Once a year or so Scott and I ususally find ourselves with some extra money, energy and a couple of days off together. When this happens we splurge all three on doing stuff around the house. Cleaning up, decorating, moving furniture around and generally making our home a nicer place to be. Well, with the babe in the picture I wasn't sure that was going to happen this year. Then my dad called and said he'd come over to help me with the border around our back patio. We have a really nice sized patio slab in back of our townhouse here, about 15 x 20. There's a border of dirt around it, maybe, 18 inches to 2 feet wide. When we moved in a nasty weed called Bermuda grass had taken over the border. It looked really gross. Dad sprayed it all down with Round-Up weed killer last month and it all died and turned brown. He came over yesterday to help me pull it out and plant new stuff. I really like having a big space to set up our outdoor furniture and stuff but the dead weeds were to sad to look at that I was embarassed to let anyone see it. So, my father (who's done yard work of some kind every weekend for as long as I can remember) came over with all his tools and we got to work. I would like to say that I'm no stranger to hard work but that would be a lie. (Granted, not the first lie I've told, but the first one I've admitted to before telling it.) I know hard work when I see it. And I've worked hard on things. But neither are even close to being experienced with doing hard work. Bermuda grass has tubular blades and it vines as it grows. So for every square yard of growth you'll have one root system. Then the vines get really entwisted and tangled making it tough to pull up. My job was to go in front of my father using lawn shears and cutting the dead growth off as close to the ground as I could get. I couldn't get a good grip on the shears with gloves on so I used my bare hand on the shears and pulled a blister on the webbing between my thumb and forefinger. He came behind me with a hand tool and pulled up as much of the roots as he could get. To make this more challenging, the ground here is very rocky and the soil was very dry. It took us close to 2 1/2 hours to get it all pulled up. Then we raked and moved rocks around. My mom called just as we were finishing up and asked if we were having fun. My dad said "Well, no, but we're getting things done." Finally, we were ready to get some plants. We headed off to the home improvement store for plants, a hose, a hose box, trellises and a system to make watering as easy as possible. With two baskets full of stuff we got back to my house and got planting. My god, what a difference. It looks so clean and cool and pleasant now. Jasmine bushes that will eventually grow up trellises, clover along the side of the house and little purple flowers and geraniums along the back. I've reserved some space to grow herbs under the kitchen window close to the hose bib. It took us seven hours from start until we were finished. I'm not sure the last time I was that dirty. The ground was so dry we kicked up a ton of dust which settled in my nasal cavities. I blew my nose and got a tissue full of dust. The last time I saw this was after the Arizona Renaissance Faire in 1994! I do have to say that I had more energy after having Zoë then after getting done with the yard! Zoë had spent the day with Scott and was ready for some mommy time. I was nursing her when Scott decided that he'd like to set up our aquarium. He found that some of the stuff is still packed away. So, I changed clothes and we headed for the pet store. We got everything we needed and Scott got our fish tank put together. Then he said he'd been in the house with the baby all day and wanted to go get ice cream. So, I changed clothes again and we walked up to downtown Claremont (one mile away) and got cones and window shopped and showed off our baby. We walked home, got the baby to sleep and I collapsed. Dad came back over this morning and we took him to breakfast. Afterwards we put the bar-b-q together. Wow! It's nice in back our house now, somewhere you'd like to have coffee in the cool of the moring. Or grill for friends. Or just sit and read. But, first, I'm going have a nap.
posted by Amanda Snyder at 11:08 AM

