Teresa's Donation

You're getting some bonus posts tonight because I won't be online much during the Triduum and Easter. :)

I have to say, I am SO INCREDIBLY PROUD of Teresa - she did the most amazing thing this past Wednesday.

She had been asking me for a little while now to let her have her hair cut shorter. She wasn't sure how short, but she has a friend here in Tucson (the daughter of one of my new co-Leaders) whom she idolizes, and she wanted her hair cut kind of like this little girl's 'do. I cautioned her against trying to look like someone else, since I have gone through this myself. My mother still reminds me that I went off to school and decided I *had* to have my haircut like Jamie Greenberg's. Well, Jaime Greenberg was a very petite little thing with a great face for extremely short hair - and I....was neither. Of course, I had all my hair chopped off, looked awful, instantly regretted it, and cried for months while waiting for it to grow back.

Moral of the story: if you're going to make a major change to your appearance, do it because you think it will suit you, not because you want to look like someone else. Or, if you must do it to look like someone else, at least pick a "someone else" who shares at least some vaguely similar characteristics with you.

So Teresa kept asking, and I kept putting it off. I was so torn - I LOVE long hair, I think it's beautiful and feminine and fun to style, and she'd been growing it for years. She looked so pretty with long hair, and always got compliments on it. I was afraid she's regret cutting it, as I had. But I started to realize that Teresa is getting older, and that maybe the time has come for me to allow her to make her own decisions in areas like this.

Well, this whole ongoing hair discussion came to a head when Teresa heard about the charity Locks of Love, with which a local salon participates. For those who don't know, Locks of Love is a national organization that accepts donations of hair from people, mostly other children, and turns it into real-hair wigs for kids who have lost their hair due to chemotherapy. As soon as she heard about it, Teresa said, "Mommy! I want to cut my hair REALLY short and give it all to a sick girl who has no hair from that medicine!" I started crying right there in front of the hair salon. I was SO impressed and proud of her. How could I say no? After all, she not only wanted to do this to look beautiful, she wanted to do it for such a beautiful reason.

So, they measured her hair to make sure it was long enough (they need a minimum of 10 inches of length to make a wig), braided it and banded it on both ends and cut it off in one big piece before the stylist went back and evened it out and shaped it. (I was trying not to look!)

They took Teresa's name and our address and said she'll get a thank-you note in the mail.

Teresa has had extremely long hair for as long as most people who know us can remember - letting her let go of that was like admitting to myself that she's growing up, and admitting that she's really becoming her own separate person.

I couldn't believe it - but my little, or not-so-little, girl looks even more gorgeous than before - not only does her new haircut really frame her face beautifully and show off her eyes, but she looks radiant from the inside, so proud of herself for what she did.

I promised her I'd post this here to tell everyone what she did for another child she'll never know - and also show off how adorable she is with her new look!

CHOCOLATE!!!!

I had to share this video clip - the other night we were having strawberries for dessert, and I had made some melted chocolate to dip them in - Andrew went crazy and was such a mess, but he loved them AND he learned a new word, a very important one for every person's vocabulary, in my opinion! It took a little coaxing (and reminding from his sisters in the background!) to get him to say it, but now I make him repeat it constantly because the way he says it cracks me up every time!

The Best News Ever, for the Fourth Time!

Most of you reading this have probably already heard our news - I delayed posting it because there were so many people I wanted to tell in person - but we have been blessed with another baby!!! We are expecting our fourth child in late November! I am too thrilled and happy and excited and grateful to express it in words! We'd been praying so hard for this for a number of months now. The girls, especially, are going crazy with excitement - it's going to be a long 8 months for them to wait!

Of course, I'm a little nervous, too. My thyroid condition bears a higher risk of loss and of pregnancy complications, so I'm always a little anxious at first. So please, if you are a praying person, pray for our new little one to be a sticky, healthy baby!

