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Well, Tater Tot’s appetite is back. It’s nice that she’s eating something other than applesauce. Makes a mommy worry a little less. It has been hard to relate to the struggles of Mommies with toddlers who are picky eaters because Tater Tot generally eats most of what’s put in front of her at any given time. But I got a small glimpse into your world, Ladies, and it was not pretty. I understand the worry that your child is not getting adequate nutrition now because, really, how much of your daily RDA can you get from applesauce and juice? Or just cheese? Or whatever the food du jour is for your picky eater…

She seems to be doing better on several fronts, as I have not had to get up with her because she is hacking and coughing for the past two nights and she doesn’t seem to have a fever anymore, either. Although with my crappy ear thermometer, who knows? I didn’t think she had one when I took her to the doctor on Tuesday, either but guess what? She did. We go back to the doc this morning so, hopefully he’ll tell us her ears look better and her lungs sound better. And maybe, just maybe, I’ll get to remove the baby monitor from our bedroom and have a sound nights’ sleep sometime soon. Free from undue worry. And being woken up by congestion-induced snoring or coughing. That would be nice. But, what can ‘ya do? Such is a Mommy’s Life.

On a totally unrelated note, although I am feeling a bit better energy-wise, I’ve decided that I’m going to ask my doctor to increase my thyroid medication until my TSH is between 1 and 2. It was above 2 this last time around and she’s not likely to do this for me but you never know until you ask. I can’t help but think that some of this not being able to sleep may have something to do with my thyroid. It’s worth a shot. If you’re asking “What the heck is she talking about?” let me tell you some background. I have been diagnosed with Hashimoto’s thyroiditis since I was 16 years old and I am now 39. My body recognizes my thyroid as a foreign body, not as the wonderful, useful gland that it should recognize it as. As a result, my body is trying to destroy my thyroid gland (and probably already has). The end result for me is that my thyroid gland does not function as it should, under-producing the all-important hormone needed to regulate my metabolism, energy-level, etc. (for more info go here or here). So I take synthetic thyroid hormone. And most of the time I still feel crappy. Not as bad as some people do, but bad enough to hate my life sometimes. The times when I feel like I need a nap by 10am or feel like laying on the couch instead of playing with my beautiful daughter or when I am utterly exhausted yet have trouble falling asleep or staying asleep. And when I’m exhausted I feel like I need to eat continuously all day long in the vain hope that it will give me enough energy which results in weight gain and/or not being able to lose that last 10 pounds of “baby weight” that really should now be called “toddler weight” since my Princess is two! Or the times when every piece of clothing that I put on makes me feel like a 10 pound sausage in a 5 pound casing…

If you’re saying to yourself “Yeah, but I feel that way sometimes, too and I don’t have a thyroid condition. It’s just being anxious or depressed about emotional stuff.” or something like that, I’ve thought of that, too. Life’s messy and there are lots of things to worry about, do, and generally let invade your otherwise peaceful mindset. I know that. I also know that I deal with life’s messiness relatively well when I feel good. Yes, it’s well-established that I am a worrier but, at the end of the day, I know that everything will work out and I find my peace within a situation. This is different. This is an irritability and moodiness that is not usually there. This is an exhaustion that is worse than lack of sleep and worry combined. This is a physical depletion that just feels different than one caused by emotional issues or feelings. For example, I am generally a happy shopper at large super-discount stores that shall remain nameless (hint: there’s one on just about every street corner here in Cali and the name ends in “Mart”). I go when there is plenty of time to shop and we have no pressing time constraints. Tater Tot likes to help me push the cart. It’s even easier when I go by myself so it’s generally a pleasant shopping experience for me. The other day I thought I was going to end up on Jerry Springer because I felt so much like running over several of the clientele of said establishment who would have then roundly kicked my ass, trailer-park style. This is not me. I do not generally feel like going all kung-fu on people’s asses whilst shopping. Add to that the need for a nap at 10am and voila! You have a generally low-thyroid-feeling situation. This has been going on for a month. So I asked for my thyroid levels to be tested and was very surprised that they were within the normal range. The last time I felt this bad, they were out of the normal range and my medication was increased.

So, I will ask my doctor. In the mean time, I am reading Fat, Fuzzy, or Frazzled and The Thyroid Diet trying to find ways to “optimize my treatment”. Hopefully I’ll find a few things in there that will make a difference in my situation…

Anywhooo…thanks for reading my long, rambling, fairly self-centered post today! Now it’s time to get on with the day. Time for Tater Tot to get up and then we get to go back to the doctor’s. Hopefully he’ll have some good news for us! Have a fantastic day!

