Category Archives: The Boy

Halloween!

I have just sent Harry Potter off to school. I don’t know who’s more excited about this costume, the boy, HRH, or myself.

Oh, heck. We know it’s the boy.

HRH built that broom and wand from scraps of wood in his school workshop. Here’s a better photo:

I made the robes from scratch; I think the material cost me all of $15 (yay for the bargain shelves at the fabric store). We bought the glasses, but that’s the only thing we purchased for the outfit. The crest is an iron-on transfer we printed out from an Internet image. If we’d had time we would have made the gloves and shinpads, too.

(Personally, I think the argyle socks make the outfit.)

This was so much fun. There is, alas, a no brooms-no wands policy in effect at school (no accessories of any kind, it’s a safety thing) which was very upsetting to the boy, because he desperately wanted to show them off (and I cannot blame him, because just look at how awesomely cool they are!). So we did a photo shoot this morning and printed out a couple of the pictures for him to take to school to share instead.

The school is doing their annual costumed Halloween walk just before lunch today, a police-accompanied neighbourhood tour that allows the kids to show off their costumes to the other kids and get some fresh air before they settle down to an afternoon of parties and haunted house activities the older grades put together for the younger kids.

There will be more pictures taken tonight, of course. I hear a very tiny superhero will be making an appearance…

Cello!

Last Wednesday evening was the first orchestra rehearsal of the season, and it was fabulous. Despite our principal being absent; despite sight-reading challenging music I’d never heard before; despite being up past when I usually pass out.

The first concert of the season will take place on Saturday November 26th at 7 30 pm, at Valois United church, and this is the programme:

    Beethoven – Prometheus Overture
    Holst – St. Paul’s Suite
    Sibelius – Valse Triste
    Brahms – Serenade No 1

I’ve previously played the Beethoven and Sibelus. I thought I didn’t know the Holst till I played through it, and of course I know it; it’s an old CBC standard, nice and stompy folksongy stuff. It was the Brahms that tripped me up. I don’t know it, and it’s what we began with. It was not easy: it was a bit demoralizing as a starter to the first rehearsal of the year, and it’s going to take a lot of work.

This weekend the boy and I started our cello lessons again. It’s been about two months since I played seriously, so we took it nice and easy and played the Minuet I’d done for last winter’s recital, which went surprisingly well, then poked at the Dvorak Humoresque that I’d been working on in the spring, and finally did a bit of etude work. Then we started La Cinquantaine, which has a lovely elegant kind of controlled flick up to the A harmonic on the A string that I love to do.

The big news in private lessons, though, is that the boy is starting to use his big bow part-time, and has officially begun the first Suzuki book. We are going to work on French Folk Song, something he recognises because it’s my default test piece on any new cello I try, and Twinkle. So he has officially left pre-Twinkling behind! (And if I don’t get a move on, he’ll pass me in Suzuki, too. I know I play tonnes of other stuff and only dip occasionally into the Suzuki books, but if he passes me it will feel very odd indeed. But I’m only two pieces away from book four, so it’s very doable!) He has a new reply for his teacher when she asks him if he thinks he can do something she sets for him: “I don’t know if I can do that… but I’ll try!”

We had our first group lesson yesterday afternoon as well, and there are seventeen students with my teacher’s home studio this year, which is going to make for interesting floor plan dynamics come dress rehearsal time. I love the first group lesson of the season, because we sight-read the proposed group pieces for the recital, and anything goes bowing- and fingering-wise. There were some nice pieces — Monteverdi bits, an extract from Schütz’s Christmas Oratorio, a cello quartet arrangement of Beethoven’s Ode to Joy (which will please the Owlet no end, as she has decided Beethoven’s ninth is the perfect piece of music to relax ad pass out to), and a couple of other things that escape me at the moment. Nothing too finger-trippy if I’m on first cello, and some very pleasant harmonies indeed. The boy did well in following his teacher’s directions on the fly in his group lesson, too, in particular managing to pull off a full descending one-octave D major scale without ever having done it before. Mind you, then he decided he’d had enough and asked to go sit with me, and as he’d followed directions on three or four other fun things that were new to him his teacher was fine with that.

I have really, really missed my cello. Slipping back into it and seeing that I can pick up just about where I left off with only a few rough spots is a huge relief to me. I love making music with other people, and even with the challenges of a difficult commute, not much time to practice, leaving Owlet behind with HRH, and having to make sure we have enough bottles of expressed milk on hand, the good that it does me outweighs the stress.

