2011 In Review

2008, 2009, and 2010

1. What did you do in 2011 that you’d never done before?
Parented not one, but TWO children.

2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
My resolutions from last year were to be more organized and better at time management. I also wanted to complete my Day in the Life project from 2010 and work on my photography skills. I was doing beautifully on the organization/time management goal until my third trimester got really ugly starting in April and then, of course, Oliver was born in July. Since then life has been about managing the moment-to-moment kid stuff and I can only dream of getting organized and having time to manage. Maybe I can tackle some things once life settles down. Yes, I'm still clinging to the hope that life will not continue to feel this chaotic and out of my control. I did finish the Day in the Life project for 2010 just before Oliver was born, but there was no working on photography skills beyond checking out a book on exposure from the library and reading it. I think I did decently with my resolutions given the circumstances.

2012 resolutions:

1. Give up diet soda. OH, I WEEP! But it's time. It's way out of line with my other eating beliefs and I know it makes my body feel kind of gross. I will allow myself 13 diet cokes during the year (one a month and one to grow on) to whoop it up on occasion.
2. Be more positive. Husband and I both want to work on this. I have always struggled with negativity (my fatal flaw, perhaps), but it's especially challenging when you are operating on little sleep. So we now have code words to say to each other when we are getting bogged down with what's wrong. There are many things right. I need to see those and not the poopy stuff.
3. There are a million other projects that I'd like to work on, but I'm trying to be more realistic about my non-time. Maybe that's a resoution in itself? Be realistic about this stage in life and embrace my limited personal time in a meaningful way (read: not only turning to Netflix between the hours of 8-10 pm).

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
Me! My sister. My friend, Holly.

4. Did anyone close to you die?
No.

5. What places did you visit?
*Changed this to places since there won't be all that much country traveling for several years*
We went to San Diego in February that turned into a longer stay when a major blizzard hit the midwest. Then we went ot Florida in November to visit Husband's parents.

6. What would you like to have in 2011 that you lacked in 2010?
The feeling that my head is above water on a regular basis. A house better suited to a family with two small children. A thrush-free existence.

7. What dates from 2011 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
July 1 - Biggie is born!

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
If I were to point to a single event, then I would say delivering Oliver without pain medication. And to that point, and perhaps more so than the actual birthing experience, I am proud of how hard I worked to prepare myself for another med-free birth - all those hours of Hypnobabies and affirmations. But on a more macro level, I'm really proud of my parenting. It's not perfect and I make mistakes everyday, but I think I do a fab job of parenting mindfully.

9. What was your biggest failure?
I keep going back and forth between saying "keeping up with stuff" and "being okay with not keeping up with stuff." That sort of confusion is the story of my life right now.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
I would say that this past year has been the most challenging one of my life on a physical level. There was the nasty third trimester and then the hemmorrhage/anemia/thrush recovery. Now I would say I'm quite healthy, I just don't necessarily feel that way since I'm incredibly sleep deprived and out of shape/overweight.

11. What was the best thing you bought? I really adore my iPhone and use it in many ways.


12. Whose behavior merited celebration?
Both kids, of course. Bella in many ways - her incredible grasp on language, her self-motivation to get potty trained and most notably her ability to adapt to her little brother joining the family. She amazes me daily, perhaps even hourly. And sweet little Ollie surprises us with his physical strength every day and his mellow, happy personality shines through. Husband gets kudos for going after a new job that was better suited to his talents and abilities. Same with my sister and her new job!

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
This question makes me depressed.

14. Where did most of your money go?
Same old, same old: Household stuff (bills, mortgage, groceries, whatnot), rental-property stuff, and savings. And I suppose some new baby things, too.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
Having Oliver is the obvious answer, but the truth is that I felt really yucky leading up to his birth and then I felt even worse afterwards. So I only had about 5 minutes of excitement there. So what made me really, really excited was when I emerged from the fog that was postpartum anemia to find that I was (1) not pregnant and (2) the mother of two beautiful children. Does that make sense? Also: running again was great.