The Tater Tot still has whatever it is that she has and it is not getting better. By my rough calculations she is down 2 pounds because all she will eat is apple sauce. I don’t care how much applesauce you eat, you will not maintain your weight eating it alone. Hey, maybe I can create The Applesauce Diet, make a gazillion dollars as the diet fad of the moment and not have to worry about money any more! Yeah, maybe not. It was a nice thought.

We went to the doc yesterday for her 2 year Well Child visit and he didn’t see any change in her ears at all and she still has a fever. She’s been hacking at night so I bring her down to sleep on the couch, propped up by pillows so she can breathe better. She must just feel horrible because she has not been without Gossageesie and Dora for a moment this whole week and a half that she has been sick. I think I might need to throw them in the washer again…she keeps coughing and sneezing and generally germing them up. I wonder how long germs can live on matted, well-traveled synthetic fibers? Huh.

The doc decided to change her antibiotic to Zithromax and put her on Albuterol for her cough. I don’t know why medications make me nervous but they do. It makes me more nervous to not have her on them, though, so we dropper cherry and strawberry goop into her mouth at the appointed times and hope that she will respond positively. The upside is that I didn’t have to get up with her at all last night except to give her a dose of the cough medicine because it was time to, not because she was coughing. That’s improvement right there. For the past week and a half, we’ve been getting up with her 3-4 times a night trying to ease her cough. “Rocking and shnuggling” is a frequent request when we get her up and has become one during the day when she gets upset, too. Which is often. Waaaaay more often than usual. I’m sure she just feels miserable and, once she feels better, will be back to her little self.

She’s never been this sick before. Or for this long. I hope it goes away soon. Duh, Mommy. Who wouldn’t?

I am doing laundry, dishes, and cleaning the bomb site that is my home in a Dora party hat for one reason: my baby girl wants me to and it’s her birthday. My baby is two. It’s hard to believe. She is still sick but getting better….slowly. Her fever finally broke last night after a week and she is starting to eat a little bit of something besides applesauce. The antibiotic-induced diarrhea is no fun but whatever eventually makes her feel better is okay by me at this point.

Now comes the task of finding a spot for all the birthday loot…wish me luck!

Happy Birthday Tater Tot! And Happy Birthday to you too, Zoe! You two are such great little girls!

I am grateful that The Daddy was off work this week for President’s Week. Tater Tot is sick. Pretty darned sick. Sick enough to warrant a trip to the doc where we found out that she has an ear infection. That doesn’t sound bad, does it? Well, it’s obvious that whatever is infecting her ears is also infecting her chest because she has been up hacking and snorking most of the night since Sunday with a fever between 100 and 102. So I’ve been up giving her Tylenol and “rocking and shnuggling” to get her back to sleep. The Daddy took a turn last night so I was able to get a little bit more sleep. She’s on her second day of antibiotic and the diarrhea has begun. Not fun. She’s never been this sick before. But she’s starting to get a little more pep back in her step today so I think she’s turned the corner. I’ll tell you, though, we have broken just about every routine we have this week and I’m curious to see what it’ll be like when she’s not sick anymore and we go back to the regular routine. At least then I will have more sleep which hopefully will equal more energy to deal with the inevitable tantrums when I don’t let her follow the loosey-goosey routine we’ve had this week.

That’s it. That’s all I’ve got. Creative juices have dried up so all you get is the report of what’s been going on in the world of Princess Tater Tot and The Mommy. Sorry.

Tater Tot has been sick the past couple of days. Snorky and feverish and sick. It’s not slowing her down as much as you’d think it would but it’s obvious that she’s a little “off”. For one thing, she was sluggish about eating her “yummy turkey sandwich” the other day and pretty much won’t eat anything except apple sauce. Any time this kid doesn’t nearly jump out of her seat about eating, I know there’s something wrong. And when I got her up from her nap the other day, she cried for about 10 minutes while I rocked her. What she was crying about, I have no idea. But then we went to play with trains and she was fine.

The fever went down after a day or two but she’s got lots and lots of congestion. So much so that I’m sleeping with the baby monitor in our bedroom again because I’m paranoid. Paranoid about what, I’m not sure. That she’ll have too much trouble breathing, maybe? But, if I were sound asleep, would I really be able to hear that even over the baby monitor? Probably not. But it gives me more peace of mind than not having it in our room so… Yeah, I know it doesn’t make a whole lot of rational sense but what about my life does? Your answer is “not a lot”.

