The Fish Pond

Baby Scrapbook Kit Giveaway

2009-11-03T16:16:50-05:00

About a frillion years ago when I was pregnant with somebody, probably Sunny but possibly Nemo, I got a small scrapbook kit from Dreft, the baby laundry detergent people. It has sat around this house and been moved a bunch of places, and I know I'm never going to get around to making it. It's cute, and while the box has a few stains on it, the album and the pad of textured, colored card stock that goes with it is just fine. I'll send it to the first person who says they want it and gives me a valid address.

Sorry, the flash washes the color our and if I don't use the flash it's too dark, but this is a pad of textured colored card stock that came with it.

This is an example page, but they are top-loading sheet protectors, so you wouldn't have to use the pages they have inside if you don't want to. I think the pages are 8X8.

Somebody please take this thing off my hands.

That Uncultured Swine

2009-10-30T11:07:37-04:00

Would you believe we still don't have all the sickness out of the house? Sunny is still sick, suffering from what the doctor believes is a secondary viral infection. She's still running a fever at night and she's still coughing. We get one more day for the fever to resolve itself before they start running bloodwork and other unpleasantries.

Okay, all that was true yesterday two days ago when I started this post, and you see how much I managed to get written before I got sucked away again. Her fever stayed down last night, so today yesterday, two and a half weeks after we started this whole mess, Sunny went back to school to join her sister and brother, Nemo went to the babysitter, and I cleaned up the disgusting disaster area otherwise known as my family room. The mess was so bad that I simply took a big rubbermaid tub, threw everything in it that wasn't laundry, trash, or a book, and told the big three that they have until tomorrow tonight to clean everything they wanted out of it, and whatever is left is going to charity or in the trash. It was foul. It feels so good to have that room, the main room in our house and where we all spend the most time, clean and clear.

I want to thank everyone for their well wishes, prayers, kind words and thoughts. Before the antibiotics took effect, Trout just laid on the couch and stared into the back of it, not having the energy to face forward and stare at the tv instead, and she loves her some tv. I had to sit next to her with a cup with a straw to get her to drink anything. She was so weak and grisly pale, like Ruth in Fried Green Tomatoes just before she died. The last time she scared me that bad she was nearly washed out to sea. My nerves could really do without all that, but I guess that's just one of those things about being a mom. If my kids didn't scare the crap out of me all the time something would be wrong. At any rate, after two doses of the antibiotic she woke up the next day yelling at Sunny, so I knew then she'd be okay. Augmentin rocks.

If you have the unfortunate luck to have any member of your family get H1N1, please, please make sure you monitor them for several days after you think they are all better. Our experience with Sunny has taught us this. She got sick first, coughing and running a moderate fever but not the scary 104 that Nemo hit or even the 103 that Little Man had. The fever lasted five days and broke on a Friday. It stayed down all weekend, so I sent her to school on Monday. By Wednesday she was running a fever again, and due to the experience with Trout I suspected pneumonia and took her in to the doctor on Thursday morning. The doctor confirmed it was either bronchitis or early pneumonia, commended me for bringing her in so quickly, and put her on antibiotics. Once again the fever broke on Friday so we sent her to school Monday. Monday night she started to run a fever AGAIN. So thinking that the antibiotics weren't appropriate and we needed a different one I took her back to the doctor and said WTF why can't we get rid of this stinking thing? The doctor said her lungs were clear and that she thought Sunny had a secondary virus, that her body/immune system were so weak from fighting off the H1N1 and the bronchitis/pneumonia that it has made her susceptible to everything else out there. It cleared in a couple of days, but if it hadn't they would have started running bloodwork etc. looking for something much worse.

Please, if you get this, err on the side of caution and keep your child home an extra day, if you can, to give their little bodies time to strengthen so they won't succumb to something else. They need that time. Sunny may be back at school now, but she's tired and doesn't have the energy she usually does. She even told her teacher that she was tired. So we'll be doing early bedtimes for another week, I think, til she starts feeling like herself again.

Somehow, in the midst of all this, I managed to not get sick. I was exhausted, profoundly, like first-trimester-of-pregnancy tired, but I never got a cough or sniffles or a fever or aches or anything. BigDaddyFish missed almost a week of work running fevers and coughing and aching. That actually ended up being a blessing in disguise, as he was home so I could run my unsick self to the store without having to drag several sick kids with me, so we were able to manage pretty well without having to expose anyone who might have come to help us out. We are still grateful for all of you who offered to bring us food and staples and leave them on our porch for us. We have the best friends in the world.

Here's hoping we got all our sick for the winter out of the way now.

Swine Flu

2009-10-19T12:19:07-04:00

This is a quick note, just in case you don't follow me on Twitter (FishPondBlog) or you either aren't my friend on Facebook or know me in real life (in both cases, why not? I don't bite, unless...never mind), swine flu is making its way through our house, and Trout's has developed into pneumonia. I'll be back to being funny or depressing or obnoxious or whatever once everyone is well. This is a big deal, she looks awful, and we're right now just praying she'll make it through without having to be hospitalized. It doesn't look real promising right now. We'd appreciate any thoughts and prayers you're willing to offer.

This Is Where I Leave You - SV Moms Book Club

2009-10-14T00:09:54-04:00

I was unsure how I would relate to Jonathan Tropper's novel This is Where I Leave You, about a man who walks in on his wife having an affair with his boss and ends up pregnant right when his father died, and his father's dying wish is for his family to sit shiva for a full seven days. I am not Jewish, so we don't sit shiva, and I certainly never walked in on my husband having an affair with my boss. Which is a good thing. But I have lost a parent, and grandparents who were as close as parents, and I come from a profoundly dysfunctional family, so I do share that with Judd Foxman.

