fatuglyrhino

The March Project, part 2

2011-03-31T20:12:00.000-07:00

The March Project is swinging on towards a triumphant finish here. I have been working out at least 3 days a week for the entire month of March and I feel great! At least, I did, until today. I was getting a little cocky. After all, I've been attending Nand, Becky and Deanne's classes all month regularly. I should be building some muscle, some endurance, right?

So tonight, I decided to go for the holy grail of YMCA fitness classes...Karlton's Klass. You'll notice that, while all the other instructors have generic, YMCA issued class names, Karlton's is named after him. Plus, he has the whole K theme going on there with the Klass. Karlton's Klass is held just before one of my old lady classes that I religiously attend, so I see them, every week, with the sweat coming through their t-shirts and their extremely flushed faces as they leave Klass, looking as though they are high on mad illegal endorphins. Karlton even winked at me one day, as he left, as though to say, "yeah, keep on coming to your little old lady classes...my Klass would KILL you!". I always thought...One day, I'll be ready for Karlton. he'll never be ready for ME though.

Well, today was that day. And Karlton Killed me in his Klass. I actually thought I was in danger of suffering a cardiac arrest. In fact, I longingly thought, at one point, of how cool it would be (kool) if someone ELSE suffered a cardiac arrest, because then I could perform life-saving resuscitation efforts on them, plus I wouldn't have to do any more mountain climbers. Actually, to be honest with you, Karlton isn't that Kool. He and Mr. Zerrahn from middle school gym class could have been teaching the same stupid Klass. And I didn't like it any more this time than I did back in the 8th grade. I felt like that same geeky un-athletic girl who would surreptitiously drop down to her hands and knees after one push-up while the gym teacher looked disgustedly on. When Karlton finally called an end to his endless drills, and ordered us all to grab 3-5 pound dumbbells and head outside for the "neighborhood mile" I slinked off to child watch to collect my spawn and escape. With my double stroller and two children. Karlton caught me on his way back in, after having run, presumably, a 2 minute mile (with his stinkin' perfectly formed calf muscles). He smiled and...winked. Jerk.

The March Project

2011-03-25T19:49:00.000-07:00

Weeeeeellllll....
Yeah, that was it for the February Project. It was fun (not) and I'm not so sure I ever want to repeat it, but who knows? Maybe I will be inspired to make it an annual thing, kind of like Lent. Only earlier. And I'm not Catholic.
This month there is a different project entirely afoot. It certainly has nothing to do with abstaining from purchases at the store, as Sheila from White House/Black Market can attest to, cough cough.
I decided to challenge myself this month to do as many of the classes that are offered at the Y (as in, YMCA) as I can. They have tons of fitness classes all week, Monday through Friday, as well as free childcare and it suddenly occurred to me that, what with us paying 50 bucks a month to belong to the gym and the fact that I am available all week with little else to do, that maybe I should take advantage of the classes. See, we've used the gym so little since the children began being born that we have frequently toyed with the notion of just stopping our membership. The only thing that has stopped us on a number of budget crunching occasions is the pool. They have a delightful pool which is less than a mile from our own pool-less residence, so we have always ended up keeping the membership despite our lax attendance.
We used to go all the time. When I was a normal citizen and worked normal hours, me and Hugs would go to the gym together after work a few times a week. We would also use the pool.
When I got pregnant I attended yoga-lates (a combo of yoga and pilates frequented by a large number of citizens more senior than I). All the old ladies would fuss over me and I actually found it to be quite a positive part of my pregnancy. Becky, the instructor, is a former Olympic medalist in synchronized swimming and she would serenely call out modifications for me that didn't involve me laying flat on my face, and stomach, on the floor, AKA child's pose, also NOT known as "with-child pose" since it's impossible for a pregnant woman to do. I found that doing yoga while pregnant helped me enormously with my balance and that breathless "can't take a normal breath cause I have at least a 15 pound baby lodged in my diaphragm" feeling. Also, seeing my reflection in the huge mirrors as I did warrior 2 pose was absolutely frickin' hysterical.
Even yogalates had to go though, after Sofia came along. Child watch is only for infants 6 months and older, so I fell out of my normal Friday routine of yoga and never really picked it back up when she got to the 6 month mark. Possibly because back then I was terrified of leaving my precious bundle with anyone other than her father. Also because I was working nights and weekends and Hugo was working days during the week and for a good year and a half there I was a complete zombie trying to navigate my way through a world rife with perils and insomnia and second pregnancies and, well, you get the idea.
Now I seem to be on a slightly more even keel. I work and sleep on the weekends and then I pretty much switch out of nurse mode and into mom mode and, aside from being a terrible housewife (which I'm pretty sure Hugo has resigned himself to at this point), I seem to function pretty well. Maybe I'm flattering myself. I guess the jury will be out on that one until my kids are grown and can give an objective opinion.
Anyway, I finally decided one day that my kids aren't apt to be very proud of their flabby white mama when she comes to pick them up at school (if I ever decide to send them there; the jury is still out on that one as well). No sense sitting around the house getting fatter when we are paying good money to belong to the gym, right? Come to think of it, maybe this months challenge IS related to the February project. Maybe it's a continuation of my newfound thriftiness and abhorrence of waste.
I first dipped my toe into the waters, timidly, by re-attending my old favorite, yogalates. Becky still teaches it, she still smiles serenely throughout the entire hour with her eyes half closed, and I still love it. I still look ridiculous doing warrior 2 pose. Now it's just because of my gut though, not my cute protuberant pregnant belly. Not nearly as hilarious.
Next, I decided to try the stretching class offered by Deanne. Ok, I know, a whole hour of stretching? Even the senile old ladies who make up 99.9% of the rest of the class looked disgusted by me as I sidled in, attempting to look as old and decrepit, and therefore inconspicuous, as possible. Yeah, I admit it. It's an exercise class that takes place while mostly seated in comfortable chairs. I'm a loser. Deanne kindly approached me after class and suggested that I might enjoy, as did most of the other participants of the stretching class, her hourlong total body fitness class that precedes total body stretch. Ok, now I'm really a loser. I skipped the REAL workout and attended the hourlong cool-down class instead. Freak. The problem is, I'm not an old lady. I have kids. I can't hang out at the Y all day, attending hour warm-up sessions followed by hourlong exercise classes and then hourlong cool downs. There's a strict 90 minute limit to the free childcare offered. So I made a mental note to come to the real work-out class next time.
The next one I tried was step and tone. This, ladies and gentlemen, is a real exercise class. It involves fairly loud music and is attended by people who are not eligible for Medicaid. Or is it Medicare? Dammit I'm a nurse and I still can't keep those two straight. Anyway, you use those stepper thingies and you have to follow the instructors ridiculously complicated instructions for stepping on and off the thing in specific sequences while your heart is racing at 200 BPM's and you have sweat dripping into your eyes and down the crack a yo ass. As it would turn out, Deanne was again the instructor. She approached me, again, after class (am I starting to feel a little conspicuous?) and gently asked me if it was my first step class. Umm, what was your first clue? The horsey laughter coming from my mouth as I attempted to keep up or the part where I almost broke my ankle falling off the stupid stepper? She told me that it takes, like, 4 or 5 classes to "get it". Well, thanks actually. I feel like somewhat less of a loser.
After step and tone I actually felt really sore. The kind of soreness that sort of feels good because you can tell that any minute now a total 6 pack is gonna burst forth from the flab and your going to be, like, the queen of Olympus. I was encouraged by that queen of Olympus feeling. I decided to press on. I attended Deanne's total body class and she kicked my butt. I literally thought I was going to die. I don't know that anyone has ever made me do lunges and squats before. I have no muscles below my waist. I should say, I HAD no muscles below m waist. I have no attended total body class every week for 4 weeks and I'm getting to where I
can hold my head up high around those ubiquitous old ladies. I'm telling you, the Y is filthy with old ladies. It really should be called the OLCA because there really aren't that many young men frequenting it these days.
I attended a real yoga class led by an honest to goodness Indian yogi named Nand. It was a keeper. Total body was a keeper. Yogalates is a keeper. I didn't care for Dance Trance, Zumba or belly flab blaster. Those are all evening classes and I just don't feel like working out as much in the evening. Plus, as pertains to this newfound dance-inspired fitness craze...I just don't get it. If I'm not wearing heels, dressed like a hooker and drinking a dirty martini, I just don't feel that much like dancing. Y'know?
So my March Project has been fun and the girls have become household names in child watch.
I am enjoying the slow reawakening of different muscle groups which is going on, mostly unnoticeable to the visible eye, under the layers of fat formed by too many late-night trips to the vending machines at work. Maybe one day Nand will suggest to me, while I'm in a yoga-induced coma, that I really don't want to seek spiritual enlightenment in 4 slices of delicious homemade thin crust pizza from Annies Eats (my new FAVORITE food blog) anymore and I will shed some pounds and reveal my Queen of Olympus 6 pack. Maybe. Hmmm. Haha. Doubt it....

A way to use leftover sugar cookie dough OR jam-packed sugar cookies

2011-03-01T20:03:00.000-08:00

I had a ball of sugar cookie dough left-over from Valentines Day, when I made heart shaped sugar cookies and iced them with royal icing using the tutorial on Annies-Eats.net. When the craving for something fresh baked came on after dinner tonight, it was natural for me to grab the dough but I wanted to do something a little different. I decided to try making jam thumbprints cookies using the sugar cookie dough, even though I know recipes for thumbprints usually call for a shortbread cookie base.

I played around with a few different methods. I used a smallish round cookie cutter with a crinkled edge and cooked some plain and some with little globs of jam in the center (I used seedless raspberry jam). The ones I cooked with jam had to be scrunched up around the edges to make kind of a basket shape since they weren't thick enough for a real thumbprint. When they came out of the oven (I cooked em at 375 for 8 minutes) I allowed them to cool.

Then I used the plain cookies to make little jam sandwiches. I laid them next to the ones cooked with jam and sifted confectioners sugar over all. To my taste, the jam sandwich cookies were tastier than the thumbprint ones. They had more jam, plus a double layer of cookie. What's not to love? Not to mention, they were easier.

It would be really easy to whip up a batch of these jam sandwich cookies from a tube of store-bought sugar cookie dough (no need to roll and cut; you could just slice and bake) but it literally took me less than 10 minutes to make a double batch of sugar cookie dough and throw the extras in a big ziplock bag in the freezer. Annie's recipe uses vanilla extract AND almond extract and I could definitely appreciate an intermingling of the almond and jam flavors in the final cookie. Additionally, the fact that the dough had spent some time in the freezer meant it rolled out and transferred to the pan really easily.

A little trick I invented (I'm sure someone else has already used this idea before, but it came to me organically, so I claim it as my own):
If you want to sift powdered sugar over some sweet treat, or pancakes, or a Monte Christo sandwich (?) but you can't be bothered to get your sifter out and you don't happen to have room for a dedicated shaker in your cupboard...here's what you do. Get one of those little tea balls (it's a tiny little strainer for loose tea leaves that you can use to brew a single cup of tea) stick it in the bag of powdered sugar and fill it up and voila! You have a miniature sugar sifter that holds just enough sugar to dust a single batch of cookies, a cake, or any of the other plethora of things that is made all the more delicious by adding a sprinkling of powdered sugar. It comes out in a perfect fine mist just like if you had one of those enormous strainer/sifter things that Ina and Martha love to use. I'm willing to bet that Ina and Martha don't do their own dishes or they would likely be a little more frugal with their use of kitchen unitaskers.

The February Project Continues

2011-02-15T01:52:00.000-08:00

Yes, it continues to suck! Just kidding. We are halfway through the month...a month without the mall, without Target, without a single trip to my beloved Red Onion for dinner. I'm not saying we have obeyed the ground rules perfectly. I made a desperate trip to toys r us to purchase diapers after my homemade laundry detergent idea fell through and I had to manually scrape a few too many BM's out of the cloth diapers and into the toilet. I understand if anyone just threw up in their mouth a little.

I also had a little indiscretion involving a stop at my local ridiculously priced kitchen tools store for some equipment and supplies to make valentines day cookies. They were adorable. I made them heart shaped and used royal icing to pipe EKG tracings on them, to bring to work.

Other than that though, I've been a model of thriftiness. Buying produce at the local farmers market, where we faithfully go every Wednesday. Using up all the 12 bags of assorted flours in my cupboard to make homemade bread with. Ditto with the 12 assorted bags and boxes of various pastas in my cupboard. Substituting things I don't have for things I do have. Searching for recipes that utilize stuff in the house. It's about to kill me though, because I found a new food blog that I absolutely love, Annies Eats (ohhhhhh, the recipes...) and I'm dying to go to the store and spend a thousand dollars on groceries so I can make every single one of the things she has on her blog. The cookie indiscretion was directly attributable to Annie, in
fact.

But I'm being good. I have made some penny wise/pound foolish discoveries though, along the way. I resolved at the outset of all this to send leftovers to work with Hugo every day, since we wouldn't be going to the store and couldn't, therefore, keep the freezer stocked with his frozen dinners that he normally brings to work to have for lunch. I now realize I would have been better off to go to the store one last time and stock up on 10 or so of the frozen meals. Most days he's been good about taking leftovers, or I've made him a sandwich or something, but let's face it... We don't always have leftovers. It seems like at least once or twice a week, he ends up leaving for work in the morning without a lunch and then has to go downtown at lunch and buy a sandwich. He usually spends 8 or 9 dollars. So it doesn't take too many of those oops moments to add up to much more than we normally spend on his lunches when he does frozen. That's in addition to the fact that he often eats lunch at his desk and can therefore justify staying on the clock, while he has to clock out for his lunch break if he leaves the credit union. So, yeah, the $4 Annie's meals are probably well worth the sticker price ( even though the Smart Ones entrees that I made due with when I worked days are MUCH more economical at $2.50 apiece). Just sayin...

Tomorrow I'm going to the mall to get my hair done. I will probably spend 75 dollars or more. What?!!! Yes, I'm going to the mall to get my hair done. I temporarily thought about delaying my hair appointment till the end of the month in the spirit of the February experiment, but I decided not to. First of all, the idea was to cut out consumer/consumption type spending. Hair care is a service. It supports the local economy by supporting my local hairdresser, creates no waste, and only involves a teeny tiny tube of hair color that, ok, fine, DID have to be shipped here, probably from China. The money for my hair appointments gets automatically saved, a little each pay period, in a separate account which accumulates enough each 6 weeks to pay for my haircut, getting my roots done, purchasing my make-up and getting an extremely occasional ( as in, once or twice a year) pedicure. The money is there waiting to be spent on my hair appointment. Delaying my appointment until the beginning of March would accomplish nothing beyond requiring that I walk around with offensive roots for the next two weeks and then probably have to spend extra at my eventual hair appointment dealing with the consequences. We've already been over and around the hair thing in separate experiments during the course of our 6 year marriage (in January! Yay!) and Hugo has agreed that A. He likes when I get my hair did. B. It is EXTREMELY penny wise and pound foolish for me to pack the kids up and drive all the way over to Daytona Beach for a whole day to have my hair done for free by my sister, in terms of wear and tear on the vehicles and the hassle factor. And C. Being married to a woman means there are going to be certain beauty maintenance costs and those costs have to be factored in to the budget or else fighting will ensue.

When the February experiment is over, I will go back to the grocery store. I will go back to the mall. I will go back to the ridiculously priced kitchen gadget store. However, I will do so with a heightened awareness of my own consumer choices and how they are multiplied by the millions every single day, resulting in potentially negative effects on our communities and our planet. Hugo and I discussed how trade has been going on, globally, for hundreds of years. We don't necessarily think thats a bad thing. The spice of life, literally, is trying new things from different exotic places. However, when I was searching through the fridge at work the other day, I grabbed a little package of Dole orange segments and tore into it for a snack. As I was munching away on the little treats, I saw on the label that they were mandarin orange segments grown and packed in China. I have bought those same packages at the grocery store and I know that they are cheap. Very cheap. You could buy a locally grown orange (yay Florida!) for about the same price as a whole package of those little individually packaged oranges. So, if you do the math backwards and figure that the distributer is making the most money on packaging and shipping that thing halfway around then world, how much do you think the guy who actually grew and picked the orange got paid? When you buy fresh oranges from the farmers market, it's all going to the guy (or girl) who grew and picked it. Someone who lives here, in Florida, and might even return the favor by coming to my hospital for a procedure or to have a baby or something.

So the long and short of it is, we will continue to visit the farmers market and take advantage of whatever local stuff is available. Even if it's a little more expensive. Even if it's a little inconvenient. We will also make the effort to go to Ward's, which is a locally owned grocery store that keeps a lot of local products and also sells bulk stuff like oats and grains and nuts that aren't uber-packaged. It's kind of a pain since their store has super tight aisles and doesn't have shopping carts that accommodate two kids, but we will do it anyway. They also sell dairy from a local farm that has grass fed cows. I've been reading a lot about grass fed and a lot of it makes sense. We still aren't going back to the milk-drinking thing. The kids have been off milk (routine drinking of it, that is) for two weeks now and haven't developed any signs of impending malnourishment. Their pediatrician is going to be very surprised by that...

The February Project

2011-02-02T22:14:00.000-08:00

I am an experimenter. I love to try new things, just to see what happens. The ramifications of this is that I'm an ICU nurse, a blogger, a novice home chef and a dabbler in things that I probably shouldn't dabble in.
Anyway, my current experiment is a home-based one. My husband (Hugo, Oogie, Hugs, he goes by many names) and I recently watched a documentary about "No Impact Man", a guy who, along with his extremely cooperative wife and cute little 2 year old daughter, attempted to live in NYC for a whole year without having any impact whatsoever on the environment. They gave up,in phases, toilet paper, meat, electricity, taking any kind of motorized transportation and all buying, except for locally grown food purchased at farmers markets. I had a few nit picky beefs with their thinking ( it wasn't EXACTLY local as most of the produce was brought in from "upstate New York", which fellow New Yorkers know can mean anything from 20 minutes across the bridge to 8 flipping hours to where I grew up in Saranac freaking Lake).
However, the documentary DID get us talking about some things like, why do we spend so much money on stuff when we just end up bringing carloads of "stuff" to the dump? Also, why do we buy food from California at the grocery store when other farmers are growing the same damn stuff a few miles from our house? And finally, why do we watch documentaries anyway when we
could be enjoying a brand new episode of Glee? These are the questions that plague a modern couple in these uncertain times...

So, we decided to undertake a family challenge. For the month of February (not a whole year, ok, what do we look like, maniacs?) we would turn off the television, stop making purchases (specifically, consumption type purchases for THINGS) and buy only that which is locally available to eat at our local farmers market. No eating out. No Sesame Street. No This Old House or Antiques Roadshow (ok, I admit, our normal television patterns are incredibly geeky as it is). We can supplement whatever we get at the farmers market with whatever is in the cupboards and that is it. No thrice weekly trips to Publix for milk and frozen pizzas. No Friday night pizza delivery for dinner.

We just finished day two of the challenge and we have already failed, but haven't given up. A good friend of mine babysat for me today (along with her own three) and I wanted to thank her so I went to Starbucks and got her a Grande white mocha, her favorite. I didn't want her to feel left out so I just got myself a leeetle drip coffee as well. It was great, as we are just about out of coffee and they don't sell that at the farmers market. I checked. Also, I had requested a hold on a potty time DVD at the library for Sofia before all this started and it came in today, so we allowed them to watch it after tubby time tonight as a special treat. Never mind that this particular departure from the rules left me and the Oogster wanting to stab our eardrums with little shards of glass, just so we wouldn't have to listen to the cheesy circa 1984 potty-themed songs. It was still cheating! Other than that though, there has been no television for children or parents in the Ochoa household for two full days. My rationalization on the coffee thing is that if I had paid a babysitter, it would have cost me about 20 bucks, so I was getting off easy by simply sharing 6 bucks worth of delicious coffee
beverages with a good friend in the middle of the day.

So, up till this evening when we made our first weekly trip to the farmers market for produce, I had simply been making due with whatever we still had from my last trip to the grocery store about a week ago. Milk ran out early on and I am determined that, short of my kids showing signs of acute Rickets or Kwashiorker syndrome, I will not break down for the sake of milk alone. I have been reading my time-worn copy of the classic tome on nutrition entitled "Skinny Bitch" (seriously, you should check it out) and was trying to phase out milk anyway. I have decided that there is no good reason why children past the age of weaning require milk from another species, designed to fatten calfs to a stunning 2,000 pounds over the course of
several years, in order to grow and thrive. Are we now vegans? No. Does our day to day diet look a lot like a vegan diet? Yes. The facts are very simple. Anyone who makes a statement about a commitment to being "green" and continues to ingest a significant amount of animal products on a daily basis is really just kidding themselves. And really, green is what got us to this whole idea anyway, right? Also, have you ever gone to a farmers market and taken a look at the crazy vegans milling around? They are skinny, they smell strongly of body odor and they reproduce like f'ing RABBITS! I'm telling you those women are some kind of fertile! If they were severely nutritionally deficient, my common sense indicator light tells me they wouldn't be spawning like the dickens. We did get some locally produced, free range eggs. So everyone just calm down now. Don't send social services over to the house just yet.

One of the things I hadn't stocked up on recently was bread, as I usually buy it when it's buy one get one free and it hasn't been recently. So you know what I did? I got on my trusty iPad, searched breadworld.com and made some of my own. Over the past few days I've baked 4 loaves of bread with my own two hands. They came out pretty good too. I froze 2, just like I would normally do with the extras when I buy one and get one free. I'm pretty short on yeast now though, so we'll have to be thrifty and make this bread last for awhile. I don't know what the pioneers did without iPads and the Internet though. Did you know,if you're making a recipe and you don't have an ingredient, instead of jumping in the car, driving to the store, spending 50 bucks on things (since you're there) and then racing back home to finish your recipe you can just google substitutes? I found a recipe for eggless pancakes and it was great! I found a list of about 15 different things you can use in a recipe instead of eggs. I also made hot breakfast cereal this morning without oats, cream of wheat or milk. I used quinoi (I had it in the cupboard for the past 6 months or so), evaporated milk from a can and
water. My cupboard staples will eventually run out, which will make all of this much more difficult, but it will happen gradually over the course of the month so it shouldn't be a complete shock to the system. And I hope to have bare cupboards by the end of all this.
I will attempt to document our experience here in this blog, for fun and to increase accountability. A few exceptions we've already hammered out involve gas (got to get to work, after all), a weekly "movie night" where Hugs and I will watch a movie from our already-paid for Netflix subscription, and a weekly meal of prepared local foods at the farmers market on Wednesday nights, which is when it is. We went tonight and I got then aforementioned eggs, mushrooms, carrots, lettuce, potatoes, onions, tomatoes, fresh squeezed citrus juice from a farm about an hour south of here, and locally made pickles. We also got some delicious ready to eat samosas and other vegetarian Indian foods from a vendor there for our weekly meal "out". All together, we spent 50 dollars, which is about a quarter of what I generally spend on food per week, just ask Hoogarino, he has charts and pie graphs to prove it. If this works out, we will save a significant amount of money this month on food. Not to mention my regular indiscretions at White House Black Market in the mall...

We will not give up our toilet paper, but we have committed to buying no paper products for the month, so I have had to carefully examine my normal 5-7 sheet bundle...enough about that... The kids are in cloth diapers again and I found a recipe for ridiculously cheap laundry soap that I'm going to try and make to keep them clean. Another purchasing exception, but you can't use regular detergent on them since it has additives that accumulate on the cloth fibers... Everything else will be stretched like the dickens and when we do run out of something important, I will attempt to find a locally made (or make at home with things we already have) replacement or substitute for the real deal. I don't know of any chocolate factories in the greater Gainesville region, so that's going to be tough...

Wish us luck!

The Case of Sister Margaret McBride

2010-12-22T14:49:00.000-08:00

The Catholic Church is taking a big risk by excommunicating a nun, also a nurse, for doing her job. Sister Mary McBride, an RN administrator of a Catholic hospital in Phoenix Arizona, approved a life-saving abortion for a woman who was 11 weeks pregnant at her hospital. The woman suffers from pulmonary hypertension, a condition which would have a greater than 50% chance of killing both mom and baby if the pregnancy was allowed to go on. According to news reports, the Bishop who excommunicated her, later also stripping the hospital of it's affiliation with the Catholic church as well, claims to take issue with the fact that treatment of the mother was never attempted before the abortion was approved and carried out. Well, it basically shows that Catholic Priests have no business practicing medicine, because the TREATMENT for that disease IS termination of the pregnancy. All that delaying the abortion would have accomplished is forcing the mom to go through several more weeks or months of a doomed pregnancy (at the risk of losing her life at any time), only to be forced to perform a later term abortion on a more fully developed fetus.
It is interesting to note that the Catholic church does not feel that the crimes committed by pedophiliac priest/molesters are bad enough to warrant excommunication, yet they feel that a Registered Nurse who is carrying out her mission to heal others is worthy of this most awful punishment.
I am not a big fan of abortions. I would hazard a guess that, in this circumstance, nobody involved found an abortion to be the ideal solution to the problem. However, it was the only solution that could ensure the safety of the mother. An 11 week old fetus is not going to survive outside the womb, so if the mom died the baby would have died too. A double tragedy. As nurses, we are taught during our labor and delivery course that the mother's survival trumps survival of the baby. Sad and scary to think about having to make that decision, but...it makes sense.
I wish I had some way of reaching out to Sister Margaret. As a nurse, as a woman and as a mother. I wish I could tell her that I'm proud to know we have people like her in our profession. I wish I could tell her how much it means, as well, that there are administrators out there who truly put the patient first and then stand up to the world and defend their decision instead of letting someone on staff take the fall (of note, I read a report that indicated she had been "reassigned" to a different position as a result of this incident). Ultimately, I'd like to tell her I'm glad she broke the rules of her religion and answered a higher calling...her own personal conviction of what is right.

Me vs. Medical team

2010-12-13T20:00:00.000-08:00

Me: hello dr. Smith. I'm calling you this evening because your patient is in compensated metabolic acidosis. Her ph is 7.34 but she is over breathing the vent and her base excess is -13. I'm concerned that if we don't give her some sodium bicarb, she will decompensate and become severely acidotic. Her calcium is also critically low.
Dr. Smith: why are you calling me?
Me: because you are listed as her primary MD.
Dr. Smith: yes, but she is intubated. Call pulmonary.
Me: but she is in metabolic acidosis. The pulmonologist doesn't want to fix non-respiratory problems. Can I give her some sodium bicarb and another dose of calcium gluconate.
Dr. Smith: the day shift nurse already gave three doses of calcium.
Me: but her calcium is still critically low.
Dr smith: no. It's 2300. Call in-house with any further problems.
One hour later
Me: good evening dr. Jones. Sorry to bother you. I have a patient of yours who has metabolic acidosis, is on several different pressers and an insulin drip and is intubated. She's in SVT with heart rate in the 150's. She's on an amiodarone drip but if I increase the rate her pressure will drop even more and I will have to go up on the pressors. I think she would respond well to some sodium bicarb. Right now her acidosis is preventing the pressors from working.
Dr. Jones: this isn't my patient, I'm just on call. Increase the amiodarone drip until 7 am
and then dr. Moore will take over.
One hour after that
Me: good morning dr. Brown. Sorry to bother you at 1 o'clock in the morning, but I just got a gas on my patient and she is now severely decompensated with a ph of 7.18. Her base excess is now -21. Her heart rate is in the 140's and her pressure is 84/46 on maximum drips. I feel she needs some bicarb.
Dr. Brown: that's not that bad.
Me: I just notified organ procurement due to the fact that she is non- responsive to painful stimuli with no gag reflex. I assure you, it IS that bad. Can I give her some bicarb?
Dr. Brown: she was admitted with DKA wasn't she?
Me: yes. She is on an insulin drip and her sugars are in the 400's despite hourly boluses of iv insulin.
dr. Smith: your doing everything you can. Insulin will fix her.
two hours later
Me: dr chance? Sorry to bother you. I know it's only 3 o'clock in the ,owning and this patient isn't actually in renal failure (in fact, her kidneysnare the only thing that are still miraculously functioning) but I've called every doctor on the case and I don't know what else to do.
Dr. Chance: what's the problem?
Me: my patient's last blood gas was 7.18 and that was two hours ago. I'm afraid to get another one.
Dr. Chance: well, she needs bicarb!
Me: thank you. I agree. Do you want me to give her a bicarb drip?
Dr. Chance: yes! How quick can pharmacy get that to you?
Me: I will call and offer them my first born child. She is two and very cute.
Dr. Chance: better grab a few amps from the accudose and give them as a push. Give 4. Start the sodium bicarb drip at 250 and call me back in 2 hours so we can see if that's doing the trick.
Me: I have a beautiful diamond that my husband gave me. It's yours if you want it.
Two hours later:
Me: dr. Chance? I gave 4 amps bicarb iv push. I started the bicarb drip. The patients blood pressure is 114/66. She is off all pressors. Her heart rate is 115 and her blood sugar is down to 196. Her blood gas is greatly improved and she appears to be waking up.
Dr. Chance: great job. Why didn't you give the bicarb sooner?

This was a fictional account. Nothing like that has ever actually happened to me, any doctors or any patients. I would never offer up my first born or my diamond ring to a colleague. I have never spent the entire night waking random doctors up until I finally find one who will give me the one little thing that I know will help the patient...

Find Your New Favorite Blog

2010-12-05T14:07:00.000-08:00

Ok, so maybe you think blogging is ridiculous and you wouldn't want to waste your time, but do you really understand what blogging really is? Do you have any interests, talents or hobbies, perhaps something you'd like to learn more about. I'll share with you some of mine.

