anatomy of a pox

Bored? Have a peek into my week:

Wednesday: Decide to opt out of knit night as I feel a bit crummier than usual.

Thursday: Wake up feeling completely out of breath, a feeling I haven't had in the longest time. 100 degree fever and eyeball headache all day (you know, where your eyeballs hurt to the touch...maybe it's just me). Thankfully Dave comes home early from his job hunt so I can lie on the couch all day. We pop by the library in the evening and I'm so winded I can't make it across a row of shelves without a break. As I'm heading to bed I notice a spot on my back, figure it's a strange zit, and think nothing more of it.

Friday: Wake up feeling just like yesterday, only not winded. Maybe I'm getting over this thing! Sometime around lunch I think to check on that spot, and when I lift up my shirt, I'm stunned. Thirty more spots have popped up! My first thought is chicken pox, but that's silly because I've had them. A strange light case when I was four, but the doctors claimed it all the same. Not to mention the number of pox parties I've attended just in case!

I hop online to see what Dr. Google has to say about the initial appearance of chicken pox and see phrases like "birth defects" and "death" that make my head swim. Time for a call to mommy...then my midwife, then dave, then work, then my midwife again and my mom again. What would we do without phones?

My midwife contacts her perinatologist in Tacoma who says that at almost 18 weeks, the baby shouldn't be put too much at risk. The risk at this point is my fever and that I might come down with a deadly pneumonia that hits 20% of pregnant women post-pox. So it is now my job to take it easy and hope for a light case, this being my second. And still I feel guilty and worry all day long about the baby, what mom wouldn't?

Saturday: My grand delusion that I might just have a mild second case is over. I wake up with hundreds of polka dots, but at this point I think if I can keep a handle on the headache then this is no big deal. At night things start to get itchy and every time I shift my weight on my back, another spot pops. Just call me human bubble wrap.

By the way, if you are an unborn baby reading this to gather advice (I know you have internet in there), please do your mother a favor and keep kicking away as you normally do at all your normal times. Playing quiet is NOT a nice game when your mom is already freaked out and unable to sleep.

Sunday: Yep, a hundred more this morning. And these are the good ones. Three inside my ear, thirty on my face, don't forget the five or six I can feel starting down my throat and the thirty-some-odd in places I'd only mention to my midwife. I'm starting to get annoyed at my fever and the itching has kicked in. Little do I know just how bad it can get when you have nothing else to think about at night. If anything so much as brushes my legs, all my nerves stand on end and jump start the itching again. I'm wishing I had my hair cut over Christmas like I'd planned. It's a tickle nuissance. Thankfully, Bella sleeps through these nights on her own side of the bed.

Hours upon hours spent thinking about people who live with this ridiculous itching every day of their lives. Finally I resort to my old compression tactic and wrap myself in a thin blanket so there's pressure on all sides of me.

Monday: Not too many this morning, but the casualties are setting in and I can tell there's going to be scars. I've got pizza face, and my back looks like a war zone. I'm going to look like a freak at work this weekend. I itch itch itch all day, except when the weather's nice and Dave takes us for drive-through coffee and a day at the park.

Thursday: The days are a blur of sitting and itching, interspersed with sunshine and projects to keep my hands busy. In the night I get up every few hours to distract my mind when the itching cannot be controlled by lotion or brainpower. Even though the pox have stopped popping up, I now have hives everywhere else, my hair, my neck, my arms, hands, feet, legs. They come and go and these imaginary itchies are worse than the real ones, since they only get more swollen the more you itch. If I can distract myself, they go away. Who in the world invented itchies like that? It's just cruel.

Here's hoping that Bella does not get the chicken pox. Most likely she won't. But tomorrow is the day that will tell - day 10 since I got mine. If she does, that's two more weeks of isolation for me, and Bella is trying her hardest to not go insane without people around. She's so much more a people person than me.

Ah the life of chicken pox.

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twenty... ONE

Is that right? Am I losing count already? Well, at any rate, welcome to a new year. Everyone's hoping this one will be only better than last year. Well, baby, you can take that hope and laugh in its face. Last year was awesome for you. If I could have a whole lifetime of watching you grow into a little girl, I'd take it, Groundhog Day style. I'm sure this year won't be entirely peaches and cream for you after you have to start sharing mommy, but I can only hope this one will be half as good as last year.

This month Grandma, Grandpa, and Uncle Craig came to visit again. It was wonderful. Let me just say one more time that I wish we'd gone there so you could have at least seen snow this year, but then I'll stop, because we had a great time. Aquariums, parties at Ann's, street parties, and building blocks galore! Who could ask for a better Christmas?

You've done quite a bit of growing again this month, and thankfully you've put back on the weight you lost while I was sick. And it's no thanks to me this time! We're down to one nursing a day. One! You barely ever ask for it anymore, and lately you've had too much attitude to accept it even after you've asked. I never thought that you'd willingly give up nursing, but you are a strong-willed child, and you want to do things your way or no way. Hmmm, sounds vaguely familiar...