I had a feeling this cycle would be "it" - but then again, I have that feeling every month! Still, I couldn't resist - I actually bought the pregnancy test in Target expecting to save it for a couple of days since I thought it was probably too early to test - but of course, impatient as I am, I didn't even make it out of the store! Yes, I took the test right there in the public restroom at Target. I had to go anyway. And hey, at least I paid for it first! But wow, the other people in the neighboring stalls who heard me crying with joy and thanking God must were probably thinking, "WOW, that woman must have been *really* constipated!" ;)

But, the very early positive, at least, saved Steve and my friends from days of obsessing on my part. Still, I'm not bad at all compared to some of the stories at www.peeonastick.com. Now there's a website for some serious obsessing! :) Although, I've always been tempted to try the breastmilk-instead-of-urine-on-the-test technique. There's a theory, and I have no idea if it's true or not, that hcG, the pregnancy hormone that home tests look for, shows up sooner and/or in higher concentrations in breastmilk, so if you're a lactating woman who is trying to get pregnant, you can use breastmilk on a home pregnancy test instead of peeing on it. From a non-scientific but purely logical point of view, this would actually make sense to me, since hcG shows up sooner on a blood test than a urine test, and breastmilk is actually called "white blood" since it has so many similarities, as far as bodily fluids go. Anyway, I still have one test left in the boxes from Target (yes, I did buy several tests so I could use them every couple of days and make sure the line is getting darker - it is) so I might try this just out of weird curiosity :)

According to my chart, my EDD would be Thanksgiving Day - but my chart was actually a little weird this cycle, with two temp spikes, so Fertility Friend says it could be Nov. 25 or Nov. 27 depending on which possible ovulation date we use. And the nurse practicioner I saw the other day for initial labs thought Nov. 29. So anyway, I'm going with Thanksgiving as an average, and regardless of which due date I use, knowing our kids, it'll probably be December before he or she decides to come out anyway!

I'm still not sure where I want to receive my prenatal care and where I want to deliver. I'm so torn on this. Of course, I want the most natural, low-intervention birth possible, but with my thyroid issues and with the scare when Andrew was born and had some time in the NICU, I'm a little nervous about a non-hospital delivery. (I know, I know, I need to rent The Business of Being Born - I think everyone on the planet has seen it already except for me!) Still, take away my crunchy card if you must, but I have to do what makes me comfortable. So I started my care here, at Grace Maternity and Women's Health. It's an all-female, joint OB/CNM practice close to our house and delivering at Northwest Hospital, a very good hospital (from what I hear) which is also close to us. From their website, they sound pretty progesstive - low intervention, specializing in VBACs (not an issue for me, but a good sign of their attitudes toward birth, etc.).

My first visit there, last week, was a bit of a challenge for two reasons. First, the kids were NUTS. I mean, in rare form - totally crazy. The nurse practicioner looked at me like, "...and you're sure you want more?" as we yelled over each other and ducked flying crayons and Bunny Grahams. I was frustrated, she was frustrated, and I was frustrated that she was frustrated. Second, we have a complicated insurance situation right now (we're still waiting to get on Steve's new company's plan, and are covered under our old plan through COBRA, but this has turned into a mess itself). So I was also getting frustrated with the receptionist and the billing staff. Anyway, I left thinking I'd at least give them one more chance. Well, the next morning, the NP whom I had seen called me at home to check on me and make sure I'd "gotten everything I needed from that visit and had all my questions answered." I was very impressed by that. Also, at an LLL meeting today, one of the Group moms told me about her (very positive) experience with that practice. So I think this may work out.

But insurance companies and decisions and constant peeing notwithstanding, it is just SO wonderful to be pregnant again. :) Sometimes I think about all the graces and blessings in my life right now, and I just can't believe it.....but it just gives me something else to contemplate during this Holy Triduum.

Retraction

So, my friend tells me you're not a "real" blogger until you've had to print your first retraction. So here is mine.

