Ex Patria

My first and last election post

I think the people who know me will not be surprised who I am endorsing.  I haven't written much about the election which is a bit odd considering how closely I am following this race. We have donated to Barack Obama's campaign, more than we have ever donated to a single (political) cause.  And, you know, we're doing this while Doug is out of a job and we have a new baby. Because we really want this to happen.

[Department of weird coincedences: As I was writing the paragraph above, the Obama campaign called and let us know they had to return a donation I'd made.  I thought as a resident I could donate but apparently I cannot.  I had heard that the McCain/Palin campaign was looking into foreign donations and was wondering whether they'd trace it all the way to me. Kind of scary, how transparent things are these days.  Well, bummer to you, McCain.  We'll bounce that money right back to Obama with Doug's name on it.  Doesn't win you anything and I might just do a $0.01 donation to you to make your life difficult.]

Anyway. 

I've been watching the race getting nastier and nastier, and I've followed what is called the "McCain/Palin Mob".  I have to confess that Palin rubs me all the wrong ways, and aggressively so.  While McCain leaves me cold, even when he gets all mean and dirty, Palin makes me want to throw things at the TV. She's an insult to every intelligent and hardworking woman on this planet. She's a walking caricature, a punch in the face of...  Uh, where was I?  See what she does to me?  So, yes, the Mob.  It's probably just a small percentage of the US population, and nothing to worry about too much, but hearing utterings like those about "he's got the bloodlines" is very chilling. So I have to say only one thing:

If America elects McCain to be the next president, and Palin the next vice president, then the country deserves what it will get.

The end.

Blackmail

David owns this world.  Just in case you didn't know.

When he wants something, and it's usually something that his brothers have at this very moment, he really wants this something.  He will use sheer brute force to obtain possession of this something.  Sometime in summer, though, he started using blackmail. 

Whenever something didn't work the way he wanted it, he would yell that he'd had enough and would leave this family and find himself a new one.  He would then walk out of the backyard through the back gate, walk through the empty lot next door, and sit down in our neighbor's driveway, out of direct sight from our house.  This would drive Alan to sheer panic.  He would come and fetch us, pleading his brother's case under tears, shrieking if we were unmoved (which we were, always).  He was completely devastated, every time.  It didn't help when we explained to him that David just said this but didn't mean it, or if we told him that nobody would take David in but rather bring him back home, or that one should never ever give in to blackmail.  For months, Alan would immediately break down if David only as much as made the slightest suggestion that he would leave. Doug and I were not amused.  But as long as Alan complied, David used this strategy with glee.

So, when Alan came downstairs into the living room today, fuming, and relayed the following conversation, I laughed out loud in delight.

"David said, if I didn't give him this [toy], he will leave the family.  And I said to him, you say that every time to scare me, but you know what? It's wearing off!"

Good for him.  And, in the long run, good for David.

Happy Birthday, with spots

It's Jacob's 3rd birthday today.  As he loves all things that go, he got a great parking garage for his present.  I love this one because it's made of wood, not plastic, and it doesn't flash advertisements for some gas company. (Astoundingly, many of the plastic ones do.)

Apart from that, we're all sick.  In Jacob, this broke out with coughing, runny nose and spots all over his face.  Our old friend staphylococcus aureus reared his ugly head again.  We're fighting back with antibiotics.

Doug is having chills and a slight fever, Alan has been home for over a week now with severe coughing and runny nose, David coughs but actually keeps up the best, and I'm just aching all over like an 80-year-old.  And Leah seems fine only she gave up sleeping for a change.

But we're hanging in there.  Happy birthday, my son.  May I see the expression on your face when you spotted* your present many, many more times in the future. Happiness is good.

*No pun intended, I swear.

Tough times

We've had some tough times lately which may explain the complete absence of my person from this blog.

Four weeks ago, I took Leah to her first well baby checkup only to find out that she wasn't gaining weight. I had had a sneaking suspicion of this earlier, and actually been seeking my midwife's advice on that.  Leah seemed okay then but when she got weighed at the ped's office, she had not managed to get back on her birth weight yet.

