There is just no accounting for some people.

I work for an ophthalmologist, so we primarily see older patients. I love working here (most of the time). I love the job: the typing, answering phones, the making of appointments, and taking of messages. I know that Pam Beasly thinks that little girls don’t say “I want to be a receptionist when I grow up”, but I’m pretty sure I did. I love the people I work with, both co-workers and patients, but every once in a while you run across someone who makes you feel so awful and inferior that…

I don’t cry easily. Well, I do when I’m watching TV or a movie (like the other night, we were watching the new John Adams 7 part miniseries on HBO and I cried when the Declaration of Independence was read, it was a proud thing), but not when someone is being mean or when I get pulled over. I’m more of a “sick feeling in the pit of my stomach” kind of a girl, and even then I can usually get angry enough that my anger keeps all my other emotions in check (it sounds weird but it works for me).

There are stereotypically two types of old women. There is type #1, everyone’s favorite the Grandma/Little Old Lady. She might not be your Grandma, but you’d like her to be. She’s round, sweet, and matronly. Her wrinkled skin is very soft, and she calls everyone “Sweetheart”. Then there is type #2, the Sophia Petrillos of our time. She’s tiny, wrinkled with gray, silver, or blue hair, and she curses like a sailor. She’s crass, but you still smile a little when you see her.

In my line of work there is a third type of old woman, and while it’s not necessarily a stereotype, maybe it should be. She’s the older woman who uses a walker, or a cane, or a wheelchair. She is on Medicare and Medicaid (state insurance) and she lives in a nursing home. Most of the time she has been abandoned by her children. She is sweet, quiet, and sometimes smells bad. She is very alone.

These three types of women make up the majority of my patient base. But every once in a while, there is an anomaly. An odd patient who pops up and throws off my skewed perception of little old ladies. Today was one of those days.

We had our monthly morning meeting and followed meeting protocol for it. Our phones stayed over with the answering service, we had a sign on the front door, and the door was locked. The meeting ran late. So our 9:00 patient (who arrived early like a good patient) stood outside in the cold and the rain and was understandably upset. Understandably. I apologized and tried to get on with the process of checking her in. It didn’t take. She went on and on beyond a reasonable amount and she was bitter and loud and mean about it all. She made it impossible for me to do my job and then I was going to have to perform a test on her, a test that was going to take 30 minutes. 30 minutes trapped in a room with this woman. It was less than appealing.

Once in the room with her, I tried to set her up on the machine, and everything I tried was sub-par. She made me feel so inadequate, so stupid, and so frustrated. When my co-worker, God bless her, came in to relieve me, I stepped out of the room and cried. Only for a minute, but still…

I hate that feeling; the lack of control, the emotional upheaval. It was awful. But, thanks in part to this blog, I have vented and I am rising above. I am over it. Mostly.

My house is under quarantine

Abby got sick a few days ago. I think it started as the croup, and has gone into a full blown all day long cold. She's stuffy and coughy and whiney.

Then Jon got sick. It's awful when men get sick. They are worse than kids. But he's actually been pretty great while he's been sick.

Then I got a little chesty thing going on along with the onset of a few female things I had almost forgotten about since getting pregnant 18 months ago.

This morning, I noticed Sam was sick. It was the first night he slept all the way through and I was thrilled! Then he started dry heaving. Is there anything sadder than seeing a baby throw up? Especially when he hasn't eaten all night and there is nothing in his belly. He seems to be fine now, but it was so sad this morning.

He's in the middle of what appears to be a three hour nap (he doesn't usually sleep longer than 45 minutes) so I know he's still not feeling well.

I just hope he's feeling better tomorrow, because I don't know how to decide who stays home from church with the kids. Jon plays drums on the worship team, and I lead kids' worship. I have a backup, Anna, she's the greatest. But Easter is coming and I need to be practicing with the kids.

I wonder if you can bribe germs with chocolate like you can kids?

Ah, the return of PMS.

I know it's not uncommon to not have a period while you are nursing, so I haven't been too worried. I figured it would start eventually. I just didn't expect this crazy PMS to accompany it. The bloating, the moodiness, the sudden cravings for chocolate and fried foods.

Apparently TBS knew this was coming and helped preapre for it. You know that movie. The one movie from 1989 you can watch over and over and over again and no matter how many times you see it, you still laugh and cry as hard as the very first time you watched it? Well, TBS played it last night just for me. Steel Magnolias is that movie.

And after watching this movie, drinking a 20 oz. Pepsi, and eating pretzels and nacho cheese dip, and crying my eyes out, I feel much better.

Happy Leap Day!-- How I became an AP momma.

Only once every 4 years does this roll around, and I can't pass up an opportunity to blog on this day, so I want to tell you how I became an AP momma.

AP stands for "Attachment Parenting". There aren't any hard and fast rules for AP, but most AP parents believe in breastfeeding, co-sleeping, baby wearing, and cloth diapering. Also, most AP parents don't believe in letting their children Cry It Out (CIO).

It all started about 5 years ago near the end of my pregnancy with Abigail. I don't know where this little book came from or where it went to, but I had a little book about breastfeeding. It talked about the difference between colostrum and milk, showed a bunch of different holds, explained how to get the baby on with a good latch, and went through possible breastfeeding problems and how to fix them.

I was hooked. I knew that babies needed something for the first year of life, be it breastmilk or formula. And I also knew we really couldn't afford formula. (This was before I knew about WIC.) Then and there I decided I was going to breastfeed for a year. It wasn't a political decision. And it didn't come from researching the pros and cons. It came from necessity.

