Just reading through a recent list of recalled baby items - cribs made with plastic (!!!) brackets and tracks that deform causing sides to detach. One instance of a baby suffocating, more of babies simply entrapped and parents freaked. Cribs with metal brackets holding up the mattress that break/warp. Pacifiers that strangle. Clothes that strangle. Play yards that collapse. Stroller brakes that fail. High chairs that lose the backs of their seats.


Broken bones, bruises, head trauma, suffocation, strangulation, choking ... It's enough to make me never buy any baby things ever again. Holy freaking cow, are there any children's items made sensibly?

Got an urgent dental appt and went in today - K came to look after the kidlets during the appt (one good thing about still seeing the dentist in Corvallis!) since at the short notice his parents already had unavoidable plans (ie, houseguests). Anyway, yup, need another crown before my tooth falls apart and falls right out of my head. At least there's nothing else wrong with my teeth - no decay or anything, just the tooth is fractured. Ibuprofin as needed for pain (unless it gets REALLY bad, in which case I'm to call and they'll figure out what they can do for me), and try to avoid chewing on that side until they get it fixed up. Funfun.

When the dentist noted the incipient fracturing at my last exam, he asked if I grind my teeth. I don't think so ... but dang, how is it I've managed to fracture two of my teeth?? I know it wasn't gritting my teeth over potty training, it happened before that. Heh.

And, speaking of which, things progress a little bit there. Slowly. In many areas Kidzilla is being well ... Zilla. To the extreme. I hope he grows out of this phase SOONEST.

When I took Baby G to see the ENT doctor, after he had a look at her palate he said, "In the wild, that's a fatal defect."

That's just been... burned into my brain, somehow. I don't know why that one statement should be sticking with me so firmly, above all the others from all the doctors.

too hard to type while pumping, going back to just reading now. And th3en bed again, when done.\

zzzzzz.

Happy Birthday to K and to K's dad! Woot!

Baby G is eight months old now. Over the course of our excursion north, she acquired her 6th tooth (the second upper front tooth, it's coming in in it's proper place, YAY!) ... and now, as of this morning, she can sit herself up completely. She's been able to shove herself up into a semi-sideways sit for a little while now, but this morning she's been shoving herself up completely into a proper sitting position, with no trouble at all. She has a tendency to overbalance reaching for things or looking behind her or whatever, and sometimes the inevitable crash down scares her a little, but she recovers quickly and sits herself up again in short order.

Also, she now holds her own bottle to eat if you let her. Which is handy when she wakes up frantically hungry in the morning, you can give her the bottle and get her started on breakfast while you're changing her diaper, instead of making her wait and listening to her complain loudly and long about the quality of service and let me speak to the manager NOW!

And she slept until after 10am today. Doooood. Kidzilla didn't. Heh.

Kidzilla will sit on the big toilet now, as long as his potty isn't there, and as long as someone is there in front of him for him to hold onto. Yay, progress!

We went up to the Olympic Peninsula for a few days, in planning for the trip so K could go play bridge in the Sequim sectional, we realized you know ... staying in a motel room with a hyper, energetic, LOUD 3 year old and a baby sounds like purely negative fun. I started looking at cottages for rent, then houses for rent, and I talked to my folks, etc, etc, long story short, we rented a 2-bedroom little cottage on the beach on Freedom Bay, a little west of Port Angeles.

Spendy, about $233 per night after taxes were added, but Mom and Dad came and spent one night with us, and then Sprout and her man came and spent one night with us, so we divided up the cost a bit and in the end it turned out to be only slightly more expensive than the available motel rooms, and far, FAR superior lodging. FAR. On the beach, peaceful, gorgeous, comfy, with an actual kitchen for cooking, and all kinds of space for Kidzilla to play in.

We're going to look at the rentals in town (Sequim, that is) for this fall, so we can get together with Grandma C for a pre-holiday Thanksgiving dinner that's a real, proper, home-cooked Thanksgiving dinner instead of the assorted eating out at a restaurant kinds of Thanksgivings we've been having with her since she moved into assisted living. I think that would be swell. Grandma thinks so too, she said it would definitely be better than what the assisted living place serves. ;D

In town, or very close to town, they're much cheaper than on the beach, some fairly nice-sounding and spacious ones for just $100/night + tax. There's one on a little farm with llamas and goats and things, and another on a different farm that has its own playground, too.

