A couple of months ago, Amy was kind enough to lend me her Miracle Blanket. Breanna slept best swaddled, but no receiving blanket in the world seemed to hold her in. The Miracle Blanket is very cool and resembles a baby staight jacket. I would leave her left arm free so she could suck on her hand, but the rest of her body was snugly confined. This seemed to help her sleep rather well, especially at night.

Alas, soon I’m going to have to pop it back in the mail to return to her because Breanna is slowly outgrowing it. I hope she’ll be able to sleep without it, but I guess she’ll learn since she’s already pulling a Houdini in her sleep lately. I almost always find that one leg is free by the time I’m heading off to bed, such as this shot I risked taking a few nights ago.

It’s not unusual to see her other arm free as well, and once she wakes up for a feeding, she usually has both arms and both legs waving about with only her tummy still covered up. For someone who is greatly comforted by swaddling, she sure makes it difficult to keep her that way!

After over a week of tweaking, gnashing teeth, cursing Microshit, loving Firefox even more than usual, mentally composing hate mail to Bill Gates, copying & pasting, crying (just a little), venting, and then finally upgrading to WordPress 2 and installing the newest version of the theme with even more copying & pasting and tweaking, I finally have a new default layout. If it looks like utter crap, I don’t want to know. Okay, no, tell me if something looks weird. It looks perfect in both Firefox and Internet Exploder 6.X on my machine, and also on George’s which is at a higher resolution.

If you really hate it, you can still use one of the other themes, located in the left column – for some reason the theme switcher requires you to click it twice.

If you have no bloody idea what I’m talking about, hit refresh. I like the new title of my weblog, it fits my life rather well. Also, WordPress 2 is not as horrendous as I once thought, now that I know I can turn OFF the obnoxious rich text option. I reserve the right to change my opinion if I discover none of my plugins work any longer.

I need another coffee. And some computer-less time. I think I’ll go make a collage with Hayley while Breanna sings on the floor.

Today while I was washing the dishes, Breanna started fussing a bit while sitting in her carrier on the floor. I had given her a few different toys – a baby doll that she loves, a plastic moon that hangs from the baby gym, a little spatula – nothing was interesting for more than thirty seconds. I only had a few more things to wash and I just wanted to finish, so I stepped up the entertainment a little.

(And this is where I am so glad that there are – to my knowledge at least – no hidden cameras in my kitchen, or anywhere in my home. One of my biggest nightmares would be finding out I’m on my own Truman Show.)

So I started singing a very rousing rendition of “The Ants Go Marching One By One” (hurrah! hurrah!) and pantomiming a little, marching in place, making silly faces, the works. Of course, the first words Breanna learns will not include any of the words from this song, though they might include “fuck!” because that’s exactly what came out of my mouth when I sliced my right ring finger with a steak knife.

Lesson learned: Do not indulge in any acrobatic dancing while washing cutlery of any sort.

It cut the pad of the finger. It wasn’t like my finger tip was hanging off, bound only by a few nerves, so I didn’t need to go to the hospital. I didn’t even need a bandage since it stopped bleeding shortly after the fact. However, being on the pad means that it’s easy to put pressure on it and holy frickin’ hell does it sting.

A few hours went by this evening and it was feeling much better. Even typing didn’t bother me. Too bad I forgot about it when I was preparing Hayley’s breakfast for the morning. Did you know that oranges are rather acidic? My finger would like you to know that yes, indeed they are.

Luckily I kept the expletives in my head this time. I’m just grateful that I was cutting the orange beside the sink so I was able to rinse the finger off quickly.

Tomorrow, I think I’ll stick with singing slow love ballads or perhaps Gregorian chanting.

I know there will be some people reading this who won’t believe it and will think I’m making it up, but I’m going to write it anyway so I won’t forget when I finally get a baby book, because Breanna just did something else for the first time.

