Life's been good to me so far

We had another head lice fiasco - fiasco just in that washing ALL the clothes and bedding and dress up clothes and towels and baby blankets and changing table covers and playmats and couch cushion covers and SO ON, and spraying all the furniture and car seats and stuffed animals, and vaccuming all the carpet, and washing and then thoroughly nit-combing for a family of 7...is a fiasco. How I hate lice. At least when we got it this past December, we were rid of it very quickly. I really, really hope for a repeat of that. It's so easy to pass it around - I think that is what's happening, with Mindy's girls giving it to us. I'm hoping based on talks with Teresa that all head-doing has been synchronized. And then, understandably, my sister doesn't want to come over until we're completely sure we've got every single one, lest Brian get it, and my poor brother is staying with us and has what can only be described as a long, curly white-boy afro. So woe be unto him if he were to end up with lice. One good thing is that we coincidentally had cut the boys' hair before finding it, so it was easier to comb and pick out and required less ultra expensive lice killing shampoo. Word to the wise: mainstream pharmacies now stock homeopathic lice remedies, and THEY WORK!! So...that was yesterday, a de-lousing bonanza. One silver lining of head lice that I hadn't thought of: When you're done with all that crap, your house is just so amazingly clean and everyone in it is freshly bathed, all at once, with ALL the laundry done or soon to be done at the same time. The feeling of bone crunching exhaustion that has you nearly crawling to bed, beaten into submission, reminds you why your entire house is not normally that sparkling clean along with everyone in it at the end of the night.

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Today has been very satisfyingly productive, starting with waking up in a startingly clean house (I mean really - no toys ANYWHERE!!). I woke up at 7:20, and woke up Ananda and Aaron. Baked muffins, moved laundry through, prodded them along to be dressed and shoe'd with brushed hair, got Elise up with a new diaper, told my brother I was leaving a sleeping Jake and Isaac and took the others over to VBS. Aaron had a minor breakdown before we left; he hasn't been to Girl Scouts or dropped off at playdates, the way Annie has - this was his first big "being left somewhere". I'm assuming me standing outside the door of his tap classes or being in the next room from the church childcare doesn't count. Anyway, he was just horrified about not being near either of his parents or his home for who knows how long. Once I explained about how close it was to our house, and how they'd have my phone number and call me if he were to get sick, or hurt, and I could be there in five minutes, and how it was only for a few hours in the morning and then he'd be home again to swim in the backyard, he calmed down. He was chuckling as I told him my own nervous "going to camp" stories (that end with me crying when I have to go back home). The ladies there were so eager to hold and pass around Elise as I filled out paperwork that at one point I had to chase one of them down before I lost mah baby completely.

Came home, took a nap til the little ones were all up. Took Elise to go get A and A, who had had A BLAST and were both excited to tell me all about the games they'd played and crafts they'd done and songs they'd sang. Once back, I got a big old pot of 32 bean soup started for lunch, did dishes, moved more laundry through, more nursing and diapers and then I slathered Annie, Aaron and Isaac in sunblock and they ran outside, filling up the pool and jumping in the trampoline misters. Elise propelled herself forward. I did not witness this phenomenon, all I could see in the moment was a lot of seemingly fruitless squirming, but anytime I looked away for more than 30 seconds during her tummy time, she was noticeably further along the area rug. When we began her head was about 3-4 inches from the edge. When she started getting tired and I picked her up, she was laying her head partially on the main carpet. Sidenote: we steam cleaned the main carpet and area rugs, and the difference is AWESOME. There is still staining to hell and back on the main stuff, but it just seems so much less nasty. And my old area rug looks new again.

Grant came home, I helped him pack and got Jake dressed and Isaac out of the pool dressed and had A and A re-dress, as well as newly dressing a diaper-leaked Elise. We ate the 32 bean soup with the last of the muffins, packed a diaper bag, grabbed his stuff and left for the pediatrician-and-then-airport.

