Gun imponderables

• Tyler was telling his co-worker something he learned at the police station concerning the officers' guns by starting, "I've been around guns a lot and..." His co-worker stopped him and said something like, "but aren't you really religious?" The point being that religious people shouldn't like guns and all be pacifists.

I don't know...? Tyler pointed out that all the gun nuts belong to the Christian Right. But, why is that?

• I read a lady's blog who lives in Texas and she wrote about her daughter's Veteran's Day Pageant at school. She said something like, "I'm sure you can all guess about my political leanings: I live in Texas and my husband owns a lot of guns." She went on to say something like, "I am conservative therefore I love my country." She went on with a heavy subtext that if you believe otherwise, politically speaking, you do not love your country.
  

What about owning guns makes you conservative? Why don't liberals like guns? And why can't I love my country if I don't love guns... or something?

Why are the most conservative states the fattest? Why are the most liberal people the stingiest when it comes to charity (which I can't find a map to back up, but I swear I've seen this on the news). I really don't know.

Lillian, the fabulous

You know how when you're in some sort of retail or food service job and you boss tells you that a customer who has a negative experience will tell 10 people, but the one who has a positive experience will only tell 1 person? Or something.

I have this problem. When something goes wrong with Lillian (like yesterday when it took her a full half-hour to walk 50 yards because she had to look at, touch, smell, catalog every flower, plant, and bug that she saw while I'm yelling "COME ON! HURRY UP! GET OVER HERE!"), I'm far more likely to call someone and kvetch about it (I called my sister Allison and said, "I swear, she's got the brain damage and it's driving me crazy!") than if she does something sweet or cute. After 3 years of this, I think, at least to my family that does not live near me, I give off the general attitude that I don't actually like my children and feel constantly burdened by them and wish that I never had them.

This is not true. I do like my kids, I like being a mom, and I'm really, really glad that I have them.

So, here's my Top Ten Things I Like About Lillian list:

1. I love her little voice. Everyone comments on it and says that it sounds so sweet, which it does.
2. Like most kids, she says really funny things all the time. Once, out of nowhere, she said, "MOM, DAD! I like snakes!" "Oh, you like snakes?" Then, with an chuckle in her voice, she answered, "No, I don't like snakes." Maybe you had to be there, but it was funny. She also makes 'rules' about what's going on, probably to help her make sense of everything. We were sitting in choir at church (because she didn't want to play with the other kids in the nursery) and as the men were working out their parts, she said, "Only boys sing in choir. Girls don't get to sing." Or, "only moms can get the mail. Dad's aren't allowed."
3. She's very polite. She says please and thank you for everything. Once, I had to give her some gross medicine and she said without a hint of sarcasm, "Thank you mom. That was yucky."
4. She's very caring. If anyone around her is sad: me, Nora, kids in nursery, she's right there to hug them and say, "I know, it's ok."
5. I love her active imagination. She's constantly pretending to be one princess or another and acting out scenes of various movies or cartoons. It's so cute.
6. She's not destructive or violent. Sure, she makes messes, but it's very rare that she breaks something, or colors where she oughtn't, or gets into something and spreads it all over the walls, or whatever else kids do. And, once she figured out that Nora was a person, and not just some super annoying doll, it's very rare that she pushes/hits/bites her, or anyone else. In fact, I can think of only one time she pushed Nora over, and she...
   
7. confessed right away, because she's bizarrely honest, and not just in a "why-are-you-so-fat?"-sort-of-kid way. I can ask her what happened and she'll say, "well, Nora was crawling on me and trying to steal my juice, so I pushed her off the couch."
8. To go along with #6, she is hardly ever willfully disobedient, which is good and bad, because she is very smart. If I tell her not to do something, like not to wear shoes on the couch, she won't do it. Also, you are not allowed to do it either, and she'll call you on it. But, she's forever looking for loopholes, which are at times funny. Like, she'll put her shoes on her dolls and make them walk around on the couch, because, clearly, you meant only people weren't allowed to wear shoes on the couch. I find I have to laugh at myself because I start saying things like, "Ok, you can get out of the cart, but you are not allowed to pick up, touch, breathe on, or move anything on the shelves, you have to stay close to the cart, and try to keep one hand on the cart at all times, but don't push the cart, that's my job. You cannot hang on Nora's legs because that hurts her. Also, don't hang on my legs, because it's hard to walk when you do that. If you run away, or knock something over, you'll have to get back in the cart."
9. She's genuinely excited about life. Tyler took her to the police station last night with the cub scouts and she can't stop talking in her excited little voice about the things she saw "MOM! There was a potty in the holding cell!" It makes me laugh.
10. She's just the right amount of cuddly for me. You may or may not know this about me, but I require a lot of personal space and get claustrophobic really easily. Which is not to say that I don't enjoy cuddling with my kids, just not All The Time. And Lillian doesn't either. Sometimes, she wants to sit on top of me and read book after book after book, and I love it, and sometimes, she sits on her end of the couch, and I sit on mine, and we're both fine with that.

