Riley and Avery

Oxytocin. I've been a slave to its narcotic properties, an unwitting addict, for more than 6 long years. Now I've gone cold-turkey, completely unaware of how it has its little mitts involved in every aspect of my life.

Sleeping. Why do people tout night-weaning? For 6 years, someone or another has dictated how I lay in the bed, how lightly, or deeply, I slept. Calmed me to sleep through nursing and a flood of oxytocin, woke me gently in the morning when Avery partook of her early-morning nursing session, the sun rising through the window alerting me that it was time to slowly wake and start the day. I've lost my own internal sleep rhythm. I don't know when to go to bed, I am not tired when I force myself to retire, I lay awake, my mind won't calm down. Not without oxytocin. And the dreams! The dreams! I sleep deeply and uninterrupted, for a while, and the dreams, so vivid, attack me. I toss and turn all night. I wake angry at whatever whoever did to me in my dreams (I'm pretty sure that I verbally assaulted Rudi in my sleep last night, as I dreamed that he was laying in bed talking incessantly). At 5am, I ran down to sleep on the couch, my foggy brain fuming for another hour or so about how inconsiderate and rude my husband was, and how I would blow him a new butthole in the morning. Luckily, by morning, I realize that his transgressions were purely imagined.

I don't know when to get up in the mornings, without the nursing signal. The kids finally succeeded in getting me out of bed at 10:30 yesterday morning, and only because I looked at the clock and realized that it was, in fact, 10:30. I wake every morning with unimaginable pain in my back, shoulders, or neck, my body forgetting how to lay in a bed without nursing.

I am never hungry, and yet I am always eating, because that's what I used to do when nursing. I make bad food choices, while all food simultaneously repulses me, and nothing tastes good. It's like my body used to tell me exactly what I needed; fruit, veggies, carbs, protein; and now I don't know how to read my own hunger signals and nutritional needs.

This is all made worse, of course, by the fact that Avery nursed at least 12 times one day, and the next day was DONE. Cold turkey, indeed. This sucks. Hard.

I had to publish the last post because I needed to close Firefox to install something. Here are the pictures...


Avery's super-neat writing that she wanted to practice herself:
Riley's spontaneous writing. I used to know what it said:
Avery writing my name for the first time:

Wow, my blog is still here, not marked as abandoned!

Riley has been feverish, but no other symptoms. I had to pick her up from school yesterday half-way through. On Wednesday, no less, the day when both girls are all-day with art class tagged on to the end. Ugh. But her fever was 104 and the teachers were kind of freaking out. I told them that a spike of 104 or 105 is not unusual for Riley. Just a sign of her immune system working, doesn't mean she's sick, just fighting something off so she doesn't become sick. Immune systems are funny. Mine works by knocking me out and making me sleep, and I won't get sick if I listen. Riley's burns off whatever she's got, and she will come out of the fever and not get sick. Of course, all this happens a week or two after Avery has weaned. I wonder how the next illness with affect her.

Speaking of weaning, Avery's still weaned. It's so weird, though, because she was obviously not ready. If she wakes in the middle of the night, she screams and cries that she wants to nurse, so I ask her if she wants to try, and she says no, that it doesn't work anymore. Ugh. Poor kid!

I think Riley is hitting an intellectual growth spurt. All she wants to do is "school work." Not a problem. We started the Singapore Math, and as I suspected, it's a tad too easy for her. Actually, way too easy :) I think there may be something in the second half of the first grade curriculum that's new to her, and I want to do it all in order, so we'll stick with the first half of the first grade curriculum and just go through really fast. She did seven lessons in one day before I stopped her. Doing handwriting work is like pulling teeth, oh my goodness, SO not easy for her! And as a handwriting freak, I WILL NOT have a child with sloppy handwriting! LOL I will not! I think that because she really does truly love writing, she just doesn't want to stop or slow down and learn the mechanics of it. I also bought her some work on consonant blends, and she knew them all. Oops, didn't know she knew that. I also got her a book on non-fiction comprehension where she reads a short non-fiction excerpt and answers questions about the reading. She didn't have a problem with the reading, but was a little intimidated by the look of the book, but had very few problems doing the actual work. She lacks a bit in the self-confidence area.

Avery is so strange. I heard her counting up to 29 the other day. She also said that something was "fifty-six" and was correct. Hmmm. She also wrote my name on a picture, saying that she had seen it written somewhere, so she knew how to spell it. And Avery's handwriting is VERY neat (be still, my heart!) especially considering how she continues to hold a pencil/marker. She knows all her letters and the sounds they make. She was just randomly writing yesterday, saying she wanted to practice her ABC's, without me asking or prompting her. Oh, goodness, though, how perfectionist Avery is!! I mean, it really does handicap her in some areas, it's that bad. Ugh.

