Not Afraid to Squeeze

I'm not sure I've written very much about living in a one-bedroom apartment.  It was something of a dramatic change when we moved to the city - back when the Yeti and I lived in the middle of nowhere country we had more space than we even needed.  But we decided when moving here that if we were going to live in the city, we were really going to live here - forgo a car and extra space so that we could skip a long commute and the suburbs.  It's been a few years now,  and we've gone from it being just the two of us, through a pregnancy, an infant, and now a toddler.  And so far we still love it.  I won't say we'll never move to the suburbs because, well, never say never, but we don't have any immediate plans to move away.

Actually, we don't even have any immediate plans to move out of the one-bedroom, assuming everything goes as it has.  We are still intending to change our den/office into Thumper's space, and I still feel like we aren't even maximizing the space we have - I'm planning a ZipCar road trip to IKEA soon.  The one downside is that we have an open floorplan layout, so you can hear everything, but honestly, that one annoyance is outweighed by all the things we love about our location.

So let's ignore the open floorplan aspect and talk a bit about having the baby in the bedroom.  I'd seriously recommend this to anyone who's having a baby, regardless of whether you're getting a separate nursery ready - especially if you plan to breastfeed.

This is mostly out of sheer laziness on my part.  It's pretty common, nowadays, to keep the bassinet or the co-sleeper or whatever in the bedroom; we had Thumper in the newborn napper part of a Pack 'n' Play.  The thing is, even after he was in his crib, stationed at the foot of the bed, he'd still wake up in the night to eat.  He still does now (although, when he's not in teething pain, he cuts it way down to once or twice a night).

So, for me, it's much easier to stumble down to the foot of the bed, feed him, put him down, stumble off to the bathroom (more on that in a second) and then fall back asleep as soon as possible.  Less walking, less "is he actually awake or just making noise in the night?", more sleep.

The bathroom thing: maybe I'm the only one who has this issue, but night waking has been so cruel to my bladder.  See, I want to keep things as dim and sleepy for Thumper, too, so he'll fall back asleep all the faster, and it also allows the Yeti to sleep through the whole thing.  Thus, when Thumper wakes up crying, I immediately change him or go right to feeding.  There's no time for me to stumble off to the bathroom myself, which means I'm sitting there for ten minutes holding a steadily growing kid on my weakened bladder.  No chance of me accidentally dozing off because I'm sitting there counting the seconds 'til I can lay him back down and dash down the hall.  I've tried to think of a better way but it's like getting hens and foxes across a stream on a raft made for two.

Or monsters

In terms of getting actual sleep, unless Thumper is actively awake and standing up in the crib, I'm probably asleep.  I've gotten over the "what was that rustle?" phase.  The one exception is that with all the recent teething (status report: I think all four molars are in, but now he's working on the fangs) he will occasionally cry out in his sleep, but he's waking up more and we're all getting less sleep then anyway.  And again, the Yeti will sleep through anything, though occasionally I will nudge him if he starts to snore when I'm trying to get Thumper back down.

Some people have said that having the baby in their room has a negative effect on the romance aspect, but that hasn't been the case for me.  Honestly, if anything affects that, it's going to be the sleep deprivation.  If you're tired, you're going to want to sleep.  If you're not, the location of a sleeping baby isn't going to stop you.  There are other rooms, and even if there weren't, well, that didn't stop the Ma and Pa Ingalls of the world. Or cave people.  Somehow having a baby has made me think of early cave people quite a bit.  Something about staring at the baby and ruminating on the fact that it's basically been the very same for thousands of years.  Or maybe just the sleep deprivation.

As I've mentioned in the past, a big downside of a one-bedroom means that all the toys for Thumper are in the living room.  And they still are, because we still haven't cleared away the office stuff.  I am seriously looking forward to having additional space and shelving in which to stick some of this stuff, but at the same time, Thumper's still going to play in the living room, because that's where we'll be.  If we didn't have the den to expand into, I'm willing to bet we could find other places to store his toys (maybe I've been looking at that IKEA catalog for too long).

