Back again

When I was pregnant, I had some excruciating pain, often resulting in my inability to even move the slightest bit without stifling a scream. My OB referred me to physical therapy but I knew in my heart that was not what I needed. It was an alignment issue and physical therapy wasn't going to correct that. I needed a chiropractor, but very few are willing to manipulate a pregnant woman, and even fewer (if any) are willing to do so if she's never had prior chiropractic care.
So when I had the baby, I waited a couple weeks to see if delivery improved things or made anything worse. There were improvements but I felt very grossly out of whack. So I went to the chiropractor, and that first adjustment was a shock to my physical person, and at the same time a huge relief because all those nerves weren't being mushed and pinched. X-rays revealed a partially sacralized L5 vertabrae, and the disk between L5 & S1 having some issues. It isn't clear if it's genetic or an injury. The side that had the extra bone growth was the side with sciatic pain during pregnancy as well as other times-usually when I was out of line. I was going for adjustments twice a week for a month, then once a week for a couple months, and now I'm down to every other week.
The past couple weeks or so has been very difficult in terms of mobility. Bending forward to do things like pick up stuff or put the baby in the crib have brought back the excruciating winces. My aunt was a nursing assistant and injured herself during a team lift of a super-obese patient. I called to pick her brain and ask what it felt like when she injured her back. Similar stuff it seems. I am not sure what will follow but it's a bit unnerving to say the least.
I'm hoping and praying it can heal with time and a new job. I told my dad that I was having problems and he said not to have pins and rods put in my back, going on to say "Look at what happened to your sister". She got hurt on the job nearly 20 years ago, and opted to have a fusion with metal rods. Short story of it all, lack of mobility (not sure if it's injury induced, surgically induced or patient non-movement) and she's now majorly obese, diabetic, and has congestive heart failure.
If I ever have to have surgery, I will certainly be exploring the option of using my own bone marrow like my aunt did. She's allergic to every metal there is. Her replacement knee is ceramic coated. Her fusion was done with her own bone matter. But for now, I truck along carefully and use the TENS unit to keep the muscle spasms at bay. I'm going to the chiropractor later this week, and will definitely mention this development to him.

There are some other medical issues in the household needing attention but due to some other factors (no names, situations or fingers being pointed), I doubt attention will be sought anytime soon. So keep us in your prayers.

Cheese and wine - no H

I often tell the kids when they're being whiny that I have no cheese to go with their WHINE. It makes them roll their eyes and say it's a stupid old line and I shouldn't use it anymore. But it gives me reprieve of the whining.
I ran away from home for a while tonight. Why? Because sometimes real life is stranger than fiction. My friend Fran Pitre wrote a book about her experiences having 3 sets of fraternal twins, and there was a book signing party. I almost didn't go because it was from 5 to 8 and I was not moving fast thanks to some pulled back muscles. I really needed a shower, the children smelled the pork tenderloin in the crockpot and there needed to be something else to go with it. So I made some pan fried potatoes. Some things I just can't bring myself to leave to the teen boys yet. It was 7 by the time I finally left. The mini-human was asleep, but supposedly woke up right after I made my exit. She apparently has mommy-radar and knows when I'm more than ten feet outside the perimeter of the house. Nobody called me, so I was none the wiser, and enjoyed the company of friends.
Wine, fruit, cheese, crackers, cookies and a lot of conversation. I'm not generally a wine drinker, but I do have a couple favorites. I got to sip some wine, eat some cubes of cheese, and met some new friends. (And as I typed "cube of cheese" my ADD brain went immediately to "The Devil Wears Prada" ooh shiny! sorry...moving along).
In any case, Fran was talking about the potential plans for promoting the book. I have no concrete details so I'm not about to misinform anyone here. But I told her I'd do my part.
Twins X3 is available now for your perusal and purchase.
Our pastor read the book, and commented later about knowing details of his parishoner's body. Fran said he wrote a review of the book, so I'm now in search of that bit of text to see what he has to say about it.
And before you start whining, yes Mrs Amiot, you're next. ;)

Annnnd we are mobile!