I tell ya, I'm never staying in a motel in Sequim again if I have anything to say about it! (Last time we were there in the summer we spent $80/night for a tiny motel room with NO AIR CONDITIONING, and it was 100+F ... misery and SUFFERING. What the heck kind of crazy drugs makes people think charging $80/night when they aren't even upscale enough to have A/C ... arg! But obviously they get away with it, the place is always busy.)

Anyway, Sequim looked good ... Sequim says "recession? what recession??" ... building projects all over the place, tons of people, no empty storefronts that I saw. Pretty amazing really, considering the large percentage of retirees in the population and what probably has been happening to their retirement monies.

But, anyway! The kids were pretty good - Baby G was an absolute angel, really. Kidzilla was pretty good aside from some "showing off" issues that he tends to have when there's people around to show off for ... we were at the visitor center just inside Olympic National Park and while we were looking at exhibits he was fine, but as soon as we hit the little book store he went insane. One of the volunteers was just completely enamored of Baby G and kept abandoning her cash register to come tickle her toes and talk to her, and Kidzilla was acting up so much through all this that the volunteer (an older lady with a French-sounding accent) said I had my hands full and then actually got concerned enough to ask "Do you have family to help you??" Siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh.

But it was a really nice excursion, even with the 6 hour trip up and, more horrifyingly, the 6 hour trip back in the current little heat wave that's been going on, with no air conditioning in the car. I was *thisclose* to refusing to get back in the car. EVER. I was sunburning right through my clothes, and the sun was SO *HOT* it felt like a physical pressure on my skin as it glared in through the (wide open) car window.

Kidzilla's crayons melted in the car. And re-solidified, and then melted again. Cars without A/C are double-plus UNGOOD.

Definitely will be calling for an appt for the car first thing on Monday. Cannot go on like this. UGH.

So our 10th wedding anniversary was about a week and a half ago. We both totally forgot ... I was looking at my email thinking, why did MAW send us virtual flowers (thank you, btw!!)? And then it dawned on me. OOPS. So I called K at work, left him a message. Some of his co-worker types gave him a bit of a hard time about it apparently, telling him the only reason he wasn't in super big trouble was because I'd forgotten, too.

Anyway, so we took the kids to K's parents house, and celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary sitting in a bar and grill watching 2 girls and 4 guys play pool. Then we went on a 5 minute walk or so, up the hill and back. Collected children, scurried home to watch Burn Notice.

Thrill a minute!

Maybe we'll go do something a little more exciting later.

First of all, it refused to let me message this link to a friend, or let me post it to my status message. http://wams.hostwq.net/?page_id=174

It is apparently "blocked content" and "abusive" material. Washington Agate and Mineral Society, I never knew you were so controversial.

Now, it won't let me log in. Perhaps because I am a subversive, abusive rock collector! Ooooooo, the HORROR!

whatever.

What brought this revelation to light?

I was sitting here, composing a message to a farm owner about their sheep shearing tomorrow, which wasn't the odd part, and simultaneously pondering over the job I hope to apply for in the future which definitely wasn't the odd part, unless the compartmentalization this takes is an odd thing ...

I was also reexamining the lecture on photorealism in art that I was mentally composing while I was washing my hair, and it occurred to me that that kind of thing is probably a little odd. The mentally composing a lecture that I'll probably never deliver to anyone, or the fact that I was doing it in the shower, I have no idea. But it suddenly struck me as... a little weird.

The mental lecture on photorealism and the development of personal art style sort of wandered giddily off into contemplation of teenagers ("everyone thinks they're a special flower"), emo ("everyone needs a coping mechanism for teenagerhood I guess"), art education ("dark for the sake of dark is boring as h*ll, try to channel some real emotions in your work kthanxbye"), and I forget what all.

And somehow it wandered around to reminding me to write the person whose sheep are being sheared tomorrow to find out how to get there, just in case not-quite-potty-trained-Kidzilla and I manage to make it out the door sometime tomorrow. I'm not sure how, really. My brain does it's own thing most of the time, I'm just along for the ride.

