by grace

Bethany kindly suggested that I write an entry catching up, and so here it is. (If you aren't on Facebook: we're expecting child #2, Lord willing, in September.)

Motherhood has been an adjustment far beyond anything I expected. There are so many ways that I am not the same person as I was nine months ago.

Today I had about ten minutes of my own, to do with as I pleased, to have without constant interruption: more than usual, not less. Today I held Ellie and danced so slowly to a lullaby and she laid her head on my shoulder, and everything was perfect. Today Ellie sat across from me at the table and grabbed the tablecloth and spontaneously played peek-a-boo maybe fifty times without tiring. We laughed so hard she got the hiccups. She does that at least once a day.

I have lost all concept of sleep, become a chronic complainer about such, and I haven't been out without Ellie except for twice last July. I've been able to watch exactly one movie on a real television screen since she was born.

Even though she doesn't talk yet, I already love my baby girl more than most of the people I thought I loved the most.

I am terrified that I won't be able to love this second baby as much as Ellie, and even more terrified that I might love Ellie less when she's not my constant and sole companion.

This business of suddenly having absolutely NO time of my own has been a huge adjustment. I think if I knew ahead of time what I was getting into--just that part--I probably wouldn't have wanted children. The me-before would have been totally freaked and absolutely couldn't have dealt. As I suppose I didn't, for the first while of her life. It feels endless, like a gulf you'll drown in before you get out of it, and you're desperate to not do anything but the bare minimum of everything in hopes of scratching out a tiny little section of Time of Your Own. And then, one day, it suddenly starts to click. Suddenly it's better to sit next to your tiny human and play with them than it is to go do something on the computer or read a book. Suddenly it's the most peaceful thing in the world to curl up next to them and share their nap, instead of using the finally-free time to do something for oneself.

It amazes me how God has created us: how adaptable, how purposeful. I am becoming a person I never imagined I could be, never would have wanted to be--and loving it.

I keep having these plans to write: to write entries, here or there; to finish my novel; to write the non-fiction book that's been percolating in my mind these past few years; to write many things, like I always planned.

And then I don't have time, of course.

And then I wonder if I'd rather forget it all, throw myself completely and utterly unto motherhood and wifehood and in the end have enjoyed both more despite leaving no more words behind. It's strange because I've always written: my paper journals stretch back to 1988, which must have been about the time I learned how to hold a pencil. And to think that all those pages and pages might have really come to a close in 2007 without me realizing it! It's slightly surreal.

I posted this on Facebook, too, but I'm not sure if everybody local (or who drives through occasionally) is on FB.

We have two monitors we're getting rid of. (Not sure if that means trash, freecycle, or craigslist. That's more Seth's department.) I don't think we're really concerned about making anything out of them, and they've been sitting on the landing of our stairs long enough that I'm about ready to put them on the curb anyway.

Both work, I think both are 16". One's off-white/beige (Dell), the other is black/charcoal-gray (eMachines).

For the taking, if anyone's interested. Wilmington, Delaware.

( completely unrelated... )

In case anyone was wondering or offended at my lack of comments: I haven't been on LJ regularly since the early part of the summer, and that's not very likely to change in the near future. I hope I haven't missed any "say you read or I'll unfriend you!" posts; if you're on my flist that means I read your entries--when I'm here. I just haven't been here.

Feel free to email. Also, I'm doing slightly better at being "on" Facebook, if anyone wants to keep up with me there.

I'm working on a blog of Ellie's own where hopefully Seth and I can write some.  It's not quite ready for public perusal yet, but once it is, anyone annoyed by these posts will be happy at their disappearance and anyone who would like more newsy posts may be happy to read more--I'm trying to update the other one every day (for her distant relatives).

She says the funniest things.  I know it's all totally coincidence, random syllables thrown together, but as I'm sitting here typing this, she just said "doo-wop!" and last night she said something that sounded just like "I love you!"

