Boring

Well, I've spent the last two...three? days being completely boring.

Three days. We barely made it out of the house on Wednesday - just got out in time to run to Blockbuster and then to Girliness' last soccer game of the season. Yesterday Toddlerness was sick, and I took her with me to an appointment in the morning and then to get some cough drops (which she likes). She had a lovely fever and alarmed the nurse at my appointment quite nicely, but by the time we went to bed she was almost fully recovered. And today we went shopping for (more) long sleeve dresses for Toddlerness and running shoes for Becca, and to Blockbuster again.

Did I mention I'm really digging this thing where I can exchange an online (mailed-to-me) movie for an in-store movie for free? I'm loving not having to order movies for Toddlerness. And yes, I put her in front of the TV a lot. I have homework to do and I can't do all of it at 3am. It won't hurt her to watch a movie a day, I swear it.

Even if she does occassionally hum theme songs while she's nursing.

I totally aced a Midwifery Care exam earlier this week. Which is a good thing, because the subject - the mechanics and physiology of labor and birth - is really important. And these exams are notoriously difficult. But since I still am not in a clinical practice, I feel like I don't really know it yet. At least I have seen a few births and do know what a few of these things look like. I suppose even when you aren't a midwife or studying to be one, if you're interested in the subject matter you just notice things like how the head turns as it comes out. So I've got the visual in there somewhere. But at this point I'm semi-itching to see some real life...anything.

I feel like my energy from earlier this month is ebbing away, and I'm hoping that is a temporary state. But for now, my house is a wreck and that isn't helping. And my dryer decided to go ahead and die on me - sparking and maybe-flaming-a-little on the way - so yeah, laundry will be a challenge until we get that one figured out. For now, since the sparking and maybe-flaming-a-little episode happened after most of the laundry was done, the main laundry challenge is folding (GOD I hate folding).

And, you guessed it, I'm up at 3:30am writing this because I have once again consumed coffee to stay lucid through my assignments, completed my assignments, and found myself totally not ready to sleep yet. Well, I kinda completed my assignments. I finished everything that is actually due tomorrow. But there are things that I *should* do, so I'm gonna go do them I think. And then try to sleep a few hours before the kids wake up. At least they've been sleeping pretty late recently.

So, Boyness...

Yeah, his adenoids are really big, so we're going to remove them. They're almost certainly the reason he's having hearing issues.

It wasn't his hearing that prompted the dairy elimination - it was over-the-top hyperactivity/lack of impulse control/frenetic energy kind of behavior. And the dairy had in the past brought on the lack-of-hearing episodes reliably, so we still think he's allergic - just that the dairy wasn't the only thing making his ears not drain properly.

Assorted News and Crap

The Boyness Scoop:
So a while back we noticed Boyness wasn't hearing so well again, and it was consistent over a couple of weeks even without dairy exposure. I took a look in his ear and saw some fairly alarming things, so we did a week of diphenhydramine (an over the counter med, which worked the one other time we'd tried it). But after that week, when I took a look in his ear the negative pressure had persisted and I was alarmed to see something that I thought could be a cholesteatoma. A couple days later, his ped came up with the same thoughts (without me telling him first...sigh), so he sent us off with some nasonex and a promise to get our referral in to an otolaryngologist. That referral took a little over a week, but it took us an additional two weeks to get in...which brings us to Monday.

So, we went to see Dr. Jennifer Heydt in Bellevue. Their office is awesome, the staff is awesome, and they did a great job making sure we knew what was going on and why. A couple hours of tests, look-sees, and conversations later, we had decided to schedule surgery to place ear tubes (she said that what I and the ped had seen was not an abnormal growth but rather a portion of the middle ear not normally visible - the persistant negative pressure had drawn the membrane back that far), and to do an xray to help determine whether he needs his adenoids removed (she suspects adenoid hypertrophy has been blocking his eustacean tubes).

Boyness did a great job sitting in a little soundproof booth for a lengthy amount of time, raising his hand for beeps and repeating back words and all that stuff. He apparently has no nerve damage but his hearing is significantly impaired; presumably relieving the pressure on the tympanic membrane will resolve this entirely.

We left her office and arrived at the radiology consultants approximately 10 minutes after the xray tech had left for the day. Go figure. So we returned yesterday and I'm waiting now for Dr. Heydt to get the xrays and interpret them for us.

