express yourself

Labels: Artsy Fartsy Stuff, baby, daily life, encyclopedia of me meme

My time at home on maternity leave has whizzed by so far. Today Benjamin is 10 weeks old, so I'm halfway through my leave time. It is interesting how different I am at home than I am at work (at least, how different I feel). I've been puzzled by this for the five years since I first noticed it. It occurred to me the other day when I was taking a walk outside how good I feel when I'm not indoors. Everything about me inside brightens up, my brain is more awake, and I think and see things more, and...I'm just...happier! Maybe that is what is effecting me at work? Until I got my job at the hospital, I had spent every day of my life with a significant portion of my time spent outside. In every school I've been to, I had to go outside to walk from class to class - elementery school, high school, and college. We lived about 12 miles outside of town on 10 acres in the country, so there was always stuff we had or wanted to do outside.

Once I started working at the hospital seven years, I spent every day all day indoors. Being inside all day long, especially when I can't even see through a window, makes me feel like I'm very slowly dying - kind of like a flower wilting due to insufficient water and sunshine intake. Whenever I feel down, I always feel significantly better almost immediately upon walking out the door, no matter the weather. It just feels right.

I must admit that the thought of going back to work really does not thrill me. It's not the work, or the people - I do enjoy it, for what it is - but the whole corporate life, being inside all day, looking at numbers and figures, just does not appeal to me. It is not my passion. It makes me feel like I am missing life instead of living it. It is interesting to me how much women have shunned, some quite emphatically, the stay-at-home lifestyle. Our mothers worked so hard to make it into the "man's" corportate world, to be considered as equals in all ways including the workplace, to be seen as more than "just" a housewife and mother. This subject comes back relatively often in my conversations with my great friend Holly. We love being mothers, wives, and homemakers. I love to spend time with my family, care for my son, be helpmate to my husband, clean the house, cook delicious meals (or try), create beautiful things for the home or as gifts for loved ones, and everything that goes along with all this. I even enjoy laundering and folding my son's little outfits. We eat healthy homecooked meals, spend more time with our family and friends, get more exercise and fresh air, and are more involved in each other's lives. I love this. It makes me feel alive. Now, why haven't I felt this way for the last 7 years in my job? Do I have a bad attitude about my job? Do I need to make better use of my time, be more organized, work harder, or make better choices day-to-day? Or was this job really only meant to be temporary?

All people are made deliciously different. Which is wonderful. It is the spice of life. Some people want to work full-time in a job and setting like mine. But right now, I just can't imagine wanting to do that. And I guess that makes me feel guilty sometimes, like "not everyone gets the priviledge of staying at home to work as a wife and mom, somebody has to work at these places so they can run properly and provide the services the community needs, so I should just work and be grateful about it." But then I think that perhaps some people do not find what I do all day very appealing either. Let's see, today I have done several loads of laundry, washed our dishes, fed and changed my son multiple times, cooked dinner, picked up the house, wrote thank you notes, fed the cat, said hello to a neighbor, taken Ben for a walk outside, and a number of other related tasks. I was on my feet for probably 11 out of the 12 hours of the day. My own meals, personal hygene, and other needs went on hold, as my son's came first. Many folks might find this to be a completely dull life. But I absolutely love it. It makes me happy. It makes me feel at home, that I'm doing what I was made to do. Home, God, family, and creating are my passion. So why do I feel so guilty about it? Its like if I'm happy, then I must be not be doing what I should be doing, because toiling to earn a living shouldn't be fun - treating myself, playing, is fun. Not being productive. Work and fun are mutually exclusive, right?

My heart knows this is emphatically untrue, but my head is having a hard time with it. I seem to be one of those people that is only happy when they are miserable, because I tend to make things so darn difficult. Silly me! I see this is something I'll have to think and write on more over time.

Enter the strawberry. Don't ask me why in the world a jar shaped like a strawberry the size of a soccer ball appeals to me, but when I saw it, I knew it belonged in my kitchen. I don't collect strawberries, and didn't particulally need a cookie jar. But the thing just makes me happy. Every time I see it in my kitchen, it makes me smile. Happily, the price was within my budget, so I purchaed it. And now it is in my kitchen and makes me smile every day. That's all. And I'll just leave it at that!

Except of course for the usual photo of Ben.

Sigh. I am happy.

Labels: baby, Home Sweet Home, ponderings about life

So today was my first day home alone with Ben, just the two of us all morning and afternoon. A successful day, I think - I managed to get dressed and washed before he woke up. Unfortunately, I only got so far as thinking about my breakfast when he was ready for his, but oh well. An hour of feeding, dressing, changing, playing, changing, and feeding later, he was down for a nap. The photo is of His Cuteness sometime between a feeding and changing. I tried to get a shot of his smile, but each time I gave up and snapped a photo, he'd smile, only to stop when I tried to take another shot. Take my word for it, he smiles and is adorable.

It was an interesting day. See, I'm not quite sure how much around the house one can get done during the day when caring for an infant, especially one pretty much too young to entertain itself. It's amazing all the different ways you can multitask, like pumping breastmilk while mixing up a cake, that sort of thing. All Ben has done today is eat! I don't know if it's the heat or he's hitting a growth spurt, but it has been "food - food NOW" all day long.

