cat named pig

[Ed: I wrote this post Thursday morning; posting was delayed while I tried to look up the quote from Catherine Newman’s book Waiting for Birdy. Also while I changed several of the grossest diapers in human history. The doctor’s appointment I discuss here went fine, at least in the most important sense: she’s totally healthy. Yet the appointment was also a total train wreck, in the social-interaction-with-two-children-out-in-public sense. Post on that mess coming tomorrow. I remain both grateful and optimistic.] ….. 

I just got done filling out a stack of questionnaires longer and more detailed than my college applications, in preparation for Siena’s four-year physical this afternoon. There is nothing that makes me appreciate our amazing good fortune more than answering question after question about my child’s health and abilities. Whole forms (TB risk, lead poisoning) were dispatched with in mere seconds (“No, no, no, nope – none of these symptoms or issues – done.”). Other forms have sections that appear to be screening for autism or ADHD (questions about eye contact, repetitive behaviors, activity levels) and we breeze right through those, too, without a single check in the “This Is A Concern” column. The majority of my answers for everything from communication to gross motor skills are solidly in the “Fantastic! She’s Great At That, Too!” column. (I can barely type this without feeling like I’m bragging, like I’m going to be struck by a lightning bolt from the gods for my hubris, Greek-myth-style. Give me a minute, Greek gods; I’m nothing but grateful. I’m just trying to express it in my usual long-winded way. Please don’t strike me down.)

Anyway, these appointments and the many things they screen for always serve to remind me of how much could go wrong, of how much hasn’t gone wrong, yet, for us, and of how lucky that makes us. We didn’t even know if we’d be able to have kids, and now we have two of them. And we get to check “No” on the scariest parts of their health forms.

When Siena was about a month old, she was diagnosed with both RSV and a heart murmur. As infant diseases go, RSV is a scary one, especially for preemies. We were lucky she had been born full-term, with lungs that were fully developed. The heart murmur, while perhaps less of a threat, also terrified me. “She has a hole in her heart,” I would repeat the doctor’s phrase to myself, “That can’t be good.” I worried about the worst that could happen, too awful to put in words, and I worried about better-case scenarios like a lifetime of turning blue when she ran. Of not being able to play sports. (If you know Matt’s family, you know what a tragedy that would be.)

We had already won the life lottery, I kept thinking. We had already conceived, and carried to term, and given birth to a beautiful baby girl. Already more good luck than some people experience in a lifetime. When the heart specialist told us her VSD (ventricular septum defect, the hole in her heart) was likely to close on its own sometime in the next eight months, I could hardly even wish for that much continued good luck. When her nine-month recheck revealed that it had closed, I was amazed. It was like being given a free car after winning the lottery. Only better.

At this point in our lives, Matt and I don’t attend any sort of religious services or use a religious framework to process life’s ups and downs. We have our beliefs, but we haven’t adopted a formal means of expressing them. Catherine Newman, one of my favorite writers about parenthood, describes her secular version of prayer in an image I often think of, ever since I read it when Siena was a baby:

If I prayed, I would pray now, of course. Instead, I send my hope up into the stars, like an invisible paper airplane. Like a carrier pigeon with a note tied to its leg. And the note just says, “Please.” And, “Thank you.”

I think of this, a paper airplane or carrier pigeon with messages of hope and gratitude, every time we head into a doctor’s appointment. “Please,” let nothing turn up that shouldn’t be there. And, “Thank you,” for each illness they’ve recovered from, for each box I didn’t have to check in the “Concern” column. I send imaginary carrier pigeons into the heavens as I drift off to sleep each night. “Please,” another day as good as today. “Thank you,” for letting us get this far in our journey as a family. “Please,” the patience to appreciate our good luck in the midst of all the chaos. “Thank you,” for the healthy family that creates such chaos.

Maybe one day I’ll stop worrying so much. But not if it means I stop appreciating so deeply.

We’ve been busy since we got back from vacation and I’ve been experiencing some kind of blogger’s block; nothing comes to mind that seems interesting enough to write about (I know — like that ever stopped me before) and I’ve been waiting for Matt to put the photos from our family vacation on the computer. Because I think it’s better to wait for him to do it than to call him at work, ask him to walk me through the steps (AGAIN) and still do it wrong somehow. Which is my usual method of putting pictures on the computer.

