Reviews, Recipes, and Random Slices of Life

When one's spouse is essentially absent for three days in a row, and one has two very small mess-creators, it's a lot more difficult to get that post-vacation decompression/unpacking/cleaning done. Yeah. A LOT. By which I mean, it's still not all done. All our laundry tubs are overflowing with freshly washed but not yet folded laundry. I finally got around to unpacking my backpack only because I needed to pack it again with writing supplies for my coffee shop work-date. I'm still not sure how the dirty dishes managed to multiply so fast.

A week ago, we were out in Kansas for my widowed father's wedding. That is a post I need to make separately, because of all the little details I want to remember. And I have a ton of photos. We got back late Sunday night. Phil took Monday off as well, and on Tuesday he worked from home. Monday, we went to the Minnesota Zoo and had a pretty great "still on vacation" day. We brought our own ham bagel sandwiches, since I really couldn't purchase any food there and avoid dairy and soy. I still tried, since I had a blood sugar crash, but I ended up with a bag of chips and an apple and grateful for them.





Can you tell they're related?

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This was the year that 4th Street Fantasy became the premier dark fantasy convention in the Midwest. ...That would be because all the lights went out, and power wasn't restored at the hotel for a couple (?) of days. The summer solstice storm of 2013 hit the Twin Cities area hard, leaving 500,000 households without power, uprooting trees, flooding streets, and creating sinkholes that looked like Godzilla had been stomping around Robbinsdale.

I was at dinner at Super Moon Buffet* with a group of friends from 4th Street when the heavens opened. Between the torrential downpour and the near-tornado-strength wind, it became a question of how to get to the car, and who was going to get in it, and if it was safe even to drive back. You see, half of our party had chosen to walk to the restaurant! I dashed out to the car with the driver and settled in. Driver went back. I was just wondering what the other people were delaying for (and deciding that I wasn't going anywhere unless the car started to float away) when the restaurant lost power. In the end, we were able to get everyone out safely in a couple of car trips. When we got back to the hotel, we learned that it, too, had lost power. They had some emergency lights, and that was it. I was happy that I'd just downloaded a flashlight app on my new cellphone, especially after the emergency lights in the bathroom ran out of power.

Eventually, I got home and discovered that we had also lost power--and many large tree branches, but nothing that caused significant damage. It was actually really nice. Phil and I had a relaxing evening chatting by candlelight while music played on the laptop that still had battery power.



The next morning, I got to see all the damage while I was riding back to the hotel. We got to play a game of bush-branch-tree, identifying what that ground-level foliage was by the side of the road. The answer was often tree. It took a couple of weeks after the storm before the giant tree that was blocking a road north of our house got moved. As of today, a month after the storm, there are still piles of fallen branches pushed to the curb and waiting for the city to collect them. They claim they'll get here eventually.

In many ways, the power outage was good for 4th Street Fantasy. It made the convention memorable, promoted camaraderie, and didn't (quite) persist for an intolerable length of time. People staying in the hotel who remember glacial showers and critical coffee shortages may disagree.



In addition to the lack of power, there were a couple of other differences this year.

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Yes, we're even mopping the walls!

I have posted snippets about this on Facebook, and I am planning on one big, giant post here with all the information (once I have all the information!). But after our baby boy was diagnosed with lead poisoning, ridiculous amounts of cleaning are part of our daily life. Lots and lots of cleaning, trying to avoid the "poisoned" areas of our house, and soon--lots and lots of painting. That's all manageable. Replacing the windows will be a bigger problem. But for now--cleaning!

Cassius at 6 months.

6 mo., 0 d. Hard to believe it's already been half a year since I had the baby! Time flies when your baby's keeping you busy. I'm amazed by how much and how fast he changes (and I'm not talking about his clothes and diapers, though that's also impressive). And I'm amazed by how much I love having a baby, especially given how uninteresting I found other people's babies. To quote parents throughout time: "It's worth it." Not in some distant, nebulous will-it-all-be-worth-it-in-the-end way, but in the right here, right now sense. It's a job that I really love, that I'm happy to wake up to every morning. In some ways it's more demanding than anything I've ever done before; in other ways, it's the easiest thing I've ever done. Even if he grows up to be a distant adult or a troublemaking teen, the rewards of the right-now are worth the work of the right-now. One of the lessons of parenthood is to live in the present moment--while, of course, making sure you have everything ready for whatever the next moment may demand.



