Bathtub Fun

Yes there’s water in the bathtub. Yes, there is also an ENTIRE bottle of baby wash in the bathtub. She has also taken to removing her own diaper. She came out of her room this morning in a t-shirt and a bare bum. Here’s another:

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Vanilla Extract

We started our vanilla on Tuesday. It’s actually really easy to get going. There’s tutorials on the internet all over the place with pictures and proportions and everything. I looked a bunch of them and then kind of just mixed them together. Ivan bought me a vanilla bean in Hungary and brought it home for a coming home present to me. We wanted two beans, though, to make four ounces of vanilla so we had to find another one. We went to Central Market and they had several to choose from. Apparently Bourbon or Tahitian vanilla beans are the best to use. The cheapest we found was two beans for $7.50 or so, but looking online you can order them for a little over a dollar a bean. If I do this again I’m totally going to order my beans online.

The vodka I’ve already written about. That was a fun experience. Did you know you can spend over $100 for a liter and a half of russian vodka? It comes in a really tall, really cool bottle though. We bought the cheap kind and got 750 ml. We wanted a smaller bottle, but could only find the little individual drink bottles until we were on our way out and had already bought our bottle when we found the quick to-go shelf with a 450 ml or so bottle for cheaper. Oh well.

That night we put it all together. You slit the beans the long way and then cut them so they’re short enough to fit in the bottle and put them in a bottle with the pre-measured vodka in it. Then you let it sit for 4-8 weeks or so. They say ideally you let it sit for 6 months, but you can use it after 4 weeks or so. You shake it every day the first week and then every so often after that. It gets darker and stronger with time. The best part is that it’s reusable. When the bottle is half empty you just pour more vodka in and you’ve got more. I took this picture today, so it’s 4 days old. It’s already way darker.

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Liquor Store Trip

I found a blog post a couple months ago explaining how to make vanilla extract and got really excited about it. With everything that’s going on it’s taken me a couple months to get around to actually making the vanilla, but part of the problem was that vanilla uses vodka. My county is a (semi)dry county. This means they sell beer and wine, but not hard liquor. Anywhere in the county. We looked at grocery stores and liquor stores and asked the info desk at the grocery store where we were told to try going to the next county over. So we did.

So, being mormon, I’ve never been in a liquor store before. It was an interesting experience. I have never seen so many pretty bottles in my life. We both wanted to go, so we ended up taking the girls with us and my brother perked up when he heard we were going to a liquor store so we took him along too (we’re a little worried about him… j/k). We were quite a sight I’m sure walking into that store – Me, Ivan, my 19 year old brother and a toddler and an infant. They were very polite and helpful there, though and we eventually decided on a cheap plastic (sorry Nelson) travel bottle of vodka. So far it seems to be serving it’s purpose.

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Case Sensitivity

As you may know, Steam recently released an OS X version. This would probably not have prompted any immediate action on my part if it weren’t for the fact that, until May 24, Portal is free! Unfortunately, I was treated to the following dialog on launch:

Steam requires that /Applications/Games/Steam.app/Contents/MacOS be created on a case insensitive filesystem, with read-write access.

Really!? It seems very odd to me that case insensitivity would be a requirement for any semi-decently written program. I hope they get this fixed soon, but until then you can try what I did (though the instructions below come with no guarantee, blah blah blah).  I have now successfully played Portal on my computer, so it works to some degree.

1. Open Disk Utility and create a disk image (Cmd-Opt-N).
2. Name it anything, say Steam-insensitive.
3. For the name (of the mounted volume) I chose Steam.
4. Make it large (games are big).  You can resize later with hdiutil, but why?
5. Keep the default Mac OS Extended (it’s case-insensitive).
6. Keep the defaults No Encryption and Single Partition.
7. I chose a sparse disk image so that it only take up as much actual disk space as is used on the image.
8. Create the image.
9. Mount the volume (double-click the disk image file).
10. Copy Steam.app onto it the volume (named Steam in my case).
11. Open Terminal.app and run the following (with appropriate changes if any).