For some reason my brain cannot find the storage space to hold onto that particular sequence of simple steps, probably because half of it is always busy trying to figure out who’s crying (even when I’m home alone; it’s hard to turn that off) and the rest of my brain is full of song lyrics from Enchanted. (”How does she KNOOOOOWWWWWWW you LOOVVVE her?” and so forth. There’s one line in that song where I think they say “Don’t treat her like a margarita.” I really hear this every single time we watch this movie, but I can’t figure out how that makes sense or why it would be in a song in a kids’ movie. Like kids, other than mine, even know what a margarita is. And why is it bad to treat someone like a margarita? When we go to Pepito’s, I treat my margaritas very well; I shower them with love and attention. This line really bugs me, because WHAT ELSE COULD THEY BE SAYING THAT SOUNDS LIKE THAT? I would consult Dr. Google about it, but I think I might hear somebody crying.) 

Anyway, now that you’re wishing I wasn’t trying to chisel through my blogger’s block with the world’s longest parenthetical tangent about song lyrics, I’ll leave you with this:

They’re really starting to be friends these days. I don’t know where they’re going in this picture, but I can practically hear Siena saying, “Come on, Little B. Come on, buddy.” And you know Elliot is just thrilled that she is inviting him to join her for anything.  

These two. I’m crazy about them. Don’t treat them like a margarita.

I spent a lot of time this weekend cleaning, but don’t worry — I won’t bore you to death by writing about it. Except for this one part:

I was trying to get the cat hair off the couch in our living room, and the special cat-hair-removing sponge that we have for this task seems to have reached the end of its working days. It was leaving little crumbs of sponge all over the couch, just making the situation worse.

So I got out a lint roller and tried that instead. But the lint roller wasn’t rolling properly (I think we had bought a lint-roller-refill-type-thing that was the wrong size for the base-type-thing) so I ended up just tearing a sheet of sticky lint-roller-paper off and using that to pick up the cat hair and sponge bits. I would spread the sheet out flat on one section of couch at a time, and then peel it off, sticky side covered in cat hair. While slightly more time consuming, this actually worked pretty well to get the couch clean. The only problem?

The whole time I was doing this, I could not stop feeling like I was giving the couch a bikini wax.  

[Subtitle: I heart vacation.] 

We’re back from vacation (OK, we got back Tuesday, but it wasn’t until this morning that I really felt mentally back) and finally back online.

It being 2008 and all, we took our Macbook to the cabin with us, along with two cell phones, two chargers, an iPod and its charger, some speakers, a digital camera, and multiple other things that plug into things. Aside from taking a few pictures, the iPod and speakers were the only things we really used. We usually head off on vacations with all of this stuff because we like having it with us; Internet Time is the most coveted of leisure activities in our household. Before the trip, I even suggested in total seriousness that we pack both laptops so we wouldn’t fight over the one. And I fully expected both of us to be updating this site with all the funny vacation stories, or at the very least Twittering frequently. 

Instead, I did not even turn on my cell phone one single time until the last night we were there (when I needed my niece to show me how to text faster using iTap [which, by the way, seems to be a total crap application, unless I am still using it wrong — it always suggests total gibberish instead of real English words]). I scanned my Google Reader maybe once, checked my e-mail once, and that was it. Matt used the computer a little more than I did, but nowhere near as much as we expected.

It was kind of nice.

Now that I’m not working in an office, I expected vacation to be more like an extension of daily life. This is not to say that life as a stay-at-home parent is a full-time vacation, but I expected the same patterns of feeding kids, keeping them entertained, going online while they nap, etc., to follow us to the cabin. Even though I love the way we spend most days, it was nice to totally change it up for a long weekend. Siena was so busy with their cousins that I barely saw her, and Elliot was able to spread his never-ending need for affection across fourteen other people instead of attaching himself to my legs all day long. And instead of blogging or e-mailing to get some social interaction during naptime, it was nice to have actual people around. 