In all honesty, I don't think having a one-bedroom changes life with an infant/toddler all that much.  Maybe life is slightly more in-your-face - but at the same time, I don't think many people are sending their six-month-old off to their room to play alone for the afternoon.   People acted like we were pioneers for not planning to move to a two-bedroom immediately when I became pregnant, but in my experience, it's nothing to freak out about.

Mostly harmless

Not My Finest Moment

So the day before yesterday I lost my phone in the couch.  Not under the couch, or under a cushion - IN the couch.

It had slid between the cushion and the side of the couch, as it has many times before.  I wedged my hand in to get it, and naturally my fingers pushed it a little further down before I could get a grip - again, no big deal.  But instead of hitting bottom, I felt something give, and it slipped entirely away.

It might as well have slipped into another dimension.  I sat, stunned, before ripping the cushion off the couch and confirming that yes, the lining on our decade-old couch had completely pulled away and there was a long, narrow gap.  I wedged my hand in, but unfortunately I had a piece of wood on one side and a sheet of springs and padding on the other.  I twisted my wrist, tried with the other one, but all I got was raw hands.  (This couch has been nothing but trouble for me since day one, when it arrived two shades lighter than the one we ordered, and stupid me didn't notice under the wrapping until it was too late.  Ten years of a couch that shows everything.)

Next I tried from the bottom.  There's not much room under the couch, but I can fit my hand in.  By punching the bottom lining I was able to determine where the phone was.  The bad news?  My punching had bounced it even further away from the side.  I tried to "bounce" it back but it only made it worse.  At one point I actually got my arm and elbow stuck.  That was a scary moment, laying on my side, Thumper helpfully pulling on my hair to try to pull me up, contemplating being stuck there until the Yeti got home from work.

Of course I could have just left the phone in the couch.  In retrospect that was probably the smarter course of action.  But we don't have a landline, and somehow the thought of losing the phone filled me with panic.  What if there was an emergency?!  And worse, I wouldn't be able to text the Yeti to find out when we would meet him on his way home!  I'd have to - gasp - just gamble on timing, or not meet him at all!  It didn't even occur to me that I have, you know, a laptop with email and everything.  Not my finest moment.  No, to my mind the next logical step was to lift the couch.

I put Thumper in the pack and play, where I could see him, and went to the far end of the couch.  Surely I would just need to lift it a little to knock it back against the side, right?  Wrong.  Also, couches are heavy.  After three or four tries, lifting it several inches and probably pulling countless tiny muscles, I had made exactly zero progress.

Desperate times.  I grabbed a pair of scissors.  There wasn't enough room under the couch to actually open them and cut, but I used the pointy end to poke a hole in the hollow underside of the couch.  I scrabbled my hand in like a raccoon paw, tearing some of the fabric as I went, but somehow my lifting had actually knocked the phone more toward the rear of the couch.  Of course it had.

So behind the couch I went, attempting to lift again.  This time it was actually successful - the phone slid enough forward that I was able to reach into the hole and grab it.

Despite my obvious blind panic, I didn't completely lose my stuff in front of Thumper through this whole thing, though I got more upset than I meant to.  Sure, there was some repeated cursing, especially after I passed the couch over my big toe.  My worst moment came when I thought I was stuck under the couch - I think I just said "What?! No! No!" to my arm in a panicked yelp.  Then I got my arm free, stopped, and saw Thumper eyeing me with concern, and it brought me back down immediately.  I took a deep breath, and said to him, "Let's clap this out."  And instead of yelling and cursing and throwing a fit, which I wanted to do, I clapped and patted and deep-breathed myself into lightheadedness.

It's silly, but I'm kind of proud of that.  I don't want to be someone who flies into a rage or melts down in front of my kid.  Now I just need to work on not freaking in the first place, and letting things go.  I really could have just left it till the Yeti got home.