# In case you ran Steam already...
rmdir ~/Library/'Application Support'/Steam
rmdir ~/Documents/'Steam Content'
# Case insensitive versions
mkdir /Volumes/Steam/$USER-app-support/
mkdir /Volumes/Steam/$USER-steam-content/
ln -s /Volumes/Steam/$USER-app-support/ ~/Library/'Application Support'/Steam
ln -s /Volumes/Steam/$USER-steam-content/ ~/Documents/'Steam Content'
echo "Feel smug that you haven't sold your soul. Yet."
ln -s /Volumes/Steam /Volumes/steam
echo Shudder visibly
sudo ln -s /Volumes /volumes
echo Commit ritual suicide for such a hideous affront to nature

12. For bonus points create an alias to Steam.app (Cmd-Opt-drag). This should mount the disk image and launch the application in one go.
13. Launch Steam and enjoy.

I suspect it may be necessary to create the Steam -> steam link every time you login or shutdown. If so it sounds like a job for Folder Action Scripts!

If you still have problems, you may want to launch it from Terminal.app as /Volumes/Steam/Steam.app/Contents/MacOS/steam.sh which is how I noticed that it was trying to create //volumes [sic].  Of course, if you don’t know how to do that, then the clues it gives you may not mean much either.

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Big Sister

Avery takes care of her little sister. She likes to play all her favorite games with Evelyn. So far we’ve seen patty-cake, head shoulders knees and toes, and today the spelling game. Avery likes to spell her name, “daddy,” and sometimes “mommy.” It goes like this:

Me: Aaaaaa

Avery: A

Me: Veeeee

Avery: V

Me: Eeeeee

Avery: E

Me: Rrrrrr

Avery: R

Me: Yyyyyy

Avery: Y

Me: Avery!

Avery: Abry!

Then she immediately goes on to “Deeeee” for Daddy. Today she was sitting in front of Evelyn’s bouncy chair and this is what I heard:

“A….. V….. R….. Y….. Abry!   D….. R…. Y….. Emen (Evelyn)”

Then she repeated it so Evelyn would remember. Apparently Evelyn is spelled D-R-Y, which is a little ironic since dry is something she rarely is.

About two seconds later Avery was giving Evelyn a kiss when Evelyn spit up. Avery looked down at her and said “eeewww” and then went into the kitchen and came back with a kleenex to wipe Evelyn’s “nose.” She was very thorough about it too, making sure she told Evelyn to blow and then blow again (“gin” said very seriously).

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Ramblings Part II

So here I am at 5:30 in the morning, sitting with a wide awake 2 week old and considering my life as I know it. She slept until 4:00. Or was it 4:30? Ate. Went back to bed. Woke up at 5:00. Ate. Didn’t go back to bed. At least she’s mostly being quiet. ish.

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Ramblings on Motherhood

So here I am at 1:30 in the morning, sitting with an almost asleep enough 2 week old and considering my life as I know it. Evelyn was in bed and asleep at 11:30. Unfortunately she was not at midnight, so I’ve spent the last hour and a half walking, burping, feeding, refeeding, burping again, and bouncing, trying to figure out what will let her sleep. Finally, during our last walking session she let out a big burp, got the hiccups and settled down. Poor kid. I knew she had something in there she needed to work out.

Two weeks into having two kids I find myself tired (but not as tired as I probably will be in another couple weeks), kind of stressed (but not as stressed as last time around), and a little more calm than I thought I would be. The calm might have something to do with the fact that I got to leave the kids home with Grandma and Grandpa and go spend an hour and a half eating Italian food all alone with Ivan, but I think I just feel a little more like I know what I’m doing this time and that’s a big deal for me.

It’s interesting having two kids. I found myself missing Avery the other day. She’s around ALL the time and she’s been really cranky the last few days, but I’m usually pretty busy taking care of Evelyn and I haven’t had the time to spend just with her lately that I used to. I miss playing with her. I got to put her to bed tonight. Ivan’s been doing that a lot lately. We brushed her teeth and read a story, and then we played the itsy bitsy spider and similar games for a few minutes before I tucked her in and heard her little “ni ni” (night-night). It was really nice to lay down with her for a few minutes and play. She can be pretty cute.