We came home exhausted, but I also felt great: relaxed, even excited about getting back into our routine after a nice break from it. All the things I used to feel heading back to work after a good vacation. In the interest of getting to the point already, I guess it’s good to take a total break from your daily life once in a while, no matter what your daily life entails.  

Siena informed us tonight that she has a magic garden. In her words, “Bats come in the night and move the pollen, and then the flowers grow in the nighttime, and they grow so, so beautiful all night that you see them in the morning and they are BEAUTIFUL. You just can’t believe it.” 

Could the bats please come work on my garden? It’s mid-July and I’m starting to lose interest, although this is the first year I’ve consistently watered stuff instead of waiting for my dad to come over and panic at the sight of all the crispy blossoms. If the bats could do something about the weeds, too, that’d be super. Particularly the ones towering higher than the fence. Those suckers are getting ready to annex Austria.  

A few seconds later, Siena revised her imaginary garden: “I have a garden, for Barbie, where fairies come and they grow movies.”

That’s cool with me, too. Mabe the DVD-growing fairies could do something about the fact that we always end up with a total crap movie from Netflix right when I’m emotionally absorbed in a season of Six Feet Under? Garden Fairies, please come in the night and rearrange our queue so this doesn’t keep happening. Or grow me whole seasons at a time of the shows we watch, so I can find out what happened to Lisa already. For Pete’s sake. 

Siena’s birthday bash began with some cupcake frosting eating at the park: 

Party costumes were creative and varied (that’s Elliot in the ladybug helmet and some of Siena’s extra wings. I couldn’t resist):

And that’s me, wearing what Siena calls my “Mexican Butterfly dress,” forcing Elliot to have his picture taken in a ladybug helmet and wings. (Dear Future Elliot: Sorry about that. I really couldn’t help myself. I’ll tell your friends to stop laughing at you.) Also, Siena’s friend Jackson in a bee outfit.

And here are some more Fairy Princess Ballerinas, posing for the camera: 

There was also swimming, because why do one fun thing when you can do Eleventy-Million?    

After the Fairy Princess Bug Ballerina Cat Pool Party Extravaganza, we came back to our house for a family dinner and joint celebration for Siena and her two cousins who also have summer birthdays. 

Here’s the kids’ table (note the fairy wings — still on — and the sword): 

And that was the birthday party. Nine solid hours of fun.

Oh, but her real birthday (July 7) had not even occurred yet, so what did we do? More celebrating! Dinner at Pepito’s, followed by a trip to the Fishy Store, followed by the unceremonious dumping of Bob Dylan (the Girl) into the fish tank and the spilling of half a bag of water on our bookshelf and floor. (Note to selves for next year: drink margaritas after purchasing and transferring Birthday Fish. Not that we need margaritas to make a huge mess [see spilled milk post, and every other day of our lives here] but it may have dulled our reflexes just a bit.) 

But we did get this picture: 

 We call it Portrait With Goggles and Fish.

And this one (note Matt’s sopping wet shirt):

And that brings us to mid-July. I’m exhausted.  

Some people take photos on their camera, then come home and immediately transfer them to the computer, upload them to blogs or photo sites, and order prints. Other people (like our friend Lisa) take copious amounts of photos that are never seen or heard from again, existing in some vast computer-storage limbo for all eternity. We fall somewhere in between these two extremes, rarely doing anything with our photos the same week we take them, but usually at least getting them on Flickr or a blog post within a month. Which is why we are now presenting you with a brief photo essay of Things That Have Happened So Far This Month:

I received a beautiful necklace at my birthday dinner. Note Siena’s face in the photo: 

Fortunately, Siena received beautiful jewelry of her own just a few days later (it went nicely with her Target tattoo from the Pride Festival): 

In between my birthday and Siena’s, we celebrated the birth of our nation and debuted some new life jackets:

Which wore us right out:

We weren’t too worn out to have a Fairy Princess Ballerina Cat Party the next day, though. Here is Siena all ready to go to the park:

Hmm. . . this is getting long. Clearly, July has been a full month for Team Catnamedpig. We’ll stop here for now, but check back later today for Part II of the photo catch-up post, complete with more birthday madness and maybe a picture of Elliot in fairy wings. 