Unrelated pic, other than that it makes me feel zen whenever I see it

Oh, and I totally did screw up my back and neck and hips with all that lifting - two days later and I'm still paying for it.  Not the brightest crayon in the box.  Learn from my mistakes and let it go - or at least go right for the scissors.

PS I almost forgot - Top Baby Blogs reset their counters a few weeks ago.  If you'd like to click to vote for me, you can click here or on the side of the page (no need to register or anything).  I appreciate it!

Planetary Problems: Fixing my KitchenAid Pro Stand Mixer

Here's a post that has nothing to do with Thumper or babies (until the end), because it's about something that happened long before I was ever pregnant, that got lost in the shuffle when we moved to the city: the saga of our broken KitchenAid mixer.

The Yeti has always been far more into cooking than I am, and when we got our first place together after college, a big "adult" purchase was a KitchenAid Pro stand mixer (in Nickel Pearl, ooh).  Probably the Yeti's favorite thing to make with it was pizza dough (mine was cinnamon rolls), and many a calzone or personal pizza was had for a few years.

Then one day, it was in the middle of mixing something when we heard a clunk and a grinding noise and the thing stopped spinning, though the motor was still running and grinding.  It also looked like the beater had dropped about a half an inch lower into the bowl, and later examination showed that the entire "planetary," which I think of as the "ceiling" to the beater, was hanging loose.  After the swearing died down, we poked and prodded it with our limited knowledge and came to the conclusion that we had no idea how to fix it, or if it was fixable.

How it's supposed to look, all tucked up into the body (featuring the hand of The Yeti)

But no, you can see daylight here

I looked at Amazon reviews and my heart sank.  Many people had complaints about this part or that part breaking after a few years, stuff made out of plastic instead of metal, and so on.  Many of these complaints had been fixed since the negative reviews, but only in recent years, and ours was bought before then. You could send your mixer off to be fixed but it supposedly cost $150 at least, not counting shipping for the beast.  And that was still much cheaper than buying a new one.

However, the mixer was not a necessity and since we didn't decisively know what to do, we didn't do anything.  It sat there, silent, for weeks and then months and then... two years.

At that point, I got sick of it taking up space and decided to figure out whether I could fix it.  I'd been on a DIY kick and was convinced I could find a YouTube video that would teach me how to do anything.  Unfortunately, while I could find many DIY videos and blog posts about the stand mixer, no one seemed to have our specific problem, so I couldn't just follow steps exactly.

A few YouTube videos were incredibly helpful along the way, though.  One is here.  Though the description is very similar to my issue, it wasn't exact (the other video has since been made private, but it was mostly the same thing from additional angles).  However, it provided two important pieces of information.

First, it showed me how to crack open the mixer and get a feel for what's going on inside.  I was never a tinker-in-the-garage or build-your-own-computer sort of person, so it's not in my nature to attempt to take everything apart on my own.  In fact, I'm pretty sure that had I attempted to do so before watching these videos, I would have opened it up, seen that it's a massive, messy ball of grease and Noped out of there.  But this video showed me what stuff should look like, what something damaged looks like, and just generally made it seem more accessible.

The other vital piece of information is a recommendation for the site mendingshed.com.   They sell individual parts and pieces, and also provide copies of manuals.  We would wind up needing both.

So I set out to see what was going on.  I cracked open the mixer and cleaned up as much of the grease as I could, and examined the gears.  Some of them were indeed scored and gouged, likely from when the planetary slipped and everything ground together.  I set them aside to be replaced, but they weren't my main problem.

Between the Yeti and myself, we determined that the main problem was actually under all the gears and stuff, but above the planetary.  There's a piece of metal that's supposed to be pressed into the underside of the lower gearbox, that would no longer stay.  As such, the planetary dropped, and the little "tower" of gears on top (you can see them in the first picture) dropped down, causing the gouging on the gears.