It looks like we have a home for our guinea pigs for when we move. The school's guinea pig died on Friday from a huge tumor (the other guinea pig died last year, I think). The director said that they would be interested in taking our pigs after a natural mourning period for Sammy. Nice! Riley's on the fence about it, sometimes loving the idea, sometimes hating it. We'll see how it all pans out.

Riley starts ice skating lessons at her school in a week or two. I need to get her skates by them. I'm just so wishy-washy about which I want for her. She wants pink ones. I went to Play it Again Sports and got myself a pair of cheap beater skates for myself at an awesome price. They didn't have anything good for little girls. I'll probably just end up getting her white figure skates. Meh, who knows? I promised her skates for her birthday, so I need to produce them soon! The director said that they needed to be figure skates, not hockey skates, but I don't know if she means a figure skating blade. I like the recreational skates with more support than figure skates. I don't know...

So, Avery has weaned. And, true to herself, in the most unusual way. I'm still kind of shell-shocked!

There was no tapering, no days without nursing. She was still nursing, on average, 8-12 times a day as well as nursing to sleep and perhaps twice more at night. Then one morning, LITERALLY, she lost the sucking reflex. Her latch seemed fine, but her nursing hurt like the dickens. She then said "I forgot how I used to nurse" and "how come I don't get milk anymore?" I checked and I still had milk. So we decided that we would cuddle instead. She was still pretty frustrated and upset, but knew that nursing doesn't "work" anymore.

The funny thing is, though, that my first response to any household discord it to offer to nurse. Avery and Riley had a little argument and Avery came to me and crawled onto my lap and I instinctively lifted my shirt. Avery said, in her best teenage voice, "Mom, that doesn't work anymore!" Doh! There goes my best tool!

I was talking to Rudi about it last night, telling him that I have been nursing for more than SIX YEARS non-stop. Six years! And for 1 1/2 of those years I was nursing two. I think I've earned my stripes!

I had a conference regarding Avery at her school yesterday. Just a routine catch-up on what the new kids have been doing so far. They say she is an absolute delight and "really, really bright." The teacher talked a lot about Avery's pencil grasp, as it is quite unorthodox. They said that her drawing, painting, and writing are all above normal, so they don't want to mess with her grasp, which I am totally onboard with. She said that she has a pincher-grasp, just seems to have found a better way to hold her pencil. It does really frustrate her when someone tries to correct her grasp. Her school is of the mind that changing it would interfere with her creativity and such. They also said that she could order the Color Box 3 without any difficulties at all, which is very difficult for her age, and is something that most elementary schoolers can't even do. Honestly, I've tried it and can't do it :) She just has the perfectionist artist's eye. She also knows letters and numbers far beyond what is expected of her age, which I attribute to "playing" in that school for the past three years while Riley was attending, and just absorbing things as Riley learned them.

Speaking of Riley, she is really blossoming as a reader. The director of her school said that every once in a while they have a Kindergartener that really "gets" reading. Last week, after storytime, she sprawled out on the floor with books and just started reading them. Wow.

However, because she's so into reading, she's not doing all that much math work at school, it seems. Remember that Singapore math curriculum that I was so excited to get? A long time ago? Yeah, we haven't started it yet. Need to do that! Riley is really into games right now, and we're running out of games to play sometimes, so I made up my own game to teach her about money. I got four little cups and filled each with quarters, dimes, nickles, or pennies. I got a 20-sided dice (die?) from the school store. We take turns rolling the die and take however many cents we rolled from the cups. As we got more change, we would trade the small coins in for the larger coins. At first, if Riley rolled a 9, she would just take 9 pennies, and then I'd teach her to trade in 5 pennies for a nickle, and so forth. She caught on really fast, and in no time at all could get the right change without trading. She also realized very quickly that if she collected, say, two dimes and a nickle, she could trade for a quarter. Fun stuff. Of course, we still have to reinforce the idea, but she caught on faster than I thought she would!

Math seems to come easy to Riley, but just doesn't interest her. She's been doing simple multiplication and division on her own. She will just randomly say that 5 times 4 is 20. Or that if we buy 12 doughnuts (yeah, right!) we each could have 3, or if we ate them when Daddy was sleeping, the three of us could each have 4 (LOL how sneaky!), etc. I know for an absolute fact that she is not doing multiplication or division in school, so I don't know where she's picking it up.

I have started looking into preschools in Maine for Avery. There are some really nice ones there, totally earth-based, many are mixes of Montessori, Waldorf, and Emilio Reggio. I am not totally sold on sending her, especially since it will cost us quite a bit, but Rudi is pretty set on sending her. I guess requesting information never hurt anyone. Being unsure of where we will actually live, and what Riley's school schedule will be, it's hard to determine where, or if, to send Avery. I mean, there's a really really really awesome-seeming school (River School House) which has tuition similar to what we would have now, but it's in a town just a tad north of Portland. Not too shabby as long as Riley's school starts at a different time, or if she rides the bus, or if we actually end up living in South Portland rather than Portland proper. There's just so much we don't know yet. And our move is only 6 months away! Yikes!