In my Feb. 3 post, I made a comment (in jest), poking fun at the dietary flaws in my and Steve's homes growing up. My sister-in-law, who obviously knows much better than I what the diet was like in my mother-in-law's home decades ago, took issue with what I said, so I'm modifying my comment here. :)

I said that my MIL did not eat any fresh fruit the entire time she stayed with us, despite my offering it (this is a statement of fact). However, I also said that Steve's family never saw a whole grain, which my SIL felt implied that they'd had a poor diet. In fact, she tells me, the exact opposite is true. Regardless of Steve's or his mother's current eating habits, my SIL tells me that their mother offered an extremely healthy diet in their home growing up, with lean meat and fish and an abundance of fresh fruits and vegetables. Whole-grain products were not widely commercially available back then (a fact I readily admit I neglected to take into account, as Steve and his sister are considerably older than I am - I grew up at a time when whole grains were becoming the "big thing"). Nonetheless, they had a great variety of healthy foods, and ate things that were almost exclusively homemade from scratch (virtually no takeout or fast food).

Lest anyone have thought otherwise as a result of my teasing, I hope this sets the record straight. :)

So, you know your 5-year-old is a contrarian when she has two fairy dolls, one with purple hair and one with blue hair, and she decides to name the purple-maned one "Blue" and the blue-maned one "Purple."

That's all for now. I rushed home today, leaving a GREAT LLL meeting early, in order to pick up some groceries to make lunch for a playdate. So, of course, the other mama's kids got sick and the playdate was canceled. I promised Teresa and Maddy we'd do something else fun instead, secertly hoping that getting the free balloons on the way out of Trader Joe's would count as the "something else fun" - but alas, it did not. Nor did watching the landscapers cut down the enormous bushes which were obscuring our view out the windows (and possibly leading to more scorpions, which we are anxious to avoid!) So apparently, I have to bake chocolate-chip cookies now. How June Cleaver of me! Well, except for the enormous piles of unfolded laundry blocking the cabinet containing the baking supplies.

I love baking cookies, but doing it with one lovely daughter who thinks she knows everything and does not want to take any direction whatsoever, and another lovely daughter who is the biggest klutz ever (except for me, of course) and manages to get 99% of any egg she cracks OUTSIDE the designated receptacle for said egg, sometimes makes me wish I were sipping espresso and eating someone ELSE'S homemade cookies alone at, say, a Parisian café....but nah, I'd miss the kids too much. :)

Around Town with Mom

Stories to come, but photos for now - Mom's first trip to visit us in AZ! We had a blast - hope she comes back soon!

Some New Photos

A few new photos taken over the last month, as promised! No particular order (since I still can't figure out how to make them appear in the right order!), just things I wanted to share :)

Took a picture of this before we mailed it - it's the first letter Teresa ever wrote, to a friend back in PA :) Is that cute or what?

The girls working on Valentines for their friends back in PA.

And Andrew working on his :)

Can you believe how big (and how handsome!) my little guy is getting?!?!

Our house!!

Golf course behind our house :) Now if only we knew how to play golf...or had a spare ten grand lying around to join the golf club....

Um...Is There a Venomous Arachnid Cycle on My Dishwasher?

Well, yet again I'm apologizing for neglecting my blog for a few weeks. Apparently I've been too busy actually doing stuff to get around to writing about it, which is a good thing for me, but too bad for you, because the past few weeks have been really interesting!

So, I had fully intended to catch up you up tonight - to regale you all with tales of our adventures of late. We had our first houseguest: my mom, whom I miss terribly, flew out for 5 days last week, and we had an amazing time. We discovered the Tucson Botanical Gardens, and loved it so much we bought a family membership. The gorgeous furniture we ordered arrived, and the house is 95% unpacked and looking really, really nice. Maddy has finally potty-trained, thank goodness, at almost 3 years and 10 months of age - whew. Andrew, while STILL not nightweaned, is at least spending a good portion of the night in a toddler bed in his own room. And my hair is once again blonde-ish and straight, after having been red and curly for nearly a year.

But all of that will have to wait until tomorrow's post, because this evening, some much better blog-fodder presented itself - I came within about one inch of being stung by a deadly Arizona bark scorpion.