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Cassius at 2 months

He's grown really well. He's in the 90th percentile for height (about 24.5"), weight (13 lbs), and head size. He's almost too long to lay width-wise in the playard, and he's pretty much outgrown the <3 month onesies. The receiving blankets are too small for him now, as are a couple of hats and the tiny baby socks that never stayed on anyway. I've started packing away newborn things that he's outgrown. Shocking!

He survived his first cold and didn't run a fever, unlike his father. He even found the snot-sucker bulb amusing instead of terrifying.

We had a terrifying scare when Phil slipped at the bottom of the stairs and dropped the baby about 3 feet. Cassius hit his temple somehow (Phil says he landed mostly on his back), and was scraped and bruised. One trip to the emergency room and one CT scan later, and the doctor told us he looked like everything was fine.

A few days ago he had his 2 month checkup and was given the looks good--along with a barrage of vaccinations and a dose of baby Tylenol. He was a little feverish for the next couple of days, but baby acetaminophen kept the temperature down and hopefully helped with the muscle discomfort from getting injected.

Even if he did hate the flavor. I don't blame him. Artificial fruit flavors are pretty nasty, and babies have no reason to like them--no positive associations with the fruit. Artificial breastmilk flavor would probably work better. I had to do the stealth administration of painkiller by dropping it in while he was engaged in actual nursing. Droppering it in while allowing him to suck on a finger wasn't going to do it. That's the usual method by which we give him his vitamins, and he really hates them too--enough to launch him into vomiting and screaming fits if I don't administer it when he's a) really hungry, and b) somewhat groggy from sleeping. Well, he really hates the multivitamin. He's okay with the extra Vitamin D.

Developmentally, he's about where he ought to be, I think. He recently discovered his hands. There has been less random flailing and a lot more sucking on his fists and batting at the dangly toys on his bouncy seat and his mobile. He smiles in response to all kinds of things, and he makes it very clear that he likes us and when we play with him or talk to him. He "talks" with little gurgles and coos in the appropriate conversational intervals. When I sit him up to burp, he mostly supports his own head, but he certainly doesn't have head control yet. He has enough that I can hold him upright against my chest, at a slight incline, and not worry too much about his head flopping around, but he still needs support.

He is a mostly happy baby. He starts fussing when he wants to eat, and that can escalate faster than I can get settled with him. He also fusses about wet diapers. He may fuss if he gets overtired. And he sometimes fusses just because. A couple of days ago he would not stop crying and nothing worked to soothe him, but that was a first. Usually feeding or bouncing or rocking will do it. He eats, he poops, he plays, he eats, he sleeps, and sometimes he vomits up the entire contents of his stomach.



In a strange way, I have more "free" time now than ever before. When I'm feeding him, it's time to read on my Nook or perhaps watch stuff through Netflix. When I am soothing him to sleep by bounce-rocking him on the bouncy ball, it's time to read the internets...or ebooks on Calibre. It's very relaxing. Playing with or cuddling him is happy-making, as well as necessary to keep him from fussing.

I'm doing well. Every day, I definitely eat, shower, wear clean clothes, get enough sleep (one way or the other), keep up with the internets, read fiction, and get a little something done around the house. I usually cook dinner. I frequently get a few sentences of writing done. I've lost all of the 45 pounds I gained while pregnant. I'm far from back in shape (for one thing, that will require rebuilding my abdominal muscles--for another, I was at a high weight point from previous medical problems when I got pregnant), but I can at least fit into my two largest pairs of jeans. Yay, non-maternity clothes!

I'm generally relaxed and happy and very much in love with my baby. Life is good, as long as I remember to just go with the flow (of milk, other bodily fluids, etc.). Just go with the flow, search for the pattern that emerges instead of trying to force one, and always prepare one step ahead.

When he's awake and not eating, we play. He can go in the little swing and we play the laundry game. The laundry game involves exciting narration and description, dancing laundry, peek-a-boo, exploring different textures, tickling laundry monsters, and eventually laundry folding. Or he sits in his boppy pillow on the couch and gurgles and coos and smiles while we play with his hands and feet or play the blanket game. The blanket game is when we play peek-a-boo by tossing a light baby blanket over his face and pulling it off, then tucking it under his chin and letting him kick it all the way off. While chortling. There's also tummy time, on the couch or on Mama or Daddy's chest. He doesn't lift his head up yet (well, he did once), but he'll wiggle his arms and legs and he seems comforted by the cuddling. The item he likes most right now is his bouncy seat.