She was lying on the floor looking at the baby gym toys, and she started fussing because she was bored. I said we could practice sitting, so I put an index finger inside each of her fists and slowly started pulling her up to a sitting position. She gave me a big grin as we stopped and then pulled herself right up to a standing position! Granted, her legs are nowhere near ready for that so she didn’t stay up for long and the only reason she didn’t fall was because she was still clinging to my fingers, but my baby – my little baby! – just pulled up to standing for the first time.

I completely freaked out. I’m surprised I didn’t just flat-out drop her.

Someone please tell my 4.5 month old baby to slow the hell down.

Did you just hear that loud whooshing noise? That was Breanna sighing with immense relief. She finally figured out how to roll from her stomach onto her back so she never needs to suffer the indignity of being trapped on her tummy again.

I don’t know whether it’s showing in the U.S. at all or if it’s only up here in Canada, in honor of MTV returning to the airwaves up here (big deal), but they’ve had a campaign running with the theme being the “drought” since MTV has been gone. It showed various ads that were often a little gross like an athlete wringing out his sweaty sports sock into his mouth because he was so thirsty, or a housewife licking the inside of her dishwasher to quench her thirst. The tag line was always “The drought is almost over”.

And now it is. Apparently MTV is back. Without much fanfare in my home, I might add, since I don’t believe we have it in our current package. The new ad horrified me.

It shows humans dressed in blue jeans and white MTV t-shirts, falling from the sky, in the imitation of rain, with the slogan “Something in the water”. They don’t fall gracefully from the sky like the people in that sports drink commercial; they fall heavily, landing with thuds on the pavement. Eventually, the camera pans up and people are just falling endlessly from the sky.

The first time I saw it tonight, I couldn’t pinpoint exactly what it was about the commercial that bothered me so much but I knew something about it disturbed me. When it aired a second time during my television show, I realized what the problem was.

It reminded me of September 11th. The entire attack on and consequential collapse of the World Trade Centers was appalling and terrifying and horrifying beyond words. Obviously. But you know what image remains burned in my brain to this day, so fresh it’s like I just saw it? The image of people who were so desperate and afraid that they jumped out of the buildings, falling to their deaths. It took me weeks to stop seeing that in my head. The first night I saw it on the news, I saw it every time I closed my eyes. Maybe it’s because of my immense fear of heights. Maybe it’s because I can’t – thank God – imagine being in a situation where jumping out of an 80th floor window seems like a better choice than staying put. I don’t know. Maybe it’s all of that plus the sheer horror of that day. All I know is that the MTV commercial brought it right back and I’m sure I can’t be the only one who thought of that when it aired.

I fully plan to change the channel the next time it comes on. And I’m still deciding whether it’s a waste of my time to write a letter to MTV.

I think that a lot of (pergaps even most) parents occasionally take chances and do things they know they aren’t supposed to do. For me, it was using the buckles on the bouncy seat when Breanna was a baby. Once she started wriggling around, I buckled her in so that she wouldn’t slide off and onto the floor, but when she was just a twitchy blob of a baby who couldn’t move much, I only strapped her in about half the time. If I was going to be across the room or if I had to run to another room for a second (or if I was showering or she was sleeping of course) I did. If I was peeing or standing right beside her, I didn’t. I know the safety sticker says to always use the buckles, but there you have it: I didn’t always listen.

For about three weeks now, I always strap her in, no matter how close I am. Even though the seat is directly at my feet and within arm’s reach when I sit down to pee, I still make sure she is firmly and safely buckled in. Why? Because three weeks ago she decided that sitting back in the bouncy seat is for pussies and that although she hasn’t even mastered rolling yet, she’s going to practice sitting up.

And so buckles it is, lest she topple over onto the floor.

(That title should bring in the Google perverts, eh?)

Last night I was pacing the living room with a fussy Breanna, watching “Desperate Housewives” on television. I haven’t watched it religiously this season because I find it’s gotten a little dull compared to last year. Still, I see it fairly regularly.

Last night, Lynette was trying to hire a woman named Veronica to work at her office. The offer wasn’t that great but in the end Lynette convinced her by showing her the great on-site daycare facility and assuring Veronica that the company would be very supportive of her taking breaks to breastfeed her son.

