ok, is it just me

or is this product really disturbing?

Classic Thong

a little thaw, imagine that!

These are the crocuses that were under the snow in the previous post. Right now it seems to be spring-like -- it was warm this evening, and now there is a thunderstorm outside.
Julia -- yes, snowdrops are okay with snow...it happens often to them i think! Here they are opening up, finally, as it becomes a little warmer
and the view from the top of them. I do love snowdrops. I had it planned that they would be the first things to bloom in Nicolas' garden -- the snowdrops around the base of his tree, and then the crocuses in the lawn around it, and then the daffodils in the main beds etc. Well, it kind of works like that except most of the snowdrops around his tree have stopped coming back over the last two years...i have only 5-6 clumps and i planted 12 or 24 bulbs (can't remember, something like that) And even the ones that are blooming are dinky. The ones i have pictured are different ones that my mom gave me -- a whole load of wild ones that she dug out somewhere and i just threw in the main beds, intending to move them to around his tree later. Well, now i am afraid to do that, because i don't want to kill them too. So i guess they will stay where they are.

flowers in snow

Crocuses

and snowdrops


The pussywillows on Nicolas' tree are starting to bud out. But we are about two weeks later than last year, from what i can tell.

more lamps

Well, more shades really. I think i put up pictures of these lamps before, at least the two in the big living room. But they had some crappy mismatched gas shades on them. Now we have nice ones, a nice set of four.

No 'matching' electric yet, but these things proceed slowly. I put matching in quotes because i am not crazy enough to hope for an exact match -- just something with the right shape & with a floral pattern, and four of them.
A guy in a lamp shop suggested this antique shop out in the middle of nowhere. Our neighbor said, 'Oh yeah, that guy, he used to be really expensive but that was 20 years ago. I stopped going there, i assumed he was dead by now.' Well, he's not dead, he is 93 and deaf and a bit ornery, but the prices haven't changed in that 20 years. So yeah, i feel rather guilty about that, because now they are rather good deals.
These gas shades with the urn/flower motif were rather a pleasing find, because our hardware also has a urn/flower motif. It's hard to photograph them well, sorry.
These are in my bathroom which makes them a bit difficult to photograph. The gas & electric shades don't match, if you look closely. All floral though. These gas shades will probably end up being used in the kitchen, because eventually i would like bowl-shaped ones for the bathroom.

M has a tooth!

No picture, he won't hold still. And you can hardly see it anyway, it just poked through. But it is definitely there, the first one! At least that explains why he is up all night.

cupcakes 2

This was the first time that C was old enough to help make Nicolas' cupcakes. She loves baking, and chocolate.

I did tell her that we were making cupcakes because it was Nicolas' birthday, and when she asked who he was, i reminded her that he was our baby who had died. "Remember, we talked about him a little while ago? He would have been 5 years old today, if he had come home from the hospital." She was concerned -- "so we are having a party?" " No, we don't usually have parties for people who are dead...we are just making cupcakes to remember him." Then there was some discussion of parties, and birthdays, and balloons. After that, she said, "but mommy, i don't want to see him". "No, he's not coming for the cupcakes....people don't come back from the dead. Once you die, you go on....you don't come back. Oh, except for Jesus, i suppose, they say he came back, but that was only because he was God that he could do that." (we had been to church on Easter, otherwise i would not have mentioned the Jesus thing. But i think that was part of what was confusing her. )

We did have the problem with the oven -- i think Tash is right about the fans. It didn't occur to me that there was more than one fan in the thing. It is a big oven, though (the range is 48" and has a larger, convection oven and a small regular oven.) There is clearly some fan running in there, but maybe there is another that is on the fritz. It turned out fine though, because i had forgotten to halve the recipe* -- as written it makes enough cake for like 3 dozen cupcakes...so we had enough to spare, even without the burnt ones. I just watched the others carefully.

