Sunday, March 30, 2008
She's very articulate
Mom: "Rachel, would you like to have cheese quesadillas for lunch?"
Rachel: "Actually, I don't think so, Mom."
I was somewhat surprised by her response since she was so excited to have them the other day.
*************************************************************************************
Rachel has been asking me lately about counting the money in her tzedakah box again to see if we had enough to save another animal. She was set on adopting either a polar bear or a panda. We sorted and counted all the coins yesterday and there was $36.02. We needed $40. Rachel suggested that we get the rest from Daddy's wallet. Since she was so close to having the right amount, we did.
We then went online to WWF's website to see if we could arrange to adopt the animal online. When we got to the right page, I scrolled down and started to tell Rachel all what her options were. She saw the Asian elephant and abandoned all thoughts of adopting anything else! "Let's adopt another elephant! Then TV will have a sister because they will send another elephant!" Um, so much for altruism. And yes, the stuffed elephant that WWF sent along with the adoption certificate has been named TV. I suggested it as a joke after Rachel tried to convince me that the elephant wanted to go watch a video, and Rachel decided that it would be a good name.
We did adopt another elephant. Rachel was happy to know that she was helping animals, and I'm sure she can't wait to get the elephant in the mail!
Rachel: "Actually, I don't think so, Mom."
I was somewhat surprised by her response since she was so excited to have them the other day.
*************************************************************************************
Rachel has been asking me lately about counting the money in her tzedakah box again to see if we had enough to save another animal. She was set on adopting either a polar bear or a panda. We sorted and counted all the coins yesterday and there was $36.02. We needed $40. Rachel suggested that we get the rest from Daddy's wallet. Since she was so close to having the right amount, we did.
We then went online to WWF's website to see if we could arrange to adopt the animal online. When we got to the right page, I scrolled down and started to tell Rachel all what her options were. She saw the Asian elephant and abandoned all thoughts of adopting anything else! "Let's adopt another elephant! Then TV will have a sister because they will send another elephant!" Um, so much for altruism. And yes, the stuffed elephant that WWF sent along with the adoption certificate has been named TV. I suggested it as a joke after Rachel tried to convince me that the elephant wanted to go watch a video, and Rachel decided that it would be a good name.
We did adopt another elephant. Rachel was happy to know that she was helping animals, and I'm sure she can't wait to get the elephant in the mail!
Friday, March 28, 2008
Eleven o'clock and all's well!
Yes, I should go to bed. Of course, by this time there's almost no point since Anna will likely be up to nurse in an hour or two.
I would like to report that I read the newspaper, my kitchen is clean, the laundry is all where it's supposed to be, and I think I'm even caught up on my e-mails!
I would like to report that I read the newspaper, my kitchen is clean, the laundry is all where it's supposed to be, and I think I'm even caught up on my e-mails!
I feel the need...
... to post that Anna is still asleep in her bassinet and it's now just after 10 p.m.!
No, I don't plan to update hourly. Don't get too excited now. ;)
No, I don't plan to update hourly. Don't get too excited now. ;)
They're both asleep!
I'm sure I'm jinxing myself by typing this, but it's just after 9 p.m. on Friday night, and both girls are asleep in their beds! I'm celebrating by sitting down with a bowl of ice cream and typing with TWO hands! It only took 2 hours of nursing/rocking/jiggling/bouncing Anna to sleep, but she's been in her bassinet for a whopping 20 minutes now and I *think* she's out for her long stretch!
Monday, March 24, 2008
Our Purim Alien
I've had this costume for quite awhile now, and we were hoping to have a baby to put in it! ;) For those of you who are unfamiliar with Megilat Esther, I'm quite positive that there were aliens frolicking along with Mordechai, Queen Esther, Haman & the gang!
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Anna, aka the spit-up queen
These pictures were taken way back on March 10th. I'm sure that I'll update again once we get more pics in the computer!
As for why Anna is the spit-up queen... let's just say that burp cloths work for some babies. Not ours. We've resorted to using receiving blankets as burp cloths. It's the only way to hopefully contain most of the mess. Hahaha. I think that Anna spits up as a direct result of us ordering new living room furniture last spring. We got the furniture on Thursday June 14th in the morning. At about 5pm that same day, I got a positive pregnancy test. There's obviously a direct correlation! ;) (We'd always said that there would be no point in getting new furniture only to have it spit up on. Guess the joke's on us.)
Why does every post require a title?