His surgery is scheduled for Oct. 24th. Now the only question is whether it will be the ears and the adenoids, or just the ears.

Other Scoopness:

I compiled the kids' school supply list - yes, only just now, but honestly who cares, they are learning - and it is awesome. If this actually works out the way it is supposed to, I should get their stuff in a couple of weeks. There are tons of cool things on their lists!

Snap Circuits
Young Scientist Kits
Logic Links

Microscopes and water testing kits!
Sentence and punctuation learning tools! Writing prompts!
Art supplies!

What fun! I hope.

I also signed them up for swimming lessons and sent in the reimbursement forms. Hoping I did everything right and will get my reimbursements promptly as well.

Zoo in Seattle Drizzle

We went to the zoo yesterday with ~L~ and her kidlets.

I LOVE, love love love, the zoo in the "winter". Nobody is there, even on the weekends. We have so few people to contend with. And it isn't like we're in snowsuits - it was still 55-60 degrees. Animals tend to be out and moving around. Even when it is "raining"...well, Seattle rain is not like the rain in Hawaii. You can stand in it for an hour and only reach the outer borders of damp (you certainly don't feel it through your clothes).

My only regret was that we didn't go early and hit up the zoomazium. Which we will probably do some time this week just to do it. I do get some good not-kids-on-me time while they're in there.

Today we are braving the drizzle again, this time down at the Wild Waves Fright Fest. The kids have been looking forward to this ever since we aquired the tickets a month ago. There are things to love about the drizzle and the rainy and the dreary. It clears out those who aren't as willing to put up with it.

More Wierd

So yeah, last night I dreamt that the school moved to a remote small-mansion-like house and cars had to be searched before we went in. The kids came - all our kids were running around all over the place. The school had hired this wiry gray-haired doctor to teach us, but his teaching got stranger and stranger until he was telling us the story of the time he removed skin from his face to see what was underneath...then drank whiskey until his friend could take him to see another doctor and get it fixed up. There were kids running in and out of the room while he told us about menthol breath drops as effective birth control. And I was panicking because I didn't know how we were going to get rid of this nutjob.

Banned Books Week

Today is the last day of Banned Books week, and I just want to encourage everybody (belatedly), to go grab a book from the top-100 (complaints) list:

Top 100 Challenged Books, 1990-2000

Or from the top challenges since 2000:

1. Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling

2. "The Chocolate War" by Robert Cormier

3. Alice series by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

4. "Of Mice and Men" by John Steinbeck

5. "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" by Maya Angelou

6. "Fallen Angels" by Walter Dean Myers

7. "It's Perfectly Normal" by Robie Harris

8. Scary Stories series by Alvin Schwartz

9. Captain Underpants series by Dav Pilkey

10. "Forever" by Judy Blume

And celebrate your continued access to books that *other people* find offensive by reading them!

I don't like all these books, not by a long shot. I *do* like some of them. And I think that is of essence here - should which books I like or don't like dictate the ability of others to access them? NO! If Reverend Head-Up-His-Ass who has never even READ Harry Potter wants them banned and urges his congregation to file complaints at every opportunity (it actually seems very common that people who complain about books have never even read the book they are complaining about, at least in those accounts I've read) - that has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH ME and should not affect my ability to access those books.

This is not an arguement about whether these books are crappy, but rather, about whether we have a right to read and like books that other people think are crappy.

And allow me to just point out how shockingly stupid this concept is given what is readily and constantly available on television sets in everyone's living rooms. At least you have to work to get into and through a challenged book. There are a good number of titles on there that never say anything you can't find on the evening programming for The Disney Channel.

Oh, Onsite Week

In the midst of the insanity that is onsite week. Which might not have been so bad this go-round, except that I had put off some preparation work. So here I am at 2am, finished a presentation about half an hour ago (to give tomorrow morning), and absolutely wired to the CEILING after 2 large mugs of coffee. My presentation is going to be 1) awesome for what it actually is, and 2) perhaps something that I will have to repeat entirely, because it only peripherally addresses the exact assignment as it was written. But I think it covers important ground anyway...so I don't know. I *do* know that it is too late to change topics - by far.