It's official. We now have a quasi-mobile mini-human. She's been rolling a bit here and there, and has been able to roll front to back more so than back to front. She's been trying to roll back to front by herself and literally gets ticked if I try to help her. But the last day or so she's been rolling and relishing her new trick. Today, she rolled from tummy to back to tummy to back and almost to tummy again till she was stopped by the toy box in the living room. This in addition to her kamikaze nose dives off my lap or out of my arms. I remember the boys would launch themselves off my lap, but I don't remember them jumping out of my arms. There were many many many times I had to move fast and keep Clone from self induced bain dramage from flipping backwards while I was holding her. It was very fun apparently - only guessing by the number of times I had to hold tight to her legs. Tonight I went to the grocery store while the middle 2 kids were in religious ed class. I was walking down an aisle with the baby on my arm, facing back over my shoulder. Nothing unusual about holding a baby that way. Good thing there were two hands on her. She bounced, jumped and nearly launched herself out of my arms. This is way sooner than I remember and I'm sooo not ready for mobility. I don't think the older 3 kids are fully aware of what lies ahead. She's reaching for stuff, grabbing her toys, and working those gross motor skills like a champ. Tonight she leaned over and reached for the big brother. Apparently his aloof, "I don't like babies" charisma doesn't work on her. It was either that or she's a crafty bugger and figured he was next to the kitchen counter, and she could get closer to stuff up there and play with it, if he held her instead. I am just going to go with the delusion that she missed her big brother and just wanted to visit with him for a bit instead of hanging onto me like usual.
In other news, I am not so mobile. I already have bad posture and this new round of antics from my hips, spine and back are making it difficult to bend over or sometimes move. I've been using the TENS unit a fair amount, but I know something is way out of alignment. Plus my muscles are staging a revolt. I need to stretch my back and legs so my chiro adjustments aren't undone so quickly. These copays are taking away from my ability to save up for the trip to Rome. I'd like to go more than a week before needing a readjustment. And right now, I'd just love a massage.

Birthday Loot

I have a load of awesome friends. I suppose it kind of makes up for a crummy childhood perhaps? Birthdays as a kid sucked about as much as an industrial strength shop vac. Then I grew up and expected my husband to have a different approach to my birthday than my parents had. That was erroneous of me. My sister suggested at the time that I lower my expectations. I responded with something along the lines of "*F* that! I'll just give MYSELF a good birthday." That was 11 years ago, and my birthdays don't suck anymore. I make a full week of it, or a weekend of it - depending on when my birthday falls during the week. Yes, I milk it as much as I can, and I don't hide my birthday. Of course the caveat to that as I get further into my 30s is that I reveal my age. I don't mind it but I've noticed I'm growing self-conscious about the number for some reason. But I love my birthday now, regardless of the number, and I especially love gifts.
I really wasn't expecting to be given so much for my birthday. It was better than Christmas for me lol. I'm breathing better for one thing. And for another I got a bunch of neat stuff.