Some pictures we took of Ellie today after we went on a walk...( under the cut... )

One thing I've been absolutely thrilled with are cloth diapers. Right now we're going through about 20-25 diapers a day (she pees like mad and screams when she's the teeniest bit wet--I'd scream too), so you can imagine how much it would cost if we were doing disposables! :-o I use prefolds and Bummis covers (I like the Super Brite best). Things I like:

• They're really painless to wash. I have a plastic trashbin -- no need for a full-fledged diaper pail because they won't sit in there long enough to stink -- and a mesh laundry bag inside. I just toss the diapers in, mostly untreated except I do spray the poopy ones with Bac Out to keep stains minimal. No water in the pail, no soaking, no rinsing. Then when it's laundry time, I pull the bag out, dump the diapers in the washer, and drop the bag in after it. One wash cycle later: clean diapers. I even have a front-loading washer, which isn't as good for this sort of thing, and it works just fine. Note that I never have to touch dirty diapers anymore than someone with disposables does.
• They're really cheap. $124 starting costs from where I ordered them, and I should only have to make that order twice--once for newborn/small size, and once for standard size. Two orders, even if we have seven kids like we plan. Washing costs are really minimal, too, and while drying certainly isn't, they're supposed to dry really well on a line. If I had a line. Compare that to disposables!
• They fit better. Disposables have elastic. Cloth (at least prefolds) don't. Which means it takes a little more practice to get them to fit, but once you do it right, they fit exactly. And they don't leave marks on her little legs.
• They don't really take more time. The downside is that you have to put on two pieces--the prefold and then the cover--but it's so easy and only takes a few seconds more than disposables. And I'm actually better at putting on the cloth; with the disposables I find I have to run my finger around the leg to get the frilly elastic going the right way and not bunched up. The cloth ones almost always go on right on the first try.
  
• They rarely have diaper rash, encourage earlier potty training, don't have nasty chemicals like disposables, and they're much, much better for the environment.

We also use cloth wipes -- if you're using cloth diapers and washing anyway, why not? -- but that's not a significant savings over the life of one child. :-) But it is great to have control over what chemicals you're putting on your child's skin!

The biggest downside? Clothes aren't made to fit over cloth diapers. I've run into one little outfit already that just won't fit, even though it's plenty big enough for Eliana, the waist isn't big enough for her diaper. :-(

What's the cheapest place to order photos (to be shipped)? Preferably with reasonable quality, although I would think that would be more or less uniform across the board? I'm mainly interested in 4x6 or 3x5, although maybe some bigger ones too.

Thanks!

(I really am hoping to post at some point. I just have a very AWAKE baby. Seriously--she takes at most one short nap a day, and often takes none! And when she's awake, she's very frustrated that she can't move except scooting on her own, and pretty much wails unless we make sure she can see and play. This is presumably a thankful thing, as opposed to a comatose infant, but it makes for a lot of work for mommy!)

( some more pictures )

(I'm finally more or less up and about, so new posts and long-overdue comments should be coming soon. Also: I've been trying to keep up with my friends page, although I haven't really gotten to comment.)

( Pictures, of course, 'cause I'm a happy momma. )

• A translation of an insightful interview. I'd seen snippets of this interview, but not the whole thing.


• Some evidence that the ad program is sometimes inappropriate.


• A brief explanation of sort of the "hidden" side of plus accounts. I have a plus account, and I'm very much the sort of person who actually reads TOSes, and I don't recall this being publicized. Rather stinks if you're into privacy at all. Also, LJ was one of the participating companies in the Facebook/Beacon fiasco.


• How do you feel about people knowing when you've visited their journal page?


• Lastly, but certainly not least, an overview of a number of the censorship issues LJ has had recently.

Just some food for thought.

I love this pattern, Herringbone Baby Bootees, from 50 Baby Bootees to Knit, but I used the easier-to-find Lion Microspun yarn on size 3 needles, which made the booties about six month size. (And I'm posting about it because I searched for ages to try to find an example of someone doing that, to find out what needle to use and what size booties would result, which I couldn't find. So here 'tis for future Googlers.) One thing I really liked about the Microspun is that the result is really shiny, and fancier than cotton yarn would have been.

Baby booties are a good first project, IMHO, if any of the other pregnant women (or friends!) on my flist are interested in picking up knitting. They're nice and small, so it's a small monetary investment for the yarn and a small time investment. And they're so cute! It's fun. It's more interesting knitting than say, a scarf, too, because you aren't knitting the same stitch over and over and over.

Okay, so I started working on this photoblog thing last night (I'd share but right now it's TOTALLY unsecured), which is going quite well except I have two questions for the unsuspecting public:

EXIF data is like what camera was used to take the picture, exposure settings, etc. There are a bajillion different fields and it seems silly to include all of them, especially because many of them don't make any sense or seem duplicated.
Poll #1150167
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 2

What exif data would you want to see on a photoblog--either as a viewer/end-user or as a photographer?

What anti-spam comment features would be preferable?

