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June 8, 2003
Wednesday, June 4th, 2003
There’s something wrong when a person who’s bedrested does not have time to get on the computer. I deserve a lecture up one side and down the other because I’ve been doing more than is probably legal, half because my blood pressure is holding well with activity, I’m not at a medicatable level yet, and half because I can’t sit still for beans. Not when there’s so much that has to be done, and if I go at it slowly, cautiously, I can make headway. And the other problem is I’m just not so interested in getting on the computer. Like it kills time from more productive endeavors, or is it just that we set it up in a position that it’s physically uncomfortable to use? T’was a lot more fun when I could get on at lunch at work while rain pelted at my window, and not even my own time was wasted. Or maybe when I’m still a couple weeks from the baby and everything’s ready, I’ll catch up. I have at least a hundred million things to do.
I’m officially a soccer mom. For a couple days before his first practice, we pumped up the Brandanator. As it got closer and closer to becoming real, he started to fall apart. He didn’t think he would go because he would be too tired to play or it would be too hot to run. Or the other kids already knew how to play and he didn’t. Over and over I told him he was going to be fantastic and more important, he was going to have so much fun. We showed up at his first practice with everything but mosquito repellent and it was cute to see these boys slyly checking each other out. A few of them nervous, a couple dying to run wild, and all not quite sure what was expected of them. When it ended so soon, Brandan was crushed. We pulled in our driveway and Brandan shot out the door to go ring the doorbells of the neighbors. HIS kids HAD to know he was playing soccer now. He ran back, across their front lawns, hollering for us to pull the cars out of the garage, he wanted to practice in there. Later that night in his bath, Brandan had the perfect name for the baby. Danny. We should name the new baby after the coach we’d just spent less than an hour with. It was maybe a day before Brandan broke the news to Remo. After four adamant years, he thought maybe he would be a soccer player and not a working man anymore. Who knew.
Now three days later we went to the first game and laughed till it hurt. The under five year old boys scurried around in a pack or a hive from one side to another, off the field, near the road, into the trees. They scored three goals for the other team before they understood where their net was. Down eight to zero, Brandan torpedoed down the field and scored the team’s first goal, his very first real goal. When he turned around and I saw how incredibly proud, how impressed and excited he was, I started to cry. I was so flippan happy and proud for him. Brandan came home and called everyone he could think of, though he was so wired, I had to get on after and explain he’d just scored his first goal. At his next game a week later, when he scored five more goals, soccer became his life.
But that’s the really fun part about Brandan’s life right now. On the flip side, we’re working through some getting big issues right now that are tough. Last Friday, Brandan had an information session for kindergarten. When I went up to bed the night before, Brandan was talking in his sleep and though I couldn’t understand what he was saying, I could tell by his expression he was stressed. At three o’clock in the morning he stood beside my bed crying his eyes out. He didn’t want to go to the principal’s office (?), he didn’t want to go to school at all. We cuddled, soothed and tried to reassure. Remember soccer Brandan, you were so scared and look at how much you love it now? Brandan was actually fairly excited when we got ready for the session and he looked so darn cute. A Gap ad. In one of the classrooms, we got sorted out quickly, parents went with the principal, the kids stuck behind so the teachers could assess them. Brandan was at the first table, closest to the teachers who won’t speak any English to him for the next three years of his life. Though I thought I’d prepared him for it, even I didn’t know they would be so strict. I came back into the classroom and Brandan was the only one without a drinkbox. Not a biggie, right? It killed me. He didn’t know what they were talking about so he shook his head no. Then he watched the rest of them drink theirs.
Brandan turns five in July. Sitting at the table with him were three boys, two are turning six in October, one in November. It hit me that he will always be one of the younger ones in his grade. Strike one. Strike two was that we hadn’t placed him in a formal learning. program. Brandan spent the first three years of his life with Remo’s mother. Her only priority was that he ate well (they’re Italian) and that he was safe. He watched a lot of T.V., but he was safe. When we moved him to Annabelle’s, I thought it was the perfect environment. He would have the other kids and stimulation, but on the other hand, if he wanted to flop on a sofa, he could. I rationalized this little guy had the rest of his life to be in school, for right now, I wanted him to just have fun. Strike three was language. He doesn’t speak French and I know it’s not going to come easy for him. As if it’s not hard enough to do all that new learning, but making it in a harder language you don’t know? I keep hearing it takes five months and the kids catch on. Those five months could fly by or never end.