Owlet: Four Weeks

Technically four weeks was yesterday, but we didn’t want to take anything away from the boy’s special day. (Speaking of which, we got a garbled report of the first day of school, and it sounded like there was some weird kind of grade one/new kindergarten split class happening, which is mystifying, because kindergarten is so labour-intensive for a teacher I cannot imagine one having time to teach grade one as well. Any split class is hard to juggle, but K/1? Very odd. We should get intro letters today or next Tuesday clarifying things. On the other hand, the grade one desks were set up in the boy’s old kindergarten room, with his old teacher, so maybe he’s mixing up last year being kindergarten with having the same teacher and room for grade one?)

Anywhats.

At four weeks old, Miss Owlet is starting to smile at people. She’s filling out a bit, although she’s still tiny and thin; I can see folds beginning to develop in the skin of her arms and legs. We’ve moved from newborn to size 1 disposable diapers (we use them at night while she’s still soiling so many diapers, because she sleeps downstairs with us and all her cloth diapering stuff is upstairs, and trust me, you don’t want us carrying her upstairs while half-asleep or trying to handle the mess of cloth in the wee smas on the bed). Except when I went out yesterday to buy new ones I bought the newborn size again, and while they fit, they’re tight. Same with the cloth diapers: the newborn size covers we use with flats are a just-fit, but the small covers and prefold diapers are still too big.

She’s gaining weight slowly. Last week she passed her birthweight, hurrah! A week late, but she got there. I had an unpleasant experience with a CLSC nurse who told me she wasn’t gaining enough or fast enough even with the supplement four or five times a day, and that I had to supplement her more. I couldn’t, I told her, because I couldn’t pump any more milk. “You’ll have to use formula, then,” she said right away, and I was stunned. She didn’t seem to listen to me when I explained that we were a week behind because of nursing issues in the first ten days, which explained her apparent slowness, and didn’t even address the other health concerns I brought up. It’s my right to ignore the health advice given to me, so I did. Instead, I started taking fenugreek to boost milk production (just to get a head start on a freezer stash, since supply is not the problem; it’s that we can’t make a baby who is satiated eat any more than she already does, and that baby spends most of the day nursing anyway) and worked out an extra time to pump when HRH is home and can take care of her while I do. I saw our new pediatrician on Monday (whom we love, and who will also be my new GP, hurrah) who was equally horrified at the nurse’s suggestion and commended me for ignoring it, saying that if we switched to formula we’d be jeopardising an already shaky breastfeeding situation. She understood right away that it wasn’t my milk supply that was an issue, it was the fact that if the baby is nursing most of the time, I don’t have the opportunity to pump. She’s fine with the slow weight gain (there is weight gain, after all; it’s not like it has stopped or has become weight loss), but she’s asked to see Owlet every two weeks instead of the usual four to keep track of it. Her head circumference and overall length have increased, so there’s definitely growing happening. I have another weigh-in at the CLSC this afternoon, and I’m kind of dreading it. I hope I get one of the two other nurses I’ve dealt with and like very much.

I dislike sleepers because of all the snaps, which are a pain when changing a diaper, so Owlet wears tiny leggings and t-shirts or tops most of the time. Today I put the cardigan I knit on her over her sleeveless shirt for the walk to the boy’s bus stop, and it fits!

It’s a bit short, but I knit it that way thinking of how crumpled newborns are, and I seem to remember mentioning that I was considering crocheting trim on the bottom anyway; that will add length. Or I may knit a flared open skirt-type thing to stitch onto it, making it more like a swing coat. I’d forgotten how soft the yarn is.

The ring sling my mum bought us while she was here is a boon. I use it around the house when I need to get stuff done and can’t sit with her in my arms. I also use it on the walk to the boy’s bus stop, and it’s brilliant. I especially appreciated it yesterday, because the boy’s bus home was an hour late getting to the school to pick them up (traffic, we hate you), so we were standing in the sun for a long time. I covered her head with the long tail of the sling, and even nursed her for half an hour while waiting.

She likes looking at vertical lines, and keeps an eye on the posts of the bed headboard, and the lines of the wall board, too. She likes looking at the sun patterns on the windows, and at the window frames. She’s so much more engaged now, sitting up propped against someone and looking around, examining people’s faces and making all sorts of interesting noises. She likes sitting in her swing at supper time; we pull it up to the table so she’s sitting with us while we eat. Sleep at night is going well, too; she usually does two three-hour stretches and goes back to sleep easily after nursing. (Now that I’ve said that publicly, watch it blow up.) Daytime sleeps are getting slightly better, although anything would be better than Not Sleeping At All, which is what was going on before.