[picture removed]

Here is C enjoying a cupcake with whipped cream. She did not wait for the frosting & the sprinkles. In fact it was still warm and a few seconds after i took the picture, all the whipped cream slid right off onto the floor. A big tragedy as you can imagine.

*this cake recipe is the same as that Ding-Dong cake from Smitten Kitchen that Tash made, i do think it was originally published in Gourmet. The ganache frosting is clearly not enough for 3 dozen cupcakes, in fact it doesn't even make enough for the inside and top/sides of a cake. I usually make a chocolate buttercream for the inside filling. The trick to making this cake super-good is to use a very good buttermilk in the cake recipe. By 'very good buttermilk' i mean something local that is very expensive & typically comes from some fancy or natural foods store. You would be surprised what a difference it makes.

March 26th and beyond

I have been thinking about what i would write about, what stories i wanted to tell from the days immediately following Nicolas' death and birth. I have been turning them over in my head, those events...and have decided that they are just horrors. I don't think they are any significantly worse -- logically, they cannot be much worse -- than what other people have gone through...but to me they are simply horrors. I can talk about them in detail, (i have), but i simply cannot type them out.

When we left the hospital the day after he was born, with nothing in my arms but the orange folder containing my medical records (and now a little hat and some wisps of a dead baby's hair), we had to file the appropriate papers at the Mairie and then go make the arrangements for Nicolas' funeral. There was noone to help us do it, so we did it ourselves -- and basically that meant i did it myself, because my french was better than dh's. So though he was there, and helped as much as he could, the whole thing was essentially up to me. I never made funeral arrangements before, and things are (of course) different in France than in the States. There was a nice man at the hospital who had helped us -- told us where to do, what to do, what to expect...in generality, of course. That is different than the specifics. But who can know what the specifics are going to be in every case? You cannot. He did a good job, that man at the hospital. He is one of the people who i remember so well, for whose small kindnesses i am most grateful: the man at the hospital who explained the funeral system; Eddie (my BIL's BIL, who is an OB, and gave me information that i needed by phone); the midwife who delivered Nicolas; the lady at the funeral place who worked on the arrangements; the priest who did his benediction; the psychiatrist who told me about her own boy who died, and explained to me that i was not crazy. I remember them all with such gratitude, and i wonder if they know how much they helped me.

But yet there is the other side of the scale, those horrors that i do not care to revisit here. It can never be less than a horror to cremate a baby, but still...i made it through labor & delivery without losing my reason, but the whole funeral experience -- the arrangements, the family, the things said, the event itself -- nearly did me in. I look at it now, those memories, and am amazed.

cupcakes 1

OK, baker ladies...if you have a convection oven doesn't that mean there is a fan inside so that the air circulates? If that is so, and you fill said oven with cupcakes, shouldn't all the cupcakes be done at one time? Rather than, say, a third done, a third burnt, and a third still liquid inside?

I mean, that's the point of convection, right?

Happy 5th Birthday Nicolas

Yeah, i know it's the same damn picture as always. I was going to upload a different one (20 week u/s rather than the 32 week u/s) but i cannot seem to find the file on any machine. And now i have to go teach class so i can't muck with this that much.

Later today, when i get home, i suppose we will make cupcakes as usual. C should enjoy that, at any rate.

Happy Birthday, sweet boy. I wish you were here.

five years ago

I have been kind of hiding out this week, and will probably continue to do so. My MIL is in town for the 'festivities' of Easter & dh's birthday (which is today). Thus, there is a lot of noise.

Five years is kind of sucky. I am having a harder time this year than last year, in the days leading up to Nicolas' birthday -- which is on Tuesday, mercifully the MIL will have left and i will have taken down the damned Easter decorations which are pissing me off. I did put them up, like a good mommy, so C has a nice holiday. Blah.

One nice thing about having blogged for several years is that i have already said a lot of stuff. So rather than repeating myself i can just link the appropriate post(s), so watch me do that. I am such a lazy bum, it is amazing.

This is a story from March 21, 2003.

This is a story from March 22, 2003.

