Trip recap

There were so many times during our 11-day trip that I wanted to note something here on the blog. And, now that we're home, and Audrey is happily quiet with her stuffed, oversized blocks on a blanket in the living room, I don't know where to start...

Oh, well, let me just say that our cab driver on the way home from LAX knew only two speeds: rocket blast-off and lurching full-arrest. Oy. Car sick city. Though, it did put Audrey to sleep.

Audrey travelled great. I'm going to call her my jetsetting baby. AND, she slept TEN hours last night -- thank you Time Zone changes and aggregate fatique from travelling, people, etc. :)

We had a great trip.

Yes, we've decided to move to Minneapolis/St. Paul by or before Oct. 1st. Spent four days with Terri, her mom Darlene (at Darlene's house), and her two children, Marie and Noah. Here are Darlene and the kids, to the left. Marie is 3 1/2+ and Noah is 7 months old.

We all drove around the two cities for a couple days and saw some neighborhoods that we all liked. They are resolved, too, to move up there from Austin; though, it looks like we're going to land there before them.

In the last couple days, I've had a hard time keeping thoughts together long enough... See what I mean?

We had a great time staying across the street from Ken's parents, Dave and Jackie, in a guest suite. It was so great to be able to just walk over instead of drive. Thank you D & J for putting us up in the Big House! We saw all the aunts and uncles, took about 100 pictures (which I'm still sorting through), AND we all had a great dinner together Friday night -- again, thank you Dave and Jackie! And, I talked about it a lot, and I'm going to say it here, too. Damn, that was a terrific pot de creme chocolate dessert that night! YUMMY YUMMY YUMMY - I liked it so much, yes, I want to marry it.

On that note, I'm signing off for now. :)

Home again

I am so tired I could just sit down and cry.

In short, great trip. More details to come. Glad to be home. MUST GO TO BED NOW.

But, first. A great picture:

Grandpa Dave and Audrey.

MCSE exam 5 of 6

My latest MCSE exam song goes like this:

Passed it passed it paaaaaaaaaaaased it!
Passed it passed it paaaaaaaaaaaased it!
(repeat)

I felt the least knowledgeable on this one, but somehow skated away with 775 (passing is 700 or above). I'll take it!

And this concludes my exams on the Windows Server 2003 network operating system! For my sixth and final exam I have a choice of several other subjects. I'll probably go with Microsoft Exchange Server, their email server product, since that's pretty common.

Ahhhhhh. Feels good. Now I can enjoy our trip to the Twin Cities (to see if we want to move there) and Maryland, to attend my parents' 55th wedding anniversary! We leave bright and early tomorrow (Wednesday).

Boobs- the final installment

And, hopefully, a FINAL entry about the dramas of breast feeding:

Called lactation folks today about weaning pointers. Ironically, talking with them gave me hope that I'll keep just a couple nursing sessions per day - the wee hours of the morning one(s) and maybe one in the evening. I actually like the wee hours one(s) - even when it's been painful. There's been something primitive, primal - quiet and still that I like about those sessions. I'd like to keep them in the picture a while longer. I'd been told I needed to keep up with so many sessions per day to keep my milk supply, but lactation lady today said she knows moms who just nurse in the a.m. and p.m. around their day jobs, with their babies being fed formula from bottles all the rest of each day. So, if I "show up," the milk should continue to show up, too - even if it's only a couple times per day. That info takes a lot of pressure off the decision for me.

So, as of this week, I aim to make daytimes "boob free." Save the nipples, no boob action between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. (or thereabouts)! And, once I wean us both to only a few sessions per day, I'll evaluate whether to go completely 100% off nursing after that (in the meantime, I'm weaning us both anyway).

And, yes, Mom and Jackie, I'll contact the doctor about a prescription for boob-drying-upping before we leave, just in case...

Thanks for "listening," everybody.

Post Vaccines

Audrey got two vaccine shots on Thursday: polio and hib. Ever since then her crying spells have reached insane levels of high pitched screeching that she's never reached before. I mean she sounds insane, if you can imagine an insane crying baby. And aside from that 9 hour marathon Thursday night, her sleep has been frequently (unusually) interrupted by crying-screeching.

Oh, and Lorie just reported Audrey has a small rash on the back of her neck.

I hope those vaccines aren't cooking her brain! It's some comfort that the books talk of such possible temporary reactions: marathon sleeping, fever, fussiness, allergic reaction, insane screeching and paranoia: not hers, but ours as in, "the neighbors must think we're torturing Audrey!"

As the books instruct, we are watching out for "severe" reactions like high fever (she has none), three or more hours of crying, or severe allergic reaction. We'll keep an eye on that rash.

On the positive side...

On the positive side...

• Lorie's in a much better mood and she's on the phone getting more expert breastfeeding advice.
• Audrey slept nine hours straight Friday night! (ok, that may have been vaccine-induced, but it was still nice!)
• I'm going to take my second-to-last MCSE exam this Tuesday! In the home stretch!
  
• Audrey's sleeping right now.
• My nipples are doing just fine, thanks.

And of course,

• It's a beautiful day in sunny California!

Boobs got me down

I'm a failure, I'm a failure, I'm a failure.

Irrational Lorie is really pissed off right now. And, yes, it's about stupid breast feeding. It's 3:30 in the f*ing morning; I haven't slept much in the last three plus hours because my left breast has been so painful (ducts got clogged - who the hell knows why? Audrey slept nine hours last night - think that was because she got shots at the pediatrician's - maybe it got "backed up" from such a long interval between feedings? Hell, she was sleeping; I wanted to sleep through any swollen boob discomfort rather than getting up to pump, duh).

