Medication, Weaning, Nursing, Or how Choices Just Pull on Your Momma Heartstrings

But when she does finally pass out...it doesn't matter where she's at.

Do you know how late a baby can stay up when 

they drink the rest of Dad's coffee?

 

Baby Blueberry and Gibson wrestling. 

The house is quiet except for...hold on, the Baby awakens again, calling for 'Momma'.
     I tell her, "It's night-night. Night-night." I'm trying to keep patience, but sleeping has never been something she has taken too and now that she knows that complete weaning is imminent, she has become even more clingy.
     I pick her up and she whispers, barely opening her eyes, "O-tay. O-tay night- night."
     We nurse for less than five minutes and she has fallen back asleep.

    I think I have become her security blanket. Oh, boy.

   A few months ago we had a well baby check-up where the doctor insisted it was beyond time to wean her, after all she's two.

(Never mind that in other parts of the world nursing until a toddler is between 2 or 3 is completely normal. It's just in the United States where we have this weird thing of - it's okay to show boobs on HBO and on the beach- bikinis barely cover anything, but heaven forbid a Mom discreetly nurses a baby in public.)

  The doctor proceeded to explain how to start that process of letting her cry herself to sleep and it would only take four nights. Baby Blueberry listened intently to every word he had to say.
    Every word.
   Never underestimate the ability and vocabulary of a two year old.
   Ever since then, she has been extra protective and needy of nursing.

 It's the last well baby check-up she goes too.

   I know what's she thinking, "Heck no, Momma is not weaning me." 

  And since I'm weak and can't stand to hear her cry- we haven't completely weaned. She doesn't nurse during the day but only at night.

   And then my stupid-ass Crohn's had to flare up on me. It's been giving me trouble for the last six months and I suppose in the next few weeks I'll write a few blogs about it, but in the meantime my choices are:

    keep nursing and allow the inflammation to get worse

or

wean so I can go on some steroids.

And I suppose I didn't even realize how much this decision was bothering me until I sit down to write a blog, with a million different ideas in my head and this is the thing that bothers me the most.

Weaning. 

 Because it's going to be hard on Blueberry.

Hard on my Momma heart.

For one night we couldn't nurse because of sedative in my blood from one of the procedures I had to agree to and she cried for two hours straight-- ON MY LAP. Of course, I'm half out of it from the sedative lingering in my bloodstream, but it was still tough that no matter what I said, no matter the hugs, no matter the cartoons we put on the television- she wouldn't be comforted.

And Baby Blueberry is such an easy going kid. She hardly ever cries.

But this change...is hard on her.

And I've tried everything...bottles, sippy cups, the promise of a new toy when we're done, telling her she's such a big girl...

She responds by saying, "I'm the BABY."

I think the kid has a little bit of my stubbornness and love for change. I'm sure of it.

A few days left of nursing. Nursing the last baby. From here, it's big girl stuff. And it's time...


In the meantime, last night she drank the rest of Dad's coffee that he forgot and left at the kitchen table.

She was up until almost 1:00 in the morning.

Note to Hero Hottie: Don't leave your coffee out! Or you get to stay up with her next time.

What depth I see in those eyes! 

 

One Baby, One Puppy, and One Red Balloon

Kindred Spirits Share a Moment

I love this thing! 

As a child I loved helium-filled balloons as most kids do. They float, they can make your hair crazy, you can bounce them- they're awesome.

As a parent, I'm not so thrilled with the helium-filled balloon. The girls have fun with them and then they do what all balloons do...they POP.

And then the tears start.

But the other day we unfortunately were given a red helium-filled balloon and for a few moments- bliss was absolute. I'll let the photos do most of the talking this time.

Isn't this the best thing, Gibson? - Yes, kid, you bring home the best things to chew on. 

I tried to explain that sharp puppy teeth and balloons don't mix, but Baby Blueberry wouldn't listen. Around and around she would run in the living room, letting Gibson chase her. Laughing and giggling. And he loves to play with her. Jumping up on furniture, following her around the room, trying to play with her.

For a few moments- pure joy and bliss. And then...

Puppy, what happened?

Both babies stopped in shock, not sure what happened to their toy. Gibson started sniffing around, trying to figure out how it disappeared. Baby Blueberry wondered how it went from a wonderful- bouncy toy to something so boring and flat.

Sadness

 

 

A helium balloon always bring sadness. Great joy and then POP. That is just the way of the balloon. And just when Baby Blueberry and Gibson decide that a piece of latex can be fun, Mommy takes it away, says it's now considered a choking hazard and it's gone.

And somehow all that sadness will be forgotten as soon as another helium-filled balloon is found.

Adventures in Sewer Back-ups, Ruined Basements, and Insurance Companies

      Sewer Germs are so GROSS-in case I forget to mention that- GROSS

     With most of my friends this year packing up and leaving for exotic places and new adventures, I wanted a grand adventure of my own.

     What I settled for was sorting our stuff and getting rid of clutter so we would be ready to move should the remote possibility arrive and fix up our house in case we needed to sell it in hurry. A girl can be hopeful, right?

     Tuesday I got my wish- just not the way I had envisioned it.

    My fairy godmother sucks.

