Lucas completed this summer’s first session of swimming lessons. (See here http://sarabellae.livejournal.com/49861.html and here http://sarabellae.livejournal.com/50010.html for last summer’s Learning-To-Swim saga, including breakthrough moments.)

This time he was in the Sea Turtle II class, but it looks like he’s been working on Sea Horse skills (unassisted glides, backstroke, diving for objects with eyes open, jumping into deep water, etc.). It was a nice class composed of Lucas and only one other child, Annika, with the same swimming instructor as last year, Miss Natalie. She says that Lucas and Annika are her favorite students, and says that it’s largely because they are so well-behaved in the pool and listen to her instructions. That’s a nice thing to hear!

Annika’s mom took some photos of the kids that she’s promised to share with me. I’ll post one after she does. (Here they are: http://sarabellae.livejournal.com/110974.html)

I think Lucas will do at least one more session of lessons this summer to build on these skills. Next time he’ll be in the Sea Horses class and Daddy will be able to take him after work. Yay! Asher and I can stay home and make dinner, or maybe Asher can go to the gym day care and I can–gasp!–work out! Oh, the possibilities!

When he’s not in class, Lucas swims with great joy and confidence in the 3-foot-deep play pool. He dives for rings, attempts handstands, swims underwater, and practices other skills. Ripley from school, and her brother Rocco, are often at the pool when we are, so it’s cool that they play together and I can talk with Val. It’s a joy to see Lucas so free and happy in the water. Some of my very best memories from childhood involve swimming and playing in my grandmother’s pool. I’ve been grateful that he can swim as well as he can, for I cannot hold Asher outside the pool and assist Lucas in the water at the same time.

As for Asher, he went in the water with me once last week. The pool is heated, so he didn’t protest (unlike at my parents’ pool when I put his feet in the cold water!). I bought a floating baby boat for him, which will work well, I think, when he can sit up a little better. Right now, it seems best to hold him in my arms so that he feels secure and safe.

Later today I get to have a confrontation with a friend who’s pissed off at me for something that happened a long time ago–almost a year. I’m very very sad that this is going down and also very pissed off that this friend let it fester within for 10 months before giving us the opportunity to talk it out. It feels like I will have to bite my tongue and apologize profusely in order to make it better, if that is at all possible. But I also feel unfairly judged and that has my hackles up. It’s hard to make new friends for a freak like me. Apparently, it’s hard to keep them because I’m a freak.

Damn. I have a sick feeling in my tummy because of all this.

EDIT: My friend called today, an hour before our appointed meeting time, and canceled. My friend had reasons for canceling, which may or may not have been true. Now I get to wait at least another two weeks before we have another opportunity to work through this issue. I’m kind of tired of having this hanging over my head.

On Father’s Day we went to Six Flags Discovery Kingdom with the Bs. We had a wonderful time. Lucas was brave and well-behaved. Asher suffered the heat well. Thanks, Bs!

Edit 6/28/07: Didn’t have much time to write about this yesterday. I actually managed to post that little bit and the photos while on a conference call for work. Tee hee.

Perhaps I’ll post more of Ian’s butterfly pictures another time. He got some lovely shots with our new(ish) lens.

A friend I used to work with writes:

“Everyone loves the story [of Asher’s birth]. Someday your son will love it too. He’ll forget to close the door and his friends will say, “Were you born in a barn?!” And he’ll say, “No, a shower.”

I’m making an effort to find fun and interesting things to do this summer, so that Lucas will be entertained in between all the baby naps, diaper changes, and nursing sessions. (For the most part, Lucas is patient with the amount of time it takes to care for Asher, so that’s good. He’s gotten into the habit of lowering his voice when Asher is sleeping and playing quietly in the other room. He still comes in to whisper at me a lot, but hey–at least he whispers.)

This morning I saw a hummingbird visit our yard. They do so fairly often, probably because we have a lot of flowers. This particular hummingbird visited the red plastic rim of Lucas’s basketball hoop. It gave me an idea.