The other day I was nursing Anna on a chair in the living room. Rachel wanted me to read a book to her, so I asked her to go and pick one out from the shelf. Her response? "Why do you make everything so hard for me?"
(for the record, I do not recall ever saying that to her, so I'm not sure where she picked that up!)
In other news, Rachel is surprisingly literate. She's more of a sight-reader than sounder-outer, but that's fine by me. We've been giving her snack menus lately. I'll list several options, and she checks off the one that she would like to have. This has cut down on the fights we were having over snack. If I verbally offered her 2 choices, she would reject both but refuse to tell me something she did want, or just melt down because none of the choices were what she wanted. Now she reads her menu, checks off what she wants, and we have no fuss! I don't do it all the time since I think the novelty would wear off, but it's certainly made life easier over the past week.
*knock on wood* Everyone seems to be healthy again now. Rachel still has a bit of nasal drip and is coughing some at night, but I plan to send her to pre-school in the morning unless something drastic happens overnight. Of course, my pelvic issues are sadly still here as is the nasty pain in my lower back. I tried sleeping in the bed for a whole 20 minutes last night and I'm paying for it today with more pain than I've had in probably a week or more. Since we leave on our trip for Kansas in 34 days, I'm really hoping for healing soon. I doubt that hotels provide recliners, even in the suites we've managed to book!
(for the record, I do not recall ever saying that to her, so I'm not sure where she picked that up!)
In other news, Rachel is surprisingly literate. She's more of a sight-reader than sounder-outer, but that's fine by me. We've been giving her snack menus lately. I'll list several options, and she checks off the one that she would like to have. This has cut down on the fights we were having over snack. If I verbally offered her 2 choices, she would reject both but refuse to tell me something she did want, or just melt down because none of the choices were what she wanted. Now she reads her menu, checks off what she wants, and we have no fuss! I don't do it all the time since I think the novelty would wear off, but it's certainly made life easier over the past week.
*knock on wood* Everyone seems to be healthy again now. Rachel still has a bit of nasal drip and is coughing some at night, but I plan to send her to pre-school in the morning unless something drastic happens overnight. Of course, my pelvic issues are sadly still here as is the nasty pain in my lower back. I tried sleeping in the bed for a whole 20 minutes last night and I'm paying for it today with more pain than I've had in probably a week or more. Since we leave on our trip for Kansas in 34 days, I'm really hoping for healing soon. I doubt that hotels provide recliners, even in the suites we've managed to book!
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Why we love Rachel's pre-school
Rachel has been looking forward to Purim all year, especially when we told her that we wouldn't be doing Halloween again. (Halloween falls on Shabbat this year, so it's just out. Purim is basically the same kind of thing... well, other than the wildly different reasons behind the celebration! We don't see the need to do both.)
The Purim elephant was ready to make a second appearance, having first showed up last year at Beth Shalom in Kansas. Unfortunately, Rachel still wasn't up to going to pre-school today. Her temperature is totally back to normal but she is still very tired and if it hadn't been the Purim Parade today I wouldn't have even thought of sending her.
Ben had to drop by the JCC to return a shoe to school since Rachel's dress shoes got mixed up with another little girl's shoes last Friday. When he got there, he found Morah Basie dressed up as an elephant trainer and Morah Lu was the elephant! Since elephants and trainers do not have a place in the Purim story, we know that they did this to make Rachel feel more comfortable with the costumes and wildness of the day. They have been very good with Rachel throughout the year, and she has really warmed up to both of them as a result. I wish that Rachel could have seen them, because she would have thought it was great that one of her teachers was an elephant just like her!
Technically we still have one more chance for the Purim elephant to show since we might attempt going to services tomorrow morning. We'll have to see how everyone is feeling.
The Purim elephant was ready to make a second appearance, having first showed up last year at Beth Shalom in Kansas. Unfortunately, Rachel still wasn't up to going to pre-school today. Her temperature is totally back to normal but she is still very tired and if it hadn't been the Purim Parade today I wouldn't have even thought of sending her.
Ben had to drop by the JCC to return a shoe to school since Rachel's dress shoes got mixed up with another little girl's shoes last Friday. When he got there, he found Morah Basie dressed up as an elephant trainer and Morah Lu was the elephant! Since elephants and trainers do not have a place in the Purim story, we know that they did this to make Rachel feel more comfortable with the costumes and wildness of the day. They have been very good with Rachel throughout the year, and she has really warmed up to both of them as a result. I wish that Rachel could have seen them, because she would have thought it was great that one of her teachers was an elephant just like her!