I belong to the Ministry Of Mothers Sharing (MOMS) at church and we had a general meeting on my birthday. I was figuring someone would bring cake since I not so subtly hinted what day it was. But I was given my favorite shower gel from Bath & Body Works, and a pretty Yankee Candle tart warmer - plus cake.
My sister baked me a cake involving cocoa, hazelnut creamer, buttercream, and a bunch of yum. She did laundry and hung with the teenagers while I was gone to the meeting. She also gave me a big exercise ball like the one she loaned me when I was trying to get the baby to move closer to the exit.
My son's friend gave me a cupcake from Publix - which anyone in the southeast knows Publix bakery is awesome.
The friend that taught me to knit, sent a care package. It arrived from the upper Midwest on my rain-drenched birthday, just as she'd hoped it would. She's trying to destash yarn. So am I, but the big projects in my queue don't have enough of the appropriate yarn in my stash, and I need to avoid buying yarn. Yarn money and space in general are lacking here. But I have enough yarn now to finish a couple of the big projects I have on my list. In that loot was 3 hanks of wool yarn she's allergic to and can't even touch. She sent the rest of what will be the baby's christening outfit, a knitted drawstring bag (in her attempt to destash lol), some table food feeders and some Whoppers candy. She sent those because the Dirty Santa exchange at the holiday party resulted in me coming home with a double feature chick flick dvd, accompanied by some stale candy. The card she sent made me laugh. The front had a cartoon woman doing those "finger quotes" and it said 'Happy "29th" Birthday'. Inside it said 'From your "110" pound friend'. I laughed, opened the gift, and cracked up even more. Not only were they fresh Whoppers, it was a bigger box than the original.
I'm going to the Midnight Knit In (crochet too) as part of my birthday weekend. I don't get a chance to visit the yarn shop all that often, but I make a point to do the Midnight events if I can.
I also will be making use of those birthday freebies I registered for with Moe's and Sticky Fingers. Burrito and ribs make a birthday yummy. So do three different varieties of cake. And friends who are awesome - even the ones I play tag with so much lately. I much prefer my friend-filled birthday now than those as a kid.

It's my birthday

A year ago, I was in cahootz with Persnickety to go tool around Disney. We did that but with a stowaway. I couldn't imbibe on the beer I procured a couple weeks earlier. I could barely get through an hour without feeling green or eating something. I was still busy arguing with God that I was not pregnant, that it was perimenopause.

I very obviously LOST that argument.

I used to call my mom at the stroke of midnight and wish her a Happy BirthING Day. I'm not driving the hours to Bushnell to tell her gravestone. Her neighbors might not like the excitement anyway.

My younger brother, sister and I have a little game we play on birthdays. We try to call the birthday person first, just so we can claim "first birthday wishes". This year, the oldest son stayed up just to be the first one to wish me Happy Birthday at the stroke of midnight.

For my birthday, I have planned: waking up to take the boys to school because Beast has tutoring at 7:30. (::checks clock::) meh, sleep is apparently overrated. A chiropractor appointment - 2 long weeks since the last one and I am in sooo need of an adjustment. I'm back to walking like I did when I was bursting at the seams pregnant with the mini-human. I feel old. Devildog so much as called me old. He likes to rub it in that I'm older than he is, like 3 months means all that much in the grand scheme of things here. I have some school-related junk to tend to, and I plan on mooching Moe's for my birthday burrito. Sometime soon I need to hit up Sticky Fingers for my free birthday entree. Perhaps a date with my Devildog? Or maybe one of my birthday-neighbor friends wants to plan something.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm overdue for sleep. The older I get the more difficult it is to stay cute on just a few hours' nap.

Since I can't do much

I may as well blog.

Miss Mini-Human, Clone2, Piglet, Must-Be-Upright-and-Moving, MUST-yell-for-food, or perhaps also known simply as "the baby", is out of sorts. She's got gum pain from those phantom teeth that aren't making an appearance yet, but we all know they're hiding in the wings, waiting for the most ~opportune~ time to erupt. She's got gas because I can't seem to figure out what I'm eating that disagrees with her gastric functions. I try to knit even a row on this wrap I've been working on since June 2008, and she wakes up screaming. If I try to pump, she'll get mad and accuse the machine of stealing her food. I feed her and she still yells even more at me and at the food sources. I got a Bumbo seat for her because she insists on sitting up, and I can't always hold her, and her siblings have other things to do sometimes. She hates it. She turns in it with one leg sticking out further than the other, leans over the side bites the side and yells. She stiffens her legs and back and tries to pop out of it. She loves the Maya wrap most of the time, but my back injuries don't like that too much.