Speaking of money, there is another 100% disabled veteran in one of my classes this semester. During one of the first classes, we had to introduce ourselves, and he went first. When I introduced myself, I mentioned that Rudi was also 100% disabled and that I was getting educational VA benefits too. After class he stopped me and asked if Rudi was collecting Social Security Disability. I told him that we applied and were denied. He said that everyone is always denied at first, but if you request a hearing, the judge will never go against what the VA has already determined. He said that disabled veterans don't even need a lawyer, that's how clear-cut it is. The rationale is that the VA has already really tried to find a veteran not disabled, that once they finally do find a veteran 100% disabled, there's nothing that SS will do to counteract that. Nice! However, we had 60 days to appeal the denial, and it's been just a tad longer than that, so we have to start over. There's a good chance that this won't be taken care of before we move, but thought that there's no harm in trying. If it doesn't get finished, we'll just start again in Maine. No biggie.

No one will care, but anyway...I seem to have grocery-shopping induced alzheimers, because I have forgotten to pick up dishwasher detergent for weeks now. So, back to washing by hand. This prompted me to figure out if washing by hand is really more water-conserving as I originally thought it was. Well, come to find out that the average full-size dishwasher uses only 3-4.5 gallons of water. So, how much do I use when I handwash? I try to be economical when I handwash, as in, not letting the water simply run as I am rinsing. I fill one sink up for pre-soaking, using 2.5 gallons of water (I measured it!) and I fill the other sink about 2/3 way with water for rinsing, using again 2.5 gallons of water. Right off the bat, I've used more water than my dishwasher uses. When handwashing, I also rinse the dishes. Yes, we rinse as well when washing in the dishwasher, but I am wagering that I rinse less when putting dishes in the dishwasher. I'll even leave that water usage out of the equation so to give handwashing the benefit of the doubt.

Now, I use the dishwasher as a drying rack when I wash by hand, so it is very easy for me to tell that each time I handwash dishes, I can only wash 1/3 to 1/2 the dishes that my dishwasher would be able to hold. Even assuming that I can use one or the other of the sinks-full of water again, I am still using way more water handwashing than using the dishwasher. WAY more. So, 2.5 gallons for one sink, and 1.25 (assuming that I can use one of the sink fulls twice, so 2.5/2) times 2 again (because I wash half the dishes that my dishwasher could wash at once) equals 7.5 gallons of water to wash by hand the same amount of dishes that fit into my dishwasher, which is approximately twice the water used in a dishwasher. Huh!

But, you say, what about the energy that a dishwasher uses? Isn't the water super-heated in a dishwasher? This I cannot calculate on my own, so I turned to this site:
http://1greengeneration.elementsintime.com/?p=314
Turns out, using the dishwasher also consumes less energy. So, dishwasher, I've missed you!!!

I know I'm behind...

My car broke down yesterday. Yippee. Well, not really broke down in the purest sense, but became un-drivable :) We were about 1/3 of the way to school yesterday (but not on the highway yet, thank goodness!!) and I noticed that the car was overheating. Like, a lot. As in, ON the H, past the red zone. Not good at all. I turned around and stopped the car to let it cool off. I started it again and got 1/4 mile until I had to stop again. Rinse and repeat. Finally, I could do it no longer. I pulled into a parking lot (more on that later) and parked, bundled the kids up and started walking home. Where was Rudi, you ask? Here's the thing, Riley HAD to have a specific pair of shoes out of his car that morning, so I took his key (we only have one) and instead of putting it back in the house, I put it in my pocket, knowing that Rudi wouldn't need it that early in the morning. Yay, me! We were about a 1.5 miles from home, so it wasn't too bad, except that it was in the 20's. The girls were fine, since I had their winter stuff with me, but I just had my jacket liner over my short-sleeved shirt. My toes were freezing. I, of course, had neither a stroller nor a carrier with me, and her majesty Avery would only walk, maybe, 1/4 of the way.

Anyway, Rudi thought that perhaps it was the serpentine belt, but when I looked at it, it looked fine, no obvious wear or cracks, and it was still there afterall. Plus, there was no tell-tale squealing to let me know the S-belt was on the fritz, or slipping. So, we're thinking that it is the thermostat. The thing is, my car has always run cold, for as long as I can remember. The heat was never quite warm. Now the heat stopped working all together. I'm thinking that the thermostat was going bad for a while, hence the car running cold, and finally gave out altogether.