16. What song will always remind you of 2011?
Someone Like You by Adele. I feel like I don't even have a say in it, it was simply so EVERYWHERE. Also: Moves Like Jagger.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
a) happier or sadder? Happier is some ways - not puking! New baby! Sadder in others, but maybe I'm just way sleepy.
b) thinner or fatter? Fatter. Wamp, wamp.
c) richer or poorer? Richer.

18. What do you wish you’d done more of?
Practically speaking, there really wasn't the time/physical ability/energy to do MORE things, but I do wish I had done a better job keeping in touch with friends and also blogging the last couple months.

19. What do you wish you’d done less of?
Ruminating and feeling negative over things that were out of my control.

20. How did you spend Christmas?
With my side of the family here at our place.

21. Did you fall in love in 2011?
Oh yes, with my little man.

22. What was your favorite TV program?
Friday Night Lights. We also enjoyed Greek (random) and I like that New Girl show.

23. What was the best book you read?
Would you believe that I have read about 60 books this year in spite of the crazy? Thank you iPhone and nursing! My favorite would have to be Girl in Translation by Jean Kwok.

25. What was your greatest musical discovery?
Bella on the xylophone is something to behold. I have been fond of the Ingrid Michealson and Regina Spektor stations on Pandora, too.

26. What did you want and get?
To have a successful med-free delivery and a healthy baby.

27. What did you want and not get?
To not hemorrhage after birth and to have an easy recovery. To move to a new house.

28. What was your favorite film of this year?
I liked Crazy, Stupid Love.

29. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
My birthday was kind of a downer this year, but it ended better than it started. I had two last minute doctor appointments (pediatrian & midwives) for thrush reasons - this was when the ped said "thrush is not a problem" - and then my siblings were in town and they came over for dinner. I turned 31.

30. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
More sleep, an easier pregnancy, and an easier recovery. But stepping back and looking at the big picture - it was all worth it and the tough stuff from this year will be but a memory someday.

31. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2011?
Disasterous. Can I just go naked? I swear I would feel more confident that way versus trying to fit my random shaped bod into clothes.

32. What kept you sane?
Husband. Bella making me laugh. Oliver laughing. Help from family when I needed it most. Cats. Sleep. Coffee. For sure coffee.

33. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
Ryan Gosling for a second year in a row. Oh, and I had a brief moment of lust for Tim Riggins.

34. What political issue stirred you the most?
Giant FAIL on following political issues.

35. Who did you miss?
Husband and I have both agreed that we miss each other, although that is better now that we have reclaimed our kid-free hours at night.

36. Who was the best new person you met?
Oliver!

37. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2011.
2011 was so overwhelming in so many ways and I feel like I'm still in the middle of learning several life lessons. This past year was such a blur. But I guess it's something along the line of "Doing the best you can is okay."

38. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.
This seemed very involved and I just googled "Beautiful Life" and Ace of Base popped up. Perfecto!

Take a walk in the park when you feel down
There's so many things there
that's gonna lift you up
See the nature in bloom a laughing child
Such a dream, oooh

It's a beautiful life, oh oh ooo
It's a beautiful life, oh oh ooo
It's a beautiful life, oh oh ooo
I just wanna be here beside you
I just wanna be here beside you

Oh, the Horror!

A Husband and Wife.

A Living Social deal for a night at an inn along the river.

Grandparents to stay with the kids.

The inn? CREEEEEEEEPY in the best possible way.

30 minutes until check-out and an iPhone as a video camera.

Here is what happened.

[You may need to click over to the blog to see video.]

REDRUM!

The Beast That is Yeast

Can I ugly vent for a minute? Whine my head off even though my problems are actually quite lovely problems to have in the grand scheme of things? Yes? Yes.

Wait, first let me show you the kids' picture with Santa that I totally didn't put any forethought into, hence the everyday clothes.

PERFECTION! Rare double-looking-AND-smiling perfection!

And now back to the task at hand.

So: thrush. Oliver and I had it bad at two weeks postpartum and it was really horrible for me to deal with, especially since I was having a rough postpartum recovery (side note: I regret not getting the blood transfusion and feeling better much sooner, but it's a moot point now as I'm fine either way. Hindsight is 20/20, yadda yadda.) The thrush caused breastfeeding to be insanely painful and gave me a host of other problems such as nipple neuritis and blanching. Thankfully, Oliver never seemed that affected other than having a mouth that looked like it was covered with yucky white stuff.

