"Play" - I Heart Faces May Photo Challenge

"Didn't your mother ever tell you not to play with your food?"
50mm 1/100, f/2, ISO 400 

My Spring Garden

I love tulips and daffodils.  I'm always so sad to see them go.  I think my daffodils lasted less than a week this year will all of the crazy weather changes.

I've tried to make the garden one that is continuously blooming all spring and summer... daffodils, hyacinth, tulips, irises, lilies, hostas.  I need to find some perennial that blooms in the fall.  I'm so excited!  After 2 years of waiting, my clematis finally started growing!  It's currently working its way up the railing on the front steps. Now I just have to wait to find out what color the blooms are :)

Lucas

Lucas was being especially adorably sweet today (something that, I'm sad to say, doesn't seem to happen much at this age...).  Our pediatrician calls this the adolescence of toddlerhood :).  We played around with my camera a little bit.  When I was done taking pictures, he sat on my bed and just scrolled through the pictures of himself over, and over, and over, and over...

500 Festival 2013

Jason ran the 500 Festival Mini-Marathon Saturday.  He finished in the top 13th percentile :)

Jason says, "Give the the camera to her.  See if she'll take our picture."  Sooo... I did.  And the woman asks me which button zooms out.  Sorry, darling.  The DSLR only zooms out more if you move your feet backwards.

 We left Jack at home with G'ama.  It was plenty hard enough getting Lucas up at 5:30...

During the wait, beach balls were thrown into the runner corrals to keep everyone entertained (and to give them something to direct their adrenaline toward)

Jason says the pic on the left isn't internet worthy... I disagree :)

Since we had 1.5-2 hours to kill, Lucas and I strolled along the Canal.  I always forget how beautiful and peaceful it is down there!

  

This is where Jason proposed to me almost exactly 7 years ago (5/5/05)

 

Unfortunately, you had to pay to get into special tents on the finish line if you want to see your family/friends finish.   So, no finish line photo :(

Lucas's Kid's Run is next Saturday...

Jason recorded the race, and I caught this...

The woman with the jogger is me :) Lucas decided we got him up too early, so he's catnapping.

Jack's New Trick (or) My Boys Have Pretty Eyes

"Uh" - "Dtu" - "Dsee" (Translation: "One" - "Two" - "Three")

Explanations, Apologies, and Hashimoto's

This blog has lain dormant for the past four months.  It's been frustrating for me to not have the time or the energy to keep it up.  I'm not even sure I've picked up my camera much in that time either.  I needed a bit of R&R time.

Last summer, I learned that during the normal postpartum period, there are 4-6 months where a woman's thyroid goes into a slight "hyperdrive" mode... rapid weight loss, maybe a little bit of a rapid heart rate, and maybe some extra perspiration.  At about 6 or 7 months postpartum, the thyroid goes back to normal, or even occasionally dips down into an under-productive mode.  Most women don't even realize the changes in their body.

For me, it was pretty debilitating.

Every time I took a shower, I ended up with large clumps of hair in my hand.  All along my hair line, I had 1 inch-long sections that stood straight up, while the hair on the rest of my head was extremely thinned out.  I have always had thick, healthy hair.  Seeing my hair so thin and brittle was scaring me.

Confession:  I haven't cut my hair since last July.

I was keeping my hair in a cute chin-length Victoria Beckham-type bob.  I was afraid that cutting my hair would just make what was left look extremely shaggy.  Of course, maybe it could have hidden the short sections better, but I was too tired to schedule an appointment and not sure if I wanted to risk the shagginess. 

Lucas took this of me a couple days ago.  Pretty good, huh?  You can see where one of my shaggy segments is by my part.  My hair has started to grow back enough that I can usually tame those spots.

I was also extremely fatigued.  Everyone kept telling me it was part of being a new mom, and that it would get better.  I knew what being a new mom felt like.  I was a second-time mom.  When I say "extreme fatigue," I'm not talking about pulling an all-nighter... just take a nap, and you'll feel loads better.  I'm talking about sleeping constantly, and when you are awake and trying to walk, it feels like 2 people are hanging off of your shoulders and dragging you down.  Just the effort of picking up your feet a few times to go to the bathroom, and you're ready for another nap.  Every time Jack went down for a nap, I put a movie on for Lucas, and I passed out.  When my eyes were open, everything was foggy.  I couldn't understand half of what I was hearing, no matter how hard I tried to concentrate.  I used to be the mental keeper of my husband's keys or my son's favorite toy.  They'd ask me where something was, and I could remember exactly where I'd last seen it.  I can't count the number of items I misplaced last summer and fall.  I needed my husband to schedule just about every appointment (including mine).  He did just about every household chore.  I did my best to at least keep dishes going in and out of our dishwasher, but I couldn't even accomplish that every day. I was seriously considering whether or not I should keep working.  I couldn't have gotten through this without Jason's support.

The extreme fatigue was leading to depression.  I just wanted to be able to function normally.  I didn't even care about being supermom.  Actually, I was experiencing 2 extremes at one time.  I had such a hard time caring about anything, and at the same time, the apathy was creating some serious anxiety, because surely I should care about something, right?  I had some very irrational phobias...  On Tuesdays, I tried my hardest to get the trash together after the boys went to bed so that Jason wouldn't have to do it when he got home.  However, every time I took the trash cans to the end of the driveway in the dark, I would start crying.  I couldn't handle being outside in my own yard in the dark.  Thankfully, Jason saw how anxious and terrified this made me, that he insisted I leave the trash can for him to take to the road.

Other issues I was dealing with included a huge intolerance to cold.  I was so chilled all of the time that it felt like I had a fever (even though my temp was normal).  My eczema flared up, and I ended up with a staph infection because my body couldn't defend itself.  I had frequent palpitations which occasionally left me short of breath.  During one month, I had 3 separate periods.

After several months of seeing my primary physician, insisting that something was wrong, and several lab draws with a "mildly elevated" thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH), one result finally jumped to a critically high level.  I was finally referred to an endocrinologist, placed on thyroid hormones, and very slowly, I've been returning back to "normal" (although I still have some bad days).  More lab tests have shown that I actually have antibodies to my own thyroid, leading to a diagnosis of Hashimoto's Disease, a type of autoimmune disorder.  My endocrinologist said that my body will continue to destroy parts of my thyroid throughout my lifetime.  I've been having to adjust to remembering to take a medicine every morning, at least a half-hour before I eat (or my body will not be able to absorb it correctly), lab draws several times a year, visits to a specialist at least yearly.  I have been having to accept the fact that the dosage of my medicine will need to be almost doubled if I even want to think about getting pregnant again, or else I could miscarry or my baby could have some sort of brain malformation.

I'm sorry to anyone who feels I have been rude or unsocial in the past 8 months.  I am only just now beginning to realize how much I have missed out on simply because I couldn't pay attention or understand.  

I'm sorry this post is so ridiculously long :).

I will try my best to catch up with everything that has happened the past few months :).

Silly Boys... Yogurt Edition

Yogurt is good for you.  Yogurt is good for your children.  Yogurt is not good for clean-freak moms.

I think I'm going to blow up the top left photo and hang it up in our dining room/kitchen.  Jason and I like to present a clean house to our guests (and just to teach our children to be tidy)... but lately I've been trying harder to balance my sanity with allowing the kids to explore their world.

Even if it means several baths a day.