Dear Coffee,

Dear Beautiful, Delicious, Caffeinated Coffee. I adore you. You complete me.

Without you, I would know nothing of the world. Because I never would have gotten out of bed (not one single time) in the last fourteen years or whatever it’s been since I discovered you. I definitely would not have gone to college, would not have traveled (to countries who worship you like I do, making you into tiny works of art in espresso cups). I would not have bought my house, because I would’ve slept through the closing. I don’t know that I would have made it to my wedding on time (yes, it was at 5:00 p.m., but there was a long day of getting ready that began with a latte at the salon).

What about those times I left you, during pregnancies, for dull and boring (and non-caffeinated) Tea? I’m sorry about that, Coffee. Believe me when I say I thought about you the whole time. I’ll never leave you again.   

Sometimes, Coffee, you are all I care about. (Don’t tell the people I live with.) I go to bed at night thinking about you. I wake up pining for you. I make sure everyone around me knows how badly I need you, by stumbling into walls and complaining about everything — if they ask what’s wrong with me, I tell them, snappishly: “I need my Coffee!”

Without you, I am an empty shell of a human being. With you, I can be anything. Thank you, Coffee, for making me the person I am today (awake and not complaining about it).

Love,

Laura

[This post is dedicated to Last Night’s Storm, for keeping us up and reminding me just how much Coffee really means to me.] 

Last Thursday morning, we bid farewell to Norah Jones the fish, who had passed on in the night. We had kind of seen it coming; Matt cleaned the fish tank last week and we noticed her acting kind of strange in the new, clean water. She probably didn’t know what to do with herself since it was so different from her usual murky water. So we tried to prepare Siena for the inevitable, but it was still pretty sad when it happened.

We had a small “memorial service” where we each tried to say something nice about Norah Jones. It went something like this: 

Matt: “I liked Norah Jones because she was a good eater. Not like Bob Marley Fish — he wasn’t very smart. But Norah Jones would swim right up to the food when we put it in.”

Siena: “SOBBB.” [Sniff.]  

Laura: “I thought she was a very pretty fish. I liked how red she was. Siena, you picked a really nice red one when we went to the Fishy Store last year.” 

Siena: “SOB.” 

Elliot: “SSSHHHHHH.” [Waves his arm back and forth in his super-enthusiastic version of the sign for fish. Then heads over to the open fish tank and starts splashing the water all over.]

Laura: “Siena, do you want to say something nice about Norah Jones?” 

Siena: “Yes.” [Long pause.] “I want Norah Jones to still be ALIIIIIVE.” 

So that was sad.

But it did mean it was time for a new fish, so for the third year in a row we went to the Fishy Store on Siena’s birthday and let her pick out a betta. Just like last year, she knew immediately which one she wanted. She didn’t even want to look at any of the others once she had found The One. The latest model is blue and red with a little bit of purple, which looks great with the fuschia-colored rocks in the tank.

And the name? Bob Dylan, as previously determined (two fish ago) but pay attention here: Bob Dylan is a girl. Do not, I repeat do not, refer to her with a masculine pronoun or you will be immediately deafened by Siena’s shrieking reminder. I know this from experience. My ears are still ringing. 

And so it goes. The cycle of life, death, and birthday fish continues. Although it looks like we might have to deviate from tradition a little next year and buy two fish that can live together (not bettas), as I hear rumors of Simon and Garfunkel being the next names under consideration.

[On Elliot’s first birthday, I posted the story of how he came into the world. Not because anyone really asked, but because it is one of the few big stories of my life, and I will tell and retell it at any opportunity. Same with Siena’s birth story, which seemed perhaps even more dramatic because it was the first time I had done any of this. In the interest of equality among siblings, I am now posting the story of Siena’s birth.]

It was the day before my due date and I had gone in to the doctor for my nearing-the-end-of-pregnancy weekly checkup. Matt came with me, as he had come to all my prenatal appointments (awww!) which turned out to be a good thing. 

