03.31.03

91694703

Posted in Uncategorized at 1:34 am by Anne

Last night was unbelievable. During the day, Lily and I were busy with Shan’s family and that evening as well. In fact, she was awake for most of the day and when we left Shan’s Grandma’s at 10PM, Lily went to sleep in the car immediately. She had been unusually chatty all day long and except for a brief bout of suspected gas-induced fussiness, was a perfect angel (Even at Central Market!) I woke up at 5:40AM wondering where Lily was and found her atop the dryer, still strapped in her carseat…snoozing away. I woke her up to feed her because it felt like my chest had sprouted two painful bowling balls and we both slept for a few more hours until she woke up not to feed but because she was trying to poo. That was almost seven straight hours! I hope this means she is on the road to sleeping through the night.

Tonight she went to sleep around 8PM and woke up at 1AM. Five hours ain’t bad! I am still up because I found 7 samples a the office when I went by on the way to picking up pizza for dinner, and they are due tomorrow. In addition, my brother is coming into town for a week long visit and the house was in a shambles. Shan and I spent the day working inthe yard. I planted dahlias and lilies (of course), sprayed and fertilized all the roses (every year at the first of spring they come down with aphids pretty nastily), swept and cscoured the back porch, and so on and so forth. All this after a morning celebrating his sister’s birthdya at a very nice brunch. So yeah, I’m tired. While I looked at the samples Shan told me he’d clean the kitchen. I thought that was pretty wonderful until I went to the kitchen for some water after he’d gone to bed and discovered he’d merely stacked all the dishes BESIDE the sink and thrown away the pizza box. nice.

Later this morning I’ll devote a few hours to cleaning the house and maybe bake a lemon bundt cake for my brother. Something to make the house smell good. Well just have to see.

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03.27.03

91492552

Posted in Uncategorized at 12:02 pm by Anne

The Children’s Hospital of Dallas is enormous. We got there a little before her appointment and went to the radiology department. The waiting room was nearly packed. Fortunately, or unfortunately, there was a sign on the wall near the front desk stating that patients were not seen in the order they arrived but by their appointment time. Right after signing in, Lily started getting all crotchety. She was the youngest child in the room and became the most vocal so as to not make a ruckus, I took her from Shan’s arms, grabbed the diaper bag, and went off in the direction of the parking lot so that I could nurse her in the car. You’d think a children’s hospital would have ‘nursing rooms’ but I was a little shy to ask. Once in the elevator I had to call Shan to find out what floor the car was on. “Three.” he said. I hung up and pressed the button to the third floor while on the fifth floor. When the doors opened on the third floor, I saw no parking lot. With Lily getting a little more pizzed off with every passing minute, I walked down an office lined hallway and ducked into a bathroom. Now this was a tiny bathroom. It was cramped. This is the kind of bathroom that needs to be retrofitted; it reminded me, in age, of the elementary school bathrooms of my youth, it had that wet kind of musty and dirty feel to it. I really didn’t mind. After putting a little toilet paper guard on the seat in one of two available stalls, I sat down and nursed Lily for about ten minutes. Then I got to change her diaper in my lap and it required everything I ever learned in gymnastics ,back in the day, to complete . By the time we got back to the radiology room, mauch of the crowd had thinned out and I had to admit to Shan that I didn’t make it to the parking garage. He thinks Im directionally challenged as it is, but to be honest, and he knows this, I just wasn’t paying any attention to where we were going when we first got to the hospital. Not good. Anyway, while we waited a woman in scrubs walked up and greeted Shan. He knew her and it turns out that an old friend of Shan’s sister works there and when she found out that Lily had an appintment for some tests, she looked up the date and time on the computer. So we chatted a little and then we were called back for the first test, an ultrasound. We were led back to a little room and Lily was set on some towels on a bed while a technologist used a sonogram to look at at photograph her kidneys. This was painless and relatively easy, except Lily got bored and let us know it. The coolest part was getting to see her little full stomach on the screen. “Look at that formula!” the tech announced and Shan had to correct him.

