So our new dryer arrived yesterday.  With any luck, this one won’t try to burn our house down (see previous entry).  It’s all pretty and new, and now I want a new washing machine to match.  Alas, that isn’t going to happen any time soon.

As M installed the new dryer, Munchkin was standing at the gate at the top of the stairs to the basement calling down “What you doing?”

My mother, who is visiting us for a couple of weeks, was in the kitchen with her and told her that he was hooking up her new dryer.

Munchkin thought this over for a minute then yelled down the stairs, “you cooking the dryer?”

She’s been talking about it ever since and refuses to be corrected.  Apparently dryers are now things which can be cooked.  Or cooked in, we aren’t quite clear on that matter.

She is not a dryer fan though because the new dryer is an evil, evil fiend of a machine.  She came down with me to get some clothes out, and we were only a few feet away from it when the thing buzzed really loudly to remind us that our clothes were still done.  I have never heard such a scream of terror from my poor little girl before.  I gave her a hug and she wasn’t too bad once the buzzing ended, but she clung to my leg while I took the clothes out and demanded to be carried on the way back up.  Fortunately, she was willing to settle for holding my hand, so I didn’t have to leave the basket behind.

Terror and all, it is nice being able to dry clothes at home again.

What’s this? Sleeping kids and a chance to actually post something? It’s only because I’m up when I should be sleeping.

So Monday afternoon M had just arrived home from working a half day and we were sitting about discussing all we had to do that night when we smelled something a little funny. He’d just gotten up to go figure out what it was when the smoke when the beeping of the smoke detector started.

It’s an all too familiar sound around here. The one in the hall is super-sensitive – probably a good thing – and we here it at least once a weak when we burn something or broil something in the oven or there is a buildup of crumbs in the bottom of a toaster or I forget to close the door when I shower and the steam escapes.

But nothing was on in the kitchen, and no one had had a shower since that morning. We realized pretty quickly that it wasn’t even the main floor alarm – it was the one at the foot of the stairs, and that one should never go off. Whatever it was, the problem lay in the basement.

So M. descended into the dangerous depths while I stayed upstairs with the kids. And it’s a good thing this happened while he was home, because I would not have wanted to leave my babies alone while I went down to look for the problem, so I probably would have had to call the fire department to come find it for me. The smell was getting worse.

“It smells like the dryer,” M said as he headed down, but I reminded him that we hadn’t put anything in it that day.

“The iron is unplugged, isn’t it?” I called down as I shoved Munchkin’s snow boots on her feet. It had been days since I’d used it to iron fabric for a project, and I knew I’d unplugged it.

“It isn’t that,” M called back up.

“Did I leave my sewing machine turned on,” I yelled as I gathered coats into a pile and made plans to grab my computer – it’s hard drive full of irreplaceable baby pictures* - and our wedding album.

“It’s not coming from there.”

It turned out that it was the dryer. For some reason the heat hadn’t turned off when it stopped spinning after the last time we had used it the day before. So it had kept getting hotter and hotter until one of those three plastic things on the inside which help turn the clothes – the one closest to the heat source, I guess – melted.

Melted!

So that’s the end of our dryer. M went out that night and bought a new one – consulting me on the phone – and it will be delivered tomorrow afternoon (technically this afternoon). It’s been quite a week doing laundry with no dryer. Cloth diapers!

We really can’t afford a new dryer. It’s been one expense after another lately what with a huge vet bill for one of the cats in February and then all we bought (really not that much, but still) for the new baby. So I should be upset and angry and such, but I’m not. Because it could have been so much worse. It could have burned down our house.

*I do have backups – all of Munchkin’s pictures are on CD-ROM and I’m not deleting Sean’s from the memory card until I have burned them to CD as well. But the CD-ROMS of Muchkin’s pictures were all down in the office which is in the basement, and I wasn’t quite sure where I’d left the memory card with the other pictures on it. We need to get a safe deposit box one of these days.

You’d think that getting two kids ready to go out would take about twice as long as getting one kid ready.  You would be wrong.  It really takes about five times as long.  Thus we were a few minutes late to Sean’s two-week checkup this morning.

He’s doing great though.  He weighed eight pounds and seven ounces which is one pound and three ounces more than his birthweight.  Of course, he was wearing a cloth diaper for this weighing, so really he had probably only gained an ounce or so less than a pound.  That’s still doing quite good for exactly two weeks.

One of these days I’m going to have to think up and Internet nickname for him.  It doesn’t seem quite right that he gets called by his real name while Munchkin is Munchkin.  Alas, I am stuck for a name.  Oh well.

Speaking of Munchkin, she did not want to leave the doctor’s office today because there were lots of toys there.  I haven’t been getting her out enough, poor girl.