As I sought treatment, I quickly realized that most pediatricians and even midwives know very little about effective treatment for thrush. Only the lactation consultants knew what the deal was and, unfortunately, they aren't the ones with the Rx pads. So I cobbled together a treatment plan using all of my handy dandy new-found knowledge via the internet and - did a million and one things both for treatment and for prevention of thrush. Oof, that sucked, mostly for time-consuming reasons. But the thrush was improving - huzzah!

At some point,  however, the treatment for thrush was making me go crazy and so I stepped back and was relieved when nothing terrible happened. I really wanted to write a post called "I Got 99 Problems but the Thrush Ain't One", which was obviously going to be awesome and full of fist pumps and HOLLA!, but I was never quite convinced that the thrush was gone. My nipples still seemed kind of irritated at times and Oliver sometimes had suspicious looking white spots in his mouth, but I chalked it up to just being overly paranoid about thrush. Kind of like how I will never really enjoy hotel stays after The Great Bed Bug Incident of 2006 because I always think I MAYBE see something that could indicate bed begs. I can never quite quell that internal voice that says, "But maybe...?"

Regardless, my problems shifted from thrush to Oliver's sleeping drama so I mostly put it out of my mind. That is until we arrived in Florida last month and after one day in the humid warm weather we saw that Oliver's mouth was covered in that white stuff. We tried to deny it was thrush and pretended it was spit-up, but it persisted and my nipples started hurting and bleeding and the jig was up. Thrush had come on vacation. So I made the calls to the pediatrician and then had to jump through a few hoops to secure a prescription for Nystatin down in Florida, but we got it figured out. It sucked to do all that extra laundry and nipple ointmenting and Oliver medicine-ing on vacation, but it was much more doable than the first time around when I was so weak and anemic. Besides, I tried to tell myself that it was weather related and we would get home to dry, cold Minnesota and POOF! the thrush would disappear. For good measure, however, I did do a 3-day course of gentian violet when we arrived home and crossed my fingers that it was enough.

To make this already too long story short: it was not enough. My less aggressive treatment this time meant that the thrush persisted. I wasn't obsessively hand-washing or applying ointment following every feeding or laundering each and everything Oliver's mouth touched. This was a mistake.

And so now I need to go back to being aggressive, which really just means obsessive, about treating the thrush. The first step involves seeing a nurse practitioner who is also a lactation consultant. For anyone who has been in my thrush-y shoes, you KNOW what a coup this is because normally you have to make multiple calls to get thrush treated - to the pediatrician, to the lactation consultants, and to the midwives. For once I will get one stop shopping! After step one comes steps 2-100: all the many, many things I need to do to kill/prevent thrush. This seems like Mission Impossible now that I have a very-mobile-almost-crawling baby who shoves everything he can get his cute little paws on into his mouth. Basically he is a non-stop contaminating machine. But you gotta do what you gotta do. So I will throw away all those toys that he's been chewing on that I can't boil for 20 minutes or launder (goodbye over $100 in toys...) I will launder everything his mouth/breastmilk touches, even though that probably means washing my sheets EVERYDAY in addition to a thousand other things. I will put my super-expensive sports bras through the dryer, which is exactly what you are not supposed to do with super-expensive sports bras. I will do all these things, plus many more that you can read about here. And once I don't see/feel any signs of thrush then I must continue to do these things for at least a week.

And that is my major whine. Dudes, I don't have the time let alone anything resembling the energy for all of this. It puts such a damper on my quality of life. All I see are things I should be washing or sterilizing or possibly throwing away- the bathmat, the jumperoo, a book - because Oliver's mouth touched it. It doesn't end and it doesn't stop and all of this work might still not be enough. That is the point where I want to weep: when I think that I might be doing all of this and it might not be enough.

But life goes on and we'll figure it out. Currently, neither Ollie nor I are particularly bothered by the thrush and there are plenty of good, happy things going on to outweigh the bad. This too, shall pass. But MAN could I use an easy stretch of time that doesn't involve drama of the vomiting, anemia, thrush, or sleep-deprivation variety. I know that none of these problems are that bad, but they still suuuuuuuuuck.

