Misc.

I'm mostly updating this blog out of a sense of obligation, which leads me to wonder as to its life expectancy. Lilah is still stubbornly refusing to walk. She stands with an ever-increasing sense of purpose but plops down forcefully when anyone holds their hands out to encourage that magical first step. Her favorite word is "Hi!", which she chirps to everyone. If there are no people present to greet, she simply sits by herself chanting, "Hi, Lilah, Hi Dada. Hi Mama," and then running through her ever-increasing list of friends' names.

She had her belated one-year photo shoot yesterday. My old friend Mitch Haarer is an incredibly gifted photographer and I wouldn't hear of anyone else doing her photos. We drove the nearly-two hours to Hillsdale, MI and Lilah slept until the last 20 minutes when she started to cry and chant her signature, "All done!" The shoot itself was a success. Lilah charmed the camera, sat where she was posed, pointed, played coy, and smiled winningly. However, Mitch had three locations planned, and even though it was a short drive to each, she still managed to fight getting back in her carseat and wail when strapped in. After a very long hour, we bid the Haarers farewell and drove 20 minutes to Coldwater. Lilah screamed the whole way. Dano dropped me, Lilah, and her purple carseat off at Biggby Coffee so we could spend time with the Sevens (Mike was transporting us to their house after he got out of work) while Dano jammed with Brent Yuhl. Lilah was given a chocolate chip cookie which she ate at record speed before exploring the store and generally trying to wreck everything. I had planned to read American Gods again while she sat and played with her toys quietly and we waited for Mike to be done. I'm not sure what possessed me to believe that was possible. We made it to the Severn's around 9:30, and fter Lilah made the rounds of "hellos", I could see she was over-stimulated and over-tired so I attempted to get her to fall asleep. That "attempt" lasted 3 hours of her mostly screaming. Dano got there and tried for a few minutes to no avail. I tried one more time and we both fell asleep.

Today I felt her gums and they are, for lack of a better describing phrase, riddled with teeth. At least four swollen little bumps that I could tell. She screamed most of tonight at home as well, so we gave her an ice cream, infant Motrin, and sent her to bed with fingers crossed for a regular baby in the morning, and Dano asking when he could schedule a vasectomy.

I'd take childbirth any day

So today, May 6th of 2010, I pinched a nerve in my back/neck. I've done it before but never to this extent. I had been feeling strange for about 10 minutes, like I had a muscle cramp in my back. I asked Dano to rub it and leaned forward. Immediately upon doing so, I felt like something inside my nervous system had literally exploded. My eyes saw only colors and I think I cried out because Lilah started screaming and Dano said, "Babe, you're scaring the baby," and all I could say was, "Don't touch me. Don't anybody touch me." He took the baby and I stood up hoping to relieve the pain positionally with no luck. I sat in the rocking chair and it kept growing until I thought I'd die. The pain was radiating to my neck, the crown of my head, my right shoulder, my right hip. Everything tingled and I clamped my jaw shut and forced myself to breathe short, shallow, controlled breaths. Lilah was still crying and staring at me and I just told her I was sorry in my head. I was frantic with pain at this point and maneuvered myself onto the living room rug and laid flat on my back, spine aligned. My head was spinning even though I was still and flat. My whole body tingled and all I could think was, "I have to go to work. I have to leave in two hours." Dano sounded light-years away when he said, "You're not going anywhere. You can't even move. Your job requires lifting! How can you take care of others if you can't take care of yourself?" He was right. I knew he was right. But I couldn't even process it at that point. "I'm sorry."  "You don't have anything to be sorry for."

