Judy and the Gorgons

I spent the morning of January 7th searching my Facebook friend list for Old Calender Orthodox, to wish them a Merry Christmas. If you're unfamiliar with the Old Calendar vs New Calendar thing, look up the Julian and Gregorian calendars on Wikipedia - a number of Orthodox churches still use the Julian (I think the majority), which means most feasts, including Christmas, are thirteen days apart, though Easter (Pascha) is celebrated on the same day (not the same day as the Western churches necessarily, but all Orthodox celebrate together). So anyhow, I mentioned to Husband what I was doing, while Kittyboy was in the room.
Of course, the boy's favorite word is WHY.
He has since been talking about the "Judy-an and Gorgon" calendars. He wanted to know why we aren't Old Calendar too (because the Greek churches and I think some others use the New/Gregorian Calendar). He wanted to know, if Christmas were January 7th, what would December 25th be? He must have asked that four times, to which I answered "just December 25th", or "still in Advent" before I asked, "Do you mean what feast or saint would it be?" He said yes. Naturally. I told him I'd figure it out. I still need to sit down with a calendar, count thirteen days back from December 25th, and see who's commemorated on that day. (Wait, I will do that NOW... Okay, Dec. 12th is St. Spyridon. I'll tell him after his nap.)
So now he wants to follow the "Judy-an" Calendar. And no, it's not to have two Christmases, that didn't even occur to him - he wants to go OC because "that would be COOL." Have to get him an OC church calendar so he can see both. There's a Russian church a few towns south of here, I can probably buy one there.
I absolutely love that he wants to follow the Old Calendar now. We won't be, because St. Anthony's is New Calendar, but I love his enthusiasm. Granted, we don't want him enthusiastically jumping into things SOLELY on the basis of "it's different and new, and that makes it cool!" But, I just have to like the flippant disregard for peer pressure. Who cares when everyone else celebrates Christmas. I'm reminded of my brother, who wore a beard throughout high school because 1) he COULD, and 2) no one else had one. Not all that is "different" is good, but approval by the majority doesn't make something good, either!
So I'll get him his Old/Julian church calendar, and he can hang it next to his New/Gregorian one, and heaven help me when he wants more details on WHY there are two.

posted from Bloggeroid

Kittyboy and Housework

I'd already been teaching Kittyboy how to load silverware in the dishwasher, and put it away when it's clean. He also could gather his laundry, and put away his clean clothes (the putting away, sorta kinda).
Well, now he does a lot more. He can gather his laundry and the bathroom laundry in one hamper, and dump that hamper into the washing machine. He can empty the dryer into a basket and bring me the basket. He can sort out his clothing from everything else. He even can SORT OF can fold his own clothing.
I had been thinking to teach him the microwave. It's on his level, and I could tell him a few minutes before getting up to start dinner, "Please put two potatoes in for so many minutes," that kind of thing - then I thought good and hard about how much easier DON'T TOUCH is than "Touch only when/how I tell you to." Now, I've had him stir at the stove before, but the radiating heat is an un-ignorable reminder to take care, and the microwave would appear deceptively safe by comparison, and that could lead to carelessness. He's good at stirring, and careful. And were I to put a pan on the stove for soup, sit at the table chopping ingrediants, and have him on a chair putting what I chop into the pan, I'm still the one setting up, turning on the stove, and he can't reach the burner controls. Letting him add and stir, that doesn't remove a Flat-Out Prohibition on anything. But the microwave.......... A little knowlege could be a disastrous thing. No microwave yet.
But he could sweep, at least spot-sweep with a dust broom. He's learning how to load dishes other that silverware, and a few days ago, insisted that he could put in the soap - "Oh, let me, let me!" as he ran to get the box. I helped. Had he been a puppy, he would have been wagging his tail!
I'm guessing four is an age where being a Big Helper is REALLY fun, and it's not so much "work". That would make this the perfect age to train!
And he's plenty strong enough to haul a full (and full-size) clothes hamper, lift his half-size one over his head to dump in the washer, and carry garbage bags to the front door. May as well use those muscles to the max!