And then everyone found out Veronica’s son was five years old.

I nursed Hayley until a few months shy of three years old. Obviously I am pro-breastfeeding when it’s possible, and obviously I have no problems with extended breastfeeding either. However, even I get a little uncomfortable at the thought of a five-year-old nursing, especially if it’s frequent enough that she would need to do it several times during the work day; with Hayley it was generally only at night with rare mornings here and there.

It wasn’t the age that bothered me about the episode though. What bothered me was the end result. At first, when confronted, Veronica defended her choice with explanations that breast milk continues to offer vitamins, antibodies, and all sorts of benefits, including possible higher IQ levels. These are all things that you can learn if you read about breastfeeding at the World Health Organization website. Although I wouldn’t be comfortable to extend it to that age, I applauded her choice.

Then Lynette pulled a fast one on her; when the little boy came looking for Mom and her milk, Lynette said she was in a meeting and then co-erced him into trying some of her chocolate milk. Just like that, bam, he self-weaned because Mom’s breasts don’t produce chocolate milk!

At first I was annoyed with Lynette; sure, maybe I’d feel awkward seeing someone breastfeed a child of his age, but it was seriously undermining Veronica, and as a mother herself, Lynette should know being undermined is frustrating and rude.

In the end though, I wound up annoyed at the show – because when Lynette stumbled across a crying Veronica later that day, she wasn’t sobbing because a long-time bond had been severed. No, she was distraught because breastfeeding was the only way that she had been able to eat whatever she wanted while keeping the weight off. “I’ll have to join a gym!” she wailed.

It just seemed like such a disservice to breastfeeding. First of all it made breastfeeding past the age of saying first words seem freakish by choosing a particularly higher age for shock value. Then it made somewhat of a mockery of the whole thing by showing that it wasn’t really about the continued value of breastmilk, but rather as a weight loss tool for yet another vain woman.

I guess I just wish that they had chosen less of an “Oh my God!” age, like two, an age that isn’t unusual but that is still seen as odd by many people, and that they had shown Veronica sticking to her guns and educating people as to the benefits of breastfeeding for so long.

Then again, maybe I should just stop expecting prime time television to educate the masses.

I spoke (wrote?) too soon with that entry last night. George got home around 11pm, and I had just finished telling him Hayley was sleeping soundly, not coughing, and feeling cool to the touch. No more than three minutes later, we heard wailing from her room. She was burning up and coughing so hard that she was gagging and choking. We got her cleaned up, took her temperature and saw it was pretty high (39.8C), and gave her more medicine. She wanted to be a big girl and go back to bed but I told her even big girls are allowed to sleep in the big bed when they’re scared or sick. She went off to sleep under George’s watchful eye and I took care of a hungry, waking Breanna.

And then this morning I wondered why someone would not only run me over, but look in their rearview mirror and back over me too, just for good measure. Holy crap. Coughing, fever, chills, aching head, severely aching legs, and a desire to crawl into a cupboard and die.

Luckily Breanna passed out around noon and I laid on the couch with her. I didn’t sleep much, but I dozed a bit and at least I was flat. She had the best nap in over a week, sleeping on me for over two hours, so that was great.

Hayley’s fever shot back up and she could barely blink so we dosed her up again and I sat on the floor while she took a lukewarm bath which helped temporarily. George is gone for a couple of hours to do some work and I’m considering it practice for being sick and alone with the kids tomorrow. Supper will just be some soup and maybe leftover chicken from last night’s supper if anyone is hungry.

I took regular Tylenol and it helped my head and toned down the ridiculous pain in my legs by a notch or two; it seems to have done nothing at all for my fever as I am currently sweating profusely.

I’ve warned Breanna that she’s grounded from her first high school dance if she dares to catch this. I’ve been nursing her as much as I can and praying that she doesn’t get sick. The way we’ve all felt, I can only imagine this would land her in the hospital. If you could think good no-flu thoughts for her, that would be great.