Then it was time for the final examination. Two of the nicest RN’s led us to the XRay room and Lily was undessed and basically strapped around the waist to what looked like a 2X6. She didn’t like that at all but liked even less the young nurses attempts at installing a catheter. She tried and tried and tried to put one in and each time Lily cried harder. It was painful to be there. I held her little hands, rather she squeezed one of my fingers in each hand, and I tried to sooth her as much as possible but was not too effective. Finally the RN went to get another woman to help. This middle-aged RN walks in and without a hitch put in the catheter. That’s what you call experience. After that, they strapped Lily’s little legs to the board and called in the Doctor. The doctor came in and Lily’s arms were pulled abover her head and her head and arms were strapped. Poor little angry miss. Shan and I were given lead aprons and the machine was pulled over above Lily and they began pumping dye into her bladder and taking pictures. The board Lily was strapped to rotated this way and that and she just cried as much as she could. By the end of the debackle both she and I were sweating buckets. And thankfully the doctor said it lookeed like she was just fine, no kidney damage and no ureter reflux. So thank goodness! Going to a children’s hospital and seeing all the poor children who aren’t 100% healthy really makes one count their blessings.

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03.25.03

91388750

Posted in Uncategorized at 9:49 pm by Anne

The little miss is asleep onthe sofa while her father watches the Dallas Stars play Vancouver. yaahaww.

I need to put down how truly amazing it is to have a little baby in my life. Of course before delivery I had a number of preconceived notions of how it would be. I thought I’d love her with the intensity that I love my little sister, or my best girl Cess, but it’s different. She is so perfectly innocent now and spongelike.Not knowing what kind of a person she will grow up to be but having this wonderful gift of being a part of that growth is so humbling. As parents of one so young, we see her before she starts picking up on the less positive characteristics most adults wear on their sleeves. I want so much to influence goodness on her, qualitites like strength, integrity, independence, and kindness.

Becoming a parent is so much bigger than the concept, you realize you are a part of something HUGE and lovely. I’m just crazy about it.

Ask me how I feel when Lily learns to talk back.

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91360707

Posted in Uncategorized at 1:00 pm by Anne

Lily is sleeping again as I type from the office. I only like to bring her here when she is asleep for obvious reasons. No mail but I had to pick up a file on a client. It’s hellish taxtime again and I’m in the dreary process of getting my gross income together to hand over to the CPA. The easy part was grouping all the expenses. I really need to get a program like quicken or something for next year, because this is ridiculous!

Anyhow. On the Lily front things are okay. We are taking ehr to the dallas children’s hospital for those test mentioned earlier. Basically they’ll check to see if her ureter is functioning properly and I suspect it is since she only had that one urinary tract infection but better safe than sorry. I’ll be sorry for her during the tests though…gahhhh.

This morning after I changed her diaper and started pulling her little pjs off, I got stuck because her little fist was pulling on her hair. oops. She’s up. more later.

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03.22.03

91197109

Posted in Uncategorized at 4:35 pm by Anne

A few mornings ago, I’d say around 6 after feeding the littel miss, instead of going back to my bed, I laid down with her on the twin bed in the nursery. Her little head was near my head and just as I was falling asleep, I felt the unmistakable sensation of warm spit-up hitting my mouth. Fortunately it was closed.

Then, yesterday I spent most of the morning organizing the nursery closet. I threw out a bunch of boxes and pulled out non-baby items, and folded up all the clothes into groups by age and type. Then I rearranged the furniture until it became a feng shui nursery. A day earlier I had gotten the single most important nursery accoutrement and here it is. Anyway, when Shan got home he was not completely satisfied with the furniture placement and suggested a slight alternative, which involved switching places with the crib and the bed. I got after it and started moving the bookcase along the wall (He went to work in the office) when the unmistakable sound of porcelain breaking on the cement floors pierced through the air. I looked down and the beautiful lithographic nightlight was in pieces. Of course I felt like a complete idiot. Shan rushed in and knew exactly what had just happened and gave me plenty of love. Then he picked up all the pieces and said he’d glue it all back together until we could get a new one. I blurted out, “But I bought the last one!” A few hours later as I rocked Lily to sleep, Shan walked in and plugged in a newly repaired peter rabbit nightlight and just completely saved the day. It looked good as new, the cracks were barely noticeable. And that’s the kind of man I married. I experienced one of those moments of complete and total love. It was good.