Realistically, on the spam issue, probably release 0.1 won't have anything other than the option to require a log-in (which is what I personally would use for a baby-photo blog). The other options would be added only later--most of them aren't really time-consuming. Except Akismet, which is elegant but looks like it might be a major pain and somebody wrote a PHP class for it so it wouldn't be time-consuming either!

Anyway, I'm 99% sure I'm going to GPL the result; definitely going to release it at least. I'm pretty happy with the way it's turning out so far.

It's a tutorial on how to make a fleece wearable blanket (otherwise known as the probably-trademarked "sleepsack").

Please check it out!  One on a diaper stacker will be coming eventually.

Okay, new plan. I think I am going to try to throw a photo blog thing together before Eliana gets here.

This is sort of part todo list and part potential feature list; I'm sharing it at this point to invite feedback.  :-)  FWIW, I am planning to "release" the result, although I'm still wavering between licenses.  And my main problem is moving from "bare minimum I need to do the things I want" (which usually means no "edit" page because I'd rather change the db itself) to "actual program with installer which doesn't require knowledge of any code."

• I'm thinking the "new post" page would let you select a title, a primary image (which would appear first, and also be used as the post's thumbnail in archives), and additional images.  Descriptions and tags for each individual image, and a single "text post" area which would ideally not be used very often (and probably not even be expanded by default).
• Adding video option later.  Probably what would happen is that the images and videos would be stored the same way, and the view script, not the upload script, would look to see what kind of filetype it was and what needed to be done to display it properly.  But I have never done videos online--not even YouTube--so I'm not going to tackle this one off the bat.
  
• Admin options initially very basic: default picture size; default thumbnail size; maybe some theme color choices.  (Not doing theme support anytime in the near future--settling for separating content and style and leaving the "themed" pages well-commented enough that someone who knows HTML should be able to change it easily enough.)  Comments on or off.  (Not doing anti-spam at this point, either, although it would be high on the list to be added later.)
• The end-user first page would display the title / date / primary image / primary image description / text post (if any), and a row (or more) of thumbnails for the secondary images.  Secondary images would load in the background, thumbnail images would change from partial to full opacity when each image was loaded; clicking on an image would swap it in where the primary image is, and its description would replace the primary image description.  In other words, it would work somewhat like SimpleViewer, but no Flash, and obviously a very different and more customizable layout.  Comments would not be loaded by default, rather a clickable option and they would then load and expand without reloading the page.  Similar option to load EXIF data.
• Later addition: a sort of "favorites" section where the user could add photos as they browse, accumulating in a sort of shopping cart fashion, and once they were finished, they would click "download" which would give them three options: download for email (at a smallish display resolution), download for wallpaper (maybe two options for size here), or download for print (at 4x6" 300 dpi resolution).  Then they'd get a zip file of all their "favorite" photos at the appropriate resolution.  This would obviously have an on/off feature in the admin settings, since it's perfectly appropriate for a baby blog but quite inappropriate for professional photography.
• Archives: probably drop-downs by month; the archive page itself would be just thumbnails of the primary image of each post.
• Tags: yes, but not categories (i.e., a text field not multiple choice).  Probably tags per post not per image, although maybe add tags per image and display the sum of all tags per post (so, for instance, a post with one b&w photo might appear to be tagged "b&w", but clicking the tag would only display actual b&w photos, not all photos from that post).
• Pretty URLs.  Probably won't get done until everything else does, unless I run out of out time (I want the URLs by the time she's born to be finalized, so I won't break any bookmarks.)
• Probably (might as well) will incorporate some kind of really simple password-to-access system since I'll be wanting one anyway.  Ideally would integrate this with the "favorites-to-download" section mentioned above, so certain users could have downloading privileges and others wouldn't.  Option to turn all this off, since probably most people want public blogs, not private ones.  Oh, and integrate with comment system, obviously; probably a good anti-spam lead-in.

I've never written mod_rewrite rules of blog-level complexity before, so I'm a little intimidated by that, and I've never tried to read EXIF data at all, so I'm hoping that's easy.

Lastly, I'm always a little freaked out by the idea of releasing anything, because I have no education whatsoever and haven't ever worked with another coder.  (Seriously: all the people I worked with at my job were totally non-programmers, and despite writing thousands and thousands of lines, none of them were ever read by anyone other than me.  Kind of scary, actually.)  Kind of like somebody who learned English from a dictionary but hasn't ever spoken with a native--I could do things totally unconventionally and stupidly (although I do read: SQL injection and all that) and I've never had anyone look at my code to find out.  So if I do put anything out there, you people who can read the source have to promise not to laugh at me too hard.  :-\

One of the things I plan to do once Ellie is born is take LOTS of pictures, and post them online (probably password-protected*) so Seth's parents and my extended family can keep up.  *This doesn't need to be a feature, though, so long as the presence of an .htaccess file won't screw things up.