posted from Bloggeroid

An update, after a long absence

So! The-Little-Fetus-That-Could, still IS. 22 weeks and counting. I am resting, resting, resting, and taking my blood pressure, which has been generally above "wonderful" but comfortably below "call the office". What the chances are of "Kittyboy all over again" (28 weeks, HELLP drama) depends on which doctor is looking at me, I think, which is either annoying or amusing, depending on my mood. My regular ob-gyn, Dr. Z, was pretty much happy with the way things were going, the many tests all came back at least acceptable, and apart from one little incident that involved a couple hours of having my BP monitored and a pre-eclamptic panel run on a Saturday afternoon, it all seemed fine. Except, to me, it seemed something, somewhere, somehow, was less than fine. Just little nagging oddities - the stairs at church seemed to put me out of breath, a walk that was normal in the first trimester would leave me exhausted the next day. I wasn't nesting, I was tired. I would sit for a moment and feel my limbs, back, and trunk muscles all give a great sigh of relief, and not after a day of work either. And the incident that sent me to the hospital for blood testing and blood pressure checking was exceedingly weird, sudden hand-swelling, out of the blue, 9 a.m., so that my fingers tingled and hands felt weird to close.
We have a pregnancy helpline through our insurance, and I must say, whatever Husband's employer is paying is worth every penny.
So I had just decided last week that at my next appointment with Dr. Z, I would mention, "So I know the tests have all been fine, but I just think something's not necessarily fine..." It's like when something, somewhere in the kitchen, is juuuuuuuust starting to go, not bad, but "off". All you know is that sometimes, at the sink - or is it closer to the garbage can? - you just get this whiff of something. But the garbage is out, the sink is clean, and then, darn it, just caught another whiff. What the heck? Am I smelling things?.... It was like that.
Then Monday, I had a sono appointment. Not seeing Dr. Z, just checking on Baby. Everything seemed good, tech mentioned she (baby's a she) was a little small, but neither of Baby's parents come from tall families. Then the nurse said "the doctor" would come in and talk with us.
Dr. T, whom we'd not met before, is a high-risk pregnancy doctor. I think she and Dr. Z have to compare notes (haha) because she's not at all convinced all's well. According to HER, the chances of Kittyboy-all-over-again could be 25-50%. She said I would be getting a blood pressure cuff for home. Aye aye, Cap'n T. She asked if I was taking baby aspirin. Um, nope, no one said to, but I will now. I took a big breath and said, "Okay. Blood pressure cuff, baby aspirin. What else, what do we DO?" She paused a second and said, "Well, there's really nothing you CAN do, if it's going to happen."
She did add that modified bed rest might help.

I've since calmed down, reassessed what exactly she SAID, not what my pessimist brain HEARD (which of course was the worst of all possibilities) and taken this as doctor's orders to take my body very, very seriously. I lay down enough throughout the day that when I have been up and lay BACK down, there is no release-of-tension, sigh-of-relief feeling, because if there were, it would mean I should have ALREADY been down. And laying down to that extent has amounted to partial/modified bed rest. I avoid ANYTHING that makes me have to breathe like I've been running, which means very slow on stairs, as few as possible (we live in a one-story house, I only take stairs at church), I sit whenever I'm not doing something (and all through church, basically), and Kittyboy is learning a great many household tasks.
But THAT is a story for another day... Kittyboy doing housework is a post all its own...

posted from Bloggeroid

The Little Embryo That Could

(We think you can! We think you can! We think you can!)

In March of last year, I went for a first sonogram at eight weeks pregnant, and the baby had no heartbeat. Not to be flippant, but a generally unpleasant and distressing experience I really didn't want to repeat. Now, to our joy/disbelief, I'm finally pregnant again.
We got a sonogram at 6.5 weeks this time - juuuussst wanted to see that heartbeat for real, before I got excited. Maybe that's morbid, but, well...
We have a heartbeat! Baby measures six weeks, five days! Heartbeat 114 bpm!
The sucky part is, we have four weeks until our next heartbeat-listening-to. I am going to be counting down the days. Basically, if all our tests come back good (already know my progesterone is right where it should be, that's one concern taken care of), there's really nothing that can be done any differently than before. Assuming no abnormalities with hormone levels or anything else, first trimester miscarriages can still "just happen". We're being calm but vigilant. There's only so much you can do. Although, thanks to my history with Kittyboy, things will get very different about 20 weeks. I don't know the details, but that's what the doctor said. And of course, to contact them if anything is unusual.
Is it me, or is it some kind of cruel joke, to say, "Oh, but don't stress about it! Stress is bad for the baby!" Because while I understand that to be completely true - do I need something ELSE to stress about? So I can stress about not stressing about something stressful, because if I stress about the stressful thing, the stress alone could cause said stressful thing to occur just because I stressed about it?
So! Not stressing - overly much! Holding on tightly, in my head, to my progesterone results! Counting days! Calling it The Little Embryo That Could (thanks to my friend Carey for that lovely and optimistic title!)!
33 days from yesterday, so 32 days to go!
And may Kittyboy's angels watch over his sibling in the meantime.