He fed Lilah her lunch and I whiled away the minutes on the floor attempting to call Bekah for more nursing advice to see if I'd missed anything. She suggested different ways to position my affected arm and side to reduce the nerve compression. Her ideas helped. I felt my phone continuing to vibrate next to me after I hung up. I knew it was Mike texting me and was again furious for making myself unavailable to yet another person who might need me. Patients, friends, Lilah, Dano, coworkers. The pain tingled and throbbed with the feelings of inadequacy. "I'm broken. I have a problem," I thought. "I'm have the mental incapability to be selfish. I'm crazy." Dano left to run to CVS and buy me copious amounts of Icy Hot and Ibuprofen. I laid on the floor, alone with my brain. She's my arch-nemesis. It hurt to breathe deeply, and the hurt was exacerbated by worry, which was my primary mode of thinking. I looked toward my phone, which buzzed merrily again. "You have a text message. Hope nobody's dying in a fiery crash because you can't answer your phone." Thought #1: I'm a horrible person! What if my phone is right?! Thought #2: I am certifiably bat-shit crazy. And my phone didn't tell me anything. No one is dying. Mike is probably just bored of Bekah's checking in again. Thought #3: Could my phone be the devil? Or worse, 10-Speed (the demonic bicycle of the Coheed and Cambria's Amory Wars graphic novels) reincarnated? I came back to Thought #2. I'm not normally incoherently insane. I really was in enough pain to make me delusional. My thoughts then meandered to the origin of the phrase "bat-shit crazy", one I am oh-so-fond of (incidentally, aerosol-transmitted rabies has been known to occur in caves with high numbers of, you guessed it, bats. Thanks Google). I stared at the ceiling. It appeared to be moving in weird white swirls, so I looked away. I closed my eyes and went through my yogic mudras. I even visualized the nerve cluster that was currently ruining my life and pictured the pain ebbing away like the tide going out and that actually helped considerably. I opened my eyes when the pain was manageable and watched a muscle group from my obliques to my right hip spasm and ripple. It looked too cool to be alarmed. My mind then wandered to wishing for Valium to relax said spasms. "Yeah, at this point, I'd risk my nursing license for it." I started shivering because for some reason my body was struggling to maintain my core body temp. "It's like my nervous system's giving me the finger today," I lamented to the cat who stared back unblinkingly and (I felt) unsympathetically. I spent 5 minutes (I clocked it) rolling from my back to my stomach before realizing I liked it better on my back but could now not get back there. I started feeling tingly and crawly and was convinced there were bugs crawling on me. To make matters worse, a lone ant tracked across the floor about 16 inches from my head. I was on the verge of screaming. Dano came back. He put Icy Hot on the affected areas, killed the offending ant, assisted me off my stomach (which took 10 minutes and I still ended up almost passing out from the pain), helped me swallow 5 Ibuprofen tabs (he only bought 200mg tabs!) and answered my question with no, he didn't believe he knew anyone from whom he could score illegal Valium or Vicodin.

Currently I am resting on the couch on my back. I can't move anything but my hands, so my laptop is resting on my legs and my phone is on my chest. Dano is cooking me a pizza and Mike is texting me his usual endearing craziness and I'm actually able to respond at this point. No one died in a fiery crash, and I have exactly 15 minutes to be at work. I don't think I'm going to make it. Oh well.