The problem was there was no way to fix the metal piece.  It was not sold as a separate piece, because it comes as part of the lower gearbox.  Since it's just supposed to be pressed into place, there was no snapping or gluing we could do.

Luckily, Mending Shed actually sold the entire lower gearbox piece as a replacement.  I wound up buying a few replacement gears, a replacement lower gearbox, a replacement planetary (might as well, couldn't tell if it had been damaged), a little pair of pliers for a snap ring, and a big tub o' grease, all for around eighty bucks.

Now, here's where I jump to the future.  I checked out the site today and they now have the option of a much smaller container of grease, more suited for the task at hand, for much cheaper.  Also, for those replacement pieces, now they actually have a pretty wide selection of colors to choose from.  At the time, not so much. Still, I was more worried about functionality than looks, so to replace my Nickel Pearl parts, I got a white lower gearbox and a dark pewter planetary.

Upon receiving the parts, we got an amusing surprise - the piece that had caused us all this trouble had been changed.  Instead of a separate metal piece that provided the extra height (a piece that could fall out), the new gearbox had it simply part of the actual box:

In the old gearbox, that metal washer is sitting flush on the ground

In the new gearbox, it's sitting nicely on some molded plastic

Now all that was left to do was screw in all the bits the way we found them, including the new gears and pieces... 

Cover all the prettiness with a giant mass of grease and screw the cover on...

And voila!  A fully functioning stand mixer, now with white racing stripe.  

Good as new

I wanted to write about it because I still haven't really seen anything online with a similar planetary problem - usually they just want to replace the worm gear (which we did, but it wasn't the real issue).  We fixed the mixer about three years ago and it's still going strong as ever, for about 80 bucks altogether.  When it first broke, fixing it seemed like a daunting process, but it really wasn't that bad, thanks to the miracle of the internet!  And yes, I still rather believe that I can learn anything with YouTube.

Okay, a bit of a baby update in the present day: St. Patrick's Day happened.  One side of my family has Irish roots (when I was younger, I felt "extra Irish" because I have green eyes), and I grew up eating the typical corn beef and cabbage meal (which is not an Irish meal, but an Irish-American immigrant thing, like much of the holiday) and decorating the house and so on.  I don't really have the focus to go all out anymore, but I do make an effort to wear green and I'll probably do more in the future with Thumper (because we all know I love a holiday and ignore the dubious origins).  

Last year: 

This year: 

Okay, he's not wearing his official shirt there, but the parallels in the face make me laugh.  I had to cover up the official shirt with a hoodie, but he's ready to take on sunnier weather, I think: 

Happy Spring! 

He Didn't Catch the Garter

The wedding!  Still no pics to share, unfortunately, but I'll try to snare some when I see them.  So the wedding was between a friend I've had since high school, and his fiancee, who is quite lovely and they've been together for years.  That being said, I had no feel for what the wedding would be like.  It was at night, which could mean a more dramatic setting, but they're both pretty low-drama people.  They're both geeky, but more traditional, so I wouldn't expect a themed wedding... and so on.

As it turned out, it was short and sweet, in the most complimentary sense of both terms.  Everyone looked lovely.  The ceremony itself was incredibly short - we're talking less than five minutes - but the vows were original and said together; it wasn't perfunctory.  And I actually got to listen and enjoy because, as the ceremony was so short, Thumper didn't even have time to get bored or antsy!  We weren't expecting such a smooth experience.

The plan was to feed Thumper in the car when we first arrived so we'd be able to give him water and food at the table but not deal with massive hunger issues.  Well, that didn't exactly happen.  He's not used to being in a car (we used ZipCar) and when I let him out of the car seat, he just wanted to explore.  After wrestling with him for a few minutes I gave up.

Fast forward to the cocktail hour.  After we'd been standing around outside for about a half an hour chatting, Thumper started to melt down and it was clear that he probably needed to eat and take a quiet minute.  I headed inside the hotel on my own, confident that I could find a dark corner or something.

