DragonBlog

Crossing the Language Barrier...

TWO! Count them - TWO posts today! If you haven't read the other one, scroll down there first...

Jareth absolutely amazes me sometimes. Right now I have him stashed away for a short, late nap after spending four and a half hours of "being good" at my NST and doctor's appointment. First we had to wait a half an hour just to get registered for the NST - something I can never predict, so I never know when I'll get in or out of that room. Then, they prolonged the test and I ended up spending nearly an hour and a half in the room getting the NST - during which, Jareth was reasonably content to color in the notebook I keep for him, chat with me, and open and close the blinds on the window - which are trapped between two pieces of glass and can be manipulated by turning a small knob. There was also a span of him playing peek-a-boo with me over the footboard of the bed.

Since RainMoon couldn't join me today, I was on my own, but once again Jareth was an angel. Any other child might have figured out that their mommy was kind of "trapped" on the bed, hooked up to the monitor, and couldn't leap out and stop them from running off or getting into trouble. Mine was happy enough to even let me finish reading the magazine I had brought along. Imagine that - I have actually READ a magazine, cover-to-cover! This is a momentous occasion - I haven't done THAT since before he was born!

After we got out of the NST room, we headed to the doctor's office. Down one elevator, across the facility to another "building" of the place (it's a hospital and something like two medical buildings, but they are all connected together). Then up another elevator and into the office to sign in. At this point, because of the wait on the previous occasions, I am now more than an hour late for my 2:00pm appointment. Which means I have to wait. A while. I had gotten the last available chair in the waiting room, actually.

Having exhausted the "coloring" distraction tactic already, I whip out one of the "backup toys" I keep in my bag. A large matchbox car. He proceeds to play with that on the table next to me, as well as one of the bead puzzle things they have in the office for kids. He gets bored with the beads quick today though. The car is more enticing. So is one of the other people waiting in the office. A man who is waiting with someone keeps smiling his way. And my kid has an instinct about people. He smiles back, shyly at first. Then he puts his car on the floor and scoots it in the guy's direction. The guy smiles - the right response! Jareth scoots the car a little more. Again - response to the stimuli! He bravely goes forth, giving the car that final shove that will leave it at the man's feet. It helps that there were no more chairs - this guy's sitting on the floor, at Jareth's level - another reason for him being targeted in the first place, I'm sure.

The man scores! He grins and grabs up the car, sending it racing back to bonk into my son's shoe! This results in uncontrolled giggling from Jareth, one of those infectious giggles that makes a few others in the room chuckle from the sheer cuteness of it. Within five minutes, my kid not only has an avid playmate in the man on the floor (who even went so far as to create tunnels and ramps for the car to use, out of the literature available in the office!), but has at least half the room watching him, being entertained by his antics. This, in a standing-room-only doctor's waiting room where Jareth and I were quite possibly the ONLY two people there who didn't speak a lick of spanish...

Amazing. This guy and my son amuzed each other and quite a few of those waiting for nearly an hour. There was more conversation on Jareth's part, entirely in English of course. The man hardly spoke, but they didn't seem to have any trouble communicating. I kept watching for any signs that my son might be annoying him or anything, but he seemed happy for the distraction too. Despite the fact that Jareth was already at the point where he should of been napping, overtired from a long day (which had also included a gymnastics class for him in the morning), and a little high-strung - he managed to keep a captive audience and still be a good little boy. I only had to warn him a few times not to throw the car back to the guy, and only because I knew he was at that overzealous point where he'd have been likely to bean the guy in the head with it. And he mostly listened too.

I am so blessed with this wonderful little boy that I have! It warranted a second post for today, especially since I've been pretty lax in posting lately.

G'night!

Current Mood: grateful

The Deadline Approaches...

I was just at the doctor's today, having my weekly (now upgraded to BI-weekly, damnit!) NST monitoring and doctor's appointment, thus keeping me in the two areas of the facility for a good four and a half hours. At one point, I was nearly in a panic when they saw a "variation" on the test and had me stay on the monitor longer. I guess if they'd seen another such "variation" it might have meant me staying there. I don't know if they would have just kept me there to watch over or what, but I sure don't feel ready yet.

Nonetheless, I got the news from the doctor today that if I haven't gone into labor by the 14th, she wants to induce me. So now the little one is on a deadline, and so am I. I guess I'd better finish getting all my "lists" in order and make sure Brian knows what to pack in case I do end up stuck in the hospital after one of those tests or something. Last time I had a few hours to finish packing up and eat something before they even wanted me to head to the hospital. I guess this kid could be a little more spontaneous. She's already taking after her mommy that way, eh? Oh boy. I'm in for an interesting parenting job with this one if that's the case!