The toys are one nice part of seening a real pediatrician.  Our family doctor has aboslutely none.  And the waiting rooms at the family doctor’s office is horrible and the miniscule exam rooms barely leave you enough room to stand beside the exam table.  I chose our family doctor because she was the closest one accepting new patients when we moved to this house, but I’m thinking I need to find a new one just so I don’t have to go in that horrible office again.

Also, the ped gets points for having a poster with Health Canada breastfeeding guidelines (no solids for six months, breastfeed for two years or beyond) on the wall of the nice big, toy filled exame room.

Did you know it was pi day?

Erm.. it was a few minutes ago, anyway.

It’s sort of strange being able to bend over again.  I keep reaching for something on the floor and thinking “oh, I shouldn’t be doing this, it’s going to hurt” then being surprised when I get it easily and of course it doesn’t hurt.

And I can tie my own shoes again!  M was having to help me with my winter boots there for a while.  It was quite a struggle to get in and out of them when he wasn’t around back when I couldn’t reach my feet.

It’s also amazing just how much faster I can pick up the living room when I don’t have to have a loooong recovery period after each item I pick up off the floor.  When I cleaned it the last afternoon I was pregnant, it took me about an hour just to pick up the toys, and I killed my back in the process.

I haven’t had a chance to respond to the comments on my last post (the comments on my liverjournal anyway, I think this pretty much shows that no one reads the weblog I actually post these too before the script copies them over, but I’m keeping it anyway), so I just wanted to thank everyone for the congratulations and kind words.
I have much to write about, but I rarely have a free hand to type with these days, much less two.

As if having a newborn who wants to be held constantly (which is just what newborns do) wasn’t enough, Munchkin is quite sick and needs to be on me constantly as well.  So I’ve spent the last few days watching children’s programming on PBS or Treehouse (no commercials on either one) from a big overstuffed chair with two kids on my lap.  This is killing my back.

Munchkin has been lethargic and not wanting to eat and had a fever for the past few days.  Tyleonol helps some.  I think that she has a molar coming in, and I hope that is the cause of the fever, because the thought of poor little Sean catching the flu at only one week old is quite frightening.  If she still has a fever tomorrow we’ll take her into the walk-in clinic, because this has gone on long enough.

Did I mention that M went in to work today for a part day?  I was ready to fall to pieces by the time he got home around 3:30   Munchkin was very tired and very unhappy and sick and just wanted to nurse all day.  I let her a little, but I had to cut her off long before she was ready because I can only handle so much.

And was so tired that she was crying a lot, but she just would not go to sleep.  That was, she wouldn’t go to sleep until around five in the evening.  She woke a little after ten seeming to be feeling much better which is good.  But it is midnight now and she is still feeling pretty good, and I don’t expect I’ll be seeing my own bed any time soon.

I love my kids, and I love to snuggle with them.  I never minded being in constant contact with Muchkin when she was really little, and I don’t mind with Sean now, but having two of them on me most of the day every day this last little bit is starting to wear on me.

But M has Sean now, and Muchkin is actually happy to play on her own for the moment, and I am blessedly free of child!

Except Sean is hungry, and M lacks the necessary equipment, so it’s back on duty for me.

And that’s my whine for now.

Little Sean was born at 7:05 AM on Thursday, March 2.  We came home early Friday afternoon.  Munchkin has had a couple of jealous moments, especially around the nursing issue, but mostly she is very excited about the baby.  All is good.

Birth story and more to follow…

Just posted this to two due date communites/forums, so I guess I should copy it here too…

I had my dr’s appt on Wednesday this week instead of Thursday because I guess they were overbooked for Thursday or something.  She said I was three centimeters dilated and she didn’t expect me to make it to my next appt.

Now I’m thinking she’s going to be seeing me today (Thursday).

Contractions aren’t that strong or frequent or long, but they are absolutely killing my back.  It feels like someone is taking a hammer to it at the same time as someone else tries to rip it apart.  This is just how it was with my daughter, and I was really hoping that I wouldn’t have to go through the back agony again.

Of course it started just before midnight when I was going to bed so I haven’t slept.  Arrgh.  I’m hoping it will die down again so I can go back to bed and get some sleep.  But I’ve had a bit of bloody show, and like I said, it is just as it was with my daughter, so no sleep for me

I do not want to do this tonight.  Actually, I don’t want to do this at all.  I just want this baby out by some magical means that doesn’t involve any pain.

I think I’m going to go wake my husband up now.  I was trying to let him get as much sleep as possible, but I’m tired of suffering alone, and I’ve had three contractions during the course of writing this, so I probably should start timing them.  Besides, someone needs to run down to the basement to get my clothes out of the dryer so I have something to wear to the hospital when it is time, and it’s not going to be me!

Wish me luck.

Because OWWW!