My niece was on the Today Show

So I realize this is totally out of character, but in the spirit of helping out my very awesome niece, I’m soliciting your help, dear readers who are probably wondering where the heck I’ve been for the past three months…

But back to Meg… the short version is click here and vote for Meg Richey, a Charlottesville grade student who is a semifinalist for the Kid Reporter contest (she’s the first video listed).  For the longer version, here’s the note from her mom and dad, which I think says it all!

Meg needs your vote on Monday, October 19th at the TODAY show (todayshow.com) -please help her reach her dream.  Please also help us spread the word through Facebook, email, Twitter, etc.
 
In Kindergarten, Meg announced that she wanted to be on the TODAY show, specifically as a sidekick to Matt Lauer on his “Where in the World” series.  She has talked about it ever since.
 
A few weeks ago, the TODAY show announced a contest to select its next “Kid Reporter.”  On Wednesday, October 14th, the producers chose Meg as a semifinalist and invited Meg to be on the TODAY show Monday, October 19th.  The segment is supposed to air at 9:15 am.
 
Meg is competing against three other kids.  America votes on who the winner is.  MEG NEEDS YOUR VOTE AT THE TODAY SHOW (TODAYSHOW.COM) THIS MONDAY OCTOBER 19TH AFTER 9:15 AM (not before).  WE’RE BEGGING YOU TO PLEASE HELP MEG BY FORWARDING THIS REQUEST TO YOUR ELECTRONIC NETWORK THROUGH FACEBOOK, EMAIL, TWITTER, ETC.
 
Meg thanks you, and Brett and Debbie thank you.  The voting closes Tuesday October 20th at 5:00 pm.  The semifinalist results will be announced next Wednesday, October 21st.  Thanks so much to everyone.  More info at the site set up by Meg’s friend: VOTE FOR MEG.

881

That’s how many pictures I’ve taken of the small one so far.  Eight hundred eighty-one.  Let that number sink in for a moment.

Okay, I’m lying.  That’s how many pictures were good enough to include in my weekly Picasa uploads so my father could get his grandbaby fix.  Meaning even more photos of the small one actually exist on my hard drive.  And we’re not counting the two professional photo sessions we’ve had which have each yielded 200 plus prints.

Now what makes me officially crazy is that I just had all 881 printed so I get to spend my evening stuffing 4 x 6’s into photo sleeves in preparation for the deluge of family arriving for the small one’s baptism this Sunday.  I figure I can somewhat quell the boos I’ll receive when I steal the babe from the “it’s my turn to hold him” queue come naptime if I can then hand them an impossibly large book of photos so they can coo over how small he was and how much he’s already grown.

An Update

It’s been a while.  A long while.  Here’s what you’ve missed…

• The small one now crawls.  Everywhere.  And pulls up on everything.  And tries to put everything in his mouth.  So he is much more work for my dear, exhausted work from home husband.
• Solid food is fun, especially when dad’s a chef.  Veal with garlic and thyme, check.  Organic carrots grown in our own garden and pureed with boutique olive oil and garden tarragon, check.  Local peaches for breakfast, double check.  And it’s so easy.  All you need is a cuisinart and you’ll never buy jarred baby food again.
• One night the gourmet baby food went too far when my husband deglazed a pan of veal with sherry… opps.
• I’m so over nursing.  Still doing it, still pumping at work, still no formula has touched the child’s lips, but while I used to say things like “I could totally see nursing him through the winter,” I now plan to wean as soon as we hit the first birthday mark and we know that the babe can digest cow’s milk.  Please don’t be lactose intolerant. Please please please.
• I now smell terrible.  I don’t know if it’s the hormones, or the dehydration with breastfeeding in the summer, but I stink bad.  And I am not a fan.  Some days I stink so bad I have to shower before feeding the small one as he’s not into eau de armpit with dinner.  Is this normal?
• Despite the solid 12 hours of sleep the small one puts in every night, my husband and I are completely tired out these days.  And a little punchy with one another.  I think the balance we’ve struck with my working and rushing home and his full time dad who also runs three businesses is a bit more precarious than either of us realized.  And we still have a full year before we go to preschool.  This will be interesting…

And tomorrow the small one turns 10 months old.  He was 21 lbs. and 29 inches at his 9 month appointment, so we’re no longer in 95% range… my husband laughed at me because I took this drop personally and looked a bit disappointed, like I must not be feeding him enough or something.  I guess it’s the little old italian lady in me.  These days we think he’s around 23 or so pounds, and while he’s still sporting thunder thighs, he has certainly grown into his size. 