I know Brandan better than anyone in this world. Though he never ceases to amaze and surprise me, I can measure his strengths and weaknesses pretty fairly, pretty honestly. He’s physically coordinated. Brandan was potty trained, overnight even, before he turned two. By a year he could run up the stairs without holding on, by three and a half he could ride a two-wheeler without training wheels. Give him something to build, give him something to fix and his logic is impressive. But make him sit at the table and write out his alphabet and he gets ants in his pants. He’ll stall or escape. It kills him actually to concentrate on something. What I would think is easy to catch on to, couldn’t even permeate his reasoning. Sometimes I wonder if it’s me, am I pushing him too hard? Expecting too much from him? Am I placing unreasonable standards or worse, too much pressure on him? Should I have started working with him younger? Am I comparing him to other kids? I know I feel guilty because I coulda shoulda didn’t do more. It’s not that I want him to be the best at anything, though when he does something really well, or new, I’m seriously proud of him, I just want to make life easier. If I could just figure out where his blocks are, or how to wire that GOT IT connection. My aunt made a good point when she said we should give him associations. She told him she remembers we’re in the month of June because of June bugs. Poof, he can remember June now too. Though he hasn’t got a clue what a June bug is. For days we sang our phone number, he’d sing along with me, but when I’d ask him out of the blue, what our number is, he’d blurt out a bunch of numbers. He could never remember the second digit. Four hundred times we said it together but it won’t stick. Yet he instinctively knows his rights from his lefts and I have to make an L with my hand or I’m lost.
At soccer practice this week I gained a little more insight. When the kids are in a huddle getting instructions from the coach, he can’t sit still and listen. He’s either fiddling with one of the other kids, and there’s two that always fiddle with him, or he’s running after the ball he was actually not supposed to kick. Yet. So he’s not actually doing the exercise correctly, yet he does a fine job of mucking it up for the other kids who listened. Can a child have selective attention deficit? Does he just have to learn how to concentrate? Just???
How many times have I heard bigger kids, bigger problems? There are a lot of kids in our neighborhood and maybe because we were a construction site for a while, it seems like all the boys hang out here. Maybe a week ago, one of the neighbors took Remo aside and warned him about one of the boys that started coming around. Older than the rest of the boys, she said he’s a bad influence on the other kids, that we should not let him play with Brandan. All of a sudden he’s here all the time, and now that I’m sensitized, I’m seeing there’s a few other kids I’d just as soon the young and impressionable Brandan not hang around with. Just today, Brandan came charging in the house because the older boy had asked him to go him a coke. Though I always vowed to have a home all kids would feel welcome in, I said no to the pop. I offered juice and then I insisted the kids had to play outside. Remo, who was outside with him, shrugged a “what are we going to do about this’ shrug. How do we get rid of that kid, without hurting his feelings and without giving Brandan mixed messages (there are some fantastic boys next door who are a little older, who are great with him). Man alive, it just gets more complicated!
EEEEK, look at the time! Did I ever get off on enough tangents. I have a very important ultrasound to get to! With my best Arnold impression…I’ll be back.
Sunday, June 8th, 2003
I’ve shipped the lot of them off to Walmart with a list this long of things to pick up. Walmart on a Sunday, with both kids, when you can’t stand shopping? Remo didn’t even say bye.
Last Saturday morning, it hit me that I hadn’t really felt the baby moving. I knocked back my vitamin with some orange juice and waited for my ten movements in an hour. Next hour I tried a banana. The hour after that I went for Oreos. At one point I counted what I thought was four movements, but it could’ve been contractions. I was at the same weeks with Matthew and though deep down I told myself what are the odds it would happen again, I called the case room. They asked me to come right now. If you’re not already nervous, come right now peaks a little anxiety.
When I got there it took 22 minutes to pick up the heartbeat. They had no problem finding mine from the placenta but the high baby one would pop on the monitor for two seconds at a time. The nurse kept telling me over and over not to worry, it was just in a funny position but it was taking so long my eyes welled up. Another nurse came in and suggested I lie on my side. With my back to the wall I held the monitor in the only place they could get it to work and reserved my other hand for the button I had to click when the baby moved. Except that it wasn’t moving, maybe if I ate something I could set it off. In my bag behind me, I had a bottle of water and a peach and as I craned my neck to figure out how I was going to get them out, I noticed the spider right there on the wall. All I have to say is I’m grateful I didn’t have an audience when I was trying to shoo the thing away, behind me, hooked up to monitors, with no hands. Or even five minutes later when I used my teeth to try to open the water. I looked like I was starring in a wet t-shirt contest.
A couple hours later the baby’s heart rate had fluctuated a satisfactory amount but I was having decent contractions every three minutes. The nurse, who was with me for Kaillan’s birth and I adored, brought in supper. She was sure I was going to be admitted. All I thought was no, it’s impossible, this is all wrong. A couple hours later Dr. Bray said I could go home, I had an irritable uterus and I needed to keep on bed resting lest something real start.