I'm good with my family in small doses. As long as we don't have to spend too much time together, we're can manage to maintain the superficial relationship we have to maintain to be civil to one another. I can't imagine spending a week in close quarters with them, as I'm sure they'd go nuts imagining spending a week with me. It's been that way for as long as I can remember.

But then. Then my grandmother passed away. She lingered in a coma for about a week prior, just enough time for my entire family to gather at her bedside. Both my aunt and my uncle, and their spouses. All of my cousins from Colorado who I hadn't seen in 15-20 years, and their significant others, and their kids. And while it was heart rendingly sad, it was wonderful to be all together like that again, just like we had for so many many years on holidays when we were growing up. There are seven of us in all, five girls and two boys; the bookish, the athletic, the musical, the dramatic, all of us whip smart (seriously I'm the dumbest one of the bunch of us, I think, though the most educated college-wise). It's nice now that we are all adults, since I'm 9 years older than my next closest cousin and growing up we didn't have a lot in common besides the shared experience of having the family we did. We relate better to one another now. I wanted that shared experience for my kids. And I knew if they were going to have it, it would have to come from us.

So I agreed to my husband's request for a fourth baby. Nemo would not be here if not for the experience of my grandmother's death drawing our family together. Really, family is what life's all about, is it not? And whose family isn't dysfunctional to a certain extent? Life would be rather boring if all families were "normal."

This post is part of the Silicon Valley Moms Group Book Club. We don't do book reviews, but rather use the book as a platform for relating to our own lives. The book is laugh out loud funny, at times crude, but a great read.

Sixteen

2009-10-09T14:38:58-04:00

In our culture we recognize sixteen years as a term of achievement. We grant drivers licenses. We have Sweet Sixteen parties. We have deemed it the age at which someone is mature enough to give consent for sexual activity in 33 states plus DC, and the age at which someone can drop out of school without the cops coming after their parents in many states as well (though that's a bad idea - stay in school!). Why don't we recognize a marriage this way?

Traditional anniversary gifts go from one (paper or clocks) to fifteen (crystal or watches) and then jump to twenty (china or platinum). I guess they figure if you've made it to 15, what's 5 more? There's no special gift, no designated way to mark the day. BigDaddyFish, always unconventional, thinks this is the time to follow tradition. Not that I'm overly driven by convention by any means, but I did keep to tradition back when I was 23 a helluva lot more than I do now. So I'm not bending to tradition, per se, but I'm choosing to mark the day by examining all the things I would have done differently on that day sixteen years ago.

I would have been even more laid back than I was. Not that I was a bridezilla; the photographer had to tell my bridesmaids to put makeup on me so I wouldn't be so washed out in my pictures. I just didn't wear it, I felt it wasn't that important in the overall scheme of things, just like I felt about a lot of stuff (engraved crystal or silver? For one day? Not for me). I would have kept things more simple than they already were.
I wouldn't have designated bridesmaid dresses, I would have just picked a color and asked my bridesmaids to wear whatever made them happy in that color.
We wouldn't have rented tuxes for any of the guys, either. Again, nice clothes that make them happy.
We wouldn't have registered for anything but flatware and dishes. Nobody pays attention to the registry for anything but that anyway, apparently.
I would have gone barefoot. Or worn hiking boots. Does anyone care about the bride's feet, really?
I wouldn't have asked my bridesmaids to wear hair bows. What the hell was I thinking?
My aunt made my gorgeous dress. When she gave me a list of patterns that she thought she could manage, I'd have picked the simplest, instead of the most complex.
I'd have worn deep blue instead of white. It's pretty and I look good in it. Or even an emerald green, my husband's favorite color. Who says a wedding dress has to be white? It's not like most brides nowadays are virgins, and frankly it's none of anyone's business but her's and the groom's whether she is or not.
We would have altered the ceremony to include mention of the fact that our best man's father passed away that morning, and publicly acknowledge the sacrifice he made by choosing to be with us that day, even though I tried to send him home.
We would have made the ceremony shorter.
I would have let the photographer take more of the pictures ahead of time.
We would have seen each other before the wedding, in a brief private meeting, just the two of us. For all that a wedding is supposed to be about the couple, there is very very little time together.
Our food was great, but I would have had a wider variety of dishes offered. Not everyone likes chicken.
We'd have had appetizers of some kind for while we finished up the pictures.
We'd have had a smaller, more simple cake, and had a sheet cake for serving.
I'd have made my own invitations.

Hell, maybe we'd even have scrapped it all, eloped, then had a barbeque in a park later. Or had a surprise wedding, where the guests had no idea it was happening til it happened (which certainly would have helped with the stressed out relatives. We kept telling them to relax, it's just one day). But one thing I absolutely, positively wouldn't change, even after sixteen years, especially after sixteen years, is the groom. It's obvious that it's a good match when sixteen years feel like two. We've been married longer than I shared life on this earth with my mother. Long enough for tradition to tell us this year doesn't matter. So we'll bow to tradition and do nothing. Well, not nothing. I'll take care of kids and do laundry all day. He'll work for 10 hours and add a 1.5 hour commute on each side. I'll make him chicken and dumplings for dinner, and we'll sit on the couch after the kids go to bed and play Rune Factory Frontier on Wii. Maybe we'll each have a glass of wine. We'll sleep late tomorrow.

Happy sixteen years, BigDaddyFish.