I DON'T think it's the radiator. I really want it to not be the radiator. I've had quite a few radiators go out on me, and it's just not like that this time. Every other time I've had radiator problems, driving faster cooled the engine, as did running the heat to alleviate the heat on the engine (which was always fun in 100 degree weather!). With radiator problems, the engine seems to get hotter while idling. This time, the car gets hotter by driving. See my thinking here?

Anyway, back to the parking lot. I parked outside a store called Crystal's. I thought it was a lingerie store. Turns out it's more than that :) I was about to go in to let the shopkeeper know that my car broke down and to please not tow it, we'll come for it, etc. but I had the kids with me. There was signage and all that they check ID's, etc. So I went to the hearing aid store next to them and told them my sad tale instead. BUT, I had to go back to the car later to get my school books out it, and decided then to tell the folks at Crystal's my problem, since my car was parked directly outside of their store. As I'm going in a mother, her 5-6 yo. daughter, and what looked like Grandma were coming into the store. A 5yo!!! It's a women's toy store if you catch my drift! Really? What is wrong with people? Anyway, the salesgirl turned them away, but still. So, long story short, my car is parked outside an adult store, and that'll be fun information to share with the towtruck driver!

So, I have my money on it being the thermostat, but then there's the whole separate problem of what damage was done to the engine by the overheating. Ugh. In the end, though, I am so grateful that my first three cars were beaters. You learn a lot about cars by owning cars like those. There's just stuff you can't learn with a car less than 10 years old. I think those experiences have prevented me from getting ripped off on numerous occassions, saving me perhaps thousands of dollars in the long run. If your parents buy, or help you buy, a car less than 10 years old, you're really missing out on some valuable lessons!! I argue, well debate, this with Rudi all the time. He wants the kids to have dependable cars. I mean, I don't want my kids stranded in the middle of the desert in a broken-down car, but really, they need the experience of maintaining and repairing cars, especially being girls. I will help them, perhaps, buy a "nice" 8-10 year old car, but he wants them to have newer cars. No way. I know, it's a long way off...They're already brainwashed to prefer Toyotas! Oh, yeah! LOL.

We had actually never been to Focus on the Family, in spite of hearing great things about their (free) play area. Riley really liked the super-huge slide (it was stories high, I don't know how she could handle it). The Narnia portion really got the girls interested. Riley and Avery enjoy it because they said it reminds them of Grandma and Grandpa. Since their visit, we've read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (in record time, they request readings several times a day) and watched the movie a few times as well (it conveniently came on the Disney channel right as we were finishing the book). We've since started Prince Caspian, and hope to see that movie too as soon as we're done. Avery requested a Renaissance-style dress like Lucy and Susan wear in the end of the movie. I was going to make her one anyway for the Renaissance fair, and even have a pattern that I think is close enough. Lucky.

Anyway, it was a very neat play area. Avery was kind of in a snit that morning for who knows what reason, so she was a bit of a pill. We left Grandma and Grandpa there for a bit while we went home and did something-or-another (I forget now, probably grocery shop or something). We met up again to go to Manitou Springs later that same day.

No visit to Colorado Springs is complete without a visit to the Garden of the Gods. Nice days are few and far between in January, but we thought we had a good one. It was decently warm enough in the sun, but passing into shade was quite cold. Poor Grandma and Grandpa, being dragged around outdoors in the cold! We managed to get in a decent walk before driving the rest of the way in the car and stopping in to the trading post.

Not that anyone cares, but I noticed that I have 400 posts already published. Neat-o! So even though my posts are sporadic at best, at least I've stuck with it, right?

I have a lot of blogging to catch up on, so here goes...

I guess first up is Grandma and Grandpa's visit, which will probably take several posts, so we'll start with Riley's birthday ceremony.

Well, I guess we'll start from when Grandma and Grandpa surprised Riley and Avery at school on that Wednesday (January 6th). The girls were kind of stunned. Riley kept giggling. Avery got shy for a minute. Riley said that she didn't recognize Grandma and Grandpa at first, because they were so skinny (I somehow forgot to tell Grandma and Grandpa this, so there it is!). The girls showed them around their school, a lot. There were some dicey moments, like allowing Grandma and Grandpa to go back to their hotel room so they could, heaven forbid, actually get some sleep, and understanding that Grandma and Grandpa had to drive in their own car (I have lately been envious of those with mini-vans).

Anyway, birthday ceremony:







Typical birthday ceremony, really. This is Riley's fourth Montessori ceremony, so we're getting to be pros. Riley insisted on a fruit salad (sans pickles, thank goodness!) which was nice, but quite expensive in January to buy cantaloupe, honeydew melon, strawberries, grapes, and blueberries. But, she's the birthday girl, no? And I suppose it was nice for the peanut-allergic boy in her class to actually safely eat some.

Friday after the ceremony, there was no way we would be able get Riley to school, with G'ma and G'pa in town, so we skipped it. Just seemed cruel to make her go!