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03.20.03

91088362

Posted in Uncategorized at 5:29 pm by Anne

Yesterday I met my old organic chemistry prof for lunch at the new ‘rockfish‘ in town. I got there early and Lily and I were seated. She slept away in her little carseat and the waitstaff buzzed around us ooh’ing and aaah’ing. They have these handy little gizmo’s that kind of reminds of of those foldable contraptions in hotel rooms that are used for keeping your suitcase off the floor. These kind are for the car seat and are more stable than say, a chair. My prof showed up bearing gifts. She loves to cook andalways brings some new spice mix to give out. This time was a mexican seasoning mixture and a cannister of an asian salad dressing. She advised pouring some over a cabbage blend and I’m thinking if it is what I’m thinking it is, then it’ll be awesome with shredded carrots and grilled chicken…maybe some mandarin orange segments. She also purchased two of the cutest little dresses for a 3-6 month old. Perfect! I feel bad that I didn’t tell her sooner about Lily, she should have been invited to one of the baby showers :(. Anyway, we wound up sharing an appetizer of crabcakes (very good but should have been warmer) and an entree. The entree was breaded snapper filet served over grilled tomato sauce and spinach fettucini. The snapper was passable…a little on the chewy side but the star was easily the tomato sauce. If you have ever had the divinely inspired tomato basil soup from la Madeleine then you’ll know where this sauce was coming from. I just won’t ever believe that whole cream is bad for you, it’s just too good. Lily let us eat and didn’t wake up and start twisting around until dessert was served (a slice of chocolate cake, of course). I unbuckled the little miss from the carseat and tried to calm her down on my shoulder. Shortly after my prof spoke candidly, “Amazing. The minute you brought her up to your shoulder, you immediately began to leak.” I was mortified. In my lime-green sleeveless shirt, my right nipple region was very definitely seeping. I could feel the burning eyes of the loitering waitstaff landing on my bosoms. She asked, “Don’t you wear pads?” ummmm…shit. Of course I forgot them! I could imagine her thinking, “You don’t get out much, do you?” So I scrounged around in my purse, threw a 20 on the table, and asked if she would mind paying the bill. We got the cake to go and had it with coffee at my house.

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03.18.03

90966809

Posted in Uncategorized at 9:31 pm by Anne

Lily is beginning to stay awake for longer periods of time. Today I took her to the gym and at one point, I looked up to find one of the supervisor lady’s holding her in front of me.

Her: Are you Lily’s mom?
Me: Yeah, is something wrong?
Her: Well, I was wondering if you have a bag for her. She won’t stop crying.
Me: ummm…really?
Her: Well, the minute I walked out here she stopped crying. She must like loud noises. (music is blaring)

Well of course she likes noise, she sleeps on top of a tumbling dryer as much as possible!

Then she walked back into the room. I guess Lily stopped crying. Later I looked at the video monitor of the playroom and saw another woman rocking her in her little carseat thingy. I don’t know how wother women get things done with a crying baby who wants to be held all the time. She’s such a cutie, though, and I know she recognizes my face by now, the sweet little thing.

A good friend of mine is getting married in June and has asked me to be a bridesmaid. Of course I would love to and I’m also talking with her maid and matron of honor about putting abridal shower together. The thing is, it’ll (the shower) be held in a small town an hour away. I wonder if they would be terribly put out if I brought Lily, since she will have to be fed and who knows how long we’ll be there setting up and then taking everything down again. Would it be impolite to bring her I wonder?

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03.14.03

90743339

Posted in Uncategorized at 8:41 pm by Anne

Oh my gosh. When Lily woke up she launched into the loudest and longest crying jag ever, it was at least an hour of me trying everything, walking around, singing, dancing, putting her on top of the dryer, changing diapers, but I could do nothing to help her and called Shan again. He suggested the Children’s Tylenol and assured me that he was on his way home. I did manage to give her the smallest dose, which the Dr. reccommended, and once it kicked in Lily seemed a lot better. It was such a relief to not have her crying. She cries real tears now and they are just too awful for words. All of the shots (the info said) could create tender spots where they were administered and I imagine the tetanus is the worst one, since I hate getting them as an adult! Poor baby.

When her Daddy got home she had finally calmed down enough and was sleeping in my lap. He asked, “Can you put her in her bed without waking her?” I told him I hadn’t even tried. He helped me up out of the rocking chair but she woke up anyway and began crying again. Shan took her and soothed her back to sleep.

I’m really not looking forward to the next round of shots in 2 months but at least I know we’ll be able to handle them.