Sparky is in love with her, and cuddles her whatever chance he gets. He is a very proud big brother:

I came into the room the other day to find her on his lap… she’d been fussing, and he’d managed to lift her out of her Moses basket then sit down with her. I’m glad I didn’t see it; it probably would have given me a heart attack. As it is, we had a talk about only doing it under supervision, and once she’s less squirmy.

Grade One!

One hundred labels on school supplies (because yes, we had to label every crayon, marker, coloured pencil, and graphite pencil), one new school bag, one new lunch box later…

It’s the first day of Grade One.

(There are new sneakers, too — black hightops! — but as we don’t know if he needs a pair each of indoor and outdoor shoes this year like last year, they’re waiting at home because tying laces is still a challenge.)

He has a new bus driver, a very nice lady. And his bus stop is one block closer, which is a welcome change, although one wonders why the closer stop wasn’t assigned last year when he was younger. This morning’s routine seemed to work quite well. We’re going to have to find a new time for cello, though, because we can’t fit it in at 7:30 AM like we did last year, what with the baby and me needing that time to pump milk for the day’s supplements.

He’s very ready for school to start again, as we are; I think the lack of structure of summer vacation was wearing on him, despite our best efforts. Now he has something that’s just his own again that will keep his mind busy.

I’m looking forward to my day alone with the baby, but I’m also looking forward to meeting his bus this afternoon and hearing all about his day.

Owlet: Week One & Two

Don’t worry; eventually the journal will swing back to cello, writing, and fibre arts. It’s just that right now there isn’t much time for all that! I do use this to record stuff for my own reference later on, after all, so if you’re not interested in the family and baby stuff just skip these entries.

We’ve never had a newborn with us, so this has all been very, well, new! The baby is a sweetheart and very good-tempered in general, and we love her to pieces.

Highlights of the past two weeks:

    Meeting Ceri, Scott, and Ada; meeting Jeff, Paze, Devon, and Tallis (complete with Tallis taking it upon herself to choose one of her own stuffed animals to give to the baby); meeting Uncle Marc M and Uncle Marc L; and meeting Rob, Kristie, and Rowan. And of course, meeting Nana, who has come down to spend a week with us! This weekend she gets to meet Granddad, who is coming down to join Nana.

    Our first post-discharge visit from the CLSC nurse on the Tuesday went very well: I am recovering splendidly, and Owlet is doing very well, too, gaining good weight. We’d been having latching issues, so the nurse showed us a couple of tricks.

    Owlet’s first outing was to the luthier! Very important to start them young. She travels beautifully both in the car and in the stroller. We did a two-hour shopping trip nearby on foot and she didn’t stir the entire time.

    She lost her cord stump exactly one week after she was born, so that Friday was our first official cloth diapering day! It went very well, without any accidents. In general it’s great, and I’m very happy with it. We’re using disposables at night until her system matures more.

This next bit is hard to write, so bear with me. It’s probably TMI for most of you other than mothers, so like I said, feel free to skip it; it’s mostly here for my records.

Breastfeeding in the first ten days was agony. Owlet tore me up really badly; she chomped and ground and I had bruises and scabs that bled into her mouth. This was beyond the basic “cracked and bleeding” thing you get warned about, and was decidedly unpleasant. She was feeding almost every hour for fifteen to twenty minutes at a time, too, and I dreaded nursing her because it was agonizing. She comfort sucks a lot as well, which is nice for her but not so nice for me what with the open wounds and all. I loved breastfeeding the boy, and I was so looking forward to doing it again, so I developed a complex about feeding Owlet because I desperately want to do it but it hurt like OH MY GOD MAKE IT STOP.

Friday I took the baby to the CLSC for her follow-up weigh-in. Turned out that she lost ten grams since that Tuesday when the nurse was here. Now, this normally wouldn’t fuss me, because she’d gained at a really good rate between discharge and Tuesday. But Friday’s nurse was concerned. I’d also requested to see a lactation consultant, so she took me into an interview room and we talked about the problem. “Show me what you’re doing,” she said, so I dropped one of my bra cups in prep for nursing, and she had a fit at the state of my breast, which was much worse than Tuesday’s nurse had seen. “It hurts me just looking at it,” she said. So then we brought the baby to the breast, and sure enough she chomped and locked her jaw, and we struggled to unlatched her… and there was blood dripping from me onto the baby’s sleeper. (Charming, I know. Let me tell you, one does not feel like a stellar mum when one’s baby’s clothing is bloodstained.) “How long has nursing been like this?” the LC asked, aghast. Since day one, I told her, and she stared at me. “You’re so courageous,” she said. “You’ve been nursing like this through intense pain for eight days? I’d have stopped long ago.” And it was such a relief to hear that, to know I was really trying hard and not faking it somehow. “Are you putting something on them?” she asked. Lanolin, I told her, and she shook her head and said, “No, I meant a real cream, to heal them. I’ll prescribe you one.”

