I need help, readers. Please feel free to comment here, or if you followed this link from my facebook, comment there.
So Freya is 15 months old and it’s the middle of stupid winter. We need fun things to do that don’t cost money, don’t involve me buying her more toys, and can be done inside. So what I am asking for is fun, entertaining, maybe even educational activities for a toddler her age that we can do in our living room. If she was just a weeee bit older we could color, play dress up, something like that, but so far she isn’t terribly interested in her crayons.
She’s very smart and very interested in lots of stuff. I want to stimulate her mind more. I wish I could let her roam around more but we only have one (large) room that is totally babyproofed. The kitchen is off limits and the front room is too, plus there are steps that she can’t manage yet.
I think I’m just blocked right now. Need new ideas. Cabin fever. Should I just let her play with a pile of scarves and bags? She has almost mastered opening and closing zippers. She has lots of kitchen containers and bowls to play with.
Long story short, I don’t want Freya to be bored! Her only job right now is playing, and I want to make sure she’s having fun every day. I’m sure there must be blogs or sites with cool DIY baby activity ideas. Please point me there! Thanks.
Posted in Freya, Fun | Tagged games, play, toys | Comments Off on fun and games
So my monthly ladyfriend visited today. That’s code for “I got my peeeeeriod!!”
Since my last cycle began, it has been 33 days. I think the one before that was around that long, too, maybe 36 days. This is my third cycle since I returned to fertility, post-partum. Before that, I went 22 months without a period. It was glorious. But I’m glad it’s back.
Before I got pregnant, my cycle was 28 days, on the dot, like clockwork. In fact I could almost predict it down to a four-hour window. Two years ago this month, on the day I expected to start, nightfall came and when it hadn’t come I began to seriously suspect I was pregnant (I was).
I think this regularity was attributable to being on the pill for over five years. Before that, I believe my cycle was longer, something like 31 days. Maybe I am going back to something like that? I like being able to predict it, though.
I will never go back on the pill though. It dulled my spirit and seriously diminished my sex drive. I know this because when I stopped taking it, I felt like a whole new person.
Posted in Misc | Tagged cycle, fertility, tmi | Comments Off on here comes tmi
Shopping around online for Freya’s future twin bed, I stumbled upon a website selling “Pacific Rim” wood furniture. And this is one of their beds.
That will look familiar to anyone who has been in my bedroom, heheh. Yeah, it’s the bed in our guest room, which I bought in 1999 in San Francisco and knew really nothing about except that I liked the headboard and I could afford it because it was the floor model in the store. So now I know my bed is solid maple, eco-friendly, and was made in Oregon. And it now retails for over $600, so that will help in setting the price on Craigslist later this year.
It gets odder (to me). Because I kept scrolling and saw that indeed, this is also the company that made Freya’s crib. Which I bought when I was pregnant, thinking for some reason that she would actually sleep in it (ha). It’s a gorgeous piece of furniture. Thankfully, it converts into a bench, where I’m guessing she will store her dolls 🙂
So why not complete the circle and have a bed to match the bench. I am thinking this one would be great.
I know it’s a quality product and will last her until she’s 18, so it’s worth it to me to spend money on it. And I’m actually making some money of my own (!) lately, selling some handbags and jewelry online.
I want her furniture to be solid wood whenever possible. Pressboard/particleboard actually off-gasses formaldehyde fumes over time. Can’t have that.
While in the shower this morning, I thought to myself, why am I still having skin problems, at my age? I mean, I don’t have big red flaring erupting pimples, just an overabundance of clogged pores and the little bumps they cause. I don’t have smooth skin, maybe never have (well, except that time I was on Accutane. Glorious, fetus-deforming Accutane).
Anyway, I wondered, as I often do, if it could be something in my diet. Relative to the “typical” American diet, mine is pretty healthy. No fast food, limited junk food, no sodas, extremely limited high fructose corn syrup (if any at all), lots of homemade food, whole foods, good ingredients, small portions, and so on. I am overall a healthy woman and if I am overweight at all, it’s only by 5 or 10 pounds, which I would only lose to make my clothing fit a little better, and I probably could lose if I had the time to work out 5 times a week.
So what is it about my diet that could be affecting my skin? I started thinking about the modern human diet and how totally different it is from the diet our bodies evolved over thousands of years to eat. Not very long ago, humans didn’t even have agriculture, so no grains, no dairy. In fact, people native to our continent lived on the natural human diet only five hundred years ago. Native Americans subsisted on meat, fish, eggs, and the plants they found in their environment — berries, nuts, wild fruit, mushrooms, root vegetables, and so on. No wheat, no rice, no milk.