First, the elephant in the room. If you've read any of my previous blog entries, you know that my favorite blog is The Pioneer Woman. But why? I first discovered the blog when my sister revealed several toothsome recipes (including, and this is the actual name)"the best chocolate sheet cake...ever" which had come from her site. I decided to check it out. At the time, I was a new mom, at home for long long hours wih a baby who mostly slept. All my friends were back at work, disimpacting people to their hearts content, and I was ready to go crazy from boredom and my own need to provide colon-emptying support to a mostly elderly population of sick people. I'm sure you've been in the same situation. I had never been much of a cook and definitely had never been a baker at all (due to a habit of frequently forgetting to add key ingredients to recipes such as flour, eggs, baking powder, etc...). The Pioneer Woman has people like me's back, because she takes pictures of the entire process from start to finish. You simply scroll down the page, follow the steps which are described using detailed pictures and instructions, and before you know it, you have a delicious confection sitting in front of you on the counter with no real recollection of exactly how you accomplished the task. I started with the chocolate cake, moved on to the Sleepin' In Omelet ( oh it's too delicious for words) and before I knew it I was a cook and a baker! I was making bread, cakes, cookies, dinner casseroles that didn't have a single can of Campbell's in them, and many other things that I had never even heard of. Clafouti, pots de creme, French silk pie. Domestic goddess I ain't, but The Pioneer Woman at least made me into a functional housewife. The butter and eggs budget went up but the dining out and ordering out budgets went WAY WAY down. Thank you Pioneer Woman. That's from my husband.

The next thing on my list was my unmet healthcare-providing needs. How could I, in the middle of a 4 month long maternity leave, get those needs satisfied, in some small way? Enter Code Blog. This is a blog written by a fellow ICU nurse, with gross stories, drama and ICU nurse tips and thoughts on life. Perfect! I became a follower of that blog. Recently, I even had a story posted in that blog, as a guest blogger, about the time one of my coworkers found a dead cat under her patient. Fun stuff. For anyone interested in any specific niche of the healthcare spectrum, she also has a list of quite a few other medical blogs with links to them. Although I've always been fascinated by the "At Your Cervix" blog, written by a labor and delivery nurse, Thats really more of my sister Val's interest area.

For my newly piqued interest in writing and the idea of breaking into the world of fiction, I found a blog written by a published author and mentor to new and unpublished writers, Randy Ingmerson. He has a monthly newsletter and a blog with tons of helpful advice and encouragement for aspiring writers. He recently co-wrote the "Fiction Writing for Dummies" book, released in print and electronic formats and because I was a follower of his blog, I got a free copy downloaded to my IPad! Being a bloggee pays off in interesting ways sometimes...

I was recently in search of a recipe for a food that Hugo was waxing poetic about from his halcyon childhood days in Colombia. My sister in law Maria directed me to "My Colombian Recipes" a blog written in English by a Colombian lady who married an American and now lives in New England. I surprised Hugo by going to the Latin foods market, buying the stuff, and making him a delicious Colombian meal. All the Colombian recipes I have found online are in Spanish. Not only is this a language that I'm not particularly fluent in, they use metric measurements, which is really, ummm, interesting. You want to make a recipe that calls for 100 gramos of mantequilla? Me neither. I don't even know how you would measure 100 gramos of mantequilla. Do you use a scale? So this lady, Erica, has taken all those recipes and translated them for morons like me. Wasn't that nice of her?

Now that I have shared my favorite blogs with you, won't you tell me what YOUR favorite blogs are? You never know, I might be a devoted follower of that one...

Www.codeblog.com
www.thepioneerwoman.com
www.advancedfictionwriting.com/blog
www.mycolombianrecipes.com

My Hobby

2010-12-02T20:59:00.001-08:00

Yes, I am a blogger. I consider myself to be a very lite blogger, with emphasis on the lite (spelled the way it is, to signify a lack of depth rather than a lack of color). I basically spew out various things onto this format, much as a normal person would write in a diary and then hide it away from the rest of the world. My brand of journaling for anyone who wants to see ( though admittedly few) is a sort of lazy person's way of channeling mild creativity into a media which requires very little effort, no cost, and as little or as much time as the blogger wants to put into it. There are blogs out there on every subject known to man...people passionate enough about food, photography, dieting, exercise, writing, and any other topic you could think of to write consistently on those subjects on a very regular basis. This brings me to my growing affection for and interest in such blogs. Therefore, I'm not just a blogger, but a devoted bloggee.

I'm not the only one you know. Just check out The Pioneer Woman's blog. Her blog, which has won numerous national awards and has caused her to become somewhat of a cooking, photography and homeschooling ( amongst other things) celebrity, is kind of a blog of all blogs. Many of the other blogs that I follow were found through The Pioneer Woman's blog. Recently, just as an example, Ree (The Pioneer Woman's real name) had a contest on her cooking page wherein she gave away 4 expenses paid trips to her guest lodge on her ranch for a cooking weekend. She was going to do it, like, a month later, so she indicated that she thought, due to the short notice of the contest that she wouldn't get a huge number of entrants, which would give those who actually could conceivably do it a better chance of winning than some of her other contests which are extremely popular. My fingers tingling at the thought of meeting Ree, hanging out on her ranch in Oklahoma, cooking with her and becoming best friends (it's absolutely bound to happen if we ever actually meet), I entered. Quit my job if necessary I would, but if I won that contest, I was going. There were 64,000 entrants, or something like that. This was in the space of about 4 hours after she posted the announcement. That's how many people visit her blog on a regular basis and think highly enough of her to want to spend a weekend in her guest bedroom, so to speak.

I like to visit The Pioneer Woman's blog, amongst others, and read her recipes, look at the pictures of her daily life on the ranch, hear about her homeschooling exploits and get the latest on her cookbook, her true life romance novel, due out the beginning of next year, her recent Throwdown with Bobby Flay and all kinds of other related things. It's amazing to think that one woman, a woman with a strong voice and personality who was sitting there on a ranch out in the middle of nowhere with dial up Internet service (at the time, if my thinking is correct) managed to plug into the very new idea of blogging and turn it into a huge big deal. Her fans connect, not only with her but with each other. It's a network of people with similar interests.

It's not always sweetness and light either. Maybe I'm a freak for admitting this, but I read a large number of her posts from beginning to end, including the comments. The comments often number in the hundreds, sometimes the thousands. But it can be a lot of fun. For instance, there's one lady named Suzanne, who has her own blog, who shamelessly promotes her own blog by attempting to be the first to comment on just about every single one of Ree's posts, along with a link to her own blog. Ree doesn't seem to mind people doing this; in fact, as I've said, one can find a plethora of like-minded people out there simply by starting with one good blog and clicking on links in the comments section to travel to other peoples' blogs. Suzanne doesn't really play fair though. I mean, every single post, there she is, with her link and some inane, often generic sounding comment. Not only that but she's found a way of cheating to get herself up at the top even when she wasn't the first person to comment. She simply "replies" to the first person who did comment, sticking her link in there and then up it pops just under that person's comment instead of at the bottom of all the other replies. She's not the only one who does this either, but she is pretty blatant and very persistent and one has to wonder if she spends any time at all working on her own blog, what with all the blog hitching she does over at Ree's site. The hilarious thing though, the thing that has me checking furiously for her ubiquitous comment under every post of Ree's is that someone else, a woman who goes by the name of Gin, no blog link, has appointed herself the police-woman of The Pioneer Woman site. Suzanne and her irritating comments are pretty much ignored completely by Ree, but Gin feels strongly enough about the integrity of Ree's posts to reply to many of Suzanne's more annoying comments and replies with scathing rebuttals. I often wonder if Ree is even aware of the underbelly of her blog, the quiet scandals taking place in the forgotten annals of the comments section. Lord knows, she can't possibly go back and read all, or even most of the comments left on her blog. She posts 4 or 5 new things in the various sections of her blog every day and typically gets at least a hundred replies to each, sometimes many many more. It's a world she created and yet, it has taken on a life of its own. Kind of like the Trekkies or the Harry Potter fans; they overwhelm even the ability of the initial draw to continuously entertain and so they end up having to propagate the fun themselves, in ways the original creators of the phenomenon could never have envisioned. And by my own fascination with that underbelly...POP! I've become a member of the club. What would The Pioneer Woman's rabid fan base be called, I wonder? The Pineys? the Piners. The PinWo's. I'm gonna have to work on that. In a little while though. First, I need to check back at the site. She may have posted something new in the time it took me to write this...

I like medical terminology

2010-11-22T17:16:00.000-08:00

Yup. I really do. I use it every day at work and I've found that the longer I do it what I do, the more it bleeds over into my personal life. I tell Hugo he can repeat the dose of Tylenol Q1 hour, prn. Every time I see that ridiculous infomercial for the fitness made simple DVDs it makes me laugh hysterically, because the big logo, FMS means something very different than fitness made simple to any healthcare worker. You see, we have this thing called a fecal management system that we use on people having profuse watery diarrhea (you'd be surprised by how many of our patients do). It's a plastic hose with a big bubble that gets inserted into a patients, well, rear end. The bubble gets inflated with a fairly large amount of water to hold it in there and Presto! You have cut your bed bath count down significantly, as the liquid stuff drains into a bag rather than into the bed and all over the patient. It's revolutionized the care of the cdiff patient (more medical jargon).

The FMS inservice lady came recently to update us on a few advances in the use of the device (that would be such a rewarding job, wouldn't it?) and she was trying to quiz me on the thing. It turns out, I'm kind of an expert. I took all the wind out of her sails. She was like, "And does anyone know how many cc's exactly your supposed to instill in the balloon?". "45" I answered immediately. She smiled at me, graciously. "Very good. And do you know what this port is for here on the side.". "Irrigation" I shot back. Her smile was wearing thin. This was what she got paid for darn it! She came back at me with everything she had. "How long is the FMS device approved for continuous use in a patient?". I shot it out of the park. "29 days!" We haven't seen her back since then.

One other fun story about the FMS. I was eating my lunch in the break room one day at the little table we have back there, back in the days before I transferred to night shifts. Dr Rodriguez, one of the hospitalists, came back to ask me about a patient. I happily updated him as I chewed away on my sandwich. Suddenly I realized he wasn't paying attention to me. "What is that?" he asked in disgust, pointing to the bulletin board, which is located right over the table, so you are kind of staring at whatever happens to be posted up there at the time. "That"
was a fairly graphic diagram of how to insert the FMS into a patient. I realized in amusement that I had been unconsciously looking at it every day while eating my lunch without ever realizing just how disturbing of a thing that is.

Anyway, today I was laying there in the dentist chair getting my mouth worked on. The tables were neatly turned on me. I had my mouth open as wide as I possibly could (with frequent semi-annoyed requests from the dentist to open back up nice and wide. He was working on one of my very back teeth for a good hour and a half. I had just come off a 12 hour night shift. I was freezing cold and shivering from all the cold water that the drill sprays out all over. My jaw was trembling uncontrollably from all the strain of trying to hold it open that wide for all that time. I began mentally reviewing all the mean things I had done the night before to my patients. This was obviously my karmic payback. There was the little confused guy who pulled his ng tube out (a plastic tube that gets shoved into someone's nostril and down the back of their throat, into their stomach, used for various reasons on a variety of patients). I had to replace it...twice. There was blood involved. He didn't enjoy it. There was another confused patient of Molly's, who had to be forcibly restrained from pulling her endotracheal tube out (yet another of the wonderful tubes that we, as nurses, are charged with keeping in patients who very frequently try to pull them out). There was an ugly code I was involved in that did not end well. All in all, I pretty much deserved whatever the dentist could dole out to me. Plus, I was laying there with no idea what was actually going on in there, which may have been the hardest thing of all for me to deal with. Finally, the assistant murmured something like, "are you ready for the temporary?". "No, not yet" Dr Dell replied in his deep baritone voice. "I still have to reduce the lingual.". I felt myself relaxing immediately. I had only the faintest of ideas as to what exactly reducing the lingual meant, but for some reason it helped me out a lot. Medical jargon, you know?

I'm switching doctors

2010-11-16T06:47:00.001-08:00

I decided today that I want to get a new doctor. I already picked her out. It's Dr. Mas, my kids' pediatrician. I know, I know, I'm too old. Last time I called my own doctor, about an annoying little issue I was having, I mentioned to the nurse on the phone that maybe I should make an appointment to come in, since I was due for a check-up anyway. She laughed. "Oh, I don't think well be able to fit you in until after the first of the year, Lauren" she said. Ok, but why was it funny? Why is it so amusing that I might actually think I could have a legitimate medical concern and come in and be seen to have it taken care of?
Let me explain why I want to go to Dr. Mas from now on. I called there this morning, because Fiona has a little bug and is running a temp of 102-103, which is just a tad higher than what I think is acceptable in my one year olds. The nurse responded to my call within a half hour, though I emphasized to the secretary when I called that it wasn't urgent. I explained my concern when she called me back and said, "I was just wondering if I should bring her in so someone could take a peek at her?". "Yes, I think you should." she responded immediately. "Is 12:15 ok for you?".
Last time I called there, to find out if I could give Fiona the higher dose of Tylenol yet, the nurse urged me, "Don't hesitate to call us tomorrow if the temperature isn't better, or if you just want Dr. Mas to have a look" (tomorrow was Saturday). "Dr. Mas will be here till noon tomorrow." My kids have a doctor who works on Saturdays. No fair. I want her for myself. The well-child waiting room has a flat screen television with Shrek playing most days. They give you a sticker even if you're not totally brave when you get your shots. They treat the customer like, well, a customer. My doctor's office, bless them, treats me like a complete nuisance.
The interesting thing, as a nurse myself, that I notice about this situation, is that the doctor herself (or himself) doesn't set the tone for this sort of thing. The average time spent dealing with the actual doctor (even Dr. Mas) is negligible when compared with the time spent talking and interacting with the office staff. The nurse who calls me back. The secretary who takes my call in the first place. The person at the desk who talks to me about billing and setting up new appointments. These are the people who make or break your day. As one of those people myself, its a constant reminder that, even though I rarely get credit for either making or breaking someone's day, the power to do either is in my hands. Nobody wants to be sick. Its a real pain in the neck, and often happens at the worst possible time. In the end, though I don't in fact have the option of switching my care to the pediatrician, I do have the option to take my business elsewhere. Someday, maybe I'll find an adult practitioner whose office treats the little kid inside.

Love your Liva...

2010-09-16T08:43:00.000-07:00

The liver is not an organ we hear much about. There is no American Liver Association (OK, maybe there is...but you don't hear much about them in the news), no Annual Liver Walk for raising awareness and funds, no special liver healthy diet. The reason for all of this is that your liver, a powerhouse organ that is just as important to your daily life as your heart, lungs, brain or kidneys, is a silent hero. It works nonstop to purify toxins in your blood and it doesn't require the kind of upkeep that your other organs do. You have to exercise to keep your heart and lungs healthy, drink plenty of water and eat a balanced, electrolyte rich diet to keep your kidneys happy, get plenty of fresh oxygen to keep your brain cells truckin' along. Meanwhile your liver, as long as you do those things to keep your other organs happy, is perfectly content and will most likely work tirelessly for you without a single glitch until the day you die.

Your liver, in fact, will outlive you if you have made the decision to donate your organs when you die. A lot of times nurses don't call the organ center when they have an extremely old person who is considered terminal, thinking that their organs are too old for the organ procurement people to possibly be interested in them. However, the organ people will gladly take any liver from an otherwise healthy individual of virtually any age. I had an 82 year old whose liver was hotly pursued by the agency because he was a vegetarian nondrinker who didn't take any medications and they knew that such a well cared for liver would be very useful for someone else who hadn't taken such care of their own.

So, if the liver is so resiliant and selfless, than why should I be so concerned about it? Shouldn't we just let well enough alone and let it keep on keepin' on? Well, yes. And no. Because in fact, I HAVE seen people die of liver failure. Young people. Rich people, poor people, educated and uneducated. In just about every case, the people I saw die of liver failure had one thing in common. They drank alcohol. You're probably thinking that what I meant to say was that they were alcoholics who abused alcohol, but I didn't say that on purpose. In truth, some of the people I have seen die of liver failure WERE nasty old drunks. However, a good number of them were moderate to moderately heavy drinkers. As in, a couple glasses of wine every night. A twelve pack of beer most weekends. A weekly knock down drag out party where everyone got trashed but were all back to their normal, everyday selves by Monday morning. Those are always the people who are so shocked to hear that they are in liver failure. "Liver failure?" they say, bewilderedly. "But I'm not an alcoholic."

Let me lead you through a possible scenario that could culminate in liver failure. We have a person who enjoys a cocktail hour with her friends every Thursday after work. She has two or three and goes home. Friday nights, she likes to get together with family and usually has a few glasses of wine. On other nights of the week, she usually has a single glass of wine with dinner because its good for you now, didn'tcha hear? Only, what she secretly knows and doesn't admit to anyone is that her wine glass holds about a third of a bottle of wine (lots of the wine glasses out there do nowadays) and thats a good three times what "they" are now saying has heart healthy benefits. The serving size that is extolled by the heart people is a teensy weensy 4 ounce glass for women. For men its a tiny bit bigger, like, 5 or 6 ounces.

Now, there's a good chance that this woman will live her life out normally and die contendedly of something completely unrelated to her moderate drinking habit. There's also a chance that she will get morbidly ill at some point in her life. Most of us do have at least one major illness during our lifetimes. This is when the moderate drinker will live to rue the day he or she ever picked up a wineglass. Because during a serious illness is when our body's liver power suddenly gets heavily taxed.

When you're fighting a really bad infection, for instance, the doctors have to throw all kinds of really strong antibiotics at you that are really hard on your liver. A normal liver does just fine. It has lots of reserves. And, once the illness is over, the liver will be able to rest and recuperate and come back to its normal function. A liver that has been steadily detoxifying small amounts of alcohol away all these years, like our example's liver for instance, is a little bit tuckered out to begin with. Its almost like that liver has been getting pinched every day for a long long time. When someone comes along and throws a sucker punch, the healthy liver can take the punch and come back swinging. The pinched liver is already hunched over and in pain. The sucker punch knocks it out and its down.

This is an example of how the way you treat your liver can decide whether you survive a lengthy or catastrophic illness. You can either live to complain about the bad hospital food you endured or leave your family shaking their heads going, "I never even knew she was an alcoholic. How did she die of liver failure?"

This is one scenario that can play out to result in liver failure. Its not the only one. Pill poppers, the ones who never go to the doctor and don't drink at all but who take a few tylenol and ibuprofen every single day because its over the counter so it must be perfectly healthy are also at risk. If you take tylenol on a regular basis, you are pinching your liver. Just like an alcoholic beverage! Drink some water and lay down on the couch for a few minutes if you have a headache! And don't even get me started on people who give their kids children's tylenol for every single sniffle and whine. They are setting their children up for a lifetime of medication-reliance and starting the liver pinching way too early.

On the alcohol front, though, I have another scenario to describe to you. It is a scenario that is all too familiar to any hospital nurse out there. People who drink a few beers religiously every single night or a few servings of wine are not only pinching their livers, they are putting themselves on a medication schedule and setting themselves up for DT's when they alter that schedule at all. What are the odds that you are going to be hospitalized for some length of time in your lifetime? Pretty good, right? You might need some small trifling surgery, you might get an infection, you might have a mild heart attack. It happens all the time. With all those aforementioned examples, we can usually get you fixed up and send you on your way in a few days.

Anyone who has an alcohol consumption history better hope, though, that they do not require more than a single night in the hospital. Because round about the middle of that second night, we nurses have become accustomed to seeing those special signs that someone is experiencing delerium tremens, or alcohol withdrawal. We know it as soon as we see it. And to know it is to love it. Get out the wrist restraints, order up an ativan drip, and notify the family that their loved one will be busy for the next three days. The families often act completely mystified when we tell them that their loved one is in DT's. They have a picture in their head of the typical DT experiencing person and it is NOT their loved one. Sometimes they flat out deny that their loved one drinks regularly at all. Those patients often get sent for CT scans of the head to rule out stroke, they have neuro consults to rule out seizure disorder and neuro disease, and in the end we almost always conclude that it was, after all, alcohol. The family isn't lying. They are in complete denial or are totally unaware of the actual extent of their loved one's alcohol consumption, even though it has been going on under their very noses for years. A six pack at a time is NOT normal. It is NOT minimal. A three rum and coke drinker who doesn't even act drunk IS at high risk for going into DT's. Even if you think they don't do it every single night.

I have seen ministers and PhD's go through DT's. It has been my humble privilege to wipe their asses because they're so gorked out on DT's that they can't even control their own bodily functions. I have lovingly jumped on top of a 240 pound man with an 18 guage needle, as he was being held down by two security guards and a nurse to reinsert the iv that he has forced out of his arm with the violent tremors associated with this condition. I have dried rivers of sweat from the clammy, diaphoretic bodies of perfectly young, fairly healthy people as their family members and friends watched from safely outside the room, shaking their heads in wonder and disbelief. Finally, I have seen a young person have to be completely paralyzed with medicine and put on a ventilator (which eventually caused him to get pneumonia and experience a life-threatening infection) because he was in such a bad state. His wife did not know that he was a drinker. It added about 9 days to his hospital stay. I can imagine what it did to his hospital bill.

So, if you do have a planned hospitalization coming up and you are tempted to gloss over your actual use of alcohol to the doctor or your admitting nurse, you might want to think twice. If we KNOW your drinking history, there are steps we can take to prevent this terrible cascade of events from transpiring. If we don't know, we will know soon enough. And so will every member of your family (even your annoying Aunt Bea who feels the need to spread the news about everything to everyone) as well as your work associates and social circle.

If you think you might be one of these low level alcohol users, one of these social drinkers who socialize a lot, one of these mild headache pill poppers that I'm talking about, you should at least be aware that you are pinching your liver. You are pinching it and if you aren't careful, it might pinch ya back one of these days.

Soapbox Post: Dietary Sugar Reduction

2010-09-07T16:21:00.000-07:00

We have all heard that excessive fat consumption is related to poor heart health and excessive weight. But did you know that research now proves that excessive sugar intake is just as bad or worse? Increased sugar intake by Americans over the past 40 years is being pointed to by the American Heart Association as a primary reason for increased weight, proliferation of cadiovascular disease and reduced intake of nutrients in our diets. As a result of this compelling research, the American Heart Association recommends that we all minimize the intake of beverages and foods with added sugars, like soft drinks (also known as "liquid candy"). If you have been telling yourself that it is natural to gain weight as you age and blaming it on your metabolism...think again. Maybe it is simply because, on average, Americans are taking in 19% more calories than they were 40 years ago. Where do those excess calories go? Straight to your waistline. To read the entire article, search Dietary Sugar Intake and Cardiovascular Health.

Source: http://circ.ahajournals.org/cgi/content/full/120/11/1011

Goal: Eliminate soda from your diet for one whole week. Don't replace it with diet soda or other unhealthy beverages like sweet tea, milkshakes or energy drinks. Simply drink plenty of cold refreshing water. Do you think you can do it? I did it. This is despite the easy availability of soda in my workplace. While everyone else is sipping down the calories (or the unhealthy chemical sugar substitutes that some experts say are even worse), I treat myself to one cup of coffee per shift and about a liter of water. I rarely crave soda anymore like I used to and every once in a while, when I allow myself to have a single serving...I often wonder why I ever thought it was so great. Where else can you eliminate added sugars in your diet? Can you learn to drink your coffee without sugar? Can you experiment with reducing the added sugar in dessert recipes? What about breakfast? Breakfast cereals are a landmine of hidden sugar. Find a tasty one with plenty of fiber and no high fructose corn syrup. I bet you will be surprised at how difficult that is. An easy solution is plain instant oatmeal (plain is the only one with no added sugar) with fresh fruit, nuts, and cinnamon sprinkled in. Delicious! I also like raisins, pure vanilla extract and hazelnut in my oatmeal. I've even added unsweetened cocoa to make it a real indulgance! And for a cold indulgance, try my sister's recipe for homemade granola. Store bought granola has an unearned repuation as a health food. Most have outlandish amounts of sugar and high fructose corn syrup. My sister relies on a small amount of honey and dried fruits to sweeten hers.

Val's Homemade Granola:
3 cups old fashioned rolled oats
3/4 cup slivered almonds
1/2 cup sunflower seeds
1/2 cup unsweetened coconut
1/2 cup wheat bran
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 tablespoons butter
1/2 cup honey
1 cup dried fruits (raisins, dried cherries, dried cranberries, etc...)

Melt butter in small saucepan. Add cinnamon, salt, vanilla extract and honey and stir to combine. Combine remaining dry ingredients (except dried fruit). Pour honey/butter mixture over and mix well. Spread on two baking sheets in thin layer and bake 20-25 minutes at 325 degrees F. As soon as it comes out of the oven, break it up and mix in dried fruit. Store in airtight container. Enjoy dry or with milk or soy milk.

Lauren's Straight Talk about Health, part two

2010-08-26T14:29:00.001-07:00

The second high risk behavior I want to share with you is being overweight. Being overweight sucks. I'm not sure which sucks more. Being overweight or smoking. They might suck equally. If you are overweight AND you smoke, well, you've got issues. I'll be seeing you one day. The thing is, weight is a continuum. Smoking is an all or nothing thing. If you quit, you have to quit completely and never do it again. Eating, now that's another story. You can't give up food. Its the worst addiction to have if you think about it, because its the only thing that you can't go cold turkey on. You have to eat. You have to learn how to do it in moderation. No addiction expert would ever advise you to try just smoking in moderation. You have to go cold turkey or you won't succeed.
And if you're one of those people who thinks that their weight is not related to a food addiction...please. Tell someone else about your bad genes, thyroid issues and glandular things. Every reputable source I have ever found is pretty clear cut on this. Being overweight is about one thing and one thing only. Calories consumed exceed calories expended. Plain and simple. There is one and only one weight loss approach that is effective. I'll even tell you it for free. This is not a difficult concept. Close mouth, move ass. There is no colon cleanse, detox regiman, secret herb from the jungles of the African Sahara (hehe) special combination of foods or mantra that will alter this cold hard fact.
I am not trying to say that overweight people are just fatasses with no self control. There ARE a plethora of different situations that CAUSE people to consume more calories than they expend. Psychological issues, mobility issues that limit ones ability to expend calories and yes, even glandular issues. Those issues are only exacerbated by excess weight though, so if you don't deal with the underlying problem and get on your way to a healthier weight than you will only make those problems worse. Using it as an excuse to justify excess weight is a really bad idea.
I have seen people die for no other reason than an inability to control their weight. Diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, poor circulation, chronic pain, degenerative joint disease, anxiety, all manner of psychological disorders (if you can't get a handle on your issues with eating, then why would you think you could manage any of the other stressors in your life very well?) nonhealing wounds and skin breakdown, oh my! Granted, I know that not everyone who struggles with their weight is morbidly obese, but if you aren't headed the correct way, towards a more healthy weight, then you're most likely headed in the other direction which is morbid obesity; few people just get somewhat overweight and then stay there.
Here's the thing. I love fat people! I am not a fat phobe. I have had excellent relationships with some of my fattest patients. Also, I have some food issues myself. I have found myself elbows deep in a carton of Chubby Hubby ice cream at 2 oclock in the morning and wondered whether it would be totally insane of me to go to the store for some more because one pint was surely not going to be enough. I comfort myself with food. If I had anything to be depressed about (which I don't) I would probably weigh a metric ton. I'm writing this blog as much for myself as anyone out there. I would never ridicule overweight people gratuitously. I would never ridicule them at all.
The problem is that a lot of people who ARE overweight have not been counseled by anyone to lose weight BECAUSE it is such a sensitive issue. Your average doctor will sit there all say talking about your high blood pressure reading and the cold hard facts of what that means medically, but shys completely away from dealing with the numbers on the scale because its uncomfortable and embarassing to talk about weight. Plus, you can't look your doctor up and down and throw his own blood pressure numbers back at him, but he's secretly afraid that you WILL say something about his weight if he starts talking to you about yours.
As a society, we feel completely comfortable with criticizing and chiding those who choose to smoke. However, if we mention someone's weight, as in, "You really should think about losing some weight Deloris. Its gonna kill you someday you know," that's totally unacceptable social behavior. Why? Why is one ok and not the other? I'm not advocating that we start or continue giving anyone a hard time, whether smokers or overweight people. I'm just pointing out an interesting disparity. I happen to have one of the good doctors. One who isn't afraid to throw it out there. At 30 my cholesterol is a smidge above normal, my resting blood sugar is a trifle troubling and my abdominal circumerference is one eensy weensy inch beyond the cutoff for being high risk for heart disease. She flat out told me; "Lauren, you either lose 5 pounds and stay at that weight or don't and you'll be a diabetic in 10 or 15 years." I wouldn't appreciate hearing that information from, say, my hairdresser, but I kind of appreciated her candor since she is the person I pay to give me unpleasant facts such as that. I lost the 5 pounds and I'm doing everything I can to keep it off. I do NOT want to be a diabetic. If you can't count on your doctor to drop little bombs on you like that, then fire your doctor and find one who will.
So. in closing, don't get fat. If You ARE fat already, lose weight. If you are impossibly skinny and you can eat whatever you want to and not gain weight, you suck. Go back to your home planet.