I adore, love, the newest incarnation of Office. But if there is a shortcoming in PowerPoint, it is that you STILL can't wrap text that is continuous in a text box around a picture that is a separate item automatically. Come on now. That has GOT to be something that people want to just DO. Buh-bye 20 minutes of my life doing it.

I am also finding myself increasingly nervous about actually getting in a clinical placement and getting my objectives accomplished. Like, before I was growing impatient, and now when I think about the timeline my physical stress level rises (ah, don't you love that system? can't I just shut it up sometimes, like after I've had 2 large mugs of coffee and a cookie in the last 6 hours and am feeling a bit not-nice in the belly already?). Hearing about how some other students are moving through clinical and getting stuff done is simultaneously encouraging and stress-inducing, because I'm so far from it. Hearing about how many other students are in situations similar to my own is nothing short of terrifying. Will we all get the placements we need? Is the school in fact looking after us adequately? Will our already-dimished class diminish further? We are down to 9. So we've lost more than a third of our original class in about a third of our total school time.

I went ahead and dumped on Fran the fact that I am really nervous and uncertain about how my clinical thing is going to come down. I realized that I hadn't clearly TOLD him that I feel that way about it at this point. But I told him in response to a question he asked...and I wasn't ready to really talk about it. It sucked to basically say "I feel really uneasy and scared about this, but I need to process it first and I really am not up to that right now." (Yes those were nearly my exact words, only there were children running around and I was sitting at the computer and he was pacing back and forth getting them juice, so the net effect was even more crazy than it sounds.) He told me that he didn't think that it was going to be as difficult as I was thinking, and that we would do what we needed to do. Viola, role reversal. What the hell.

I'm falling back on not thinking about things until I get a new piece of information, because my energy is out. This has been the decision since approximately, oh, last Wednesday. So far? Not working so much.

Beach Day

We began at noon on a foggy beach:



And wound up with beautiful sunniness by the time we left at 4:



There were lots of kids:



And a decent amount of cuteness:



Girliness found something!



The big kids had a project:









Toddlerness was exceedingly girlish even on the rocks *sigh*:



Marshmallows!



And a last pretty for the day:

Last Night...

I had a dream that prominently featured my Midwifery Care instructor standing over my shoulder, marking my LOs so that the questions were more difficult, and cackling like the Wicked Witch of the West.

Yikes.

Overwhelmed

So my school started, which is nearly overwhelming enough.

Then there's the kids' school, which yeah, is all about me too. They had these irritating things called SLPs due (the learning plan for the year), in order to secure all things good and paid-for about our homeschoolingness, that took up precious time that I should have spent on my own school work this week.

Then there is the fact that this place is just.too.small for us, but we can't afford anything bigger. Seriously, we can't, not with my school and at Fran's income. There is a house we're interested in buying but because it is manufactured, they want a downpayment, which we don't have. And I'm feeling very frustrated with the confined space, and stressed-out about how the kids bounce back and forth and into each other all day.

*Sigh*

A frustrating, overwhelmed kind of day. And I'm going to go try to write an essay for school now.

Math Before Breakfast

At the park with Marie last week, someone asked us if we sit the kids down at certain hours and do "school."

HA.





Note PJs, witch hat, bedhead.

Math Manipulatives (bucket full of small farm animals) - $1 at Target
Math Cards (this is all one set they're playing with) - $1.27 at Target
Kids having fun learning math while I make breakfast - PRICELESS

Wild Waves!

Picture-heavy blog to ensue. On Saturday, we went to Wild Waves! The kids had a BLAST! Tony finally inched his way over the minimum-height line and made it onto the big coasters. This was a HUGE adventure and it took some warming up - he spent the first half of his first ride in terror - but by the time we went (at his request) for a second ride, he was screaming happily and waving his hands in the air. There was no turning back. We rode every big ride twice :) Meanwhile, Toddlerness spent some time with Nana and Nanu riding the kiddie rides.


Toddlerness' favorite thing! The carousel! She found a pink beribboned horse-on-a-stick that used to be Girliness' and has been riding it around the house ever since.

The cars were WAY FUN too.

Boyness liked the Scrambler more than he liked the coasters! Or maybe he liked the coasters more! Or maybe the Scrambler!! OH, why were we picking again?


And this ride looked SO TAME sitting there...with little umbrella thingies...


