WHYYYYYY MEEEEEEEE??????

I woke up yesterday morning scratching my neck. I don't know about anyone else, but sometimes I just feel itchy in the morning. But this way different. I scratched....and my neck just itched more! When I finally went to the bathroom to look in the mirror I was surprised--the whole right side of my neck was bumpy and red.

Just wonderful.

Oh well, I figured. It's just a morning thing--it will pass. BUT it didn't. In fact, it got worse and actually spread throughout the day! Pretty soon my whole neck, my ears, my cheeks, and my hands were red and bumpy.

Still, I give whatever this was the benefit of the doubt, and hope that it goes away. Again, it doesn't! By 11:00pm it's pretty much more than I can stand. So, I take a luck-warm bath with baking soda. It feels good while I'm in the tub, but the minute I get out it starts all over again.

Boo-hoo! I ended up using an ice pack on my face so that I could at least numb the worst parts.

I called my doctor bright and early this morning, and couldn't get an appointment until 4:30. Gah. When I FINALLY saw the doctor, he said almost immediately, "Oh yeah--that's contact dermatitis. Have you been outside recently?"

My dad used to get poison ivy like twice every summer when I was little. I remember being at church picnics and he'd be covered in pink calamine lotion and looking pretty funny. I never realized it was THIS bad--and this case is mild!

Being that I'm pregnant, of course the most conservative treatment is in store. No steroids for me, unfortunately :-(

So, that's my sad story. Pray that this passes soooooon!

Commercial Break

(The following should be read in a 1940's radio announcer voice.)

BEEP BEEP-BEEP BEEP BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!!

We interrupt your regularly scheduled blog reading to bring you an important message. Our very own Matthew D. Riley has recently announced the launch of his very own blog, which promises to be equally, if not more exciting and intriguing than any blog you have ever read before. We predict that in just a few months, Mr. Riley will become a household name. So don't delay. Hurry on over to http://rightfortherightreasons.blogspot.com/ today.

And now we return to your regularly scheduled reading...

My favorite part of being a mommy

During the past week or so Abbie has been waking up really upset about once per night. Out of nowhere she'll scream out and not be able to calm herself down. From what I've read, this is a symptom of separation anxiety; she wakes up in her room all alone, gets freaked out, and needs Mommy or Daddy to help her get control of her overwhelming emotions.

This scenario played itself out, once again, this morning around 3:00am. At first Matt got up to comfort Abbie while I dashed to the bathroom. But the cries kept coming. (Usually Matt can calm her down so she can go back to sleep...but not last night.) So I decided to go in and give it a go. I scooped up my little baby (who had stopped crying, but was doing the uncontrolled spastic sniffling that inevitably leads back to sobbing), pressed play to re-start her favorite sleepy time CD, and sat down on the glider. I tucked her as close to me as I possibly could and we started to play with our hands--clapping, waving... and she started to calm down. Then the most precious thing happened. She grabbed onto my fingers with both her hands and just clung on for dear life. We stayed like that for a long time. I loved holding her so close to me, feeling her soft baby skin against my cheek. She was so quiet, so still. All she needed was to know that Mommy was there. What an awesome privilege! When her eyes finally got droopy and she started to squirm, I knew she was ready to lay back down in her crib. I tucked her in, kissed her good night, and didn't hear another peep. Moments like that are my favorite part of being a mommy :-)

Big news!

Matt and I found out today officially (we pretty much already knew) that we are pregnant again!! I'm so excited; mostly because this is exactly according to plan--how many times in life can anyone say that?! About a month after Abbie was born, we decided that we wanted to try to have our kids about 18 months apart, so that would mean getting pregnant in March. And we did! It's hard to believe that both times we've wanted to get pregnant we have done so successfully, AND we've avoided pregnancy when we didn't want to get pregnant--and we did it all with a natural method! This only confirms even more to me that NFP is the best method of planning/avoiding pregnancy (I don't like to think of it as birth "control") for us, and I would totally recommend it to anyone else who is less than satisfied with hormonal or barrier methods (like we were before going natural).

How did I get on a tangent about NFP?! Oh well :-) Horray for new baby!

Some things should just remain unsaid (regardless of senility)!

I wore a dress to church this morning. I hardly ever wear dresses to church, mostly because I own hardly any dresses to wear to church. But today I pulled out a cute new dress from my closet that I bought a few months ago, thinking that it would be a good, sunny day to debut it! It's brown, pink and cream with a hippy flower pattern; it has an empire waist line, little cap sleeves, and goes down to about my knees. Very cute. Very appropriate for church. To top off this nice little look, I wore a pink and brown necklace and matching earrings, and with my fun, bouncy, newly-permed hair (which I actually styled this morning), I'd say I was lookin pretty good. Stacey and Clinton would be proud.

