growing a blueberry

Yes, you read that right.  Other than our car accident last year and recent a trip to the Express Care for an ear infection, Keyven had not been to a doctor until yesterday.  Doctor’s offices, and hospitals, are for sick and injured people and for special check-ups.  I don’t subscribe to the “let’s expose your perfectly healthy child to all the germs in a doctor’s office for the sake of checking a box on the Good Parent report card once a month” school of thought.  And don’t get me wrong — I know some people aren’t comfortable with that way of doing things.  That’s fine.  If you’re one of those people, just don’t try to guilt trip me in to doing it to make yourself feel better.  

While I’m ruffling feathers, and to answer the question most oft-asked by those who find out about my take on these visits, we are delaying vaccinations until Keyven is a little older.  Since we plan on traveling internationally as soon as possible, we do plan on doing some.  But by delaying, not only do we give Keyven’s system a chance to grow and mature on its on, we can break them up instead of giving them in huge chunks, and we can actually eliminate some of them that aren’t given after a certain age.  To my pleasant surprise, I was commended for doing my research and making my own decision when asked about vaccines and why I am delaying them.  No lectures… and I swear this isn’t some crunchy-granola holistic office. I’d be happy to expand on that topic but it’s enough for a blog of its own so that’ll suffice as an explanation for this one.  If you’d like to read more for yourself, I recommend checking out “What Your Doctor May Not Tell You About Children’s Vaccinations” as a great starting point.

Our reason for going yesterday was two-fold: one, to get a physical done for his daycare application for this fall; two, because even though I don’t take him when he’s NOT sick, I do sometimes need to take him when he’s sick and I learned with the ear infection that it’s nigh impossible to get in as a new patient to see a good doctor.

Well, guess what?  Somehow he managed to grow perfectly healthy this whole time without the assistance of modern medicine.  I know.  It’s practically a miracle.   The nurses were in love with him and he got caught flirting with every lady in sight of his big blue eyes.  My home measurements weren’t too far off — he weighed 20 pounds, 10 ounces and he’s 28.75 inches tall.  Also, no surprise to anyone who has seen him in person, his head measurement put him in the 95th percentile for his age.  Yes, the boy has a big brain bucket.  Just like his mommy and daddy.  :)    All his parts checked out just fine and, minus all the squirming and monkeying, he did great!  Now we are all set for day care adventures.

Photo: Random “catching up” photo — Keyven with his Pops on Father’s Day.

Sometimes I wish that…

… having an alcoholic beverage or a going for a pedicure did not require logistical forethought that rivals that of military coups in small countries.

… “sleeping through the night” actually meant sleeping THROUGHOUT the night and that it occurred on a more frequent basis than when mommy is gone or the two days a month that Keyven is not teething, ear-aching, growth-spurting or adjusting to a change in schedule.

… if it didn’t occur on a more frequent basis, someone else would get up with him for a change.

… I heard from my husband more than once every four days, especially when the last time I talked to him it seemed like we would be speaking again within the next 24 - 48 hours. 

… my mortgage broker and realtor wouldn’t call me again until closing day and then only to tell me I can come sign the papers and get my keys.

… I could fast-forward through a month of finding a babysitter in a new town, doing renovations mostly on my own, and moving in to a new place in another town.

… for once I didn’t have to pay for ALL the gas to go somewhere just because the car seat only fits in my car so it automatically gets driven the most. 

… I had friends here to go out with occasionally instead of sitting at home trying to conversate with an 8-month-old and writing bitchy blogs as a means of communication while everyone else is out doing things.

… I could go to the spa for a day.  Hell, I’d settle for a half-day even.

… reality t.v. was anywhere close to reality.  Like if they made a show about my life.  They could call it “Survivor: The Amazing Extreme Surreal World Home Improvement Supermommy Edition”.  Or something. 

… Aunt Flo(w) would visit already.  December 2006. Yup, that was the last time.  Surprisingly, I miss her.  I think she’s mad at me. 

… I could stop making obsessive mental lists of the 50 million things I have to do only to forget most of them when I get a pen and paper and then remember them at around 2 a.m. when I’m lying there trying to go back to sleep after the most recent pacifier-retrieval mission.