I had a non-stress test, which I remember as eating granola bars with some kind of fetal monitor strapped to my belly, and then they measured my beach ball of a waistline and found it to be smaller than the week before. An ultrasound revealed that I was slowly losing amniotic fluid (not the baby shrinking or any of the other disturbing possibilities I entertained in my head while we waited) and the doctor cheerfully informed us, “You’re having the baby today!”

 That statement, at thirty-nine weeks and six days, should not really have caught us by surprise, but I remember feeling nothing but shock. You mean, TODAY today? As in NOW?!? But I have a meeting this morning at work. And we don’t have our bag of stuff. We packed it; we’ve done everything we’re supposed to do, but we didn’t bring it to the appointment because this is just a check-up and seriously, you mean we’re having our BABY?! Today?!?

I processed this information by bursting into tears, a solid strategy that had gotten me through everything from diaper commercials to running out of breakfast cereal during the last month of the pregnancy. Matt stayed calmer, but he looked stunned, too.

We made some phone calls to work as we drove to the hospital. Which was the building right behind my clinic, so we were parked and getting out of the car before I had finished trying not to cry on the phone to my boss. Then I called my mom and started crying again as soon as she answered. In between phone calls, I just kept repeating, “We’re having our baby.” Which, again, at one day shy of the due date, should not have been the most shocking concept in the world, but I just couldn’t wrap my brain around it. Our baby. Today. This large, kicking, hiccupping mass in my belly was an actual small person, and we were going to see her face for the first time today.

It was a little weird just walking into Labor & Delivery, no wheelchair or panting through contractions or anything else TV had taught me to expect. Someone at the desk looked up: “Can I help you?”

“Hi, I’m here to have a baby,” I grinned. And then promptly teared up. She probably rolled her eyes.

But my doctor had called and they had a room all ready for us, and within minutes, I was in a hospital gown with a fetal heart monitor strapped to my belly. They hooked my up to an IV of Pitocin to induce labor (I remember actually dreading the IV, the thought of a needle in my arm freaking me out a little bit. Seriously. Two babies later, the thought of a mere needle in the arm barely bothers me. I could be walking around with a needle stuck in me right now and I wouldn’t even notice it. What a different time that was.)

As the nurse got the Pitocin drip going, she suggested that Matt head home to get our overnight bag, saying, “This will take a while to get going. With first-time mothers, induction takes longer. She’ll probably be just barely feeling the contractions by the time you get back.” She was not correct about this.

She was very wrong, in fact – I would maybe say I “just barely” felt the first three contractions, but within fifteen minutes of starting the IV I was having contractions strong enough to make me forget that I had ever worried about a needle in my arm. The printout from the contraction monitor started showing sharp, jagged peaks and valleys where the nurse had apparently expected to see gentle rolling hills for the first few hours; apparently I was more sensitive to Pitocin than the typical first-time mother.

Our nurse would continue to exclaim about that fact all day, but she had so reassured Matt that he not only went home and got our stuff, but also stopped by Chipotle and grabbed a burrito for himself. He was thinking, and rightly so, that it would probably be a long time before he got a chance to eat anything. While that was true, and probably smart of him, it did not play well when he walked into the room where I was already trying to breathe through seriously strong contractions (unusual! for a first-time mother! but still very real! and painful!) and I saw his Chipotle bag. The imbalance of our roles in this process couldn’t have been more obvious: I was setting land-speed records for a first-time induction, and he was eating a delicious burrito. (As were half the people who came to visit us that first night, our hospital being conveniently located near a Chipotle.)

I might be playing up the burrito drama a little bit here – mostly I was just glad to see Matt when he got back. Things were really cranking along, labor-wise, and I had a feeling I was going to need him around.

The doctor had come in to break my water and found meconium in the fluid, a sign of fetal distress, which meant they attached a fetal scalp monitor to the baby and I had yet another printout unfurling next to my bed. I watched this one obsessively and tried to get a sense from the doctor and nurses of how worried I should be. They didn’t seem too freaked out so I tried not to be, and then the contractions got stronger and I couldn’t think about anything anyway.