Technically we still have one more chance for the Purim elephant to show since we might attempt going to services tomorrow morning. We'll have to see how everyone is feeling.
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Too smart for her own good
Rachel has not been feeling well at all this week. On Sunday she had a temperature of 105 and it kept spiking back up as the Tylenol wore off, so off to the ER she went with Daddy. The ER doctor couldn't find anything wrong so she was sent home with instructions to alternate Tylenol and Advil. *WARNING BELLS GO OFF HERE!!!*
We have never given her Advil. There is a good reason for this. We have reason to suspect that Rachel has issues with ibuprofen since other similar drugs have given her diarrhea. Needless to say, we got the Advil but thought it would be prudent to keep Rachel close to home. That turned out to be a smart decision, although I think that taking out shares in OxyClean would be an even smarter thing to do.
Since Rachel has been sick, she's been watching a lot of videos. She's definitely been watching way more than I would normally allow. Yesterday afternoon she asked to watch another video and I said no. I explained that she'd already watched too many and we didn't want her brain to rot. (No, I don't know why I said that!) She thought about it and said, "But my brain's already rotted from watching too many videos so it's ok to watch another!"
No, that didn't work.
We have never given her Advil. There is a good reason for this. We have reason to suspect that Rachel has issues with ibuprofen since other similar drugs have given her diarrhea. Needless to say, we got the Advil but thought it would be prudent to keep Rachel close to home. That turned out to be a smart decision, although I think that taking out shares in OxyClean would be an even smarter thing to do.
Since Rachel has been sick, she's been watching a lot of videos. She's definitely been watching way more than I would normally allow. Yesterday afternoon she asked to watch another video and I said no. I explained that she'd already watched too many and we didn't want her brain to rot. (No, I don't know why I said that!) She thought about it and said, "But my brain's already rotted from watching too many videos so it's ok to watch another!"
No, that didn't work.
Friday, March 14, 2008
Food Art
I would just like to state that Rachel came up with this all on her own. "I made a face!" she proudly told us. She's got a long way to go before recreating scenes from plays like her mother once did, but we're proud of our budding artist just the same! (If anyone cares, I once made the set for Waiting for Godot out of a dinner at my residence at the University of Toronto way back when. Amanda, if you're reading this I'm sure you can vouch for me!)
Monday, March 10, 2008
Typing with two hands!
I finally have a few minutes while Anna is napping IN HER SWING! No-one is holding her! And she's asleep! (and yes, I'm probably jinxing it by having typed that...)
I was considering titling this entry "I am Jane". For those of you who have known me for a long time, those three words need no explanation. For those of you who might be unsure, let's just say it refers to a kind of Murphy's Law in which things just never go as you think they will/should.
I had a lot of difficulty nursing Rachel. She wouldn't latch on properly until she was almost 3.5 weeks old and we saw a lactation consultant at the hospital when we were in for Rachel's unexplained fever. (Coincidentally, the same night I ended up in another hospital ER with gall stones and several days later Ben got food poisoning. My pelvic and back issues seem like a breeze in comparison...) I also had supply issues, and constant pumping & domperidone (the lactation drug) really didn't do much to help. Since my mother had the same supply issue, I wasn't totally surprised by this.
Fast forward to Anna's birth. I had decided that I wouldn't bother trying to breastfeed. I didn't see the point in being set up for disappointment, and it's not like formula is baby poison or anything, despite what some people seem to think. When she was born, the nurse in the delivery room asked me if I wanted to try nursing her. I said, "Sure, we can try, but I don't really care if it works." (I did also explain my history.) Anna wouldn't really latch on quickly, so I told the nurse to not worry about it.
She was bottlefed for her first four days of life. On Monday Feb.18, I woke up and said to Ben, "Um, do these look larger to you?" Hmm, I thought. Could there be anything in there? "Hey Ben, let's see if the baby will latch on, just for kicks!" She did. "Hey Ben, could you go rent me a breast pump so I can see if there's really anything in there?" Oh look. There was.
The next day we had a lactation consultant come out to the house. I figured that I wanted someone professional to tell me if there was any point to trying this out, given the bottlefeeding start and seemingly random nursing success. She got me set up and showed me a few different ways to nurse Anna.
