Weaned

I weaned my Rosie girl last week.  She was 16 months and three weeks old.  That's almost three months longer than I nursed Maggie.  I'd only been feeding her in the morning and at night, and then really only at night since the time change.  Poor girl has to be woken up and loaded straight in the car every morning when we head out for carpool.

I've known it was coming.  She's been growing out of babyhood for some time now, right under my nose.  We were looking at old pictures of her on my phone and realized that she has lost her baby chub.  The creases on her wrists, creating the "screw on hands" I love so much, disappeared without even saying goodbye!  She's all but given up her morning naps.  But though we often are so busy that it almost got forgotten, she showed no signs of wanting to give up the breast.  And I, knowing that this is my last little baby, wasn't in a hurry either.

Since she has given up those morning naps, I have had to accept the fact that most days I will have company in the shower.  As soon as I take off my clothes, she starts trying to strip out of hers.  I use the toilet, she indicates that she wants a turn.  She sits on the toilet,does nothing, then immediately pees in the shower afterward. And then, at some point in the shower, she notices my equipment, and insists on a snack.  I sat there last Thursday morning on the floor of the shower, nursing my little girl and realizing it would probably be the last time I held her slippery little naked body against mine like that.

I really have enjoyed nursing this little girl.  What I have not enjoyed  is the struggle I've had with my body for the last year.  I finally, in that moment, connected that if I'm going to work as hard as I have been to reclaim my body, I need to reclaim all of it, and that includes my breasts.  And so I decided we should be done.

I nursed her one final time that night, for as long as she wanted.  I thought about the friend of mine who told me the last time she breastfed her youngest, she filmed it, feeding him for an hour and a half just to treasure those final moments.  I didn't record it, and I didn't last that long, but I did take several "selfies" just to remember the moment (no, I won't post them).  That sweet little hand on my chest, the "special K" lips, the feeling of my baby falling asleep at my chest. 

And then we were done.  That phase of my life is over.  A couple days later, we got ready for our shower again.  I took off my clothes, and Rosie made eye contact with my chest.  Her eyes brightened, she waved her arms, and squealed in delight.  And I said no, hard as it was.  It's time.

Brain Food

I mentioned my new diet a few posts back (I know, I actually only wrote it a few minutes ago.  Four posts today.  Four!  It's almost like I didn't fail in my resolution to blog every day by not doing it for an entire week.)  On this diet I am currently eating a lot of lean protein, tons of veggies, 2 servings of fruit and 2 servings of probiotics, as well as a couple tablespoons of healthy fat every day.  Thanks to this diet, I have consumed 500% more fish in the last week than I had in the last couple of months.  And fish is brain food, right?  This is a healthy diet designed to make me healthier, wealthier (please?) and wiser.  Right?

Wrong.

While I generally am feeling good, and I think I actually do have more energy without all the garbage coursing through my body, I feel like my brain has taken itself on a little vacation.  Maybe it decided to leave to spare me the agony of really thinking about a month of my life with no sugar, no chocolate and no white flour, but I am really starting to miss my mind!

Here are a few of the stupid things I have done in the last few days.  I hope I can remember them all.  Most of them, of course, are related to food.