She watched the baby eat, and she said that there were a couple of problems: one, that she wasn’t opening her mouth wide enough (which we knew, and we’ve been working on pulling her lower jaw down); and two, she’s sucking the nipple sideways into the pocket of her cheek, so that it scrubs back and forth along her sharp upper and lower jawbones. That plus the chomping = sensitive areas that look like ground beef. It’s nothing I was doing wrong, which was also a relief to hear. But the theory is that because she’s not sucking properly and essentially cutting off her own supply by how she’s latching, she’s not getting enough milk despite nursing for at least fifteen to twenty minutes at a time, and pretty much every hour to an hour and a half. The frequency of her feedings is to cover the low amount of milk she’s drawing at every feeding. And of course, the frequency isn’t helping the wounds.

So the first prescription was: Supplement. But bless the nurse, I was to supplement with pumped breastmilk, between 15 to 30 ml after each feeding; that way the baby gets more milk to bulk up, she’ll feed less frequently allowing me to heal, and we know she’s getting more milk. The second prescription was for me: An antifungal, antibacterial, anti-inflammatory cream for the open wounds.

In the days before the CLSC visit I was in so much pain feeding her that I’d taken out the small hand pump my cousin’s wife had passed on to me and cleaned it in preparation for possibly giving up on breastfeeding for a bit and pumping to feed her instead. I came home from the CLSC and pumped for ten minutes with that teeny hand pump, and pulled 60 ml right off the bat from the breast she’d fed from at the clinic. So, um, it wasn’t my supply that the issue (not that I was worried about that). After she nursed HRH gave her 30 ml and she gobbled it up, so I checked to see if I could pump more (um, another 80 ml… okay) and then he gave her the other 30 ml I’d pumped initially. She gobbled that, too, then passed out in his arms.

So it looks like she’d been hungry all this time, because her latch isn’t efficient enough to get her what she wants (or needs). Poor thing, she was starving, so she attacked the breast aggressively, which had been causing physical damage and creating tension in both of us. Breastfeeding will continue, but the ointment plus the supplementing has certainly eased the pain and her aggression at feeding time, and allowed me to almost completely heal in three days. So here I am, pumping again regularly when I thought it would only be an occasional thing. I dragged out the big double pump I used to pump for the boy when he was in hospital, cleaned it, and have been using that once or twice a day.

But we already saw an improvement within a day: the supplement allowed her to sleep a bit longer between feedings and she didn’t come to me ravenous. The ointment numbed the pain and sped up healing of the wounds, making the physical aspect much easier to deal with. Definitely a thumbs up from me. Plus HRH doesn’t feel as helpless any more, and the specialized not-a-standard-bottle/delivery system we’re using for the supplement (Medela Calma, for those interested in that kind of thing) will allow him to handle a whole feeding if he wants, as there’s been no issue with nipple confusion or rejection so far. We also resorted to a pacifier, since she demanded comfort sucking and I couldn’t give that to her while nursing was so incredibly painful. The pacifier has turned out to be a godsend, as much as I dislike them.

Monday’s CLSC weigh-in revealed that she gained 20 gr over the weekend, a good improvement, so while she’s not yet where they’d like her to be at 11 days post-birth she’s already past where she was on the initial Tuesday visit. Yesterday she had her first appointment with our GP, who weighed her in at 7 1/2 lbs, so she’s certainly gaining well; she’s just a week behind where she ought to be on her post-discharge timeline.

Speaking of sleeping better, at night she’s nursing, sleeping for three hours, nursing, then sleeping for another three hours, so nights have settled nicely. Days are more social; she likes being snuggled with someone and looking around at things with a funny furrowed brow. She has crazy-impressive neck and head control already. The poor thing has had some nasty problems with gas, too, bad enough that I went out for gripe water last week. She loves the taste of it, and when she’s taken some she settles right down, and then I love to bury my nose in her neck and sniff the dill/fennel/anise/new baby smell.