I guess it comes down to the fact that I really like her, and I know she likes me. We play and have fun and sometimes it's hard when she's being headstrong and stubborn and I swear I'm going to sell her to the gypsies, and then she says something funny or makes a joke and I laugh and hug her.

Iron and Whine

I mentioned before that I'm now taking iron supplements and they make it so I'm not tired all the time. Which, I really like. No longer do I fall asleep on the couch at 8 at night. No longer do I start thinking about when I can go back to sleep the minute I wake up. But also, no longer can I fall asleep at will.

I'm now figuring out that I treated sleeping sort of like a hobby. If I was bored, or out of things to do, I could take a nap. If Nora woke up at 5:30, I could feed her and then go back to sleep, even if I fell asleep at 9 the previous night.

I cannot do these things anymore because I'm Not Tired. Today marks the second day in a row I've been up before six. It's awful and bizarre.I miss the feeling of being exhausted and falling into bed to blissfully welcome the loving blanket of sleep. Now, I go to bed because it's time and if I don't go now, I won't get 8 hours.

Yesterday, I was really sick and tired and feverish and needed to get some sleep and it was hard. It took a few tries because even though I had the door closed, I could hear Nora fuss, and Lillian talking to Tyler about how she really wants to go visit mom in her bed, and the microwave open and close, and fire engines, and airplanes, and children playing outside. Is this what it's like for normal people? How do you live like this?

Immunization FAIL, sort of

My friend Sarah sent out this email:

There are so many controversial topics, especially immunizations, and with being a first time mom, I enjoy asking others about their experiences and thoughts on different topics to get different points of view.

Have you or will you [for your baby/kid(s)] be getting the:
Seasonal Flu Shot
H1N1 Flu Shot

Do you normally get it as well?

Why or why not??

I'm not one to be political, and I'm not looking for an argument, but since this is NaBloPoMo, you get to hear me expound on things I wouldn't normally talk about.

I believe very strongly in routine immunizations. My kids get all the shots from MMR to their DipTep, I'm on board. What I do not have a testimony of is flu shots. This is probably due to the fact that I'm pretty sure the year I was pregnant with Lillian and my doctor FORCED me to get one was the first one I'd ever had. (This is the same doctor that argued with me for 20 minutes about whether or not I needed a RhoGam shot when both Tyler and I are O-.)

I don't know why we never got flu shots in our growing up years. If my mom had something against them, she never told me; it was simply a non-issue. Because I never got the shot, and rarely got sick, I began to regard them as completely unnecessary, and also, only for paranoid people.

Now that we go to the doctor's office for all of Nora's bazillion well checks, they're always pressuring me to get flu shots for my kids. For whatever reason, I can't bring myself to do it. Lillian has never had a flu shot, and she's never gotten the flu.

I feel the same about the H1N1 shot, except that I'm really probably not going to get it because I'd have to go to TEP stadium, and if the local news is to be believed, wait in line for hours and waiting in line for hours with two squirmy kids is really not my idea of a good time and something I don't think I could bring myself to do for something I have no testimony of.

Tyler got a flu shot every year of his life, and I think is a little baffled by my opinions, so this year, I decided to do an experiment. I got a flu shot, because they were handing them out in WalMart, a place I already was, and there was no line, and I made a deal with Tyler that if I didn't get sick, I would get the kids shots next year. But if I got the flu anyway, he could take his flu shot and... you know.

I was going to write about how vindicated I am that flu shots are useless because I woke up this morning with a sore throat, achy body, low-grade fever, and a headache. But, I happened to be chatting online (while writing this) with my friend Carrie, who is a doctor, and she told me that I probably have the same virus Nora has, which, I wasn't aware that adults could catch. She she said that yes, adults can get it, it just doesn't cause the same croupy cough. Huh. Who knew?

And, although I'm biased against the shot, I have to admit that it probably wasn't designed to protect me against whatever croup virus I have. Dang.