Lauren's Straight Talk about Health, part one

2010-08-26T11:42:00.000-07:00

OK, I'm not a public health expert. Nor do I work for the CDC. I am just a wee humble ICU nurse who has spent the past 7 years (amongst other things) taking care of the sick and dying amongst our society. And in that time, I have noticed a few things. For lack of any better inspiration on what to write about on my blog I'm going to do a straight talk on health series. If you have delicate feelings, please avert your eyes and back away from the computer screen. If you appreciate getting your health information in CNN formatted, Dr. Sanjay Gupta type sound bite form, this won't be for you. I tend to ramble, expelling lots of unnecessary information along the way. Self editing is not my strong suit.
Let's assume that you, like most people out there, want to live a long and healthy life. Let's assume that you have at least a smidgen of interest in that. From the front lines, I can tell you what is making people sick these days. I can tell you what causes people to die in their 60's. Now, I know that there are a lot of people who will scoff and say, "What do I want to live to be OLD for? I'd rather live my life and enjoy it! Who wants to live to be a hundred anyway?"
First of all, I do. And I can tell you that I have seen a lot of really old people who are in their 80's and 90's who come in to my ICU and say, "I don't want to be rescusitated. I've had a good life. I'm at peace no matter what happens." I have seen a lot of people in their 50's and 60's who come in and are really sick and I haven't met a single one yet who says, "Well, I didn't really want to be old anyway. I'm ready to go." Funny thing about that. Old people = at peace and ready to die. Middle aged people = bitter, sad and not ready to say goodbye to their loved ones yet. I love taking care of the really old ones. Sometimes we even send them home for another 5 or 10 years. The 50 and 60 year old sad and bitter ones? Not so much fun.
So if you don't want to be 50 or 60 and sitting in an ICU bed waiting for death to take you, you might want to pay attention to what I have to say. Because I have just about narrowed it down to a few risky behaviors that put you at extremely high risk for being one of my patients. I haven't ever actually crunched the numbers but I'm pretty sure about 90% of the people I take care of fall into one of three categories. They smoke. They are overweight. They drink more alcohol than what would be considered moderate. These three things just about sum up the modifiable risk factors (read: you can control and change them) that cause a vast majority of the many acute illnesses that bring people into the ICU and often kill them.
I'm going to address the first of these today. In my opinion, one of the top things you can do to ensure that you will not live long enough to collect social security...
Smoking. Duh! Are you an idiot? Remember when we were kids and they used to tell us that if we smoke we might die of (gasp!) lung cancer? Well, "they" didn't know what they were talking about. If you smoke and you get lung cancer, that sucks. Yeah. Its a pretty sure likelihood that you will die. They might try to save you by cutting out part or all of your lung, putting toxic chemicals into your body to try and kill the cancer (without killing you...a tricky task), and then see how your other lung, the one you've also been inhaling poisenous gas through for years, handles it. However, its highly likely that you will just die. Case closed. End of story.
The real horror story, though, is not what MIGHT happen to you in the form of cancer. The really tough stuff is the chronic obstructive pulmonary disease that you are virtually guaranteed to develop in your middle years as a result of smoking. If you smoke, you WILL have COPD. Count on it. What is COPD, you ask? Its what causes smokers to slowly lose any and all tolerance for physical activity as they get older, until they end up living on the couch, hooked up to oxygen, still smoking (thereby putting everyone in their near vacinity at risk for dying of an explosion when their tank catches fire)and waiting to go into respiratory failure. This is no sudden death. COPD kills you slowly, over 10 or 20 years, in a gradually increasing web of personal misery culminating in a horrifying death of, basically, strangulation. I have seen people in their 50's and 60's who live on the couch. They come in to the hospital in respiratory failure, still reeking of cigerette smoke and we try to stabilize them. Sometimes we succeed with breathing treatments and such. Other times we have to intubate them and put them on a breathing machine. We keep them intubated for several days, do the best we can to fix whatever underlying thing caused them to go over the edge (whether it be pneumonia or just an exacerbation of their COPD)and if they are lucky, we extubate them a few days later. The first thing a lot of them ask for is a cigerette. Sometimes we aren't able to stabilize them for a long time and then we have to send them off for a tracheostomy. That's when they cut a hole in your neck for you to breathe through. That we we can easily put you back on the breathing machine if it becomes necessary. There is one certain thing: And remember, I have seen this happen many times and followed the same people who come in again and again with the same issue. Eventually, these people die. There is a downwardly spiraling continuum of what happens in every single case. At first, its just coming in to the ER with CBS (can't breathe syndrome) and getting tanked up with some breathing treatments and nebulizers. This tends to become normal to them after awhile, to the point that they know the EMS guys who come to their houses to get them when they dial 911 and can just about tell them exactly what to do to fix them. Then, they might get admitted to the floor with mild pneumonia or emphysema a few times. Eventually they will be in total respiratory failure and have to be intubated. If they survive that a time or two, they end up trached. The family will eventually have to make the decision whether they want to intubate AGAIN. If they make that decision, then awhile later they will have to make the decision to pull the plug. Because it doesn't get better at that point. It is a chronically degenerative disease, meaning it gets worse over time, not better. And if you don't smoke, it is virtually guaranteed not to happen to you. If you do smoke, it is virtually guaranteed to happen to you.
That's if your heart doesn't give out first. Because did I mention that smoking also causes hardening of all your blood vessels, putting you at very high risk of heart attacks, pulmonary embolisms and strokes? I frequently see people in their
30's and 40's who come in with their very first heart attack (aww, isn't that cute?) and the only risk factor they have is smoking. They look at me like I'm nuts when I tell them that it was smoking that caused their heart attack. How come their high school health teacher didn't mention that? They thought they only had to worry about lung cancer!
So if you don't want to die young or spend your final ten years or so in and out of the hospital, QUIT SMOKING knucklehead! It doesn't get any easier the longer you wait. And even if you do smoke and you've begun to experience the downward spiral that is COPD, quitting smoking will vastly improve your quality of life. Even though you may not be able to totally reverse the disease, quitting will most likely buy you some more time here on this Earth. I have heard every excuse known to man for why people smoke. You can blame it on whomever you want, but in the end, its you who will die because of it. In my opinion, the medical community doesn't do enough to stress the importance of quitting smoking. The pharmaceutical industry has some really cool medications they want to put you on to help you "manage" your COPD. Your primary doctor will eventually refer you to a pulmonologist to help you "manage" your disease. At the hospital we have a really helpful handout that we give to you to advise you of the benefits of quitting. The long and the short of it is that the only reasonable treatment is to stop immediately and hope to God that you haven't done any irreversible damage.
Those of you who don't smoke are probably nodding your heads smugly, saying, that's right! Dumbass smokers! Your all gonna die! Well, we're not through yet. We have a few steps to go before you can decide if you're likely to live a long and healthy life. And remember, I'm only talking about modifiable risk factors here. You can't change your genes. If you have bad genes, then you REALLY better listen, because you need to do everything you can to not make matters worse. Be sure to stop back in a few days to read my scintillating thoughts on being overweight and what that means for your health.

Duppy

2010-07-14T18:15:00.000-07:00

The other day Sofia started using the word "duppy" quite frequently. It's not the first word she's invented. Anyone who has hung out with us knows about her "deedly deedly doodly doodly" sing song voice that she speaks in. It's a largely self-invented language in which she makes up a rather convincing sounding sentence, finishing with a single comprehensible word which may lead the listener to assume that he or she simply didn't understand the first part, but that it was indeed a complete thought. This is ever so slowly morphing into scarily complete sounding sentences as she has begun to fill in the doodly doodly parts of the phrases with actual, discernible, honest to goodness words. Duppy, though. Duppy is her own word. She invented it to describe the action of bending the knees, then extending them in a sudden motion that results in a short separation from firm ground into the air. Jump?, you say? Yeah, sort of. Duppy. She hops around in the house saying duppy duppy. She holds my hand when we are crossing the parking lot and spontaneously duppies every few steps. I was able to successfully teach her not to duppy her way down the stairs. However, she now walks solemnly down the stairs, one step at a time, and when she reaches the last step, she yells "duppy!!!" and rockets off the last step onto the floor. So stinking cute.

This One's for You, Flo

2010-05-11T16:02:00.000-07:00

For Nurses Week the night shift ICU nurses had a retro nurses night. We all showed up to work in our whites with nursing caps and everything. It was GREAT! The day babes looked at us like we were nuts (we are) and the other nurses from around the hospital thought that the ICU had been overtaken by nursing students. One of our more alert patients saw us all parading in at the beginning of the shift and asked, "Are those new graduates?" My patient, on the other hand, was more concerned with the coldness of our ice water (it wasn't...cold enough I mean) than what her nutjob nurse looked like.

The Bill of Night Shift Nurses' Rights

2010-04-26T07:22:00.000-07:00

1. All evening and early morning appointments should be offered to night shifters first. Nobody asks you to get up at 3 AM to go to the doctor.
2. It shall be prohibited for your place of employment to call at noon to see if you want to work that night. Nobody calls day shift workers at midnight "just to see".
3. If the sign says "Night Shift Worker Asleep Inside" DO NOT KNOCK OR RING THE BELL!
4. It is entirely appropriate for night shift workers to have a beer at 7:30 in the morning. For us, its early evening. We just finished a long hard shift and we need to unwind. Quit staring. What are we supposed to do, have a beer with dinner before we go to work? That wouldn't go over well with the patients...
5. Shananigans that go on at 2:30 in the morning (such as attacking co-workers with pre-filled syringes of normal saline) are an extremely necessary means of staying awake when the rest of the world is resting peacefully in their beds.
6. Any empty beds in the hospital are up for grabs.
7. Starbucks should make 3 am rounds. They'd make a fortune.
8. Any tricks played on the Day shift are simply a coping mechanism.
9. Anything that happens after 5 AM becomes a DSP (Day Shift Problem) by virtue of the fact that there's a lot more people around during the day to handle such things.
10. Staff Meetings at 9AM? Yeah, as if. See you tonight.

The Drama Queen

2010-04-24T23:21:00.000-07:00

Sofia is a major drama queen. I woke up from a sound sleep yesterday (it was 11:30 AM and I worked the night before, so I was sleeping) to the sound of Sofia screaming. Hugo was down there with her and I figured he probably had it under control, so I tried to go back to sleep. She continued to cry in various degrees of distress for about 45 minutes, so finally I went downstairs to investigate. Hugo informed me that she had scraped her knee on the sidewalk outside and was having a hard time moving on. He had kissed it, applied antibiotic ointment, given her tylenol and a sippy cup with milk all to no avail. He had her favorite program on the television, one she usually only gets to watch at bedtime. She was still freaking out.

My appearance on the scene did not help matters, I'm sorry to say. Her wails began again with new urgency. I cuddled her and fussed over her for a good hour to give Hugo a break, and then retired back to my room. After all, I had to go back to work that night. Later on that afternoon, I woke up to the sounds of her crying again. She had finally passed out from shear exhaustion, and upon waking from her nap the drama began once again. Good Lord! If you've ever seen a 2 year old limping you might know what I mean. It was adorable and pathetic.

She has used the experience to add a very important word to her vocabulary...booboo. For those who have heard her speaking in her own little language, I will try to approximate what she sounded like. "Diddly diddly BOO BOO, Mama. Deedly Deedly BOO BOO." Hopefully by the time I get home from work this morning she will be sufficiently recovered from her trauma. I love her in the morning. She almost always wakes up in a good mood. I certainly hope she retains that quality as she grows.

Lesson on Parenting No. 999

2010-01-14T14:27:00.000-08:00

...The vessel in which the food or drink is served is of greater importance than the food or drink itself.
Example 1: The subject (one 19 month old female heretofore known as "Sofia") is offered a sippy cup with water in it. Though she frequently accepts said sippy cup with milk in it, she flatly refuses to take more than the one sip of water from it, leading this researcher to believe that the child does not, in fact, like water. However, Sofia is then offered a second drink of water, this time from her mother's gigantic purple water thermos that she uses to down unnatural amounts of water while at work for the purpose of staving off the dreaded UTI. This time, the subject happily downs several ounces of the stuff, while simultaneously getting several more ounces of it all over herself and the carpet.
Example 2: Sofia is offered a bite of delicious macaroni and cheese florentine that her mother spent hours (or at least a half hour) slaving over the oven to prepare. She sees green and immediately turns her head, with a look upon her face that clearly indicates she will not be trying any of it, even though this researcher knows she will love it if she can just get one bite of the stuff in her mouth. Thinking, the researcher gets up and rummages through the cupboard until she finds a baby food jar. She smashes the macaroni and cheese florentine into the jar and then offers it to the child. The child sees it coming from the baby food jar and is tricked into trying it. The researcher is correct. She loves the macaroni and cheese florentine.
Fascinating stuff, this parenting.

On Second Thought...Maybe I'll Just Stay In

2010-01-12T11:07:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I received further education in my voyage to becoming a succesful mom of two. STAY HOME! For some reason I have this foolish idea that I should try to "get out" during the week when Hugo's at work. I spent 30 minutes packing the babies up so I could go to the store yesterday. Did I need to go to the store? No. Hugo had very thoughtfully taken me to the grocery store the evening before so we could get all the food we needed for the week.

I decided to take a trip to a cute little consignment shop down the street that has clothing and furniture for sale so I could "get out" of the house. Hello people. Its not prison. There's no metal toilet bowl. You aren't limited to one phone call. Its home. Its cozy and warm. There's a huge television on the wall, lots of yummy food in the refrigerator and if your 18 month-old decides to yank your shirt down and effect a thorough inspection of your boobs, nobody will see.

So anyway, I bundled the kids up (its COLD in Gainesville right now...like, 30 degrees). I checked both their diapers. I made sure Fiona was fed. I put Sofia's shoes on. I loaded Fiona into her Snugride carseat, put Sofia's shoes on, carried the diaper bag and my purse out to the car, put Sofia's shoes on, loaded Fiona's carseat (with her in it) into the car, put Sofia's shoes on and put her in the car as well, locked the house, went back in for my cell phone, locked the house again and finally pulled out the driveway, while listening to the unmistakeable sound of velcro as Sofia took her shoes off....again. At this point I have realized that having infant shoes be easy to put on is not nearly so important as it is to have infant shoes that are difficult to get off. Though I haven't yet found any she can't get out of yet.

Once we got to the store, I unloaded the gigantic double stroller. I put Fiona into the back slot and, after putting Sofia's shoes back on her...AGAIN...I put her into the front slot. I did not, I am ashamed to report, strap her in. This would be a fact that I would end up regretting. The store, which was delightful aisles of clothing interspersed with antique and gently used furniture when I used to shop there childless was now a maze of crowded stuff with tantalizing bits and pieces hanging out for Sofia to grab onto and pull off the hangers, plus lots of annoying metal feet for my to run into with the too-wide stroller. I was navigating through valiantly though, when Sofia, unbeknownst to me, managed to stand up in the stroller and toppled over to the horror of the people around us.

Let me give you a little description of what it looked like though. She was wearing this very warm and adorable coat that my in-laws gave her for Christmas, which is puffy and well-insulated and has a huge hood on it, making her resemble a cross between the little brother in A Christmas Story, when his mom dresses him in his snowsuit, and a South Park character. She can't quite hold her arms down and she has very limited peripheral vision. So, when she toppled over, she was well insulated for the fall and I knew she wasn't actually injured, so the event had a certain hilarious quality to it, with her laying there on the floor with her arms akimbo, screaming offendedly and unable to actually roll over and get back on her feet. All the concerned passersby were mildly horrified by my irresponsibility and my insensitive nature. Sofia needed to be fluffed back into my good graces and at that point, I came to the realization that "getting out" is highly overrated.

So I tossed them both back into the car, loaded the behemoth into the back and went straight there. Where I still am now, in my pajamas at 2:30 in the afternoon. Sipping on my second cup of home brewed coffee today, while Sofia takes her afternoon siesta and Fiona lies contentedly in her Boppy, gumming her fist. No judgemental passersby invited. If you need me anytime in the next 4 years or so, feel free to stop by.

Over the River...Yada yada

2009-12-22T21:10:00.001-08:00

The Extended Ochoa family is descending...upon our house for Christmas. We've decided that last year was such a blast, we oughta do it again. As usual during the holidays, I also have a brisk schedule at work to keep up with. So, faced with providing a large amount of food for a good-sized group of people over a several day stretch, I've decided to adhere to the Julia Child principle of using liberal amounts of butter to ensure everything comes out tasting well. In fact, my menu has a little Julia, a little Alton (Brown that is) and a lot of Pioneer Woman, my go-to people when it comes to cooking. And, hopefully, a little Lauren too. I like to stick with things I've made before at times like these, but add a few things that I've never attempted to keep it interesting.
I had my first physical exam by my primary doctor since before I got pregnant with Sofia and Dr. Akey told me I looked, "exactly the same" as before I got pregnant and that she wouldn't believe that I had birthed two kids in the past two years if I hadn't told her. I made Hugo go and have a physical with Dr. Akey as well, and he got to have his first prostate exam. Hardy har har. I got a real giggle over that one. Plus, I don't know if Hugo knows this yet, but I told EVERYONE at the hospital about it. They all shook their heads and wondered how such a nice guy (Hugo) ever got mixed up with such a messed up chick (me). Something about me though....he seems to enjoy my company.
I went out the floor to respond to a code the other night. The in-house doctor never showed, so I went ahead and had the lady intubated and transferred her to the unit. When the doctor finally showed up (he apparently did not hear the code called) he was told by Amy that Dr. Ochoa took care of it for him. I responded that I wasn't a doctor, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night. Haha. I've been waiting a long time to use that line. I finally got the perfect chance.
In terms of Christmas shopping, I'm finished. Hugo and I each have Secret Santa presents to buy for one of his family members (we did the name pull thing) and we took care of that early on. We got a little gift for each of the two kids that are coming (Sebastian and Santiago) and one for each other (we weren't going to buy for each other this year but Hugo got a Christmas bonus so we split it and used it to get each other one present). Everyone keeps asking me what I got for Sofia and Fiona. Umm, nothing. Yeah, that's right. I said nothing. Anyone gotta problem with that? One of my patients actually accused me of being a bad Christian when I told him that. He told me that if we accept the validity of Christmas as a Christian holiday, we are required to buy presents for our children so they will grow up with an understanding of God's love. Hmmmm. I'm not a theologian, but that doesn't quite jive for me. I didn't bother informing him that according to my dad, the whole Christmas thing started out as a pagan holiday. Didn't want to give the guy his second massive MI in one day. First of all, Fiona's wants are pretty easy to satisfy at this point in time. It involves a part of my anatomy being in her mouth and pretty much everything else is just an unwanted distraction anyway, so... Sofia is a little more interested in the toy thing, but I'm guessing that the few presents she is getting from others will sufficiently amuse and entertain her without me going out and buying a bunch of plastic things from China to add to the mix. Don't worry, I'm not about to move to a commune in the desert of anything.
So Christmas tidings around here are a pleasant mix of family togetherness, hospital happenings and prostate exams. Haha. My combined 18 months of torture at the hands of the medical community (AKA pregnancy) means I get to make fun of Hugo as much as I want about his prostate exam. He accepts that. I think.

Fiona (Ms. Fortune)

2009-12-03T09:14:00.000-08:00

Fiona has had a rough past couple of weeks. Last week it was RSV. She got so sick she had to be admitted to the Big Shands pediatric floor. That was compliments of her big sis, who brought this lovely virus home from daycare. I was none too pleased and Sofia will be hanging out at home with the babysitter from now on rather than going to that petri dish known as daycare anymore.

Fiona came through the illness swimmingly though and is now back on track, gaining weight, smiling, laughing (she laughed at Hugo for the first time yesterday) and looking as cute as is humanly (or ogrely) possible. We refer to her as our little ogre, since she shares a name with Shrek's true love, Princess Fiona.

Yesterday I took her and Sofia to the park to meet up with Carol and Grant. Carol is a friend I met through the postpartum luncheon at the hospital; she had Grant the same week I had Sofia. We get together occasionally for playdates. We hadn't seen each other in a long time, so we were gabbing and catching up while Sofia and Grant whirled around happily on the merry go round. Fiona was hanging out in my arms, drooling all over herself and acting like the two and a half month old she is.

All of a sudden I heard a "Thunk!" noise and after a second, Fiona started crying as though her heart would break. I never saw it but all I can surmise is that the wind blew a pinecone off the trees and it fell on Fiona's poor wee little head. She quickly developed an angry red mark with a scrape in the middle that bled. The poor thing just can't catch a break! First the unfair advances of a nasty cold virus, then an attack by a tree. I felt terrible, but how can you plan for such things? I think she takes after her mom. I was the unlucky recipiant of many such poor circumstantial accidents as a child.

All I can hope is that things get better from here. Sofia, bless her heart, has had to deal with accidents that were a result of her parents' collective inexperience with the care and protection of babies. Luckily, we've learned many hard lessons through her infancy and are doing much better this time around. I haven't walked Fiona's head into the doorway once.

Pictures! Pictures!

2009-11-08T11:19:00.000-08:00

This was less than a week before Fiona arrived. As you can see, I was about ready to pop.

This is a gross picture. However, it is notable for several reasons.

1. I was in labor and less than 8 hours away from giving birth to my second child.

2. I had Mcdonald's the day before Sofia was born too. And I RARELY eat Mcdonald's. We should post a warning on the label..."FDA WARNING: Women have been known to poop out babies as a result of eating this processed, sodium ridden, highly caloric junk.

3. It was Sofia's first Happy Meal. She is still playing with the stupid arm bangles that came with it a month and a half later.

Oh yeah, I was contracting every 8 minutes or so and I still had a smile on. How Duggar of me!

Sofia at the park. Wierd shot, but there's something about it I like.

Peekaboo! That one never gets old.

Awwwwe, what a cute daddy!

Gawd, I wish my parents would quit starting fires and setting off the fire alarm... I'm exhausted!

Luckily, the markers I bought are washable.

Something about that high chair. She always needs a full on bath after spending a little time in it.

Fiona was 3 days old here. We went over to Keith and Rondai's and Hugo took Sofia in the pool.

Doctor Mas graciously agreed to pose with her two favorite little patients (at least they better be...)

Sofia is wearing her "Big Sisters are the Coolest" shirt proudly.

Fiona looks like Maggie from the Simpsons here, doesn't she?

This is what happens when computer programmers become GUITAR HEROES!!! I think he forgot to remove his pocket protector...

The wammy bar requires extra concentration.

Sofia is every daddy's favorite groupy.

Fiona's First Two Weeks

2009-10-10T21:01:00.000-07:00

Well, its been two weeks and Fiona is doing fabulously. She has taken to breastfeeding in a big way and is subsequently gaining weight at a fast clip. Hugo is off work for another week and having him at home with me has been a big help. He's gotten really good at staring disapprovingly at me whenever I pick Sofia up. I can't help it though. She's still a baby. She needs her mom and she's used to being carried by me. I did it through 9 months of pregnancy, as awkward and uncomfortable as it may have been at times and I can't stop now, just because my uterus might prolapse and I might suffer from life-long incontinance as a result.

Today I had my first glimpse of what life will be like after Hugo returns to work. He had gone out to return a movie and gas up the car and I was home alone with the girls. Both were sound asleep when he left. No sooner had he gone then both woke up and started crying. Sofia was crying because she's cutting a tooth and suffering from a terrible cold/ear infection/possibly swine flu right now. Fiona was crying because she's a newborn baby and when she wakes up she expects a boob to be immediately thrust into her mouth. I was torn. Sofia needed me more for emotional reasons, while Fiona needed her physical needs met. Was I to ignore Sofia's needs simply because Maslow's hierarchy of need pyramid places food and shelter needs above love and belonging needs in terms of importance? I couldn't do it. I ended up stacking the two of them on my lap, Sofia sprawled across my lap with a bottle, and Fiona held just above her so she would have access to my maternal food-providing equipment. At this point, I realized that its a really good thing I like my couch, because it looks like I'm going to spend a lot of time parked on it for the next 6 months or so. Hugo said he had a similar moment a few mornings ago when the two of them woke up and were hungry and he was trying to let me sleep. He had Sofia in her high chair and was feeding her breakfast while holding Fiona in his lap and giving her a bottle at the same time. Yes, we are both college educated, professional, fairly intelligent human beings. And I am aware that many people before us have succesfully given birth to and parented children in the past. Maybe I am totally melodramatic to even bother writing a blog about how I succesfully breastfed my 2 week old while simultaneously giving a bottle to (and comforting) my 16 month old. Whatever. Its the biggest challenge I've ever taken on. And if I want to make a big thing out of it, I will.

I have also begun to take an assembly-line approach to diaper changing. Between changing diapers and feeding the two of them, I don't see myself getting much else done after Hugo goes back to work. I have said it before and I'll say it again...that Duggar lady is frickin nuts!

The Special Delivery

2009-09-27T09:36:00.000-07:00

On Friday, at 3:24 am, we welcomed our second child into the world. Finally! I was so happy to be in labor that I hardly believed I was until I heard the magical words from the labor and delivery nurse, "Ok, Dr. Brazzel says he's admitting you". That was around 10:30 on Thursday night. I don't think anyone there would have predicted that I would have a baby before morning, but I did. Once this baby decided she was finally cooked, she didn't waste any time.

Oh yeah! And I had a girl! I was quick to report to the doctor that though we didn't technically know what we were having, I had a very strong feeling that it was a gynormous boy creature whose name would be Wesley. I couldn't even remember the girl name when he asked me. So when Fiona Marie made her debut, in three whole pushes (5 minutes of pushing), weighing 7 pounds and 3 ounces, I was shocked. She really surprised her mommy. I'm still trying to figure out how she managed to kick me in the ribcage for the past 6 months, when she's 2 cm shorter than Sofia was at birth. I never felt Sofia's feet up in that region.

When we arrived on the labor floor, I was giving the unit clerk my information, while panting my way through a contraction, when this dude wearing surgical scrubs who was sitting there listening in asked me if I "take epidurals". "Yes, please, I'll have two." I responded. "As quickly as possible please." He was as good as his word and hooked me up with a great epidural that numbed me up completely. For about an hour. Then, my entire right side wore off and I had to finish up with a left side that was numb and a right side that decidedly wasn't numb, and a right leg that was tingling like crazy because the sensation was trying to come back. Plus I felt my catheter and that was gross. The funny thing is, this exact same phenomenon happened when I had Sofia, so I have to conclude that it must be due to some interesting physiological quirk in my spinal cord that will not allow me to have a completely pain free childbirth experience. I don't care. It was worth it to be pain free for that one hour.

I will spare the gross details of my intrapartum hemorrhage for another day. Suffice it to say that the doctor (who caught the majority of it in his lap) was looking mildly ill over the whole thing. I was too busy oogling my darling little creation to take much notice of the liter or so of blood that rushed out with the placenta. That was the doctor's problem to deal with.

Fiona was born without any of the drama that Sofia came into the world with. No infection, no respiratory issues, no jaundice (so far, fingers crossed). She just kind of plopped out and they wiped her off and wrapped her up in a blanket and handed her to me. Then they all went to the nurses station to take a nap and I was shocked to be left alone with my baby in my arms for the remainder of the night shift. When Sofia was born, I only got to see her for a few minutes and then she was taken away to the special care nursery for hours. Hugo passed out on the couch and I spent the rest of the morning staring in wide eyed disbelief at the bundle in my arms, carefully checking her every few minutes to be sure she was breathing.

She is tiny and perfect and all my pregnancy related sarcasm, frustration and irritability has melted away into a cloud of pillowy marshmallow new motherhood, with whipped cream on top. So enjoy it while it lasts, eh?

39 Weeks (I can't believe I'm typing this)

2009-09-24T13:36:00.000-07:00

Today I am officially 39 weeks pregnant. No I'm not. Actually, I went into labor three nights ago and delivered a healthy 8 pound baby the normal way with no pain medicine. I didn't even have an epidural. My doctor was amazed. I only pushed once. It only took 45 minutes from start to finish. Sofia is changing the baby's diaper as we speak and I am enjoying a much needed post-partum massage while Hugo gets caught up on a few housekeeping activities.
OK, back to reality. I'm still fat and pregnant. I still have cravings (last night it was Twizzlers, which I haven't eaten in years). Hugo is at work. I am trying to deal with contractions (that hurt but not enough to make me think I'm in labor) and take care of Sofia at the same time. We are currently watching Curious George and I'm thinking aobut a vanilla milkshake from McDonalds.
I worked two nights this week and was going to work tonight but my stamina feels like its finally reached its limit. I'm not worried about making it through an entire shift. I'm worried about what will happen if I decide to go into labor at the end of the shift. Is there any precident for a pregnant girl getting to 10 cms and refusing to push because she's tired and needs a nap? I'm not sure, but I have decided that I do not want to know. Stick a fork in me, I am officially done with work.
My doctor is on call this weekend and I have decided that one way or another, I am having a baby this weekend. Do NOT argue with me on this point. People who have had the nerve to argue with me, or say uncool things this week, have found that 3 cms dilated Lauren is a very different creature than her usual docile, easygoing self.
Its 5 oClock. I wonder if its too early to call Hugo and put in my vanilla milkshake order?

38 Weeks

2009-09-17T06:53:00.000-07:00

I'm now in uncharted territory (sort of). Since I had Sofia at 37 and a half weeks, I've never actually been 38 weeks pregnant. I gotta tell ya, its not that much different though. The bladder is scrunched up a little more (increasing my average nightly visits to the restroom by one or two), the stretch marks are looking a little stretchier, and the baby's feet are lodged somewhere up in the region of my ribs.

I bought Sofia a baby doll yesterday to play with, to prepare her for big sisterhood. She loves it. Violently. I'm frightened.

I've stopped counting the number of times I've been told by my co-workers that I've "dropped" since they last saw me. Whatever the hell that means. As far as I'm concerned, I haven't dropped until I've dropped the baby, like its hot, right out of me. Then I'll consider myself to have dropped. Until then, I'm still working and taking care of Sofia and functioning with an 8 or 9 pound bowling ball wedged inside my pelvic bones. Ouch.