Daily routine:
* We stop going back to bed sometime between 10 AM and noon. I either skip breakfast or eat at the waking around 6 AM.
* After feeding and changing, I carry his bouncy seat up into the bathroom, and sit him in it while I shower, get dressed, and prepare for the day.
* Then we go downstairs and settle on the couch. I take care of my hair and generally try to do something on my computer until he demands to be fed again, which is usually a 15-minutes-later thing.
* I eat lunch, settling him into the big swing near the dinner table. He doesn't like the big swing so much, so I have to eat fast. Mr. Wiggly the caterpillar helps keep him distracted.
* While he's awake, we play, or I try to clean or do computer stuff in between distracting him.
* His next nap is around 2 PM, he goes down for his afternoon nap, for between one and three hours. This is when I do my work-from-home projects or (theoretically--I've been working a lot instead) write.
* More playing/cleaning/cooking.
* Then Phil gets home and he mostly takes over baby duty, playing with the baby between feedings.
* Sometime between 10 PM and midnight, Cassius gets tired enough to go to sleep. Then we go to bed.
* He may have a long sleep, four to five hours. After that, he only goes an hour and a half to three hours between feedings (or, forty minutes to two hours twenty minutes of sleep). It takes about forty minutes to change, feed, change, and soothe him back to sleep. Time between feedings is counted from the beginning of each feeding. And this continues until sometime after 10 AM.


And of course there are the tiny little baby posts from the last month (which I am regularly updating on G+). Oh, and more pictures!
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The various tiny little baby posts I've been putting up on G+.

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Right. Now that I've finished up the work-from-home projects that have kept me busy for the last month (though there are more on the horizon), I may actually get some other stuff done. So what have I been up to lately (aside from being in the last month of pregnancy, which is a Thing in and of itself)?

Cleaning! There was a lot of cleaning up for the 4th of July Party, and a lot of cleaning after...for values of "a lot" that are less than previous years but significantly more than was getting done without party-motivation. Phil has figured out that he needs to take the lead on some of the to-do-type items, like the planting of the tomatoes. This is how I have tomatoes in pots in the front yard (though they're not really thriving, and I'm not sure why--maybe they just need more time to establish themselves) and two magnificent upside-down tomato plants hanging from the branches of the Russian olive tree in the front yard. They seem to be doing very well, and it looks really neat, so I think next year I will want to festoon all my tree branches with upside-down vegetation.

The 4th of July party was great. I think at peak we had maybe two dozen people, which is about the right amount for our backyard. Four of them biked here, which always makes me happy. I really enjoyed seeing people and being able to hang out and chat without really having to do anything active to make it so. Like go somewhere else, because that's so not happening. And there were many tasty eatables (special notice goes to Moffat's fantastic peach-and-berry pie), and a giant sparkler duel at the end of the night. The freezie-pops were also a good idea, and the Viking bocce ball did well. Phil was the only casualty that I know of. I was a bad hostess a few times because I thought Phil was taking care of things, when in reality he'd crawled away again. Ah well. These things happen.

Things started to die down when it got dark around 9, as predicted, though discoflamingo stuck around and chatted and watched Wire in the Blood with me for a bit longer. I've been meaning to post about that show for a while--I found it on Netflix Instant and I've really been enjoying the heck out of it. It falls under the "eccentric specialist helps police in their investigations" template--if the eccentric specialist specialized in serial killers, the show was grittier and more realistic than Criminal Minds, they were given a DOP/cinematographer far better than a TV show deserves, and the director was exposed to lots of Dario Argento films at an impressionable age. In short, it's pretty fantastic. And it's in the British model where each show is an hour and a half long and good enough to be released as a movie on its own merits.

I've been slowly whittling away at the massive to-do list--I'm down to only having three levels of urgent to-dos. I got a bunch of insurance bills straightened away, figured out who I wanted our pediatrician to be, got myself a physical therapy appointment that may help with the pain I've been having, and wrastled baby carriers (the baby carriers won).

There were other major events. Somewhere in there were two baby showers and a 4th Street Fantasy convention. I passed on CONvergence, though--I may be pregnant and crazy, but not that crazy.

I also may have lost the second job doing senior-sitting. The elderly lady had a bad fall (not while I was present) and wasn't doing well, so they checked her into more advanced care at least for a while, possibly permanently depending on if they think her husband is no longer still capable of taking care of her on a day-to-day basis in their apartment. It is sad for them. Although it was nice having the job as a back-up, the amount of work I've been able to do from home recently has been reassuring to myself and Phil that we will not be totally fiscally screwed now that I'm *only* working from home.

Circus of Brass and Bone Writing Log

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I've been able to get more writing done. Not great amounts by my normal productivity standards, but at least a few hundred words a day. And I've sent a half-dozen stories out that were just lurking menacingly on my hard drive instead of doing anything useful, so that is *also* good. I am feeling better about things, even as I blow past writing deadlines. Well, I did give notice that I'd be doing that!

