All right, folks, I'm closing in on having more blog time. I just finished Annie's crocheted blanket, which was her Christmas present, delivered 2 months late. Eee! I'm glad it's done, and I think she is, too.
We're dog sitting this week. Dogs, dogs, everywhere.
Okay, so all I have to share today is that Olivia went to the doctor on Friday and we learned that she is the length of a 10-month-old (28 inches) and she's not even five months! No wonder why nothing fits her anymore! It felt really strange to put her in 12-month clothes, but it makes sense now.
As Olivia has gotten older, she is starting to look a little more like me. Her hair color is still a bit of a mystery, but I'm leaning towards coppery. Even though JB has beautiful dark red hair, his was orange when he was a baby, so I'm not sure whose hair she really has. Both sides of JB's family have red heads, and the Teagues do, too.
What IS for certain, is where the Bird gets her elf ears! It dawned on me the other day so I fished this photo out of the family archives for proof. She gets them from her Great-Grandpa Teague--Dad's dad, Carl, don't you think? (He's the one on the left):
Nothing new has been happening. Okay, so lots has been happening; so much so that I don't have time to write about it. Agh!
However, this horrible winter will end soon and I'll be in the mood to write again. Until then, photos of Olivia (and one of Miss Heather, who came to visit! YAY!):
Earlier this week Annie, Olivia, and I were shopping at Meijer. Before we finished shopping Olivia had a "blowout." For those of you who are not familiar with babies, we use that term to refer to baby crap breaching the diaper. Ick.
I picked Olivia up out of her carseat and cruised over to the bathroom while Annie finished getting groceries. I ended up having to change Olivia's whole outfit so I was in the bathroom for probably 10 minutes.
The changing station was located on the wall opposite the sinks, and to the left was the door, to the right were the stalls. As I lay Olivia down a Mom and her 11-year-old daughter had just finished drying their hands and headed toward the door. "Don't touch the door!" the Mom scolded the girl. "Here, kick it open with your foot. You don't want to get germs."
I smiled to myself. Go back in time about 20 years and that would have been my own Mom telling me not to touch the door for fear of germs.
And that, my friends, was the BEST part of my stay in the bathroom. From there, it very quickly went downhill.
The next woman who came in saw Olivia and said, "Aw! A baby!" as she walked to an open stall. "Newborn, huh?"
"Four months old!" I told her pleasantly.
"Oh," she said curtly, as if she thought I was correcting her and was offended. I think she was actually touched in the head. But that is no excuse for what she did next.
She used the bathroom, exited the stall, and walked right out the door, scorning the sinks! And she put the big ole crazy-lady-pissed-on hand of hers on the door and shoved it open.
I had to focus really hard on Olivia in order to keep my composure. That mom wasn't kidding about germs!!
Then a grandmother-type lady came in with a 4-year-old who said, "Look, a baby!" as she walked by Olivia. They went into the stall for about two minutes. The woman said to the little girl, "Hey, you little tricker!" and they exited the stall. They did not flush. It was possible that she didn't go to the bathroom. Then they came up to Olivia on the table and the little girl got all excited about the baby. Then they walked out the door, again scorning those beautiful glistening porcelain sinks. Those lonely sinks.
I turned my attentions back to Olivia in time to see her pudgy little baby hand waiving happily in the air, and I watched in horror as it found its way to the wall of the changing station and felt it up. Agh!!!!! I could just SEE the germs crawling en masse from the wall to her hand and down her arm and into her baby mouth. The germs were going to eat my baby! You don't know how hard it was for me to keep my cool at this point. I always imagined that while there were germs in public bathrooms, that the good ole Dutch Christian women of West Michigan were exceptions to the rule and that germs weren't that plentiful around here. Especially not in the CASCADE Meijer, which is located in the land of "new money."
Okay, so I was about ready to puke. I could NOT believe it. So I kept track. Eight females entered a bathroom stall, and only 3.5 washed. I say .5 because there were two who I am pretty sure did not wash, but I couldn't say for sure. One was a woman who I saw at the sink, but who was combing her hair and not washing her hands. It's possible that she washed them extremely quickly before picking up the comb, but after she left I scrutinized her sink and there wasn't much evidence to exonerate her. I want to give her the benefit of the doubt because she did approach Olivia after combing her hair and said, "What a beautiful baby!" and then, looking at Olivia, said, "The world made rosy cheeks just for you!"
Could a dirty bird really be that sweet about MY bird? I'm not sure.
All in all it was a horrific experience. Know what the worst part was? Look back at the story, clever readers. Do you notice any pattern?
How about the fact that the people who gave attention to Olivia were the ones who didn't wash their hands!!!
