Ears.

this will be a slightly more serious post with a happy addition of a recipe!! WOOHOO!!!

i have an ear thing. 

really.

one of my ears decided to stop working in my early years. we found out when i was eight. hence only one side of my head is pulling any weight (which could be said for many issues with my head, not just my ears). i get yearly hearing tests and i'm not supposed to be anywhere with a sound level above 80 decibels. 

side note to hearing impaired children, a lawn mower runs at 90 decibels. do the math. use the excuse.

i can also only sit on one side of people (well, people that i want to listen to anyway), so it comes out that i'm deaf pretty early on in relationships that i want to maintain. 

upon finding out that i'm hearing impaired, i cannot tell you the number of parents who asked "did you have a lot of ear infections as a kid?" i did not, but i always thought it was strange that people didn't immediately blame scarlet fever, or q-tips shoved too far into the ear.

more so than that, how does EVERYONE come to the exact same conclusion of ear infection? why not sinus infection? why not a lot of colds? what is it about ear infections that stand out to people??

i've had ear infections as an adult. they usually bring some pain and discomfort, a little congestion, nothing earth shattering. you get on antibiotics and you can't hear for a few days. hey, THAT'S MY LIFE EVERY DAY!!!!

guess what? that's not how it works for infants. the reason parents all blame ear infections is because their memories of them are HORRIFYING.

because his ears and tubes are so little, they clog fast and hard. that means 

1. he can't sleep on his back. say good-bye to hours of sleep that you would have gotten and get friendly with your rocking chair. you'll be in it all night long holding your baby upright while he lays on your shoulder, eyes wide open and tears dripping out like a leaky faucet.

2. she can't breathe. that alone is frustrating for anyone.

3. he can't eat. because he can't breathe. so you'll be marathon feeding in between rocking. if you're lucky your baby will be in to solid food when they get their first ear infection (i was in this lucky category) and you can just give them more solid food for a few days. spoon feeding is much easier than bottle feeding when you're stuffed up. "but wait leanne, won't all that solid food make my baby constipated?" no. because

4. she will have amazing explosive diarrhea. i didn't wear a shirt after about 2 p.m. the second day he was sick because my first one got vomited on, my second got diarrhea-ed on, and my third got soaked through with sweat during a rocking session because of 

5. fever. you just can't get rid of it. your baby will be a pink inferno. that's rough during a hot summer because baby turns cool pool water into a jacuzzi in a matter of 20 minutes. on the plus side, if you can get baby rocked to sleep for a little while, you and your husband can go enjoy your new plastic whirlpool!!!

6. you, and your baby, are MISERABLE.

if you are unlucky enough to have a baby with an ear infection on a weekend, you will spend HOURS AND HOURS AND HOURS of your life in an ER. and when you finally get your baby rocked to sleep, the doctor will come in and wake him up to examine him for literally a minute and a half, diagnose him with an ear infection, and leave you with a screaming baby for 40 minutes while he writes a rx. glorious.

so my baby is sick and now i'm freaking out and wondering if he's going to end up being one of those babies who needs tubes in his ears because he gets infections every 3 weeks. i have no grounds to reasonably be worried, but i'm sleep deprived and irrational anyway.

i'm a firm believer in homeopathic remedies (not ONLY homeopathic remedies, mind you), so i googled a bunch about herbs and amoxicillin and everything in this came up clean-- but ALWAYS CHECK WITH YOUR PEDIATRICIAN FIRST!!!!! please don't be the parent in the ER who says "but i read it on a blog!!! i thought it would be safe!"

if you have an herb garden, or your neighbor has one, this is outrageously cheap. we're talking the cost of ginger root. that's about a buck. if you don't have an herb garden, I HIGHLY RECOMMEND YOU GETTING ONE!!!! the cost for one package of herbs at any major supermarket literally costs the same as a plant from a hardware store. (and it has more on it than you get in that package and reproduces) you can pick up a starter garden from home depot for $10 that has 4 herbs and a planter. herbs require almost no attention. thyme grows best in cracks in sidewalks. no lie. 