...But I couldn't.  The hotel was really crowded with people and every chair and lobby corner was filled.  I hadn't brought a wrap or something to cover myself with because I'm a moron.  Out of curiosity, I checked out the lobby bathroom; it was a nice hotel and sometimes nice bathrooms have little separate lounges.  Not this one, though.  It didn't even have a baby changing table.  It did have a tiny counter off to the side, and briefly I entertained the thought of feeding him there.  I tried to set him on the counter and he looked at me like I was insane.  I figured we'd have to duck out to the car.

Anything but the bathroom...

As we were leaving the bathroom, I passed a woman I'd seen at the wedding, with a newborn.  She was heading into the bathroom with the baby and had an all-too-familiar panicked look.  "Are you looking for someplace to change her or feed her?" I asked.

"I was looking for somewhere to nurse," she said.  "Yeah, me too," I said, grim.  That was all that was said, but a few guys who worked for the hotel overheard us and launched immediately into action.

"We're pretty full here but... hang on," one said.  A few minutes later we were led through the crowded lobby and into the relatively empty spa reception area.  The woman at the desk led us to the spa waiting room, where you sit and meditate (or, if you're me, eat nuts and drink cucumber water) before being called back for your massage.  It was empty, with couches and a fire going and dim lighting.  Rarely have I ever seen Thumper snuggle down so contentedly, and never outside of our home.  It was the perfect place to recharge.

Our timing was perfect: we left the spa, met up with the Yeti (who was now waiting outside the bathroom because he thought we were in there - sweetest guy ever) and it was time to head in for dinner.  Thumper hung out in a high chair and we gave him little bits of our food.  We'd also brought a sippy cup, and a tupperware with a few snacks, but he mostly played with everything.  We chatted with friends we hadn't seen in years and I think Thumper did more than his part in giving babies a good name.  He's still not particularly forthcoming with strangers - I'm not sure he smiled at anyone the entire time - but he wasn't miserable, either.  Mostly just interested.

The ceremony was at six, and as it approached nine it was clearly time to wrap it up and go home... so we did.  It was fun seeing our old friends and it was a fun, relatively laid-back reception, but we had a baby to put to bed, and I don't feel like we particularly missed out on anything.

I remember going to a wedding with a night reception when I was a teenager - the wedding of a distant cousin.  The wedding party hung out on a party bus between the ceremony and reception and drank, and I saw a groomsman passed out in the bushes already when we were walking in.  That set the tone for the evening.

This was not that kind of wedding.  It was sweet, simple, and fun - a perfect wedding to include a baby, and lot of fun without one, too.

Next time he'll be hitting the dance floor

Illness Intermission

Lemme tell you, it's a good thing I bought that dress for the wedding two weeks early; if I'd waited till the weekend before, I would've been screwed.  Here's how last weekend went:

Thursday morning I woke up and my stomach felt mildly uncomfortable.  It sort of felt like a fist in my stomach; no sharp pain, just something there.  I think I looked cross and the Yeti asked me about it.  Just a little stomach issue, no problem, I said.  Out the door he went to work.

Flash forward a few hours and it's time for Thumper's morning nap.  I'd been feeling increasingly worse, starting to feel achey all over, but still manageable.  When he went to sleep, I threw up - nothing major, but still.  The Yeti had been having a string of later-than-usual nights at work.  I texted him and told him Thumper was asleep, I was soon to join him, nothing was majorly wrong, but I had thrown up and I'd appreciate a regular work day if possible.  Then I went to sleep.

A few hours later I hear Thumper stir and it wakes me up.  I felt probably ten times worse than I had before I went to sleep - stomach ache, achey, hot, chills, just terrible in general.  I seriously contemplated texting the Yeti to see if he could come home early because the idea of even moving seemed terrible, much less crawling around after Thumper.  I still hadn't decided about texting when I heard a rustle in the apartment.  The Yeti was already home.  I nearly cried with relief.

