I have nothing to say

So Jeff tells me (yesterday?) that it's been about three weeks since I've posted, and I feel very guilty, but at a loss as to what I should talk about. I have this weird thing (maybe a type 4 thing) where I feel like if I don't have anything deep and heavy to say, it's better to keep quiet (in this format, anyway). I find the intimate details of my day to day life fairly dull, so I have no reason to believe anyone else is waiting with intense interest for me to post about it.

I'm up to my maintenance dose (200mg) of lamictal now, and it is working very, very well. So well that the three weeks of sunlessness we all just suffered through hardly registered. Mostly I just felt a little tireder than usual, wanting to sleep in, or maybe take an afternoon nap. It beats not being able to get dressed and being intermittently suicidal, which is how I usually feel during December and January. I'm a bit irritable in the morning and evening, but since I'm not by nature an early riser (my kids are), and evenings here are chaos, I think that's perfectly normal and not a manifestation of mental illness.

Allie got into the magnet school that I wanted for her, and she's very excited about kindergarten. She keeps asking why she has to wait till fall to start. She likes her preschool, though. The other day she dictated a note to me for her teachers. I will reproduce it here for everyone's amusement:

Dear Mrs Rhodie and Mrs Greer,

I like my Christmas present you gave me and I would like another one. I want all four of my teachers to come to school again. When I go to kindergarten, I want all the kids in my class to come with me.

Allie

Part of me loves that she is so direct and isn't afraid to ask for what she wants, and part of me is mortified. But I'm sure they're used to it, and anyway, they love her to death.

Speaking of Christmas, the kids got mostly gifts that I approve of. Jeff will tell you- I am a gift nazi. There are toys that are ok with me, and toys that mysteriously disappear around springtime (I don't throw them away- they get donated to the Lupus Foundation). I'm not a complete meanie- if a toy I hate is especially beloved by one or more kids, I grant an exemption. But it is pretty rare that I have to. Thankfully. We have so many toys as it is (four kids and three grandmas who all go overboard with gift-giving will do that) that I go through every two or three months and get rid of some of them anyway.

Their favorite gifts this year are the Melissa & Doug cooktop set, birthday cake, and pizza party- my mother-in-law bought the first one, the other two they got from us. I'll admit I have a bias toward wood toys (Little People and teethers being exceptions- all my kids play with Jonah's teethers. Go figure). Ok, I'm really just nuts. My dislike of plastic toys borders on the irrational.

But there's also an element of practicality in my derangement. It's not a matter of educational value or noise or replacing batteries or anything like that. What it comes down to is that we don't have a ton of money to spend on gifts for anyone, our kids included. If I'm going to spend $20 on a toy, it better be something my kids are still playing with on Valentine's Day, or I will feel it was money wasted. Ditto if it gets broken a week after Christmas, like the fire truck Gabe got from his great-grandma that is already missing two wheels. And so many of the plastic toys you get at Target or anywhere else feature licensed characters, which, as far as I can tell, about doubles the price, with no corresponding increase in quality. It makes me really angry, so I refuse to buy them, and instead, I buy a lot of Melissa & Doug stuff.

I guess, upon reflection, it's not what the toys are made of that matters to me, but what kind of values they represent. Are they an extension of our throwaway culture's love of passive entertainment, violence, brand names, and flashiness? Then I'll probably hate it. If, on the other hand, it encourages imagination, improvisation, movement, or interaction (even if said interaction ends with one party crying, as is often the case here)...then it's pretty likely that I'll adore it. It's just a sad coincidence that plastic toys are usually of the former variety, and wooden ones almost exclusively the latter.

Honestly, I bet I'm the only person you know who could start a post titled "Nothing to Say" and write this much. G'night.

Human again

I was abducted by aliens this weekend, and my husband was forced to look after four screaming, demanding children while his replacement "wife" dozed in the recliner, ate soup, and watched television. Then got up once a day to go on a random rampage about how she really shouldn't have to be responsible for chores at a time like this, etc. While doing chores.

Actually, being abducted by aliens would have been better than what really happened...because I wouldn't have had to suffer through it, and I wouldn't have to own up to being the one who went on the random rampages. I actually got strep throat Thursday night. Only fever that night (oh, and puking! can't forget that!), but it was sleep-in-clothes-under-two-comforters fever (tested Friday night as 103+ degrees- eek). Friday morning I had a sore-ish throat that quickly turned into a throat that had apparently been repeatedly rubbed with bits of broken glass, and tonsils so swollen that when I talked, people thought I had a head cold...it was weird. My glands were so swollen and tender that I was actually scared I might have mono- even though I had it more than 10 years ago.