Now every time a stranger approaches Olivia I wonder, "Are you a dirt bag? How many bars of soap to you purchase annually?"
Sick.
Shoppers, beware. Don't use those bathrooms unless it's an EMERGENCY.
Monday, February 2, 2009
It was one year ago today that I learned that I was pregnant with the Bird. It was one day after JB's hernia surgery and I was supposed to be taking care of him. Instead, I was suffering from lots of nausea and was having a tough time just taking care of myself.
I didn't expect to get pregnant so soon, so the little plus sign on the stick was a little startling. In fact, I hadn't even considered that my nausea was the result of pregnancy: it was JB who suggested it. I never was ready to have a baby but here I am, one year later, with my own little dolly!
I wouldn't say that my terrible pregnancy was worth it. More like, necessary. But what's done is done and I'll probably willingly go through it again. But I won't be happy about it.
I have many friends who have had trouble conceiving, who still have trouble conceiving, or who have had high-risk pregnancies. So I consider myself blessed that misery was the only byproduct of carrying Olivia around.
Today she was in rare form. She jumped in the Johnny Jumpup with more gusto than usual (I like to think it was because I was playing rock music for her). She chattered up a storm with Annie--Annie would say something to her, and she would respond with a sound or shriek and they went back and forth for some time. Extremely entertaining. She laughed and laughed at JB when he made weird monkey sounds at her, and it was the most she's ever laughed out loud. She also had an incident with her hat falling down over her eyes while we were in the car and she was so scared that she was crying and crying and blowing bubbles and scratching at her eyes in frustration. I felt pretty bad when I discovered the problem. Not being able to see must be scary for a baby!
All in all, I'm glad that the last year is OVER. Being pregnant was tough, having a newborn was tough, and dealing with work drama for the last 4 months and then getting fired was tough.
Work drama is over and Olivia is finally entering the "fun" age. JB's brother is getting married this June and my sister Melissa is having her first baby, a girl, in June as well. The Teague girls are having fun scheming her baby shower preparations. My Dad is also turning 60 and Olivia will be turning one.
What strikes me is that it took me 30 years to realize this.
It all started one early Sunday morning last fall. Mom and Dad had gotten up earlier than usual. To go to church, you ask? No. To take part in another activity that is perhaps just as holy to my parents: handgun class.
So Dad was standing at the stovetop making eggs when Mom walked into the kitchen and started to whoop and holler. There, at Dad’s feet, was a giant RAT. The rat jumped up and ran across Dad’s feet before it escaped under the cupboards and to its safe haven of the basement.
Mom was all in a tizzy then. The whole family was set to come over for Thanksgiving the next week, including little Olivia. “We can’t have a rat when the baby comes!” Mom exclaimed. “It could eat her hands!” Now, before you think that my mother is overreacting, Google “rats biting babies.” Granted, the possibility of Olivia getting eaten on by a rat was quite slim, seeing as someone would be holding her just about the entire time and my parents don’t live in a slum with flesh-eating rats, but still.
The rat was quickly killed, along with six of his mousy friends. I asked my mom how big the rat was, as I am a journalist at heart and don’t do exaggerations. Mom said that the dead rat was as big as a hamster.
I was surprised to hear about the rat, since my parents have never had rodent problems. I think it was because we regularly had a kennel of Jack Russells (renowned for their rodent-killing abilities), several feisty barn cats, and children constantly running in and out of the buildings and basement. When there’s people, cats, and dogs around, mice and rats don’t have much opportunity to party. For 20 years my parents have lived in that house on 75 acres with several outbuildings, and we’ve only had one rodent problem before this.
Back before my parents remodeled the house, we had a resident rat named Curly. Krystal, who followed Mom everywhere, and saw him several times, named him.
After rat #2 (dubbed Larry...see the pattern?) last fall, I asked Mom how she knew we had Curly living in the house and she said, “I saw his happy little face!”
Dad would leave for work around 4 or 5 a.m. and Mom would sit on the couch and read her Bible and pray until us kids got up for school. The living room was over 100 years old and my parents had not been able to fix it up yet. One of the walls even had a little mouse archway chewed into it, just like in the Tom and Jerry cartoons.
“I was reading my Bible one day when I saw two little eyes (in the mouse arch) so I got down and looked and he was looking right at me. I said, ‘You dirty rat!’”
She told me this all quite matter-of-factly, which is my Mom’s way. Nothing in this world is really out of the ordinary to my mother. I am the same way, but I know that if I came face to face with a RAT, I would be a bit unnerved. Though I’d probably call him a dirty rat, too.
Mom continued with her rat story. “Then, when I was putting wood in the stove (in the basement) it jumped up and it was the flying rat.”