The ped appt was awesome. The doc's assistant, a man who is referred to throughout the office as "J. Lo", measured and weighed her, first - she's grown an inch and a half, and put on 2 pounds, since the last time I was in there! He said she's off the height and weight charts :) 24 1/2 inches and 14 pounds, at 2.5 months, for anyone wondering. I asked him to measure her head, as well, because it's something relevant in a brain-injured child, sometimes. "What? Brain injury?" he asks, not familiar with her or her chart. "Yes, she is brain injured." He squinted at her there in my arms, holding her head steady and tracking him with her eyes. "What happened? Something minor?", he asked. "Well, she had a compressed cord and was in distress in utero for a couple of days...she was born seizing for the first two days and then slept for a week, in NICU care. They told me after her first MRI that she would be a vegetable." There at the end she started grinning at him and waving her arms around and he just took off his glasses and raised one eyebrow at her, and then me, incredulously. It was really funny.

Dr Geraldi is thrilled with her. He actually sat her up and moved his hands and said, "Look at this, Mom" - she sat there with no support for about 3 seconds before she started leaning over to fall. He did her reflexes and we talked about the phenobarb wean - it was so good to hear him say I would definitely know if she was seizing. If she was having very subtle, ongoing seizures, she wouldn't be meeting these milestones or be so aware, and if she were having more significant ones I would see or feel for sure, especially with co-sleeping.

It's interesting to me that he is a pediatrician, who had a brain injured child himself that he and his wife did therapies for at home (and is now an RN, with only one working hemisphere), and who has worked alongside a rather renowed pediatric neurologist off and on for 20 years, and he has never mentioned Early Intervention services or any other formal care to me. He stresses everytime I'm in there the importance of us "bombarding her with stimulation" at home, and the significance of getting her in the water often, for muscle development/tone issues, and praises me for "doing whatever I'm doing, because it's definitely working". He gave me a pamphlet on the importance of tummy time for both craniofacial and motor development, and passingly endorsed Baby Einstein videos in moderation, as well as voicing what I've heard over and over from many medical professionals - that all these brothers and sister will be the best thing in the world for her, because she will be constantly surrounded by activity and always wanting to join in/keep up. But there has never even been lip service to "getting her into a program" or "starting now with people working with her" or anything else like that.

Anyway, Grant didn't even see why she needed to be seen right now. I say, $100 is a small price to pay for this kind of reassurance and piece of mind, right now. The headspace I'm in today, after that visit, is so radically improved from the nervous nelly bs I've been wallowing in for weeks. And he doesn't want to see her again for 2 months, and the neuro isn't up again for about a month and a half yet, so hopefully all insurance will be in place by then.

Also, the weird balls on the back of Isaac's head were as Poppy internet diagnosed: enlarged occipital lymph nodes. In this case most likely reacting to mosquito bites. +10 for norwegian_wood.

A and A and Jake slept in the van, along with Grant, during this visit and on the ride to it. Jake was due for a nap, and the rest of them were just worn out. We drove up near the airport, had dinner at Pollo Tropical (grilled citrus marinaded chicken, black beans and rice with salsa in it, sweet plantains and mango slush to drink...SO GOOD, how can this place have a drive-thru?!), and dropped Grant off. I actually didn't cry. I did get a really good kiss.

Anyway...I think I'm starting to come out of the haze and find my groove. I'm starting to do things like shave my legs and put on jewelry before leaving the house, again. I'm starting to think about losing weight and putting a stop to the gauchos and nursing tank combo that's become a uniform. As such, I've also noticed that sometime when I wasn't paying attention over the past 4 or so months, my hair got SO LONG. When I'm washing it, and it's straight and wet, it hits the bottom of my butt as I look up to rinse it out! Dry, it falls somewhere between my waist and my hips.