… I could get tired and go to sleep the instant I need to.  Like, when Keyven is sleeping.  As opposed to 7 a.m. when he’s ready to wake up. 

… I could afford to hire an accountant.  Because there’s not much I hate more than dealing with bills and finances, except maybe liver.  I really hate liver.

Okay, I’m done with my self-indulgent whine-fest.  Now for the disclaimer:  I am totally thankful for my family, friends, and all the abundant and amazing life opportunities that come my way on a regular basis.  This blog in no way reflects negatively on those blessings or means that I don’t appreciate them.  But do you ever have one of those days that seems to be going relatively okay and then something seemingly insignificant happens that throws you in to an emotional tail-spin that makes everything seem huge and unconquerable after that?  An overused phrase about camels and straw comes to mind.

If you’ve never had one of these days, please forward your Prozac prescription leftovers to me.  To the rest of you, thanks for reading this far and putting up with my moods.   Two Tylenol PM are calling my name.

Photo: How I feel today, captured in color by Tim-daddy on the way home from the KC airport. 

I can hardly believe that I’m ACTUALLY sitting down to write a blog!  That I actually have time to sit down and write a blog.  Our lives went from merely hectic to positively frantic with a hint of meltdown over the past few months. I have thought of the blog often, composed little entries in my head to share about something fun or interesting that happened… and then never wrote them because I felt so crappy about how neglectful I have been of writing real updates.  It would take me all night to write everything that has gone on in prose form, so here’s a recap…

• Keyven is now: 8 months, 3 days old; almost 20 pounds and 28 inches tall
• Baby Skills: mastered crawling about 1.5 months ago, has been eating two meals a day since we last blogged and is currently boycotting pureed foods in favor of feeding himself, jabbers like a monkey in a tree, is pulling himself up on anything that will hold still long enough
• Cutest Things EVER: clapping, waving hi & bye,  giving kissies upon request, laughing and crawling away when told “I’m gonna get you!”
• Number of Teeth: currently working on the first, much to the dismay of my boobs
• Knows: his name, what “no” means, the baby signs for “more” and sometimes does “all done”
• Likes: throwing plastic rings on non-carpeted floor to watch them bounce, chicken, black beans, Aunt Victoria, hats
• Dislikes: diaper changes, being scolded by mom, still not a fan of bath time but screaming less, going to sleep

The short story on where I’ve been lately is that in the midst of preparing for finals and starting to think about our late-May trip to Virginia for Tim’s leave and Jody & Jes’ wedding, we found out that Tim’s leave was coming early.  As in, the first week of May early.  Cue frenzied scrambling to get permission to take my finals early and cramming for them in addition to doing all my end of semester projects; rescheduling and moving everything I had planned in the last two weeks prior to going to Virginia plus making arrangements to travel and lodge  early; oh, and buying a house in Pittsburg, KS.  Leave time with Tim was wonderful.  It was so much fun to spend time with him and Keyven as a family, especially since Keyven is much more interactive now.  But, in the midst of that, we got a call that my grandmother passed away pretty unexpectedly, in the last week that Tim was home on leave.  We decided to travel to Kansas together for the funeral, which I was very thankful for even though it was all a bit crazy at the time.  Tim returned to Virginia alone and proceeded on to Iraq.  He’s now back there, at his new encampment.  Meanwhile, I decided to head back to Virginia for the wedding by myself (while Keyven stayed with my family in Kansas) and return with a moving truck and most of our stuff that has been occupying the basements and storage sheds of Arlington.  Upon my return, I continued the process of buying a different property from the aforementioned one, went to family reunion and decided to drop my summer college class in favor of retaining some semblance of sanity later when I remodel the new digs and move there before I start class full-time in August. 

Got all that?  I didn’t do any of the major events justice — Tim’s leave, the wedding, the house — but I’ll be able to share details as I relate stories about them now that I’m writing again.  It feels good to be back.  I missed you guys!

Photos, Top to Bottom: Keyven in his Radio Flyer (compliments of Nana & Aunt Victoria while mom was gone) clapping for his first ride; more Nana & AV spoiling — first Nikes & matching hat; holding on to Tim-Daddy’s ring during a nap on Father’s Day; DCUs and kilts — coming home to his baby boy; “Who Me?” — pulling books off the shelf, another new favorite activity.