I think my two little girls are pretty precious, but just so you know how tired I am… I tried to spell “bed” in the first paragraph of this post b-e-a-d. And that was only the first typo. Feel free to laugh uproariously at any more you may find that I didn’t catch.

I’m kind of curious… any of you mothers out there that may read this… did you have troubles with breastfeeding? This time around was much better. It’s still a little uncomfortable, but by 2 weeks the pain of breastfeeding was pretty much gone. I did blister and bleed a tiny bit this time around, but nothing compared to when I nursed Avery. With Avery it took a good three weeks before the pain was gone and I was comfortable with nursing and I bled for several days. It was a little traumatic.

Nursing is hard, and I have to confess it’s not my favorite thing to do. I’ve talked to lactation consultants any chance I get, but for anyone thinking about it… I definitely think it was worth it. The first few weeks are bad, but it gets better. Not to judge formula feeding in any way… it’s the right choice for a lot of people.

I think the little one is asleep enough to move and I think I’ve rambled long enough. To sleep…

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All the details

Two weeks later and probably nobody’s really interested, but here are the details of Evelyn’s birth. I realize not everyone thinks birth stories are cool, so I posted my favorite non-birth bit first. Here’s the picture:

How many bracelets does one hospital need on a patient? The big bulky one that says “kisses” was really kind of cool. It was “bonded” to a bracelet around Evelyn’s ankle so that anytime she came near me my bracelet made a chiming sound to tell us that she was my baby. If I got too close to any other baby apparently it had an alarm. It was kind of fun to hear a chime every time they gave me my baby. So there you go. Feel free to ignore the rest of this post if you want.

I have a friend in Budapest who told me that with one of her six girls she went into labor and denial at the same time. She said she was running around the house all day in labor and totally denied it. I don’t know what finally got her to the hospital, but my water breaking did it for me. I was in labor for nearly a day before my water broke and I swore it was false labor. Maybe it was because I was two weeks before my due date or because I REALLY didn’t want to be in labor before Ivan got here, but I really thought I was in false labor. I even posted on facebook about 15 minutes before my water broke “Rachel Andrus thinks she might cry. False labor sucks.” Famous last words right?

In my defense, my labor followed all the signs of false labor. The contractions got stronger and weaker and they didn’t seem to be getting any more regular. They started in my lower abdomen rather than in my back, and I’d known people who had had bad false labor for several days or a week before actually having a baby. On top of that I have contractions all throughout my pregnancies. With Avery I remember wondering if contractions were her moving because I had small contractions before I even felt her move. But usually those contractions aren’t uncomfortable. I kind of like them. These contractions were a little painful.

So, from the beginning: I started having small painless contractions Thursday night. I had just finished my taxes (I think I have grounds for a suit against the government. I’m pretty sure taxes put me into early labor) and I was having all these contractions, which isn’t unusual, except that there were a lot of them. That night I had three or four contractions that were kind of painful. They were uncomfortable enough to wake me up in the middle of the night a few times. This had also happened a week or two before, so I didn’t think much of it until they didn’t go away all the next day.

Friday I had contractions all day and some of them were painful and some of them weren’t. I probably had one really good hard one every hour or two and the rest of them hurt a little, but not too badly. Like I said, they really seemed like false labor to me. The only thing was that I was pretty sure I was dilating because I was losing a lot of mucus and that seems to happen when I dilate. I figured I was going to be like my mom who dilated to 7 cm two weeks before she delivered with all her babies.

So I went to the store and helped my mom make strawberry jam. I did my chores early so that I could help lay wood flooring on Saturday (haha). I talked to Ivan online and chased Avery around, all while being in labor and not realizing it.

About 11:00 I ate an ice cream and decided it was time to go to bed. I got into bed and I remember saying my prayers and asking to please be able to sleep well that night. It had been a few nights since I’d slept well and with the contractions I was afraid I wasn’t going to get any sleep. So I asked Heavenly Father to let me sleep that night and rolled over onto my side and tried to relax. I was just thinking I hadn’t had a contraction in a little bit and I might actually sleep when I heard/felt a “pop” and felt a gush. Apparently I jumped out of bed pretty  quickly because my mom went to check the bed before we left for the hospital and it was dry, very unlike my pajama pants.