This morning I really thought I was going into labor. I was having contractions, they seemed to be getting stronger as time went by, and I was READY. I had Hugo take the baby to daycare on his way to work, so I could focus on going into full-fledged labor, and I set about waiting for the definitive moment to come. It never happened. The contractions petered out and now I don't feel any closer to being in labor than I did 3 days ago. Darn. False alarm. I remember these from last time. Only last time, I went to the hospital several times, thinking I was in labor. Now, having actually been in labor, I won't be so easily fooled.

After my labor dreams went up on smoke today I pulled myself together and took advantage of not having Sofia with me to go and get my nails done. I went to Fancy Nail, this new place in the Publix Plaza near my house. Fancy Nail. Just one. Swear to God Val. It was great. I got a French manicure and my eyebrows waxed for 24 dollars. You can't beat that. I like getting my nails done and everything, but I always feel so gargantuan when I'm sitting there in front of this tiny little Asian person with my mits in her tiny little birdlike hands. Its even worse when I get my toes done. I always wait way too long between pedicures too, so they have to get that heel scraper thing out and shave the dead skin off the bottom of my feet. Its mortifying to see a pile of what looks like very thin potato chips on the floor underneath your feet. They probably lose their appetite for lunch because of me.

So here I am, another week into the pregnancy, waiting and wondering. I can't count down the days, because I don't KNOW how many days it will be, which is maddening. I never thought of myself as an impatient person, but this is just about killing me. I'm trying so hard to be all serene and let nature take its course like I'm sure Mrs. Dugger has done for every one of her 18 and counting kids. But right now, a little bit of Cervidil and some Pitocin amongst friends is starting to sound awfully nice...

Week 37

2009-09-09T01:36:00.000-07:00

Week 37 is a magical time for every pregnant woman. It is the time when the prospect of labor becomes very real and very imminant. Its the special cutoff that marks the time when the doctor stops saying "stop" and starts saying, "go ahead, make my day". There were times when I thought I wasn't going to make it. There were moments of extreme despair when I felt like screaming "Why 40 weeks God? Why?" 40 weeks is, in my opinion (and I realize that I may sound somewhat sacriligous here), just too long.
Anyway, all that is behind me (almost) now. At most I have a month left to go. And believe me, it better not be a month. But even if it is, I think I might be able to do it. My bags are packed, the nursery (ie. my bedroom) is ready and there are several frozen dinners on hold in the freezer. I have an entire arsenal of baby girl clothes ready to go (leftover from Sofia of course) and one lonely newborn boy outfit for the child to wear home if it does indeed turn out to be a baby of the male variety. I'm sort of hoping for a boy, but that might just be because I know it will give me an excuse to go shopping right away if it is. Is that pathetic?
Yesterday Hugo asked me if I've been having any Alfred Hitchcock contractions. I think he meant Braxton-Hicks, but, having experienced a few contractions during Sofia's birth, I think Alfred Hitchcock would be a fine person to name them after. The Birds have nothing on a few good uterine squeezes for horror content. And if the definition of Braxton Hicks is indeed "painless practice contractions that get the uterus ready for labor" than the answer is no. Contractions hurt. All varieties that I have experienced hurt. I have never had one that felt "painless". Anyone who would dare to say that contractions are painless to a pregnant woman is either very brave or very stupid. Which leads me to believe that this Braxton Hicks character was probably a man.
My doctor told me that I looked like a ghost and I better take my iron pills and get my hematocrit up before the baby comes. I told him I was trying out for the new pregnant Twilight movie.
Every time I do any kind of housework, Hugo accuses me of nesting. Now, I realize that for most women, nesting would involve scrubbing floors with a toothbrush, reorganizing the closets and cleaning out the refrigerator. Should I be offended that my husband thinks my loading the dishwasher qualifies as nesting?
Irritability is a common, understandable side-effect of late pregancy. I don't remember being particularly irritable with Sofia, but this time around I sure am. Last week I brought Sofia to the pediatrician for her 15 month visit. There was a stocky little pest of a boy who was a good year older than Sofia who came over to the toy she was playing with and proceeded to begin slamming the little plastic doors on the toy alarmingly close to my darling one's fingers. "Jackson" his mother whined, "don't do that. Play nice with the little girl...". She looked at me with a simpering smile, as if I was supposed to be amused by this. Normally in this situation I would at least attempt to be civil, understanding that children at that age are not capable of exhibiting socially acceptable behavior at all times. But not that day. I got up and snatched Sofia away from the toy and the little boy and said, "Come on Sofia, let's play with a different toy" in a special tone with a stony glare at the other mom. She got the message. Don't mess with the pregnant momma.
And so, I begin this next and final phase of pregnancy with anticipation and a big question mark. When? How? Will my water break spontaneously like last time? Will I have to have a c-section? (I sincerely hope not). Will I get to the hospital in time for my epidural? (I better). Will the baby be born with a tan (ie, jaundice) this time, requiring several painful and emotionally scarring (for me) days under the bilirubin lights? Will I lose so much blood during the delivery that I will have to be intubated, transferred to the ICU, transfused with 20 units of blood products and ultimately rushed to emergency surgery for a hysterectomy? OK, I admit, this is a bizarre thing to wonder about, but ICU nurses only see the bad postpartum patients, so we tend to have a jaundiced (no pun intended) view of the birth process as a result. I've already let my doctor know ahead of time that I'm not that attached to my uterus, so if there's any shananigans after the baby is born, he'll skip the whole 20 units of blood products thing and just proceed directly to the hysterectomy. I need to be alive to take care of the babies I have thanks very much. I'm not one to cry over spilled reproductive organts. And if I wake up on a ventilator in the ICU with sore boobs and a swollen you-know-what, I'm NOT going to be amused.
And of course, the biggest question remaining...pink or blue?

Joys of Pregnancy II

2009-07-25T02:12:00.000-07:00

**This post has been certified sarcasm free for your enjoyment.
*** Not really. I don't think I'm capable.
OK, I feel bad for complaining about pregnancy constantly, even if it IS the scourge of my existance. It occurs to me that these next few months may be the last time I'm pregnant for the rest of my life, in which case I'll never get to experience the thrill of incubating a new human life ever again. Other than inspiring me to write a sonnet, go frolicking in a field somewhere and start a maternity clothing bonfire, that thought does make me just a teeny, tiny bit sad. Here are a few of the things I actually do enjoy about being pregnant.

#1: Having my legs shaved for me in the third trimester by my husband. Yes, he does.
#2: Feeling those little flutters and bumps in the night develop into actual baby parts. As in, oops, there's a foot. And I think that might be a shoulder blade or a...butt.
#3: My doctor. He's adorable and we love him. He sings to Sofia, banters in Spanish with Hugo and comes up to me in the hallways at the hospital to rub my belly whenever he sees me.
#4: My belly. Yes, I said my belly. The thing is, it may be extremely rotund right now, but pregnancy is when its at its firmest, believe it or not. A pregnant belly is very different from just a flabby belly.
#5: Taking three hour naps every day and not even having to feel lazy for doing it. I'm really lucky because I have an extremely adaptable 1 year old who has adjusted to my nap schedule quite nicely. She used to take two shorter naps a day and now she lays down with me every day at 11, right after Sesame Street is over, and we don't stir until 2 or so.
#6: Eating. Whatever I want. Whenever I want. I'm very lucky that I haven't had any trouble with pregnancy related diabetes or anything like that. I eat a diet consisting mainly of carbohydrates and fats and the baby seems to be thriving on that. I must have a pancreas and gallbladder made of steel...
#7: For every person out there who has said something unkind, unthoughtful and/or just plain stupid, there are several people who have been supportive and nice to me. I just don't remember what they say as well as I remember the "zingers" thrown at me by the morons. Human nature I suppose.
#8: No pimples. I haven't had a breakout since before I got pregnant. I don't know why, but my face likes being pregnant.
#9: Cinnamon Sugar soft pretzels from Aunty Anne's at the mall. I'm very fortunate to have them in my life.
#10: Maternity leave. I'll get to spend 3 months changing my babies' diapers, cleaning up their messes, feeding them, and pushing them around in strollers instead of doing all those things for my patients. With a little luck, there'll be no enemas. Although everyone who knows me knows there's nothing I enjoy more than a good enema. For my patients, not for me.
#11: I could round this out by saying something like, being treated like a princess by my wonderful Hugo, but let's face it. He's always treated me like a princess and pregnancy is no exception. He tolerates with good nature the 325 dollar electric bill (have I mentioned that my internal thermostat is set on "furnace" and its frickin hot in Florida?), my inability to perform routine hygiene activities (like shaving my own legs), my constant lamentations over stretch marks and weight gain, my middle of the night screechings when I wake up to a wicked Charley Horse in my calf, and my fluctuating ability to provide meals on a regular basis when he gets home from work. Pregnancy is no picnic for him either, but now that he's seen what it results in (Sofia) he's hooked. In fact, he mentioned yesterday something about wanting at least 4 more. At which point I laughed hysterically and advised him to start looking for a surrogate. I hear Octomom's available.

The joys of pregnancy

2009-07-17T01:07:00.000-07:00

My second pregnancy (coming so fast on the heels of my first) has brought back so many wonderful memories of stuff that I had blocked out for my own emotional and psychological well-being. Not to mention some new experiences that are no doubt exclusive to the repeat pregnancy offender.
First of all, I had forgotten how much fun it is to be in the grocery store, with a cart full of stuff and have to go to the bathroom RIGHT NOW. No doubt I didn't block this memory out from the last pregnancy; its just that having to dash into the Publix restroom, leaving my cart full of stuff outside the door, while being inconvenient and slightly embarassing, was not that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things. Now when it happens though, I have a 13 month old in the cart and have to furiously struggle to release her from the seatbelt (which I have to use on her since one of her favorite things to do these days is get into a standing position in the grocery cart, thereby giving me and those in the immediate vacinity a heart attack of the very first order), yank her out of the thing and take her into the bathroom with me, get my fat pregnant girl pants down while holding her and then...ahem, do my business with an inquisitive and slightly talkative toddler in my lap. Fun. Worthy of run-on sentences fun, I tell ya.
Another thing that I didn't get to experience the first time around was the discussion about the dreaded pregnancy belt with my doctor. I'm not sure if this little chat is typically reserved for the second time around or if I just lucked out the first time since my doctor is a guy and pretty much doesn't think about stuff like abdominal girthiness and the stressing out of the "natural girdle muscles" of the abodminal region. I saw a different doctor for my last visit since my own doctor was out of town and it was a girl doctor. She spent 20 minutes, with Hugo in the room, describing the necessity of getting a good maternity belt to support the sagging abdominal muscles. The description, though apt, of my medial region, was enough to send even the most stallwart of gestating females into paroxisms of "why didn't I do more crunches during the 5 minutes that I wasn't pregnant" lamentations. Hugo offered to take me maternity belt shopping that weekend. I still haven't taken him up on his offer. If I pretend my abdominal musculature doesn't exist, ...
Another joy that I think is actually a unique experience for me alone is the nosebleeds. For some reason, I get nosebleeds during pregnancy. It happened last time with Sofia. The nosebleed always emanated from the left nostril for that pregnancy and for this one, it always emanates from the right one. This has prompted the helpful speculation of my doctor that this must mean I'm having a boy. Other than making meaningful remarks such as this, my doctor has been fairly useless in dealing with this problem. Since they aren't being caused by hypertension, they really don't concern him too much. Imagine if you will, being at home alone with a small child. The small child falls down, hurts herself, and requires maternal comforting and cuddling. At the same time, the mother's nose starts spurting blood. It always happens at a most convenient time like this. The mother is then trying to awkwardly (is any action not akward when one is in the third trimester?) hold and comfort the small child while holding a tissue to her nose and a bag of frozen peas to her neck (for some reason it helps to stop the bleeding). This wasn't addressed in "What to Expect When You're Expecting". Not even the most recent edition, which features a much-updated picture of a pregnant woman wearing sassy maternity jeans rather than the previous one that shows her wearing a floral maternity dress,the likes of which has not been worn by any non-Duggers in the last 20 years.
There are many other fun things I could talk about. Such as, when people at work ask me when I'm due and I tell them and they act, well, clearly horrified. As in, "You're not due till OCTOBER?!" That's a real self-esteem booster I tell ya. And a word to the wise; It is NEVER appropriate to ask a pregnant woman if she is expecting multiples. This is on par with the faux pas of asking a non-pregnant woman if she is expecting. It doesn't matter if the woman in question is Kate and her abdomen protrudes out so far that she clearly has a litter of children in there...DO NOT DO IT. The only appropriate thing to say about a pregnant woman's size is, "Oh my goodness, you don't even look pregnant from behind." Even when we are lumbering along like a mack truck with a double load, we love to hear that our posterior hasn't totally kept up with the growth going on out front. Even if we know its a lie. Honesty is extremely over-rated when it comes to pregnancy.
To be fair, I imagine that the questions, comments and observations that I get to endure on a nightly basis at work are worst then they would be for someone who worked, say, in an office or something. Someone with an office job would work with the same people every day, and presumably, after some initial curiosity and interest, everyone would eventually get tired of talking about so and so's ever-expanding abdominal region and move on to something else for the remainder of the pregnancy. Not so with my job. I work with a large number of people on a constantly rotating schedule, so every time I work, I have to answer the same questions. I'm due October 1st. No, it isn't twins. I don't know what I'm having, its going to be a surprise. My friend Kayla is threatening to have a pin or a t-shirt made for me with these things printed on it to save me from having to repeat myself ad-nauseum. And by the time I work with someone again, they have forgotten the answers to these questions and have to ask them all over again.
One of the things that,suprisingly, doesn't bother me as much as I thought it would, is having people touch my belly. It isn't fun, during the first trimester, when you haven't even begun to show and people are just grabbing at your own belly flab of course. Which they do. But now, my belly honestly feels like such a foreign thing to me that it really doesn't feel at all overly intimate for people to touch me there. Its kind of like watching someone paw over a clearance table at Bed Bath and Beyond. You might think to yourself, "Boy, they are really making a mess of that clearance table," but it doesn't concern you, so why get bent out of shape? Mind you, that isn't an invitation for anyone. The only people I actually enjoy having rub my belly are Hugo and Sofia. Though I sort of suspect that even though its really cute when Sofia does it, she'll probably keep on doing it, to my eventual public embarassment, after the baby is born.
While there is much more to be said on the subject (I could write a book if I thought anyone would actually read it, the only people that can get away with writing books about their own pregnancies are celebrities), I think I better stop now. Ranting is only good for the fetus in very small doses. Besides, I have to pee.

Disney Pics

2009-06-24T09:16:00.001-07:00

Its a small world...

Really, it is. I remember thinking my parents were such dorks because they got so excited about bringing us on "Its a Small World" the first time we went to Disney. They thought it was so cool that they had gone on the ride as youngsters at the World's Fair back in 1885 or so, and now they were bringing us on it at Disney. Well, now I have brought my offspring on it as well and, well, it was kinda cool.

Overlooking the (man-made) lagoon at our resort. I don't look too pregnant here, do I?

Even here, you can just see a gentle roundness in the abdominal region. Not too bad.

Here I'm using a classic "cover the future baby up with the existing one" trick to conceal the bulge. One of the best reasons for having your second while your first is still small enough to lift and carry.

Whoops. That Hugo. He couldn't resist catching one from the side. There's no hiding it there.

My little princess was such a good girl all day at Disney. And luckily, she seems to have inherited a certain, shall we say, skin tone benefit, from her dad's side of the family. No sunburn for her. At least that made one of us.

Epcot isn't all that entertaining for 1 year-olds. But she tolerated it for our benefit. Until the fireworks at the end of the night. She wasn't thrilled about those.

Magic Kingdom was much more her style. She rode the carousel...

And Dumbo. On Dumbo, she seemed less than entertained. She was just like, "Oh well, if mom wants to go on this thing that goes up and down, I guess I'll humour her..."

We enjoyed staying at one ofthe Disney Resorts and we took the opportunity of our weekend trip to travel around and see a few of the other resorts as well. The Grand Floridian was beautiful and we decided we would love to go back and stay there sometime.

All in all, though it was just a short weekend excursion, we had a grand time and can't wait to go back someday and see it all again! Originally, we were thinking about doing a short cruise, since I had requested the time off and we wanted to do something fun that wouldn't require driving more than a few hours. Unfortunately, I found out that pregnant women aren't allowed to cruise past the 24th week and I was officially past that mark. So Disney was the next best option. The cruise will have to wait a year or so, because babies aren't allowed to cruise until they reach 6 months of age, so that will count us out once Chumby Pumby '09 makes his or her official debut.

This Tuesday

2009-06-17T14:50:00.001-07:00

I find that stuff happens on Tuesdays that I need to blog about. The kind of stuff that one needs to find a way to purge their soul of. Some people would write about it in their diary, some people would talk about it to their therapist or priest, others would just stew over it and then let it go. Me, I blog. I really don't even care if nobody ever reads it. Just kidding. I want everyone to know what a basketcase I am.
Tuesdays are a little stressful for me to begin with, because my work week ends on Tuesday morning and I only have a sitter until 2 PM, so I get about 5 or 6 hours of sleep if I'm lucky and I have to get up and function for the rest of the day. I've talked about it before.
This Tuesday, I found out upon waking up that my babysitter has decided to move back to Lakeland with her parents, and presumably will not be commuting to her babysitting job for us, so in a month I will be sitterless. My darling Sofia will be caregiverless. Oh no. I handled it fairly well, though and put it on my mental list of things to freak out about in about 3 and a half weeks.
When 6 O'Clock rolled around, I started to think about food, and what I would be feeding my family for dinner. I didn't feel like doing much, so after vacillating between the freezer, refrigerator and cupboards for about 15 minutes, I settled on a very easy menu plan for dinner. I had a thing of Velveeta Shells and Cheese. Easy. Not very nutritious, but easy. And tasty too. I also had chicken breasts in the frig. that really needed to be used up since I bought them about 5 days ago, so I decided I would sautee it in olive oil and cut it up into chunks and add it to the Velveeta, to dress it up a little. Not to mention make it a little more substantial of a meal for my meat and potatoes loving husband. I also had some delightful vegetable sides in my freezer. Birds Eye makes them and they come in this balck dish that you put right in the microwave and the veggies cook up perfectly, all dressed in a delicious savoury sauce. I pulled out the brussels sprouts one and stuck it in the microwave.
With dinner well underway and Hugo now home to entertain the baby, I took the chicken breasts off the stove and transferred them to a plate with a piece of paper towel to drain any excess oil before I added them to the macaroni and cheese. Luckily, I decided to try a chunk before I actually added them and it tasted awful! Rotten chicken is the worst. I spit it out and threw the rest into the trash. So much for that chicken. I decided that plain old Velveeta would have to suffice.
I took the brussels sprouts out of the microwave and took off the plastic film covering the dish. Hugo was watching Rachel Ray on the Food Network in the living room, and she was making something that had bacon in it. She said, "I don't know about you, but I don't think there's anything as good as the smell of bacon cooking..." Hugo got the strangest sensation just at that moment, because he swore he could smell bacon right then and there, but knew better than to think that such a thing was possible, because his wife is vehemently opposed to any pork products whatsoever and would never countanance the cooking of such a thing as bacon in her kitchen.
Well, meanwhile, in the kitchen, I was about to discover that the delightful savoury sauce that my brussels sprouts were served in was actually liberally endowed with real bacon. It really bugs the crap out of me when you innocently assume something that should be an entirely vegetable product turns out to have bacon in it. I forget to check sometimes and then stuff like this happens. Then, I dropped the spoon, coated in bacon sauce, on the kitchwen floor and had to bend over to wipe up the mess and then haul my considerable girth back up to a standing position. It was about this time that I said a VERY BAD WORD. Then, because I'm 6 months pregnant, I burst into tears. Hugo was just getting the baby settled into her high chair for dinner and bewilderedly asked, "What's wrong?"
"These damn brussels sprouts have BACON in them!" I burst out hysterically. Of course, I didn't have time to outline all the other things that had lead up to that being the straw that broke the camels back, so he was understandably mystified. However, he handled it with aplomb, assuring me that he had no problem with bacon in the brussels sprouts and promising to take me out for something later if I was still hungry.
After such a disastrous dinner experience, things started to look up. Hugo took me to Target, got me a pretzel and an ICEE (the perfect meal as far as this pregnant girl is concerned), and we picked out some new toys for Sofia, as well as a new pair of pajamas and a new, much lighter stroller so I won't give myself a hernia trying to load and unload it into the car. Then we stopped at the video store on the way home (haha, even though we haven't rented a video in years, I still call it the video store, much to Hugo's amusement) and rented some movies. I managed to stay awake until midnight and then went to bed and slept like a baby.
So that was my Tuesday. Wonder what delightful things will happen to make me curse and cry next Tuesday?...

Camera Phone Gems

2009-06-09T19:05:00.000-07:00

I often wonder how our parents ever captured any cute photo ops of us when we were little without camera phones (of course, with me, I know the sad answer to that question...they didn't). Some of my favorite images are stored away on my trusty Blackberry. Until now that is..

Just before the priceless moment...wait for it...wait for it...
WoWWWWZaaa!!!

After we went to the YMCA pool one day and found it inhabited by 100 fifth graders, we decided to head over to WalMart and get this $7 number for the backyard. Now when Hugo calls me from work, I can casually state that we're hanging out by the pool.

This little tug was hidden away in a corner at the urgent care center. We fished it out and had a grand time while Hugo was in the back getting tended to.

Sofia is one

2009-05-27T12:57:00.000-07:00

I am now the mother of a one year old. Whew. For some reason, it feels so much different to tell people, "I have a one year old" than it does to say, "I have a 10 month old" or "I have an 11 month old". Baby bottles and spit up are giving way to finger foods and battles of will. Instead of being protectively cocooned and somewhat isolated in the rear-facing car seat, Sofia will now be facing forward, swinging her feet freely and watching the world as it approaches rather than as it recedes into the distance. My little muffin is growing up!

The Good and the Bad of Life

2009-05-19T16:47:00.000-07:00

Good: I got to order my Kitchenaid food processor today. Hugo made me do many hours (aka at least 20 minutes) of painful research before he would allow me to choose between the Cuisinart and the Kitchenaid brands. I found out that, though both are considered to be extremely good food processors, the Kitchenaid slightly edged out the Cuisinart in both ease of use and customer service. I'm going to make pie crusts and spinach artichoke dip as soon as I get it. Maybe I'll make a spinach artichoke pie. That would be yummy.
Bad: I can't afford to buy the Kitchenaid stand mixer to go with the food processor. I had to choose one or the other for now and since I have a hand mixer which will suffice for my mixing needs for the time being, I chose the food processor. It was a difficult, heartwrenching decision. Who knows when I'll get around to buying the mixer? Hopefully by Christmas. That's the only time I ever do any real cooking anyway.
Good: My new Prius. Its not really new. Its a 2008. But it looks new. And its new to me. And its a heck of a lot newer than Hugo's stinky old Celica with the convertable top that leaked whenever it rained. I hated driving that thing to work.
Bad: The Murano has to go in for its 36,000 mile service at the dealer. This is one of the expenses that I would probably "defer" if given the chance, but Hugo is a stickler for car maintenance. Bleh.
Good: Sick patients. I love sick patients.
Bad: Crazy patients. I really hate crazy patients. I'm just not cut out for mental health nursing. Unfortunately, it seems that, although I work in critical care (read; sick patients) some physicians think of my unit as the psych unit (read; crazy patients) and I get stuck taking care of all kinds of wierdos. My patient last night kept insisting that the telemetry wires attached to his chest were "live wires" that were going to electrocute him. For two nights in a row I had spent considerable time trying to convince him, in my most soothing possible tone, that the wires were absolutely not capable of shocking him and were in fact entirely benign. By about 5:30 this morning though, my patience was running very thin (especially after his mother called and notified us that he had been calling her from his phone in the room and telling her that he was outside of the hospital with one of the doctors and they were watching a young couple making love in the street). He called me into his room for some ridiculous pretense of a problem and casually mentioned the live wires with the electric charge that were in his bed (since he had helpfully removed them from his chest where they were supposed to be monitoring his heart). "Those are NOT live wires!" I snapped, as Nurse Betty turned into Nurse Ratched in the blink of an eye. "Believe me, if we electric charge you, you'll know it!" Aside from the grammatically incorrect nature of this comment (which isn't like me at all) my tone was enough to cause considerable hilarity from Kayla, who was sitting close enough to hear the exchange. Between my crazy patient and hers, we were both ready to have ourselves committed by the end of the shift.
Good: Being able to eat whatever you want cause you're pregnant.
Bad: Being nauseated (even at 21 weeks) no matter what you eat or don't eat.

"We got no FOOD, we got no JOBS, our pets HEADS are fallin' off!..." Kayla reminded me last night that Dumb and Dumber is one of the most hilarious movies of all time. I'm watching it right now.

Pictures of the Princess

2009-05-13T19:15:00.000-07:00

I'm calling this one..."When one bottle just isn't enough."

This is Sofia standing at the bars of her newfound prison...she discovered the stairs one day and Hugo decided it was time to confine her more effectively. It doesn't get much more effective than this thing!

Sunbathing at the YMCA

Hydrating at the YMCA

Hugo sporting Rene's artistic interpretation of the "faux-hawk". Sofia is wearing her short shorts and a really spiffy firecracker hairdo.

AWWWWWe. Does it get any cuter than that? I'm pretty sure this breaks all the cuteness thresholds I've ever encountered.

Baby Daddies

2009-05-13T16:43:00.000-07:00

Here are some of our "Springpea Dads" when they met for the first time. We had a group birthday party at West Side Park and it was HOT! 90+ degrees out. It was fun to connect some of the babies with their dad faces, after being so well acquainted with their moms for a whole year.

The Southern Belle

2009-05-11T12:40:00.000-07:00

I had a patient last night who was a bit of a Southern Belle. She was one of those old ladies who treats their nurses (particularly their female nurses) like the hired help. I don't know why, but I get a huge kick out of it when my little old lady patients treat me like the hired help. I find it adorable and hilarious. I'm a real nut. Now, when I have 57 year old male patients who weigh 375 pounds and they treat me like the hired help (and call me darlin' to boot) like my patient from the night before; I'm not nearly so amused. So I guess I'm a bit of a sexist like that.
Anyway, my patient last night was a little tiny thing who had suffered from a cardiac arrest out on the regular hospital floor and had to intubated and defibrillated about 6 times. And she came through it kicking. She would order me around the room, having me fill up this cup, place that pillow, fluff her neck roll and adjust her bed to just the right position. Then she said, "I'll take my sleeping pill at 9 please" just as though she was ordering room service. I complied faithfully. When I showed up at 8:55 with her evening meds, just for the fun of it, I said, "I'm a few minutes early...I hope that's ok?" and she graciously forgave me. I think she actually became my slave at that moment. Because I'll tell you a little secret about those kinds of old ladies. They absolutely love it when you play along. It means so much to them, just to be able to feel a sense of control over their own little domain.
Early this morning as I was drawing some blood from this lady she inquired about my now visible "baby bump". "Is this your first?," she asked.
"No, I have an 11 month old at home."
"Goodness gracious!" she exclaimed. "I hope you're not planning on coming back to work after you have this one?"
(I am). "Oh, I don't know, we'll have to see how things go. I work nights, you know, so that my husband can take care of the baby while I'm at work. So it works out pretty well this way."
She sniffed. "Well, I just think it should be illegal for a mother to work outside the home when she has small children." That Southern accent. That sniff. That oh-so-condescending tone of censorship.
What? Quit my job and give up moments like that? I couldn't even begin to fathom it. I retreated in a haze of suppressed hilarity to share the comment with the other nursing staff, 99.9% of whom are "mothers with young children" who are most disobediently working outside the home some 36-60 hours a week. HI-larious. Take me away Scarlet O'Hara.
Sometimes I think the hospital pays me too much for working there, considering all the absolutely priceless moments I get to experience in the wee hours of the morning. Then I remember the 375 pounder who felt absolutely no compunction at all over asking his pregnant nurse (who weighs a mere fraction, though a growing fraction, of what he does) to roll his ass over, wipe his butt, sprinkle it with powder, change his pad, straighten his sheet, remove the pad, put the pad back, etc... at 25 minute intervals all throughout the night till she thought she was going to drop the fetus right there on the spot in his nasty germ infested room...and I realize they don't really pay me too much. Definitely not too much...

Training the Parents

2009-05-08T11:17:00.000-07:00

Me and Hugo have been in training over the past few weeks. The goal? Put the baby in the crib at bedtime and let her put herself to sleep. I came home from the hospital with the little stinker intending to do just that from the first, but did I? No. I couldn't. I realized that newborns are not meant to put themselves to sleep. They rely on their mommies (and more recently, their daddies) to rock them and sing them and feed them to sleep.
Now that Sofia is almost a year old and is most definitely past the newborn stage though, I realized that it was time for her to get off the proverbial tit at bedtime. She's been off the literal tit for a good month and a half now. She was getting to be a real pest. Hugo would have to sit there and rock her and carry her around shushing her for a good half hour to get her to go to sleep. When he went to put her, oh so carefully, into the crib, if she so much as stirred, she would wake herself up and all would be lost. We were at the mercy of whenever she decided to fall asleep every night. Usually it was midnight. Plus, if we didn't go straight to bed when she did, she would wake up, sense that we were still afoot, and demand vocally that we remove her from her crib. Once again, all would be lost.
I had given up putting her to sleep some time ago as the carrying around in a cradle position had become a little too much, considering that I am also carrying around someone else on a more or less 24/7 basis. It was Hugo's job. He did it well. But it was getting to be a real pain.
So one night, we decided to see what would happen if we just put her in the crib at bedtime, kissed her goodnight, and went to bed ourselves. One of us would get up every 5 minutes or so and go into the baby's room, under strict orders not to remove her from the crib. We would firmly lie her back down and shush her for a moment and then leave. It was textbook. We followed the rules exactly as they were written (by some Nazi who obviously didn't love their children). And you know what? It worked. She fell asleep, exhausted, after 45 minutes of crying. It was pure torture. The next night it took about 30 minutes. And ever since that night, she has fallen asleep after about 5 minutes of half-hearted wailing.
Now I know. Babies really CAN put themselves to sleep! We don't give her a bottle or a toy or a blankie. We just put her in the crib and she falls alseep. A few nights ago she didn't even cry. She just laid there and went to sleep. I confess I had to get up a few times that night (just like I did when she was a newborn) to make sure she was alive. The trick is to make sure she really is tired before attempting to put her down. If she isn't tired, it takes a lot of crying to tire her out. When I think of all the people who never get past the stage of putting their kids to sleep, simply because they can't deal with a few nights of crying (and believe me; it is heartbreaking) it makes me sad. I shudder to think of what would happen if we waited until she was big enough to climb out of the crib herself (believe me, its coming fast). We might have been SOL if we had waited that long. She wakes up refreshed and happy every morning with no sign that grudge holding or emotional damage has resulted from our cruel ways.
I only hope it goes so smoothly with the next one.