• Every morning I microwave a cup of water, which I then squeeze a lemon in and drink before I eat anything else.  The other day I went to remove my cup from the microwave and discovered the handle was burning hot!  That was because I hadn't put any water in the cup before I put it in the microwave.  
• That same morning I baked muffins for my family.  As I said on facebook, "Today is my 8th day without sugar of any kind. I got up early this morning and made chocolate banana muffins for my family, and didn't taste any part of them. I'm pretty sure that kind of strength and self sacrifice means I'm a super hero now."  A really stupid superhero who accidentally turns the oven off halfway through baking the muffins, and then wonders why they are taking so long to cook.
• Later in the day, I opened the oven to see what I was cooking.  Oh yeah, nothing.  Empty oven.  Wishful thinking.
• Yesterday I kept listening to my stomach growl as I waited for my super delicious Basil Pesto Tilapia (freezer section at Costco, you won't regret it) to finish cooking.  And then I looked in the kitchen and saw that I had forgotten to put it in the oven.  
• I was making eggs for breakfast and was, again, super hungry.  I decided to make two eggs, plus two egg whites.  I started separating the eggs, cracking them first, then letting the whites down the drain.  Doh!
• And then today, finally, a non-food related brain fart.  As I walked back from the mailbox, I noticed water pouring from our neighbor's yard into the street.  I walked closer and noticed it was actually coming from our yard.  I bent down, moved some mulch and saw water pouring from a little hole by the sidewalk.  Everything else seemed to be dry.  I immediately called the landlord, as I walked into the backyard with my kids.  As I explained the crisis to her, and heard the panic in her voice, I noticed that my backyard was flooded!  I panicked even more for a minute before I connected that Maggie had been the last one in the back yard last night, and had been playing with a Barbie pool.  Yep, unbeknownst to me, she'd turned on the hose and left it running.  I quickly turned it off, and tried to put our landlord's mind at ease.  Thankfully, everything is fine now, but man, I wish I'd looked around a bit more before picking up the phone. I'm just glad she laughed when I explained the situation. 
• Also, full disclosure, I may have taken a really long, hard sniff of a Malted Milk Chocolate Chip Cookie before I handed it off to Rosie at lunch today.  But really, I'm doing fine!

Just look at the camera, Addie

Last Sunday my facebook feed was filled with pictures of cute families at the Oakland Temple that my friends had posted.  We had had a special stake conference with Elder Cook, and the meeting was held at the Interstake Center next to the temple.  Afterward we walked on the grounds. There were DSLR cameras galore, snapping pictures of darling children doing darling things in a beautiful setting.

I do not have a good camera, but a friend offered to snap a couple of our "cute family."  Let me narrate the experience for you.

Okay, everyone.  Look at the camera so we can take a quick picture!

 What's going on Maggie?  Are you smiling or screaming?  Addie, why so serious?  Let's try again.

That's okay, Addie, everyone has to sneeze sometimes.  I can see why it distracted you, Maggie.  Rosie, I know you're sad because you someone sneezed somewhere near you, which means you will inevitably be sick in a few days, but could you please just smile?

 SERIOUSLY GIRLS! STOP LOOKING AT ADDIE!  ADDIE!  LOOK UP!

Fine.  I give up.  Let's see if we can do better in front of the temple itself. 

No really, I'm not mad, just look at the camera and smile.  Chloe's doing it.  Look, I will try and smile as big as I can and lift my head like I'm enjoying this a lot!

Hey!  You all looked at the camera at the same time!  Awesome.  Could we try it one more time with smiles?

No, I didn't think so.

(We had a similar experience with Addie during our family pictures this summer.  When she looked at the images later she asked, "Why does my face look like that?"  I don't know, Addie.  I just don't know."

Spring flowers

 This last weekend I had the opportunity to do flowers for a special church meeting we had with Elder Quintin L. Cook, one of our church's 12 Apostles.  I felt honored and nervous to be asked, but also very excited.  I love flowers, and I love spring.  It was the week before St. Patrick's Day, so I immediately thought of Bells of Ireland, and calla lilies, and then decided to throw some pink in with the white and green.  I visited the San Francisco Flower Market for the very first time to get the flowers.

I was so excited when I arrived there to find they had flowering quince.  It is my very favorite spring flower!  I discovered it when we were living in Citrus Heights.  It is the very first thing to bloom in spring. Bright coral, pink or white flowers on long dark stems fill in with green leaves as the blossoms drop.  The rest of the year it masquerades as an ordinary shrub.  But in the final cold days of winter it fills my heart with joy.  I actually did a lot of research, visiting nurseries and websites, trying to figure out what plant it was because I needed it to be part of my life. 

 I was also quite enamored of the fresh curly willow for these arrangements as well. 