Homemade yogurt

Last week, I had some milk in the fridge that needed using, so I decided I'd try what I'd been thinking about for a while - making yogurt. I did have plain yogurt in the fridge, and all I knew about yogurt making is that you put a little plain yogurt in, and the milk should just do it all by itself.
But given that there's such a thing as a "yogurt maker", and people talk about using crock pots and heating pads and whatnot, I went looking for directions. The first site I found was http://makeyourownyogurt.com/
I didn't have a big enough double boiler - I didn't have a crock pot - but I did have a thermometer!
I put a quart jar's worth of milk in a pan, heated while stirring constantly, and I mean CONSTANTLY, and took the temp every few minutes. At one point, Kittyboy got himself assigned to stir, while I hunted for a better food thermometer. And he did stand there quite responsibly, never stopped stirring, and at no point did he stick his fingers on the edge of the pan, into the heating milk, or on the burner (all of which he was sternly and repeatedly warned about beforehand). He can be a good helper when he wants.
Finally, after oh, forty-five minutes or so of stirring over a hot stove, it was heated to 180. I put the pan in a sink of cold water and stirred until it was just down to 110, stirred in a good-sized dollop of plain yogurt, and for lack of any means of keeping it warm, just covered the pan and set it back on the stove on the turned-off-but-still-warm burner. I figured, people have made this for centuries without necessarily a means of keeping it evenly and consistently warm - a crock pot or heating pad might make it take only 7 hours, but maybe I could just leave it for longer, like 24?
After eight hours or so, before I went to bed that night, I peeked. Hmmm - smelled like spoiling milk. I figured it was going to be a learning experience and went to bed.
The next morning - creamy white yogurt!! There was no whey to stir back in, the texture was even, it was perfect! It's whiter than store-bought, which I thought was funny, too. It worked great! Next time, I'm going to leave it longer to get thicker. This time, I was just so thrilled to have yogurt that I just jarred it up right then.
So far, I've twice made a bowl of homemade ranch dip for carrots, and used it as a base for beef and noodles. It goes well in place of sour cream, too.
Anyone have any good yogurt recipes to share?

Randomness...

I am loving my new knee braces!! In the last five days, I have dug several two rows of the expansion to my flower garden, planted a rose, put the sod from the expansion in my wheelbarrow, planted more plants, caged the maybe-cucumbers unknown-squash-vines in the big garden, and spread more cardboard in the garden. I even weeded! I had a LONG list of yard projects waiting for these braces to come in. The tomatoes need tying too, though it may be too late - they've grown all funky and weird along the ground.

Kittyboy informed me a few days ago that he had been sitting in his room, reading a book. To himself. I wonder how long it will be before the I Can Read books no longer interest him. He was looking at his globe last week and said, "Rrrrussian. This says Russian!" I said, without looking up, "RussIA. It says Russia." He murmured thoughtfully, "Russia... but there is an N." "What?" Oooops, forgot the age of his globe - Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic. "By golly that does say Russian! Good job!"

We've been using interstate travel to do math. If we're passing exit 264 and we need exit 267, how many miles are we from our exit? That question is best phrased "What is the difference between 4 and 7?" and to my surprise, he gets it right half the time.

Kittyboy had his first dramatic nosebleed today - he came to me with his hand out, asking, "What is this?" Red smeared all over his hand and face. Nothing hurt, so he didn't even know it was blood. I asked if he had hit his head. "No." Hit his nose? "No." Hit, bumped, fallen down in any way? "No." Deep breath. Did he stick anything IN his nose? "No." I ran through the possibilities remaining - the air isn't dry, his sinuses haven't been running... couldn't think of anything else. Hmm. Well, it's been tough to keep him from sticking his fingers in his nose. Had he been scratching inside his nose? "Oh, yes." SIGH. And had the blood started coming out after he was scratching his nose? "Um, yes." Aaaahhhhhh. Well, YAY for not needing a doctor on the FOURTH OF JULY, because up to that point I was out of guesses, and spontaneous nosebleeds for no apparent reason are not generally a good thing. I told him that a) a finger qualifies as "anything", and b) here's another reason to keep your finger OUT OF YOUR NOSE. Delicate tissues, capillaries, etc... the fact that your fingernails are filthy...

We'll be hauling him out of bed about 8:30 tonight to go downtown for fireworks. I'm hoping to coax him into bed about 6, 6:30, which probably means we'll have to skip the nap. Or start the nap at 5, and then he probably would have been awake until after 9 anyway.

Happy Independence Day, everyone!

"Like the sky. But different."

Kittyboy randomly spouted, this morning, "I saw there were angels! They were circling up over my bed. And God was standing next to my bed!"
"........? And when was this?"
"Oh, at night!"
"What night?"
"The night before this morning!"
"...And what did the angels look like?"
"Oh, I don't know! Like angels! They had wings on them!"
"What color were the angels?"
"Oh, I don't know. I think blue. Or green."
"........And what does God look like?"
"Um - I do not know! He is Our God!"
(as opposed to someone else's? huh?)
"He looked like the sky! [could have been 'He looked up like the sky'] But different."
"So God looks like the sky. But different."
"Yes!" Nodding emphatically, driving his car.
"Were you dreaming?"
"Oh yes, I was dreaming about my globe! The one that I found in the gift shop!" (a $400 inlaid stone globe he found at the Sheels gift shop)
"Were you dreaming about God? Or angels?"
"Um, no. God was just standing, next to my bed, and the angels were just circling."

I like the description of God as looking "like the sky, but different." How interesting...