My mom had just gone to bed, too, so I knocked on her door and made her get dressed while I rinsed off in the shower and grabbed the bag I had hastily packed that night. I wrote Ivan a quick email (poor Ivan) telling him what had happened and where I would be and that I would have my cell phone and my mom’s and off we went.

We got to the hospital about 11:30. I hadn’t preregistered. I hadn’t toured the hospital. I had no idea where labor and delivery was. So we asked at the ER. I felt a little silly because after my water broke it took 45 minutes or so for contractions to start again, so here I was walking around signing papers and feeling just fine while telling people I was in labor. I was pretty sure my water had broken though.

They put me in a room and asked me a bunch of questions. Registration called and I answered more questions. They asked if I wanted an epidural and I said I wanted to try without it. They checked and told me my water had definitely broken and I was 6 cm dilated, 7 during a contraction. Then I started having contractions again. I kind of breathed through them. Some of them were pretty intense and some weren’t so bad. After a while they checked again and I was 8 cm dilated and they called out to the desk to call the doctor. They told me to tell them if anything felt different and especially to tell them if I felt like I needed to push.

My mom was there rubbing my head and reminding me to breathe and I asked “I’ll know the need to push, right?” and the nurse and my mom both said “oh yes…” Then I started having really hard contractions. They asked me how many times I pushed with Avery and I told them twice. I think they got a little nervous at that point. The contractions changed at about 8 cm to really intense burning like pain. It’s hard to explain, but they were different and I felt like I could feel her pushing and rubbing against my bones. I only had about two contractions like that though, because at the end of the second I felt like pushing. Then things really got exciting.

I told them I felt like pushing, but the doctor wasn’t there yet. There was an on-call doctor and they called him, but it took him a minute to get there and I was needing to push. Pretty soon there were three or four nurses in my room telling me to pant and not push. I tried really hard, I swear I did, but it felt like when you throw up. You know how when you throw up you can’t just say “no, I’m not going to throw up” your body just does it and you feel like everything inside of you is coming back out? That’s what it felt like. I tried pretty hard not to push, but my body did it anyway.

The first pushing contraction I tried not to push and tried not to push, but by the end of it Evelyn was crowning anyway. The nurse put her hand on Evelyn’s head trying to keep her from being born while the doctor finished robing and gloving. The second pushing contraction delivered her head and then I had to stop pushing AGAIN because she had the umbilical cord wrapped around her neck. They got that untangled and the rest of her kind of just slipped out. They told me that the cord was also wrapped around her arm and her leg, but didn’t cause any complications at all. She was born at 1:29, was 6 pounds and 10 ounces and she was healthy.

My doctor made it there just in time to stitch me up where I tore a little. She had tried to get there faster, but had been unlucky in that she managed to get herself in front of a cop most of the way there. She could have sped anyway, but explaining the situation after being stopped would have taken more time that just going the speed limit, so she got there just seconds too late. The on call doctor almost didn’t make it either. I think next time I’ll tell them to call the doctor when I’m about 5 cm.

The nurse asked me afterward if, since I’d had an epidural with my first baby and then had this baby all naturally, I’d do an epidural next time. I told her I thought probably I’d have an epidural next time, but since then I’ve really kind of liked having the memory of feeling Evelyn being born. I can’t really explain it. It’s not really anything like I’ve read where people say how amazing they felt or powerful or that it was this spiritual experience. It was just a nice feeling of… connection, maybe? It’s nice now to have that memory of that experience of her birth.

On the other hand, I really liked having an epidural too, because I felt more present right after Avery was born. I felt more aware and less frenetic I guess. And the epidural felt really really good. So, I guess it’s really amazing to me how very different the births of my two kids were, but I liked both experiences. Evelyn’s was easier, but Avery’s was probably more comfortable. If I’m like my mom, I may not have the choice of an epidural in the future, as all her labors went very very quickly and this one was only 2 hours from check in at the hospital to crying baby. For that reason (and others) I’m glad I had an epidural the first time around.

One thing I do think I’ll do next time is ask for an episiotomy if the doctor thinks I’m going to tear. I really feel like I healed more quickly last time and the doctor said the tear was a little harder to stitch up.

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