There is a very small person laying at my feet, alternating between playing with my toes and saying "Ma, ma, ma, ma, ma, ma, *squeak*, *grr*, ma, ma, ma" and whacking vigorously on the old keyboard Kidzilla used to play with. Oh, and some random towel-chewing and grinning thrown in.

She's reached the serious wiggle-worm stage, it's gotten really hard to change her diaper. The instant you get her diaper off she's squirming and rolling off somewhere.

She's got 5 teeth now, still only the one on top, plus the 4 middle ones on the bottom. I hope the second top front tooth comes in soon, I'm anxious to see if it actually will ... and where...!

I've started using a mesh feeder with her, she seems to like gnawing on that and getting some banana mush that way - likes it better than having her banana pre-mashed on a spoon, anyway. Of course, she's not real big on anything all mashed on the spoon, although she'll happily take the spoon and gnaw on it like mad. I'm thinking maybe cooked sweet potatoes, cooled completely in the fridge, and placed in pieces in the mesh feeder ... things like that. So far apparently she's the COMPLETE and UTTER opposite of Kidzilla in terms of food preferences.

I'm still taking Kidzilla to the potty chair every hour or so all day long. Getting pretty tired of it, but he's actually used it 18 times now! (Yes, I know how many times ... we have a little chart. When the chart is full of stickers, he gets a pair of toy alpacas (mama and baby). He's been very excitedly anticipating the alpacas.)

So there's improvements there -- when we take him to the bathroom and sit him down, he almost always goes in the first couple of minutes. We had a long talk yesterday morning about what it feels like when the pee comes out, and what it feels like before it does, and how you have to relax and just let it come out, and be calm ... and immediately after that talk, things improved immensely. So I guess the careful explanation helped.

And the majority of the time, he doesn't complain much about being taken to the bathroom. Much.

Now of course, we have to get him to start spontaneously going on his own, instead of needing to be led there. And figuring out how to get his pull-ups down and sit down on his own, instead of needing help.

Whee. We went over to D & E's house last night so I could leave the kidlets with them and run to the store. So not ready to deal with the terrified screaming if I tried to get him to use a public toilet.

Which reminds me, another thing we have to work on, the terror of the big toilet. He used to be stark terrified of the sound of flushing, but at least now that's okay, and he likes doing the flushing himself. One step at a time.

Gratuitous non-kidlet item: nearly computer-crashing fun with fractals

Fold towel, place towel on floor. Place potty chair on towel, facing the TV. Place Kidzilla on potty chair. Give juice to Kidzilla. Wait.

and wait.

wait.

Hmm. Doesn't seem to work very fast. :P

On the other hand, he doesn't scream and cry if there's some Word World or Dragon Tales to watch.

He speaks for those with no voice.
"Baby G--- is hungry! She needs her bottle!" Sure enough, she's hungry. Every time.
"She needs her diaper changed!" Yup.
"Kyra's thirsty!" (M & J's dog) Yup!

Random moment (taken a few days ago) -- the description says it all.
http://chamois-shimi.deviantart.com/art/Don-t-wanna-nap-126867845

From today:
Kidzilla is sitting on potty chair. I tell him I have to go check on lunch, and I'd be right back. He looked so forlorn, so anxious, I told him "Don't worry, C-----. Soon you'll be an expert and this will all be behind you."

So he turned around and gave the wall behind him a very confused, searching look. Then he looked at me. Then he looked at the wall again. And then there was me, falling over in the bathroom doorway, laughing.

Kidzilla is playing with Baby G, and they're both laughing madly. I suppose I shouldn't complain that what's making them laugh so much is that Kidzilla is dropping one of G's blocks directly onto her ... thank goodness it's very light and soft and squishy!

*listens a moment* G is laughing so much! Too funny. Kidzilla is giggling. When I looked over at them, Kidzilla said "I'm having fun with Baby G---!"

Kidzilla needs a haircut. He's in the thermonuclear threes. (I can't believe I just put him in his room and told him to stay there until he could behave nicely. I am a bad parent.) He says WHY? WHY? WHY? WHY? to ev.er.y.thing. Which is particularly frustrating when it's something like "DON'T KICK PEOPLE!" and he says "Why?" which just makes me go ... ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR. I want to bite things when he giggles and laughs when I'm steaming mad.

Anyway.