Ken winces whenever I talk about boob stuff now. Like he doesn't want to bore people with our boring, too-much-info baby shit. I'm sorry, but when it's been so hard, it takes center stage in my world. I can't believe how hard this has been. I can't believe I'm such an idiot to keep trying. I can't believe that after all this effort, I STILL CAM'T F*ING DO IT RIGHT>

Okay, I'm really crying now. Let the typoes fly. FUCKJ
.

I haven't been able to reconcile my head with my heart. I haven't been able to tell if I've been trying to talk myself into or out of continuing on. I have moments, days even (barely) where I've felt like "I can do this. This is getting better." Then I have such a painful episode like this morning, and I think "I'm an idiot to keep doing this with the same results."

Ken keeps saying some breast milk is better than none - why don't I pump? Well, fucking pumping ain't no picnic either. Well, maybe I've got the wrong size suction cup thingies (yep, already went up a size). I appreciate his obstinancy and resent it at the same time. Well, what if we hire a lactation consultant again, before finally giving up? You know what, unless that chick can sit there with me ALL FUCKING DAY, every time I nurse, I don't see the point. People show me shit, they watch me with Audrey, give pointers (the pediatrician just did on Friday, at our appointment), but when it comes down to it - five minutes with someone watching me and commenting HASN'T MADE ME ANY MORE ADEPT AT THIS. And, I feel like such a failure.

Baby Fashion

Okay, so this isn't a prime example of "art photography," but here's Audrey in Cute Outfit #1. She wore this to the farmer's market in Santa Monica on Wednesday. I was hoping that being closer to the beach, it would be breezy and cool enough for her. Alas, by lunchtime, it was time to wear only the onesie underneath. Damn, she looked cute, though, while it lasted.








Here she is in a "lovely footsie ensemble." She wore this last night for a looong stroll Ken and I took.


Started setting aside outfits for her today to pack for our upcoming trip. I'm ready to go. Well, actually, I've got a lot of laundry to do first, but then I'm ready to go.

Keep having dreams about housing. Night before last, I was competing with Paris Hilton to rent this big apartment (that seemed to be trapped in a 1960s version of "modern, futuristic"). And, she won out! Weird.

Guess who's 12 weeks old today?

Audrey says,
I know, I can't believe it either!

Riot for Austerity

Ken found this group of bloggers who are resolved to make theirs the "smallest footprints," ecologically speaking. Check out the link here, which describes their mission

I can agree with a lot of their intentions, but I'm not interested in making spreadsheets to track how many GPUs or MCUs or whatever of electricity we're using monthly. I don't want to follow a "program" like that. But, I do like their recommendation to prepare foods at home based on what's available locally and seasonally at food co-ops and farmers markets - instead of deciding what to make and then shopping for ingredients, regardless whether they're local, in season, etc. We shop the farmers market in Larchmont on Sundays a couple times per month, and Audrey and I are going to join Lisa L. this Wed. a.m. for the one in Santa Monica...

I also like the idea of adopting a formal Spring Cleaning tradition: A time every year where we'll go through all our belongings, cabinets, drawers, closets, etc. and clear things out for giving away, throwing away, or selling. I feel we already live fairly stuff-and-clutter free, and we give things away at Goodwill a lot, but things still accumulate. And, with the Little One in our lives, the accumulation factor has risen, of course.

I miss Half Price Books in Austin. That was a cool book chain. Haven't found anything like it out here in LA.

Well, Little Bean is rousing, off I go...

Happy LA day

Things I like about LA:

KLOS radio station - 95.5

Iced mochas from:

• Mama's Enchiladas Cafe and Coffee Roaster, across the street from MacArthur Park on Wilshire

• The Whole Foods store in West Hollywood (but, not the one across the street from The Grove, so much)
  

• Urth Caffe

The Red Hot Chile Peppers. I liked them before, but once I lived out here, I realized just how LA they are (it's hard to explain, I guess).

The pool in our apartment complex. It's cocooned between the outside edge of our building and the apartment building next door, so it's relatively secluded and quiet. Plus, most of the time I go there, there aren't other swimmers, so it's like having my own. And, it's been really handy while I was pregnant and now for keeping all my moving parts, moving.

Off I go to it now - Daddy's got Baby Duty for a while longer. Mama needs to strengthen her (still a little sore when I try to use them) stomach muscles. :)

56620 (Cat jumped on the keyboard)

Okay, so I'm doing Baby Duty all day these days. Which is cool. Fine. I'm on it. We're getting our rhythms.

Yesterday, I managed to change the bed linens, do laundry, make dinner, and take a walk with Audrey. The day before, I managed to go grocery shopping, make dinner...

So, today, hm. What to do. It's 11:13 a.m., and the day stretches out before me (us). I just wrote a letter to the insurance company, backdating my cancellation date. So, going down to the mailbox is coming up shortly. Figure I'll drive over to Larchmont later with my little Bean and get an iced mocha from Peet's...

Yep. I think those two things will take me to about 3:00...

Rollover

Even though today's the day we've decided to begin pretending that Ken's "not home" during the day (because he's begun studying full time again to pass his final two certification exams), we captured this moment in pixels like the new parent geeks that we are.



Yep, Audrey rolled herself over for the first time. Hot damn.

:)

Audrey's pic o the week

Courtesy of grandma Sue!