An Uff in an Uff

An Uff in an Uff

Monday, December 24, 2012

Merry Christmas Eve

Ruby celebrating with her boys

He loves his ball from Gigi and Popi

Christmas eve feast! (not a single request for lutefisk)

Life on the lane...

On early Thursday morning right after a 2am feeding I heard the strangest noise as I was drifting back to sleep. A cracking and rumbling noise. In my half comatose state I assumed I was hearing things. I turned to Zan and said "I think there was a landslide," to which he replied, "I'll deal with it in the morning." I rolled over and tried to get a few more hours of sleep, sure that I had been half dreaming.

Well unfortunately I was not dreaming. When I got up to take Ruby outside this is what greeted us:




I quickly ran back inside to tell Zan, and then hopped in the car to see if we could get off of the street. This is what I found:


The road was covered with a slide and two trees. Looks like my baby group won't be able to make it to the get together at our house. I quickly ran back to the house to call and cancel everyone coming over. As I was making phone calls I looked out the front window to the North and saw this:


4 feet of mud covering the roadway below. It certainly made the slide behind our house look small, and made me question at this point whether the Mayans were right. Was the apocalypse starting a day early?  Zan ran across the street to make sure that the little old man who lives there was ok. He started to build a barricade with old railroad ties to divert the muddy water that was still coming down the hillside like a river and going into his garage. At this point multiple neighbors came out to assess the damage. My Dad came down to help and had to hike in from way up on Picnic Point Rd to get to us. Luckily with his full rain gear from his construction business days he looked official enough that the County crew let him pass and climb up over the slide to get to the street without too many questions. Zan and my Dad worked the rest of the day diverting water from up on the hill, digging and climbing through mud up past their knees in the pouring rain. Leif and I spent the day looking out the windows, packing evacuation bags and being anxious.

The silver lining to all of this is the support and camaraderie we found with our neighbors. People we had never met before came out, and everyone pulled together to help find a construction company to clear the road that was covered that is not maintained by the County. People shared stories and insights of their 30-40 years here on Possession Lane. Sharing how they control slides on their property, as well as insurance plan insights. We will now be getting a DIC insurance policy. However, I find the name of this to be rather ominous and those of you in the medical field probably know why :)

At the end of the day we found ourselves safe and dry, and thankful to not have had more damage. 

"Life on the Lane: when you first move here you look to the west, in the winter you look to the east!" -Neighbor Matt

Sunday, December 9, 2012

Janna and the case of the terrible, horrible, very bad mom brain

I have self diagnosed myself. I have now broken a total of 3 drinking glasses, my favorite mug, and the french press. I am at a loss for words and the amount of times I have asked Zan the same question, following up that question with whether I have already asked that question have been numerous. The final act to make me sure I was losing my mind was when I left the car door open while we were at the dog park. Yes, I packed up the baby and the dog and just left the door open and walked away! 

All of the differential diagnosis floated around in my head. I have never diagnosed myself with so many things, except for a short period in nursing school where I think everyone thinks that they have the symptoms for every horrible disease that you are learning about. It finally dawned on me. We are in the bleary-eyed, cloudy survival mode that is called parenting a 10 week old who has decided sleep is overrated. Yes, we are in the trenches. 

Once I settled on that and tried to let go of  thinking I must have a horrible disease I could direct my research  towards fixing the sleep issue. Sleepwise, Happiest Baby on the Block, Baby Whisperer the resources are endless. Not to mention the scores of "mom chats" online. Everyone using acroynms like "LO" (little one) STTN (sleeping through the night) etc, which has done nothing but make me furious that people use 800 words to describe their situation, but don't want to write out these extra few words. Also these posts generally being full of how their baby is the best and it is because of their superior mothering skills. I have to admit that before the last few weeks I felt pretty smug that I had it all figured out. Leif had started to sleep 5 hour stretches and it had to be because we were doing things the "right way." Parenthood is such a lesson in humility and patience. 

But for the moment he is sleeping, and I am grateful.





Good thing it is hard to feel tired and cranky with this little guy

 
I finally caught him on camera rolling over.