She is awesome. The boy is a fabulous big brother, too, doing drive-by kisses on the top of her head as he runs headlong through a room, or reading books to her. We’ve been trying very hard to pay a lot of attention to him and give him special time with us. And speaking of reading books, I am going to indulge in a bit of bragging here, and state that we have just finished reading Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets together. And when I say ‘together’ I actually mean together, taking turns reading. My mother said to me, “You said he was reading well and I thought oh, well, yes, everyone says that about their kids, but then I got here and heard him… and no, you weren’t exaggerating, were you.”

Okay, I think I’m caught up. This post was originally a one-week post that dragged on in draft form. I know you all want more pictures, but those will have to wait till I have more time.

Welcome, Bria Elisabeth!

Hello, world. We’ve been offline for a few days; sorry about that. I managed to get a quick announcement via text message out to Twitter late Thursday morning, and eventually a quick post to FaceBook when I’d had the time to sit back and buy data access for my iPhone on Thursday night, but this is the first chance I’ve had to sit at my computer since we got home late Friday night to acquaint you all with the lovely news of our daughter’s birth and shower you with photos.

In a delicious show of irony, the Owlet decided to hatch on the estimated due date I’d been using from the beginning before my doctor adjusted it back and forth. To the medical community, I say Ha, and Ha again.

Thursday morning I woke up just after 4 AM and thought to myself, Hmm, that’s probably another annoying prodromal labour contraction. And really, there was no reason to think otherwise, seeing as how I’d been handling two weeks of prodromal labour on and off. I got up to walk around as usual, and started timing the contractions just out of habit. Good thing I did, because it turned out that they were getting more intense, were lasting about ninety seconds, and were coming between two and four minutes apart. After a solid hour of timing them to be extra-sure I woke HRH, who called his parents, and we threw the last few things we needed into bags. The boy woke up just before his grandparents arrived and we gave him hugs and kisses and told him his sister would finally arrive that day, and that he could come meet her that afternoon. The roads were beautifully clear at six-thirty in the morning, and we got to the hospital in record time. Good thing, too, because when they checked me out they discovered I was just passing 4 cm, and the contractions were getting stronger. They let me move around with the monitors strapped to me, thank goodness. Within an hour I was at 8cm, and then suddenly 9+cm, and the doctor was there and they made me get on the bed to push ( “Please don’t make me get on the bed, I hate the bed, the contractions are worse on the bed,” I remember saying). After fifteen minutes of pushing (which certainly felt much longer than that), and a grand total of four hours of labour (a time span which I certainly do not recommend in general, because yes, that was about fourteen hours of work compressed into a quite intensified four hours), Bria Elisabeth was born at 08:13, weighing 7 lbs 12 oz and measuring 51 cm long.

Our first family picture, post-birth:

Baby!

A close-up of the baby!

True to our word, the boy was the first person to hold the baby after HRH and I, and he got a little teary about it:

And then he began gifting her with all the little toys he’d chosen and bought for her:

Culminating in the ceremonial Passing of the Bunny, one of the boy’s special favourite toys when he was just a tiny thing:

We were released 36 hours after the baby’s birth, and only that late because they weren’t allowed to release us any earlier. Both baby and I are in sparkling good health, eating and sleeping and settling in well. Today the hit-by-a-bus feeling that lands a couple of days after a major physical undertaking arrived, and Tylenol is my friend, because everything everywhere hurts.

For those wondering, Bria is pronounced BREE-ah, and yes, it’s Elisabeth with an S instead of a Z.

Or Else

The boy burrowed into our bed this morning, snuggled his back up against me, reached behind to pat my belly, and said, “The baby’s going to come this Friday.”

WHAT.

(Remember, this is the spooky child who informed us that he was going to have a baby sister, and her name was going to be such-and-such, and two weeks later we were pregnant with the girl child he’d ordered, after trying for two years.)

“What makes you say that?” I said.

“Because I’m going to stay with Papa and Grandma on Friday.”

Oh.

“No, Sparky, you’re spending the day with Papa and Grandma because Mum and Dad are going to see the new Harry Potter movie that afternoon. The baby can come any time after four o’clock on Friday.”

(You hear that, baby? AFTER four o’clock.)

He was quiet for a little while, then he said a bit sadly, “But I want her to be born. I love Owlet.”

We know you do, you wonderful boy. We know you love her so very much and you want to be able to see her, and cuddle her, and tell her you love her in person. We do, too. Just… not till after Friday afternoon.