Taken in a dark room with no flash and a 30sec exposure. Slightly desaturated in Photoshop.
Ah sleep. If only we were getting more of it! Am so thankful he didn’t wiggle while I was taking this.
Month: March 2009
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Death! Death and destruction!
I keep finding dead mice in random spots.
The first one showed up in the bathroom. I was alerted to it’s presence by a yelling Nathan, who had me pick it up and throw it in the fire. [In his defence, he was just about to step into the shower and everyone knows you can’t deal with mice when you are naked]
The second one was in the middle of the study. Just laying there. I almost trod on it, which would have been unpleasant, because we all know what poison does to their insides. I can just imagine the squidge sound it would have made.
SQUIDGE.
I mean, I knew it was going to happen when we poisoned them. Theoretically I knew.
I don’t think I was prepared for the dead mice to start appearing all over the house though.
It feels like it is only a matter of time before I go to put on a pair of socks, only to find dead mice inside them. Or pull out a pot from the cupboard to find a tiny little funeral taking place.
I don’t know what’s worse. To have them scurrying about, breeding and carrying disease, or dying in nooks and crannys where I may or may not find them.
Fun times.
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Dirty Nappies and Cheese
When Amy was a baby she screamed.
and screamed
and screamed
andscreamedandscreamedandscreamed.
She wanted to be UP! And DOING! and being HELD! while SCREAMING!
It was hard. It was so very very hard to get through her first 6 months. Because yes, she screamed to be UP and DOING until she was able to crawl and make mischief on her own.
It was colic, it was a tummy ache, it was general grumpiness, it was a high maintenance baby, needing to be held.
Until she started solids though, I didn’t notice that she was allergic to milk protein. Actually, I didn’t notice for a while after she started solids. For a new mother who had been told ‘introduce foods one at a time and wait for any reactions’ I was remarkably blind to the fact that SHE WAS ALLERGIC TO MILK. Her allergy wasn’t severe, just diarrhoea and eczema. She was breastfed though, so I didn’t expect her poo to be any different and eczema? Well that runs in the family. Hereditary. Nothing to worry about.
However, one day it clicked. ‘Wait! Her diarrhoea went away when I forgot to buy yogurt! Geez, has she had any dairy this week? Hmmm, didn’t a friend have a boy with a milk allergy? Well shit, maybe I am just the worst mother in the world.’
Once we cut out dairy, she was pretty okay. Her skin cleared up mostly and her diarrhoea went away. Because she was breastfed, it wasn’t hard to keep dairy out of her diet. She didn’t react badly when I had dairy, so I never bothered going dairy free myself. After her second birthday, we started letting her have a little bit of
milk with cereal, etc etc. We lightened up on the whole dairy-free thing and generally stopped thinking about it.
Enter Isaac.
Isaac doesn’t scream. He also doesn’t sleep, but he doesn’t scream.
However.
At nine weeks old, he is still pooey at every nappy change and I am needing to change his bum once an hour. Dude? That’s not completely normal.
Then, his bum breaks out in a rash. Sure we’ve got/had the whole thrush thing happening, but I’ve got that mostly under control, so blisters? bleeding? Not in my current repertoire.
Also, his gas smells BAD. His poo smells like normal breastfed poo, but this boy could out fart my brother. True.
So, I drew some conclusions (and some cats and dogs and a plane, because Amy had the paper) and decided that maybe, just maybe, he might be allergic to milk protein too.
Cue me going dairy free.
And whinging about it every step of the way.
I like dairy. I like dairy A LOT. A freaking lot, okay?
I supermarketed today and didn’t buy any yogurt. No cream. No bocconcini.
I figure Amy has been looking a little blotchy lately and Nathan tells me her nappies have been bad, a little dairy free won’t hurt her either.
Still.
I’m not looking forward to this.
[Isaac’s bum has cleared up now, thanks to a nearly nappy free day yesterday and a good dose of zinc cream. Thank goodness!]
Our sunset this evening.
9 weeks and 3 days.
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Free to good home
Free to good home: My sanity. Would prefer to give it away before it dribbles away entirely.
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At 3am this morning you would have found me wandering around the house, trying to find every single dummy that may have been hidden in the hope that Isaac would just suck on one of them for just a minute fortheloveofgod.