We packed up our stuff and went to the Wild Birds and Gardens (http://www.wildbirdsandgardens.com/index.html) shop at Madison and Sunrise (I think Kimkimkaree used to work there at one time). We announced our intetion of buying a bird feeder and were soon set up with a feeder, nectar mix, and a recipe for making our own nectar later on. We came home and Lucas cleaned our new feeder with sudsy water. We mixed up the nectar, filled the feeder, and hung it on our tree in the backyard. It was fun. I’m hopeful that the birds will visit and find the feeder soon. It seems likely. I told the store lady that we needed the kind of bird watching that was going to be super rewarding, otherwise the five-year-old would give up on it. She said a hummingbird feeder was the way to go for beginners.

My grandma RoRo is now 88 years old. She was born Rose Anne, I suppose. Every time I’ve asked her about her name, she dissembles. But she goes by Anne. The very first “grandchild” [Not so. I am the first grandchild] called her RoRo. It stuck.

It’s been a very tough year for her so far. I got very sick. Then she fell and broke her hip/leg, had surgery, did physical therapy, etc. Now she has a torn meniscus. Her sister Mary died less than a month ago. Her other sister’s Alzheimer’s disease is very frustrating for Ro. Family MONEY SHIT is now GOING DOWN. The evil side of the family is making a play for the family fortune. Lawyers. The whole shebang. This is and will continue to be a very painful thing for RoRo to endure.

RoRo is one of those women who never allowed the apron strings to be cut. She has two sons and has managed to maintain her position in the center of her sons’ worlds all this time, to the chagrin of their wives. She can be vain, selfish, manipulative, and self-pitying. She is also one of the most generous people I’ve ever known. Over the years she has given me fantastic gifts, including fine jewelery and a new car when I was 18. (I have come to realize that her “love language” is gift giving.) When I was a girl, she indulged my love of pink things–until I told her I was over pink. She let me have birthday parties in her swimming pool. She took me to Gunther’s ice cream. She attended all my high school plays. She bought Christmas gifts for my boyfriends so they wouldn’t feel left out during the holidays. She wrote me letters (and sent money) all the years I was away at college, and I believe she is not inherently a letter writer. She shares my love of plants and flowers and looks forward to the next time we can go to the nursery together. She recently proudly showed me an orchid plant in full bloom that I gave to her four years ago. She dotes on my sons, and would dearly love it if Lucas would pay a little more attention to her and if Asher would lay quietly like a little newborn so she could gaze into his face.

Tonight we are going out to Frank Fats for dinner to celebrate her birth. I love her to pieces, for all her quirks.

Yes. Lucas has pinkeye. Probably from the gym pool, but who knows? At first it was only in one eye, but he’s five–yes, you guessed it: Place finger in infected eye, next, place same finger in uninfected eye. Repeat a hundred thousand times. Voila.

We have medication now. (Eye drops are a whole new adventure.) But because pinkeye is so contagious, Lucas has been home with me and Asher for 2.5 days now. Driving. Me. CRAZY. We’ve had to cancel two play dates with his friends. Yesterday was pretty good. Today he hasn’t left me alone for a moment all day long. I might just have to kill him. Did I mention he never stops talking? Ever. (I’m currently experimenting on him. My hypothesis is that he talks a little less if there’s music playing.)

I’m a good mom. I’m just not cut out to be a full-time mom. A little bit of daycare goes a long way to keeping me sane, in addition to allowing me to earn a living.

Asher doesn’t have pinkeye. Yet. Lucas has a terrible time remembering not to touch the baby’s face, hands, feet.

My ob/gyn gave me good news on Thursday in a really crappy way. I’ll get to the crappy part in a minute.