It's not all bad. Today when we showered he only screamed while I was rinsing/shampooing/rinsing his hair, instead of wailing the whole time (this is definitely good). When he's been visiting with grandparents or whatever and hasn't seen me in a little while (20 minutes, or 2 hours, doesn't matter) he'll come rushing up to me all smiles and saying "It's so good to SEE you!" He says and does a lot of cute and/or funny things, like when we were driving down the mountain on Sunday and he was saying "Goodbye, Pine Mountain. Goodbye, tent."

He loves to talk to people, he's turning into a good little hiker, he loves to play outside, he thinks magnifying glasses are fascinating, he likes drawing with crayons, chalk, pens, pencils, anything, he's very fond of ants, horses, dogs, cats, flowers, sticks, rocks. He's learning a bit about the sounds of letters "B makes a buh sound! S makes a ssssssssss sound!" and is very enthusiastic about it. He wants to help with everything - weeding, cleaning, dishes. He pretends to change his stuffed kitty's diaper a lot. He was great on the camping trip this weekend -- his appetite was fantastic, and he slept very well in the tent, though getting him to like the sleeping bag was a small challenge.

A week or so ago I was working on breaking down a dying deciduous azalea (the thing must be 40 years old, the age of the house, and it's all sparsely foliaged, brittle, lichen-covered, mostly dead) ... I had noticed a beaten-down spot through the ornamental grass but figured the cats had done it, or someone had trampled through while pulling weeds or something. But then, rushing up to me comes Kidzilla crying "No! No! My bush! NO! Don't take my bush!" HIS bush. Funny boy! So I took away the dry brittle parts I'd broken off, and left the rest for him to play with. The trampled place is longer a mystery.

We're slowly starting on the potty training thing. And I do mean slowly. Yesterday we talked about what the potty chair is, what it's for, and he lifted the lid and dropped it a few times. Today after showering, he sat on it for a couple minutes (a big accomplishment just for that much) and we talked some more about what it was for, and about how people wear underwear instead of diapers. Etc.

On the not so good front -- still hates most foods. Still gag reflex/vomit boy. (Again on Sunday while driving home from Pine Mountain.)

---

Baby G is, as one might expect, doing those baby things! She's getting pretty good at sitting when you place her in a sitting position (she'll still fall over if she reaches for something, but she stays pretty well for awhile), and when she's laying on her blanket or in her crib she'll turn to her side and prop herself up on one elbow just like a big person might, which is kind of funny to see.

In really big news (for us), we finally found a "regular" nipple that works for her to drink from - Dr. Brown's Y-cut. $4 for 3 nipples ... instead of $13-15 EACH for the Haberman nipples. The Y-cut nipples wouldn't have worked when she was smaller, before her lip surgery, but they work great now. Which is fantastic, because she's gotten really rough on the bottle nipples, she gnaws on them so hard that she's wearing them out in a matter of weeks. The Y-cuts do it too, they're already starting to split a little from the ends of the cuts in the nipples, so I'll have to go buy more. At least they're cheap!

She also did great on the camping trip this weekend, she slept in the sleeping bag with K and I, and she just slept and slept quite happily. She went to bed the same time as K and C (I stayed up a couple hours after them for pumping milk schedule, which had to be done at the astronomer's residence where there was electricity and a fridge) and would sleep beautifully until C woke up in the mornings and got us all up - about 10 or 11 hours-ish.

Also on the camping trip, she was so happy to visit with people. All sorts of new people she'd never seen before, and she was just happy as a lark to go from person to person, being held and played with. Strangers, what are those??

A few days ago she started saying "Ma, ma, ma, ma, ma, ma" at times, which makes me happy. Yay for babbling kinds of sounds! We still might get ear tubes for her earlier than the palate surgery, but if she keeps working on babbling, maybe not. We'll see. It would be good not to have to pay the $$$$ to have them done sooner (done with the palate surgery, they won't cost us anything). :P

She's still not very interested in "real" food yet, but one day I was eating while I was holding her and she grabbed my fork, stuffed it in her mouth, and gummed my pasta to death. At least half that bite dribbled all down her and me, but she loved it.

However, now all she wants is that pasta - she looks excited when a spoon or fork comes her way, but if it's not spicy mac 'n' cheese with black beans, corn, smoked sausage, smoked paprika and garlic? Very disappointing. She gives me the sad face and usually lets it all fall back out her mouth again. Grandma E's spiced baked potato slices were marginally acceptable, though. Apparently she wants more strongly flavored food than C ever did (or does)!