i'll list what the herbs are good for first, then the recipe, so you can sort of pick and choose which symptoms your baby has and make your tea accordingly

ginger--good for upset tummies, a bit of a pain reliever, and an antispetic

stevia-for sweetening note: DO NOT DO NOT DO NOT DO NOT EEEEEEEEEEEEVER use honey as a sweetener for a child under 1 year of age. honey contains bacteria that infants under 1 do not have the proper flora to digest. your child could get botulism from consuming honey.

sage- for drying out snot. note: sage tea is also good to dry up your breastmilk if you are weaning

chamomile- good for calming, relaxing, helping to sleep, and slightly sweet.

EAR INFECTION GRIPE WATER

4c water

2 inches of ginger root, peeled and sliced into 1/4- 1/8in wide discs

1-2 tablespoons sage leaves

2 tablespoons stevia leaves

half a palmful of chamomile flowers

2 coffee filters

boil the water, add ginger discs. bring the heat down and let it simmer for 25 minutes.

while those are cooking, bundle all of the leaves and flowers into the center of a coffee filter. bring all the sides of the filter up and tie the whole thing shut with string (think wedding favors-- the little mesh bags with m&ms in them ((it better be m&ms!!! rice kills birds!!!)))

add the bag'o'leaves to the ginger tea and let it steep (cook in the heat) for 5-10 minutes.

turn off the heat. put the other coffee filter in a colander and strain the tea into a bowl or large vessel where it can cool.

refrigerate! i dilute this the same way i dilute juice-- 3 parts water to 1 part tea. i use it in his bottles or give it to him straight if he's met his caloric needs for the say, or if he's been out in the sun :)

it won't last more than a few days (2-3), so feel free to help your kiddo polish it off :) all those things are good for you too!!

babies

babies are full of magic. it's true. that's what actually comes out of women's boobs. magic.

babies are like sirens. they coo and murmur and babble and screech and people come flocking to their death. and by death i mean transformation into a giant lump of mush talking 58 decibels too loud and at a frequency that even dogs are appalled by.

it's adorable. 

as a child, i never wanted children. i think that's understandable. third grade isn't exactly prime hunting grounds for eligible bachelors. most of the guys in my class had rattails. unacceptable.

it wasn't until college that i finally embraced all my lady parts (figuratively people!) and all that other mystical-mother-earth-hippie garbage about how beautiful it is to bear fruit from my loins.

my husband and i picked out names for 4 children. before we even started dating. our entire relationship has been sort of cart before the horse-ish. i'll tell you the names at the end of this post. all good things come to those who wait. or who scroll down. 

when we found out we were pregnant (SURPRISE!!!!), every feeling i had about having children sort of grew baby feelings who all started fighting each other and tripping and bullying all of my other feelings and thoughts about everything. that's my explanation of how i went crazy during pregnancy. it was rough. 

my husband is a saint.

the end of my pregnancy was a bit rough. i say a bit because i know a woman who's epidural didn't take before her c-section and she felt them cut her open. i think that trumps any horror story i might have thought that i had, so i say a bit rough. i had pre-eclampsia and was in early labor off and on for 2 weeks. that means a few hours of contractions that did a little bit of work at any given point of any given day. i was just under 2cm dilated when they decided to induce on december 15th because my blood pressure was taking leaping bounds in an upward fashion, which is apparently bad.

Alan Jeffrey Patrick Bulger was born on december 17th at 6:37 am after 3.5 hours of pushing. he was in the nicu for a half a day because he thought breathing was for chumps. i took that opportunity to sleep. so did my husband. we figured that chances were we'd be seeing a lot of him pretty soon, and we had been told that babies don't sleep much.

that's false, by the way. newborns sleep all the time. they wake up, eat, poop, scream at you while you change them, and then pass out. parents just spend so much time in those first few weeks staring at their kid that they never go to sleep. bad move. take a few pictures and pass out. you can thank me for that tidbit later.

anywho, he developed an amazingly bad case of jaundice. it lasted 9 weeks. nurses were stunned. i was sick of going to the doctor and JP was developing a hatred for his own feet because of all the heel pricks. 

pregnancy, labor, and the first 2 months of his life were enough to convince me that having babies wasn't for me. i loved this one so much, but i didn't know about having 4 of them. and going through pregnancy with a toddler? no thank you.

but here's the problem:

my kid is a saint, just like daddy. he never cries. he's always smiling, even when he wakes up. he is sweet, interactive, friendly, loves dogs, and eats like a champ. his poop doesn't even smell all that bad.

