::testing a lily::

Baby Lily

After much debate and strong but kind pleading on my part I have talked Lily's school into testing her for a learning disability.  It has been coming since kindergarten and I am feeling very excited about the prospect of getting it all going.  I am currently working on filling out all her paperwork.  I am happy to say that after that process I am feeling very hopeful.  They had a check list were you mark the behaviors that your child struggles with, I was happy she does not:

Set fires

Abuse substances

Steals

Often swears (that would be her mother)

Hallucinates

Harms animals

She did get checked on:

Fidgets

Poor concentration

Difficulty completing tasks

Often is loud

Easily frustrated

Who else does that sound like???????  Maybe me?  Even her check marks are kind of cute.  

 

::flag football::

This little man found himself at his first day of flag football yesterday.  He kept telling me he was going to tackle the guys.  I tried to explain the concept of FLAG football, but he couldn't even listen to that.  Josh and I both had this feeling he was going to go all Bobby Bushay from Waterboy on the other kids but he did not tackle anyone. 

He actually listened and did what he was asked and tried hard and basically was not only the cutest kid in the 3-4 year old group but also seriously the best behaved.  Amazing.  

::oh - ER how I love you::

ARE YOU KIDDING ME!!!???  Why did no one every tell me that I was GOING to ADORE being in the ER????  I LOVE IT SO MUCH!!  Wow - its nice to have my brain wake up again.  I love the staff.  I love the social aspect of it all.  Yes, I am still terrified of old ladies.  One slapped my arm for "being too rough" with her tape.  Which I seriously doubt since I work with preemies all day.  Yes - some times the sights and smells are just down right gross.  But I am having a blast.  I talk to people all day long.  ALL DAY!  It's so much fun.  The staff is wonderful and so kind to me.  They take great care of this silly old baby nurse.  I thought they might try to eat me alive from being so annoyed with my lack of adult knowledge, but they just love the baby info I bring to them.  I am loving all the interaction with taking care of adult patients.  I didn't think I would, but I really do love talking to them.  Plus putting an IV in a grown up is SOSOSOSOSO much easier.  You can actually say, "Hold still" and most of them listen.  

I am almost done with orientation and I could not be more excited to be awake and alive at work again.  I still do NICU some, but now it feels like a restful vacation compared to the mass craziness of the ER.  For the first time I can actually say that I like this job.

Side note - the ER I work in does not do heart attacks or major trauma unless they walk in the front door.  It is a lower acuity ER which is just the right kind of ER for me right now.  Gun shot wounds and major burns are not my gig.  I am all about fluids and anti nausea meds, maybe a little shortness of breath, or needing some stitches.  If you are holding in your own intestines please let me find you someone else.  Thanks.     

::a mental update::

On January 17th 2011 Josh and I found out that our 18 week old baby no longer had a heartbeat.  All three of our kids were with us when we went to what we thought was going to be a normal old OB appointment.  That night we delivered our son around 11pm.  The entire story can be found under my infant loss label on the side.  I am not going to go into it now.

What I really have been thinking about is - what's the aftermath?

Here I am 10 months later and much has changed.

- I am 28 weeks pregnant.  I was blessed enough to get pregnant right away again.  Thank God, because infertility would have been the final blow that pushed me into a complete tail spin.  Every kick and every heartbeat on the Doppler is one little brick of healing.  The moment this baby got a healthy check from his ultrasounds and when they said he was a boy,  all this deep-buried-hidden-behind-numbness raw-pure-fear and sadness just started to go away.  Slowly.   I didn't notice at first, till one day it was gone.  I wasn't faking anymore.  I really was better.  I feel that this baby being a boy (third in a row for the record), made such a huge difference.  Now I get the son I was supposed to have.  Of course I would have rejoiced in a girl, but my heart ached for a boy.  My heart still aches for Zack, but its already kind of a dull ache.  I just can't dwell for Zack, when Quinn is punching me in the bladder and doing the worm in my belly.

- I still thank God that Zack was taken from me with out me having to make any choices.  He was gone before we knew it.  We hadn't found out his gender yet, we hadn't named him yet.  We didn't have to agonize over what to do for him if he had lived long enough to be born alive and weak and suffering.    

- I left my beloved job as an NICU nurse in the best unit in the city to work as a float nurse in adult ER and in a much smaller NICU.  The job is not nearly as spiritually satisfying as the old gig.  It couldn't be anymore different, but I took it so that I could be a bit numb and a bit new and bit distracted and a bit out of that same building were I delivered Zack.  Overall that was the right thing to do.  I don't love the new job like I loved the old one.  And I don't have to.  I show up and I try hard and I leave.  That works OK right now.  But not forever.

- I still have the ramifications of the social anxiety that I didn't have before the baby died.  It just didn't exist before.  I feel like I knew how to act with out thinking about it or having to be told.  But just last month I went to my cousins wedding and I had so much anxiety that I almost didn't walk in.  If Lily hadn't been with me I would have chickened out.  I'm not totally sure were this comes from.  I do great with strangers - the patients in the ER are fun and easy to talk to and to help.  I talk too much, and get in trouble for taking too long because I always have to make best friends with all my patients.  (Not in real trouble, the veterans are just teasing the rookie a bit.)  But you make me go talk to my extended family and I just can't take the bullshit.  I've always been a bit of a black sheep in the family, but its like now I just don't even want to see them.  Lucky for me I hardly do every have to.  With my friends I am still a bit distant from most.  It's nothing personal, and I can't even identify why.  I just only want to be with Josh and the kids.  I still talk to my oldest friend Hannah almost daily.  But whenever I try to make or renew any other relationships beyond them (Josh/kids/Hannah) I just can't.  I feel too awkward.  I have made a promise to myself that after Quinn is born I am really going to put more effort into getting this figured out.  Its not healthy to make yourself an island.