Where to start

I haven't been able to blog in what feels like years! We have officially moved and are slowly but surely unpacking and making our sweet little house into a home. This house chose us more than we chose it. I had looked at it online but was deterred by the price they were asking. It looked to be a decent place, but more than I was willing to spend on a 2 bedroom, so I passed on seeing it. I looked at a few other places and saw some that would adequately meet our needs, were affordable, and met our specifications. Something just didn't feel right about all of them. The clock was ticking, since Lilah and I were staying with Dano's sister and her beautiful family for 2 1/2 weeks while we made the moving transition and I started my new job. Finally (a little against my better judgement) I set up an appointment to see the house on Wrenson. I pulled into the driveway a few minutes early with the dulcet tones of Claudio Sanchez gracing my speakers rather loudly and Lilah babbling/singing in the backseat. I sat in the driveway with an adorable house on my left and lilacs in full bloom on my right and tried not to get my hopes up. I looked at the tree-lined, double-lot backyard, huge covered front porch, 2-car garage, and tried not to picture our family here. The realtor shower up and showed us inside. The living room was large, the ceilings were coved, the doorways arched, there was an office adjacent to the living room, a library/dining room, many windows with lots of natural light, laundry room, kitchen with counter space that caused my husband to ask, "Be honest, sweetheart. Did it turn you on a little when you saw how much cooking space you'd have?" The bedrooms were perfect for us. The spirit of the place seemed to embrace me the moment I walked in the door. This house wanted us. I told the realtor I liked what I saw, but weren't willing to pay that much for it. I got my application approved and made an offer to the owner for what we were willing to pay a month in rent. He accepted with a 2-year lease. This may sound strange, but this house loves us as much as we love it. When I pull into my driveway after work, it says, "Welcome home." When I sit on my porch and watch Lilah caper about the yard, it says, "This is where you belong." When I cook in my kitchen, the whole spirit of the place goes into what I'm making and somehow makes it better. When I look out my big kitchen window to my backyard, the house suggests places for my garden to go. "What about a melon patch behind the garage? Herbs close to the kitchen door so you can get to them easily. Flowers would look great here." The owner is very friendly and plans to repaint the porch and put new floors in the kitchen for us next spring. He's also offered to let us buy it if we would ever like to. We're trying to think up a name for our house now. It seems to need one.

I've started my new job, and Lilah has plunged headlong into separation anxiety. I work 64 hours a pay period. Unfortunately, they have me working 6 days one week and 2 days the next. I expressed my concern that it was too much time in one week away from my poor baby who's used to having me at her beck and call 5 days a week. The scheduler was more than willing to adjust it...on the next schedule. So this is my schedule until May 26th. Great. Lilah is absurdly clingy with Dano when I'm gone, and when I'm home, she cries if I even look like I'm going to go somewhere and she glares at Dano like he's the enemy and might take her from me at any moment. He's trying his best not to take it personally. We both realize it's a hard adjustment for all of us. She just left all that was familiar to her and had a parents go back to work full-time. She'll settle down soon.

She's also gotten very adept at chattering away and saying new words. She adores her cousins and likes to follow them around squealing. "Zedd! Ephraim! Zedd! Thank you, thank you, thank you! Adam (her uncle)! Bye bye! Bye bye!" She also lets us know when she's hungry. "Num num, Mama?" and sleepy. "Night night." She loves to greet people. "Hi. Hi. Hiiiii!" God forbid they ignore her. Dano took her upstairs to lay with her in hopes she'd nap yesterday. He ended up dozing and she waited until he was asleep and slithered down off the bed and let herself back down the stairs! She entertained herself for about ten minutes before her daddy realized in horror that she was gone. She's gotten very crafty. She was great on the drive here. There was one point in the UP that she woke up from her nap starving and started crying, "Num num! Num num, Mama!" My heart broke for her because we were about 30 minutes from the nearest anything. She didn't understand, obviously, and thought I was just withholding food from her. I shared a chocolate shake with her to say I was sorry after letting her devour a platter of pasta and garlic bread. I'd never felt so guilty as a mother, but I hadn't had any other options. I had kept handing her graham crackers but she was still hungry. She was an angel after she ate until about 20 miles from our destination. She started fussing mildly. "All done, Mama. All done!" I handed her what I thought was my empty to-go cup of chocolate shake for her to kick around or whatever, since she had tossed all her toys on the ground. She had the straw out in seconds, tasted it, and was pleased. She popped the top off and flung it. She then took the cup and turned it upside down on her face/head to inspect the bottom for any remaining contents. I was horrified as I watched in the rear-view mirror to find that the cup wasn't quite as empty as I'd thought. It had a bit left in the bottom and that "bit" was dripping down Lilah's hair and trickling into her eagerly awaiting mouth. By the time we got to Hazel Park, she was a sticky, chocolaty mess, but I was so relieved to have made it that I didn't really care.