Oh, I think somebody's Nanu was feeling spoilrific:

Meanwhile:

The waterslides looked WAY TOO COOL to resist, despite the cool weather:

Now, most of the attractions were at least a little heated (Toddlerness' favorite spot was the HOT TUB, of course), but Boyness wanted to try out the one spot that WASN'T heated. It was as cold as the Sound, I swear. At least as cold. Physically painful to enter. He (and a smattering of other children) tried anyway, because the water features there were just.that.cool. But this is what we ended up with after about, oh, 80 seconds:

AH, much better!


Meanwhile, Girliness and Toddlerness were discovering the cruising circuit and wave pools (Toddlerness) and the big slides (Girliness). Oh the fun! We topped it off by eating out, since we were an hour from home at 6:45 when we finally left the park. Why, I do believe this will be a "remember mom and dad took us to the water park every year!" memory.

Super Soccer Girliness

On her day to be goalie (they get one half as goalie per season):






She LOVES, LOVES, LOVES soccer. I'm way happy she has an active outlet that she's reasonably good at and willing to really go for.

School Issues

I couldn't have written much better, so I'll refer you here:

http://mamamidwifemadness.blogspot.com/2007/09/reno-student-midwife-seeks-financial.html

In the off chance that there are millionaires, very large-hearted midwifery supporters of any income, etc. lurking somewhere amongst the few readers of my blog, I can say that there are few people more worthy of a tuition leg-up than Tiffany. She's the most awesome woman I know, seriously.

Seattle Midwifery School does a great job of covering my rear tuition-wise; my family is really pretty poor, and we qualify for the full range of government help as well as a need-based scholarship that pays the final bit of my tuition. As someone who has never earned a degree beyond high school, I qualify for all kinds of fun stuff that people who have already "accomplished" this level of education can't get. As someone with a crystal-clear income situation, my aid situation is equally crystal-clear.

Tiffany has none of these benefits. Single, a business owner, holder of an MA, out-of-state student...all of these things take separate hits on her ability both to pay for school and to qualify for financial aid. She gets a fraction of the help that I do.

It seems that in order to successfully attend Seattle Midwifery School, you either have to have nothing going for you at all or have enough going for you that you are able to pay the huge tuition on your own. The people who fall in between, which unfortunately covers a huge range of women who would like to be midwives and would make excellent midwives, are prevented from attending because of MONEY. There is something hugely wrong about that, but can we please start by taking care of this one woman, this one wonderful person who will someday make an incredible midwife?

Husband's Packrat Switch

Fran has inherited something really obnoxious from his mother's side of the family. Oh, holy packratness. Recall this post, which shows the apartment we took over from MIL *after my MIL moved out of it.* My MIL is not the biggest packrat in her family, either, although by some stroke of good fortune slovenliness does not also run in the family, so while there is an abundance of *stuff,* it is at least *clean stuff,* and even, for most of them (8 kids in that family, most but not all of them affected by the packrat genes) well-organized stuff.

So it has been horribly difficult to thow things out in our household. "We can use that" and "I have something in mind for that" and "but that's still good" and "that's still worth something" come up over and over and over again.

Did I mention I live in a TEEEEENY space? We're trying to make 525sqft work here. So for the most part it goes in the shed. And gets dusty and jumbled. Or it goes in one of his stashing-spots (a large box in the bookshelf, the area on top of the kids' clothing/toy closet), which have been overflowing lately.

This is becoming horribly frustrating because I need more space for my own textbooks and clinical supplies, and because I can use every spare inch to create spaces for my children to feel like they can do activities easily and comfortably - a really important thing when you're trying to allow them to direct their own homeschooling.

Now, from time to time he's flirted with turning off his packrat tendencies. Usually it is an itty bitty *blip* ON/OFF "just kidding" kind of flirtation. But on Friday he walked out of the house to see me with a massive "give away" pile on the grass, and said - "you know, normally I'd see that and be all - we can use those motors in those vaccuum cleaners...but I think I'm done."

Those of you who live with packrats (or have or whatever) will know how completely odd these words were, falling out of my husband's mouth. I covered the give-away pile with a large tarp, awaiting the day that I can drive them off to donate them (today or Monday, haven't decided yet), and he still hasn't rescued anything, even the perfectly good rotary fan or the really neat-looking garage door opener parts. YAY PERSONAL PROGRESS. YAY CLEANING OUT THE SHED!