I decided to go in to the doctor, leaving the Yeti with Thumper.  I wasn't sure if I had a stomach bug or flu or what, but I had a fever and I hoped that if it was the flu, maybe I could get Tamiflu and shorten it (my biggest fear was giving this to Thumper).  The doc visit was a disaster - a long wait with me running to the bathroom to throw up during it.  As I could have predicted during a more rational time, they didn't figure out what was wrong with me, just prescribed me anti-nausea meds and took some blood (and gave me a pregnancy test; rational thing to test, but negative).  I found out at the pharmacy that the meds were incompatible with nursing, and I'd already gone over an hour without throwing up by then, so I decided to play it by ear and never did take them.

It's still unclear what the deal was.   I had a fever, aches and chills for a few more days.  On Sunday or Monday my stomach hurt again, and I began to wonder about gallbladder issues, but it's been fine since.  Probably just a bug, but thankfully, the Yeti and Thumper have remained unscathed.  My guess is that I picked something up from barre class.  That's what I get for trying to be healthy.

The upside of the illness is that I basically missed all that internet furor over "the dress."  It looked light blue and brown to me, anyway.

The wedding was fun and I'll go on about it in more detail later but I don't have any pictures yet - we didn't think to take any of our own and the wedding photographer took a lot anyway.  I know she at least took some of Thumper, but I'm assuming I won't see those pics until the bride and groom get back from their honeymoon.  Worst case I'll stick Thumper back in his clothes and take some recreations because, bow tie!

Post-baby Dress Shopping and Post-Shopping Cookies

So, in a few weeks a pair of friends are getting married, and I'll be a guest at the wedding.  I put off buying a dress until this past weekend; I knew it was going to be more difficult than usual.  I'm pretty short (I probably ought to stay in the petite section, if selection were good) and most of my weight is in my stomach (even before the baby) which doesn't make finding dresses easy.  But this time I have even more requirements: I've gained weight since Thumper was born, so there's that to consider, and I'm still nursing, so I wanted to find something that didn't require me taking off the whole shebang.

Easier said than done.  I headed to Ross while the Yeti stayed home with Thumper, because it's next to impossible trying on clothes quickly with a baby in an Ergo or stroller.  My initial goal was to find a fancy separate skirt and top, but there was literally nothing in that capacity.  Same with finding a pants outfit that didn't look like it belonged to a 50-year-old woman or look too Sunday-morning (it's a night wedding).  I headed to the dresses without much hope.

The main obstacle in finding a dress took me by surprise: my boobs are ginormous.  I've always been well-endowed, so I wouldn't have thought that much would be different in that regard (for example, button-up shirts have always been problematic).  I knew they were bigger, but I bought new nursing bras in new brands and I'd been wearing shirts one size bigger anyway because of the weight I've gained.  I headed to my old usual dress size without really thinking and quickly learned I had to go up two sizes - probably one size for the extra poundage, and one just for the massive bosom (the word 'bosom' makes me giggle - makes me think of an Anastasia Krupnik book and the movie Victor/Victoria, simultaneously).

Now add to that the fact that I'm short, and you get dresses fitting me even less well than usual.  Still, I happened upon something!  It's a black dress, sleeveless, with a gold zipper that runs all the way down the front and a skirt that sort of flares out (thus hiding most of the stomach).  The zipper means I can unzip to nurse (and when it's zipped it's relatively high and I don't have major cleavage, another common dress problem for me).  It's not a particularly discreet way to breastfeed, so I'll have to cover or go in a dark corner or something and I'll probably nurse in a car beforehand to minimize such things, but the point is I won't have to completely undress to do so.

It's just above knee-length and it's got bare arms, so I got a little shrug and I'll probably wear black tights.  I know it's a little goth but I think I'll be able to pull it off since it's at night.  But let's face it, it was pretty much my only reasonable option.  As an added bonus it turned out this dress is only one size bigger than my norm, so it's got added vanity points.