Here is Nicolas' birth story, which starts on the 23rd.

There's a lot of stuff i never wrote down, like what happened in the days after Nicolas' birth. I just never did it....maybe i should do it now. (as in, in the next few weeks). Or maybe i will never do it.

First flowers of spring

In Nicolas' garden:

and in my other gardens:
Well, it is kind of a stretch to call the weed-ridden mudpit in the front of the house a 'garden', but that is where these crocuses are. They are inherited from the previous owner of the house. It is my great hope to put in an actual front garden (and lawn) this year.

So far i have only these snowdrops in Nicolas' garden, his crocuses are nowhere to be seen. These are actually different than the other snowdrops i have from before -- these are from my mom and apparently they bloom a little earlier because the others that i ordered from White Flower Farm are still just pushing up. These seem smaller than those, too. Maybe i will move these so that they are around his tree, like the others. I know it is a lousy picture of the snowdrops but i didn't have much time...so you can look forward to a year of lousy photography. The crocus picture came out well enough, though.

Of course there is snow in the forecast for this weekend.

For us stillbirth moms

There was an interesting article in the NY Times magazine a bit ago about pain in fetuses and newborn/premature babies:

The First Ache

is the link, i am not sure how long it will stay up though -- it has already been more than a month. I am the speedy blogger, to be sure. There is a bunch of nonsense in this article as well as some good stuff -- of course they have to present both sides of an issue, but one guy who is quoted is obviously a loon. The one who says that we can't experience pain until we are over a year old? Yeah, that one.

But the point of my posting this here (if you don't want to wade through the whole article) is the following paragraphs:

In the fetus, especially, we can’t deduce the presence or absence of consciousness from its anatomical development alone; we must also consider the peculiar environment in which fetuses live. David Mellor, the founding director of the Animal Welfare Science and Bioethics Center at Massey University in New Zealand, says he was prompted to consider the role of fetal surroundings in graduate school. “Have you ever wondered,” one visiting professor asked, “why a colt doesn’t get up and gallop around inside the mare?” After all, a horse only minutes old is already able to hobble around the barnyard. The answer, as Mellor reported in an influential review published in 2005, is that biochemicals produced by the placenta and fetus have a sedating and even an anesthetizing effect on the fetus (both equine and human). This fetal cocktail includes adenosine, which suppresses brain activity; pregnanolone, which relieves pain; and prostaglandin D2, which induces sleep — “pretty potent stuff,” he says.

Combined with the warmth and buoyancy of the womb, this brew lulls the fetus into a near-continuous slumber, rendering it effectively unconscious no matter what the state of its anatomy. Even the starts and kicks felt by a pregnant woman, he says, are reflex movements that go on in a fetus’s sleep. While we don’t know if the intense stimulation of surgery would wake it up, Mellor notes that when faced with other potential threats, like an acute shortage of oxygen, the fetus does not rouse itself but rather shuts down more completely in an attempt to conserve energy and promote survival.

I know many of us are troubled by the question of pain -- for those of us whose babies died inside us, we wonder: Did it hurt them? Or was it just like falling asleep? The idea that our babies were in pain and we didn't even know, much less do anything to help them...that is a thought that keeps you up at night. The doctors say 'oh, it was like falling asleep', but they don't know that. I have wrestled with this guilt for years.

But if evidence does point to the 'falling asleep' theory as being correct, well, that does not absolve my guilt but it is good to know that. Which is why i post it here, to share it with you.

I got my mug!

Last week, even, Candy is speedier sending them than i am posting about it....

So, here is my post....Emmazing Grace Foundation is having a Spring Donation Drive and as part of that you can buy a cool mug with their logo (which i assume are Emma's real footprints, not like those fake-o MOD footprints on their 'saving babies' billboard BLAH)....details are up on Candy's blog so go check it out!

Palm Sunday

Getting C's breakfast ready, i said....

Me: Today is Palm Sunday, i guess i should put some Easter decorations up.