Happy Birthday Grammy!!!

2009-04-21T17:06:00.000-07:00

My Plant Life

2009-04-21T17:00:00.001-07:00

Here's my garden. My tomato plants are doing swimmingly. My basil and mint are also doing well.
My strawberries...I'll have to get back at you on that one. That's the funky planter with the holes in it. I got it off HSN. If it doesn't work, I'm so done with HSN.

Here's my little green corner in the dining room. Pretty huh? What is it about spring that makes people want to get all green thumby?

Tuesday is Zombie Day

2009-04-14T14:03:00.000-07:00

Since Monday night is my Friday at work (don't ask...it gets complicated) I always face a terrible dilemma on Tuesdays. What I want to do is go to sleep and stay in bed, preferably all day until I feel well rested again. That usually occurs around 8 PM, at which point I am fully recharged and ready to go...just in time for everyone else in the world to get ready for bed. Then I stay up for a few hours, try to go to bed with Hugo, and end up wide awake all night. Thus begins a cycle of being awake all night for the rest of the week and wanting to sleep all day.

That might work for some people; in fact the majority of people I know who have succesfully worked nights for many years (without ever going on a homicidal killing streak) simply do that all the time. For someone who has a baby to take care of, that is not an acceptable solution to the problem. See, the problem is, I can usually get her to go down for a nice long nap just after the babysitter leaves on Tuesdays, which allows me to go back to sleep, often until Hugo gets home from work. Then I can lounge around on the couch dozing on and off for several more hours. I can get away with it for that one day. But there's no babysitter coming on Wednesday.

So a much BETTER solution to the dilemma is to sleep for 4 or 5 hours on Tuesday, when I get off work, and then force myself to stay awake until 10 or 11. If I can do that than I will go to bed exhausted, sleep all night, and quite possible, wake up feeling refreshed and reset for the week. That solution requires self-control which I don't have. I CANNOT stay in the house all day on Tuesday, putting the baby down for her nap, and not go to sleep myself. I'll lay down on the couch to "watch tv" and next thing I know, its 9:30 at night and I'm rarin to go.

So I have taken to forcing myself to partake in activities on Tuesdays. Last week we went to the mall when Hugo got off work and I stumbled around the place blearily. I invited some friends over for lunch one week and I'm sure I was a really stimulating hostess. Today, I took the baby and went to La Fiesta, a local Mexican restaurant. Then I went grocery shopping and bought a whole bunch of stuff we probably don't need. When I got home the baby was sleeping. DANGER ZONE!!! I immediately proceeded into the kitchen and made a new recipe. Asian marinated chicken thighs with vegetable potstickers. I'm going to put the chicken on skewers and grill it. I got the idea from Guy's Big Bite on the Food Network. Some days I just take to scrolling through my cell phone and calling random people I haven't spoken to in a long time. I'm sure they love that.

The good news is, its 5:30 and I have succesfully made it through most of the day. So maybe, just maybe, my mission will be a success this week.

Picture Time

2009-04-13T05:37:00.001-07:00

On Friday I took Sofia to the mall in hopes of getting a picture of her with the Easter Bunny. First, I took her all over the mall in search of a cute and thriftily priced dress to put her in for the event. I really didn't feel like spending 30 dollars or more on a dress since we weren't even planning on doing anything for Easter. The dress would be for the sole purpose of getting her picture take with Peter Cottontail. I finally found a darling dress at Macy's that was white with yellow polka dots and pink buttons. It was perfect for the occasion. I spent 12 dollars on it. We then proceeded to the Easter Bunny area where we encountered a sign saying that the Easter Bunny was on break (apparently he belongs to the Easter Bunny Union, which is downright militant about enforcing breaks for its members) and he would be back in 15 minutes. We got in line and waited. 15 minutes later, some hussy comes along and informs us that the Easter Bunny was "hot" and "didn't feel well" so he was going to go ahead and take his lunch break and wouldn't be back for another hour and 15 minutes. The long and the short of it is A. We didn't get the picture after all. B. I'm thinking of a career change. That Easter Bunny has got the easiest gig in town.
Here's some other pictures instead.

Vanity, thy name is...Sofia

2009-04-10T13:16:00.000-07:00

I have a very conceited child. At 10 and a half months she has developed a real ego. Lately, whenever she gets a little cranky (which is frequently, since she is apparently the world's SLOWEST teether), all I have to do is hold her up in front of her favorite picture and her whines and whimpers are quickly reversed into smiles and giggles. Her favorite picture of herself that is.
I realized this one night when I was trying to get my very tired and very cranky baby to go to sleep. I was in the living room, holding her up against my chest and jiggling her up and down as she tried to contort herself into an unwieldy enough position so that I would put her down. Suddenly, she relaxed and I thought for sure she was finally dozing off. I shifted her just enough so I could see her face to verify that her eyes were closed and instead of closed eyes I saw that she was grinning adorably at a picture of herself hanging on the wall.
Ever since then, whenever I want to turn that frown upside down, I know I need to hoist her up in front of the wall where her Valentine's Day picture is displayed and like magic...poof! A wonderful, gummy smile ensues. What a stinker.

Jammy Baby

2009-04-01T21:54:00.001-07:00

This was taken at Todd and Tamera's house. Luckily, when Todd and Tamera have "game night" at there house, they don't get irritated with us for bringing our spawn along, even though everyone else has a pretty good understanding that its for adults only. I mean, they're our only social lifeline these days. If it weren't for them, we'd never get out. They take pity on us... Plus, she's just so darn cute, who could mind the imposition? I'm aware that this sounds like a rationalization that anyone with a 10 month old might make (everyone thinks their baby is the cutest one on the planet) but with Sofia its actually true. As such, I generally feel free to bring her along to gynecologist visits, hair appointments, staff meetings and lunch dates with friends. Mainly because I have no choice. I have to bring her with me. She is my constant companion. We are a package deal.

My Favorites

2009-03-29T01:08:00.000-07:00

I love to make lists, and I love to expostulate on my favorite things. Expostulate or pontificate? I think either would work here.
Favorite Show
Suze Ormond. If I listened to everything she said, I would be rich. Wealthy.
Blog
The Pioneer Woman. I check her site out daily. I quote her frequently, to people who have no idea who she is. I convert non-believers into followers of her blog whenever possible. I cook her recipes whenever they don't contain disgusting meat componants. I even had a dream that I went and visited her on her ranch one time. Wierd.
Book
Outlander by Diana Gabaldon. I love that whole series. Hugo recently caught me reading the first book AGAIN and said, You're reading it AGAIN? I even bought the unabridged audio version (read by a fabulous lady named Davina Porter) on ITunes and made Hugo listen to the whole thing with me. We've made it as far as the 3rd book on trips and stuff. Don't let him fool you. He LOVES it. His favorite thing to say to me lately is, "Christ Sassanach." You have to read it. Go. Read it now. It will only take up about 6 months of your day.
Store
Target.
Name
Sofia. I'm having a really hard time contemplating what I'll name the next one if it turns out to be a girl, because I just can't think of anything I like as much as Sofia. Nothing feels right. Sofia was Sofia right from the very moment I found out she was a girl. I'd love a few suggestions.
Food
Pasta. I love pasta in all its different forms. I could eat it every single day and not get tired of it. That's how Hugo feels about rice and potatoes, but since I do the shopping and cooking, I get to choose the starch. Guess what we have most of the time? My favorite pasta dish of all time comes from Everyday Italian on the Food Network. All you do is cook up some bowties, reserve a small amount of the pasta water and then throw the pasta over a bed of baby butter lettuce (I know, wierd, huh?). Then you toss in some pine nuts, sundried tomatoes, goat cheese, and parmesan and a little of the pasta water and toss it all together. Delicious. I could eat some right now. Damn. Why do I have to think about food all the time?
Place to Go on Vacation
I could make a case for every single place I've ever been, including Chincoteague Island, where I went on vacation with my college boyfriend and his family and got into a fight over the moped we rented and drove away, stranding him in the middle of the village for a short time, but I would have to go with the Keys as my all time favorite. Its so beautiful, yet so laid back. So warm, yet rarely hot. So exotic, yet so only 10 hours by car away.
Restaurant Chain
Sorry Mom, I'm gonna have to go with Dad on this one and say Carabba's. Even though they betrayed me by removing the tiramisou from the dessert menu while I was in full-on pregnancy craving mode one night and Hugo was even willing to drive all the way across town to get me a piece.
Fast Food
Zaxby's. Oh, I'm sorry. You don't have a Zaxby's near you? Boo Hoo for you. Because they have the very best chicken sandwiches in the world and we have two of them here in Gainesville. One of them is right on my way to work. MMMMM. I would open my own Zaxby's if I could (you have to have 600,000 dollars of net worth to qualify for a franchise. Anyone want to finance me?). Then again, I also love me so Jimmy John's. They have the best vegetarian sub in the world. I would open a Jimmy John's if I could, too. Only, if I did either of those things, I would quickly balloon in the most unattractive way. Better stick with nursing. Though us night shift nurses tend to be a little on the hefty side as well. Must be all that Zaxby's we stop for on our way to work every night.
Dessert
Chocolate bread pudding from Stonewood. I never would have thought to try something with the words bread and pudding in the title, but boy is this delicious. Its like a giant cross between a brownie and a fudgy cake, with a giant scoop of vanilla ice cream on it and a giant chocolate crispy thing stuck on top. Its drowned in a warm sauce that consists of mostly butter and some kind of liquor. It gave me a massive gall bladder attack and almost put me back into the hospital after Sofia was born, but I didn't hold a grudge. I still love it. Enough food. I'm getting hungry.
Kind of Patient to Take Care Of
All my colleagues laugh hysterically at me when I say this (and think I'm being sarcastic) but GI bleeders. I will take a GI bleeder over a stroke or a COPD'er any day. Although they are kind of gross to take care of (what with the pooping and throwing up blood and everything) they are generally really sick when they come in and you have to run around like crazy, pumping blood back into them, sticking NG tubes down their noses, starting central lines and running multiple IV drips and so on and so forth. They are too sick to complain about stuff like the loudness at the nurses station (have I mentioned that my indoor voice kind of sucks, which makes me a bad night shift nurse?), the lack of good food (the last thing these people want is food) and the wierd pain in the arch of their left food that they have been having for the past 14 years, but now that they are in the hospital for something totally unrelated, would like you to call the doctor at 2 oclock in the morning to let him know about it and see if there is anything they can get for it. Also, the whole cleaning up their bloody poop thing earns you their undying gratitude and devotion. And they get better. Watch a COPD'er accomplish that feat. Its nice to have a patient who comes in really sick and gets better, thanks to good nursing care. So refreshing.
Husband
My favorite husband is Hugo. Hands down. I know, he's my only husband. But if I was a polygamist (or whatever they call women who marry several men) I'm pretty sure he would still be my favorite. He's just right. Tonight I couldn't sleep because there was a horrific thunderstorm and he got up with me at 3 in the morning and shared a sandwich with me. A turkey reuben. I've never made a turkey reuben before, but it came out pretty good. Oh wait. I said no more food, didn't I?
Song
Somewhere, from West Side Story, as sung by Barbara Streisand. I know, totally '80's with the synthesizer and everything. But I love it.
Age
29. Which I am right now. When I was younger, my older sisters used to torment me and make my life a living hell, but I got the last laugh because they're both in their thirties already and I'm still in my twenties. Haha.
That's enough favorites for now. Until next time...

My Portfolio

2009-03-25T07:48:00.000-07:00

I recently expanded my horizens (still further!?) by purchasing some stocks. I am now a participator in the stock market. I watch CNBC with interest every day to see how the "DOW and Nasdaq faired" (I'm still a little shaky on exactly what that means). I have already made close to a hundred dollars, having only invested 250. That's a pretty good return on investment. I bought some shares in Starbucks, because I like Starbucks and I figure, if I can buy a share in the company for less than the cost of two lattes, why not? I'm still going to buy the two lattes, mind you. Don't get the idea that I've given up on the product or anything. I just feel better about spending 4 bucks on a latte now that I'm a shareholder. I'm just bostering my own bottom line, you see, whenever I make a purchase.
I also bought in Citigroup, the company that owns Citi Bank, because what the hell? They were only a buck fifty a share. If the company does go belly up, I won't be out too much money. If, on the other hand, they return to 40 dollars a share, I'm up big time.
My other purchase was GE because that company has been around forever and I don't see them going out of business any time soon.
Now, at what other time in history has 250 dollars allowed a person to actually purchase an entire portfolio of stocks? Umm, a few years ago I wouldn't have been able to buy 10 shares of Starbucks for that. And what the hell? Its only the kids' college savings, right? If I lose it all, there's always community college. Just kidding. If the college savings fund consists of 250 dollars, I'm thinking community college isn't even an option. Maybe technical school (BOCES anyone?)

My Vegetable Garden

2009-03-20T12:51:00.000-07:00

I had big plans to plant an organic vegetable garden this year in my backyard. I made a list (mainly listing all the different kinds of vegetables I envisioned myself growing), asked some of my "green" friends at work for advice, borrowed a book from the library, and even poked around on the internet a little for research purposes. I had it all planned out. I was ging to plant tomatoes, onions, lettuce, basil, mint, peppers, tomatoes and eggplant. But mostly tomatoes. I crave garden-grown tomatoes. True, I've only had them, like, once before, but they really aren't even comparable to the ones you buy in the store. And I spend so much money on tomatoes at the store. I can't stand to buy the pale, grainy, mealy ones that are 99 cents a pound. I have to go for the red, juicy, somewhat fresh-appearing vine grown tomatoes that cost 2.99 or more per pound.
My problem is that after I put all that mental and emotional energy into my vegetable garden, I found out I was knocked up. Suddenly, I had to contemplate a mental picture of myself, 7 months gone with child, with a one year old baby perched on one hip, probably wearing some type of shapeless smock with a floral pattern, barefooted and on my hands and knees weeding a garden. It was a little too Dugger for my liking. For those of you who don't know who the Duggers are, you really should watch more TLC.
The vegetable garden was tabled, needless to say. However, I couldn't get the thought of those fresh tomatoes out of my mind. I really want some damn fresh tomatoes. Is it asking so much to have some fresh grown damn tomatoes from the garden? I don't think so. So I decided to experiment with what's known as a "container garden". It involves planting stuff into moveable containers and then you can just keep them on the porch or the deck or anyplace that's sunny. You don't have to worry as much about weeds, since you aren't planting them into the ground. Pests aren't as much of an issue either since the plants are up off of the ground. I bought these planters that have a special resorvoir in the bottom so you don't even have to water them every day. Hey, that sounds like something even a pregnant broad can handle, right? We'll see. I will keep a chronicle of the experience here and if it turns out to be a success, I will have developed much needed skills and knowledge on the science of growing stuff so that next year maybe my enormous kitchen vegetable garden will be a reality. Or maybe the whole thing will be a colossal failure and I will realize that I don't really care for fresh veggies after all and as a matter of fact, I actually like going to the grocery store and buying pesticide covered, wax coated produce that smells like ass.
I bought about 3 cherry tomato plants, 4 regular tomato plants, a basil plant and a mint plant. If it is succesful it will be the first time I have ever grown anything. When I finish planting them, I'll post some pictures of them in their new containers/homes. Right now, they are being "hardened off" a process which involves taking them outside during the day so they can get used to the sunlight and temperature outside, and bringing them inside to be protected at nighttime. Any tips and pointers on the next step (transplanting them to their containers) would be appreciated.

Insalata Caprese Trio

2009-03-19T19:25:00.000-07:00

Here's how you can make three delicious dishes out of the same 5 ingredients.
#1 fresh mozzerella (the kind that often comes in water)
#2 fresh vine-ripened tomatos
#3 fresh basil
#4 one lemon
#5 olive oil

For the first dish, a simple salad, dice the tomatos and the cheese into roughly equal sized pieces. Rip up fresh basil and sprinkle over the top. Make a simple vinagrette by squeezing the juice of half the lemon into a dish and then whisking a 1/2 cup of olive oil into it. Drizzle some of this over the top and add a tiny bit of salt and freshly ground pepper. It will be delicious, simple, and addictive.

...Kind of like this (I know, The Pioneer Woman I am not. Let's not go into it).

Later on, if you feel like a midnight snack, like I do every night now that I am gestating again, get a piece of bread and stick it under the broiler for a minute, just until it starts to brown. Thinly slice some tomato and fresh mozzerella to lay on the bread and then sprinkle with some of the basil. Drizzle with the lemon vinagrette and stick it back under the broiler until the cheese melts. It might not look like much, but it makes a delicious open faced sandwich. You could get fancy and do this on french baguette and call it bruschetta. You only have to do that if you're making it for other people though. I ate this all by myself while Hugo was putting Sofia to sleep.

The next day I still had some cheese, tomato, basil and vinagrette left, and since I paid a pretty price for the mozzerella, I didn't want it to go to waste. Oh Fresh Market, I love you so and some day I will be so wealthy that I will be able to shop in your store all the time. Until that day, I shall have to let it remain a rare treat. So anyway, the next day I decided to cook up some bowtie pasta and toss it with the exact same salad from the night before. It looked like this...

...and boy was it delicious. Light and springy and very girly. I didn't eat like a girl though. I finished it.

A whiff of paradise...

2009-03-12T19:50:00.000-07:00

Oh Florida Keys...we've been separated for too long. I miss your beautiful beaches, your clean (looking) waters, your tiny little strips of land connected by one long highway and surrounded by water.

I took this picture the first time I was in the Keys. Its a view of Bahia Honda Beach (a state park), taken from the end of the old bridge that used to connect the islands before the modern highway was constructed. I have always been struck by how beautifully this picture came out; taken by an unskilled photographer (me) using an extremely basic camera (my point and shoot digital Canon PowerShot) it looks like something you might see in Conde Nast. I guess that's just what happens in the Keys...

My Big Fat Retarded Head

2009-03-11T14:17:00.000-07:00

I thought it was worth letting everyone know what a dork I am; it might save some of you a hassle if you learn from my mistake. Iwas at home yesterday afternoon with Sofia, the two of us just hanging out on the couch watching HSN when I heard a knock on the door. It was these two really nice, pleasant guys; my first thought was Jehovah's Witnesses. So Igreeted them pleasantly enough and they informed me that they were going around the neighborhood letting people know about this store that was about to open in Walmart Plaza that was going to sell stuff for cleaning the home, small home repairs, car maintenance, etc... They wondered if they could come in and show me a few of their products so I could maye recommend the store to my friends and family if I thought the products were useful. What the hell, I thought? In hindsight, I realize I shouldn't be letting random strangers into my house, particularly when I am at home alone with the baby, but I tend to be a littletoo trusting of people anyway. It turns out there is no store. There are not"a couple products" there is one; they were vacuum cleaner salesmen.

The"talker" quickly introduced me to his friend, the "demo man" and left. This guy started going into this spiel about his vacuum, the Kirby, which isapparently the oldest vacuum cleaner company in the world. After about 45minutes and the guy was just getting into his demo and I realized he apparentlyplanned on staying for about 3 hours and showing me all 83 functions of his vacuum cleaner. I asked him how much? He told me 2300 dollars. Haha. For 2300 dollars it better do more than clean my house...Well, at that point I used thatinformation to inform him that I would not ever be making a 2300 dollar purchase on something that I saw demonstrated without discussing it with my husband. It was at this point that he suggested glibly that if I applied for the credit and bought it, it could be a suprise for my husband. A surprise! Yeah, I laughed at him and told him in no uncertain terms that my husband wouldn't make a 2300dollar purchase without my knowledge and I wouldn't do it to him either. Theguy ended up calling his partner up and telling him to come get him (it took him like, 20 minutes to pack up his vacuum) and the guy on the other end of the line was giving him crap about it, trying to get him to continue the demostration even though I had told him I wanted him to go. He sat outside of my house for15 minutes waiting for the white van to come back and get him.

Needless to say,I got on the internet and did some research on the Kirby Vacuum as soon as heleft. Apparently, it is a great vacuum (though like I said, it better do morethan that for 2300 dollars). However, the company gets horrible reviews for its unsavory sales tactics in which it targets old people and housewives, trying toget them to sign on the line for "financing" then and there (which is a huge scam and a credit card that you end up paying 29% interest or something on). Their sales tecnique is that once they get into your house they won't leave until you agree to buy the thing and there were numerous examples of people calling the police when the salespeople actually refused to leave their house. Previous customers said the demo guys didn't know what they were doing and have actuallydone damage to peoples' furniture and carpets. Also, part of their justification for charging so much for the vacuum is that it comes with an unconditional lifetime warrantee which most people were furious about and said that getting the things serviced was like an act of God.

Some of the ways they get into your house is by asking if they can ask your opinion on some cleaning products (they will be carrying a bottle of Febreze or Tide or something), or tolgive you a free carpet shampoo. DON"T let them into your house! They also sayyou have 30 days to cancel if you change your mind and then they ignore you when you try to cancel (after you come to your senses). Hundreds of people havegotten burned by them. AND you can buy the vacuum on EBAY for about 500 bucks if you really want it. I don;t need to tell you, I laid there in bed last nightberating myself for letting those guys into my house. They could have been casing the joint and come back later to kill us or rob us blind. I think itmust be the economy, there has been an increase in door to door sales lately. They seem kind of desparate and I feel sorry for them, because I'm sure that they are doing their best to earn a living, but this is not an honest way to earn a living and the sooner they realize that the better. Im thinking about putting a no solicitation sign on my door.

Its stuff like this that makes me wish I lived on a farm in EBF like my parents. I don't think they get too many door to door salesmen braving the one lane dirt road followed by the 6 mile long driveway (over the oft flooded bridge) with wild beasts approaching the vehicle from all sides just to find out if my parents want to see a live demonstration of the best vacuum cleaner in the history of the world. Maybe I should call the local office and refer them, just to see...

Sofia's Nicknames

2009-03-05T13:01:00.000-08:00

OK, here is a list that I fear is far from exhaustive. I have to keep track of all these ones so we can make sure we don't accidentally call the new baby by one of Sofia's nicknames. She has several of them copyrighted. Or is it trademarked? Whatever. Right now, she's sucking on a bandaid that she pulled out of the box. I just had to take it away from her (its so soggy at this point, I'm afraid she might actually ingest it). She's not too happy about that.
Sofia's number one nickname is Chumby Pumby. Hugo came up with that one. I'm not sure what it means but it fits her to a tee. He Googled it the other day and didn't come up with any hits.
Muffin (that one is mine and it is the base for many of the ones that follow).
Muffy McMufferton (Her Scottish nickname).
Muffin Top (more appropriate would be the reason-for-my-muffin-top).
Muffy McStink (when she has something in her diaper).
Chumby McPumberton (a Scottish variation of her Colombian nickname).
Sofia Pepita
Iguanita

Dinner...Ughhh

2009-03-05T12:30:00.000-08:00

Lately there hasn't been a whole lot of cooking going on in the Ochoa household. In fact, I wouldn't be at all surprised if a family of moles (or other small animals) had set up housekeeping in my oven. I just haven't been feeling much like cooking, what with first trimester nausea and food aversions and what-not. Hugo is not much help in this category either. The last time I did cook, I was complaining about how its impossible to make progress with a 9 month old baby trying to eat the dog's food and licking the trash can while I'm trying to make dinner and he was like, "honey, that's why we both work. So you can just order out." Well, why don't ya just hand me a phone book and a debit card for crying out loud. So we've been eating a lot of pizza.
Today I've been trying to work up the energy to get to the store so I can resume some semblance of my wifely homemaking duties. I just can't seem to figure out what I would buy if I did go and what I would then make for dinner. The more I think about it the more discouraged I become. Does anyone have time to come over and make dinner for us tonight? I promise to evict the moles before you get here.
By the way, I'm officially 1o weeks pregnant today and all (appears to be) well. Judging by the hurl factor, this baby is going to be just as healthy as Sofia. And in other news, I accidentally put a disposable diaper through the wash yesterday and I can only say that I highly recommend not ever doing that if you can help it. Just another reason why I think disposable diapers are sent from the devil.

Sofia in repose

2009-02-25T11:50:00.001-08:00

Mishmash

2009-02-18T02:49:00.000-08:00

#1: I bought a set of pots and pans on HSN a few weeks ago. I was so excited. They came in a big huge box and they were so shiny and pretty. I finally got one of those big pasta pots with the built in strainer that I've been wanting since I was a little girl, a steamer set, and a big skillet with a cover. Plus they were all oven safe, so you can go from the stove top to the oven without a problem. If this is starting to sound like an infomercial, don't get your checkbooks out just yet. Yesterday, after I asked the Oogster to make us some rice, he angrily confronted me with something I had uneasily noticed after just a few uses of one of the pots. It was already rusty around the rim. You can understand he was justifiably irritated, since I bought the thing on flex-pay and we still have 3 more payments of 44.95 before the thing is paid for. I pretended (at the time) to be surprised and dismayed, but, like I said, I had already made that same observation. I was hoping he wouldn't notice. Because I'm lazy and slovenly like that. But since he did notice, I ended up hunting down the return slip (the one thing about HSN is that they allow unconditional returns for 30 days, and they pay the shipping). So I'm sending that crap back. And if anyone is thinking about ordering the cookware off HSN, think twice. Now I will have to retrieve all the old, crappy, ugly pots and pans that I put in a box to send to Goodwill and start using those again. At least they aren't rusty.

#2: I love French Onion Soup. I love how its cooked in the little crock with a crouton and a big layer of swiss Cheese. Its so salty and cheesy and oniony. Yum.

#3: Speaking of cheese, Hugo took me to a fondue restaurant for our anniversary a few weeks ago. We had the most delicious appetizer of fondue with yummy pieces of bread and apples and stuff. The main course consisted of a pot of broth into which we were instructed to insert pieces of meat, vegetables, and raviolis and allow them to cook in the broth before retrieving them and eating them. Interesting. A little gimmicky if you want my opinion. I would have taken another pot of the fondue cheese as my entree if they had allowed it. However, after that came the true moment of joy, because they brought out a pot of chocolate fondue for dessert with all kinds of delicious dessert items to dip in it. Items like cheesecake, pound cake, bananas, strawberries, and marshmallows. It was extremely yummy. I went to Estee Lauder that afternoon and got my make-up done (for some reason whenever I try to put eye make-up on I end up looking more like I just got into a fight than anything else) and they made me look all glamorous and stuff.

#4: Valentine's Day. I had to work. Usually Hugo takes me out to Emiliano's for dinner (which is where we went on our first date), because they always have a special Valentine's Day menu and its all romantic and stuff. But I had to work, so Hugo brought me a sub from Subway and a dozen roses and a box of chocolates. Plus he brought me Sofia, who is the best Valentine's Day present of all. I can't believe she's already almost 9 months old. Something tells me now that Hugo and I are parents, we are going to have to curtail our usual habit of going out to eat for every special occasion. We normally go to all these decidedly adult restaurants to eat to mark special occasions like our first wedding anniversay, our second wedding anniversary (yes, we have two anniversaries because we technically got married twice; once in January and once in September), the anniversary of our first date, Valentine's Day, birthdays, etc... However, going out on our anniversary sans baby involved my getting my butt in action a good hour and a half before our reservation so I could pack her up and run her across town to the babysitter's house. By the time I got back to the house I had to hurriedly throw on my nice clothes and run out the door. Plus, we both experienced a unique phenomenon about half-way through the meal. We missed her. By the time we got out of there after eating our 4 course meal, picked her up and got home, it was late and time to go to bed. Hugo, who had been at work all day, didn't get any time to play with his Chumby Pumby before she went to sleep. He was sad. So we have been frequenting the Red Onion, a family friendly establishment close to our house that we can feel free to bring the baby with us to. They have the most delicious french onion soup by the way...

Babies Babies Everywhere

2009-02-05T19:05:00.000-08:00

Playdate at our house! I blowdried my hair for the occasion.

Sofia, Briona, Mattia, Julia, Sydney, Hanna, Cayden and Madison. Grant (the lone boy) showed up later on. He must be camera shy. Or he's a good man and didn't want to outshine the girls.

Cutie Patootie

2009-02-05T18:29:00.001-08:00

Here are Sofia and Gianna: Cousins attending school (ahem, the mall) with their mommies, who diligently tutored them in the fine art of buying shoes.

Hugo is very popular with girls
Here is Sofia in her "Little G" diaper. It is environmentally friendly and I don't have to wash dirty dipeys every other day. Woo hoo!

It gets cold in Florida too you know

I'm calling this one, "I just pooped my pants and mommy's gonna LOVE cleaning it up!"