This big arrangement for the main pulpit gave me a lot of trouble.  I just could not find the right container for it.  I spent half of Saturday running around trying to find something.  I finally settled for a cute trash can!

 Bells and quince and willows and callas and asters and tulips and hydrangeas.

I spent most of the meeting thinking, "I should have made that thing bigger.  It seemed so huge at home."  And then I brought it home and put it on the table in my entry and every time I walk past it I think, "That thing is enormous!"

Finally, I found these lovely hydrangeas I had never seen before.  They are called Angel's Parasol and have layers of delicate little blossoms.  Lovely. 

Fat

Maggie picked out a shirt to wear the other day, put it on, then announced, with tears, "Mom, I don't want to weow dis.  I look fat in dis."

She's three.  And breaking my heart.  Granted, it was a bulky t-shirt, and not at all feminine, but still.  How can my perfect little girl say such things?

I try so hard to keep my body issues to myself.  On the whole, I feel okay about myself.  Between every baby I've been able to get back down to my pre-baby weight, actually lighter than I was before I got pregnant with Chloe.  Before I had Rosie, though, I joked to allay my fears that child number four was going to ruin me.  I was not wrong.  I was doing okay, but last April, out of nowhere, I suddenly put on 10 pounds in the month, and I have spent the last year trying to get it, and the last of the baby weight, off. 

It has been a rough year.

In January I started attending an exercise class two mornings a week that a fantastic lady teaches for free at the church.  Two days a week I drag myself out of bed at 5:30 and spend an hour doing things that hurt.  A lot.  I have only missed one class this year. I definitely feel healthier and stronger, and when I wave, my arm doesn't wave back nearly as much as it used to.  I can see muscles in my thighs now.  But the scale hasn't budged at all.  I've thought back several times to the first few months after my mission.  I felt like I was so heavy when I got home (Though looking back I would kill to be that heavy again!) and started an aerobics class two days a week.  Within 2 months I had dropped all the weight I had gained on my mission.  What a difference 14 years and 4 kids makes!

I started a new diet 10 days ago, one that will hopefully give my metabolism the jump start it needs.  As part of this diet, I'm not eating any sugar (besides 2 servings of fruit a day) and no grains/starches for the next week.  I'm actually feeling pretty good while on it, and definitely recognizing the good changes I need to make long term for both my weight and my general health. 

At the moment, though, the restrictions of the diet are hard to explain to my children, especially without using the words "fat" or "diet" or "sometimes when I exercise certain parts of my body jiggle so much it hurts."

We were at dinner the other night.  I served a lot of veggies, oven baked fries for them, and turkey sloppy joes on fresh baked multigrain bread.  I just ate the meat, with no bread.

"Mom, why aren't you eating any bread?"
"Oh, I'm eating different food right now."
"Why?"
"Because I'm trying to be healthier."
"Isn't bread healthy?"
"Well yes, this bread is very healthy.  I'm just taking a break from eating bread right now."
"But why?"

It went around and around, and I couldn't answer their questions to their satisfaction, no matter now I tried.  I have always tried to emphasize being healthy over being thin with them, but they are still picking up on the "fat" thing.  I only hope that by continuing to make healthy choices for myself I can set the example they need. I need to be able to be louder than the world.

It might be starting to work.  Maggie just prayed that she would be able to eat all her dinner, even if she doesn't like it. 

So that's how it is in your family

 Maggie drew this picture at preschool today.  Initially, I was just concerned that half of us don't have heads.

Then I flipped it over and saw the caption she had dictated to the teacher.

What must they be thinking of us?  I guess Bracken's big secret is out.

I've been poisoned!

When I was in the fourth grade, I loved to play four square during recess at school.  Next to the cement squares we played on was a fence covered in honeysuckle.  When the honeysuckle bloomed we would abandon our game and gather by the flowers, pulling their stamens out the bottom and licking the nectar that came out with them.  Flower after flower, we ate those tiny sweet droplets.