Yeastily Yours in Thrushville,
The Mothership

/End rant and muchos gracias for letting me blog vent.

In Which I Think The Earth Revolves Around the Moon

There have been several times over the past couple months where I have asked myself, "Am I depressed? I think I must be depressed." The exhaustion, the inability to focus, the feeling that easy tasks are Herculean efforts...

And then I remember that I am horribly sleep deprived and no amount of Prozac will help with that. And so I go back to whatever challenging task that lays before me (putting frozen pizza in the oven, finding matching socks for Bella, boiling every toy that the baby's mouth touches - shout out to my friend, thrush!) and just keep plodding forward. Plod, plod, plod. There has been much plodding.

The extra ridiculous thing is that I go through this exact same scenario again and again...Am I depressed? I must be depressed! I feel so dreary and listless and "FOOL! YOU ARE SLEEP DEPRIVED! AND YOU JUST KEEP FORGETTING IT!"

It's like 50 First Dates. With myself.

True story - I was trying to explain to Bella in general terms about why it gets darker earlier and I was seriously at a loss about how that worked. I couldn't remember if the earth moved around the sun or maybe the moon? And that happened every day? Or every year? And HOLY SHIT I AM SO STUPID RIGHT NOW.

But getting a few nights with a 4-hour stretch of sleep in the past week has reminded me that life, in fact, is actually not that hard with a modicum of sleep under my belt. I am able to do more than just the barest of bare minimum and can entertain thoughts of getting actual things outside of mothering done again. Things like blogging, cooking, organizing, and exercising. Things that make me feel calm and centered and like me.

So life is getting better and I owe it all to one of the best things in the world: sleep. Biggie continues to wake a few times a night despite gentle sleep training but that's OK for now*. I will take getting up three times a night over 10. The best thing is that those 4-hour stretches will become 5, 6, dare-I-say 7 or 8 hours someday and I'll be freaking manic with the amount of rest I will be getting. Actually, that's not the best thing. The best thing is that I will be able to enjoy this great life that I am living without a big hazy cloud of sleepy stupids hanging over me. Days will feel less like intense uphill climbs and more like pleasurable hikes that include a few challenging parts, a few boring parts, and a lot of exhilarating live-in-the-moment parts.

*This is not my opinion at 1 AM or 4 AM. OH HO HO NO. If you are a person with easy pregnancies and babies who sleep 12-hours-a-night starting at 2-weeks-old, you best stay far away from me at those times. Haha, just kidding!

(Not kidding. HISS!)

When Two Weirds Collide: Our Love Story (Chapter 11)

Previous: Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Raj started the car and we drove away from his Garage-Mahal and headed to the car wash. There was a lull in the conversation as we passed though the quiet neighborhoods of Northeast Minneapolis but, strangely, it didn't feel uncomfortable. As I sat there, with my toasty bum and frozen feet, I wondered - was he thinking about kissing me?

A couple of minutes later we arrived at the gas station, which was shockingly bright compared to the rest of the closed businesses around it. Raj drove around the back and punched in the code for the car wash. Soon we were in a white world of suds; the only noise was the dull roar of the brushes overhead and on the sides of the car.

We turned to each other in our seats. Was he going to do it right away? But as Raj began to talk, that question was answered. We laughed about our co-workers regular antics in the breakroom and wondered if any of them had noticed something was up with us. I felt my insides squealing as Raj acknowledged the "us"-ness of our situation. But while we talked, my mind kept shouting at me: When is he going to kiss me? Was he just going to lean in and...? Or will he ask me first? 

I continued to wait for the kiss as we talked and laughed. Waiting, waiting, waiting...

Teen magazine circa '89 would have me gently laying a hand on his forearm to show my interest, but I wasn't sure I could pull off that kind of thing without looking like a complete tool. Maybe I should just lean over and initiate a kiss myself? Because I was not going to be able to tolerate this much longer. The anticipation might actually kill me.

But then the garage door in front of us opened up. Car wash complete. Please pull forward.

Well. Maybe Raj hadn't taken me to the car wash in some master plan to kiss me. Sometimes a car wash is just a car wash. The flecks of water outside my window danced towards the roof as we drove away. But...why hadn't he kissed me? Did he not want to kiss me? 