So, instead of the "sometime two weeks before or two weeks after" rule that I've heard before, this kid will likely be born no later than the 15th, depending on what time of day they would induce me.

Are you ready world? 'Cause here she comes...

Additional note: I just flipped the calendar to March, since it starts tomorrow. The 14th is a full moon. Just thought that was an interesting point of note.

Current Mood: anxious

Am I Cooked Yet?

You know that pop-up button that some turkeys come with to let you know when they are cooked so you don't have to muck about with a meat thermometer?

Yeah. That thingy. My belly button feels about ready to do that any day now...

I think I'm just about cooked.

More later. Brian just got home from another long day at the RV show he's been doing. Thus I must go vampire-suck my day's worth of grown-up human contact out of him before he runs for the bed to get some sleep.

G'night!

Current Mood: crazy

Another post involving a mention of snot...

Okay, so the trouble with the blog has still left me baffled. We'll see if the next picture I put up does the same thing or not, but for now the rose pic has to remain a set size. I've also realized that one of these days I need to adjust the archive pages to have the sidebars, as anytime I set one of my pics to be 100% in width it is showing up HUGE in the archive version later on. Not that I expect a ton a people are having a problem with that - most people look at blogs and peruse the most recent stuff on that first page instead of pouring over tons and tons of archives. But the fact that I've recently been posting more weekly instead of daily means there's less up front, which is why posts are dropping off the bottom. I thought I had it set up to show the last 7 entries, but it's set to show the last week of entries - which means that you'll only see one or two on the front page right now. As I said, I'll probably get back to posting daily again at some point after the baby is born. Right now I'm just exhausted and brain-dead most of the time and conserving my mental energies for other things. It's not that I don't have plenty to blog about, it's just that I haven't the energy (or sometimes the time during the day) to sit down and type it out.

Today, being President's Day, I did not have class this morning. I had told myself that I would likely spend that time working on my current class project (a silver chain) anyway, but instead I am sick. I suppose the timing is good in that I won't miss class, but I am not enjoying the sniffling, dripping, coughing, stuffy head, and oooooh diahreah! feeling that I have today. I thought maybe I had had some fever while sleeping, but can't be entirely sure. Every time I've taken my temperature it's been low instead of high. I think it's messing with my blood sugar levels too - I ate an extra apple at lunch I was so seriously shaky. Jareth was a total sweety and played in his room this morning while I tried to sleep in, and has been playing quietly on his own for the most part today. When I put him down for a nap later, I'll take a nap myself. I'm taking the risk of taking my antihistamine/decongestant twice per day instead of the usual once, in order to allow myself to actually breathe, since the stuff that I'd been told by the doctor I could take doesn't work anymore. I'm popping Tylenol like candy and have waves of nastiness rushing over my body periodically. I just want to crawl back into bed, although even when I was in bed I was having "sick dreams" - dreams where I dream about oddly mundane things in a nightmarish fashion. I remember being sick once while my day job was working in and office and I dreampt of sorting mail endlessly. That kind of stuff. One of last night's dreams involved my being late getting to class and trying to watch through the window in the door to get the last bit of the lesson anyway since I didn't think the teacher would let me in if I showed up that late. In reality, he would probably have still let me in, but in the dreamworld things are often strangely skewed.

Needless to say, I won't be getting a whole hell of a lot done today. Instead, I'm going to see how quickly I can kill time to get me to naptime but still not just pass out in my computer chair. I feel icky enough that I could just curl up in a ball on the floor somewhere at this point, but then the cats would just bonk me with their heads while my son thought it was some cute game where he could use me to stack his toys on top of... *sigh* Sometimes I'm just furniture around here, ya know? I'd pack up the kid and head to the doctor, but I know they'll just look at me and say "sorry, you're pregnant so you can't take anything useful for your illness."

This part sucks. Big time. *moan*

G'night.

Current Mood: gloomy

Technical Problems

Strange things are happening on the blog here. The image in the last entry was somehow showing super-sized in Internet Explorer, despite the fact that it looked fine in Opera and Mozilla? Instead of a percentage, I gave it a set width and now the entries that came before it seem to have dropped off the page? I have to go to class now, but I'll try and figure it all out later. You can still use the links to "recent entries" on the left sidebar to get to the other entries that would normally be showing on the page if you're catching up...

Later!

Current Mood: confused

Brownie Points...

I call these "brownie points" when they come from a guy who just doesn't do the flower "thing". As much as I hate to say it, Brian's been in a bit of a brownie point deficiency as of late too. While I know I'm not the most girly girl around, I must say I can easily get suckered by this stuff...

Happy Valentine's Day everyone!

Current Mood: loved

Heart and Soul...