Speaking of vanity, I almost never wear heels, and I picked up a cute pair... only to have the Yeti point out that they're not very practical for carrying Thumper.  Much as I'm loath to admit it - I even picked up Thumper experimentally - he's right, so I'm wearing beaded black flats instead (trust me, I'm clumsier than a bad Mary Sue character in a vampire series). I'm keeping the heels anyway.  Someday we'll go on a date without the baby, and those shoes will be ready.

And after I've spent all that time complaining about my even-more-ample figure, here's photographic proof that I never learn from any of this:

Man, those Girl Scouts saw me coming.  In my defense I bought a bunch with the intent of it being the final Scout cookie purchase of the season.  

Speaking of food, here's Thumper in contemplation: 

We'll pretend he's eyeing the cookies. 

I'm looking forward to the wedding (and I like this couple), but I'm slightly nervous.  There will likely be old friends there I haven't seen in years.  I didn't go to my ten-year high school reunion but this will be similar.  Also we've never taken Thumper to such a formal event.  The Yeti is prepared to hang out outside with him during the ceremony if needed, but still, I'm already planning to get new (quiet) toys to distract him, etc.  But wait'll you see the little outfit he has! Two words: bow tie. 

Deep(ish) Thoughts Caused by Sleep Deprivation

When I disappear for awhile, it's almost always a safe bet that sleep is involved.  For the most part, sleep has a routine around these parts: Thumper wakes up twice a night, eats, goes back down almost immediately.  It's not perfect, but it's not that bad.  We're trying to get him to eat more regular food so I can work on weaning or at least night weaning, but he's not interested and/or gags.  Plus, while he's still on the small side, his last appointment showed that he's creeping up in the growth chart department, so I don't particularly want to mess with what's been working, and it's slow going.  In the meantime, this is fine - but when something messes up that schedule, it really, really sucks.

So last week, Thumper started waking up almost every hour for more than half the night.  It was seemingly out of the blue; nothing had changed.  And we still don't know for sure what the culprit was (or if it was anything, really).  He was moving like crazy around the crib when he did sleep - up, down, in circles, bumping against the bars at one end of the crib even when I'd started him at the other end - and he'd done something similar when learning to crawl, so I wondered if he was practicing walking in his sleep.  That's a definite possibility, but I also discovered he has four (4!) teeth coming in at once as well.  All the same tooth, the one right in front of the molars, left, right, top, and bottom.  Whatever the cause, he's been back to his usual routine over the last few days, meaning I'm not crashing into a deep sleep when he naps just to stay sane.

Valentine's Day was quiet and spent together as a family. The Yeti is wonderful and I could go on all day about him, but I know he doesn't particularly want me to, especially on a public blog.  The next day I did have a massage, which was exciting because I looooove professional massages and the last one I'd had was for last Mother's Day.  My stream of consciousness naturally went in a million different directions as I lay there and I reflected on what my personal spirituality is.  Obviously I'm not into any organized religion or really a believer but I do have my own little gut feelings about things.

What I found myself thinking of as I lay there was back when I was a teenager and went through a Pagan/Wiccan phase.  Even then I was more interested in reading about it than actually doing anything myself, but I always liked the Maiden/Mother/Crone imagery, probably due to the whole Circle of Life thing.  I thought about how much I identify myself as a mother now.  It's not the right choice for everyone, but if I do have any beliefs it's that I personally was meant to be a mother.  I've always wanted to be one, and now that I am, I do somehow feel more whole.  Yes, I still have my own other hobbies and goals (for example, to be a published author, someday) and hopefully decades in which to live after Thumper is grown, but still, I feel like this is a major component of me.  Whether it's biological imperative or personality type or something else, I do feel like I'm doing what I'm meant to.

At least, I think that's the general gist of what I was thinking.  I snored and startled myself fully awake.