Smart Patient, Dumb Doctor

Samantha has this white spot on her tongue. I noticed it when she was really little, like, a month old. Of course, the worst things ran through my mind: Cancer. I brought it up at her next doctor's appointment. The pediatrician told me not to worry about it. Watch it, but don't worry. And it's not cancer. So I did. Nothing changed.

Many months later, I was watching Oprah episode about medical mistakes and being a smart patient. She had a guest on who was a famous chef who had had oral cancer that started as a small white spot on his tongue! He almost had to have his tongue removed!! Needless to say, I freaked out and brought it up to the doctor again. She referred me to an ear, nose, and throat specialist (ENT).

This guy was supposed to be a pediatric and adult ENT, but I don't think he's ever seen a baby in his life. When he started to examine Samantha, who was sitting on my lap, he said, and I am not making this up, "Open up!" Then when she didn't "open up," he said, "Say ahhhh!" He was dead serious, too.

Uh, dude, she's 9 months old.

Although that was the point of this post, I should probably tell how the story ends. The ENT doesn't know what the spot is. He says he's 99% sure it's nothing and he's not willing to put a baby under in order to biopsy it (too much risk). Unfortunately, this makes me nervous since the famous chef's point was that his oral cancer could've been avoided had they just biopsied the small white spot in the first place!

At Least I'm Dressed

Some people may think that being a stay-at-home-mom (at least temporarily) would afford me LOTS of time to blog (or do whatever), but what I've learned in my almost 11 months of not working is that I barely have a little time to get stuff done, let alone blog. Hence, my last post was more than a month ago.



Samantha is now an expert crawler and stander, so I can't leave her alone for a second. Actually, it's she who won't leave me alone for one second. She's kinda a mamma's girl (in Italian this is called a "mammona"). I can barely leave her in her play area to go get my morning cup of coffee. She starts whining and then crawls all the way into the kitchen just in time to have to crawl all the way back. I've tried explaining to her that if she just stayed put, she could save herself a lot of energy as I am coming right back, but she's stubborn. ; )

Anyway, the point of this post was supposed to be about how when I was rocking her to sleep this morning for her morning nap, I was making a mental list of what I was going to accomplish in the 1 - 1.5 (sometimes 2) hours Samantha was sleeping. Here's the list:

1. check email
2. get dressed
3. move car (don’t call DCFS on me, please)
4. make phone calls
5. put on makeup (which I normally don't do, but we were meeting up with friends later on)
6. fold laundry (and watch 15 minutes of one of the many Oprahs I have recorded)
7. vacuum downstairs
8. clean downstairs bathroom

She fell asleep and off I went. I literally move in fast-forward to get as much done as possible. I got halfway thru #5 and she woke up which means that #6 would have to be done with her in the room (which takes twice as long since her new thing is taking the laundry out of the basket and scattering it around the room).

It's now the next day and I still haven't had time to do #7 and 8.

So now you know why I haven't called you back or why if you come over I may have half my makeup on, laundry strewn about my living room, and nothing is vacuumed or clean. I do promise to be dressed, though, and to have checked my email, though. Those are always first on my list. ( :

Egg Head

Samantha got her first ear infection. It was pretty terrible: high fever, irritability, poor sleeping, etc. Even worse, though, was the medicine she was given to cure her of this infection: amoxicillan (sp). My god, she HATED it. And we had to give it to her for 10 freakin' days. And it was pepto-bismal pink and got on everything in her vicinity since she pretty much spit it out or gagged on it the first 6 times we tried to give it to her.

She seemed cured until she got another fever and started pulling on her ears again. When I brought her into the doctor for her 2-week check in, the infection was still there, and, even worse: in BOTH ears now. More (and stronger) anti-biotics...but at least she's learned how to take the medicine now (actually I've learned how to give it to her) and this time it's white.

Turns out that the propensity for ear infection is due to the shape of the baby's head and is hereditary, which absolutely SUUUUCKS, since my husband had about 3 million ear infections as a child (and even had to have tubes put in his ears) and he and Samantha have the exact same shape head.

So here is to the first of many, many ear infections. *sigh*

Happy Easter.

76 Trombones

So I've decided the reason I don't blog anymore is I don't have the time. Composing a decent blog entry isn't something that just happens, but seeing as though I have about 2.5 minutes in which I have nothing to do all day, I've decided to just wing it and write what's on my mind. Don't expect anything well-written, for anything to come full circle, or for there to be a moral of story (or a point for that matter), cuz it ain't gonna happen. I'm just gonna write shit down that happens, moreso for me than for any reader, so that I can remember what it was like to be the mother of a 9 month old (or 12 month old, or 15 month old...or however long I can keep this up).