I wonder how my Western European digestive system would do on this diet, the diet of my ancestors. Europe has had agriculture for much longer than North America, but even ten thousand years is hardly enough time for evolution to catch up to the human diet. Most African and Asian people have a hard time tolerating dairy because it wasn’t introduced very long ago into their diet. It is easiest for Western Europeans to digest it. But it’s still not a natural food for us to eat. Our bodies have done their best to adapt, something the human body is perhaps best at.
It then occurred to me that if I were to try to eat a natural human foods, that I would be eating some of the most expensive food available. Unfair. Meat, fish, whole nuts, berries… definitely not as cheap as cereal and pasta and diet pepsi.
I don’t know if this has anything to do with my skin, who knows it could just be dry winter air. But it is something to think about anyway.
Posted in Cooking and Food, Health and Fitness | Tagged agriculture, berries, nuts, prehistoric, skin | Comments Off on hunter gatherer
Freya points and points to something on the kitchen island.
“Dah? Dah?!”
“Do you want an apple? Bread? Toast? A magazine? The mixer? The oven mitt? A dish towel? The rest of your cereal?”
Well it turned out she wanted the dish towel.
It will be so awesome when she’s a little more articulate. Less frustration for both of us!
Posted in Freya | Comments Off on lost in translation
Freya seems to have made a significant recovery. When she woke up close to 9am, her temp was down to 100, and she was very cheerful.
Now we are playing in the living room and she just opened her bunny book again to the snow page, and went to look quite wistfully out into the backyard.
Posted in Freya | Tagged fever | Comments Off on getting better
It took fifteen months, but Freya has her first fever. I realize that we are fortunate that it took this long. She’s had one (maybe two?) 24-hour sniffle attacks before this. In general she is an exceptionally healthy baby. I am filled to the brim with gratitude for that.
Anyway I woke up at 4am this morning and held her close. I noticed that her hand felt hot. I wondered if it was because she had been laying on it. I felt her other hand, then her foot, then her head. All hot. She wasn’t crying or showing any other symptoms. I let her nurse a while, then she delatched and said “mama. mama.” Brian went downstairs to fetch her water bottle and the ear thermometer.
She drank some water (so glad she loves water), and then I attempted to take her temp with the ear thermometer. I don’t really trust that thing. I tested it on myself: 99 degrees. Ok whatever. Finally got a read on Freya: 102. As I suspected. We all lay back down and I gave her more milk. She went to sleep with her back to me. I love to spoon my little one.
I had dreams after that, of being in a small airplane with her and Brian while it rained outside. Then a dream of being at the doctor with her and taking her temp a few times until it read normal. This definitely got right into my subconscious.
She’s still warm, I am letting her sleep as long as she likes. When she wakes up, more water, then I’ll offer her something good to eat, like apple sauce. I hope she has an appetite. We do have a doc appointment Monday, hopefully this thing will have run its course by then.
This makes me so glad we co-sleep. If she was off in a crib in another room, I would have had no idea at all. She’s not old enough to articulate that anything’s wrong. When she’s older and in her own bed, it will be easy for her to call out for me and tell me she doesn’t feel good.
Posted in Freya | Tagged co-sleeping, dreams, fever | Comments Off on burning up
As you can tell, Freya is a solemn and miserable child. 😉
She is fifteen months old today.
Yesterday we took a walk along the waterfront in our town, which is one of her favorite places to go. There are always numerous birds of all kinds around, and in fact yesterday we spotted a very large gray heron standing on the rocks near the pier (it was low tide). When you see those birds fly you can’t help but see the connection with the pterodactyl.
We also looked at ducks and gulls and crows, as usual, as well as a few passing dogs. Freya is just fascinated with animals in general, and why not. They are all fantastic creatures to her.
As we walked along the waterfront I had this huge sense of peace and happiness and gratitude, that I get to have this time with my little baby, showing her the world, enjoying the perfect sunny/cloudy winter weather, looking out at the rippling water and boats together. I realized how much I will miss this time as she grows up, but I know that when she is older we’ll have even more fun sharing it together, actually communicating with each other, finally.
Posted in Freya, Videos | Tagged birds, lol | Comments Off on let’s make some noise