That is, until I made the mistake of lingering at the sugar and creamer station during coffee hour which just happened to be where Levan was also lingering. I was in a rush; "Dump some creamer into my coffee, stir in some sugar, and I can get out of here and put the screaming baby down for a nap," I thought inncocently to myself. Then out of the corner of my eye I notice Levan inching over to where I'm gussying-up my cuppa joe. Now, Levan is a nice old man. He was a Methodist pastor for a thousand years, is now retired, is a faithfully attending member of our church, leads prayer ministries for the elderly people, and makes a point of shaking hands with at least 75% of the congregation before the service starts every Sunday. So, naturally, I was expecting somethinig funny or even mildly flattering to emerge from his mouth.

Instead, with a twinkle in his eye he asks me, "Are you gaining weight?"

....uh......How do I handle this gracefully?????

Me: "Um, I hope not! (?!!!) Are you asking if I'm pregnant?"

Levan: "Well, are you?"

Me: "Umm....maybe? We don't know yet."

Levan: "Have you looked yet? Do you know if it's a boy or a girl?"

Me: "No; we're not sure that we're pregnant yet."

Now, granted, Matt and I are currently trying for a second baby (well, not CURRENTLY; I'm sitting at my laptop typing right NOW.... :-) but we haven't exactly make this public knowledge. And I'm sure that Levan's intentions were pure. After all, he doted over me when I was pregnant with Abbie. But all I heard was "You're obviously wearing a maternity dress. You look huge. In fact, you look big enough to be half-way through your pregnancy already! Or maybe you're just getting fat!"

So apparently my cute little sundress makes me look like a whale. I don't think I'll be wearing it again until I AM really pregnant. As for Levan, well, you can only blame so much rudeness on being old...

Thai massage parlors

I had a great experience this morning. For my birthday Matt gave me a gift certificate for an hour-long Swedish massage at the small massage parlor in Wilmore, and today I went! I loved the heated table, the sandalwood massage oil, the relaxing music and candles, and I LOVED the face and scalp massage especially! Oh, it was just wonderful. AND when I got home, Matt had washed all the dishes (my job) so the relaxing experience could just go on and on! Ahhhhhh what a great morning.

During my massage, I was thinking about the only other time I've experienced a massage...which was a much weirder situation. I was 17, staying in Bangkok [alone] for a few days before moving up to Khon Kaen for the summer. For those few days my home was the Alliance Guest House, where several other random travellers and missionaries were in-and-out. Over breakfast one morning I met a guy (who's name has escaped me) who was stopping over in Bangkok on his way from India to Sri Lanka, where he would be working as a missionary in an orphanage for the next few years. Somehow the group conversation turned to Thai massage, which everyone raved about. Unknown name guy said he wanted to get a Thai massage before leaving for Sri Lanka, but was apprehensive about the shady nature of most massage parlors in Bangkok (if you don't know, Thai massage parlors = brothels, especially when white Western men show up alone!), so would I mind going along with him? I though, "Huh! That would be cool!" so went along without another thought. (Good Lord, so many red flags go up in my head as I'm re-telling this story!!!) Once we got to a reputable-looking parlor, we went in and were met by two women--a young Thai girl, and an old, rather scary-looking woman. They set us up on two side-by-side mattresses on the floor, fully clothed, and, well, gave us massages! The old woman did mine, and it was actually pretty painful. (Thai massage is a mix of blood-displacement and yoga, and doesn't have very much to do with muscle kneading.) At the end the old woman contorted my body into some really strange yoga positions and all I remember is feeling like a beached whale, an embarrassment which was only exacerbated by the fact that I was right next to a relatively complete stranger. After the massage was all done, unknown name guy and I were both given bowls of fresh pineapple which was, by far, the best part of the experience. Then we paid (about $5 for a half hour) and were on our way! Well, actually, unknown name guy was on HIS way--he had to leave and catch a plane, so I was faced with the challenge of shopping (er...finding....) my way back to the guest house by myself. All in all, it was a very weird experience and I should probably by very thankful that I got through it unscathed!

Dumb dog + organic farm

Our dog Lucy has had four ear inner-ear infections in the last year. That works out to about one every 3 months. Treatment for these recurring infections (vet visits, drops, antibiotics, cortizone shots, maintenance ear cleaner) is way more than our dwindling budget can handle! After her last ear infection (about a month ago), our vet gave us two options: since it seems to be an underlying yeast problem that keeps getting triggered by something in the environment, we can 1) clean her ears once a week and give her maintenance ear drops twice a week, or 2) switch her to a hypo-allergenic diet (cutting out all treats, table scraps, etc.) for 8 weeks to see if she's allergic to something in her food. After doing option #1 for a month (and having a dog with constant chemical-ears around our grabby baby) we decided to start Lucy on the special diet.

Get this--for the next two weeks, Lucy will be eating a gourmet meal of KANGAROO MEAT every day!

...dumb old dog.

(Yes, this is Lucy pretending to be a gopher).

In other news, Matt and I discovered an organic farm right here in Jessamine county! We're buying a share of the farm (that is run by three families) and will be getting weekly boxes of seasonal produce, herbs, and fresh-cut flowers! And when the weather warms up we can visit the farm, too. I am SO EXCITED! It doesn't get better than this--supporting local business AND buying organic veggies for CHEAP! I feel like we discovered a gold mine!