No, see, this is not how it goes. It is NOT almost August. No. August is the Sunday of the year. You have a day off yet, but you know that the end is near. And SUMMER is such a huge, glorious thing in the teacher's world, that you rarely think beyond it. So it is NOT almost August, damn it.
Actually, it's not going to be so bad. I always enjoy the first 1/3 of the school year. Basically up until Christmas vacay. Before that there's fun seasonal songs and holidays to look forward to, and school is still new and fun for the kids...most of 'em. You come back in January and it's gray and sad and a sadly LOOONG stretch till Spring Break. Or spring, for that matter.
Maddie world:
We started Reglan yesterday. Medication number THREE that my kid takes regularly, several times a day. We now have 4 medicine dates a day, coinciding with 4 of her 5 feedings...although I think we're eventually supposed to wean her down to 4 feedings. I thought all day yesterday that she was barely eating at all, but in the end she took a good amount. Plus, she had 2 good meals: peaches & bananas with ham & pineapple, and 'chicken noodle and veggie dinner'. Today she ate solids well - LUVED the morning oatmeal w/ fruit! - and took formula ok, as long as it was from Bob. He's bigger and stronger, he can wrestle her better than me. I bathed, PJ'ed, and cuddled my sweet baby with her sent-from-Heaven-clean-baby-smell, she was all ready for bed. And I guess I put the syringe too far in her mouth, because she gagged several times and then vomited up everything she ate for dinner, plus a good bit of formula. ARG! Now, I can deal with the extra effort of feedings, all the rice, the extra medicine, and the other weird things we do at the direction of her Dr.'s to keep this reflux thing at bay. But when she loses everything we put in her...especially when I'm pretty darn sure it's my fault...that I can't do. You get very hopeless, you know? When's this over? Did I sign up for this? What do I do now, do I feed her, re-medicate her, what? This was supposed to be better by now. "She'll be over it around 4 months when she starts cereal." Nope. "She'll get over it around 6 months when her esophagus matures and she no longer spits up as much." Ha. I'm WAITING here! And it's times like these that you just thank God that you have somebody else to hand the screaming baby over to. I feel for single parents, I really do. You just have to call your husband and hand over the baby, drenched in pea-soup-looking vomit (she had green beans, turkey, and sweet potatoes for dinner. Did beautifully. And there it all went, down the front of her clean jammies and all through her freshly-washed hair). And you get away. Go cry or scream or smack a pillow and feel better. Me, I put all that mess in the washer (not the baby, Bob put her back for bath #2), and then posted to a reflux help board called momswearingpuke.com. Clever name, huh? The mommies who post there are supportive and have real insight into the whole reflux thing, seeing as they're either in the thick of it or survivors. I got lots of suggestions for medicine-giving tricks, supportive words, etc. But it didn't take long for me to feel 100% better and a 100% worse - here's what one person responded with:
"I just wanted to let you know that I am thinking of you. Since Ian receives all of his meds via his feeding tube, I don't have this particular issue. But I can certainly relate to the puking and know how annoying it is!! Hang in there, Sarah's right, it does get better! You are doing a great job!"
Feeding tube? My God...
...and I'm done feeling sorry for myself right about NOW.
Well, let's make this a ridiculously long post and catch up some more:
Summer:
I still haven't done half of what's on my list. This week I tackled the photos. The albums and the ordering. Seeing as my kid is over 8 months and I haven't done the 6 month page of her book, I think it's time to update. I didn't ready Angels and Demons or the Orff theory text yet, but then, I did finish Harry Potter 6 and am well into 7. You must have priorities, people. Oh, and we're not painting the bedroom furniture yet. We're going to hold off till we win the lottery (when we play it?) and buy new stuff. Or wait till next summer. Whatever. I must get a move on the other things, though.
Last Weekend (Wedding, in Review):
We went to Hometown, stayed over one night, and went to an old friend's wedding. Julie and I were good friends in high school, and she married Andrew. Julie was one that I shared all sorts of embarrassing 8th grade lovey-dovey boy-wishes with, and she with me, and one of the nicest things of the weekend was witnessing Julie ending up with the exact guy I'd hoped she'd end up with all along. Ah, the girlie days of sleepovers at Nicole's and band bus chats...He's her type, let's say. At least he seems to fit perfectly the person she was when I knew her well, and that's good to see. Really enjoyed seeing partially quaker ceremony, too. I think of few of my personal issues with the various manifestations of organized religion that I've come across have been neatly fixed up the by the Quakers. Not what you'd expect. No, no oats or guys out to found Pennsylvania. Must do more research. Must also take baby laundry out of washer before I end up having to wash it again. Anyway, a good time was had by all. Maddie is a party girl, we learned. She loved the music, lights, and dancing at the reception. She skipped the ceremony - she's not the introspective type yet, and I think her well-wishes of "ba-ba-ba-goy-goy" might have been badly timed.
It was wonderful, interesting, and sobering to come across high school friends, too. A few I've kept up with, a few I see at weddings or run into at the outlet stores when we visit, a few I haven't seen since August of 2003. I was thrilled to see Zeb, the only one of the circle I ran with in high school who was an Eisenhower Elementary buddy. Very impressed with him, working in NYC for a big company, and still so warm and well-spoken. I was more pleased and flattered that he seemed to be really happy to see me - and interested in my little life. Teaching? Baby? House? New Jersey suburbs? Polar opposite of his own, pretty much. :-) But he's Zeb, he's an expert conversationalist. It was good to see everyone again, but Zeb and I date back to, I believe, 2nd grade. I'll have to ask if he had Mrs. Keller or Ms. Eiker that year...
We had a "high school friends" table and had quite a nice time catching up, eating good food, drinking good wine (I have not been hungover since college, and not that badly since one particular Spring Arts festival...owie. Mommy forgot that more than 2 glasses of wine = headache and nausea). And when we saw that our old English teacher had hit the dance floor, it was officially time to get up and boogie. I really like just hearing everybody's stories, though. Everybody was in a different place in life. House-buying, graduate school-finishing, business-personing, traveling near and far, etc. Seeing old friends with different lives in different places reminds me of the choices that I made that are a bit different from theirs. And, though it's not the glamorous life and spit-up soaked as I tend to be, I couldn't be more pleased that I made those choices. Everyone looked lovely (Bride was a supermodel, and I've seen her dolled up before many times), and everyone was well, and I won't pretend that it wasn't SO fun to show my Maddie off. She did beautifully too. Boogie-oogie-oogied on the dance floor, baby.
Well, it's (past) bedtime. We apparently think we're going to early church tomorrow. I'll believe it when I see it. *night*
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