Krystal corroborates this story. "I was down there when she saw him that time," she told me. "The first time I saw him mom was loading wood in the basement. He ran vertically up the wall into a hole."
Curly was a tough rat to get. Dad tried several tricks, but Curly got wise to his antics and outsmarted him every time. Dad had even created this elaborate trap, which was an advanced version of “walking the plank.” A common way to catch a rat is to put a ramp up to a deep bucket of water and put a treat at the end of the plank. As the rat walks to the end of the plank, the plank will tip into the bucket with the rat on it, and the rat will drown. However, a clever rat will climb back up the submerged plank and hop out of the bucket. Dad crafted a plank with a hinge, so that as soon as Curly got to the edge, it would drop him in, and then swing back into place, leaving Curly with no way to climb out.
Curly figured out the plank and after walking out on it once (and somehow escaping), he never went back on it for the treat.
My parents eventually had to resort to the Blue Death, which is a poison. With children, dogs, and cats about, they didn’t want to use poison, but they had no choice. It worked. Curly was found dead one day, and he was tossed out by the barn.
Until 5-year-old Krystal found it. The story about THAT is in my attic. I think. I will look for it.
After they caught Larry this fall, I told my mom that I think she had a rat problem because she had killed all the snakes in her basement. Snakes eat rats, so if the snakes go away, the rats come out to play, right?
See, I wasn’t completely honest about our “only 2 rats” rodent problem. We also have had a few snake incidents.
This is where my mother’s fearlessness comes in.
Our basement used to be a Michigan basement, meaning that it has really low ceilings. Here is a photo of the basement today (note how long the jeans are hanging down—that should give you an idea of how much we have to stoop over to walk around down there). It looks a lot less creepy because Dad installed new windows and the place is all cleaned up. But back in the day, it was dark and scary and had lots of hidden cracks and crevices. And the ceiling is a sky of low rafters, heat ducts, and cobwebs.
Several years ago my mother was in the basement doing laundry or getting food from the pantry. “I saw something hanging and thought, ‘That looks like a snake,’ so I walked over and it WAS a snake!” Mom recalled.
Now who in their right mind would walk up to an unknown object, that you already think is a snake, that would be hanging next to your head, in a dark, creepy basement?!???
My mother.
(Apparently she was bothered by this enough to always wear a hooded shirt down there. That way, in the event that one DID drop on her head, it wouldn't slither down her shirt.)
Like rats, my mother has no time for snakes. They must be removed. When I was a teenager she had me help her kill a snake that was out in the yard. It was quite a gruesome ordeal, as the only tools we had were a baseball bat and a rusty hoe. It seemed to take forever and has scarred my memory ever since. Mom was not phased.
So this summer when she spotted some large snakes in her basement, she took action yet again. Next to the basement door she keeps this old farm implement which belonged to my great grandfather, Thomas Jefferson Davis Teague. It’s a very crude tool with an old wooden handle attached to a rusty piece of slightly curved metal. She calls it “Grandpa’s tool” and she kills snakes with it.
“I already killed a couple this year,” Mom told me. “With Grandpa’s tool. One was long, like 34” long. (The tool) killed three snakes and Dad said that Larry wasn’t dead so he took care of him with this (too).”
I asked her just how she killed a snake with Grandpa’s Tool.
“I pinned it down and I sawed its head off,” she said simply. “I sawed it in two.”
“Wasn’t it flailing all over the place while you did it?” I asked.
“No, you stand on it with both of your feet and then you use the Tool to saw it in the middle.”
I shudder just to think of being in the same room with a snake, but Mom has no qualms about standing on its writing body while she saws the life out of it.
Lately JB has been telling me that I’m my Mom whenever I say something funny or show a humorous mannerism. I take this as a compliment because I find my mother to be quite entertaining.
But fearless? Able to saw snakes in half with the flick of a tool?
Last week ended with the coughing splutter of car issues.
April has Fridays off each week and so we dropped my car off at the local Ford dealer to have it's oil changed and have it checked out. I thought I may have some alignment issues - in fact I have over $1000 in issues, alignment included. All basic maintenance stuff, new tires, boots, alignment, oil change, power steering flush, stabilizer bar. Yeah, fun. We had them fix two on the list and left the less dire fixes for later.
On our way to pick up my "clunker" on Saturday we kept smelling exhaust in April's car. With the weather being as cold as it has been, low teens to below zero, cars tend to act funny. I thought maybe snow got stuck in the exhaust or the other cars were expelling extra noxious fumes. At the dealer, while I was paying for my car, April noticed steam rising from the hood and decided to have the mechanics check it out.