According to Matt’s notes in my journal, they gave me IV antibiotics (I remember feeling feverish, and then nauseated, and Matt telling the nurse that I never actually throw up so she didn’t need to hover next to me with the barf bin). I also remember various people checking for dilation progress and announcing numbers of centimeters (not recorded in the journal) and the nurse continuing to exclaim about how fast things were moving along and how she never even needed to increase the dosage of Pitocin; that first starter dose had been enough to kick things into high gear.

Matt’s notes also reveal that my mom arrived around 1:40 p.m. and that at 2:30 p.m. I got the epidural. Given my dread of the IV in my arm, you can imagine how I felt about the prospect of a huge needle going into my spine. (Spine! Agh!) However, if induced labor does one thing well, it is making you so uncomfortable you actually wish for a needle to the spine, to the eyeball, to the inner ear, to any part of your body so long as it numbs the contractions a little. The epidural procedure sounded downright relaxing by that point.  

Within fifteen minutes, the epidural was starting to work, but only on my left side. I was lying on my left in order to send as much blood-flow, and therefore oxygen, as possible to my poor little distressed baby, whose fetal monitor printout showed a frightening drop every time I moved from that position.

Unfortunately, for an epidural to work properly, you need to lie on your back so the numbing goodness can spread throughout your body. Since that wasn’t an option, soon I was experiencing the bizarre sensation of one half of my body (my left) being completely numb from the waist down, while the other half was being squeezed in a vice and stabbed with daggers and set on fire. The nurse left the room “so I could get some sleep.”

(It didn’t really work out that way.)

At 4:15 (Matt’s note), I was dilated to nine centimeters and at 4:30 they called my doctor. She arrived at 4:45 and it was time to start pushing.

I had dreaded the pushing (along with the epidural and the IV) but it wasn’t actually that bad. I actually started to appreciate my half-epidural because I could still feel enough to know what to do (some women have trouble pushing because they are too numb) yet the partial pain-relief was better than nothing. I won’t go into any more detail here; if you’ve done this, you know, and if you haven’t, you don’t want to.

Siena was born at 5:26 p.m.

Because of the meconium, they had to suction out her lungs right away, which meant I had to wait a minute or two that felt like a decade before I could hold her. I kept asking the doctor if she was really OK, and then, “Is she really a girl?” (We had been pretty sure from the ultrasounds, but if they had been wrong, I wanted to know!) The doctor laughed and said, “You know, I didn’t even look – yep, definitely a girl.” Then I finally got to hold her.

Matt and I both said, “Hi, Baby Girl. Hi, Siena Isabelle.”

(Needless to say, I teared up.)

But I was laughing a few seconds later when the nurse told us there were “two people anxiously listening outside the door,” waiting to see their first grandchild. My parents all but fell into the room when the nurse opened the door.

The rest of that night was all about food: nursing (Siena was a pro, right from the start), a steady stream of visitors with Chipotle burritos, me fainting the first time I tried to stand up and then being practically force-fed crackers and juice for the next few hours, and large trays of hospital food that Matt took great pains to videotape. (If you watch the video, you’d think I was at an all-inclusive resort buffet or something. The camera zooms in on me eating and on my tray and you hear, “There’s Mom eating again” with no mention of the fact that I had just fainted, never mind the fact I had just given birth. To his baby. Give a girl some crackers.)  

Matt kept very precise notes of each feeding and diaper change that first night. He also kept a running list of visitors to our room. It was great to see my parents as grandparents and my brother as an uncle for the first time. Matt’s parents, sister and brother-in-law were there too, as were two of my girlfriends. It felt like a party. When I wasn’t snacking or feeding Siena, I tried to get used to the idea that this beautiful little creature was going home with us, was our baby.

Four years later, I’m sitting here trying to get used to the idea that that same baby is now a girl who received a bike as a birthday gift, who will start a new preschool in the fall where she’ll learn a second language, who takes ballet and music classes, and who tells me long, complicated stories about imaginary friends and princesses and dance teachers and her own daughter, Barbie.

I thought she was amazing that first night. I didn’t know the half of it.

Happy Birthday, Siena Belle.