After Abby was born, it just seemed natural to pick her up when she cried, feed her when she was hungry and fall asleep on the couch at night with her in my arms.
After Ben was born it was the same thing. He was about 12 months old when I stumbled across this whole "Attachment Parenting" thing. And by then he had self-weaned and I was sure I had missed the boat.

However, the AP mindset was just something that seemed right to me. It was like it all clicked and fell into place. This thing that I thought and did with my own babies, had a name! And a lot of other people raised their kids the same way!

I became a nut. I researched baby carriers and learned about fenugreek. I read about the joys and benefits of breastfeeing to age two. And I was hooked.
When I found out I was pregnant again, I excitedly ordered my Moby Wrap and planned for a natural childbirth. May 20th rolled around and while the natural childbirth didn't happen (So I'm a big wuss, get over it. I did.) The birth of our new baby boy did. And we excitedly greeted our little Samuel.

Co-sleeping happened by accident, really. Before I had kids, I was really against the whole "family bed" concept. I barely liked sharing a bed with my husband, there's no way I'm gonna stick an extra person in there (I'm a bit of a bed hog…). But with a newborn, it really is a lot easier to cosleep at first because they wake up sooo often and I was sooo tired. Abby was great about sleeping in her own bed most of the time, and so was Ben, but when Sam came along, he had a different idea.

Don't get me wrong, he will sleep in his crib, but he prefers to snuggle up to Mommy and he actually sleeps much better this way. Most every night he starts out in his crib, then wakes up and we fall asleep together on the couch. I wake after a couple of hours and lay Sam back down in his crib, then climb back into my own bed for about an hour of belly sleeping. Sam will wake up again around 5 am and this time, I just bring him to bed with me. He sleeps in between Jon and me and stays there until 7 when it's time for him to wake up and get dressed to go to the sitter's house. It works out pretty well for us.

One of the aspects of Attached Parenting that I haven't fully embraced is the cloth diapering. Maybe I'm just lazy. Maybe it's because I have 2 kids in diapers already. Maybe I don't think I could convince Jon that it would be worthwhile. Maybe I don't think the babysitter would appreciate it. Maybe I'm a little scared.

I'm not sure if cloth diapering is something I will ever do, but I am intrigued by it. And I have to tell you, if I was just starting out and having my first baby, I would definitely cloth diaper. And I would never look back.

No rest for the weary

I am happy to report that Sam has been only waking up once a night for the last week! Hallelujah! He's 9 months old and it's about time he learned how to sleep.

On a more sad note, Benjamin had a rough night last night. He woke up when the baby woke up to nurse at 3:00. Then didn't fall back to sleep until 5:30. I don't know how the kid survives.

I think we're going to go back onto a strict regiment of no sugar after nap time and a cup of Traditional Medicinals Kid's Nighty-Night tea 30 minutes before bed.

Not only does he wake up in the night, he roams. Last night he roamed the living room and climbed up the kitchen counters and found a bag of Dove chocolates from Valentine's Day. He ate at least three of them. Then he had chocolate smeared all over his face and hands. When I finally got him to stay in bed, (unbeknownst to me) his cup of water spilled all over him and he slept in a puddle all night.

So here I am at work, administering visual field tests in a dark, quiet room. I hope I don't fall asleep...

You never realize how much kids overhear until...

Abby and Ben and Sam got a few little Valentine's Day presents last week. Abby's was a little black dog in a hat that just happens to look like Nana's dog, Nikki (Nikki is a black miniature schnauser and the way her ears are cut, she looks a little like a Scottie). We always make sure to check the tags on stuffed animals to see if they have already been named.

So while I was making chocolate covered strawberries, Jon took a look at the tag. He says "Abby, her name is Maddy." Then he looks at me and says quietly "The tag says 'Made in China'. M-A-D-E, Maddy."

We had a good laugh then Jon says, "Hey, sis. Do you know where this dog is from?"

"Where?"

"From China."

And this is the best part:

Abby says "So you mean it's made out of poison?"

It's nice to know people still get pulled over for running a red light.

You know those idiots who think: "It's okay. I have time before this yellow light turns red."

Today, I was that idiot. And as I was crossing the intersection of Antelope and Hwy 62, the thought running through my head was: It's okay, I have time before this yellow light turns red.

Darnit! If these jokers in front of me had actually been going the speed limit I could have made it.
Oh, come on! Why is everyone driving so slow?!?

Is that a cop behind me? I wonder where he's headed. Is there an accident somewhere?

His lights are on, I'd better move out of his way.

He's still behind me. … Crap.

I pulled over. I knew I had done something stupid. I knew that I deserved a ticket. I was prepared to pay the ticket for the stupid thing I had done.

This is going to be my very first ticket. Why does it have to be for running a red light? Why couldn't it be for something cooler, like failing to use my turn signal, or speeding? Ooh! Speeding would make me seem cool and dangerous. Not dangerous in a bad way, but dangerous in a cool way. (The voice in my head gets carried away sometimes.)

I owned up to everything. "Yes, sir, that was me in the intersection. Yes, I did realize it was red when I was halfway through. Yes, sir, here is my driver's license. Yes, I still live at that address." (Thank goodness I had actually remembered to change my address on my license after I moved for once! I usually run around with an old address for a year or two before remembering to change it.) "Yes, sir, I am on my way to work. Yes, here is my insurance card. Yes, sir, these are my children."

And then he tells me he's letting me go. What? Well, I am not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, so I went on my way with no ticket. I was ready for one, but I didn't get one. Figuring that was the last of my traffic karma for the day, I didn't get too worked up over the jokers driving 15 miles under the speed limit all the way to the sitter's house.

And even though I didn't get to stop for coffee this morning, I didn't complain.