    Bean was in the shower when the water started raising. She hurried out, hastily putting her clothes on as the water started to come out of the toilet. When she came rushing up the stairs and said the toilet was overflowing, I grabbed the plunger.

      “No, Mom. You don't need that. It's not plugged.” She's trying to explain to me as we rush back downstairs.

     I stop at the bathroom door, shocked by what I'm seeing.

The towels stopped the gushing, which I wished I captured in a photo, but you can see the water still coming out of the toilet and this is towards the end of the 45 minutes.

      Water is like a geyser shooting out of the toilet, with debris of toilet paper and branches and who knows what else, (I don't really want to know). The shower is overflowing, and the floor is already covered in an inch of water and it's quickly flowing into the other parts of the downstairs.

     “Get your Dad.” I holler at her, not sure what to do. This is more than a blocked sewer pipe out to the main sewer line.

Gross

      The next few minutes pass in a hurried blur of shouting at each other as Hero Hottie comes rushing down the stairs and realizes we can't do anything to stop it.

     The older girls and I start to grab things off the floor before the water can reach it and throw them onto top of beds and counter tops, trying to save as much as we can. From the photos you can see we couldn't save everything.

     And for 45 minutes we watched as water kept pumping into our house, ruining half our house.            

      Destroying the girls' bedrooms, the downstairs bathroom, the living room. Inches and inches of sewer water flowed everywhere.

     The cause: The construction company up the street had busted a water main, causing sewer to back up into six different homes on the blocks. Our house was hit the worse. But all the houses would need new flooring.

     We sent the girls' over to Grandma's so they could clean up and get the sewer water off their bodies. The upstairs was contaminated by our footsteps.

     My house was a bio hazard.

What's this brown stuff?

     Gross. Totally gross and just a little – no, completely gross.

     Sewer water. People's poo. Covering my girls' bed. My couch. My Blueberry's toys. I wanted to cry. And scream.

    Hero Hottie was upset. He marched down the street, still in bare feet because he didn't want to put sewer water covered feet in his shoes and started demanding answers.

   Mostly who is fixing this and they better start right now.

   Hero Hottie and I are pretty easy going people. Except when a company pumps sewer water into our home for 45 minutes and RUINS our house. Then we're a little bit more demanding.

   Which was a good thing. Because within a couple of hours, the construction company had professional cleaners, Stanley Steemers, at the house, decontaminating the floor so we could safety walk through and grab our personal items that were savable.

Clothes, baby potty, Abu's retainer and waterpik all totally gross and ruined

   

Blueberry's toys completely ruined. You can't clean those toys enough. Not for this Momma.

Who wants toast?

Sorry Gibson, it got your dog food too.

    In the last few days, the company has taken the flooring out of Abu's room, ran 13 giants fans to dry the sheet rock, tore out most of the bathroom, and spray all kinds of germ killing chemicals into cracks and around edges of walls.

   Bean and I have spent the last four days, not doing schoolwork as planned, but sorting through the damaged items, making an inventory with photos, and then finding the replacement price of the item on the Internet. That way they can see how much damage they did, at least the monetary side of it.

   They can't replace the sack of letters I had from loved ones who have already moved on, and they can't replace the box of teenage memories, the photos that Bean looked at and said, “Wow, Mom you were pretty when you were a teenager.”

   “Thanks.” I said sarcastically.

   “No, I just meant...you're pretty now too. It's just, you didn't have wrinkles.”

   “Just stop talking.” I said. 

It's just stuff. But it was the stuff I used to take care of my family.

These are the things that can't be replaced.

And you want to know the irony of this? We are in the process of fixing up our upstairs shower, so this was our only working shower. Guess what kids? We're all taking showers in the kitchen sink. Or with the garden hoses out back. It's only a little cold outside this time of year. Brrr.

These giants fans, 13 of them, run for 72 hours to help dry everything. There is a constant hum upstairs and the cove heaters are turned up to 90 to heat things up. The smell upstairs is stomach turning. Damp, and hot and coying.

    They can't replace the container of dance costumes I had been keeping from all the girls' dance recitals since they were five and tiny and just my little girls. And they can't replace a Blue Blankie that was Abu's security blanket, especially when I was sick. She carried that thing everywhere, quietly watching me, wondering if Momma was ever going to get better.

    The couch, the beds, even the toys are replaceable. We won't get new price for it, but as long as we get enough, Hero Hottie and I can rebuild the downstairs and give the girls' their rooms back.

    But in the meantime, my mother-in-law is kindly doing all our laundry since my washer and dryer is off limits until they have been decontaminated. We have been staying at my in-laws' house too, until we can buy another mattress and set up three girls in the tiniest room in our house.

    

     A teenager and a toddler in one room. What could go wrong?

   When Blueberry finally saw our house, her bottom lip quivers, her eyes filling with moisture and she whispers. “House broken.”

     Yes, little sweetie, our house is broken.

     So in a way I have been granted my wish. We packed up part of our house and MOVED it to the garage. And we're redoing our entire downstairs. And I'm having a grand adventure of the character building sort.

     Blah, character building adventures are for literary novels. I wanted sun, sand and fun. I swear, one of these days, I just going to move to New Zealand. Their website says they're the happiest place on the Earth. I'm assuming after Disneyland, of course. 

Some beach in New Zealand, works for me- I'm not picky