Wednesday was the big ultrasound and I was doing it at the same hospital as with Matthew, at the same time even. Again, I know odds were near impossible that I would go there and they would tell me the heart had just stopped, but I couldn’t help my apprehension. We got there, and I explained as I was getting up on the table that it was at this ultrasound that we were told our would be stillborn, would it be possible for her to tell us first off the heart was fine? She put my anxiety to rest immediately. Everything about the baby appeared normal except for the bilateral pylectasis on the kidneys (6mm). All my babies had it, though this time it was a little more than the others. At that moment I wanted to know what it was, as much as Remo didn’t want to know. So instead of gluing my eyes to the screen where I think I’m actually good enough to read a lot of it, I spent all that precious time with the technician trying to negotiate a way for her to give me a sign. Squeeze my hand if it’s a boy. She was new and didn’t know what to do, instead, darting her eyes back and forth between Remo and I. So officially, we don’t know. For the first time I leaned a little more girlish, though that kidney thing is much more common in boys. And Remo and everyone else who knows me, swears it’s a boy. And we’re in a boy year. I came home and started washing the baby laundry (I didn’t want to jinx myself by starting it before the ultrasound) and almost everything I have is pink.
The next morning was my date with Bray. Julie said bottoms off and I thought again??? We do this every week, we have to stop meeting like this. BP 140/85, fantastic, I thought smugly. Then as he did his check he said the baby is zero station. I asked what that meant, was I dilated? The head is engaged and he wasn’t touching the cervix for fear he would set something off. Then he said the baby has to stay in another four weeks (I’m technically 33 weeks though it’s backdated a week to 32). Too early to be smooth sailing. Babies born at the hospital I’m delivering at before 35 weeks are picked up by a medical team from the Children’s hospital. It’s not an optimal setting for a preemie. So now I’m confined to not moving bed rest. I hate it, my hips are raw, I’m bored and my wheels are turning a million miles an hour with the three thousand things I need to do, but none of that matters. I’d hate myself worse if I did something stupid and had to live with it for the rest of my life. I just read for every day the baby stays in me, it cuts three more in intensive care.
And at this very moment in my life I’m going to KILL Remo. He came back from Walmart and decided to get back to work outside the house. He’s right now laying a cobblestone terrace in the back yard and while I know it’ll be beautiful, the problem I have is he’s also watching the children. Kaillan has come into the house crying for one thing or another maybe ten times. Brandan is who knows where. I am up and down like a yo yo and I think I’ve mentioned to him four hundred times I’m not allowed to be. He knows it, but it’s inconvenient. So as I’m typing away, a BMW pulls in front of the house and the couple got out and studied our house. This isn’t new to us and I’m telling you it makes me crazy. Here we worked our butts of building this house, our home, and I can’t tell you how many times it’s been videotaped, photographed and copied. People have knocked on our doors and Remo’s told them where to get every material we used. So Remo’s in the front talking to the couple and I could hear Kaillan crying in the back. So I went to the window and asked him where Kaillan was. He said she’s ok, she’s right here and kept on talking. I said no, Remo, she’s crying in the back, can you go get her. He went reluctantly. Next thing you know he had the couple in our house, giving them a tour! It made me crazy. So while they were downstairs smiling a hello, I was over the banister telling Remo this is not an appropriate time, I could see he wanted to die. They didn’t dare come upstairs. I think they could sense my mood. When they left, Remo said they want to buy our house and when opportunity knocks…I say tell them to stuff it. I wonder how much of it is hormonal.
Now pregnancy wise, I’m in decent shape ‘cept for being big huge. I’ve gained nearly 35 pounds and while I joke a lot about being so rolly polly, I’m still reasonably confident I’ll shake it off after. Maybe not as fast as all those other times, but a gal can hope, no?
Life has a way of evening itself out. Remo’s down there trying to fix lunch and he has no control, they’re all falling apart, and I can just hear him wiping the perspiration off his forehead. Go kids, go.
So last week we moved Kaillan out of the crib and into a real bed and she had no problem with it. Though it was a big girl move, she looked so small in her four-poster bed. They say you have to do it at least six weeks before the new baby and now I ask her all the time if we should put that new baby in the baby bed. I wonder often how she’ll be when life as we know it is turned upside down. I’ll never forget that day just before Matthew was born when we were walking along with Brandan between us and I felt horrible for him. So guilty because he had no idea how much his life was going to change. The only thing I feel this time is that our life will soon be fuller, perfect even if the baby is healthy.
The keyboard just fell off the bed for the millionth time. That it still works is amazing.
I posted a few a couple favorite recipes on the board, but I think you have to scoot to page two to find them. I learned a couple things this week that may be interesting to you. If you want a perfect peach and you don’t live in the know, I discovered how to perfect them. Buy perfect, firm ones and ripen them either in a bowl or in a brown paper bag. I find the bag goes faster. In a couple days they’ll be perfect and then you can put them in the fridge. It’s impossible to segue to my next tip. Know anybody with thick, discolored toenails? I understood the only way to cure it was oral medication but I just read that amazingly enough, Vicks Vaporub rubbed on your toenails twice a day til the nails grow out will cure it too.
It’s grand central station here today with people visiting left and right and the place is a pigsty. You know it’s really bad when you can’t even muster up an excuse or an apology and you’re on bed rest and just had a shower and the bottoms of your feet are black.
I give up.
And I’m filthy stinking jealous of all those people who can just walk out of my filthy house into that incredible cloudless day, out to a great restaurant or even just out for a stroll. Watch it be winter by the time I get a turn.
Allisun
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