I'm trying to clean stuff. My house is a disaster. It looks like it puked all over itself, and it kind of actually did that. I won't list the messes, but it's like ADD gone awry to say the least. Between the actual ADD in my brain and the baby, it's a bumpy ride on a personal watercraft in pre-hurricane conditions. I managed to get one big box of clothes sorted. Somehow while still baking the mini-human, a bunch of different sized clothes got lumped together in one box. I found 3s, 4s, 5s, a couple 2s and even a 12-18 months item in there. I re-sorted the box and started to put them away when the cute bundle of screaming tantrum sounded the alarm - again.

So, I sat down to feed her and she refused to be put down, acted sleepy but fought it...and here I am. I grabbed the My Brest Friend cushion and hooked her up so I could type with 2 hands, because I'd be here 5 hours trying to type this post one handed. She yelled at me some more. I gave her teething tablets, Tylenol and snuggles. I looked at her a few minutes ago and said "You're not going to let me do anything are you?" and I was met with a playful-eyed grin from behind a pacifier. That means no. She's cute. She's funny. She's sweet. And my 16 year old said she's evil. Pot meet kettle? Now that she's asleep again, I'm going to try to lay her down and finish these tasks I started several hours ago around my house. At least I was able to make dinner.
(And don't mind the timestamp on the picture. That's entirely incorrect and I am not sure how that happened.)

All I want for my birthday

Suburban Correspondent inspired today's blog post.
Last year, Persnickety and I tooled around Disney for my birthday. I was freshly planted with the mini-human, but wasn't 100% sure at that point. I was still arguing with God that it was perimenopause, NOT another baby. I lost that argument big time. She's cute and smart and funny (because I haven't made babies any other way), and I think I'll keep her. This year, Disney changed their freebie to "do something for someone else, ya schmuck" and quite honestly, I've got lots calling my name, and the Mouse isn't loud enough. I did have fun with what we thought was a child-free trip. Hence that's how the baby was tagged as "The Stowaway" on my blog, and the pregnancy ticker.
So here we are rounding the corner to another birthday and I'm trying to figure out what I want to do for it. I grew up with crummy birthdays. I can count on ONE hand how many childhood birthdays were any fun, had some kind of commemoration even. ONE hand. My parents treated birthdays as just any other day. I didn't even get cake. Occasionally I got cupcakes to share with classmates, but not every year. Birthdays sucked like an industrial strength shop vac. My sister suggested I just lower my expectations so I wasn't disappointed. I did one better. I decided that I was not going to rely on those around me to do something for my birthday. Devildog looks at it as just another day too, and that's just annoying. He just doesn't particularly care, even saying "Why am I going to point out that I'm OLD?"
The first year I gave myself a good birthday, I made a weekend of it. My birthday was on a Thursday or Friday that year. I did a monthly girls night out on the 3rd Thursday with some board buddies, and it started with that - and I ordered what I wanted, not what was least expensive. Friday, I came home from work and did NOTHING. The kids ate PB&J sandwiches that they made themselves. Saturday and Sunday, I went shopping for new underwear at Victoria Secret's Semi-Annual Clearance sale. YAY for wedgie-free drawers! That has become a yearly part of my birthday ritual now. I go in June, just because I can.
That year, I enjoyed my birthday for a change. It didn't suck. And since then, I've made a point to do something for my own darn birthday because my kids are only so capable and resourceful, and my husband has no interest. I will say that last year, I got a call from the oldest while I was at Disney, asking if he could bake a cake for me for my birthday. SURE! So I got home really late, and the kids left the cake on the stove for me. I took pictures of it (not sure which memory card at this point) and waited till they were all home from school the next day to eat any of it.
This year? not sure entirely but it will involve a round of the usual Birthday freebies from those places I signed up for, and visit to my favorite local yarn shop for the Midnight Knit In. The Yarntender does them every couple months in addition to the weekly Wednesday & Friday extended hours for yarnies to gather. One of the other girls at the shop shares my birthday, and Persnickety's is a couple weeks after mine - maybe we can plan ahead and Persnickety can join us finally (hint hint?!?!) She's a couple weeks younger than I am. But, I - nevermind, I'll be nice. On one trip 'Snick and FCB took, she got me a plaque that says "It's great to have a friend to grow old with. YOU GO FIRST!" Just what I wanted for my birthday - to be told that I'm OLD.