Instead, I ended up cold, with a crying baby who flat down refused to suck on ANYTHING that wasn’t me. My nose? Good. My little finger? Good. My nipple? FANFREAKINGTASTIC! A dummy? What the fuck MUM?
I ended up with a screaming gagging baby frantically hunting for my nipples, three rejected dummies and milk to my waist. Not a good night. It was however, a normal night.
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I had planned to go along to my mothers group tomorrow. All this not sleeping is seriously killing my sanity and I think I need to just talk to women who are dealing with the same things right now. Also, the coffee and the chocolate biscuits don’t hurt either. Plus? I like the women at my mothers group. I have missed it desperately since I stopped going over 12 months ago. I need to go along and let Amy play with the kids again.
Best laid plans of mice and men though, today the car started playing up. Until we get it booked in to be fixed (it needs routine work we were putting off because we were broke), we aren’t going anywhere.
Which would be FINE, were we not living on rice and beans and was I not slowly losing my sanity. Whatever.
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-Consistently runny poo
-Gas that smells BAD
-Red rashy bumWait wait, I know this one. I’ve done thing one before!
I suspect Isaac has the same milk protein allergy that Amy did. The difference this time? Hardly any screaming, which WAIT! That would be because I eat very little dairy at the moment anyway. Where’s that elimination diet sheet? SIGN ME UP!
Sigh.
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Nathan slipped his arm around my waist today and pulled me closer and OH FUCK! One of my ribs moved under his hand and went all out of place. Can ribs dislocate? God knows my side still hurts. I’m falling apart.
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Another post about sleep. Sigh. Even I’m sick of me.
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Not Sleepingness
It seems to be a theme around here, I don’t sleep and at the pinnacle of my not sleepingness, I blog.
When I’m not getting any sleep, sleep seems to be all I can think about. Will I get enough in order to cope through tomorrow? Will Isaac go down before midnight? If I make sure there is no butter/zinc cream/crackers/vegemite/water/scissors in Amy’s reach, can I stay in bed dozing while she destroys the house? How hard will I have to kick Nathan to make him get up in the morning and leave me blissfully alone?
On and on it goes. Circles, all made up of the same questions.
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Yesterday:
Nathan: ‘So, what do I do with it?’
Veronica: ‘It’s pouches. Just get one out and pop it up into the ceiling.’
N: ‘How?’
V:’Well open the pac….’
He looked at me oddly.
N: ‘Not like that! How do I get it into the ceiling?’
V: ‘Oh. Those gaps in the dining room roof will work.’
N: ‘Of course.’
You know it’s bad when neither of you bats an eyelid when you talk about the gaps in your ceiling. Or the throwing of poison pouches up into the ceiling to kill the fucking mice. Or the fact that I checked the poison placement to make sure that it wasn’t going to fall back out of a gap.
More to the point, you know the mouse infestation is bad when you can smell them. Or when it sounds like mice wearing football boots and pushing shopping trolleys are living in the ceiling. Needless to say, they are noisy and if I see them I will stomp on their furry little heads.
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Dear Isaac,
Did you know that breast milk has a sleep inducing hormone in it? You did? Wait, so that would be why you are refusing to both feed and sleep right now? Surely there is room enough in your stomach for just a tiny little sleep inducing feed? Please?
Well you know if I have to keep jiggling you to stop the crying, I am likely to jiggle an entire feed out of you. Wait, you knew that too?
Heh.
Good thing I love you so much.
Mummy.
***
Dear Amy,
You are much bigger than a moth. Please stop waking screaming because you are having nightmares about them. Tomorrow I am going to teach you how to stomp up and down on their little moth heads. Again. I know that we’d just about gotten you over your moth phobia when you got scared of a moth the other day. Everything would have been fine had Daddy not tried to show you the dead moth so you wouldn’t be scared, when suddenly the moth came to life.
I know you were terrified, it showed in how white you went and how quickly you threw yourself under as much of me as you could find while screaming your little heart out. I’m sorry the moth came back to life.
I’m sorry I laughed so hard I cried. Tomorrow we will stomp on moth heads. Together.
I love you.
Mummy.
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Gosh I’m tired.