My chance to dwell and obsess was thankfully interrupted when we once again found ourselves asking what we should do next. The option of ending the date was noticeably not in the mix even though the neon numbers on Raj's dashboard told me it was getting late - 10:30 pm on a school night. We debated the options - a bar? Another restaurant for dessert? A coffee shop?

"You could come to my place," I finally offered, trying to sound nonchalant and not like I was trying to lure him to my den. Because it wasn't like I wanted to bring him there just to make out with him. Well, it was like that. But I had enough self-control not to do that. Maybe.

"Sounds good to me," Raj said.

"Alright. It's a plan, man," I said. We smiled at each other, co-conspirators in whatever this thing was. As we drove along the dark highway, I thought that it was at times like this that being a grown up was seriously as awesome as you imagined it would be when you were younger.

Twenty minutes later we were walking up the steps to the front door of my apartment building. I unlocked the front door and the act of bringing him into my personal space caused the scary early-date feeling come over me once again. I felt shy, nervous, exposed. We headed up the interior stairs to my apartment and I felt unbearably conscious of each step I took since Raj was directly behind me. I hoped he wasn't looking at my butt, but what else would he be seeing? I turned my head to talk to him over my shoulder, solving that little problem.

Team Gray greeted us at the door. Toonses sneered at the sight of Raj and he stalked back to the bedroom to sleep, but Stevie, per usual, wanted to be right in the middle of things. I quickly scanned my apartment, making sure I hadn't missed anything and that Stevie hadn't dragged my dirty laundry out into the living room. It looked fine, but suddenly certain things were sticking out - my Freddy Prinze VHS movies had spotlights on them and that stupid "He's Just Not That Into You" book stood out like a sore thumb on my bookshelf. I crossed my fingers that he wouldn't peruse my books. I found myself wishing I had a more adult apartment, one with tasteful books and decorations. I could offer him a glass of sherry. Or something.

"Want something to drink?" I asked, taking his coat and laying it on the back of a kitchen chair. I took off my own jean jacket and pashmina and then suddenly felt ridiculous in my low-cut tank.

"Sure, what do you have?" Raj asked. I looked in my fridge.

"Um...milk. Diet coke. A bottle of gin. We could have gin and tonics, if you don't mind diet tonic water?" I told him.

"Gin & tonic? Sure." I inexpertly fixed us two gin and tonics, although I certainly wasn't needing to be drinking any more tonight. I carried the glasses into the living room where Raj was sitting on the loveseat next to Stevie. I handed Raj his drink and then pushed Stevie off the loveseat with my free hand. I sat down next to Raj, feeling overly formal in my own apartment.

"Cheers!" he toasted me. We clinked glasses and I took a sip. Whoa. Strong. I set it on the coffee table. Stevie hopped up onto the couch again and settled in between us. Raj pet him so I decided to let Stevie stay.

For the next thirty minutes Raj and I sat together on the loveseat and continued talking. But there was a very different feeling between us than there had been in the restaurant or even the car. We weren't in chairs, separated by a table. We were on a small, soft loveseat. Separated by a fat gray cat.

I moved Stevie to the floor.

Our positions shifted a bit and our legs were touching. I felt that prickly, tingly feeling and I was incredibly conscious of the point where our legs were touching. Raj knew we were touching right? Was it on purpose?

At some point the talking died away. I looked at Raj. He looked back at me. The atmosphere was practically buzzing.

Another beat passed.  Thump, thump, thump. Were our faces closer together?

And then they definitely were as we fell into a kiss. And all that thinking that my mind had been doing all night finally stopped. 

I didn't know it yet but this was my last first kiss...

THE END
(finally)

*          *          *          *          *

The first date led to a second date exactly one week later, on the day Raj returned from his trip to South Carolina. We went to dinner at Big Bowl (I had chicken pad thai) and went to see the very romantic "Team America." (Fuck yeah!) That second date led to a third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh date...all in the same week.