The Many Expressions of Sofia

2009-01-15T07:17:00.000-08:00

Some of them anyway. She really has too many to categorize in one posting. I feel a multi-part series coming on...

...But first, a sequence of events.

"My mom is watching the Home Shopping Network. I feel inspired to do some shopping as well."

By the way Sofia, Gram called. She wants her pants back.

"Hey, I could get used to this. Now where's Daddy's credit card?"

" I'm getting a little ahead of myself here. I forgot... I can't walk yet."

"Woops! Whoa!!!! Can I get a little help here? Mom? Ya wanna get that thing off your face and help me out?"

"In some countries, drooling is considered a compliment to the chef..."

"I hate it when my mom puts me in these long skinny pj's that accentuate my abnormal length"

"This is MY corner! Unprotected electrical outlet and all! I will defend it to the death!"

"You think I got this big on skim? Full fat baby! Bring it on!" Mind you, this particular evening out was marked by the fact that she made an unexpected lunge for my water when the waiter plopped it down on the table, thereby knocking it over all over me. She has perfected this sort of lunging hook grab, which is guaranteed to ensure that whatever she knocks over lands directly in MY lap. Hmmmm.....

...But I love her anyway.

You might be the mother of an 8 month old if...

2009-01-14T11:28:00.001-08:00

...your living room looks like this.

...You FINALLY just got back into your pre-pregnancy jeans.
...buying cute outfits for yourself has been replaced by buying cute outfits for the baby.
...your biggest entertainment value these days lies within the reportoire of different air-fart noises you can make.
...the toys that make noise are finally starting to get to you.
...your biggest consideration when picking out a new purse is whether you can fit diapers and wipes, a few small toys, some biter biscuits and a bottle in it.
...You've suffered several small heart attacks when the baby decided to take an unexpected flying leap off the edge of the bed.
...you have an intimate knowledge of the steps required for giving the baby Heimlich maneuver.
...staying home suddenly has its advantages.
...despite all your best efforts, you have watched your baby contort herself in the grocery cart in order to put her mouth around the disgusting, germ infested siderail and proceed to...suck...on it.
...you have known the delight of a child at her first taste of ice cream, whipped cream, chocolate pudding, etc... and suddenly you know why people insist on giving babies food that isn't good for them.

Kisses to all. New pictures coming later on today.
Lauren

Sensible Tips for Daily Living

2008-12-29T18:37:00.000-08:00

If you're having marital problems and your husband was recently arrested for domestic violence and he suggests a nice Christmas-time cruise off the coast of Mexico, you might want to develop a sudden case of seasickness and stay in your cabin the whole time, or better yet, not go at all. At the very least, stay away from the rails.

If you are manning the "crime watch" line and a local utility worker calls in, 3 times, to report a suspicious plastic bag less than a mile away from the house where a child has gone missing and is suspected to have been murdered, you might want to check it out.

If you are 22 years old and find yourself strangely attracted to an ancient and totally unattractive former police officer who is suspected of killing not one but two of his former spouses, you might want to just go ahead and kill yourself right now rather than marrying him and becoming his 5th victim, er, wife.

If you are the already wealthy and influential governor of the state of Illinois and you already suspect that you may be under investigation and surveillance for corruption, you might not want to blatantly and un-intelligently try to sell the president-elect's Senate seat to the highest bidder right under federal investigators' noses.

If you are an insanely rich and extremely smart investment banker who has a succesful investment business that makes billions of dollars legally, you might not want to set up an illegal ponzi scheme on the side that will lose money, cause friends and business associates to kill themselves, get yourself sent to jail, and exacerbate an already ailing economy on the brink of collapse.

I'm just sayin'...

All I want for Christmas is...

2008-12-25T19:59:00.001-08:00

This year, because of the Great Depression, we didn't have a lot of money to spend on Christmas, so John Boy had to go sell his hair to buy Marmie some scarlet ribbons...wait. Just kidding.
I got everything I wanted and a few things I didn't even think to ask for. For instance, on Christmas Eve, I was getting ready for work and Sofia said Mama. This time, there was no doubt. "Mama" she said, then, "Mamamamama". She's been saying it, quite purposefully ever since. This was only 3 days after she turned 7 months old, so as you can see, she's very advanced for her age. At least when it comes to talking. When it comes to crawling, not so much. She still hasn't quite figured that one out. We even bought a rug for the living room floor to make it more comfortable on her. She gets onto all fours, turns around in a circle, goes backward, and rolls over onto her back but just can't work up the necessary momentum to propel herself forward. Eventually, she gets frustrated and starts screaming. I think this is why they say second and third children crawl a lot quicker. Because there isn't always someone right there to rescue them when they start to get frustrated.
When I got home from work on Christmas morning, Hugo had coffee ready for me and everyone was just starting to stir. By everyone, I mean Hugo's parents, his brother Alex, his other brother Daniel and Daniel's wife Maria and their little boy Sebastian, and his sister Paula and her husband Alex. Did you know that I have three brother-in-law's named Alex? I bet not. Oh and Maria brought her aunt as well. So we had a full house. Everyone piled into the living room at that time and we opened presents. Sofia got a pair of earrings from her Abuelo and Abuela; adorable little gold butterflies. I then made her cry by trying to take her other earrings out so she could wear her new ones. I was tired and clumsy by then I guess.
Hugo got me a Coach purse and a Coach wallet. I have been hankering after that purse for a long time, but I never dreamed I would get the matching wallet as well. Not in these economic times. I'm so spoiled. Oh yeah, I got him a french press. Whoo Hoo! I'm going to take him to the mall tomorrow and we're going to get a new flash for the camera that HE'S been hankering after for awhile. With the help of a gift card he got from our brother -in-law Mark.
After we opened presents, we had a delicious breakfast of the Pioneer Woman's Sleepin' In Omelet (which I had prepared the day before, ready to be popped into the oven on Christmas morning) and then I went emphatically to bed. While I was in dreamland, Santa's Little Helpers (my in-laws) prepared a turkey as well as all the side dishes I had gotten ready the day before. I woke up, ate, went back to bed, got up, got ready and came to work. Didja get that? I woke up, ate, went back to bed, got up, got ready and came to work. It was great. I got to do all the things that I love about Christmas (opening presents and eating) and none of the things I hate about Christmas (frantic food preparations and cleaning up). Working the night shift for the holidays has its perks. Plus, I wore my Christmas jammies all day and just dressed Sofia up in a real cute Christmas outfit instead of worrying about my own appearance. The pictures will reflect this.
All in all it was a very succesful holiday. And I hope everyone who reads this (my mom, Val, Rene', Aunt Joann, etc...) had a great holiday as well. If any of you guys are wondering (mom) why you didn't get a requisite phone call on Christmas Day, of course its because I had to work. Plus, in these hard economic times, the cell phone minutes are just so dear...

Brie N' Apple Pie

2008-11-26T13:29:00.000-08:00

OK, Val, you beat me to the apple pie recipe. But here's one I developed today in my test kitchen. Quite delish.
You will need:
6 or 7 Granny Smith Apples
1/2 cup golden raisins (if you're really brave you can soak em in whiskey like I did...yum?)
1 round brie cheese (cut off all that nasty papery rind it comes in too, cause that's just gross)
1/2 cup sugar
1 tspn nutmeg
1/2 lemon or just a few dashes from the bottle, if that's what floats your boat
1 egg white
1 pie crust

For the pie crust, you can buy a premade pie crust. Or, if you're a sadist around the holidays like me, you can make your own. I don't know what it is. All year long I'm perfectly content to make do with the absolutely satisfactory taste of a pre-made pie crust (if I make a pie at all; this year I had to unbury my pie pan from where it had been hiding since, you guessed it, last Thanksgiving). Around the holidays I start feeling June Cleaverish and the need to torture myself asserts itself. But, I will say that, though it may not look as neat and pre-ordained as a store bought one, a homemade crust is a thing to be enjoyed above all other things. So flaky. So buttery (even though I use the recipe on the Crisco can). Enough about that though.

Peel and core and cut up the apples. Exactly how you cut your apples up depends on your philosophy of apple pie of course. I cut mine into slices, about 8 per apple, and then cut the slices halfway down. I like the apples to still look like apple inside the pie. Throw the apples into a bowl and add the raisins, lemon juice, sugar and nutmeg. I don't care for cinnamon in my apple pie because its just so, obvious. Try a little subtlety people. There's probably a lot of Republicans out there who would criticize me for omitting the cinnamon, but I don't really care much for Republicans anyway. So haha.

Now, take your bottom crust and put the wheel of brie smack dab in the middle of it. Oh, I forgot to tell you to pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees. Now pour the filling in. Add the top crust and glaze it with egg whites. And take a butter knife and make a little slit in the very top to vent. Put in the oven and bake for 50 minutes or so. You'll know when its done. It will be crying out to be eaten by the time its done. Due to the inclusion of the brie (and as per my general apple pie philosophy as well, believe it or not) you must eat it warm. The brie will be all soft and warm and, brie-ey. If you hate brie, you're probably a Republican, so go away and don't come back. But, in the interest of open-mindedness, if you happen to be a brie-hatin' Democrat, go ahead and substitute a little tub of mascarpone for the brie. Its much milder and sweeter than brie. Either way, this is definitely an adult apple pie. Especially if you made it with the whiskey soaked raisins, as I strongly suggest that you do. Thanks to the Pioneer Woman for that great tip. And to think that I always thought I didn't like raisins.

Sick...again

2008-11-20T08:25:00.000-08:00

I don't know if its the stress of working nights, having a 6 month old (germ incubator) in the house or the strain of being a lactating mom with a VERY hungry baby (eating and germ-killing for two is hard work), but I am sick for the second time this season. This is very unusual for me (I have gone years without throwing up; though not recently). I might also add that I make a much better nurse than patient. I do not take to being sick very kindly. When I'm sick, the drama queen in me comes out. I make every nose blow into a broadway-inspired theatrical performance. I wallow in my misery. I am capable of doing absolutely nothing. I mean, in the grand scheme of things, a yucky cold virus is not that big of a deal. I know this. Yet it doesn't seem to stop me from making a trip to the urgent care center, taking Sofia to the pediatrician even though she seems to be taking this like much more of a champ then me, and making Hugo call in to work so he can stay home and tend to my needs. After all, if he goes to work, who will brew tea for me, fetch me more tissue, remind me to take my cold medicine and take care of the baby?

This is how the conversation went at Dr. Mas' office (the pediatrician):

So, has Sofia been running a temp? (as Sofia lays on the table, butt-ass naked and giggles to herself).

No, but I have.

Is her nose running? (as Sofia pees all over herself and the table, because I left her diaper off after the girl weighed her and took her temp).

No, but mine is.

Does she have a cough?

No, but I do... you get the picture. Dr Mas was, understandably, mystified as to why I felt that Sofia was sick just because I am. Well, I don't see how she could NOT be sick. She is in my face all the time. I drool all over her, giving her a million kisses a day. She feeds off my tit for God's sake (sorry). It doesn't make any sense! It seems like maybe all MY immunological defenses are being diverted for her use, leaving me to suffer the consequences. What's up with that?

Oh, well, how could I hold it against her? Just look at her. Did you ever see such an adorable little pointy tongue?

Snappy Hugo

2008-11-13T07:44:00.000-08:00

We have a computer filled with thousands of photos that we've never done anything with. Everyone thought we were so much better off when digital photography came into vogue. No more mystery rolls of undeveloped film. No more paying for prints of junk that you don't want. However, as in most things, progress brings its own set of new problems and dilemmas. Now, people can gratuitously shoot photo after photo, all of which end up getting uploaded onto the laptop and sitting there for years. The really good photos tend to end up buried if you aren't careful. So here are some of my favorite pictures that have heretofore sat un-enjoyed and un-displayed.

Here is a picture of me (Hugo's favorite subject before a certain small interloper came along and upstaged me). I'm standing in the ballroom of the Casa Monica Hotel in St. Augustine, the site of Josh and Lisa's wedding. Don't I look fabulous?

This is so wrong. I just had to include it...

My parents dogs, Penny and Brassy.

This is a picture of some really strange clouds we saw on our way from San Diego to Las Vegas. Wierd...

Yes, that is me. In my wedding dress. In the pool.

Hugo took this picture of Giana. I think its really cool. How you can see my sister Val setting up a pose in the background of Rene' and Alex on the tractor (repeat after me...If you have to ask, you don't want to know). Giana, oblivious to the wierdness that is her parents and her aunt Val, is playing with the bubbles, and one second before Hugo snapped the picture, she spilled them all over her leg. Her expression, surprise, mixed with a certain amount of delight, is absolutely priceless. The combination of pose and candid is part of what makes it so appealing, I think. I don't care who you are, that Hugo certainly does take a nice picture...

This is a West Virginia Trash the Dress shot. If you have to ask what trashing the dress is, you should google it. Definitely.
Here are Nicholas and Giana happily watching some toons together. Adorable.

Here is a picture of the farm in West Virginia. The place might well be overrun with hicks, but there are some real purrty views.

...ditto

Me and Hugo. Such an attractive couple...

This is me, with some serious bedhead, teaching Giana how to play some Mozart. She also learned to walk that weekend, so I guess it turned out to be a very fruitful trip.

Little House on the Prairie and other stuff...

2008-11-07T00:40:00.000-08:00

Sofia has taken to saying "MAAAAA" whenever she is crying. She hasn't said it any other time but it has become quite unmistakable that she blames me for every unpleasant thing that happens to her over the course of the day. And when all that pent-up suffering finally finds its outlet in tears, wailing, and gnashing of teeth (if she had any to gnash, which she does not), she let's it all out in a "MAAAAAAAAAA". Is she talking? Is this to be her first word? Her first utterance of my name? I had invisioned it so differently... Also, I had planned on her calling me something cute and adorable like mama or mommy. Apparently, she likes the easy functionality of the mono-syllabic "Ma". Just call me Ma Ingalls or something (Little House on the Prairie joke). Where's my apron? And my abnormally long single braid?
One time when I was in high school I was over at my sister Val's house and we were watching Little House on The Prairie reruns (even at that time they were, like, well over 10 years old). She swore she had never seen that one. Then, at the end, she predicted all the women of the church were going to get up and march across the bridge singing a rousing rendition of Onward Christian Soldiers as the closing credits rolled. Was she psychic? Did she lie and had she really seen that one before? Or, did she really just know the format of the show so well that she was able to predict with astonishing clarity what the writers would make those poor pioneer women do? This is one of the great questions that has bugged me for all these years.
When I was really young, Little House was one of the only shows we were allowed to watch. We used to go upstairs to Gram and Beeb's in our pajamas and watch the rest of Jeapardy! (I love how it always has the exclamation mark) and then Little House would come on. There was one episode that scared the living daylights out of me, when Laura and Mary were running a girl's boarding school (an interesting departure from the facts since I read the whole series and they never did any such thing) and one night, while all the menfolk were away, there was a crazed lunatic on the loose and poor Mary couldn't even see and she was terrified and so was I. Were the girls at the school blind too? Maybe. I don't remember exactly how the drama unfolded, but it was the scariest thing I ever saw. Up to that point. Of course.
I'm definitely going to read the whole series to Sofia when she gets a little older (ok, I confess, I already started trying to read it to her and she just wasn't interested so I gave up for now). I'm going to be heartbroken if my child turns out to be a reading enthusiast and starts reading on her own too soon. I have about 2 dozen books already lined up that I want to read to her. Anne of Green Gables, the entire series, of course. Emily of New Moon, another series by the same author, naturally. Those will be later. Until then we will certainly make our way through Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Charlotte's Web, Stuart Little, The Borrowers, and Cheaper by the Dozen. Am I missing any? Help?

Most Popular

2008-11-05T18:13:00.000-08:00

Thanks to the magic of "the internets" and feedjit, the nifty little thing that keeps track of the traffic to my blog and where it came from (geographically as well as from what site), I can now pinpoint my most popular blogs with those who are not related to me and do not know me. In other words, actual traffic; people who aren't just signing on to see if I've posted any new pictures of my little upstaging daughter Sofia.
See, since this blog is run by Google, my blog entries actually pop up in search engines if people are searching for specific terms or phrases included in my entries. So what are the most popular blog entries? In 3 odd months, which a total of 27 blog entries, my most popular ones are my ode to the nose sucker (http://fatuglyrhino.blogspot.com/2008/08/beware-nose-sucker.html), my description of one of the most horrifying events I've ever experienced
(http://fatuglyrhino.blogspot.com/2008/09/cockroach-incident.html), and finally, my expose' on the sneaky, palate-addicting gastronomical creations of the evil Starbucks corporation
(http://fatuglyrhino.blogspot.com/2008/10/salted-caramel-signature-hot-cocoa-from.html). The first one is the one I find most amusing. People all over the world have actually been stumbling upon my blog after searching for such things as "infant nose sucker" "adult nose sucker" (?@#!), and "how to get booger out of baby's nose". Well, glad to have been of service, world. Is that going to be my legacy of public service? Hope not. Anyway, people are also interested in hearing about my close encounter with a creature of the cockroach variety. Finally, I have accidentally discovered that, in order to increase traffic to my blog, it cannot but help my endeavor to include the names of prominant national brands like Starbucks. Is this legal? Am I breakin' the law? I didn't say anything bad about the stuff. Au contraire. I was highly complimentary.
So, in the future, you can expect to see blogs entitled, "My triumphant victory dance on election night which included consumption of an inordinantly large slice of week-old birthday cake from Publix Bakery," "The long road ahead of Obama in which he will no doubt require copious servings of Stuffed Crust pizza from Pizza Hut", and last but not least, "Sour grapes and plenty of comforting Velveeta brand shells and cheese for McCain/Palin following crushing defeat on election night'. Think of the traffic I will entice to my site. Tee hee.

BIrthday!

2008-11-03T19:16:00.001-08:00

I don't know if it was the post pregnancy impulse to get back in shape or a last minute fear that a Coach purse (what I originally thought I'd ask for) was too "old" and would brand me as a 30-something before my time (29, ok? I'm 29. I got a whole nother year to be in my twenties!) but I decided to ask for a Nintendo Wii and Wii Fit for my birthday this year. Hugo was thrilled. It brought him right back to his childhood in Colombia when his parents bought him and his brothers and sister a Nintendo for Christmas and they got to stay up all night playing it for the first time ever. He and I have been having a blast with the thing. My favorite thing to do on the Wii is Hula Hoop. Actually, let me be honest. My favorite thing to do is watch Hugo do the hula hoop. You haven't lived if you haven't seen a 6'2'' Colombian twirling an imaginary hula hoop in his underwear.

The Day in Pictures

2008-10-28T19:03:00.000-07:00

Today I hosted mommies and babies for a Halloween themed playdate. We all dressed our little "Springpeas" up in costumes for the occasion and I decided to make an autumnal themed dessert for the ladies. I considered a lot of options, from simple to exotic. It should come as no surprise that I settled on a recipe culled from the goldmine of the Pioneer Woman's website. She called it Pumpkin Cake with Whiskey Cream. Of course, since I was dealing with a bunch of lactating moms with differing theories on the acceptability of alcohol consumption by the nursing mother, I decided to delete the alcohol and go with a staider, less controversial version. Here is the link to the original recipe: http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/2008/10/pumpkin-cake-with-whiskey-whipped-cream/. It came out deliciously if I do say so.

Sofia was dressed up as an adorable little flower. Lucky for me, it was one of the few remaining costumes available at The Children's Place (on sale for $11.50) after I balked at spending $27.99 at Gymboree on a questionably cute butterfly costume. She was so cute and flower like that this monarch butterfly who happened to fly into the house was completely fooled and spent quite a few minutes trying to score some pollen.

The Monarch Butterfly is Presley, Cindy's adorable little munchkin. At the top, we have Grant as Charlie Brown, Joshua as himself, Sofia as the flower, Mattia as the Strawberry, Presley as the Butterfly and Briona as the superhero Wing Nutt, protector of babies everywhere.

Chunktastic Me

2008-10-28T01:49:00.000-07:00

Here's a fun one. For some reason, only now when I am starting to regain a glimmer of my former shape (albeit, a slightly hippier, stretch markier version of that former self) can I get any enjoyment out of my pregnant pictures. At the time when I was pregnant I did not feel beautiful in any way. Now, I can't say I look at them and think they are beautiful. But I do get a certain thrill in looking at myself and knowing that Sofia, tiny little adorable precious Sofia, was in there. She was her, even then. She liked to sleep in; often not waking up until after 10 in the morning, which she still does. I know because she would be eerily still until then every morning. Then she would start kicking athletically away until 2 or so in the morning. I knew her before I saw her and she was mine from the very beginning. So what's a few stretch marks in the face of that?

My Favorite Shows

2008-10-28T00:36:00.000-07:00

Thought for the day...
Like many well-paid actors and actresses, I happen to have a fairly elevated opinion of myself. Its just that I am right to have such an elevated opinion of myself and many famous people are just, well, stupid. I am smart and interesting and well-informed and if anyone did know who I was, your damn right I would be famous. That's right. But in the world of nursing, when baby gets put in a corner, baby is usually a new mom who doesn't want to put her kid in daycare, and the corner is usually a spot on the night shift. Weekend night shift. How am I supposed to become famous on the night shift?
I was at Kohl's last week and I found an Dirty Dancing Christmas tree ornament, which was a plastic figurine of Johnny doing the lift pose with Baby in her pink dress. Hilarious. I almost bought it for my sister Val, she so would have enjoyed it. However, it was priced at 16 dollars and I was like, just how far are you willing to go for a joke, Lauren? 16 dollars? That's like, 2 lattes at Starbucks. Sorry Val. The lattes won.
And by the way, if I had to describe my philosophy of life in 5 words, it would be
1. scattered
2. hopeful
3. unsure
4. interested
5. curious
Every time I am working the night shift and the 97% of Republican night shift nurses I work with start to get to me, I retreat into my own dark little corner of Keithiness. By that, of course, I mean that I go into my comatose ventilator-dependant patient's room and turn on MSNBC, which replays Keith Olberman's show several times throughout the night. If any of my comatose patients ever wake up (haha, they never do that) and say that they saw God while they were in there, and they describe him as being passionately Democrat with predominantly gray hair and a penchant for purple ties and talking smack about George Bush, we'll all know why. Or will we?...
My other favorite show is Suze Ormond. She is a financial wiz who talks about retirement, dealing with debt, investing, work, and purchasing stuff. She has a great segment called, "Can I afford it?" which I wish I could download into, like, my head. That way, whenever I wanted to buy something, I would be like, Can I afford it Suze? And she would say, "How much do you owe on your house? Is your student loan paid off? How many car payments do you and your husband have? And then she would say no. I used to watch Suze every Saturday night on CNBC at 9 PM, or later on at midnight if I didn't make the earlier show. However, now that I work weekends and for some reason, tend to be very busy during those times and unble to sneak into my comatose patients' rooms to watch it, I feel a deep echoing void in my life. Suze, someday, Sofia will be able to go to daycare and I will be able to come back to the land of the living. Then we can be together again. Now don't you go gettin' canceled on me, ya hear? She always ends her show by saying, "Remember...People first, then money, then things. Now you stay safe."
And that's it. Those two shows are the sum total of my favorite things to watch. No Survivor, no ER, not even Gray's Anatomy. God I hate that show. I watched it for two seasons and then I was like, wait a second. Is this General Hospital at night? Are there any other possible cheesy variations on the "Dr. McDreamy" theme? Can that girl get any skinnier? I bought some Gray's Anatomy scrubs last time I went scrub shopping. When I wear them I always worry that some sexy doctor is going to come along and we're going to fall in love and then have tribulations. And I don't want that to happen because I'm really quite happy with Hugo. He's so untribulationy. Come to think of it, I'm probably pretty safe. Ever notice on shows like Gray's Anatomy that the nurses are relegated to side characters and unimportant extras? I have news for you. The nurses are the HEART and SOUL of the hospital. We do 98% of the work that those shows are always showing the doctors doing. Why are doctors so interesting to the layperson and nurses, not so much? Alas, I fear that this will have to be a question for another day. Now you stay safe...

My sister is gonna kill me...

2008-10-17T12:05:00.000-07:00

Here is a picture of my nephew Nicholas.

His baby photo is a testament to the tragedy of early childhood obesity.

His parents were guilty of some of the most gratuitous acts of overindulgance that can be perpetrated on a child of his age.

He was diagnosed with childhood diabetes at a very young age.

He appeared on Oprah, screaming "More maymos Mama, More maymos" leaving millions of fans bewildered as to the meaning of the word, Maymos, and what its caloric content might be.

His happy-go-lucky appearance in this photo belies the tragic array of symptoms experienced by infants suffering from his level of obesity...

...Just kidding about all that. Here he is with me looking fit as a fiddle at the age of 5 (we were wearing our Aunt/Nephew matching outfits that day).

Val: please don't disown me. I found that picture of Nicholas as a baby and I couldn't resist. His before and after shots will surely give mothers of pudgy babies the world over hope that their porkers too, will one day grow into slender little men and women.

Sofia Bedazzled

2008-10-16T20:41:00.000-07:00

A "piercing" scream

2008-10-16T14:03:00.001-07:00

OK, I just took Sofia to the mall and got her ears pierced. Am I...
A. Mean
B. Vain
C. A bad mother
D. All of the above?
She did very well. I premedicated her with baby Tylenol. I asked the girl if we could do both ears at once and she graciously called her manager up in the other store and they did it together to accomodate my request. Sofia let out a piercing scream when they did the deed but she was fine within about 30 seconds. I had a bottle ready to stuff in her mouth and she appeared to have forgotten the insult very quickly. Meanwhile, my stomach was upset and I felt like I was going to throw up for the rest of the afternoon.
By the way, she looks adorable with her cubic zirconia studs and I have vowed out of guilty conscience to buy her a pair of real diamond studs when she's old enough to appreciate them to make up for my cruelty today.
I was emphatic earlier on about not getting Sofia's ears pierced, so why did I change my mind? Well, it basically comes down to keeping up with the Jones'es I'm afraid. Some of the other mommies in my playgroup had their babies' ears pierced and it looked so cute. Also, my sister Val told me that she regretted not getting Kaitlin's done because she is 9 now and she really wants her ears pierced but she keeps chickening out when they get to the mall. So, really, I have saved Sofia from that dreaded apprehension later on. And now, Sofia and Gianna (her closest cousin) can compare their Jezebel adornments whenever they hang out.
When my network administrator/husband/personal photographer gets home from his day job, I will have him take a picture of the new glamour-baby and post it for everyone to see.
P.S. Mom, don't answer the poll at the beginning of this posting. I already know what one you will check.

The Yummiest...

2008-10-16T09:43:00.000-07:00

Apparently, its like, even better than a mango (those of you who watch Oprah already know what I'm talking about).

It contains everything a newborn infant needs to grow and develop, and it changes as the newborn becomes an infant and then a toddler so that it always delivers exactly what the child needs at that time.

It provides antibodies and immunity to the child to protect from disease while the child's own immune system is still immature.

It helps mom to lose the weight even if she still consumes far more Ben and Jerry's Chubby Hubby than is considered necessary and prudent.

It fosters a bond that lasts forever between mother and child.

It gives girls with an A cup that curvy look for the first time in their lives.

It costs nothing.

It gives a mom who happens to be a night shift nurse an excuse for having her baby come into the ICU at 10PM for a "goodnight feeding".

It functions as an automatic "restart" button whenever the baby is upset about anything, has just gotten vaccinated, or is just plain fussy.

It means never having to go down to the kitchen in the middle of the night to prepare or warm a bottle up.

It knows no class or socioeconomic status; its a gift every mom can afford and has access to.

It may result in a decreased risk of breast cancer for the mom later in life.

...And last but not least, it gives closet exhibitionists an excuse for "whippin' it out" in public.

Dads are Different

2008-10-15T13:55:00.001-07:00

Lovin' that baby daddy...

Here is a far from exhaustive list of why new dads are very different from new moms.

1. When the baby cries they seem to drift into an even deeper sleep than before. Its like a lullaby for them...

2. When they dress their little baby girls they somehow manage to take a whole closetfull of adorable outfits and combine two of the most unmatched, not meant to go together things to produce a truly original look.

3. They give the mother of the child a heart attack by carrying the baby in one arm, just assuming that the baby is not going to throw herself backward.

4. They give the mother of the baby a heart attack by playing games that the mother wouldn't dream of, such as throwing the baby up in the air in a very un-fun appearing way....and the baby loves it.

5. When they are taking care of the baby they just throw a bunch of toys on the bed and put the kid on the bed in a way that, if the mother did it, would be certain to produce outraged screams...and the baby loves it.

6. They are conveniently at work whenever the baby gets her shots at the doctor's office, so the mom gets to deal with the trauma, and they just get to comfort and cuddle the baby later on when they get home.

7. When the baby poops, they go through an entire package of baby wipes in cleaning her up.

8. While the mother makes a point out of putting a new outfit on her every day, the dad sees no reason, if the outfit isn't visibly soiled, not to put her back in the same clothes from yesterday; sort of the same way that he views his own wardrobe choices.

9. Bottles are left wherever they happen to be when the baby finishes them.

10. Dads prize baby gadgets above all other things and will carry the baby monitor around long after the mom has discovered that, when the baby really means business, she can be heard anywhere in the house without a baby monitor.

Helpful sites for Earth-Friendly Moms

2008-10-11T13:52:00.000-07:00

Here are a few links to some great sites for those of you who may be interested in alternative diapering solutions.

http://www.sunshinediapers.com/

THis site is where I have purchased all of my cloth diapers except one, an ill-conceived all-in-one diaper that Target sells on its web-store that I decided to try. It was called a Bumpkin and I don't recommend them. They are expensive, bulky, and take forever to dry.