I am so lost as to what day it is. It started on Wednesday night. George was playing at the usual bar that night for a memorial of a girl who worked there who had died recently. He never plays in the middle of the week. Therefore, I immediately thought that Wednesday was actually Friday, especially when he came home at 3 am. Then he ended up staying home on Thursday and Friday because he was sick with the Cold And Flu Plague Of 2006 – complete with scary coughing, fever, congestion, and basically feeling like he had been run over by a fleet of tanks. In any case, although he essentially spent those two days in bed with only very infrequent trips out to the living room, I still knew he was home and that made it feel like those days were the weekend. To top off the confusion, he worked for a few hours this morning, so I felt like we were back at Monday. I kept wondering why there were so few updates anywhere online only to remember that this is actually the weekend.

This is what happens when you don’t work outside the home: You lose all sense of the days of the week unless you can rely on someone else’s work schedule (or in my case, my must-see-tv schedule) to tell you where you fall in the calendar.

Luckily George is better today. He’s still coughing and sneezing but he’s alive and able to function and eat again. The downside is that Hayley woke up at 1:15 in the morning, coming to tell me that she was really thirsty and needed some water. She never goes through the entire cup of water I give her at bedtime so I had a bad feeling that this meant her throat was a bit sore. Also a bad sign (though a good thing overall at the time) was that she went straight back to bed and to sleep, whereas she would normally feel like it was a fine time to have a big conversation about everything under the sun.

This morning she unfortunately woke up at 5:30. She came out to the living room, groggy and staggering. Every night I lay down a thick blanket on the floor and place her special quilt on top and she often sits there to eat her breakfast and watch a show or two on Treehouse while I feed Breanna and struggle to wake up. Today, she sank down on the blankets, moaning that she was dizzy. She felt pretty warm too. although a quick temperature check showed she was still under fever levels. Then she let out a god-awful hacking cough that sounds like it should come from a 90-year-old two-pack a day smoker, not a three-year-old child. She laid down on the floor with her pillow and I crashed on the couch with a drowsily nursing Breanna; Hayley reached up to hold my hand, stared blankly at the ceiling, and then fell asleep for about an hour and a half or so.

The sleep didn’t help much. Her cough was worse and she did get a fever. Since George was at work, his sister came by with some Tylenol cold meds for her. I normally don’t give cough medicine during the day, believing it’s better to get it out and save the meds for night time, but she was just so pathetically miserable that I gave her a dose. She was quiet all morning, eating little more than a bag of raisins and a pudding cup. When George came home, they laid on the bed for awhile and she fell asleep for over an hour in there, something that never happens when Daddy is home.

She continued with the non-eating through lunch and supper, not even eating her greatly loved mashed potatoes. After supper I made her a batch of applesauce and she finally ate that, devouring the entire thing. She was mildly feverish by then so we dosed her up again, got her into pajamas and I read her and Breanna a story in bed. She seemed reluctant to go to sleep but it took less than five minutes for her to conk out. I went to check on her half an hour ago and she looks like she hasn’t moved an inch since she passed out. I hope she manages to sleep all night, though I’m doubtful. At least the cough suppressant seems to be working thus far, since I haven’t heard her cough in her sleep at all.

And of course, I’m sitting here, drinking a hot cup of tea to try to soothe an ache in my throat. I’m trying to ignore the coughing that I keep feeling the need to do, and the slight sniffling in my nose. The headache is harder to ignore, but I’m a long-time headache girl so I can still function for now. It’s just rotten timing (is there ever GOOD timing to get sick?). If it hits me tomorrow, at least George will be here to help me, but he has to work on Monday and I’ll be here, sick with one recovering pre-schooler and one baby. I really hope that I don’t get it as badly as George did or I’m going to be so screwed.

Still, I’d rather get it now so that my body starts fighting it off and passes the antibodies in my milk to Breanna. It’s bad enough that Hayley is sick, but at least she can take something for it. I can’t take anything other than throat lozenges, tea, and steam, but I’m an adult. A baby can’t take anything nor can she understand what the hell is going on. Please don’t let Breanna get sick.

And there is your really long holy-shit-she-IS-verbose Saturday update.