-The biggest thing I want to stress is that I wake up happy now.  My numbness faded away and I am glad to be rid of it.  It didn't suit me one bit.  My depression did go away by itself.  I wasn't sure it would, but it did.  I am totally excited for this baby.  The baby we lost doesn't cloud the rainbow of Quinn.  I am a huge believer in fate (you might say "God's will"), and I do not feel any anger about the baby that wasn't supposed to be mine.  Right now I am very focused on this new man that is coming my way.  I can't wait to get him home and see what happens next.
   

::baby belly::

This kid is trucking along.  I am 28 weeks now.  This has been my easiest pregnancy ever.  I know girls that would say, "Sometimes I forget I am even pregnant!"  And I always thought they were big fat liars.  But I seriously get no crap from this kid.  I don't get sick like I did with all the others.  I really don't feel to many symptoms, sometimes short of breath and a bit sleepy but nothing too bad.  Since my placenta is anterior I don't even really feel this kid too much.  (An anterior placenta just means that the placenta attached on your belly side instead of in the back of uterus.  It doesn't matter at all.)  I can only feel him if he does the worm all the way around my belly.  Which makes me laugh.  This kid loved to dance already.  We are still looking toward a 39 week induction based on the fact that my Max was a baby hippo in size and girth.  So February 3rd is the tentative date.  I will be delivering in the same hospital as Kendra, from Girls Next Door, which I think is hilarious. 

::i forgot i am a farmer::

Crap.  Were did the fall go?  It's almost over already.  I have to get it together.  I am so distracted with hating large parts of my job and with being prego that I have really become a crummy farmer.  I have got to get it back together.  Here is what needs done before the real freezes set it -

Clean out all goat pens and set out heated water buckets

Clean out the horses run in and make sure tank heater is ready to go

Clean out chicken coop and prep heated water bucket

Get dogs heated water bucket ready 

    Side note - Bruno got kicked again by Donkey, which is Bruno's fault as he harasses the Donk.  Last time it cost $600 to have fixed.  What am I going to do with him?  What would happen if we don't get it fixed?  Maybe he would just stop chasing the poor Donkey!

Clean out the tack room and aisleway

Clean out a horse stall and have it ready for a "just in case" horsey isolating

   I actually usually do need to have one of them in a stall a few times a year for various reasons

GARDEN!!!

Till the orchard garden and compost it

Add THICK layer of leaves to the cottage garden, like two feet thick

Heavy trim of the roses

Leaves in the flower beds

Leaves on the blueberries

Make 42 plans of how to set up the gardens for next year - MUST BE BABY FRIENDLY

::josh's job::

Not so very long ago Josh got a new job.  He went from being an airline mechanic with grease under his nails to a button up shirt wearer.  This was a huge change for us on many levels.  One - we both had this secret odd unspoken pride in the fact that he had a "real job".  Defined by us as a job that was not done in a cube, a job that was not done looking at a computer, a job that required real skill and hands on problem solving.  We seriously never talked about this out loud once in the entire time we have been together, but it was one of the facts that just made him different to me.  He doesn't wear suits, he wear kick ass vintage looking Adidas shoes to weddings with untucked shirts, he has a mohawk, he is fit, he has a big tattoo, he actually likes his wife and kids = he is different from most men.  Wow - that is a great deal of admitted arrogance.  Bratty Brooke is still living strong in me I guess.  I know its obnoxious but I have always felt this silly amount of pride in how VERY different he is.  Mostly different from my Dad if you really want to get into the Freud of it all.  

Back to the new job.  He got an offer to move up to the position of Aviation Engineer.  An office job.  In a cube.  Like "Office Space" in my mind and his.  But the new gig offered benefits and money beyond his old situation, and it meant that instead of climbing into fuel tanks and ripping apart his body every day be would be in less need of knee replacement on a daily basis.  He agonized over taking the job.  Lucky for me he is not a man that like change (probably why he hasn't traded me in for a younger upgrade), but it made taking this new job a trauma for him.  He dug down and found the guts and here he is still with a mohawk but now in an attractive button down - no tie.  

He new job was a good choice BUT for one little quirk.  They switched his schedule.  After he had been there a while they put him on nights.  For two weeks he works four 10 hour days Sunday through Wednesday.  It's a nice schedule with my random nursing shifts.  Then the next two weeks he goes to nights!!!!  YUCK!  He leaves at 1pm and gets home after midnight.  That makes me a single parent on those days.  Which I seriously do not like.  There is no one else to take the heat off.  Lucky for me my neighbor that helps me can keep the kids late on the nights that I work, but on the days I am off I am spooked.  I sleep terrible and in a light nervous way.  I stay up too late and watch TV I have no interest in.  I play stupid games on my phone.  I am just not very good at being with out him any more.  I don't think I nag him very much, but I whine all the time about how much I hate this night shift crap.  He is working on it, and it should be temporary.  But for now - what positive things can I be doing after I put the kids to bed?  I don't remember what I used to do.  Throw some ideas at me.