Twins, Twins, Twins

I have a friend who wrote a recently released book. It started as journaling, and turned into a book.

It's called Twins X3 (Twins Times Three).

Yes, she honestly has THREE sets of fraternal twins, one set of each combination. Two girls, boy/girl, two boys. I know some of her story, and I first met her when she was newly pregnant with the 3rd set of twins. I haven't gotten my hands on a copy of the book yet, but it's on my reading list. http://www.twinsx3.com/index.html

Well digger's what?

Ever heard the phrase "colder than a well digger's butt"? My mother used to say that every time it got cold enough to chill her bones. Since there wasn't a lot of meat on her bones, anything 40 or below was such a temperature. I live in Florida, and have Floridian blood and not much meat on my bones. So, what would this cold Floridian be doing at 2 in the morning besides blogging and waiting for the mini-human to demand milk? Knitting herself another scarf because she can't find the black one she knitted herself over a year ago-maybe two years. I know it was at least that long ago, because I had it on my birthday trip to Disney, and that was in January of last year. I recently got a random skein of yarn from someone, and since it's soft and not a horrid color, and a single 50 gram ball of yarn only goes so far - I decided I needed a new scarf. Plus it's freaking cold here. It's not getting any higher than mid 40s this week during the day, and down into the 20s at night.
I'm very grateful this weather held off till after the Gator Bowl. Someone gave Beast tickets but he decided he didn't want to go, so he offered them to me and my brother. He's a Gator fan like Devildog, and my brother and I are Seminole fans. I don't know that I would have gone if the temperatures were this miserable-for-Florida low. I'm wondering what it's going to be like on my birthday. Last year was *supposed* to be in the 60s, but the cold front got stalled over us and my freshly impregnated self was miserably cold at Disney.

Side note about the game...my brother was in awe of it all, as it was his first FSU game ever. The shuttle bus had 80% FSU fans and 20% WVU fans. My brother and his goofy self came up with a little ditty he kept singing all afternoon.

"Hush, hush, what's the fuss?
Mountaineers to the back of the bus"

With these temperatures, the Mountaineers would feel right at home, and probably wouldn't call it well digger's butt cold. Plus mines get colder than wells anyway.

Dreams of Rome

I have a friend who does yearly trips to Rome and she takes friends with her. I've known her almost 3 years and ever since she mentioned these trips, I've wanted to go. Rome has always been part of my bucket list. That and a bunch of other places with huge cathedrals and history. There was no way I could've gone this past year, even if the money was there for me to go. I was freshly planted and growing a human. That plane trip would have been difficult to say the least. Walking on land was a challenge for me. But she recently mentioned on Crackbook that she was going to Rome in 6 weeks, and had names for the 2011 trip already. I want to be on that list, to the point I can almost taste it. It's about $1500 and I have 12 months or less to get that money plus spending cash together, or I'll be on the 2012 trip. I'm thinking I could trade getting a laptop for that money being set aside for Roman travel. Yes, I'm *this* close to getting a laptop and I'm actually thinking about putting that money elsewhere. There is the pesky goal of buying a house that is in my face as well. We really need 2 bathrooms. Devildog is supportive of my desire to travel, which is helpful. I'm grateful for that because he knows Rome is on my list and travel was something I've always wanted to do. I'm also grateful he's not an insolent jerk that feels it's his duty to squash my dreams. We also want to visit his birthplace with gorgeous sunrises and sunsets. We can do that almost anytime though. Rome requires planning, investment and this friend only goes once a year. This coming trip will also include another friend whose husband died recently. One of his dying wishes was for his wife to go to Rome. Some people pitched together and last I heard, they were sending her - expenses paid. While I don't expect that level of generosity, I certainly have my work cut out for me. The good dreams don't come cheap.