At Anna's next check-up, she hadn't gained anything in 8 days. Needless to say, this had me freaking out. I had not been exclusively nursing her, but she was only getting about 1-3oz of formula in a bottle every day. (We call it the sanity bottle. As in, "I can't take anymore of this 24/7 latching on to Mommy thing! Someone else can feed you now!") My doctor wasn't alarmed, but agreed to have me come back the following week just to check.
8 days later we had our follow-up appointment. Anna had gained 9.5oz in 8 days. So, um, there is milk in there. Apparently the key to breastfeeding success is to:
a)not care
b)not try
c)wait a few days and then play "latch the baby on" just for kicks
d)laugh hysterically (and a bit sadly) as your plans to play a concert at Easter go up in smoke
This morning I decided to try pumping at around 7:30 since Anna was still asleep. Amazingly, I had 3 ounces within minutes. So I was able to get Rachel ready for preschool very easily and quickly while Ben fed Anna! Yay for an easy morning!
I won't say that I'm in love with this nursing business though. She's finally starting to mellow out a bit and not need to latch on 24/7, but I do feel very tied-down by it. I'm trying to only give her one bottle of formula per day, and I suppose if I'm ever able to pump enough to put aside, then we can switch to no formula. I'm not that motivated though, to be honest. We'll go with whatever happens. And apparently I'll get a little more time off of the orchestra circuit.
I was considering titling this entry "I am Jane". For those of you who have known me for a long time, those three words need no explanation. For those of you who might be unsure, let's just say it refers to a kind of Murphy's Law in which things just never go as you think they will/should.
I had a lot of difficulty nursing Rachel. She wouldn't latch on properly until she was almost 3.5 weeks old and we saw a lactation consultant at the hospital when we were in for Rachel's unexplained fever. (Coincidentally, the same night I ended up in another hospital ER with gall stones and several days later Ben got food poisoning. My pelvic and back issues seem like a breeze in comparison...) I also had supply issues, and constant pumping & domperidone (the lactation drug) really didn't do much to help. Since my mother had the same supply issue, I wasn't totally surprised by this.
Fast forward to Anna's birth. I had decided that I wouldn't bother trying to breastfeed. I didn't see the point in being set up for disappointment, and it's not like formula is baby poison or anything, despite what some people seem to think. When she was born, the nurse in the delivery room asked me if I wanted to try nursing her. I said, "Sure, we can try, but I don't really care if it works." (I did also explain my history.) Anna wouldn't really latch on quickly, so I told the nurse to not worry about it.
She was bottlefed for her first four days of life. On Monday Feb.18, I woke up and said to Ben, "Um, do these look larger to you?" Hmm, I thought. Could there be anything in there? "Hey Ben, let's see if the baby will latch on, just for kicks!" She did. "Hey Ben, could you go rent me a breast pump so I can see if there's really anything in there?" Oh look. There was.
The next day we had a lactation consultant come out to the house. I figured that I wanted someone professional to tell me if there was any point to trying this out, given the bottlefeeding start and seemingly random nursing success. She got me set up and showed me a few different ways to nurse Anna.
At Anna's next check-up, she hadn't gained anything in 8 days. Needless to say, this had me freaking out. I had not been exclusively nursing her, but she was only getting about 1-3oz of formula in a bottle every day. (We call it the sanity bottle. As in, "I can't take anymore of this 24/7 latching on to Mommy thing! Someone else can feed you now!") My doctor wasn't alarmed, but agreed to have me come back the following week just to check.
8 days later we had our follow-up appointment. Anna had gained 9.5oz in 8 days. So, um, there is milk in there. Apparently the key to breastfeeding success is to:
a)not care
b)not try
c)wait a few days and then play "latch the baby on" just for kicks
d)laugh hysterically (and a bit sadly) as your plans to play a concert at Easter go up in smoke
This morning I decided to try pumping at around 7:30 since Anna was still asleep. Amazingly, I had 3 ounces within minutes. So I was able to get Rachel ready for preschool very easily and quickly while Ben fed Anna! Yay for an easy morning!
I won't say that I'm in love with this nursing business though. She's finally starting to mellow out a bit and not need to latch on 24/7, but I do feel very tied-down by it. I'm trying to only give her one bottle of formula per day, and I suppose if I'm ever able to pump enough to put aside, then we can switch to no formula. I'm not that motivated though, to be honest. We'll go with whatever happens. And apparently I'll get a little more time off of the orchestra circuit.
Sunday, March 09, 2008
One picture
I don't know why blogger is giving me trouble but it's currently only letting me upload one picture. This was taken after Anna's naming on February 23.
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