However, I still managed to get a bunch of this pig sty cleaned up. I have a half finished project started in every room of the house, but hey, at least they're started! I also was able to cook a whole meal for dinner - I made a chicken pita sandwich from this month's issue of Cooking Light, which was very good but you might find a little dry if you are used to mayo on your sandwiches (Chris doesn't bother to eat a sandwich without a inch or two of miracle whip, but he loved this sandwich, so I guess it isn't missing anything). Made the roasted corn relish off the cover of the June magazine too, although I didn't have a grill at the time so I just pan fried the corn, roasted the Anaheim chile on the broiler, then added the tomato, lime juice, cilantro, etc. Very yummy, but Chris thought was a little too spicy for him. We topped it off with fresh peaches and raspberry, and a good 'ol Betty Crocker yellow cake with chocolate frosting. I think I could have made leather sandwiches and cardboard cake and it would have tasted good to us, as we're so desperate for home cooking after being on the road for 4 weeks.

Labels: baby, cooking

Pictures are up! www.thetindallfamily.com

A friend just shared this quote with me. Normally I think such quotes and sayings are sweet, but a little too sugary for my tastes. However, now that I have a child of my own, I see that these aren't romantic exaggerations made to help us feel all warm and squishy inside, but exact representations of the experience of new parenthood.

"I loved him intimately, sight unseen. Yet when he lay on my chest for the first time, part of me felt as if someone had given me a Martian baby to raise, or a Martian puppy. And I had no owner's manual, no energy, no clue as to what I was supposed to do.

The other part of me felt as though I were holding my own soul.

Now, all these years later, this pretty much says it."

--Ann Lamott

Labels: baby

Chris is writing this, as Janene is so tired she can't function, and Benjamin is sleeping on her at the moment....OH - We have a baby boy!

Benjamin Michael Tindall was born at 4:51 am on Sunday, May 20th.
He weighed in at 9lbs 5oz, and was 20" long.

Janene went into labor at 3am on Saturday morning. We were admitted to the hospital around 3pm. Janene's total labor was 23 hours - plus 3 hours of solid pushing every 2-3 minutes. At the end of this ordeal the Drs decided that this guy just wasn't going to come out without a c-section. So off to the OR it was, and a C-Section was performed. Really amazingly quick.

Since then, we've been at the hospital; Janene developed a fever (it hit 102.8 at one point) that got her onto antibiotics. Benjamin has a touch of jaundice, but is doing fine otherwise.

Today (22nd) was a very tough day - he was in a lot of pain, as all of his systems are still coming online (wow - I'm a nerd...). He's had some stomach cramps that kept him from being comfortable most of the day.

Anyway, we'll be posting photos on www.thetindallfamily.com as soon as we can - I was going to do that tonight, but the hospital limits what I can do through their wireless connection, and I can't get in to any of my admin stuff. So tomorrow night it will hopefully be.

Speaking of tomorrow, we'll probably be headed home tomorrow at some point. Please don't just drop in on us, at least until we give the ok for that - we would LOVE to see everyone, but we need to pre-approve it via phone to make sure timing is ok. So call Chris' cell and we'll set a time to hang out! :)

On a side note, since Janene has had a C-Section, we will not be that mobile for a while, as she needs to heal. Chris will be sticking pretty much right at home for at least 2 weeks, as Janene can't do much (she can do some, but overdoing it would be...BAD.)

Keep your eyes on www.thetindallfamily.com, and we'll keep you updated! :)

Chris, Janene, Benjamin

Labels: baby

Well, three days overdue, and still no baby. We had an ultrasound yesterday to check to see that the amount of amniotic fluid is still OK (and it is), as well as a non-stress test. They hook you up to a monitor that checks the baby's heart beat, and he has to move a couple times in about 20-30 minutes, and they check to make sure the heart beat rises and falls as it should - that test came out beautifully as well. So, he's doing just fine, and those tests are "good" for about three days.

I myself have been doing pretty OK, up until recently. I still have not felt much in the way of contractions, but on top of the swelling problem I've been having, unfortunately my hip has now made it impossible for me to do much to try to help things along. For those of you that don't know, last week I woke up one morning with severe hip pain. Sitting is fine for the most part, but any pressure I put on my left hip is very painful - bad enough that I can barely dress myself, let alone walk. Its just a result of everything loosening up and moving around in my pelvis, on top of already having a hip problem, so there isn't much to do about it except take some tylenol and give birth. :) We did purchase a yoga ball that I should be able to do some squatting and bouncing on, as that has been said to help things along a bit, so that's nice. Chris has been stellar support, and has pretty much been doing literally everything, down to washing my feet in the shower for me. :)

Otherwise, I still haven't progressed much at all, so if I don't go into labor by Thursday morning (when we have another non-stress test), they'll check me in to the hospital sometime on thursday or friday night, depending on bed availability. At that point they'll administer hormones several times throughout the night to start dialation. The doctor says that has often been enough to bring on labor naturally (that would be nice). But if that doesn't work, then they'll induce with Petocin (which brings on faster, longer, and harder contractions, so at that point I'll probably look in to getting a light epidural). This has a somewhat higher risk of stress to the baby, so they'll watch him very closely. The doctor also mentioned that I am at a slightly higher risk for C-section due to several factors, among them including the fact that I'm overdue, I haven't progressed at all, and the baby is getting pretty big.

So, that's a complete update. Obviously there are some possibilities in there that I'm really not too keen on, but we knew going into this that anything could happen and you just can't predict it. (Although, so far this is following my sister's labors to a T - she had the Petocin, and STILL didn't progress, hence her 30 and 18 hour labors). It is kind of stressful, but I think most of it is just normal emotional ups and downs from hormones and the big Unknown. Besides, if it is just now starting to get truly challenging and difficult to deal with day to day, at 9 months pregnant, then I'm not too bad off!

We'll keep updating as we can - thank you for being patient with me as I disappear for months on end (blog-wise). I hope to blog a bit more regularly soon - I know, I keep saying that, but I really enjoy it and mean to build more of a habit, as soon as we have a bit more routine to our lives again. :)

Labels: baby, pregnancy