It’s not just me. I have commiserated with plenty of moms and MTBs (at least I think I have) about my total “baby brain” issues. I thought it would go away after pregnancy. But it lingers on, like bad Muzak stuck in your head after a ride in the elevator. And now, there’s scientific proof that I’m stupider than I used to be:

Postpartum Changes May Bring on “Momnesia”

There’s probably not a new mother alive who can’t identify and share a smile with Andi Silverman’s stories of memory lapses. Like the time she went shopping and left her groceries in the store. Or when she went on vacation with her two small children and forgot the diapers.

With two toddler sons, Nate, 3, and Teddy, 2, commanding her total attention, this kind of forgetfulness is to be expected, say medical experts. They even have a name for it — “momnesia.”

“It’s a state of the female brain that is a bit forgetful after she’s had a baby,” Dr. Louann Brizendine told TODAY correspondent Savannah Guthrie.

The author of the book “The Female Brain,” Brizendine said that the condition is brought on by the wildly fluctuating flood of hormones that accompanies pregnancy, childbirth and breast-feeding.

“It alters brain chemistry,” she said. “All these hormones are in a stew in the brain that are changing the way a mother focuses.”

Hannah Keeley, a parenting expert who runs the Web site totalmom.com, watched Guthrie’s taped report with TODAY’s Hoda Kotb on Thursday and laughed in sympathy. As the mother of seven children ranging in age from 2 to 14, Keeley knows the syndrome all too well.

“It’s insane,” she said. “You’re in the car, you’re going to the grocery store, you forget — ‘What am I going for?’ Meanwhile, your coffee flew off the hood of the car a mile back. All the time you just feel like you’re scattered everywhere. We went on vacation — I forgot to pack for my baby.”

Then there was the time she and her husband went out with several other couples for an adult dinner without the kids, and she found herself cutting her husband’s grilled chicken into dozens of tiny little pieces because that’s what a mom does.

Keeley, who’s written a book entitled “Hannah Keeley’s Total Mom Makeover,” divides her life into two eras: BC for “Before Children” and AD for “After Dementia.”

She laughs easily about her own momnesia while explaining that mothers are so focused on their children that other things simply get lost.

“It’s like a pie of attention,” she told Kotb. “We have so many resources we can spend for things. When you divide that pie — here’s a slice for breast-feeding, here’s a slice for packing the diaper bag, going to the doctor, making sure the milestones are met — the common, ordinary things get pushed to the wayside.”

The good news, she said, is that there are ways to cope with momnesia.

“You dip after you have this child in your functioning ability,” she said. “But you start to develop strategies to help you become more efficient. You write everything down. We have this huge calendar — the largest we could find — where we write down everything.”

When she’s away from home, she always carries a pen — her husband gave her one on a necklace — and paper to take notes.

The second step she advises new mothers to do is simply accept that they can’t do everything and scale back their responsibilities. That means fighting off the “mommy guilt” that mothers often feel when they can’t be Superwoman, she said.

Finally, she said, mothers should find the time to exercise daily.

“There’s a study with older people who are forgetting things, and they found that cardiovascular exercise actually helps in maintaining attention to things,” she told Kotb. “It also helps as a new mom — you have a better body image.”

And it never hurts to laugh.

As Silverman said, “It’s pretty funny if you can keep everything in perspective.”

Article by Mike Celizic, TODAYShow.com contributor, originally posted on msnbc.com, and last updated at 10:57 a.m. ET, Thurs., March. 6, 2008. Credit to Grandma Marge for forwarding me this article in the hopes of making me feel better about myself.

Photo: Momnesia in action. Sometimes I forget where I put my baby.

Since we’re at home today, gDiapers and BabyLegs are the uniform of the day.  I told Sarah I’d post a pic of Keyven in his argyle BLs, so we took a quick shot before playtime.  I actually got him sitting up!  He’s getting good at it but prefers to transition to belly-down, crawling practice mode.  The  other pic is from one morning sharing a ‘nana with Nana.  :)  Same outfit, different day.