She's still a small giant, at 7.5 months old she's right on the edge of needing 12 month size clothes. She can still kind of fit into some 9-month size, but others not so much.

I heated up some noodles for Kidzilla to supplement his tomato soup and peaches lunch.
Kidzilla: "Too HOT!"
So I put them in the freezer for a few minutes to cool off.
Kidzilla: "Too COLD!"
Me: "Okay, time for bed then."
Kidzilla: "No, don't wanna nap!" Whining this as he walks up the stairs and starts gathering up his stuffed critters.

*rolls eyes*

Okay, so I was right. There IS indeed a bumblebee nest in my giant compost pile. (I should say "compost", not compost, because well, really, it's not doing a very good job of composting. It's too big. In my defense, I sort of inherited it from the previous homeowners ... NOT to my credit, I hadn't done anything about breaking it up into smaller piles. Of course, I didn't own a pitchfork at the time ...)

Anyway! So I was out there with a shovel this evening, breaking down one edge of the pile. I have plans for the half-composted stuff. I noticed a handful of bumblebees buzzing and crawling all over one section of the broken up piles of half-compost and decided it was time to go work on another project.

So I was pulling up seedling weeds out of the raised bed I was planning on backfilling with some steer manure and topsoil (the level goes down every year due to decomposition and then the dirt that leaves on the roots of plants that go to the compost pile. And some washes out in serious rainstorms :P ). I realized I could hear a bee buzzing angrily, very close by. I very carefully peered around, couldn't see it. It sounded trapped, maybe, the sound wasn't moving at any rate. I shook my sleeve a little, carefully. No change.

I moved out of the garden, and the sound didn't diminish. Holy &*$#%, it was ON ME. SOMEWHERE. I fluffed my bangs and the hair escaped from my braid, I jiggled my braid. I very very carefully pulled my fleece pullover (did I mention I was out at 9pm doing garden work?) away from myself and shucked it off over my head as fast as I could and dropped it on the ground.

There just below the shoulder on one sleeve was a VERY angry bumblebee, trying to sting my fleece pullover to death.

I left my pullover there in the grass and went back to pulling weeds, making a mental note that the cucumbers needed watering, when I heard a bee buzzing. Nearby. I glanced around, and a very angry bumblebee was buzzing all around me.

I hightailed it out of the garden, and he followed me, actually bumping into one of my hands as I moved. I went farther away, and he fell back.

I stood there. I needed to water my cucumbers! I edged back toward the garden, and poked at my fleece. As I suspected, the bee was gone, it was probably the one that found me in the garden. I carried a gallon jug of water into the garden, dumped it on top of the cucumbers, grabbed up my pullover (left pullover under the eaves by the back door, was NOT going to bring it inside, just in case!) and dashed inside.

I totally have the creepy crawlies now. I keep feeling like there's bugs on me. *twitch*

So the question is, do I dare go back to work in the garden tomorrow??? Maybe I should wear perfume or something. (Mental note- do I OWN any perfume? Um...) Or wear a different color (my tank top and my pullover were the same color).

Anyway.

K's poison oak is really awful. He's weeping and oozing and dripping even, and it's actually itching this time (it usually doesn't make him itch, but he always looks like he's got chemical burns or something). He actually went to the doctor and is now on prednisone and super-strength Benadryl. Ugh.

Uncle TK has been rushed off to the hospital with an infection, possibly a burst appendix. His bad headaches had started to return (he's had two aneurysm bleeds in the brain) and now this. Good thoughts, or prayers if you're so inclined, would not go amiss. :(

Kidzilla plays this game - "What comes after G?" or "What comes after 4?" Etc. etc.

And so you tell him. Today he discovered the wonders of "What comes after X?"

To which, of course, I say "Y."

And he says "I don't know!"

Which makes me crack up every time.

Rejoining our cast of characters ... Gag-Reflex Boy's best friend, Ooze Man.

K-dragon got into the poison oak this weekend. He's got it EVERYWHERE.

He is blistery and oozy. *twitch*

I think I'm going to sleep in the recliner. Or maybe use Kidzilla's bed, since he insists on sleeping on the floor these days.