Part of the reason I'm doing relatively alright with this combination of ages of kids - most of it, really - is Jake and Elise as they are. Jake is back to his easy-peasy self, aside from needing to be chased down and wrestled into clothing when clothing is necessary. He listens SO WELL, is happy almost all the time, and has even fallen back into a bedtime routine. This is a toddler who will tell you "sleepy" and then happily run off to the bed with you to take a nap. A toddler who will put back what he got off the shelf when asked to. A toddler who cannot cuddle enough, and laughs ultra-easily. Ananda was moodier by far, and more rebellious, though just as much fun - Aaron was much harder to get to understand directions of any kind, although he was also uber affectionate like Jakey. Isaac was...well, a nightmare, if I'm honest. The only thing he had in his favor at this age (21 months), aside from being mind-bogglingly cute, is that he was finally sleeping at night, sometimes. And Elise is shaping up to be just like Jake. Obviously everything can change, she is so little, but with the withdrawals gone she's been back to sleeping 12 hour stretches at night. Granted, now, this is with me in the bed with her most of the time, and with 2-4 side-lying, half asleep nursing sessions factored in. But, WHATEVER. I'll take it ;) She just DOESN'T CRY, if her needs are being met. And to some people, I'm sure, carrying a baby around almost all of the day would seem unreasonable, but really...she's so good. She spends 15-20 minutes on the floor by herself about 3 times per day. She spends 5 or so minutes with Aaron talking to her or Annie holding her, about 3 times a day. And the rest of the time one of us is holding/changing her, unless she's in the carseat. But, I mean...she never cries. She'll ride on my back in the kozy or nap in the sling with Grant or whatever while I do dishes or he works. She's happy as heck. She doesn't even mind the car anymore, at all, unless you let more than an hour or so of running around go by without stopping to attend to her (change/feed) - I can stop every hour or so for the baby who's holding a toy or looking around calmly all the rest of the time! This is only the second baby I've ever witnessed laying next to me and falling asleep on their own - before I saw Jake do that I would have laughed at the IDEA of that. They're both doing it in our bed, now, on either edge (it's lowered to the floor, and in a corner), and it's so cozy and nice that I'm forgetting to be bitter about the missed privacy with G. Especially with the bittersweet "no more babies" in the back of my mind making it all the more poignant.

The two of them were both nursing the other night, with all the others in bed. Two nights ago, I guess it was. I was singing them this silly song and she kept popping off smiling and he kept laughing and trying to keep drinking and laughing at that. And I just felt so FULL, like full to bursting in my heart, over the two of them. It was a very nostalgic feeling, kind of achy underneath as they held hands and he made her grin - and I realized it was like when A and A were little. They're a tad further apart then A and A are - 19 months, not 13 months. The boy is older, with them. But...I put her, belly down, on him, as he layed there "asking" for it with a lot of pointing and "eh-yeesh!", and she was holding her chest up off of his and hooting up a storm in a way I've never heard, while he talked to her, and it was like...man. It would be so awesome if they could have something like what Ananda and Aaron have. I felt like I would smother in the avalanche of luck and blessedness, to just maybe get to hold another peas and carrots pair of tiny, closeknit people close to me for awhile, AGAIN.

I wanted Jake and Isaac to be close so badly. Isaac just has no use for siblings, as far as I can tell. They just get in his way of dominating the family ;) I was combing nits out of his hair yesterday - he was standing on the closed toilet and staring into the mirror with a huge smile as he talked to me. His eyes never left his eyes, the whole half hour of conversing :p He didn't even notice I was combing his hair, normally cause for a tantrum, because he was so taken with the Glory that is Isaac. He made flirty faces at himself, and periodically interrupted me to say "Man, I'm really cute". O_O

Aaaaaaaanyway. I had all 5 kids asleep by 12:15 tonight, with bedtime routines, BY MYSELF. This may be a fluke and tomorrow night I may well be ranting and raving about Grant being across the country. But tonight, I've managed to update my LJ and clean the whole kitchen on my own at what is, in my warped mind, a decent hour - only having to run in and put Elise back to sleep once (under 10 minutes). I have decided to say screw folding laundry for tonight and go to sleep BEFORE THREE AM (!). While A and A are at VBS tomorrow morning, I'm going to take the little ones grocery shopping mostly for snacks, so that I can have something for them all to eat at La Leche League in the afternoon. And then we're free for the rest of the day and hopefully will have another, EARLIER bedtime, after semi-homemade pizza for dinner.

Goodnight Internet.