And he’s so much fun.  He has so much personality and a little will of his own.  It’s entertaining and fascinating to watch him struggle to get a toy or get frustrated when we can’t reach something or I take something away from him (which I’m sure will lose it’s cuteness soon enough).  But it is defintely getting harder. 

I’d say the turning point was 8 months… by which I mean the first two months were so hard, the third and fourth month we hit our stride, months 5 through 8 were a breeze of happy, giggly baby and then the small one began to crawl and get bored and notice when we left the room (and not take too kindly to it).  And it sounds like it’s only going to get more complicated until we wake up and realize we have a potty trained and verbal 3 year old (hopefully).  At which point I’m sure we’ll destroy the new-found balance by having another one.  Ah, parenthood.

Seriously?

I’ve seen my CEO maybe three times since I’ve been back from maternity leave.  The first time, I was exiting the room where I pump, breast milk in hand, and he walked by with pretty much the entire executive committee.  He said “welcome back,” and I smiled sheepishly and scurried off to my cube to hide.

The second time I was headed to lunch.  Not bad at all.  Nice conversation.  Breast milk incident officially replaced with normal colleague interaction.

Today, I was in the kitchenette cleaning off my breast shields and pump what-not and guess who walks in?  Yup.  And we then proceed to have a five minute conversation about some meeting later in the week, all while I rinse off various bottles and membranes.

Seriously?  This is ridicules.

I guess it’s better than being a guy on the same floor as him and running into him on my way to the bathroom on a daily basis.  I think.

Phew!

As in relief, not as in dirty diaper.

I just returned from a visit with the breast surgeon and she gave me what amounts to a 95% all clear… the one looks like a cyst and she’s not concerned at all.  The other does look like a fibroadenoma with calcification.  She says the edges look fine, there is no blood supply, and it generally feels like a fibroadenoma.  Because of the calcification, there is shadowing on the ultrasound, which is something cancerous tumors have (the sound waves can’t penetrate the mass so it appears to have a shadow on the screen), which is probably what prompted the radiologist’s concern.  The surgeon said she wasn’t concerned about the lump, and that she didn’t want to do a biopsy (something about fistulas and spurting milk, all of which sounded highly unpleasant, plus I’ll take any excuse to avoid a needle), so instead I’m just supposed to come back when I’m done breastfeeding. 

Yippee!  I don’t have to worry about this.  I don’t have to stop breastfeeding.  I don’t have to turn this into a cancer blog (ok, now I’m being dramatic).

My kinda website

Go check out Let’s Panic About Babies  right now.

No, I’m serious.  You must click that link.  You must then fall off your office chair because you are trying not to laugh out loud at the “what kind of mom stereotype are you” fake quiz.  And that’s only the beginning.

So cute my ovaries hurt

Yes, I realize this confession officially makes me crazy, but Heather over at dooce.com  just had her baby, and while I’ve never met this woman, nor conversed with her (heck, I don’t even comment on her blog, I just lurk), looking at pictures of her newborn baby girl gives me baby fever.

And my kid’s only 7 months old!

Only someone who spends 8 hours a day away from her baby could possibly be so delusional as to even let the thought “I want another one” pass into her brain this soon.  No no ovaries.  Sorry uterus.  You guys are on the bench until at least 2011.

Not exactly a first word, but…

Sure, we’ve been hearing the small one babble “dahdahdahdah” and “ma ma ma” for weeks now, but it has always been indiscriminate and varying in the number of “dah”s or “ma”s, so we thought little of it beyond its enduring cuteness.  This weekend, however, were introduced to “guh.”

As in dog, but drop the beginning and only go with the drawn out g sound.

And not just “guh” whenever the small one felt like singing, but only when our beagle-mutt wandered into the room in the that forlorn way that only a creature with bassett hound blood can muster (and Eeyore).  It’s probably because both my husband and I always chorus “is that your dog?” whenever the mutt is in sight, and the small one lunges his body towards the fur ball he so desperately wants to grab. 

We even went to a friend’s house the other evening and when I pointed to their lab and said “that’s a dog, just like Watson” I was greeted with a smile and an assertive “guh” from the small one.

Am I insane to find this completely awesome?