The only problem is I don't know anything about photoblog software!  Two I had looked at before but haven't tried yet are Pixelpost and Pictorialis.  Here's what I'm looking for:

• Something I can put on my own web space.  Because I'm a control freak.  It'd be super if it was in PHP so I could hack away at it, but that's not a deal breaker.
  
• Something I can do multiple photos in one day if I want to.  So anything that's like here's-the-photo-of-the-day, that only puts one photo on a page, would just not work.  I'd like the option to do album of the day.  What would be really fantabulous is if it had a pretty layout like Pixelpost for a single photo, and swapped out the photo for SimpleViewer/PostcardViewer/AutoViewer if I uploaded more than one.
  
• Something that will let me add however much or little HTML to the day's post as I want to.  Most of the time it would be a description, but sometimes I might want to say a lot!
  
• Something with video support.  Although this is rather implied in the previous bullet, but it would be super-nice if "video" was a third option to go with "single photo" and "album of the day."
  
• Something that magically resizes images.  Preferably such that I can set it up to be something like 800x600 on sort of "first glance," with a click-through to something higher but still lower than the original.

I'm tempted to write my own--this doesn't seem like a lot of features, and apart from brushing up on ImageMagick it should be pretty straightforward--but since the weeks are counting down and I seem to be getting more busy, not less, I thought I'd ask first.  :-D  Anyone have any ideas?  The multiple photos / single photo option is where I'm having trouble when I look at existing solutions.

Edit:  What I'm looking for is something that looks a lot like Pixelpost (i.e., one day's "entry" per page), but with the option to do multiple images.  Either by displaying a Flash or Javascript album like SimpleViewer, Lightbox, etc. instead of a single image, or with a little bar of thumbnails under the main image that upon clicking would be swapped in (Ajax-y) where the main image is.

• First Banking Center offers 6.01% APY on a checking account, refunds on ATM fees, etc.  No minimum balance; frankly sounds great to me except the catch is that you have to make 10 transactions (e.g. debit card) per month, so it's not so good if you're in the charge-everything-you-can-to-get-rewards category.
• I mentioned Mint a few months ago; Mint is still cool but I find myself using Yodlee far more often.  It's not very snazzy, Ajaxified, or otherwise cool, but now that I'm juggling a bajillion different rewards cards (with too many due dates for me to want to keep up with in my head) Yodlee's features have won me over.  There's a neat calendar view where you can see all your bills in one place (on the calendar), and Yodlee can even automatically pay most bills.  It's also better at handling investment accounts, and can even manage airline rewards and stuff.  There's all kinds of features I rarely use, as well, such as a "credit card utilization chart" which lets you see at a glance how big your credit limits are in comparison to their current balances.
• You can monitor your "FAKO" score for free from Credit Karma. Doesn't correspond exactly with FICO, but it's neat to check and have a general idea of the state of things.

Also, I just got my latest iron count, and I'm up to halfway between the must-go-to-hospital point and the where-we-like-you-to-be point!  So much happiness there.  :-D  (I'm still anemic, but it's sufficiently better that they're going to stop monitoring it.  Which makes it only too tempting to stop taking the pukey iron pills, but I shall endeavor to be a good girl.  ;-))

Today I had the second ultrasound to check how the placenta position is going.  According to the tech, it's all better.  Woo-hoo!  (I'll feel a bit better about this once the birth center agrees with her, but I'm still very happy in the meantime.) And baby girl is still a girl and still doing perfectly.

On Friday I had my glucose test, which I passed (I was sure I was going to fail because I am a sugar addict), and my hemoglobin/hemocrit re-test, which I failed miserably.  Apparently despite trying to raise my iron levels, I'm even more anemic than I was back when I was throwing up all the time and eating very poorly.  Now I'm taking extra iron supplements, trying to eat iron-rich foods, and... I'm worse.  :-/  This actually has as much potential to screw up the whole birth plan as the placenta previa did; they won't take me if I'm anemic.