Princess Shopping

Today was a fateful day. A dreadful day. One of those days that you know is coming, but avoid the very thought...allowing the anticipation to build slowly and stealthily in the background, somewhere just beyond your conscious notice. One of those days that are simply too horrific to envision in advance.

One of our twice-monthly grocery shopping trips.

The hell begins, fittingly, before we even leave the house. You see, my children hate oatmeal (apparently they'll lift this rule if ~L~ both makes and serves it for them, but me making it or even ~L~ making it and me serving it doesn't do the trick), and this was pretty much all that was left in the house to eat (I said I dread the shopping trips...). So the children are *hungry.*

Toddlerness wants to wear a particular shirt. But doesn't want to wear a skirt. Or pants. Or underwear.

Um, no.

After a screaming fit that lasts half an hour and means unlocking and reentering the house twice for alternate clothing, she happily locks herself - now wearing an ENTIRELY different outfit (both shirt and pants pronounced "princess") - into her carseat.

Unlock the house again and get the cell phone.

Um, repeat for the wallet.

The laundry is done, might as well haul that in before we leave.

Shit, the kids got out of the car.

Well, we eventually get ourselves, all of ourselves, clothed and with all the necessary shopping supplies, into the van and off towards the store. We find a package of crackers - unopened even! - in the car, and the kids dig in. We even listen to a new CD - "Live, Live" Sister Hazel - on the way. I arrive with only slightly elevated blood pressure. And get a parking space near the front of the store!

Toddlerness decides that the cart isn't very princess. Luckily the carts at Winco are roomy and I can stick her in the basket even while she is kicking and screaming. Double-lucky: the patrons at Winco tend to be the sort that understands this bit of necessary expediency, and smile knowingly as I stuff her (still kicking and screaming) into the cart. At this point I become happy that I can't afford to shop at Whole Foods.

Shit, they don't do the sample thing at Winco. Nobody will notice if she eats a few grapes on the way, right?

We are (predictably) on the exact.complete.total.opposite.corner of the store when Toddlerness begins to hop up and down in the cart "I NEEDA MAKEA PEEEEEEEEEEE". Daddy with a baby in a mei tai (I guess there ARE some crunchies in Winco...) looks at me like I'm the oddest being on earth when, instead of scooping her up and RUNNINGLIKEMAD, I let Girliness continue to write the numerical labels for our bulk food items while Toddlerness does the potty dance.

He doesn't see Toddlerness stop potty dancing and start grabbing magazines as we high-tail it through the check-line to the restrooms. So he gets to take a quick but knowing glance at us once more as we arrive in the meat section.

Cheap roast! Cheap pork! Score! Let's go get some chick...what's that smell?!!!...OMG FORGET THE CHICKEN.

Boyness and Girliness start to play tag and run into an old lady, who looks totally bewildered at this turn of events. I yell and separate.

We positively dash through the final portion of the store, halted by Girliness' pathetic request for some bread (so I can make some sandwiches maaaamaaa we never get bread anymorrrrre).

Winco does not carry ANY BREAD AT ALL that doesn't have milk in it. Oh, no, not a single loaf. A whole aisle of bread. A whole...hell, it felt like half an hour, maybe it was really 15 minutes?...of label reading. No bread.

Fuuuuuuck.

Meanwhile, the kids decide to amuse themselves by seeing how fast they can run circles around the cart.

I begin to contemplate buying large volumes of alcohol. That's on the opposite side of the store. I judge it not worth it.

We go through the checkout. Boyness begins a game where he runs full-speed from one end of the register belt to the other, tags Girliness' hand with his foot, and then repeats.

I separate and yell.

The label has fallen off the vegetable oil. The checker asks "was it $2.18?" This sounds too high but if it gets me out of the store...whatever.

I tell the kids to just use the damn plastic bags.

We leave. I put on Linkin Park, eat a bagel, and try to breathe.

We arrive at Trader Joes (yes, we do require two stops).

The kids whine and ask to stay in the car. This will probably take me about half an hour. NO.

The kids throw 10 (not kidding) boxes of cereal in the cart. I threaten not to buy any cereal at all. They return 5 boxes. *Breathe* I can handle that *breathe.*

Trader Joes doesn't have milk-free chocolate chips in stock.