Tuesday Reminiscences: In which I remember when I thought Tyler had died

*Sigh* We used to live here. This is a place called Montana de Oro (there's supposed to be a tilde over the second 'n' but I'm on Tyler's computer and I can't figure out how to make one) and it's my favorite place on earth.

That's the ocean.

Look at us: so young, so... unencumbered by children. It was a lazy Saturday just a few weeks after we were married, and we decided to hike Oats Peak. Just like that.

When we got to the top of Oats Peak, it was really, really foggy. We thought it would be funny to take a picture of Tyler falling into the mist.

One second after I took this picture, Tyler fell off the side of the mountain, which was not a small distance. My heart stopped. I screamed. I ran over to where he disappeared to find that he did not, in fact fall off the side of the mountain. There's a gentle slope behind him which he stepped down and into the fog to make it seem like he fell off. Jerkface. I really did think he fell and died and that I was a widow at 21.

I don't think I've quite forgiven him (five years after the fact) because one of us brought it up a few days ago, and I was mad all over again.

Hostage crisis

Around dinner, Nora's breathing turned stridorous and labored, so we took her to urgent care where the doctor took one listen and sent us to the ER (we suspect this is probably because they were going to close in 30 minutes).

The hospital is really the only place where you pay to be taken hostage. Nora was diagnosed with croup, got some steroids, and chest and neck x-rays (for which she had to be put in this iron maiden contraption which was pretty much the saddest thing I've ever seen) to rule out foreign body obstruction.

Then we waited.

And waited.

An hour later, Tyler asked what we were waiting for. I told him the doc had to read the films and then discharge us. Nora's breathing had slowed and she was sleeping comfortably.

I'm not a squeaky wheel. I thought the doctor was probably busy, or a trauma had come in (which was hinted at by the x-ray tech), and they'd get to us in their own due time. I probably would have waited another hour, trying my best to look pathetic and tired, and giving the nurse a withered look every time she walked by. Tyler is more of a kind to take matters into his own hands, especially if he feels like the situation is lame, or unnecessary. He politely bothered the nurse until she bothered the doc who ran in all in a dither to tell us she didn't have anything stuck in her throat (surprise) and that we could leave.

Time of arrival: 8 PM
Time of discharge: 12:02 AM
Time in bed: 1:00 AM

To call or not to call

Nora is sick.

She woke up last night at 2, wheezing with rhonchi and a fever. She was breathing really fast, 53 breaths per minute, but she wasn't blue, or grunting, or having retractions. I considered taking her in to the hospital for a breathing treatment, but I decided to give her some Tylenol and see if that helped. Once it kicked in, her fever went down and her breathing became less labored, so I let her sleep.

She woke up again at 4 and I brought her to bed with me but she mistook that gesture as an overture of play and giggled and climbed all over Tyler and me. Back into her crib went she and cried for an hour. I felt bad doing it because she was already having such a hard time breathing, but I was exhausted and couldn't sit up with her any longer.

She got up again at 6:30, and my wonderful husband got up with her and let me sleep until 7:45, which was magical. When I came downstairs, he asked if I was going to call the doctor.

I always find that question to be so sticky in my brain. If I call and ask whether or not I should come in, I think there's a 99% chance that they will say that I should. It cuts down on their liability and we were actually taught in nursing school to tell people this if they called wondering. So I can't rely on the nurse at the office to tell me whether or not to come. And then I think to myself, "I'm a nurse, what do I think?" I think, yes, she's sick... but she's not in distress, she's not barking so she doesn't have croup, her fever is under control, she's not pulling on her ears, and she's not especially lethargic or crabby. And, what's the doctor going to say?

He's going to say, "yep, she's sick. Make sure she gets lots of rest and fluids and call me if she gets any worse."

My normal MO is to just skip that first visit and then call when they get worse, which rarely happens; they usually get better. So, I think that's what we'll do today, but I'm conflicted because I've never had a wheezy child before. I don't know. I'll let you know what I decide.

Here comes a robot with electric brains

I'm a robot from Amanda Ball on Vimeo.

Here's another installment of our One Hour Till Bedtime series. The cleaning/organizing of the office/sewing room/spare bedroom yielded two boxes. Tyler turned one into a new cardboard house, much in the style of our old house. The other became a robot suit and Lillian wore it around saying "I'M A ROBOT, I'M A ROBOT" in her best robot voice for about 20 minutes. It was great. I wanted to color some dials and buttons on it, but Lillian vetoed that idea. Which is too bad because it would have been great.