I thought there was only one cyst on my ovary, but it turns out there were actually two: one on each side. The one on the left, which I didn’t know about, has gone away. The one on the right is smaller. This is very good. Also, the fluid they said was in my abdomen back in March is now gone completely. The blood test revealed that my levels of CA-125 are in the normal range. So, yay. It’s not ovarian cancer. Just some pesky cysts, which appear to be resolving themselves without any intervention. Good.

The crappy part is that I got a call on Wednesday afternoon saying I should come in the next day because they had a cancellation and the doctor wanted to see me. I knew it would be about the recent ultrasound and blood test results. I thought, great, the doctor wants to see me instead of calling me on the phone to tell me that I’m healthy. And it’s the doctor who wants to see me instead of her many NPs. (She has a huge and thriving practice in Roseville.)

I spent a somewhat tortured night and day waiting for my 2:45 appointment time to roll around. Asher and I then waited AN HOUR AND A HALF in the waiting room to see the ob/gyn. When she finally saw me, she pulled me into her office … with the desk … and the two chairs … and the doll collection (creepy), instead of talking with me in the exam room. Then she had to interpret the results there, as though she were looking at them for the first time. Slowly, ever so slowly, she told me the … GOOD news.

I was very happy to hear it, but could have killed her for her tenderhooks methodology.

Asher is growing into his cheeks, I think. He doesn’t look quite so fat … from the neck up. His eyes are still a sparkly blue. I think they’re a little lighter in color now. They seem lighter than Lucas’s eyes.

Asher has found his toes! Great, great fun can be had with toes.

Don’t know what he weighs at this point, but it’s time to make an appointment for another round of vaccinations. 🙁 I’ll find out then.

We have a pretty good rhythm going on most days. I am greatly looking forward to the time when he’ll give up his nighttime screaming. Instead of being between 6 p.m. and 8 p.m. like it was, it’s now happening later. More like 9 p.m. We have even less emotional resources to draw from at this hour, unfortunately. Also, this blowup is cutting into Lucas’s snuggle time with me. That’s a big bummer because bedtime is sometimes the only time that Lucas slows down enough to be cuddled. Asher usually quiets down and goes to sleep when I come out of Lucas’s room to comfort him. I think the fact that he only settles down for me is frustrating for Ian. I know it’s frustrating for me sometimes.

Pottying Stuff
He’s using the potty beautifully now! Between about 3 and 9 times a day, Asher goes in his potty. It’s hard to know when he needs to pee; I’m still trying to suss out a consistent, clear signal. But I’m getting better and better at knowing his body rhythms, so I still “catch” a fair number of pees every day. He almost always poops in the potty now. Maybe one time a week he poops in his diaper, and that is often because we’re out and about and I’m not able to get him to the potty. I hope that he will soon adapt to going in a real toilet because that will greatly expand out options when we’re out in the world. So far, though, it seems that he feels physically insecure when I hold him over a real toilet. He hasn’t gone potty there yet, and kind of fusses when we try.

At night, pottying is easier. He actually wakes me up when he has to pee! He starts to squirm and kick and make little “ehn ehn” sounds. Gradually I wake up, check his diaper. If he’s dry, I take it off him and set him on the potty (which is sitting in the co-sleeper beside the bed). Usually, he pees as soon as he’s awake enough to realize he’s sitting on the potty. Then he smiles at me. I put all his clothes back on him. Usually by the time he’s suited up again, he’s fast asleep. I used to think he was waking up to nurse several times each night! Now I think that’s true maybe once per night. The other times he wakes up he needs to pee. Weird. We’ve had many nights when he wakes up in the morning wearing the same cloth diaper he went to bed wearing.

K. That’s all for now.

http://images.burningman.com/index.cgi?image=27477&results=27571,27492,27479,27478,27477,27453,27451,27401,27387,27374,26440,27358,27307,27263,27236,27224,27213,27209,27206,27205&ord=85/1817&skip=80&q_photog=&q_category=people&q_keyword=&q_year

Photo by Ken Ketchum

Thanks for pointing this out, PirateGirl.