C: Palm Tunday? What's Palm Tunday?

Me: Well, Palm Sunday is the day that Jesus went into Jerusalem...

C: And now we are going to go to Target!

Hey, that works for me....

---------------------------------------------------------

Speaking of breakfast, i was having a hard time yesterday trying to convince C that it was not her name in big letters on the back of the Cheerios box, that in fact it said "Cholesterol"....

Look at this...

So, i just got back home from donating blood in memory of Zoë and Lennox and just look what i found in Nicolas' garden:


It's a crummy world we live in, but it does have its little miracles.

blaaaah

Well, i wrote a long-ish post with a story pertaining to Julia's post/the anons/Kalakly's rant but for some reason blogger couldn't save it and then i guess my machine got rebooted by A so bye bye post. Oh well. I don't have the energy to rewrite the thing. Trust me i have nothing interesting to say anyway.

I am having a hard time these days with Nicolas' 5th birthday approaching. Actually yesterday i had a good day because Sara & Samuel came to visit (watch me not link stuff because i am too apathetic to bother) but other than that this week has been a real washout. So much for spring break. I have done no work & i am still totally behind & who cares? I guess the students who want their tests to be graded care, so i gotta go do it. Blah blah blah.

Well maybe i should attempt to clean the kitchen before the babies wake up from nap.

Happy Birthday Thomas

Happy 3rd Birthday to Kristin's sweet boy Thomas...thinking of you all today.

unclear on the concept

T and the sippy cup:

[photo removed]

"Forget the cup, mom....just give me the boob already!"

illumination

My husband has a few faults. Not that many, really -- it is a short list, but i would submit they are pretty big faults. However one cannot fault him for one thing, and it is dedication to completing a task once he has taken it on. Such as, for example, finishing the house.

So one of his winter projects is to do the lamps. We have had bare bulbs since we moved down into the main part of the house...but he is slowly changing them out for period light fixtures that he has rewired. There was only one period fixture that came with the house. But we were able to get a bunch of other ones of the right vintage, that all match even....they came out of another house in the city. And we were able to swap the boat that was being stored in the run-down garage for these light fixtures, after we had gotten it back from the guy who stole it -- long story. Anyway we have had the lamps for awhile but dh just started getting them up in January. And it has taken me this long to post pictures.

The lamps of the period would have been either gas or gas/electric combination. In singles

or in chandeliers



The gas points up, the electric bulb points down. Of course we do not have gas, but dh put little xenon bulbs in for the gas parts so at least it looks kind of like it originally did. There isn't a big bulb in there.

The reason they had gas and electric on the same fixture was that the electricity was a newfangled invention and it was very unreliable -- apparently it would go out for a month at a time. So the gas was the backup system.

This is the lamp in the vestibule, one of my favorites.
We don't have that many shades. We were originally planning to just buy repro shades but apparently they are made in France and the current exchange rate makes it quite expensive. So instead we are buying old shades on ebay, of all different kinds, and hoping to make some that match, eventually. Here is a partial picture of the dining room chandelier:
partial because we only have one gas shade, though we do have three electric shades. But taking a picture of half the lamp kind of made it easier to imagine the whole thing, with shades, eventually...these shades are kind of girlie, but i like them anyway.

And this weekend dh put on the newel post lamp too, that is a nice addition.

Here is the closeup:

He also came from ebay. He is not precisely what dh wanted -- he wanted some big impressive beautiful woman, but big impressive beautiful women are expensive on ebay. This guy, on the other hand, was a good deal. And we don't have a huge space, so he fits quite nicely. Any bets, though, on how long it will be until the fellow's lampshade gets busted by a ball thrown by some naughty child?

Vocabulary homework

aversion (n.) a feeling of intense dislike. Sentence: "My brother has an aversion to shoes."

[photo removed]

overheard

C: A, let's play a game.

A: OK, let's play the game "Be quiet, or I'll shoot you with my dart gun."