Zoë and I started Gymboree classes last week. Very similar to Diaper Gym. We take Gym-Crawlers on Thursdays and Quarter-notes, a class that introduces babies to music on Fridays. Last week, while in Gym-Crawlers class, the window cleaning service was there. It struck me as a weird overlay. The men very solemnly spraying and squeegying the inside of the big windows while ten women danced around with their babies singing a song to a plush clown named Gymbo. Zoë really likes playing with the other babies and her favorite part is when we play with the parachute. It's funny when you get ten crawling babies on the floor moving at the speed of light. It looks sort of like those Discovery Channel shows about babies when they get a bunch of babies together and then point out behaviors. She a master crawler, Zoë is. She's all over the place. She's eating Cheerios, scrambled eggs and these grain and veggie cakes shaped like wagon wheels. She's completely shunned teething biscuts in favor of these wagon wheels. The first time I gave her one I noticed it was gone and started to look for it on the floor. She ate it of course but it didn't dawn on me for a few minutes. She also like to throw things on the floor from her high chair and then look at it from the high vantage point. Scott only picks things up twice and then won't give them back. I find this to be cruel and unusual punishment.
My dad is coming over tomorrow to help me pull out all the dead plants surrounding our back patio and plant some new ones. I bought a bar-b-que online and we'll put that together as well. If all goes well, we'll be all set for summer!
posted by Amanda Snyder at 12:25 PM

On Friday, my friend Dawnise came up to walk and we hung around for the rest of the day. We are both big fans of bad horror movies. I record them on Tivo and we watch them in the afternoon during the week. Scott just clutches his head when he reads that our Tivo is filled with flicks like "Blood and Lace" and "The Thing that Wouldn't Die". Anyway. She was just leaving when the phone rang. It was my father-in-law Bill. He's been in Sacramento for over a month taking care of his mother who was in poor shape following a fall. She's not able to live on her own anymore so he's there making arrangement for in home care, getting her signed up for Medi-Cal and other things that need to be taken care of. Bill asked if he could come down to visit for the weekend. I said "Of course, you are always welcome!" I hung up the phone, looked at the pathways through the rubble in our living room and said "AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!" I called my parents and said "Bill is coming down tomorrow to stay the weekend. Could you please come over and baby-wrangle for me so I can get the house in order?" My dad said "Tomorrow moring?" I said, "No." My parents were at my house 45 minutes later. Now, I had cleaned the upstairs on Wednesday but the lower level of our place was a disaster. Scott called as my parents were on their way and I told him what was going on. He said "It's just my dad, he doesn't care." I told him, "This has nothing to do with your father!" The house just needs to be clean when you have guests, even if they're your parents. You just need to take the hour or so to pick up, clean the toilets and put out clean towels.

Zoë had a great time with her grandpa and Bill got a well deserved couple of days to relax. He's hoping to be done in Sacramento in a week and back home in Maryland. We'll see how it all washes out.
posted by Amanda Snyder at 6:25 AM

A long time between blogs, I know. Zoë and I went with Scott on his business trip to San Jose last week. We were gone Monday through Thursday and had a very nice time. It was wonderful to not have a household to worry about. All I had to do was take care of the baby. We met the guys Scott was working with and hit all of my old favorite haunts. Zoë and I hit the Mini Gourmet three times. Scott was grateful for the company. We got home and I'm now faced with starting Gymboree classes this week. We're going to be taking the play/learning class for babies who are crawling as well as a music class called Quarter Notes. This will take up Thursdays from 11:45 to 1:00 and Fridays from 10:00 to 11:00. In addition, I've just volunteered to be the co-ordinator for the Moms Club Playgroup for the younger babies. So, now three days a week will have playgroup. Plus going to visit Kathye or have Dawnise over here. And going out on the weekends with Scott or going out to see friends. Oh boy. I'm looking at close to full time hours just to keep up with activities. What will I do at holiday time? Anyway....

Zoë is a crawling machine. She crawls everwhere. In the dining nook, in the living room, at my parents house, anywhere you put her down. She crawls around. She's getting more teeth too. Four on the top and two more on the bottom. She's in remarkably good spirits to be cutting so many teeth. But she's a good girl.

Today I got up at seven with the baby, ate breakfast, unloaded and reloaded the dishwasher, cleaned up the kitchen, nursed the baby, went out for my walk, changed clothes, went to the ATM, drove thru Carl's Jr's for lunch, went to Kathye's house, met up with Susan, ate the lunch I bought, left the baby with Kathye and Susan and Kathye's kids, drove back to my house, cleaned 2 bathrooms, put away 3 baskets of laundry, vacuumed the uppper floor, cleaned up the nursery, emptied the diaper genie, took five bags of trash out to the dumpster, took a shower, ordered Scott's birthday present (late late late!), got dressed, went to pick up the baby, nursed the baby, picked up Scott at the airport (returning from a 2 day business trip), drove thru In-n-out for dinner, fed the baby, fed myself, gave the baby a bath, put the baby in jammies, let the baby play a while, nursed the baby, rocked the baby to sleep and now I'm blogging, my god I'm tired. I'm going to bed.
posted by Amanda Snyder at 9:15 PM