Raj and I embarked on what we called "The Accelerated Plan" because everything just happened very quickly for us. We were committed to each other from the start. We took our first trip out of town a mere month and a half after our first date and it was around that time that our dating status was revealed at the workplace. Four months in, we exchanged "I love you"s after Raj accidentally blurted it out one day in a totally random way. He had been consciously trying not to say it for weeks and I had been in the same position, always having to put forth great effort not to throw it in after every sentence: "Want to watch TV? I LOVE YOU!"

We moved in together at the beginning of 2006 and shortly after got life insurance at Raj's insistence, because he didn't want me to be left paying a mortgage I couldn't afford on my own should something happen. That, more than a diamond ring perhaps, gave me no doubt about the road on which we were headed. On February 2, 2007 "Raj" proposed on the top flight of stairs in our townhome. We were married that same year, on December 8, on a beach in Mexico. And then you know the rest.

I think I'll do one last "Afterward" post for this love story series that will include Husband's perspective on our story and a few other things that I want to say. Let me know if you have any questions for him/me and I'll include those in that post.

Picture Time!

My Apartment Building in 2004 - I lived in the upper left unit.

My Living Room with the yellow loveseat (site of our first kiss!) and Stevie the cat.

"Raj" building the Garage-Mahal. Note the jeans.

The (almost) finished Garage-Mahal

Raj's disaster of an apartment during our early dating days. It stayed like this until after Raj and I had moved into our current townhome. He could never understand why I couldn't get excited about living there...

The tank I wore on our first date (this picture was from the following Spring.)

Our first picture together, a few weeks into dating. The funny thing is that I always thought a different picture, one taken of us during the early Spring of 2005 was our first picture together and I was disappointed that we didn't have anything from earlier on. But then as I was putting together this story and looking through the old pictures on Husband's computer, I realized that this was actually our first picture. It makes me so happy to actually have a picture of those very, very early days.

This video is the one I made to surprise "Raj" with the news that we were expecting Bella, but it includes a lot of photos from our earlier days so I thought I'd include it here.

Our Life from Laura on Vimeo.

Next & Final Chapter: Afterward

[Insert clever title here.]

Hey-oh!

November was...erm...uh...

November is over! HOORAY!

Yeah, it was not my favorite. Nothing capital B sort of bad, but it was two scoops of frustrating with a cherry on top. Some bloggable reasons, most not. And really most of my wah-wah-life-is-soooo-hard probs are likely due to the fact that I've traveled deep into the land of no sleep. Biggie did get his sleeping under control for about 3 days in early November, but that feels very long ago and far away. And then he completely gave up sleeping in any sort of a multi-hour stretch during our recent (VERY VERY LONG) trip to Florida so now we are doing some sleep training. I'm hopeful.

[Insert your own personal thoughts on sleep training HERE.]

There are some that think starting solids would help the sleep drama (cough-Husband-cough), but I'm stubbornly waiting until Biggie is 6 months, even though Biggie is OBSESSED with trying to eat our food/drink our drinks and he seems hungry all the time. Maybe it would help him sleep better. Or maybe not.

[Insert your own personal thoughts on when a baby should start solids HERE.]

Isn't this why parenting is fun? Because you can be all over the map with your parenting choices? WHEEE!

[Insert other thoughts here, maybe thoughts about unicorns and Ryan Gosling. I will let you decide. It will further your creative thinking.]

And while I'm updating you on my life, I would like to share the happy news that my BFF Thrush is back. He came on vacation! Dude just loves warm weather and my nipples. Which is reasonable, really.

[Insert long, boring paragraph about why I hate thrush so much, ZOMG more wah-wah-mah-life-is-soooo-hard sort of nonsense. And add a cup of vinegar to it, because that helps kill the thrush.]

One of my long-time favorite bloggers, Linda from All & Sundry, recently wrote this about a family trip.

I’m glad to be out of the reality of the visit and looking back on the handful of photos I took that show some of the brightest moments. That is often the magic of photography, don’t you think? Whether it’s a blurry badly-framed Instagram image or a gorgeous high-end SLR photo, sometimes you can choose to focus on the spirit of what you captured, and let the rest of it go.

Yes. Yes, yes, a thousands times yes to that. So how about some pictures from the beach?

PS - Gah, sorry about the irritating amount of time it's taken me to finish the last chapter of the love story. Lack of time, writing mojo, etc. Soon...