first night, when V. went down in 15 minutes and was asleep at 7:30, she's been falling asleep mostly at 8:30 but two nights at 9:30, and one night at almost 10:00. This despite lights-out close to 7 every night. That's a LONG TIME to be lying next to her. Some nights we take shifts. We usually follow the same routine of books, lights-out, lullaby for about 15 minutes, then play possum - but she'll come over and crawl on us, head-butt us, etc. I'm not sure how effective it would be to leave her alone and let her fuss. We did that when she was in a crib, and she NEVER went to sleep without crying - sometimes for 10 minutes, sometimes for 30 or more, but she ALWAYS cried.

As for the night waking, she's slept through the night 3 nights out of the 7 (tonight I don't know yet what the outcome will be). And two of those nights, she did wake up a couple times but then put herself back to sleep right away, so I'm still counting them - simply because she didn't do the 2-hour waking thing that she did the other 4 nights.

So.... it's somewhat better, but not where I hoped we'd be by now. For now though we're going to keep trying with the dinner at 5 and lights-out at 7, mostly because I have no earthly idea what else to try. I guess the options are 1) put her back in the crib and let her cry it out, or 2) leave her on her little bed but move ourselves into another room. I think with option 2 we worry about her wandering around the room at night on her own.

What IS working better is the earlier mealtime. She is more focused on eating, and eats a good meal in about 45 minutes, when we start dinner close to 5. So this is working well with my having the sitter come every morning and then just caring for her myself in the afternoons.

As of tonight, we've stopped giving her a snack at bedtime, wondering if maybe she's overfull when we put her down, or having heartburn or something.

She's still fighting naps, too. It takes 40 minutes or more to get her to sleep in the afternoon even when she's obviously tired and ready for it. I don't really know what that's about. She usually falls asleep between 1:30 and 2:00 even though I put her down between 12:30 and 1:00. So that's really frustrating too.

The other struggle we're having right now is with bath time. Last Sunday, she was soooo tired from 3 weeks of poor sleep, and Terry thought he'd entertain her with the toddler shower head he bought a long time ago. It's a little dolphin, and you attach it to your own shower head but it comes down closer to toddler level and the water comes out its mouth. We'd never used it before, but it was hanging in the shower and V. always points to it and wants to play with it.

Well, it terrified her. Ever since then she has not wanted to take a bath AT ALL. We've made her bathe twice since then, just because her hair was starting to smell funky, and she fought it crying all the way. So hard. Not sure what to do about that either.

I've been feeling pretty demoralized and discouraged about the sleep issue. She's such a sensitive little thing, it's hard to know sometimes how to help her cope with life. Sometimes I think this time of year is just hard for her - it was precisely at this time last year when we first had our horrendous sleep problems - coming after the holiday travel, into a new schedule with a new babysitter. Hopefully by the end of this week we'll have some better news.

Because I'm late...

Because I missed posting on the actual date, I just put up an anniversary picture for my parents to mark their 39 years of marriage!

Sleep, Eat, Smile

So last night Valerie slept through the night for the FIRST TIME in almost THREE WEEKS. She went down fighting but was asleep by 8:30, which is an improvement on the previous night when she spent 2.5 hours jumping on the bed until 9:30, and woke up at 1:30, 4:30, and 6:00 - although she did fall asleep quickly every time. Well last night she didn't wake up AT ALL until 6:15! And was in a much better mood this morning. With our extra time until 9:00 when the sitter comes, I made this recipe:

Mumologic's Unoffensive Recipe

It smells soooo good. I don't know if V. will eat it, but we still have rice and beans hanging around and she likes that a lot. I add chopped tomato, olive oil, salt, and maybe a little meat and she really enjoys it. I'm trying to teach her to eat with a spoon (I know, recien???) but she still turns it upside down to put in her mouth. We're working on it. She prefers to spoon-feed me pretend food and let me do the shoveling for her.

Also, we got yet more snow last night... and more is predicted for the weekend... I was digging around in a box of stored baby clothes yesterday and found a bag of winter clothes I'd forgotten we had - all size 2T and pink! There may be time to use it yet!