When Samantha sleeps, I'm always wary of the sounds that abound in our condo, mostly from our upstairs neighbor, but also from the phone or doorbell or outside. Well, NO MORE! I've found that if my baby is tired, she will sleep no matter what. What taught me this lesson? SHE FELL ASLEEP WHILE A MARCHING BAND WAS PASSING US BY NOT 5 FEET IN FRONT OF OUR FACES! Trombones, cymbals, and everything! Babies, I swear!!!

Free Toy!!! Provides hours of fun!!!

If you follow my blog, you'll know that I wasn't thrilled about getting Samantha too many plastic toys or that her favorite thing in the world is a plastic water bottle. I was happy, however, that the plastic water bottles are free since we reuse and reuse them, so she just got an old one we've had for god-knows-how-long. Well, things have gotten better! She has a new favorite "toy" that is free AND environmentally friendly! Wanna know what it is?

My belly fat. For real.

After nursing her, my shirt's lifted up, thus exposing my belly fat (which I am trying to get rid of...not very hard, though). The other day after nursing her I laid down, belly fat exposed, and put her on top of me. She kind of "crawled down me" until she was face to face with said belly fat, looked up at me, and gave me a great big toothless smile, like she couldn't believe her good fortune! She then gave it another good long look, buried her face into it, and blew a great big raspberry! She raised her head to look at me and had the expression of having just completed the BEST thing she's ever done. She'll do it for a loooong time, too, like 15 minutes (which is a long time for a baby to do anything... except cry...they can do that for a really long time).

It's really funny to see. I'd post a video of it if it didn't mean exposing my fat to the world. So for now, only my husband and my sister have been privy to this phenomenon. My husband expressed concern that she may suffocate "in there" and to be careful. I think he's the one who ought to be careful now after saying that!

I Need a Sub

I'm sick. I don't get sick very often, but when I do, it hits hard. So what I have is "just a cold," but man, I have the cough from HELL. I think I coughed for 4 hours straight the other night...no exaggeration. I managed to get to the doctor today and got some good stuff for sleeping (Tylenol with codeine), but there's not much out there for breastfeeding women. Those are my doctor's exact words. Thank god I can take cough syrup as that is safe for bf'ers, but this over-the-counter crap wasn't cutting it, which is why I went to the doctor.

Before going to the doctor, though, I was rummaging through my medicine cabinet in desperate search of something to relieve my symptoms. Everything, and I mean everything, comes with a warning for breastfeeding or pregnant women. Vicks Vapo-Rub? Come on! When I told my doctor this, even she was like, "What???" Apparently she lived on the stuff while she was pg, so I don't feel so bad having ignored the warning and applied it on myself anyway.

I had a point to this post. Oh yeah, I miss working for one reason only: sick days. I used to rarely use my sicks days, even when I was sick! I just hated having to prepare for a sub in my classroom. Man, what I would give for a sub now!

Gone are the sick days of watching tv all day and falling in and out of sleep during the afternoon. This is not one of the perks of this job. Samantha is clueless to my condition. In fact, I think she's a bit annoyed that I can't sing to her while rocking her to sleep without exploding into a fit of coughing. Poor thing, I about scared her half to death the other night with my coughs.

At least now it's the weekend and I'll have a temporary sub: Daddy!

Money Saver

Even before our daughter was born, my husband and I tried to live as eco-friendly as possible: we recycle religiously, we drive fuel-efficient cars, we reuse everything until it basically falls apart, we keep our heat down, etc. Now that we have a daughter, we try to raise her in an environmentally-friendly way as we can. Aside from cloth-diapering, we try to avoid buying too many plastic toys for her. Actually, since she has 2 sets of grandparents and many loving friends, we haven't had to buy much of anything for her since she's been born!

This Christmas, though, I really wanted to get her something. It's her first Christmas after all! So I went to Timeless Toys, this great toy shop here in Chicago, to pick out something for her that, hopefully, would not be plastic and made in China.

I came home with something plastic that was made in China. I spent more money on it than I would have liked, but whatever. It's cute and fun and she actually really likes it!

What she REALLY likes, though, and in fact I may say that she LOVES and GOES CRAZY FOR are, interestingly enough, plastic water bottles. (Again with the plastic!?!) I swear, if you walk up to her holding a plastic water bottle, she will give you this huge grin that just melts your heart. You think she's showing you how happy she is to see you, how much she loves you. No, she's excited to see the water bottle.

Thanks, kid. Now I know what to get you for Christmas next year.