But.  I did a lot of research tonight, and I think perhaps the reason my iron count has plummeted is because 1) I was eating a lot of vitamin C when I had the worst morning sickness, which has a HUGE positive impact on iron absorption, and 2) I wasn't eating quite a few iron inhibitors that I am eating (in ignorance) now, mainly tea and calcium.  Also I've really cut back on meat, because I don't like it very much and the whole ketosis thing freaked me out.  So the whole anemia thing is worrisome, but I am hopeful that if I eat a strict high-iron-absorption diet (instead of just high iron) that my levels will go back up.  And then perhaps I'd have more strength/energy as well; I figured I was tired just because of being pregnant, but it seems more likely that I'm tired because I'm anemic!

Anyway, my main point in posting is because I'm ( overwhelmed by the cuteness. ;-) )

P.S.  I have been horrible at commenting over the past few months, and honestly am not much likely to get better soon.  Many of you have posted entries that really deserved a response, and I read it too long after the fact.  I apologize, and I wanted to let you know that I do read everything--I'm skimming a little more than usual because I just don't have the computer time, but I read everyone's entries.  Hopefully soon I'll be able to be a more active participant.

Watching the Republican debate last night was just... depressing.  This whole election is rather depressing, actually.  I remember in 2000 watching the debates and thinking that there were some candidates I agreed with more than others, but Bush didn't seem so horrible, either, when he got the nomination.  Now there are so many people on the stage that if they get the nomination, I'm having trouble seeing the point of even bothering to go vote in the general!

• Giuliani's policies make me wonder why he isn't just running on the Democratic ticket and be done with it.  Pro-abortion, pro-gun-control, etc.  Maybe fiscally more conservative than many of the other candidates, but socially liberal.  On the other hand, maybe he could draw some of the Democratic vote, which definitely isn't likely with many of his competitors.
• Huckabee is by far my least favorite candidate.  He's so inconsistent and there are so many things about him that just scream crook!  He's fiscally liberal, changes his positions, evades questions, and lies or misrepresents himself.  (Like saying "I have a theology degree!" at every turn, which isn't even true, but then protesting when moderators ask him religious questions and complaining that religion shouldn't be a consideration.)  I would like him better if he didn't claim to be a born-again evangelical--his record certainly throws that into doubt, and there are many instances where he had the chance to say something true and came out with something wishy-washy and evasive instead.  If you're going to leave Christ out of it, please get on with it instead of pandering to the religious right.
  
• McCain I like a little bit despite not agreeing with him on all kinds of things.  I wouldn't vote for him in a primary, but he does seem to talk fairly straight compared to many of the others.  But his views on Iraq and Iran and, to some extent, Israel, are quite grating and scary.  Not very strong on the 2nd amendment.
• Paul is not a very good public speaker.  But if you listen to the debates, he's really the only one saying anything different from anyone else, and he's the only one who actually talks about policies instead of just throwing around a bunch of catch phrases and pop issues.  I'm a libertarian, not a Republican, so obviously I agree with a lot of the policies he proposes--in particular non-interventionalism and delegation of most power to the states--but I can understand why people aren't sure how exactly a Paul presidency would work. It is hard to imagine.  But I hope he runs third party if (hope springs eternal) he loses the Republican nomination; a Republican candidate wouldn't be especially likely to win this time around, anyway, so it'd be a good year to vote on "conscience" and not worry about "wasting" a vote.
• Romney strikes me as mostly obnoxious.  He's a flip-flopper, a total politician.  He's more liberal fiscally and socially than I would like, but less so than some of the other Republicans.
  
• Thompson is a really good public speaker.  I consistently come away from the debates liking him, even when I don't agree with his positions.  I'm surprised he doesn't do better in the polls.  Some of the single best soundbites in the debate last night were from his podium--he made a few really good points.  Fiscally he's pretty conservative, he's more constitution-centered than anyone besides Paul, and socially he's more balanced than most of the other Republicans.  I don't agree with him on global policy, and some other points, but if he won the Republican nomination, I would still vote for him in the general.

So basically the only people I agree with at all are Ron Paul and... Ron Paul, although Fred Thompson would be next in line.  If Giuliani or Huckabee won the nomination, I don't think I would vote for them at all, and if McCain or Romney won the nomination I'm not sure what I'd do!  The saddest thing is that there aren't more constitutionalist/federalist/libertarian/old-school Republican candidates running.  Last night when they were collectively bemoaning the death of Reaganism (though really, do we want to hold Reagan up as the ideal?) I was sitting there thinking, yup, Republicans today are quite a different party than they were a few decades ago.  We're really due for a third party to come in instead.

Anyway, this is probably the only politics-related post I'll make; a number of people on my friends' list have made similar posts with the point to inform and not to start a debate.  I thought I'd join the fray.