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90727779

Posted in Uncategorized at 2:25 pm by Anne

Today was Lily’s two month check up. She weighs a whopping 10 lbs. 12 ounces and checked out on all the other exams( cooing, making eye contact, grasping, holding head up nearly…) They refer to eye contact as the baby ‘regarding you’. I love that, it is so true. I don’t feel that she knows who I am or that she loves me or Shan, which is fine, she’s too little…I see it more as a ‘oh, you are the guys that I see all the time.’ kind of thing. Regarding us is perfect. so YAY. The bad part was right at the end when she got 4 (polio, diptheria, hepatitis/someothermix, and streptococcus meningitis vaccines) shots, two in each leg. The Dr asked if we wanted to do the strep shot . She said only 1 in 100,000 come down with it but if they don’t die from it, babies have a high chance of being deaf after an infection. Shan asked, “If it were your little girl would you do it?” and the Dr. said, “Absolutely, because I’ve seen babies who have had it.” I got to duck out to set up an appointment (as Shan’s request) in another 2 months while Shan stayed with Lily so that we could just up and leave afterwards. Her little screams could peel the paint off the walls. Because it is such a beautiful day and because the drs office is so close, we walked to the appointment. It took about ten minutes each way and and except for the crying on the way home, it was perfect. Shan strapped her in the Baby Bjorn and we walked. Only Darwin was missing.

When we got back home I fed her and she went to sleep for a few hours but when she woke up, forgetabout!,she was pizzed off again. I fed her but she quit after only completing it halfway, and proceeded to cry and cry and cry. Nothing could convince her to stop, not nursing, not walking around, nothing. So I called Shan to let him in on my misery and he suggested I take her for a drive. Great idea! Once I strapped her in the carrier she groused a few minutes but then went right to sleep. I drove by the office, checked messages and mail, and by the time we got home, she was sleeping again. So I set her up on the trusty dryer and no sooner had I put my purse down but the doorbell rang and my favorite client met me at the door with ten samples.

I did miss lunch though, so I’d better go take care of that.

There is a possibility that Lily will suffer through a fever resulting from the shots over the next two days and we have permission to use Children’s Tylenol in that case. Poor little miss.

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03.12.03

90628840

Posted in Uncategorized at 9:57 pm by Anne

We have a nice routine developed for when we go to the gym. I feed her before we head out and she sleeps until I’m done and we are back home again. Another leftover pregnancy pain in the ass is that I suffer from acute knee strain still. I first noticed it while pregnant around the middle of the second trimester, apparently a hormone called ‘relaxin’ was released and it loosened all of my joints, and my knees especially. A few weeks ago I tried to do squats with the smith machine but it was so painful I had to quit. Lunges hurt my knees some but not even close to the damn squats. Depressing. I hope they go back to normal and that this isnt a permanent condition. crikey.

We all just went out to Huck’s for fried catfish. Right when the food came out Lily woke up and got fussy so Shan volunteered to change her diaper outside. Well, he was gone for at least 12 minutes, Grandaddy went out looking for him but didn’t see him. Shan’s Dad went out and they were still in his truck. Apparently Lily was upset and Shan was upset because I hadnt answered my phone (he had called twice.) So my father-in-law came back to say Lily was crying and Shan was pizzed etcetcetc. I asked, “Is Shan mad?” and he said,” You know how he is, he’ll get over it. I told him I didn’t hear your phone ring and it’s been sitting here the whole time.’ which was true. So I wolfed down half of my supper, one piece of fried catfish, a little salad with ranch on the side, and half of a baked potato with margarine and sour cream…gulped some of my sweet tea down and went to the truck. My Lord, when I opened the door, Lily was crying at the top of her lungs, it was awful . I put her to my breast and she still wouldn’t stop crying for what seemed like a minute; she was so upset! Finally she latched on and drank. By the time nursing was done, so was everyone else and we all took 2 cars to his grandparent’s for a game of dominoes. She slept on the way there and woke up, of course, once we pulled into their driveway. She was good up until the second game in which she became inconsolable. I walked off to feed her, which she did for about five minutes before conking out again. Amo asked if I thought she could hold her. Who am I to get in the way between a grandmother and her grandaughter? Lily promptly woke up again and got fussy. Somehow Amo found the magic spot after some time and there was quiet through the house, except for the sound of dominoes plunking against the table. Amo walked up with a quizzical expression,while Lily was draped oddly in her arms, and she said, ” I was moving her to a new position and she just fell asleep like this!” The concensus was little baby had terrible gas pains and that Amo found a position where it didn’t hurt her so much. Poor baby! Who knew gas pains were so big of a deal!

Heard in the news before we left that Elizabeth Smart was found, alive and well, thank GOD.Thank goodness she is back with her family.

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