OK, so they're not *that* deadly. I'm told there have only been a handful of bark-scorpion deaths in Arizona, and anyway, an antivenom was developed a couple of decades ago. Still, it's supposed to hurt like hell if you get stung. Yet in most cases, scorpion stings are similar to bee stings - though more painful, and likely to cause numbness, tingling, and blurred vision in additional to more swelling. Unless the victim is a small child, or has a particular allergy to scorpion venom, it's usually not an emergency (although around here, they advise going to the ER if you're stung and have any significant reaction, since some people do have respiratory or cardiac issues hours later.)

So, have you all canceled your plans to visit us yet? :)

I knew this would happen eventually. Scorpions, like heat and cactus and damn good margaritas, are just a fact of life here. In talking to other moms, some told me they find a scorpion once in a while, some a little more often, some haven't seen one in years. Our Realtor said she'd only found a single one in her home since she moved into it eight years ago, but then again, she was trying to sell us a house here. Still, everyone who learned we were transplants to Arizona gave us the standard warning: wear slippers when walking around the house and sandals when in the yard, shake out shoes and clothes before putting them on, inspect chairs, beds, etc. before plopping down on them, teach children never to stick their hands into cracks and crevices - it's rare to find scorpions, they'd say, but it does happen, so just use common sense.

Well, we've lived here almost two months now, and had seen exactly two bugs in the house - tiny little cricket-type things that didn't bother anyone. So, I'd relaxed a bit on the precautions.

Anyway, before leaving the house this morning, I had opened the dishwasher door a few inches, and left it that way while we were out. I routinely do this because I HATE towel-drying dishes. I don't like leaving them out all over the counter on a rack, but I find it such a pain to dry each item before putting it away. With the climate here, everything air-dries quickly (even lay-flat-to-dry clothing, which is nice!) So when the dishwasher finishes, I open the door a bit, and when I come back to unload it, everything is dry and ready to be put away.

We came home in the early evening, and shortly thereafter I sent Steve out to El Pollo Loco to grab takeout dinner for us. (This is an awesome place that makes the *best* Mexican flame-grilled chicken. Seriously delicious stuff - for like $15 you can get their family meal, with lots of yummy and healthy marinated broiled chicken, sides (the kids LOVE their refried beans with cheese, and their mac and cheese), homemade corn tortillas and homemade red and green salsas - the green one is like nothing I've ever tasted before!) Anyway, he left, I got the kids settled, glanced at my email, and then went to unload the dishwasher from the morning.

I opened the door and reached into the silverware basket. Through the jumble of Mickey forks and Princess spoons, I saw it - a long tail curved upward with a razor-sharp tip slowing waving back and forth, pointed directly at my hand.

I did a double-take. I slammed the dishwasher door shut. And then, I laughted. Hysterically.

Steve thought for sure I would have screamed, but I laughted - and I have no idea why. Maybe, for a split second, I thought it was some sort of a joke, like the plastic spiders we hid on each other at Halloween. Maybe it's just that the scorpion is a pretty funny-looking thing. Maybe it just sounds funny to say, "There's a scorpion in my dishwasher!" Or maybe it was the incredulity of it all, the realization that I, a city girl from New York by way of Washington, D.C. and Philadelphia, really am living in the Sonoran desert. The homogenization of America - the fact that you can be practically anywhere in the country and find the same stores, restaurants, style of homes, TV programs, radio stations - sometimes leads us to forget exactly where we are. And by and large, when it comes to animals, insects, and vegetation, much of America is similar, if not exactly the same. But here I was, face to face, or rather finger to telson (yes, I've learned some new vocabulary - that's the technical name for the tip of the tail, which isn't actually called a tail either, and which is the organ that "envenomates," or stings) with a creature that looked like nothing I have ever seen, anywhere. It was almost comic - the only time I'd ever seen anything like it was at the touristy gift shops around here, where they sell scorpion paperweights and scorpion magnets and scorpion postcards and lollipops with scorpions inside (no joke - Teresa asked the saleswoman if people actually eat the lollipops, and she answered, "Honey, I have no idea what people actually do with them, but they sure do buy them!") But the fact that American tourists will buy any junk put in front of them at a souvenir stand is also a post for another time. And besides, right next to the scorpion lollipop was a margarita-flavored one with a real worm inside, and I actually considered getting that for my brother.