Rhea Bush, the owner of Sunshine Diapers is based out of Gainesville but she sells all different kinds of brands and ships anywhere. I found her to be an invaluable resource in navigating all the options and brands of diapers available these days. I highly recommend the Kissaluvs for newborns and the Thirsties all in one diapers for older babies. I even got some old-fashioned pre-folds (the things that a lot of people use as burp cloths nowadays) for her to wear at night with a diaper cover. When I was about 30 weeks pregnant, Rhea allowed me to come over to her house where she conducted a tutorial on cloth diapering, complete with a Winny the Pooh model to practice on, at her kitchen table.

I also recommend the Charlie's Soap available at Sunshine Diapers for use as a cloth diapering detergent. I use it on all my diapers as well as Sofia's clothes because it has no additives or scent. Apparently, most commerical detergents have a lot of that stuff and it decreases the absorption of the cloth diapers as well as contributing to rashes and irritations of babies since they have sensitive skin. Its VERY cheap and works well on all laundry. Also environmentally friendly (of course).

http://www.gdiapers.com/

This is a company that sells a brand new type of "hybrid" diaper, one which I think I am going to switch to for trips and outings since it has a much smaller environmental impact than the traditional disposable diaper. It consists of a cloth diaper cover with a flushable insert that apparently takes only 5 days to decompose (as opposed to the 200-500 year disposables) since it goes into the septic system and not the landfill. Landfills are bad places people. Send as little trash to them as you possibly can, because nothing really biodegrades in those places. Yuck. It is very affordable and was brought to my attention by a fellow night shift nurse who is thinking about having a baby. Here I was, getting all ready to "evangelize" to her about cloth diapers and she ended up schooling me on a totally new option. Go Teresa! Some of you might remember Teresa from my story about the patient who came into the ER with the dead cat under her that wasn't discovered until she got to the ICU. http://fatuglyrhino.blogspot.com/2008/08/in-unlikeliest-of-places.html Please read all about it if you have time. Absolutely HI-Larious! And totally true too. All the good things happen while I'm on maternity leave...

Alas, neither of these sites offers any good comic relief like that which is available through kellymom.com (see http://fatuglyrhino.blogspot.com/2008/09/helpful-resources-for-new-parents.html). If you've ever hankered to see a lactating man, check out that post.

Salted Caramel Signature Hot Cocoa from Starbucks

2008-10-09T12:00:00.000-07:00

OK, SERIOUSLY! It isn't fair! I still have about 5 sticky pounds leftover from my pregnancy (OK, I admit it, those 5 sticky pounds had nothing to do with my pregnancy and everything to do with caramel turtle waffle bowl sundaes from Dairy Queen and jelly donuts from Dunkin) and the entire commercial world seems to be conspiring against me to keep me from losing those pounds! Last week I went in to Starbucks (Sofia insisted; she frequently does) to get a nice staid, minimally offensive regular coffee with just a teeny tiny splash of half and half, no sugar or anything, and what was I confronted with? A whole tray of FREE samples of Starbucks' new line of gourmet hot cocoas. The hazelnut, I could resist. Mocha? No problem. But roll out something called "Salted Caramel Hot Chocolate" and we've got a problem on our hands. I LOOOOOOOOVE salty caramelly things (see above, caramel turtle waffle bowl sundae). I don't know how I am supposed to resist things like that, especially when I'm in upstate NY, feeling crappy, and walking around Lake Placid on a cold autumn day. I gave in. I had one. It was divine. Now its all I can think about. On our way to the airport the other day, we stopped at Starbucks so I could get another one. Even though I only ordered a grande, they had conveniently run out of grande sized beverage cups and upgraded me to a complimentary venti instead. Just twist my arm why don't ya. I guess I'm just going to have to get used to these size 10 pants for awhile.
Check out my pics from our trip, taken by my talented photog sister Val. http://valspictureperfect.blogspot.com/2008/10/sofia-little-lady.html
http://valspictureperfect.blogspot.com/2008/10/lauren-hugo-and-sofia.html

First airplane ride with baby...

2008-10-01T08:31:00.000-07:00

OK, here's my checklist for the big long weekend trip that will involve, gulp! A three hour flight from Orlando to Albany.
Diapers.
Sofia's clothes.
Sofia's tubby stuff (towel, baby shampoo, baby lotion, baby soap)
Socks for Sofia (its COLD in New York right now!)
bibs for Sofia (she is eating solids now, makes a mess)
Wipes
Food for Sofia
Pacifier
A few toys
Sofia's new coat that I got her at Old Navy for the trip
Sofia's carseat (getting checked at the airport)
The camera bag (there's sure to be lots of excellent photo ops of Sofia)
Sofia's baby health kit (with clippers, thermometer and, of course, nose sucker)
Breast pump
Sofia's sling
A pair of jeans and a few shirts for me
A pair of jeans and a few shirts for Hugo
Some socks (its COLD in upstate New York!) for both of us
Toothbrushes
Deoderant
Ativan for me; enough for before and during the flight, with a special post-flight "decompression" dose
WOW. Who could have thought that Sofia (all 15 pounds of her) could need so much STUFF and Hugo and I could get by with so little?
(I'm freekin out)

Saving the Earth, One dirty diaper at a time...

2008-09-30T18:13:00.000-07:00

Cloth diapered darling
Hugo and I made a decision when I was pregnant with Sofia. Actually, we made a decision long before Sofia was thought of or tried for, which involved agreeing roundly that the Earth was literally groaning under the weight of all the human beings on it and that we shouldn't make the situation worse by procreating. We would eschew the age-old practice of spitting out eating, pooping, garbage producing infants just because we had chosen to get hitched and just enjoy our lives together without any kids. We decided to give old Mother Earth a break and not have any kids. Well, then we changed our minds. So, we decided that if we were going to bring this child, this garbage spewing, unsustainable being, into the straining populace, we would do everything we could to bring up an ecologically sensitive, non-excessive trash producing, alternative fuel car driving (ok, so she won't be driving anything but a sweet tricked out Graco Stroller for a long time) infant.

The first step in the plan was to find a solution to the diaper crisis. See, way back in the day, diapers were made of cloth and our grandmas and grandpas (knowing MY Grandma, she never did, that's why I included the grandpas in the deal) would wash them out, fold them neatly in a hamper, and then reuse them. Remember safety pins? By the time our moms were pushing us out (in twos, threes, fours and in my case, fives), disposable diapers were on the rise. And if your mommy diapered YOU in sweet little Huggies than somewhere, in some landfill, stinking, rotting (but not decomposing) and leaking toxic little baby turds into the Earth, those diapers still remain. I read an article recently that said it takes those things 200-500 years to break down. Are any of you people out there planning on living for 200-500 years? Your diapers, then, will outlive you. And I didn't want that for my little darling. I wanted her little turds to go away and never be heard from again. So we decided to do cloth diapers.

Now, realize, that the disposable diaper industry pays a lot to keep us using their products. Apparently, nobody in the disposable diaper industry gives a flying crap (no pun intended) that their products are toxic, unhealthy and very very bad for the environment. Anybody out there care to cite that very well known "study" done on the environmental effects of cloth versus disposable diapers? The one that says the environmental effects are equal and that it really doesn't make a difference either way? The one Parents magazine, as well as a host of other popular-amongst-the-mommy-set magazines has frequently cited? Yeah, I did some digging on that one. Guess who paid for that research? HINT: Its the companies that makes the chemicals that are used to create the disposable diapers. And guess what else? That research has been banned from being printed as research in England due to the fact that it has been deemed false information and mere propaganda from the diapers companies to assuage the guilty feelings of moms who just might be contemplating the idea of switching to cloth. Why, you might ask, would Parents magazine, a reputable periodical, print such a thing? Well, open up an issue of the magazine and thumb through some of the advertisements in it. Who is it that is paying the magazine big bucks to advertise in their magazine? (I'll give you a hint; its not the cloth diaper companies).

So we found ourselves in a not terribly unique position of being treated like children by everyone we told about the hair brained cloth diapering idea. They said we wouldn't last. They laughed. They said the first time we had to do a load of dirty crappy diapers, we would turn tail and run to the nearest store for some Pampers. Strangely enough though, we found when we brought Sofia home from the hospital that we actually kind of liked the diapers. They were soft and felt nice. They didn't have a bunch of gel in the center that turned to cement whenever the baby peed so that we could arguably leave the dirty diaper on the kid for 12 hours without her butt getting wet. They had to be changed frequently, but since we did it right from the start, we didn't really mind. We had to do a load of dirty diapers about every other day to keep up with them. Oh my. Might I add in here that Hugo's mother cloth diapered 4 kids in COLOMBIA with diapers that she had to make herself and without a washing machine? Every time I don't feel like doing a load of diapers, I think of that. And best of all, we never had to make an emergency "diaper run" to the store in the middle of the night.

We have spent about 500 dollars on all the diapers we'll need until the kid is potty trained. Oh, and did I mention, cloth diapered kids are potty trained, on average, six months sooner than disposable diapered kids? You see, all that gel that the diaper company puts into your kids' diapers actually serves several purposes. First of all, it keeps the kid so dry that she doesn't even realize she's gone, which means that by the time your child is of potty trainable age, she makes little or no connection between the act of releasing her bladder and the resultant wetness that should accompany it. She has to, in effect, totally learn how to recognize that she is even going before she can be potty trained. Secondly, it sets your kid up for all kinds of convenient products (designed and marketed by the disposable diaper companies) to act as "interim" or "training" tools while your child is learning to potty. Pull-ups, toddler diapers, toddler wipes (in what way these are different from baby wipes I have no idea) and those neat new diapers for 10 year old boys that are disguised as boxer shorts so he won't get made fun of at camp. I tend to think that I got off easy with 500 dollars. Also, IF we decide to give Sofia a baby brother or sister, we won't have to spend ANYTHING on the diapers for that one. All you disposable diaper using moms should try that with YOUR baby's diapers. Save them and reuse them on the next one. They'll still be around I promise you.

So if you notice that Sofia looks a little puffier around the middle than other babies in some of the pictures, it's because her cloth diapers give her an absolutely adorable little Oompah Loompah appearance. She seems to be dealing with the stress quite nicely though. Do I think every mom should throw out their disposable diapers and buy cloth from now on? Kind of. But here's the thing. Keep a few packages of your Huggies around for trips, long days of errand running and the like. I even have a few packages for those purposes. Nobody's saying we shouldn't use paper plates and plastic silverware EVER. But who uses them every night for dinner? Most of us bust out the glass plates and metal silverware most of the time. Dixie Cups and Chinet plates are perfectly acceptable for picnics, work eat-ins, and potlucks, but it would just be silly if we ate off them all the time. If you think about diapers in much the same way, I think you might begin to see my point.

If you just CAN"T bring yourself to stick your toe in the water of cloth diapering, ok. I won't hate you for it (though I can't speak for mother nature on this matter). However, think very carefully about the future our kids will live in. They will be the ones who will have to learn how to live more environmentally friendly lives. They will have to adapt as we have all failed most miserably to do in even the most simple ways. It will be their future that depends on it. Are you doing your part to make sure that your child is prepared for that future?

Last year around this time...

2008-09-15T22:23:00.000-07:00

OK, last year around this time (actually towards the end of October) I was experiencing the joys of first trimester pregnancy and around my birthday and Halloween was when we made the "Big Announcement" to Hugo's family and my side of the family that lives in Daytona (ie. Rene', Alex, Frank and Angela).

Here are a few pictures of me, unwrapping the gift from Hugo that "spilled the beans" so to speak. We decided that at my birthday dinner he would present me with a gift wrapped onesy or newborn outfit of some kind. When I opened it, his family would be like "WTF?" or, more appropriately, "Que es esto?" Try to keep up with the sequence. It went a little something like this....

He chose an adorable little sleeper that was white with green dinosaurs on account of the fact that we didn't know what the gender was yet (you think maybe he was leaning toward boy?)

I held it aloft proudly. Here you can clearly see my "sea bands" the grey wristbands that resemble something Cyndi Lauper would wear in a workout video from the '80s. They were supposed to help with the morning sickness (a euphemism if I ever heard one). I was sick all the time.
I looked at Hugo and grinned...
...cuz I had a feeling that what was underneath the jammies was a very pricey little video camera that I had suggested he purchase me for my birthday...
...so that we would have it when the baby was born to videotape her with
Hugo's parents...his mom got it right away, but clearly, his father was wondering, "Isn't that going to be too small for her? Who is she kidding?"

Hugo's brother Daniel was like, "Geez, I was starting to think the old boy didn't have what it takes..."
Hugo's dad was like, "Can I borrow this?"
Later that night, at a party at George and Adrianna's, the other part of the family had their chance to weigh in on the news. What's that? Was it a costume party? No, Alex and Rene' are just wierd like that. He likes to play Doctor, she likes to dress like a floozy from a different era.
Me and Hugo decided not to dress up. Or actually, we dressed up as a pregnant girl and Jimmy Smits.
Gianna was like, "Yo, if you think I'm just gonna push over and not be the baby anymore, you gotta nother thing comin'! Don't mess with the gansta fairy"

Helpful Resources for New Parents

2008-09-15T20:53:00.000-07:00

Here is a picture of Sofia (far left) along with some of her future "best friends," all born within a few weeks of her at NFRMC; known affectionately by us moms as our "SpringPeas"

As a new mom, I have several websites that, along with my trusty American Society of Pediatricians tome, my sister Val's phone numbers, and the paltry amount of knowledge that falls under the heading of "maternal instinct," act as my main resources for parenting. Kellymom.com happens to be a very helpful resource for nursing moms. It was a godsend during those first few dark weeks of motherhood when I wanted nothing more than to hurl the baby through an open window every time she "latched on". However, upon browsing through the many helpful links contained in the site, I happened upon a really interesting one. It is aptly (and alluringly) titled "milkmen: men who breastfeed." Now how, I ask you, can one resist clicking on that one? For everyone's enjoyment, I will post a link to the site.

http://www.unassistedchildbirth.com/miscarticles/milkmen.html

Please don't think I'm making fun of Kellymom. I love the site. Like I said, it was a godsend. Especially after I watched the hilarious Youtube video about lactating men. It gave me an idea...Hugo? You're feeding the next one.

Another {un} helpful link was this one...

http://www.kellymom.com/parenting/links/no-diapers.html

I decided to put this idea into practice one day soon after we brought Sofia home. The Diaper Free Babies people recommend putting your baby, naked, upon a blanket or towel on your bed and "observing her" for an extended period of time to learn what her facial expressions and mannerisms are just prior to eliminating. Then, you can just watch for those preparatory signs and hold her over a small potty whenever she is about to go, thereby eliminating (hehe) the need for diapers. That sounded mighty interesting and if all the granola moms were doing it, I was determined to do it as well. Who needs diapers? I laid Sofia on the bed as directed and proceeded to "watch" her. She was quite content to be naked and happily munched on the back of her hand while I "observed" her. After quite some time, I began to feel the need to eliminate myself, so I quickly excused myself. Upon returning to the bedroom, I found that Sofia had taken advantage of my absence by both pooping and peeing all over herself while I was gone. I put a diaper on her and gave up. What a quitter I am.

Sofia at 16 weeks

2008-09-15T19:46:00.000-07:00

I had a special request from one of my loyal readers (my mom) for some recent pictures of Sofia. So, I had Hugo go through, I don't know, 4,000 or so raw images on his computer and pick out some real cuties. I like to think of Hugo as my Network Administrator first and my husband second.

Go Gators!

Catching some "couch time"
Sofia "Pooh"
Now, I will post this and congratulate myself on several facts:

1. My daughter (whom I created with a minor amount of assistance from Hugo) is the cutest baby in the world.

2. I am the luckiest mother in the world since it is 10:55 PM and Sofia has been sound asleep since 9 or so and I'm not even terrified that she will wake up.

3. It feels good to not have engorged boobies anymore (those first few months of nursing were a doozie).

4. So far, I seem to be succeeding at this whole "stay at home mom who just happens to work 36 hours a week" thing. Me and Sofia had a lovely day in which we went to the mall, Old Navy and Target and walked around to avoid staying at home and succumbing to the temptations of the "all day nap" which I easily could have done. I bolstered myself with plenty of coffee from Starbucks and tried to forget the fact that my 401K (as well as everyone else's in America) is soon to be gone and McCain is actually starting to pull ahead in the polls. Yikes!

Oh and here's an amusing anecdote. Today, I went down to Hugo's work to pick him up and arrived early, so Sofia and I enjoyed some time together on the bench in the very park-like setting that is the Sunstate Federal Credit Union's downtown branch (one of the many joys of living in Gainesville is that even the downtown area is nice and green with plenty of trees and streams and whatnot; you hardly feel like you're in a city at all).

Hugo and his boss, Chuck, came out of the building promptly at 6 PM and Chuck greeted us pleasantly. I told Hugo that we had spent the day shopping and strolling around Gainesville and then Hugo's boss Chuck said something that SOUNDED like, "Now its time to go home and sip some beers with Daddy, right?"

"Damn Straight!" I replied, grinning enthusiastically at the thought. Perhaps Hugo had mentioned this to him as his plan for the evening or something. As we were walking away toward the car, Hugo looked at me strangely and said, "Why are you grinning? What's so funny about that?"

"He said we were gonna go home and sip some beers!" I giggled. I don't know, it just seemed kind of uncharacteristic of his boss to say something like that. As it turns out, it was. What he REALLY said, according to Hugo was that it was time to SWITCH GEARS, not SIP BEERS. Tee Hee. I guess I must have some fuzz in my ears.

Another amusing anecdote (they're just piling up here tonight). Hugo and I are currently in the computer room, he at his monster PC that he built himself and me with my laptop. I just caught Hugo laughing quietly to himself. "What's so funny?" I asked. He was enjoying quite a chuckle. He demured, claiming that it was something only he would be amused by and I wouldn't "get it". Of course, once he said that, I had to know. I insisted and finally he broke down. "My computer is running at 17 degrees Celcius" he said, and I howled with laughter. Because he is so right; I have no idea why that is laugh-worthy. And that makes it all the more of a riot.

Some of My Worst Vices part IV

2008-09-12T14:38:00.000-07:00

Cassie, My Yorkshire Terrier

But, you may ask, how can an adorable pooch be considered a vice (unless you have already come to the conclusion that I have an extremely loose grasp of exactly what a vice is, in which case you would be entirely correct; after all, I don’t have any REAL vices). The truth is Cassie is far from being an adorable pooch. If you examine the picture at the header of this blog, you will see Cassie sitting on my lap. If you look closely, you may also appreciate the fact that she has a certain look of superiority on her face which tells the world that she is the queen and she doesn’t give one red cent what you or anyone else thinks of her. What you might not be able to tell from that picture is that she is mean and vile and frequently chooses to roll around in rotten animal remains before returning to the house to sit on my furniture as though she owns it. She hates her sister Nicky who I specifically got to act as Cassie’s companion during the long days Hugo and I were away at work. The way that she expresses her feelings towards Nicky is by attacking her at any given moment (real subtle, huh?) and also by walking over to whatever chair, cushion, blanket or bed (mine included) Nicky deigns to sit upon and peeing directly in front of her. Not only that, but Nicky got several beatings for this when she was first brought home, because up until that point Cassie had always demonstrated at least a moderate amount of urinary continence so I assumed (until I actually witnessed the act) that it must be Nicky, the newcomer. I hope that Nicky (and God and Violet who was kind enough to give me Nicky) will forgive me for this oversight. Oh, yes, Cassie is everything that Lassie was not in terms of canine baseness and villainous acts. If she found a little boy stuck in a burning barn instead of running to get Timmy, she would probably add insult to injury by peeing on the innocent victim. She loves nothing more than to kick a girl when she’s down, as evidenced by her apparent delight in attacking Nicky whenever Nicky is already scared or being punished.

When little children mistakenly identify her as a cute fluffy puppy that they want to play with, she disavows them of this notion very effectively by “bopping” them in the face, an act that is somewhere between a punch and a bite. Luckily she has no teeth so she presents no actual threat to anything larger than a fruit fly. Yes, my “main” pooch Cassie is a real pain in the butt. Nicky, my “back-up pooch” is so much more pet-like and enjoyable to be around. And yet, I stubbornly continue to love Cassie the most of my two pooches. She’s mean and nasty and high-fallutin’ and she makes a poor excuse for a pet. She deserves nothing more than a date with the euthanasia tech at our local vet’s office. Don’t think Hugo hasn’t thought of it. I see it in his eyes sometimes. The only redeeming characteristic that Cassie exhibits, and get ready because it’s a good one, is that she is devoted to me. I might even go so far as to say that she worships me. At nighttime, she sneaks up and joins me in bed while Hugo is brushing his teeth. She sits there on the bed at my feet looking adoringly up at me until she hears Hugo on the stairs. Then, she leaps up and races to the top of the bed so that she can squirm underneath the covers and, following a path right along the side of my body, she slithers down to the bottom of the bed and lays there, quivering, as close to me as her 5 pound bulk will allow her to press. Hugo, playing along, comes up and pretends to be oblivious to her presence.

He sneaks up to the foot of the bed and in one motion he sweeps back the blanket and swoops her up, going, “ah-HAH!”. The foiled pooch gets transported back downstairs to where her bed awaits, with Nicky obediently ensconced already. Nicky will not risk her life and limbs to be with me, which is why she mostly stays downstairs and therefore on the better side of Hugo’s ill temper. Cassie, on the other hand, will not only risk life and limb but I firmly believe that she would gladly sacrifice all in order to save me. And when it comes right down to it; isn’t that the primary requirement of a good pet? My more egotistical side says yes. After all, it’s nice to be worshipped once in awhile, even if it’s by a lousy (no really, she catches fleas from the squirrels out back) excuse for a dog.

Some of my worst vices, part III

2008-09-11T21:15:00.000-07:00

Keith Olberman
I love that man. For those of you who don’t know him, he has a show called Countdown with Keith Olberman on MSNBC every weeknight at 8. I watch him somewhat religiously (unless I’m currently on the no television until after the baby is in bed kick and then I have to catch him on reruns at 4 in the morning when I’m having insomnia because I’m a night shift nurse again).

But his show is pretty much a political commentary which his blessedly leftist soul attempts to pretend is fair, impartial and nonpartisan but in which he finds it extremely difficult to say anything nice about Republicans and anything not nice about Democrats. Since I tend to agree with him that Republicans are mostly evil and that most of the Democrats at least have some redeeming characteristics, I love to listen to his antics. The promo for his show says that it is “…Keithier” than other shows and it most certainly is that. I think he’s adorable. And he thinks that Barack Obama (or B-Funkadelic, as my sister would like me to refer to him heretofore) is sent straight from the heavens, a sentiment which I tend to also agree with.

So keep your Anderson Cooper 360, with his perfectly prematurely white hair and carefully nonpartisan subject matter. I’ll take Keith in all his dark suited and purple-tied, musty salt and pepper hairdo’d oddness. He’s a man who isn’t afraid to call Bill O’Reilly “Billo the Clown” and Fox News “Fixed News” and “Fox Noise” depending on how the mood strikes him. Left-Wing News Media he may very well be, but he’s just strange enough to make it onto my list of guilty pleasures.

Some of my worst vices, part II

2008-09-11T20:41:00.001-07:00

Parentheses. Have you noticed? I use ‘em a lot. I also use them in conversation, only my listeners do not have the benefit of the physical presence of the parentheses so they don’t know I’ve gone off on a tangent and they consequently lose track of the main point of the story. Often, without having the benefit of looking back at my previous text to remind myself, I also forget where I was going when verbally telling a story. I wish we could have “air parentheses” like we have “air quotation marks”. I would use them frequently if we did.

Ellipses. These are the little dots that allow the writer to trail off, as though she has so much more to say on that subject but there just isn’t enough time. That way, anyone who does brave the typewritten diarrhea that is my daily thoughts will know that no matter how much I have rambled on and no matter how many crazy tangents I have gone off on (see above), it could have been worse…

The Long Hard Road to Motherhood

2008-09-10T19:31:00.000-07:00

I have reached some sort of a crossroads in my journey to being a “mom”. Thus far, I have been a “mommy” and a “new mother,” but I haven’t yet felt like a “mom”. Shall I explain? Let me explain.

Mommies are new and fluffy and extremely, cripplingly in love with their babies. They cannot stand to hear them cry and they have utterly no perspective when it comes to their babies. They get offended in the supermarket when they hear some old moron calling their babies by the wrong gender (as in, “what’s his name?” when it’s a girl). They pull the car over (even if they’re in the worst section of town) if the baby makes any noises of discontent and sit there in the parking lot of the Mellow Mushroom with their boob out, feeding the baby till she settles down and falls asleep. They cry, and I mean really cry, if they see anything remotely unpleasant happening to any baby on television because they immediately think of the same thing happening to their baby. Their boobs start to ache and leak all over the place if they so much as hear a baby crying in the grocery store. They are drippy, tearful, maternal, worshipful and probably annoying for anyone else to be around. This is most likely why new moms have to hang out with other new moms in “postpartum support groups”. Not because postpartum is some kind of disease. Just because none of their other friends want to be around them, so the best thing is for them to congregate amongst each other, alternately breast feeding their own babies and cooing at the other babies in the group. This is where I have been for the past 16 weeks.

Today, I made an important advancement towards moving past this stage. We were in the car, Sofia and I, on our way to pick Hugo up at work. As soon as I got to the first red light, Sofia started to wail. She has begun doing this whenever the car stops. She’s all fine and everything until we come to a red light and as soon as I stop at it, she starts crying as though she’s in terrible pain. I have, up until this point, frequently stopped to check her diaper, make sure she’s not hungry and that there are no bugs happily munching away on her tender little neck (these are the things that haunt a new mommy’s sleep). Other times, I have pre-planned for this fussiness by not pulling all the way up to the light but instead giving myself a good 10 feet and tapping on the brakes to keep the car rocking back and forth until the light turns green again. On still other occasions, when Hugo’s in the car, I have hopped out of the passenger seat at a red light and popped into the back seat so that I can entertain and jiggle the baby to help settle her down.

Anyway, today I did none of these things. I didn’t even really think about it until after it happened. I pulled up to the light, it was red so I stopped, and the baby started crying as though her entire world was about to end. I smoothly reached over and turned up the radio. Welcome to the wonderful world of “Mom”.

I know that there is a purpose to the stages of motherhood. When the baby is tiny and helpless and incapable of manipulation, there is no need for perspective. Many will tell you that you shouldn’t let your newborn sleep with you, that you should let the baby “self soothe” if she wakes up crying, and that you should feed her on a strict schedule from the very beginning to avoid raising a “snacker”. This all made perfect sense to me before I had Sofia, and I planned on doing all of it. She wasn’t going to sleep with us, ever, she was going to learn how to “put herself to sleep” and she was going to be fed on a schedule so that we could establish a good feeding and sleeping pattern. When she was born, though, I found my own maternal instincts at odds with these dictates. The truth was; I wanted to sleep with her. She was so soft and snuggly and smelled so good. I didn’t want to hear her cry, ever, and I would do anything to make her stop when she did. When all else failed, even if I knew she wasn’t hungry, I would nurse her, because it seemed to make her feel better and it sure as heck made me feel better. The point is, I truly think now that this is how we’re supposed to act as new parents (don’t think Hugo was exempt from any of this).

Newborn babies shouldn’t ever be allowed to cry themselves out. They’re so tiny and they’ve just been introduced to this world from one in which they were warm and snuggly all the time, enveloped in love and fed a constant diet of the very best of whatever the mother eats. Is it asking so much to give them a few months to adjust before we start slugging them with the muck of “reality”? Can’t they just enjoy a short reprieve before we start imposing “schedules” and “sleeping rules” on them? Of course, eventually, we must begin to slowly introduce reality in small doses, so they won’t grow up to be narcissistic and incapable of dealing with unpleasant sensory experiences. I think I know how that happens now. It’s a slow transition from “mommy” to “mom” that happens within us. Today, I let her cry at the light. Tomorrow I might let her fuss until we get home before I feed her. And someday, just maybe, I might have the courage to put her on a school bus, knowing full well that she might get picked on and made fun of. Right now the very idea makes me break out in hives, but who knows?