What I didn't notice was the poison ivy growing amidst the honeysuckle.  But, since I had been touching it and licking my uroshiol covered fingers, I quickly discovered my mistake.  I was soon covered in oozy blisters and my entire body swelled, poisoned no doubt from the inside as well as the outside.  Even my earlobes swelled--the left one was over half an inch thick. 

Eventually the swelling subsided, and the rash cleared up.  I was left with white spots all over my arms, places that just would not tan any more.  I was very careful after that, and never snacked on honeysuckle again, at least not while we lived in Mississippi.

6 years later, my family was poised to move from our next home in San Luis Obispo.  We were headed to Utah, and I spent every moment I could at the beach until we left.  A few days before the move, some friends and I went out to Hazard Reef to play on the dunes and explore the tide pools.  It wasn't until we were on our way home that we noticed the entire trail was covered with poison oak, poison ivy's almost as itchy cousin.

But I wasn't itchy yet, and I was not going to put my farewell plans on hold.  I thought maybe I'd even escaped the danger since I couldn't see any signs of contact.  I had a goodbye party at a different beach, and spent the day at Avila soaking up as much of the California sun as I could hold.  That night, after a bonfire, several of us jumped off the Avila Pier.  For a moment I felt like I was flying, until I finally smacked into the water below. 

A couple days later, my family loaded into our big brown van, filled with kids and birds and fish and hot vinyl seats.  By this point, the poison oak rash had fully erupted, though I never swelled like I had with my first experience.  I was also sunburned completely crispy, and had bruised my bottom when I hit the water after jumping off the pier.  And I was 16, and very unhappy about the move, and not afraid to show it.  It was a miserable drive that culminated in an extended stay at the Travelodge in Provo while my parents looked for a house to rent.  I spent most of it on the pull out couch in our suite, teaching my baby brother to laugh like Beavis and Butthead, or in the tub, soaking in baking soda, trying not to claw my skin off. 

We then moved from the Travelodge to my grandparent's basement for the next week or so.  By this point, the rash had erupted on my hands.  You could see the blisters, bulging under tough skin of my palms, and I would press my fingernails into them, feeling them crunch as they popped under the surface.  I definitely didn't feel, or look, much like making new friends.

But eventually I healed, both from the poison oak, and the move.  I made new friends, had many adventures, and always managed to avoid those nasty leaves of three.

Until last weekend, that is.

We went for a hike with some friends, and as soon as we got to the trailhead, Miss Maggie needed to go to the bathroom.  Of course.  And there was no bathroom.  Of course.  So I took her on a little nature pee, looking for a little privacy, not even considering thinking of poison oak once.  And then at some point I wiped my nose (because of my stupid cold.  Number three this winter.  THREE!), and rubbed my eye, and touched my arm.  The next day I got up and took a quick, hot shower before church. 

Monday morning I woke up late for my exercise class, jumped out of bed in a panic, threw my clothes on and raced out the door (Seriously, who am I?).  While working out, I noticed a rash on the inside of my right arm.  And a puffy left eye.  By that night there were patchy blisters all over my right arm, and part of my left, and on my nose and by my eye.  Stupid poison oak!

I've learned a few things about it in the last few days that I didn't know before. 

• People usually don't develop a rash until their second contact with urishiol.  Which explains why Maggie isn't currently screaming about a rash on her bum.
• The rash typically doesn't develop until 1-5 days after exposure, by which point most people have showered and spread the plant oils all over their bodies.  Poison oak=jerk.
• The liquid in the blisters is not contagious.  It does not contain urishiol, and will not spread the rash to other parts of your body.
• The urishiol oils remain potent up to five years after the plant has died. Jerk!
• There are several websites dedicated to the crazy things people will do to eliminate the oils/rash.  Most of those remedies make me wonder if having no skin at all is better than having the itch.
• Regardless of what ridiculous solutions you try, the rash usually lasts 7-10 days.

I'm now on day 4.  I'm starting to see signs of improvement, but the next time Maggie needs to go while we are hiking, I am throwing her privacy to the wind!