So, dishwasher door firmly closed and kids out of the room, I called Steve. Our conversation went something like this:

Steve: "Oh, no, I'm next in line at Pollo, don't tell me you're changing your order again."
Me: "No, it's an emergency! We have our first scorpion in the house! You have to come right home!"
Steve: "Where is it?"
Me: "Would you believe, in the dishwasher?"
Steve: "What?! Wait, do you really want me to come home, without dinner?"
Me: "Um, well, I guess not - he's not going anywhere - just hurry though! Hey, should I maybe just run the dishwasher on hot and kill it that way? He'll drown, or the hot water will kill him?"
Steve: "NO WAY! ARE YOU NUTS?! YOU MUST BE CRAZY! You can't do that! He could clog up the dishwasher and break it! Or melt all over! Or break apart and we'll have scorpion pieces all over! Just wait for me!"

I then called my mom, which was probably a mistake, because she is afraid of all bugs. She told me she'd read something about how bugs can flatten themselves out to fit through the tiniest cracks, and was I really sure he couldn't escape the dishwasher? I reasoned that the seal on a dishwasher door had to be waterproof, obviously, and that if there were a space through which a bug could squeeze out, then surely water would leak out. This seemed logical to us, but I still stood in the kitchen watching the diswasher until Steve got home. And, I was relieved that her first thought was, "Can you just run the dishwasher and drown it?" So apparently, I'm not THAT crazy.

I turned the situation over to him. "You're all about the traditional gender roles, right? So, I nurse the babies and you squash the killer insects. Good luck!" But Steve was almost as scared as I was - moreso that in the pursuit of the scorpion, he'd escape the dishwasher and run and we'd have to spend all night trying to get it out of the house.

Our driver, back when we were flown out to visit Arizona in December, had told us that the local fire department will come take care of things like poisonous snakes and black-widow spiders. "Do you think they'll come get the scorpion?" Steve asked. I had visions of the fire department arriving, sirens blaring, and me, already in my nightie, explaining to our new neighbors that no, nothing is on fire - we just have scorpion in our dishwasher. "No," I told him, "scorpions can be dangerous, but I don't think they rise to the level of fire-department rescue."

But then I had an idea - I had a file of pest control service ads I'd clipped, since setting up regular extermination treatment was on my list of things to do as it gets warmer here. I grabbed the first one that had a line that read, "24-hour emergency visits" and called. The nice gentleman who answered informed me, in an only slightly condescending tone, that here in Southern Arizona, scorpions are not exactly considered an emergency. "Ma'am," he said, "the only thing that qualifies for an emergency visit on a Sunday around here is swarming Africanized bees." (Oh great, them again.) I was, however, quite gratified that even the exterminator said, "Can you just run a rinse cycle and kill it in the dishwasher?" At that point, even Steve considered it!

In the end, we Googled "how to kill scorpion" and decided on a plan A and B. Plan A would be for Steve to use my long cooking tongs (now retired from cooking, I promise!) to grab the scorpion and deposit it in a jar, then close the jar tight and dispose of it. (The online recommendation was actually to drop it into a jar of rubbing alcohol. We had no alcohol, but we did have a jar of applesauce, which we figured would work....somehow.) Plan B, if the scorpion escaped before Steve could grab it (they can't see well, but they're fast!) would be to drop the Sunday newspaper on top of it and squash it (they're hard to squash though - they can flatten out but stay alive!)

Steve hesitated for a few minutes, planning his attack and gathering all his manly courage. ;) But he finally did it - and plan A worked. Once the scorpion was tightly sealed in the applesauce jar, the kids all wanted to see it, and watch it, and find out if it was eating the applesauce or smothering in it, so Steve enjoyed a little science experiment with them while I set out the chicken. In the meantime, I re-ran that load of dishes. On pot scrubber, and hi-temp. And I think I'll run it couple more times.

And when it's finished, hand me a dish towel.