Taking the Scenic Route

For some reason I don’t seem to have my hands as free to post as I used to.    Zora seems to be following in Zane’s footsteps…she won’t sleep anyplace but in somebody’s arms.  She is probably going to outdo Zane’s ability to sleep through noise though.  She sleeps through not only the normal household noise, but her brother’s noise.  (and he can be very noisy).

I am also not very good at one handed typing, especially with how my keyboard is located in relationship to my arms…I have to pull it onto my lap to use it and my lap is now occupied most of the time.  (Zach is holding her now, which is allowing me a few seconds to post)

Thanks to Zach’s mom, we have our domain space back, so the links should work again.  Thanks!

I have pictures from Zane’s birthday celebration to post, but I have to get them off my camera and then resize them, so it will be on another post.

Today has been a good day.  You may all breathe a big sigh of relief with me….today was the day Zach picked up his financial aid money.  WooHoo!  The financial crunch is abated for a while.  Zach bough his books for the semester and paid the car tags.  We thought we were going to have money to pay them on the 30th, but we were mistaken.  His last paycheck was two weeks before that, so we ended up a paycheck shorter than we were anticipating last month.  Thankfully, we had a few people gift us with a combination of gift cards and money that helped us squeak by.  It was a rough month, made more difficult by the early birth, but now we are on to the next chapter.  We made it. 

We have also hit the Karmic jackpot for waiting in line the last few days.  Zach walked in to pick up his financial aid and ended up with only 3 people in front of him instead of 50 or 60 (or the time we went and started waiting outside the doors of the building…the line started on the third floor and wound down all the staircases, through the lobby and out the door).  At the tag office he walked in and there was NOBODY in line.  And, most amazing, yesterday, when we went to SRS office for our appointment the office was wall-to-wall people.  There were probably 50 people in the waiting room and several groups had already parked it on the floor because there were no more chairs.  I plopped down in the middle of the room since there wasn’t even an edge available any more and was getting Zora positioned to feed her.  I hadn’t even gotten my shirt lifted when somebody offered me an empty office to nurse in.  (I guess there are advantages to nursing in an area where it isn’t the norm to see people nursing in public)  I told her I didn’t mind, but realized it would be easier for Zach to contain Zane in an office, so I accepted (after making sure it was ok to bring Zach and Zane too).  A minute later, the lady who offered us the office space came in to find out who we were waiting for…and our case worker was the one who was looking for his next appointment.  She told him we were in the office and he came in, told us to just sit because he had our case file with him…we didn’t need to go to his office (which would have meant winding through a maze of hallways) and he sat at the desk in that office and started going through our paperwork.  Not only was he organized, he was in a really jovial mood.  We forgot to fill out a portion of the paperwork and he just laughed and handed us a pen.  He was absolutely the nicest person I have ever dealt with in that office.  He was also surprised we had been given such a hard time before since we don’t apply for anything other than food stamps.  (we are eligible for cash assistance and some other things, but choose not to because of some of the stipulations) The last worker kept grilling us on how we managed to survive on the amount of money we claimed…it was obvious that he thought we must be dealing drugs or something because ‘nobody’ can survive on so little.  This guy was older and I suspect had depression era parents…seemed more impressed and supportive of our choices and our ability to be that frugal.  An un-jaded social worker…who knew they existed?!?   We were back in our car at 2:20.  The appointment was at 2:00 (we were early, but still…we expected to be there until 3:30 at the earliest, and 4:30 or 5:00 when we saw how crowded the office was.)  We were almost stunned when we walked out of the office.  We were so dreading that appointment, on many levels, and it was almost pleasant.

She is stirring again, so I better close.   

ETA

It is amazing how much more quickly Zora and I are able to nurse in public than I was able to with Zane.  Today I walked around holding her while she nursed.  She was able to stay latched most of the time and I was able to so a little bit of shopping…even chasing Zane when he wandered off.  She is getting a lot stronger.  It also helps that I am not trying to balance a blanket over the whole thing.  I think I am going to get some of my snugger shirts and just cut open the bra area and wear another shirt over it.  I wore one of my lower v-neck shirts today and it sort of worked (not terribly comfortable), but if I just take a scissors to a few shirts it would allow me to have a whole ‘nursing wardrobe’ for no money.  That way my whole stomach is not hanging out when I pull up my shirt to nurse.

The only problem I ran into is that I have lost all ability to use my sling.  For some reason, I could not figure out the Maya Wrap to save my life.  My arm, and in time, my whole stomach, hips, and back hurt trying to just hold her with my arm alone for that period of time.  Some of that is being out of shape from such a long bedrest, but a large part of it is not having the weight balanced the way it is when you sling.  I hope I can figure it out again from my video that came with the wrap, but if not, I think I might be calling Bianca and begging for help.  I need to call her anyway…just need to find the number and the phone at the same time.  lol.