---------------------------------------------------------------------

C: No! Stop! I need to get my underwear on so i can SING!!!!

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Me: We have a little time, let's go peek in at the shoe store. They are having a sale.

C: YES! We will buy boots!

Me: Well, maybe. In any case, remember this store doesn't have your size, so don't be disappointed..they would be for me.

C: Yes! We will buy boots! And take them home and hide them in the closet, so Daddy doesn't see!


(people, i did this ONCE)

pfah.

Cheaters leave a bad taste in my mouth, you know? I am so irritated right now. These students are ridiculous. What a fucking waste of everybody's time. And there is 10 inches of snow in the forecast.

At least break is next week, no students for awhile!

minor disaster o' the day

The furnace doesn't work today. It is pretty damn cold in the house. Good thing we have a space heater for the babies' room!

I have been waiting for the furnace man for 2 hours now...sigh.

As you see i have decided that this blog really needs a 'disaster o the day' label....because there are just too many posts like this lately!

sibling rivalry

So, i put the boys down with a few toys in front of them, and started making the bed. All of a sudden i heard T complaining so i turned back, and what do i see? M has taken all the toys and moved them out of T's reach, and of course is playing happily with them. It was so funny i had to take a picture....(it took me a month to post it, though!)

silly meme

Tagged by delphi...the rules are:

Look up from the computer, look around the room where you're sitting and pick up the closest book. And closest really means closest. No cheating by running upstairs to unearth your pink-highlighted college copy of The Critique of Pure Reason or the Prolegomena. Open the book, turn to page 123, count down to the fifth sentence on that page, and then post the next three sentences.

"The relations (24) and (26) give a uniform estimate for any epsilon in (0,1] if 0 < alpha < 1. Otherwise the estimate is uniform only for 0 < k < epsilon < 1, and we can not obtain a convergent subsequence of u(x) as epsilon goes to zero. The proof of the estimate of the couple force is now complete."

I did not cheat. I am at my office. And i can't make blogger do a 'less than or equal' sign. But don't worry, i don't understand a word of this crap either.

I'm not going to tag anyone because i think everyone else has been tagged already?

in order?

Trying to get my life in order....C & i started seeds for the vegetable garden this weekend, and we all cleaned cleaned cleaned. I spent much of Saturday sorting my junk in the basement while Dh & A cleaned the rest of the house. This morning i managed to make the bed before leaving for daycare with the babies. Also M slept 13 hours straight last night! Though T was up every 2-3 hours or so and i was always checking on M anyway. He recently discovered that he sleeps best on his tummy, so this is the second night in the last week he has slept through, snoring away on his belly. Way to freak out the mother, boy. If i flip him over he will wake up & scream, and then turn himself back over anyway. C was the same way...except she never did sleep through the night. (Ok, now she does....most nights anyway)

It was freezing cold & snowy all last week, but today it is so warm i left my coat in the car. So perhaps we will see those crocuses for Nicolas' birthday after all.

And then again....

So on Thursday i went to the mall with M & T. I needed to look for some winter boots -- i walk a lot so i need weatherproof, comfortable and reasonably-not-ugly boots. Last time i found any that were enough on sale that i would buy them, well, C was a baby...so you can guess that those pairs are in need of replacement. I have been looking for a while.

The babies love being out so it was the usual thing where plenty of people stop me to chat. I am used to this, it doesn't bug me. But in addition to the usual, when we were having lunch in the food court, there was another twin mom that stopped as well. Hers were 15 months old. "were yours full term?" she asked me. "Yes", i said. "You were lucky", she said, with a little stress in her voice.

(Yes, i am lucky, and i am not an idiot who doesn't know this.)

"Yes, we were", i said. "When were yours born?"

"29 weeks", she said.

"They look like they're doing great", i said, and then the conversation changed to how much of a challenge it is when they start to walk. Nicer things.

It amused me, though, that the day after i put up a post about "the grass is greener", somebody was looking at me thinking how much greener my grass was....