This month the midwife had to let you take my blood pressure, you'd have it no other way. I still can't get you to say "up" instead of your general "wantwantwantwant" when you're whining to get up on my lap. And the hardest of all, I cannot for the life of me get you to ask for help when you are frustrated or stuck on anything. Not the word, not the sign. You just cry and scream and if I suggest you say, Help, mama! You either escalate into a tantrum or you pout and stomp off, only to return to the same problem moments later. All things in good time, I guess. The potty regression we went through when we moved here is now over and you happily bring the potty wherever you want it and get on it yourself. So you do find solutions with out me, regardless.

Your mouth turns on when you wake up and doesn't shut off until you go to sleep. You either sing or chatter away in Bella speak, which I adore, by the way. You take the exact cadence of whatever we say during the day and fill it with your own words. Like how we would say, Uhoh, the water spilled. You declare, Uhoh, blarguufiedodo, and drop your voice in the same way. You also curse a lot with Doggonit! which is funny, since we don't say that at all. My favorite thing is that you hop up on the couch with B Bear and push him off the side in slow-mo, using that squeaky slow-mo Ohhhhh noooooo! that you picked up from wrestling with Daddy.

We started watching signing videos this month. Mostly you sit and watch them, but surprisingly in just a few weeks you have added several ASL and verbal words to your vocab, things you would never say before. Now you sign coat and socks and you say shoes and ball as well as signing them. When the train passes by, we open the windows and you sing, Chooooo choooooo! It's fun to watch you pick up new words (that actually exist) and realize that we actually respond to them. You are currently walking around with only your shoes on because ever since you picked up that word, you must either have shoes on your hands or feet at all times. You actually took them to bed with you last night....

This is a long letter, I know. But it's been more than a month since I last wrote what you were up to, and you're growing so fast. It's so wonderful to be back in the land of the living, getting to enjoy your every little antic. I came down with chicken pox last week, so now we're just waiting to see whether or not you get them. So far 2010 has been one for the record books. Let's see just how monumental it can be.

Love,
mama

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Festivus with just Us

This is where I work:

Every year from Thanksgiving to New Year's our mall puts on a big street party at 7pm with drummers that parade and dance and "snow" (bubbles) that falls from the sky.

This year I'm only working weekends, so I only hear it once or twice a week. Last year and the year before I heard it 5 nights a week. And you know what? It never gets old. Okay, the songs do, but anyone who works retail knows how to block out repetitive songs.

I happen to love the sound of drums, and inside our atrium they definitely resonate. And the families having fun and dancing in the cold? I love it. I mean, it's good plain fun and who can resist that?

And I must say, it's even more fun when you have your own kid to bring. And a grandma who is awesome enough to put her on her shoulders. I mean really!

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2009 review, somewhat late.

Well, let's see. I'm not going to do a decade in review post like so many you see. This decade has simply contained too much. I mean, really. Ten years ago I was a junior in high school. How can you NOT be different ten years later?

2009 was big enough on its own. I'm chalking it up to a pretty crappy year, but all things considered, we had our family, we had our health, and we had our daily dose of Bella, and that counts for a LOT.

2009 started getting stressful in February when my husband was laid off. The economy was tanking and there were no jobs to be found. I basically went back to work full time, which was an interesting test of whether I could be the breadwinner. I hated it. I was still nursing Bella full time, and people just don't understand what it means to have full boobs and NEED to pump.

In April, Bella turned one. That one caught me off guard. At the end of the month, we took a family vacation to the place we were married, Hood River, as a kind of last hurrah before Dave sold his soul to his new job.

July was a monumental month, as I got to be at a friend's birth and then Bella and I went on a wonderful two week trip to the east coast and tried to fit in as many things as humanly possible, driving from Virginia, to Pennsylvania, to New Hampshire, and back.

We came back to an incredible heat wave and all the stress started crashing down on us as Dave's job was still not making any money. That's pretty much where we've been ever since! Who knew that money could be so stressful, even when everything else in your life is going right.

In October we found out we were pregnant. We thought we'd "start trying" but apparently I forgot that you're most fertile between 18-24 months after you have your previous child... so once was enough, I suppose.

November sort of passed by with me in bed. Or on the floor. Or on the couch. Or in the bathroom. Occasionally smacking myself on the head for thinking this was a good idea. And then we moved into a house.

And then we stressed, stressed some more, Christmas came, so did my parents, 2009 left, and so did my parents. (We miss you terribly, parents.)

And here we are. I can only hope 2010 will be the year things turn around. Not so far, but maybe soon. I'd like it to go down as the year Dave got a good job, the year we got out of debt, the year we became a family of four, the year I started a successful business. I mean, it could happen, right?

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a little nostalgia

Although 2009 was probably the most stressful year of my life thus far, it will go down in my history books as the year that my baby grew into a little girl (with attitude, no less). It makes me very glad I participated in a 365 photography project. I still have something to remember when all the little details slip away.

January 2009

January 2010


July 2009


January 2010

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