Today I had another ultrasound, this time to look specifically at the baby's heart and make sure everything looked okay. The brief version is that it looked like everything was doing just fine. When I mentioned that I hadn't gotten any pictures at the last one, however, the woman doing the scanning printed me out some. I have three shots - one of which is to show "girl parts" but is NOT going up on the web (The kid hasn't even left the womb yet, I'm certainly not going to put her privates up for the whole damned internet to see! Good grief!), but the other two are profile shots where you can see her...

I realized I haven't even put up any pictures this year yet until today! I really HAVE been busy, haven't I? Today was a usual "tuesday = doctor day" kind of day, except that the ultrasound was an add-on to the other two places at the hospital I have to go to for the NST test and my OB-GYN appointment. RainMoon was able to join me this time, helping keep me sane as I shuffled around from office to office, weary and worn as I am lately. After we muddled through all that, we hit a local diner for a quick afternoon "snack" and some much-needed downtime from all the hassle and hurry I usually have. I ended up venting some of my latest frustrations, and she was a total sweetie to listen to all my whining.

Anyway, thought I'd pop in and share the photos! Again, we had more confirmation that it's a girl in there. I've been calling her "baby Kayla" pretty regularly now, and am starting to let every one else's certainty sink into me. While I love the idea of having a little girl, I wouldn't want a little boy to not think he was wanted. In the end, I just want another healthy little bundle of joy in my arms for me to weep happily over. But it seems like it's clear it will be a girl now, so I guess I'll have to start perusing over the baby clothes my mother-in-law still has saved from when my sister-in-law was little. While some of the clothes end up being outdated and weren't worn, Jareth wore some of the stuff she had from when Brian was little! I find it amazing that she held onto them all for so long! But, to be honest, most baby blue jeans and sleepers just haven't changed a whole hell of a lot over the years. heh.

That's all for now. I've got yet more stuff calling for my attention.

G'night!

Current Mood: optimistic

The Sick and The Poopy...

So Monday I had to bail on going to class after I woke up feeling super crappy. Not only had I only managed to get about 4 and a half hours of sleep the night before, but half the reason was because I was having trouble not sneezing all the damn time! After about a bazillion Puffs tissues and some tears of frustration I insisted that Brian (who'd been sick for about a week already but was supposedly "getting better") call in sick to work and take us all to the doctor. I'd noticed some crankiness in Jareth and a stuffy nose, so I figured it was pretty likely that Brian had managed to share his illness with us after all.

A nap for me and then a trip out to the doctor's office for the whole family revealed that Brian had bronchitis, while Jareth and I were the proud owners of lovely little respiritory infections. Oh yay. I got told there was "fluid" behind my ears too, and yet I'm the only one that came away from that appointment without a prescription for something to make me better. I got told I could take some Tylenol and Pseudaphed and basically - suck it up. The kid got happy cough syrup with decongestant in it, and Brian got full-blown antiboitics. I, on the other hand, am sick for two and can't take squat. Gotta love it. *grumble, grumble, bitch, moan, complain*

Regardless, I went to class today anyway, dosed up with what little I can take to make me feel less crappy. By the end of class I was not only lightheaded and had a building sinus headache, but I also started having nasty gas pains to boot. Seems the problems I had last pregnancy with gas and constipation for the last couple of months wasn't a fluke caused by too much cheese and broccoli snacking after all. Oh joy. With my IBS, my colon is touchy and gas pains can quite literally be excruciating. *sigh* Time to pull the anti-gas pills back out of the medicine chest methinks.

Oh, and it's official - I can only just barely reach my feet anymore. If it weren't for the whole "bathing" thing that normal people need and like to do now and again, I think I'd just put a comfy pair of socks on and let them stay there until the baby is born. And only wear the kind of shoes I can just shove my feet into - although I'm kinda doing that most of the time already. The baby and I have an agreement that I shouldn't remain bent over for anything longer than velcro straps. Shoelaces are simply out of the question. That's just too much time to be squishing the baby for. She starts getting uppity and kicking vital organs if I do that!

Lastly to report, I'm trying to figure out an odd little quirk about my son. The same child who will DEMAND a napkin if his fingers get dirty, or INSIST on getting a towel if he spills a little water or milk, so he can dab it up. This same child who would absolutely refuse to get dirty, even if mud pies tasted like chocolate... will sit for HOURS before letting me know he's pooped his pants! I mean, HONEST - this kid will look me straight in the eye and try to keep me from checking down the back of his pants, saying "NO POOPY!" over and over again as if it will make it true, even when his pants are so full he's moments away from having it start to drop out of the diaper and lodge itself into the hem of his sweatpants! EGADS! What is WRONG with this child? Talk about having it ass-backwards! Needless to say, potty training has stalled considerably. At some point I have to convince the kid that it is NOT actually "okay" to have a butt covered in poop...

Yeah. Count ME confused.

G'night!

Current Mood: confused