I decided last week that I'd like to lose a little weight. Not 100 pounds or anything. Just 10 or so, enough to make my jeans not tight anymore. There are several schools of thought on how to go about this. I could subscribe to Helen Gurley Brown's philosophy of exercise every day for the rest of your life and 800 calories a day. I've done this one before. She tells you it's unpleasant and is she right! Wow. Let me tell you 800 calories is not enough to get you through the day. But, since I think Helen Gurley Brown is anti-woman (and, in all likelyhood the antiChrist I probably shouldn't do anything she says. Lisa Marie Presley says exercise A LOT and eat hardly anything. A variation on the same theme. Susan Powter, who makes a living at telling people how to lose weight, says exercise moderately and eat high quality, low-fat food. Your body will change but it'll take some time to see the numbers on the scale change. Richard Simmons, I'm not gonna go there. (He says he's asexual! He claims that he doesn't need sex in his life! Something is wrong there!) There's also Slim-Fast, the Hollywood Diet, the Fat Zapper, the Fat Trapper, the Cabbage Soup diet, the Grapefruit Diet, the Beverly Hills diet, food combining, Eat Right for you Type and the cocaine-and-raisin diet created by a Dallas Cowboy's cheerleader (the raisins are for fiber). Now, if I was really desparate, I could purge, take laxatives, fast or do other nasty things to my body. Then there's the contingent who says "Don't diet! You are beautiful! Be healthy! Don't try to lose weight to look good! Just do what is good for your body and makes you feel good!" I like this last one. I'm walking three times a week or so, sometimes four or five if I'm in the mood, and making better choices with my meals. Turkey sandwiches with mustard instead of burgers with dressing, kind of thinking. But I'm not being obsessive about it. We'll see what happens.
posted by Amanda Snyder at 7:41 AM

Oh I had a bad day today. It started out all right. Zoë's rash broke out yesterday, which means we are in the final stages of roseola, and her fevers are gone. We all slept okay last night. We got up and had breakfast. Zoë napped about ten in the morning. After she woke up we went to the grocery store. I managed to forget the list again but I remembered everything on it. We got back home around 12:30. I fed her some lunch and sat down to rock her. She snoozed and I watched "Days of our Lives" (please don't ask). When Zoë woke up I decided that I wanted to go walk, even though it was hot. I thought, "I know it's hot but it's not THAT hot and there is a nice breeze." I get the baby in the car and head for Thompson Creek trail. I get about half-way through the route I ususally take when I start to feel dizzy. I put my hand up to my head and felt my temples. They were bulging out. My body had pumped all my blood to my head in order to keep me from passing out. This is just my uneducated assumption. I turn around and head back for the car. Whenever the stroller stops, Zoë cries. So I walk as slowly as I can back to our car. I sit in the air conditioning for a few minutes and feel much better. I drive towards home. On my way I check the temperature on the thermometer at the bank. 93 degrees. Doh!