WHO WOULDN'T WANT A MILLION OF THOSE!?!?!?!?!!!?!? HE'S LIKE A TINY ADORABLE PET WITH A REAL PERSONALITY!!!!!

so now i want 13 children.

just kidding. i've actually considered getting my tubes tied (or cut up and mutilated. if i'm gonna do this, i'm not taking any chances) because we already have a perfect baby. why risk having one who isn't as cute or as good? 

my parents immediately put a nix on that idea and i'm not sure my husband was entirely on board either. i think he still wants a full wrestling squad. i'm not sure how many kids that is.

for the majority of my life, i never wanted kids. then all of a sudden i did. then i had one and i figured one was enough. but he worked that baby magic (my fault for breastfeeding) and now i'm back to wanting a bamajillion tykes. 

so, here's to you jp. you're the best baby i've ever met. you're the greatest blessing in our lives to date and you have brought joy to countless people just by being a magical baby. i'm so proud to call you my son.

and here's to you Calvin Camden (named after cal ripken and camden yards ((my husband likes baseball, don't judge))), Payton Jordan (after walter and michael ((i'm allowed to have my pride too!!!!!!))), and Amelia Jane (she's only named after relatives. she'll have a complex about that later. "why can't you say i was named after amelia earhart??" "because she's a solid argument against any form of female navigation.")

Without further ado

here is my family!

i'm the suitcase.

my husband is in the army and my son is not old enough to get a job yet (15.5 months left, 8.5 if he buses tables at a mexican food restaurant and gets paid under the table!! high expectations!)

we don't have a legitimate home right now. H is in training in elsewhereland and we are staying with my folks until we can be a real family again in september. so basically, if you take a long, hard look at my life, i am a twentysomething with a kid, living in my parent's house, no husband to be seen, willingly unemployed, and i spend most of my time online. rooooooockstaaaaaaaar.

my husband is pretty much awesome and way good looking--he has washboard abs-- and my son is hilarious and better behaved than Jesus. he does not have washboard abs though, so that takes him down a notch for the ladies. we're working on it.

i like cooking, gardening, taking pictures, lying and talking. i want to be the poster child for ann taylor by the time i'm 40, which means i need cosmetic surgery on my personality sometime in the next 15 years. i'm a libra. that's a lie. i don't believe in horoscopes, nostradamus, or anything that says the world will end before my son has produced enough generations of his own for me to stop caring about all the new kids being born.

i like hippos. they're jolly. one day, after you all have made me famous (or ann taylor has), i will own a family of hippos and i will let them use obnoxious people as pool toys. they're predominantly vegetarian, and i certainly don't expect them to change their dietary habits so i can get rid of nancy grace.

are we off to a good start?

Where it all began

with bowling. or with the news. maybe in college? it's hard to say.

i majored in photography and minored in english. i got married after college and moved to a small town in louisiana where i started off as a staff assistant for the editorial section of the newspaper. in a few months i was a reporter. SCHAAAAWIIIIING!

the sports writer (who is, simply put, an amazing person, and now the editor of the paper) finally caved to my incessant nagging and published a column about my weekly bowling league

a year later we've moved twice (third time is coming in 2 months!! hooray!), had a baby, and i've gotten progressively more... colorful? i also don't work at a paper anymore.

several people have mentioned missing my column. a few more people have mentioned that i should blog. a vast majority of people i know have said that i'm freakish.

we live in america. this is a democracy. the people shall get what they ask for.

unless you ask for healthcare. then you're denied.

HERE GOES!!!