The kids begin to play a game of tag. The store is crowded. They run into someone who runs into a display and boxes go flying.

I pick up a six-pack of amber ale.

I tell the children that whoever is the quietest gets the first cookie when we get home.

They stare at each other, completely silent, for about 10 seconds. Boyness snorts. Girliness yells that Boyness has lost. Boyness yells that Girliness is being louder. They begin a full-blown-punching-kicking-slapping fight in the checkout aisle.

I separate them physically, placing them on opposite sides of the cart, and tell them that if they look at each other again before we get out the door they can forget everything they've ever known about dessert.

And then I put some chocolate in the cart. No, kids, it's for me.

We obviously survived, since I'm here typing. The kids have done some crazy thing in the living room for the past half hour, I don't care anymore.

And the Rain Rain Rain...

So I did eventually get Toddlerness to sleep last night, but not nearly right away. We were just settling in to our beds at 11pm-ish, silence all around, drifting off...

KABLAMMMM the house rattles, literally rattles, wood makes creaking noises, pots and pans jingle, assorted pieces of glass clank against other assorted pieces of glass.

No bombs, just a sudden and violent mountain thunderstorm. The kids could obviously not sleep through something so exciting, and sat in the darkened living room counting the seconds between lightning and thunder. I heard the rain coming from afar, a massive dumping of water from the sky, with almost no wind to modulate it...just DUMPED water. The storm ended as abruptly as it began, but left some raininess in its wake. The rain is still falling, heavy for Seattle but a normal "rainshower" in Hawaii. The kids are sure we're going to go have fun today anyway, and have picked IKEA as our destination. I have no beef with that.

Non-Catness

So, let's do the other-stuff update rounds, shall we?

I need some happy healthy healing vibes sent in the direction of my mother (who lives in HI), because she crashed her bike a couple days before my birthday and is healing but still hurting pretty bad. Going from her level of super-activity to not being able to tie back her own hair for weeks at a time must be super rough.

I went and hung out at Marie's earlier this week, and that was very nice. Except that Boyness was having issues. Total mystery but it was really bad and I'm pretty sure he had dairy at some point, especially since he can't hear again. I really like hanging with Marie, but damn Boyness has a way of trying to get us not-invited-back.

Went to ~L~s today, and we had a fire on the beach. That was fun. She taught me how to knit!!! Well, mostly. I'm happy with how nice my little swatchy-thing looks (it doesn't look nice at all, really, but the fact that it isn't horribly messy is really reassuring). I have no clue how to cast on and am not really sure how it was I managed to add/take away stitches on a few rows, but I know how to create a stitch now. I am sure that between ~L~ and Marie (I've seen Marie knit, blurry needles and all...), I'll be able to extract all the knitting advice I need to figure this whole thing out.

We brought Tony-safe chocolate chips to ~L~s and she made cookies for the beach. Cookies, saltine crackers, marshmallows....sugar OVERLOAD. The kids crashed on the way home and - you guessed it - are now up at 10:30 watching a movie. I might get Toddlerness to sleep some time tonight. Maybe.

Shit

Well, I'm feeling like several kinds of shit. I'm taking the cat over to Marie's, and I know they'll be great parents and all...I feel like shit because Girliness is feeling crushed. Oh, how to make this up to her? She is so unhappy, and I so feel like shit. But I'm sure that Fran and I cannot live with this cat. Damn it, damn it, damn it. And damn it some more. So unfair what we did to Girliness. So unfair.

ACK, Allergies!

Well, we're allergic to the cat. Me, Fran, and probably Nomi as well (who was rubbing her eyes in a very my-eyes-are-itchy way after petting the cat today).

I've used a roll of toilet paper a day in nose-blowing activities since picking the cat up.

We're going to be looking for another family for the cat.

Damnit, I've owned cats before without this problem, and Fran has been fine with cats when we were dating (his reaction is really pretty severe, although he was in denial the first day, he liked this cuddly cat so much...). But no dice. Cat's gotta go, 'cause I'm not popping claritin every day for the next 12 years.

The kids adore the cat and he seems very happy and comfortable in our home. I'm sad about taking him away from Girliness and Boyness, who are both not allergic and very happy about having a pet. Damnit.