Tonight Mom gets to make the decision: second-line chemo, or an experimental trial?

Her blood tumor counts have skyrocketed since she stopped chemo a couple of weeks ago, proof that conventional chemo isn't working for her. She's been in a lot of pain. The "standard of care" is that then she would now go to second-line chemo, which operates differently, but which also has more side effects.

An experimental trial might be better. In the experiment her doctor recommended, the control group gets "standard of care." The drawback is that she would need to get another CT scan to qualify, which might slow down her treatment another week. She would be getting a second-line chemo treatment on Monday.

It is a hard decision. She saw her doctor and got her blood results today, and she needs to decide tomorrow.

I've told enough people face-to-face now, I suppose I should make a proper announcement: I'm pregnant!

How pregnant? 12 weeks.

When will there be a baby? If all goes well, August 2nd.

Is it a boy or a girl? Too early to tell. And yes, we will find out early, because I am sooo not good at delayed gratification. My parents always let me open my presents Christmas Eve.

Was it planned? Yes! My husband and I have been trying for about a year (as soon as I was off the narcotic painkillers after knee surgery). After one misfire, hopefully this one will be sticking around.

Uh, what can't you eat/drink again? It's a long list. Soft cheeses, including goat cheese etc. Cold cuts. Caffeine. Booze (duh). Chamomile tea. Tofu. Runny eggs. Sushi. More than minimal amounts of properly cooked fish. Buffet food. I'm avoiding canned foods because of the BPA thing. And I have particularly severe food aversions for garlic and red sauce.

Are you showing yet? Not really. My girth has widened, but I don't have a noticeable bump. I'm still wearing pre-pregnancy jeans, though I can't fit in one pair anymore and another pair is more comfortable unbuttoned. This despite me actually having lost a couple of pounds.

Are you going to keep working afterward? It's not a good financial option for us. Quality childcare in Minnesota is expensive, and my irregular work hours mean that I don't make much more money than it would cost. Since neither Phil nor I have family in the area, "Grandma daycare" isn't an option. But hopefully I will still be able to get the occasional work-from-home project to do, and some weekend hours if needed. Money will be very tight, but we should be able to scrape by.

How is the baby? Although I had an early ultrasound to make sure it was not ectopic, all you could see is a dot. Next week, we're getting the first "it looks like a proto-human" ultrasound done (this is also where they test for Trisomy 18 and Down's Syndrome, so fingers crossed for a healthy result). Yesterday, I had my first "normal" doctor's appointment, and there was listening to the heartbeat, which was small and fast like a bird's.

How are you? Feeling semi-human for the first time in two months. In the beginning, I was puking up to three times a day and was basically constantly nauseous. (For reference, usually if you're puking four times a day, they hospitalize you.) Then the doctor got me on extra B-6, I figured I needed to eat every 1 1/2 - 2 hours, and it got better. I was only puking once or twice a day, with a couple of spells of extreme nausea, all-day background queasiness, and extreme fatigue. I want to smack whoever called it "morning" sickness. They should have called it "evil, debilitating all-day vomiting and exhaustion." I still have pretty extreme food aversions, but the nausea is receding.

It's only in the last couple of days, as I reach the timing milestone where the nausea usually eases off, that I've felt well enough to do basic things like cooking dinner (while wearing nose-plugs), folding laundry, and sitting at my computer desk.

I've been doing nothing for the last couple of months. The morning sickness laid me out flat, especially when combined with a nasty and prolonged cold that my weakened immune system couldn't fight off. Fortunately, there wasn't work at my day job during this time--I don't think I could have gone. Though it means we're stony-broke. Most of my time has been spent on the couch. My house is entirely trashed. I haven't gotten any writing done (Sorry, Circus of Brass and Bone readers!). I didn't get my market list out last month. I haven't finished my writing group critiques from last month. My Christmas letter is written, but none of the Christmas cards have been sent out yet. I did absolutely zero Christmas decorating this year (this makes me honestly very sad--I love celebrating seasonal changes and holidays). I haven't been socializing, and if I did, I probably looked quite ill. I am sorry if I missed your social event, but, well, that's why. Especially if food was involved.

You know, a long rambling post where I write about where I'm at and what I'm doing and all the other things I think friends should know about each other but all too often don't these days. I encourage you to do one of these posts, too! I miss knowing these things about my friends (Twitter and Facebook have added a lot of little detailed information, but I think they've taken away some of the big picture).

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