The pediatrician (she's new, our old ped closed his office) told me to stop nursing immediately, since I didn't have enough milk and was exhausting the baby with long non-productive feeding sessions.  Instead, she wanted me to bottle-feed Leah exclusively at least for some days.  My objection that this would reduce my milk supply was dismissed.  I drove back home in tears.

I don't know why, maybe because the thought of starving my baby horrified me, I followed her advice.  Leah gained 200 g in two days (she'd been dehydrated too, so the weight gain was quite substantial).  And of course, my milk supply went down dramatically.  The pediatrician was not concerned about that. When I told her that I wanted to go back to nursing exlusively, and actually nursed Leah in the office because she was screaming her head off with hunger, the pediatrician sighed that obviously I couldn't be reasoned with since I was acting against her advice to give up nursing.  Again, I drove home in tears.

It took me a day, and then I finally got my head straightened out. I went to rent an electric pump and buy lots of fenugreek. I started to nurse Leah and/or pump every two hours, and gulped fenugreek until I could have been served with pancakes for breakfast (fenugreek makes you smell like maple syrup).  Leah slowly gained weight.  On the recommendation of the pediatrician, we had also rented a scale and weighed her every day.  This was an exercise in frustration.  She'd gain 50 grams, only to loose another 60 over night.  Up, down, two steps forward, one step back.  I was completely exhausted, Leah was cranky for being woken up so much (she'd been sleeping nicely in the night before), until I decided to not weigh her daily anymore and take it easy.

At her next appointment ten days later, she'd gained another 200 grams.  Which, by the way, is exactly the recommendation for daily weight gain of 20 grams by the WHO. I was actually rather proud of her weight gain but the ped said it was not enough.  I told her that Leah has a similar body build like Alan, long and lean, and told her of our problems with him not gaining weight either. She dismissed me, told me again to stop nursing, and then discussed the immunization schedule for Leah.

I went home, again in tears.  And finally decided to ditch the pediatrician.  I went to see our family doctor (who I grew up with, and whose father had been our family doctor before him).  He encouraged me to trust myself, and my body, to feed Leah.  After all, he said, I'd nursed three kids before and had been doing all right.  The only thing, he said, was the challenge of making time to nurse her without any distractions - and yes, that's a challenge, and yes, that's where things went wrong in the first place -- when Doug was gone to Burundi for two weeks, I had to interrupt nursing sessions again and again to deal with boys trying to kill each other, or to get kids from school, or to make dinner, or wipe butts, or fold laundry...  But Doug is back now, and we're just taking our time.

A week or so later, we're fine.  Apart from the fact that we are all sick with some nasty virus/bacteria combination, Leah has gained weight nicely and we are aiming to break the 4000 gram barrier any moment now.  She's still lean but her skin tone is good, she even has some chubby cheeks and a little double chin.  She's alert and interested in her surroundings, she follows movements and loves her cradle with the mobile to look at. She almost smiles. Pretty darn good for 8 weeks, I think.

So, over the hump with Leah. 

The other problem we're having at the moment is Alan and the school.  He's incredibly bored at school.  He can read and does addition and subtraction up to 20.  But here in Germany, preschool and kindergarten are not as formal and instructive, so now in first grade, they are starting with single letters and counting (!) the numbers up to 10.  Alan finds this boring.  His homework today is to color a line of beads - three red, three blue.  He's done that two years ago in preschool already.  David has done that already.  Also, school only lasts from 7:40 to 11:00 am, so he's home all afternoon, bored.  On top of being bored at school and at home, he's also being bullied at school.  He's being teased for his name, for speaking English, he's being pushed and shoved and laughed about.  The, um, gang leader, tells him he stinks (oh, that one hasn't changed in the last thirty years, has it!), and we're really not sure how to deal with that. Alan dreads school now.  Two days ago, he told me he wants to go back on a plane again.  I asked him, why.  He answered that if we went on a plane, that meant we'd go someplace else and that he would go back into a real school.  It breaks my heart to hear this.  My instincts are to pull him out of school and homeschool him, only that's illegal in Germany.

But, this deserves a post in it's own right.  Tomorrow, maybe.  Because now I have to play train tracks and garage with my newly minted 3-year-old.