Chalk one up for April! Her gas line was leaking gasoline all over the engine. Apparently, there was friction between the line and the engine cover that slowly ate away at the line until it broke through that Saturday. Thankfully it was only a $150 fix, but it's $150 we don't have to put towards my new tires.
Boo.
This week can't be any worse, but I'm hoping it's better. At least the sun was shining today, and my beard is looking especially dashing.
On an unrelated note, I've decided that I'm going to shave a unique look for St Patties Day. I'll post the evidence afterwards.
"Where's April?" you might ask. She's busy trying to balance the baby with life in general that she isn't able to slow down and blog out her life. So you're all stuck with me. I know. You'll have to deal.
Tomorrow is Obama's historic inauguration. I'm hoping he can live up to his hype. While you're all watching history, I'll be worrying about my brother. He's still my little brother and it's a big brother job to look out for him! If you think about it send some prayers his way tomorrow.
I tried to give April ample opportunity to be the first to blog in the new year, but to no avail - soooo...
Happy (late) New Year!
I think I should start the year off right sharing some of my favorite things of the moment.
First, may I admit something to all you wonderful friends and acquaintances out there in cyber space? I'm a knitter. Yes I've started with simple scarves and now I'm working on hats. Before you know it I'll be making sweaters too. I've been so bored at work that I already completed a scarf for myself and I've been commissioned to make April a scarf and my bro-in-law a custom hat. I'm learning as I go, and I've gotten plenty of grieve from my male coworkers. Of course they're all just jealous. What woman doesn't want a guy who can knit?
Again because of workplace boredom, I discovered the YouTube channel Indy Mogul. It's a site that is dedicated to the backyard film maker, which I'm not. Regardless, it's got all sorts of cool stuff on how to make you own special effects on the cheap. After they explain the method, they also produce a short test film to show off the effect. It's badass. It make me want to run out and buy a video camera. And build a light saber.
Left 4 Dead!!!! It's a first person shooter cooperative video game for the Xbox 360. You and three friends have to survive a zombie apocolypse. Brains... What's not to love? It's tense and fun and awesome. It's like playing a zombie movie.
Sister Annie is staying with us. yeAH!
I pick up a haul of Holiday goodies including but not limited to - Dark Knight, HIMYM season 3, Lost season 4, Wall-E, and a couple of boardgames Race for the Galaxy and Argicola.
Yeah that's about it. Nothing really spectacular or amusing. Lives goes on with the wife, baby, dog, and now sister-in-law. Hopefully we can get back and stay on the blog-wagon.
The Bird had her first doctor's appointment today. Well, her first since she was first born.
This is what happened.
She saw Dr. Hofman, and was quite set on getting his attention as he talked to Marian and I about this and that. She was laying off to the side and kept looking at him and jabbering on as if to say, "Hey, guy, I'm the center of the show here! Acknowledge me!"
So then he did acknowledge her. He checked her vitals and deemed her healthy. Then he measured her. Olivia is 13 lbs. 7 oz, which is like 95% percentile for weight. She also has nice-sized head. But the kicker was her length. Dr. Hofman cracked up when he saw the number on the tape measure. He showed us where her height registered on the chart...which was off the charts. I asked him what the longest length on there was but he would not say. I guess he didn't want me thinking that my child was abnormal. However, I am no stranger to Google, so I found my own growth chart. The highest for a girl her age is 23.5 inches, from what I could tell. Olivia is...
wait for it....
26 inches!
Oh dear. She is going to dread clothes shopping as an adult. What if she's like 6 feet tall? It's quite possible.
Then is was time for shots. She got one droplet thingy in her mouth, and three shots. I do not recall my siblings screaming after their shots when we were young. They cried, but did not scream. I assumed this was because my mother is a calm person and did not make a big to-do over the shots. I thought that if I modeled her and was calm while I held Olivia, that Olivia would be more at ease when they administered her shots.
No. Not true.
She SCREAMED bloody murder. You'd think the nurse was actually trying to saw off her leg, the way Olivia carried on. I was holding her in my lap and was very grateful not to see the look of terror on her face. Marian unfortunately did see Olivia's face as it contorted into ghastly dimensions. I thought Marian was going to cry, too.
Despite this, Dr. Hofman said that Olivia is the most beautiful, advanced baby he's seen in his entire life. And he is surprised that no one has tried to kidnap her yet, because she is so special. He wanted to call all the nurses into the checkup room so they could witness this miracle child, but didn't want the other babies around to feel unimportant.
Okay, so he didn't say that out loud.
But I'm pretty sure that I could read it in his eyes. :)
Here are some late-breaking photos of Olivia (I can't get that one to rotate--don't know why):
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