Also going on today, I was creating some drama amongst myself and two of my girlfriends involving weekend plans. Suffice it to say that to try and explain here would sound a lot like a high school scene. Heather called me and said that Amber said that I said we were going miniature golfing when I said that MAYBE we were going miniature golfing but Heather already bought the tokens for the video games and I said that I didn't ask her to buy me anything..... You get the picture. Let's just say that I made a few too many phone calls and hypered myself into a frenzy about it. Then my mother called to say that the family is getting together that day and I can't do anything with my girlfriends after all. In the middle of all this Zoë is clinging to me like a remora. She doesn't want to be put down. She wants to be held when she sleeps. And she's napping more than ususal. She's taken up the habit of nursing before she naps and then grabbing my nipple in her fist when she unlatches. This hurts. I pry her fist open and reclaim my breast, generally making the baby protest this repossesion. We have this conversation several times today. Around one, before she went down for her early afternoon nap but before I went for my aborted exercise attempt, the baby started some mild fussing. No big thing, just general whinging. That is, until she'd been doing it for eight hours. My mom came over about six and gave me a break to take a shower. She asked me if there was anything she could do for me. I said "Shoot me in the head and put me out of my misery." Everything was just sort of imploding in on me. The roseola, her teething, the heat, my sleep devprivation, my worrying about everything from my daughters lack of interest in board books to global warming all piled up and dumped themselves into my brain. I was starting to use very sensitive parenting words like "For God's sake shut UP!" By the time Scott got home at nine I simply handed him the baby and said "I really, really need a break." I ended up driving around for forty minutes with the window rolled down and listening to a Henry Rollins spoken word album. When I got home Zoë was asleep and I was in much better shape. I think tomorrow should be better.
posted by Amanda Snyder at 10:34 PM

Motherhood has caught up with me with a vengance. Zoë and I have been congested for the last week. She had her well-baby check on Friday. Her pediatrician wasn't very concerned about her nose. He said just keep doing what I'm doing, saline and suction, until she's cleared up. I thought she felt hot, but her temperature was only 97. Also, she's teething really, really hard and that could cause her nose to be irritated and a mild fever to develop. Saturday morning I was sitting with her and her forehead felt hot. I took her temperature under her arm. I added one degree (the nurses told me to to this) and got 102. I gave her a dose of Tylenol. I called our local urgent care clinic and asked if I should just keep dosing her or should I bring her in? They said to bring her in. I got dressed and we were out the door fiffteen minutes later. The scaries part of having a baby with a fever is how quickly they wisk you back into the back office. The initial reaction is usually "Yeah, yeah. New mom. Has a baby with a degree of fever. Wait here please." until you say "One hundred and two degrees." Then it's "Ooooohhhhhh. Come back please." Her internal temperature was 103, point 7. I start to quietly freak out. I think about infection. I think about pneumonia. I think about brain damage causing retardation. I think of mumps. I think of diptheria. I read a magazine and try to appear calm. Scott holds the baby as she is happy with him. The physicians assistant we see is a cheerful fellow who takes his time examining her. He checks her ears and throat. He listens to her lungs and asks us a lot of questions. He takes note that she doesn't seem to be acting very sick. She just has this fever. She ate breakfast, hasn't been vomiting and is continuing to be active. He says she has roseola. It's a virus that causes high fevers, "rockin'" our P.A. Brian calls them, with no infection present. A rash appears about the third day, the fever breaks and your done. He doesn't want to put her on antibiotics because it will just knock out her good bacteria and if she does end up breaking out in a rash she could be misdiagnosed as being allergic to antibiotics. We agree to wait and see. Scott and I tell him that we use the barometer of how she's acting and understand that getting rid of a low grade fever isn't always the best thing. We take her home. Scott went to play his Dungeons & Dragons game. My friends Dan and Dawnise come over to keep me company. Zoë's feeling okay so we go out for lunch. At seven I go down to have dinner with the game crew. They are nowhere near a stopping point so I take the baby home at eight. She's continuing to act like she feels fine. Just her general complaining about bedtime is present. Zoë and I lay down together at 9:30. I get two hours of sleep before she wakes up blazing hot. I dose her full of ibuprofen, call Scott to tell him to come home and put her in a cool bath. I've been coughing all day and I'm losing my voice so I can't even sing to her. Zoë plays with her bath toys while I pour water over her back. Scott comes home just as we are getting out of the tub. Her temperature has dropped significantly and Scott rocks her to sleep. I go back to bed at one in the morning. Scott brings her in to me at 3:30. We swap places. I go downstairs onto the futon, Scott gets into our bed. Zoë goes back to sleep around 4:30 and doesn't wake up until 8:00.
I'm exhausted and worried and coughing and I haven't had a shower since Thursday. We are both operating on four hours of sleep. I'd gotten the house into reasonable shape and that's gone out the window with baby equipment everywhere. Zoë is sleeping now but she's due for another bath in an hour or so. I really hope this all turns out okay.
posted by Amanda Snyder at 10:11 AM