Some of my worst vices, part I

2008-09-09T19:36:00.000-07:00

Coffee.
I love it.
All different kinds.
Regular with half and half. Café Latte. Cappucino. Iced or blended. Plenty of whipped cream where possible. I even like an espresso occasionally. The only thing I don’t much like is flavored coffee. I’m not sure why, but I just don’t like the way it tastes. Love the way it smells. For a long time, I would make the mistake of ordering flavored coffees when I could smell them and they smelled divine (not to mention some of the names…toasted hazelnut truffle…who could resist something called that?). Then I would taste it and realize that its only plain unflavored coffee for me. This gets immediately tossed out the window whenever the coffee beverage is chilled and blended. Then, flavors excite and fulfill me.
Many have asked me (with very holier than thou expressions on their faces) if I really think it’s a good idea to drink coffee while breastfeeding. I came up with a great rejoinder for this while pregnant. “My baby daddy is Colombian,” I would reply, rubbing my belly comfortably, “So, I figure she’s either gonna be addicted to coffee or cocaine. Let’s hope its coffee…” Really people. Every healthcare practitioner I have spoken to says that there have been no adverse effects on children whose mothers drink up to 4 cups of coffee a day. Now, I do love coffee, but I can’t imagine what I would look like if I drank 4 cups of it a day. Like I was high on crack probably. Coffee is like crack; it should be enjoyed in very small quantities…

Easy Asian Coconut Curry

2008-09-04T18:19:00.000-07:00

OK, here's a reipce I have been making a lot lately. I think Hugo might be starting to get tired of it because I make it about once a week. Its so good though! And easy. And cheap. OK, this is starting to sound like an advertisement for the girls on Ridgewood (Rene' will get that joke; hopefully nobody else will).
Start with the following ingredients:
1 can of light cocount milk (I often use the full fat one but right now I just finished eating a decadent dessert consisting of apples, butter, sugar, crescent rolls and Mountain Dew, so I'll go with the lighter version of the recipe).
2 cups of prepared brown rice (OK, use white if you must but I promise, the brown rice isn't just a health move; it actually does add something to the overall taste)
1 package of tofu (I like the NORYU box of silken firm tofu, its very silken, yet very firm as well...)
1 tablespoon of red curry paste (available in the asian foods aisle, near the soy sauce)
1 package of Birds Eye Steam Fresh mixed vegetables. The one with broccoli, carrots, sugarsnap peas and water chestnuts. Go ahead and pop it into the microwave and cook for 5 minutes (this isn't rocket science folks. If you want some crazy complicated recipe, visit my sister Val. She likes to keep it real with the old recipes, but she also switches it up and goes all Martha Stewart on your ass occasionally). www.valspictureperfectpotd.blogspot.com

While you're cooking the vegetables (oh, I'm sorry, you didn't realize that we had segued into the cooking portion of the recipe? I like to do that. Its a literary skill. I slid right from the ingredients section into the cooking section and you didn't even know it. What's that you say? Literary devices have no place in recipe-sharing? Nonsense.) Anyway, as I was saying, pour your can of coconut milk into a skillet (carefully, so as not to slosh any of that good stuff over the side of the pan. Not that I have ever done that before...) Whisk in the curry paste. You could just stir it in with a fork if you don't want to dirty up your whisk. Or, if your whisk happens to be in the dishwasher right now. Or if you, like me, do not own a whisk. I told you, this is not rocket science here. Even girls like me who don't own a whisk can do it. I don't like a lot of superfluous kitchen utensils hanging around. Anyway, once the sauce is bubbling, you can back off the heat a little so it barely simmers. You don't want to cook it down too much or it will be super thick.

Cut up the tofu into pleasant bite sized pieces and carefully slide them into the sauce. Here is where I better throw the modification in for people like my sister Rene' who hate foods that are meatless and free of alcohol. Switch out the tofu for cooked chicken and pour yourself a glass of plum wine. Modification complete. By the way, if you happen to be one of the 3 people reading this blog AND you happen to be one of my sisters, I bet you guys didn't think I thought of you as often as I obviously do. I can't write a single sentence without referring to one of you. Don't worry Mom (the third person reading this blog) I'm thinking about you too. I know you're probably trying to recover from my previous blog, the political direction of which probably still has you swooning with dread.

Now, you must get a few bowls out. Get 2 bowls if you are serving 2 people. Get 4 bowls if you are serving 4 people. If you are serving more than that, you might want to double up on this recipe. Place a nice portion of rice in each bowl. Add some of the vegetables from the Steam Fresh bag. Then, pour some of the creamy, coconutty sauce over everything, making sure to transfer plenty of tofu along with the sauce into each bowl. Get yourself some chopsticks if you really want to feel authentic. Eat it. Just eat it. Now, of course, if you are a wuss when it comes to spicy foods, feel free to reduce the amount of curry paste that you use the first time, to sort of ease yourself into the world of curry. Curry is very good. It is an acquired taste. It will clean out your sinuses in much the same way as wasabi does, but with a totally different flavour. I spelled flavour the long, exotic way. Hehe. It makes me feel just a little bit Martha...
BTW I realize that I have a problem with excessive parentheses and ellipses (I'm working on that...) :)

A letter to our future President

2008-09-03T10:04:00.000-07:00

Dear Barack
Well, Mr. Obama, it looks like you will be our next president. I’m really happy about that because, well, I sincerely think you’re the right man for this job. I don’t envy you your responsibilities or the struggle it took you to get where you are (and where you most certainly will be this coming January). However, now that you’re (almost) my president, I have a few minor requests. I make them on behalf of myself and my family. We don’t ask for much. As you can see, we aren’t bothering to write this letter to the current president, because, Mr. Obama, I just don’t think he really cares about people like us. You, on the other hand, seem to care a great deal about people just like us. So, I can wait a few more months. Think of it as an early Christmas wish list. Of course, by the time you get into office, it will be a late Christmas wish list. And, to be politically correct, we should refer to it as a holiday wish list. So here goes.

1. Please make a socialized healthcare system of some kind. I know there are people out there who like to say that socialized medicine is a bad idea and that it hasn’t worked in other countries. Other countries that have longer life expectancy and better quality of life than we in this country have. They say that socialized medicine turns healthcare into a nightmare of red tape, and that we will all have to wait in line to receive healthcare services. Barack, last time I checked, the ER lines were 3-4 hours long here in this country. I would rather see everyone wait in line than see some of my fellow Americans go without healthcare of any kind. Sometimes I think that those of us who have health insurance are just as badly off as those who don’t. I’m a nurse. I have had to see a patient get sent home from the hospital when they weren’t really ready to go simply because some guy in an insurance office somewhere decided that he didn’t deserve to stay and complete his treatment. What is this country coming to when the insurance companies that are supposed to protect us in times of crisis are the worse kinds of “fair weather friends”?

2. I’d also like to request that you fix social security. It seems almost like the current president has used it like his own personal piggy bank, withdrawing anytime he felt the need to fund an unpopular war. I don’t know the nuts and bolts of the whole thing but I do know that the social security program is in grave danger. It says so on the statement I get every year from the Social Security Administration. It says that even though I have paid in to the system all my working life, there won’t be enough to pay out my fair portion by the time I retire. To be honest, I’m more concerned about my parents than I am about myself. I have made alternate arrangements for my own retirement, so, while a pension check from SSA would be nice, it won’t make the difference between whether or not I’m (ever) able to retire. My parents, on the other hand, will need that check in order to make ends meet. They are good people who have worked hard all their lives. They don’t deserve to be reduced to poverty in their old age.

3. My next request is that you help us put the Earth on the road to recovery by setting policy which puts us at the forefront, not the very rear, of the effort to end global warming. My daughter is only 4 months old sir. The Earth is going to need to be around for a very long time if she is ever going to bounce great-grandchildren on her knee. I really can’t see anything much more important than that, can you?

4. Next, I’d like to stop all this nonsense with “relief at the pump”. It may be incredibly bourgeoisie of me, but I don’t see lower gas prices as the answer to all our problems. I want to stop standing at the pump entirely. Please stop all this nonsense about drilling for oil and providing subsidies for families to pay for the gas to fill up their SUV’s. We need alternatives. There is technology out there already that would allow for us to end our dependence on unfriendly countries for oil. Unfortunately, our country’s leadership has been in bed with the very people who make a lot of money off of our dependence on foreign oil for a very long time and I fear that they are the ones funding this push to invest still more in spinning our wheels for years while actually doing nothing to change the status quo. We need someone in Washington who hasn’t been around long enough to be in bed with anyone. That is why I actually think your “inexperience” might be just what we need Mr. Obama. You just might be naïve enough to get the job done right. Isn’t it a strange coincidence that, just about the time that our economic stimulus checks arrived this summer, gas topped out at over $4 a gallon? Does anyone else think it’s kind of like George W. Bush wrote a big huge check to the oil companies only he used us as the middle men?

5. I think it’s time we got a new women’s rights issue and put the Roe Vs. Wade case to bed for good. The thing is, while most women feel that they should control their own bodies, abortion just isn’t that big of a deal to most of us anymore. The vast majority of women have never considered, nor ever will consider getting an abortion. We’re just smarter than that. We know how to prevent unwanted pregnancies by now and we feel that by focusing on this tiny little procedure that we all can agree is unpleasant and in most cases unnecessary, all women lose. We want to focus on equal pay for an equal day. I won’t fight for my daughter to have the right to an abortion. I will fight for my daughter to have the right to the same treatment in school and the workplace as any man. Maybe that’s why the so-called “conservative” right has tried to distract us with the abortion issue for so many years. If it were equal pay, they might actually have to come up with some argument that doesn’t involve “God says so” in its response.

6. Speaking of my daughter and school, can we please put some money into the public school system so my daughter can have a world class education? I don’t mind paying taxes if I know that the money is going to stay here and in our schools instead of being poured into an unpopular and unnecessary war. I plan on teaching my daughter everything I can about values and respect and how to develop her own philosophy of the world we live in. I’d like to know that when I send her off to school in few years she will get a good solid education to add to that foundation. I’d like to think of my child’s education as a team effort. I will do my part. I will do the school’s part if I have to but I’d much rather focus on what I’m good at (nursing) and let the teachers focus on what they are good at. That’s what they’re talking about when they say that it takes a village.

I know there are other issues that are very important that I don’t understand fully. After all, I’m just a nurse. I will leave nuclear proliferation and peace in the Middle East in your very capable hands. These issues are the ones most of us here in the U.S.A. care about. We just want to enjoy the right to work, play and raise our families. We don’t mind if there are people out there who have a whole lot more than we do. We only object to the fact that it seems like the decisions being made in this country have been stacking the deck more and more in favor of those people for some time. We the middle class are the backbone of this country. If we lose, everyone loses. Mr. Obama, we can’t wait to see you become President Obama in a few short months. We just know that the change you have been talking about is more than a slogan. I’m sorry if this letter seems like the mother of all “honey do” lists. However, if you show it to Michelle, I bet she will agree that these are the things that really matter.

Yours truly,
Lauren

The Cockroach Incident

2008-09-02T22:52:00.000-07:00

Today something traumatic happened. I told Hugo about it and then swore never to speak of it again, but I have decided to write it down for posterity. It still gives me the heeby jeebies to think about it, even after a bath and several brisk hand-washings. I was playing with Sofia on the bed and her pacifier fell off the bed onto the floor. I got up and went into the bathroom to rinse it off in the tub, but had to move my bathing suit, which was hanging over the faucet, where I had placed it to dry when I came in yesterday from the pool. When I say, the pool, so airily, I do not mean to imply that I have a pool. I would like to have a pool. It would be really cool to have one, since we live in Florida and everything. Alas, it was a community pool located in the subdivision of a “postpartum friend” who invited the mommies and babies over to a little pool party at her place. Sofia and I had a winning afternoon and came home barely in time for dinner. But, I digress. That was the day before. That was when life was grand and pool parties were the height of afternoon enjoyment. I fear I shall never be able to enjoy another afternoon at a pool again.
Why, you ask? Well, as I was transferring my suit to the closet, I felt a strange sensation on my shoulder, just out of eye-sight. I brushed it away with my hand, assuming that it was a stray hair. I have been shedding like crazy the past few weeks; they say it is common after pregnancy to shed all that extra hair you grew along with the fetus. So imagine my horror when I saw, out of the corner of my eye, a cockroach go fluttering to the floor and begin to skitter around the way cockroaches do. Just now, when I typed the word skitter, I felt exactly the same sensation on my shoulder that I felt when it happened. Ughhhhhhhhh!!!!!! Without even stopping to think or care about the fact that I was barefoot, I immediately squashed the bug with my foot. I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t stand the idea of that thing surviving to tell all his cockroach buddies about the incident. It, in the way peculiar to cockroaches the world over, refused to simply die but instead flopped over on his back and began waving his tentacles in a grisly death dance. I, meanwhile, was making awful noises and wringing my hands in anguish. How could this happen to me? I was certain I would never feel the touch of a cockroach on my skin. I mean, this is Florida and we euphemistically call them palmetto bugs in order to pretend that we don’t have cockroaches in our houses, but anything that looks like a cockroach, is a cockroach as far as I’m concerned. And those things look like cockroaches on steroids.
We get the poison at Lowe’s and we spray it around the outside of the house to keep them at bay. The problem is, even though the poison works, the cockroaches refuse to slink away into their dark crevice to die with a little dignity. It is a peculiar trait of these nasty bugs; they hate humans almost as much as we hate them, but they have to die in front of us. During their lifespan, they attempt to live in as close proximity of us (and our food) as possible, while having as little contact as possible. Yet, when they are terminally afflicted with the poison we leave to kill them, they flop over on their backs in the middle of the floor and take about 6 hours to finally die for good. During that time, they occasionally wave a tentacle pathetically, as though in an attempt to make us feel guilty. However, the cockroach who had the misfortune to come in physical contact with me did not have that luxury (if dying a slow and public death could be considered a luxury). He spent his final moments in the recesses of the sewer system after being flushed emphatically down the toilet.
Now, I am dealing with the inevitable trauma of overcoming my fear of repeating this experience. Because, like I said earlier, my hair is shedding in great quantities, so I constantly have that creepy feeling that there’s a bug on me. Only now, I know that it could actually be a bug. So I don’t just brush the hair off me. Now, I jump up and jiggle my whole body in a very grotesque fashion while waving the afflicted limb as far away from my body as possible to make the imaginary bug fall off of me without coming in contact with any of my other body parts. It’s really attractive. I’m thinking about naming it the cucaracha dance. Fitting, don’t you think?

...In the unlikeliest of places

2008-08-30T14:43:00.000-07:00

This post can go under the heading of stories which prove that truth is indeed stranger than fiction. I returned to work last night for the first time since before Sofia was born (boo hoo). That was upsetting and new for us both but it is not, alas, the subject of this posting.

I was scrolling through my work emails furiously trying to whittle down 400 plus messages that had accumulated during the time I was basking in the glory if a 16 week maternity leave (by the way, thanks Mom for the flowers. They softened the blow a little tiny bit). I found reference to a strange story within the hords of mundane postings and notifications and decided to delve a little deeper by asking my coworkers about it. Luckily for me, the girl who had originally posted the tale was working in my area with me and she was most happy to fill me in, to my initial horror and eventual hilarity.

Apparently, there was a patient admitted to the ER with crushing chest pain or some such malady. She was bundled off to radiology for a CT scan and then sent to the cath lab for a cardiac catheterization. She eventually ended up, after taking a tour through these several areas of the hospital, in the ICU and the very capable hands of Teresa the ICU nurse. Teresa decided, being the excellent nurse that she is, that the patient would enjoy a linen change after her adventures of the day. She therefore turned the patient over in bed only to find a dead cat beneath the patient. Yes, dear reader, I did not mistype. She found a dead cat. Underneath the patient. After the patient had been through the ER, moved to the CT table in radiology (love to see that film someday) and to the cath lab where they insert large-bore sheaths (they are so friggin large that they aren't even considered needles at that point) into her groin area and finally ended up in the ICU before anyone noticed that there was a deceased domestic animal beneath her. I swear that I do not make this up.

Apparently, an incident report was filled out, the house supervisor was notified, and the animal was disposed of after a quick and appropriately somber moment of silence. And this, I realized, was a clear and obvious message from the cosmos. "Welcome back, Lauren" the cosmos said. "We could tell you were gonna need something like this to get you back into the nursing spirit." And, suprisingly, it did. You won't blame me if I feel the need to check beneath my patients for dead animals from now on though.

Beware the nose sucker

2008-08-28T09:45:00.000-07:00

I have a confession to make. As a new parent, I know we all face certain tasks that we dread doing. One that I have heard a lot of moms complain about is the clipping of the fingernails. I don't particularly mind that one. Its not my favorite thing to do, but believe me, she holds still a heck of a lot better than the dogs do. And she doesn't do that nasty thing where she runs all over the house with blood dribbling from the middle of her toenail like the dogs do. I hate that.
For me, one of my guilty pleasures is...get ready...the nose sucker. While Sofia will most certainly require eventual therapy to recover from the emotional scarring that my nasal suctioning has resulted in, I find it to be one of the most fulfilling tasks of parenting (so far). It started before she was even born. I had to make sure that I had one ready by the time I got into my 3rd trimester, because I was obsessed with the idea of going into precipitous labor and having her on the living room floor with Hugo as my only birthing attendant and I wanted to make sure that he would have something to suck the secretions out of her nose if that happened. Get that? I was worried about sucking the secretions out of her nose if I should have an emergency unplanned home birth. That's the one thing I was concerned about. I went through several scenarios with Hugo where I described in great detail what it would be like and the imperative nostril and mouth clearing efforts that he would have to effect in order to allow the baby to breathe. I demonstrated how to use the bulb syringe. I told him to know where the bulb syringe was at all times. If Hugo ever happens upon a poor unsuspecting woman in precipitous labor, he will most certainly be seen shouting for a bulb syringe while the laboring woman tries to kill him. I can just see him, "Does anyone have a bulb syringe? This woman is about to have a baby! We must have a bulb syringe!"

So it should come as no surprise that I have taken my own bulb syringe duties very seriously since the birth of the child. I waited to pull the thing out until Sofia had her first legitimate episode of the sniffles. She woke up kind of cranky while we were on our family vacation with signs and symptoms that she had caught the common cold that all the kids were chummily passing around (while their parents desperately tried to get them to share their toys, which they were not nearly so accomodating with). I told Hugo, "This is a job for the nose sucker. Get it out of the diaper bag," (where I had fortuitously stashed it at the beginning of the vacation). I confidently squeezed the thing and stuck it into her tiny little nostril. I released it. Suckkkkkk! I felt a little thrill. I did it again in the other nostril. Sofia gave me a funny look, but didn't object too vociferously. I think I'm kind of a natural at it. I peered deep into the recesses of the bulb syringe and saw it. The first legitimate booger to be aspirated from my poor unsuspecting child's nose. I felt another thrill. I looked deeper into her nostrils and was certain that I saw another booger, this one was really far back. I had to have it. Five minutes later, when Sofia had become thoroughly exasperated and was fussing and getting ready to really start objecting, Hugo removed the device from my hand and put it back into the diaper bag. "That's enough," was his only comment.
But it was too late. I was hooked. I began going on a daily booger hunt every morning right after her first feeding. I think it must be because of my background as a nurse and the fact that I have been well indoctrinated with the importance of suctioning my vented patients. Most nurses are revolted by the suctioning process and vociferously object to doing it. "Why do we have to do it?" they ask. "That's what we have respiratory therapists for. They like secretions." I, on the other hand, have always found it extremely satisfying to apply the suctioning wand to the mouth, or the trach site, or the nares. Even more satsifying is when some huge goober comes up accompanied by a lovely noise, the likes of which cannot be imitated through this medium. I know most people who are reading this are probably dry heaving at this point. That's the wonderful thing about me though. I love it. I find it deeply satisfying to know that someone's lungs were contaminated and obstructed with that big hunk of nastiness and now, because 0f my intervention, they no longer are. Go Girl!
It is along the same vein (as misguided as it may be) that my obsession with the nose sucker comes from. I have actually offered to nose suck some of the babies in the postpartum group that I attend. I was chatting with the mom of Syndney, an adorable little blond chunkaroo when I noted that she had a very tempting little crust just inside her nose. "You want me to get that for you?" I asked. She smiled and then backed away, holding her infant just slightly to the side as though to use her body as a shield if I should happen to make a dive for her.
I'm not sure what it is that is so exciting about the daily booger hunt. Maybe it is the fact that Sofia's tiny little nostrils are too small to insert a finger into (I've tried) to retrieve an annoying piece of snot. She isn't capable of blowing on command when a tissue is held up to her nose yet. I know, in my heart of hearts, that I am the only person in the world who will remove that snot from her nose. Just me and nobody else. So therefore, it is a task I treasure and enjoy. Someday, when she realizes that she had the cleanest nasal passageways as a baby, maybe Sofia will thank me for my efforts. But for now, that noise is the only reward I require. Succkckckckck!!!!!!

A tale of 3 pasta fagioli's

2008-08-27T18:49:00.000-07:00

I'm not going to even go into the pronounciation of the recipe. You're all on your own for that one. "fazool" "Fagool" "fag-ee-oh-lee" you can pronounce it any way you want to. I'm also not going to take a hard-line approach on the recipe itself, as there is considerable discord in my own family about how to properly execute the dish. My mom used to make it a lot when we were kids because its cheap and it makes a huge pot and we were poor and there was, like, a bunch of us. She always made it with dittalini pasta and cannelini beans (hence the pasta and the fagioli in the recipe's title). Basically, other than an onion and some tomato paste diluted in a couple cans of water, that was pretty much it. Then we would throw on a bunch of grated parmesan cheese (the cheap kind that comes in the green can) and call it a meal. Along with some crusty Italian bread of course. Well, my mom ended up classing up the recipe later on by switching to shell pasta and real parmesan cheese and maybe adding a little fresh garlic to the mix. As kids started moving out, she started to have money for more than just cans of tomato paste and water.
Anyway, my sister Val disagreed with this "cutting and running" policy of changing much beloved childhood recipes, so she sticks by the tried and true method of preparing the dish. She also omits the fagioli portion of the meal by not adding the cannelini beans, since we never liked those anyway and would often leave them in the bottom of the bowl, uneaten. As a side note, I will state that my sister Val takes this extremely conservative approach to all her executions of oldy but goody recipes, and consequently, I always go to her when I want to taste macaroni and cheese exactly like my grandmother used to make it, down to the elbow pasta, butter soaked breadcrumbs on top and even as far as the Wishbone Italian salad dressing that accompanies the salad of iceburg lettuce, sliced tomatoes and canned black olives. I'm not kidding man. Not even my grandmother makes it as good as she used to the way my sister does. Everyone else in the family seems to be afflicted with this need to modify and enhance. I have to admit, its nice to have a taste of the old days once in a while.
However, my sister Rene' takes a completely different philosophical approach to constructing her pasta fagioli. My sister Rene' is unhappy with any recipe that does not call for meat and alcohol, so this staid vegetarian classic is an assault on all her senses. She adds chicken to the pot, making it something that would more accurately be named pasta y fagioli y pollo. She then spices up the broth by using chicken stock instead of plain water and spiking it liberally with wine. Red wine. And then drinking a liberally portioned glass along with...
Finally, I in all my middle child glory must take this mess of a family recipe and attempt to make sense out of it all (or at least a fairly edible pot of soup). I must conserve the flavor of the old without ignoring several extremely sensible modifications that have been very succesfully implemented over the years. So here goes. Here is my middle child attempt to share a family recipe that satisfies the sentimental taste for childhood while taking something from each individual version of the dish. Most likely, as per the fate of every middle child "peacemaker," my final result will satisfy nobody and at least one (if not all) of the the family members who have been humbly biographied will be offended by my attempts at amalgomation. Oh well, here goes anyway...

Ingredients: One onion, 4 cloves of garlic, 1 can of cannelini beans, 1 little can of tomato paste, 1 box of dittalini or other preferred pasta (something fairly small with holes is best I believe), 32 ounce container of chicken or vegetable stock, 1 cup red wine, 2.5 cups of water, salt and pepper (to taste), assorted italian spices to taste (basil, parsley, oregano), garlic powder, onion powder, 1/4 cup of fresh grated parmesan cheese.
Sweat the onion in a liberal coating of olive oil (Sweating is a fine culinary skill that falls just short of sauteeing. You don't want to hear the onion singing in the pan, you just want to barely hear it humming). Add the garlic cloves when the onions are just starting to turn clear. Add a pinch of salt. A few rounds of the fresh ground pepper mill. Pour in the wine and let the sweaty onion and garlic get drunk for a minute. Add the can of tomato paste. Add the stock and the water and pump up the heat. Let the whole thing come to a boil and then reduce the heat so it just simmers for awhile. Meanwhile, boil some water and cook the pasta to al dente perfection. If you don't know how to do that then lord help you, because I surely can't. Drain the pasta and set it to the side. When the soup seems to be pretty well simmered (in other words, I don't know how long to cook it at this stage, but hey, there's no meat in this one so we don't have to worry about salmonella), add in a good pinch of all the italian seasonings as well as the onion and garlic powders. Taste it. It should hopefully taste good at this point (please don't tell Mrs. Harris my freshman English prof that I just used the word hopefully in the entirely un-grammatically correct manner that most people generally use the word hopefully in). Add in the beans (they don't need to cook, just heat through so that's why you don't add them until the end). Add in the parmesan cheese. And if you grated the cheese yourself, hopefully (there we go again) you grated plenty of extra to serve at the table since almost everyone enjoys a liberal sprinkling of fresh parmesan added tableside. Stir it up. And here is where my mom definitely got with the program after many years of doing it wrong. Put the pasta in individual serving bowls, and ladle the soup over top of it. She used to add in the pasta to the soup and it was fine for the initial serving but by the time we got around to seconds (and leftovers, God help us) the pasta had become most un-al dente by virtue of the fact that it continued cooking in the broth and frequently soaked up the soupiness to the point where the leftovers took on a gouloshy characteristic. You must definitely keep the pasta and the soup seperate until they are on the very brink of consumption. And this is my humble attempt at merging three distinct versions of the same dish into one delicious entree soup that is appropriate for budgets large and small, and will almost surely satisfy the hunger of any self-respecting Italian or wannabe Italian. And when it comes to eating, are we not all wannabe Italians? If I was my sister Val (or the Pioneer Woman, who I'm pretty sure she stole this from) I would now complete this blog by making the soup, preparing a delicious-looking portion in a rustic pottery bowl, garnishing with fresh herbs, and taking a picture of it with a very pricy camera. I would then upload that picture to my computer, do unspeakable things to it in Photoshop, and tack it on to the bottom of this post. That's what I would do if I was Val. If I was Rene', I would serve up a portion of this soup to a large group of friends, pour myself a liberal glass of red wine, and consume both (though it must be admitted, I would probably consume more of one than the other, I will leave it to you to decide which). If I were my mother, I would make this soup, leave it on the stove for my dad and go out for a walk with Violet, after she helped me organize my shoe closet and paint my ballerina room. Since I am me and none of these people, what I will most likely do is nothing. Having gotten this out of my middle child afflicted system, I will most likely go to bed, sleep like a baby and never think about or make pasta fagioli again in my life. For me, writing about it was the cathartic thing to do after watching Bill Clinton rally the Democrats to a unanimous backing of Obama at the Democratic National Convention. So that's exactly what I did.

Sofia's Personality

2008-08-27T09:29:00.001-07:00

OK, so I went to this postpartum group luncheon yesterday and we heard a speaker who is an ARNP and BCLC (Board Certified Lactation Consultant) who said that a baby's temperment (AKA personality) is evident right from birth and will affect the way the child makes his or her way through life. So I thought I would examine Sofia from a temperment point of view and see if I could pinpoint some personality traits that I see in her at this early stage (3 and a half months). Then, someday when she's a big girl, I can compare my predictions with how she really is. It seems fairly harmless, so why not?
First of all, it must be said that Sofia may not be the most ambitious of girls when she grows up. She values the enjoyment of life far too much. Not that she won't achieve great things, but just that she will wait for fate to point out her direction in life rather than pursuing some gain for the sake of glory and fame.
Liked by all, she will value the importance of a few best friends over popularity.
She will always enjoy a nice afternoon nap.
She will be a lover of food, particularly dessert.
She will enjoy activities over competitive sports.
Her sense of humor will see her through many a difficult situation.
Her quiet determination will see her through many a challenge.
She will always wake up in a good mood (unlike her mother).
She will find extreme joy in sensory experiences like massage, pedicures and getting her hair done (unlike her mother).
She will be very, ahem, regular, (again, unlike her mother).
She will love to play by herself, and her imagination will be her favorite toy.
Her smile will be easily obtained; her respect much more difficult to come by.
She will prefer a nice relaxing nighttime bath over a quick morning shower.
She will be intensely aware of the world around her, sometimes preferring quiet observation over quick participation.
Her quiet intensity may often be falsely perceived as aloofness.
OK, so now if my baby grows up to be an extroverted soccer playing sorority sister, we will know I was really barking up the wrong tree. And if anyone thinks that I'm just going to bring her up in such a way as to train her to agree with my predictions, I'd like to know how they think I'm going to train her not to ever get constipated. I'd like to try that move on myself.

Sofia Sweetness

2008-08-27T09:26:00.000-07:00

Oh, Sofia, How do I love thee? Let me count the ways...
I love it when you grin. It is so friggin cute I just can't describe it without profanity.
I love when your hair sticks up straight, especially when you just finished nursing and one side of your hair is all wet and sweaty and stuck to your head and the top is all sticking up.
I love how when you were born everyone said your blue eyes would turn brown (since you have a Colombian daddy and all) and instead they just got bluer and bluer. You're a nonconformist like that.
I love how you are starting to talk and clearly understand every word I say to you even though you're only 13 weeks old.
I love your fat little chunky thighs. Pure breastfed indulgences those thighs are...
I love your smell. Even when its been about 4 days since your last tubbies and you have a funny sour milk smell coming from the rolls in your neck. Even then.
I love, love, love the little noises you make when you are nursing. So appreciative.Keep making those noises and I will continue to nurse you until you're 18.
I love how soft and smushy your cheeks are. I love to kiss them and keep kissing them until I start to feel like a child molester. Then I stop.
I love how you get just a tiny bit fussy whenever anyone else holds you but me (daddy and Aunty Val don't count).
I love when I'm not paying any attention to you and suddenly I realize you're staring at me and have the cutest little grin on your face, as though watching your poor uncollected mommy is somehow infinitely amusing to you already.
I love how you seem to understand that I'm new at this so you're going easy on me (there's just no other explanation for how good you are, except that you're obviously an angel).
I love how you start licking your lips whenever you look at me, as though I resemble nothing so much as a giant Ben and Jerry's Chubby Hubby ice cream cone to your gorgeous little milk drunk eyes. I'm only kidding when I make the Jaws theme music sound. I don't really see you as a predator of any sort.
I love how you get exponentially cuter every single day.
I love how I simultaneously want 6 more babies just like you while at the same time I don't ever want to have another one because I can't possibly love it as much as you...
I love how people look enviously at me in the grocery store while staring at their own 2 and 3 year old brats while I sanguinely push you around in all your adorable three month old glory.
Last but not least, I love you because, as the pioneer woman says so profoundly, I grew you in my womb.