And yes, poor Watty is now officially referred to as “guh” whenever my husband and I want to talk about him without his knowing, as in “you are so walking guh tonight” or “did you feed guh yet?”  As if the poor animal wasn’t neglected enough, he’s now been reduced to a consonant.

Boo for Boobs

So it’s been awhile. Sorry ‘bout that. And now onto the post…

The “girls” have been causing problems as of late, so this can officially be categorized as a boob bitch session. You are forewarned.

About two month ago I noticed a pea-sized lump in lefty… no big deal, as I’ve had fibroadenomas before (three, to be exact), so I simply went on with my breastfeeding self. A month later I found its friend on the other side. I called my doc and scheduled a “I’m so not worried about this but so as not to be the chick who was all ‘sure, I felt that thing ages ago, what do you mean it’s malignant?’ I’m coming in anyway” appointment. My doc, despite reassurances that everything felt harmless, scheduled me for an ultrasound “just to be sure.”

This week, I went to said ultrasound. Only the night before said ultrasound, lefty decided it would be an awesome idea to get mastitis mere centimeters away from the very spot where the next morning’s prodding would occur. Yippee for 100+ degree fevers and first trimester like exhaustion. Did I mention how I’m not a real big fan of the girls right now?

And so in I go the very next morning, fever back down to a mere 99 and breast throbbing. I must say, the tech was extremely merciful, and even checked to see if I had an abscess in the mastitis-y part (on that front, I was a-okay). I redressed and sat ready to put this whole inconvenience behind me.

And then the radiologist came in. Almost everything he said should have reassured me, like “the one looks like a textbook fibroadenoma” and “both have smooth edges, which is a great sign.” But out came a stream of qualifying statements said in a tone that put me on edge. Because I’m lactating, apparently it’s difficult to accurately scan my breasts as there’s just so much going on in there. And then there were calcifications on the one lump. Plus, he described the other lump as a complex cyst, and recommended that it be monitored by a breast surgeon (the hormone changes related to breastfeeding could “change things”). I couldn’t tell if his tone of defeat and caution was one of “I wish I could say everything is a-okay but the test was too inconclusive for me to let you off the hook completely” or “oh shit, I am so not going to be the one to tell the 28 year old she may have something to be worried about if I’m not 100% sure.” Yup, panic.

This is the point at which I begin to kick myself for only have $150K in life insurance, as that probably won’t even cover books by the time the small one goes to college.

The next day I spoke with my doc, who said, based on the notes, she’s not worried. She still has no idea why these lumps would have appeared, but she is not in the least bit concerned about the c-word. And then my shoulders removed themselves from my ears.

I’ll be seeing the surgeon in two weeks. My fear is that I’ll be told to stop breastfeeding. Or that I’ll have to get the lumps removed (been there, done that, rather not do it again). I’m not even contemplating the other option. Seriously. That would be melodramatic, which is so outside of my personality, right? (I love me somes denial.)

Oh and did I mention that, post bout with mastitis, lefty has decided she no longer needs to perform (she’s “recovering”), and now Lady Lactates A Lot (read: me) has only one back up bag of milk left in the freezer? After all that, I now have to work on upping my supply? Fuck you, boobs.

No really, I didn’t mean it. Just work with me, ladies. I’ll even buy you something pretty.

So how have you been?

First Mother’s Day, First Cold

On Tuesday, the small one awoke congested, resulting in a rough day in terms of not much appetite and his having a hard time going down for naps, but really nothing more to speak of.  No fever.  Still a giggly, good natured boy.  Still slept through the night.  By Thursday, the snot had begun to subside and we were excited to have almost survived the first sickness unscathed.

And then I awoke on Friday morning with a sore throat.  And by the time I came home from work, I looked like a certain famous reindeer and I was a big sack of miserable.  Saturday proved much of the same and was the first day since the small one’s arrival where I thought “if my mother lived in town, I would so call her right now so I could tag out and go to sleep.”  I even contemplated “borrowing” the babe’s bulb syringe (ie booger sucker-outer), but thought better of the notion. 

On Sunday morning, while nursing the small one, my husband stood in the doorway and said “so you had a sore throat first, right?”  It was official – the whole family was taken down by a single rhinovirus. 

Despite the copious amount of tissues, we had a lovely first Mother’s Day.  My husband made crepes, we sat in the backyard to enjoy the first rainless day in weeks and I spent all day holding my wonderful baby boy, both of us with matching trails of snot running down our faces.