So I went to urgent care and got the swab down the throat (didn't hurt, didn't gag- shocking). Bit of trivia: the rapid strep culture West Health (Plymouth) uses looks just like a pregnancy test...little credit-card size piece of plastic with two windows: the "control window" (those familiar with pg tests will recognize this as the window that just lets you know the test didn't malfunction) and a window that shows a plus or minus- I kid you not. Apparently test manufacturers don't consider doctors any smarter than the rest of us. That came up negative, but the doctor was convinced it hadn't worked right, so she gave me amox. anyway (my mom has since confessed that as many times as I had strep since they came up with the rapid cultures, I always tested negative on them...and the doctor always called back two days later with a positive result and a prescription) (oh, and the overnight test was positive...way to call it, doctor!). Very little fever Saturday night, felt much better Sunday...but still didn't go to church. Who knows if someone else here is going to come down with it tomorrow- I'd hate to be responsible for spreading it. Like my...husband. Who gave it to me. But did not have to suffer the agony himself. Ahem.

Yes, I will be taking every one of the pills the doctor gave me- I always finish my course of antibiotics, silly!

Thank goodness it happened on a weekend (so that Jeff was home). Oh, and that my in-laws were kind enough to stop by Friday and let me nap with Jonah. That was awesome.

Hope all your weekends were better than mine.

&^%#$%#%&@ Classmates.com

I have a high school friend who apparently wanted to say "hi" to me, so she sent an email through classmates.com. The drawback being that I can't read it without paying for membership, since she is not a paying member. I sent her one back, which she will not be able to read, although the site has kindly informed me that if I were to join, she would be able to read it free of charge. Sweet of them, really.

Screw that. I put my current email address in the subject line of the email.

back to the drawing board

excuse the lack of capitalization- jonah has a cold, so there's a lot of late-night feedings to be done here.

things get better, only to get worse again...at least that's how it feels right now. i thought allie was coming out of whatever behavioral fugue she falls into every few weeks, but alas, it isn't so. it's not so bad for me- we have those first two years of pretty much mutual exclusivity going for us, and if it almost drove me crazy, it also means we have near-telepathic rapport. might be because we're so alike, also- although that works against us as well as for us. on the less-helpful end, we both enjoy arguing, but only if we can pretty much grind the opposing party into the floor. as much as possible, i just refuse to argue with her- it's too much like a power struggle. a wise person once told me that you can't win power struggles with children- once you engage in it, you've lost no matter what the "outcome".

so. allie, yeah...jeff is not so lucky. three-quarters of what he says to her she percieves as rejection or attack. the word "fine", in particular, provokes a reaction you would not believe of my sweet little girl. he's trying hard to banish it from his vocabulary; meanwhile, i have a severely anxious and overreactive daughter- make that two of them; myself, who just went up to a slightly higher dose of meds, making me irritable and impatient for a few days; jeff, who is struggling mightily but still feeling like he's losing his mind; and a son who- scout's honor- would drive a substance abuse counselor to the nearest dealer. oh, and one sweet little baby who is growing up far too fast for his poor mommy.

speaking of jonah, he is definitely the prodigy of our family. crawling by 6 months (although it took him another month to really get good at it), pulling himself to standing now, at just under 8 months. and the boy can *stand*- unless gabe shoves him, he's steady on his feet for a good 30 minutes, which seems like an inordinate amount of time to me. he really enjoys walking if you hold his hands, and he uses this really cute marching-band stepping style. he also said his first word tonight ("duh....ck"). it just doesn't seem possible that i'm coming to the point in my life where i will no longer be the mother of any infants. part of me is cheering- no more mandatory 3 am feedings! no more missing concerts because it isn't worth it to introduce a bottle for one night! but part of me is sad, because most of my friends are just entering or preparing to enter parenthood, and while I'm far from done (parenting, that is), I do seem to be done with babies. I love being pregnant, and it's hard to come to terms with never being pregnant ever again.

Notice the caps are back? Jonah finally went to sleep and stayed asleep after roughly three hours of nursing and two failed attempts at putting him to bed. Thank God. The upside was I got to spend some extra one-on-one time with Allie. I walked past her room with Jonah and noticed she still wasn't asleep an hour after I put her and Eva to bed, so I invited her to get up and watch a little TV with me while I nursed him some more. We split the last of the Le Petit Ecoliers cookies (extra-dark chocolate, yummm- another thing she and I have in common), watched a bit of a movie (not Olive the Other Reindeer, thanks be- that's been more or less playing constantly the past two days while Gabe and Eva were sick), then I put Jonah down and carried my big girl to her bed. She's almost too big to carry now, so I am enjoying it while I can. She is so much to deal with right now that the chance to spend some uncomplicated, quiet time with her was really special.

I truly live in an alternate universe

I just finished a yahoogroups posting where I'm trying to convince a mother of two that she is not a bad mom for encouraging her second child (15 months) to only nurse a few times a day, because she is pregnant and nursing makes her antsy. Her first child nursed to age 2.5, so she is feeling very guilty and upset.

Sometimes I completely forget that this is not normal behavior for an American mother. That if the age of my children at weaning were general knowledge, I would get some surprised looks (at the very least). Our American average age of weaning is 6 weeks or so (largely due to the unavailability of paid parental leave, I would assert), and most babies are recieving at least some formula by the time mom and baby leave the hospital.

The hospital. Yeah. Because that's where you go to have a baby, right? I mean, only a complete freak would do anything else, right?

Sometimes the real world is too much like a slap in the face. I like my alternate universe.