I’m quite surprised that I haven’t gotten sick yet. I haven’t been feeling that great and last night I was 100% certain that I was going to wake up snorky and miserable because I went to bed with a headache and the beginnings of a sore throat. But, here I am, drinking my coffee and typing at you all feeling better than I did last night. I’m kind of tired of not feeling that great, though. Lately I do fine until about 10 in the morning and then I feel like I’ve worked an entire day and it’s time to put her to bed. Of course I wake up at 4 so…

I was going to call my doctor last week because my energy level was on the floor again but I decided against it since I had just been sick and thought I’d give my body another week to recover. I also got two books from the library about optimizing your hypothyroid treatment thinking I’d try some more stuff before just asking my doc to up my meds. One thing that I’ve learned about having Hashimoto’s is that you need to “believe yourself” when you feel physically crappy. I’ve always had the thought in the back of my mind that I’m just being a wimp. Suck it up and deal with it. Change your outlook/attitude and you’ll feel better (although I do believe that you should do this even if you do “believe yourself”). But, as I get older, I feel more and more like a lot of this is physical and it’s okay to pester your doctor to make changes that you think will make you feel better. I will give this another week or so, especially considering the fact that I have The Tater Tot coughing in my face all day. Maybe part of this is my poor, old, Hashimoto’s-compromised immune system trying to fight off whatever she’s trying to give me. But, if I’m not feeling better after that, I will ask her to re-test my thyroid levels and adjust my meds. I’m not holding my breath that she’ll comply but you never know until you ask!

Oh, hey! By the way…even as sick as she is, Princess Tater Tot went poopy in the potty seat AND slept in her new big girl bed last night! What a champ!

The Tater Tot and I had a great day today! We went to a very fun play date with lots and lots of kids where there was a jump house and a guy playing kids’ music on his guitar with some really fun props. We gave and got lots of Valentines. We wore festive clothes and a very cute heart necklace. We napped and rested and played and had fun. And the Tater Tot went pee-pee in the potty seat twice today!

So I decided to print out a cute little Dora the Explorer Potty Training chart and some “special Dora potty seat stickers” and try to get her excited about this whole thing. I tried to teach her how to pull her pants down, which is a “sign of readiness”. Yeah, not so successful at that. Add to that the fact that I don’t currently have any sort of pull-up type of diaper in the house and we’re kind of just wingin’ it. I hope the success of her potty training doesn’t depend on a full-court press right this very minute because, if it does, she may be still potty training before she goes to kindergarten! I’ve also got to get her used to using the regular toilet seat because we’ve got play dates and stuff lined up for the rest of the month! I guess I could cancel some play dates to stay at home and potty train all week… Or maybe we’ll just be sporadic for a minute and put our full concentration on this a little bit later…

Just when you get a pretty good routine going, everything changes…

I’m not sure if I’m ready for this… The Tater Tot always loves to be “Naked Girl” and she does the funniest “Naked Dance” (her words). She was having fun doing the Naked Dance before bath time tonight when she says “Have to go potty”. She has said this a kazillion times before and we take her diaper off, sit her on the potty seat and play, talk, laugh, wait for virtually nothing. So I put her on the potty seat, played, talked, laughed, waited until she said “Done goin’ potty” like she always does. There is never anything in the potty seat when she is “Done goin’ potty”. Except for tonight. I look down and there is pee-pee in the potty seat! Oh Good Lord she has gone potty on the potty seat for the first time ever! I made such a ridiculous production about the pee-pee in the potty seat that I am sure that the neighbors for at least a half mile know that my child went in the potty for the first time. I was completely floored! Does this mean I have to start potty training? I’m not prepared! I haven’t really even thought much about it because she has been so ambivalent and seemed so not ready! I guess I’d better get ready. I don’t think she’s ready to do it all the time but I think that I need to start offering the potty seat at regular intervals. Good Lord, I don’t even know how to approach this yet. Guess I’d better do some research…quick!

Yeah, not really feelin’ the New Year’s resolutions this year. I am laughing at myself because I was so fired up to make them and I have made very little progress on any of them. I will say that I am getting better at doing my daily routines and I am working on sticking to weekly routines but, other than that….nada. Zip. Zilch. No progress. Oh! Except that my daily ice cream habit is gone. I guess that’s progress. Now if I’d quit replacing it with other “after-dinner food” I may make some progress on that “lose 10 pounds” resolution I’m failing so miserably at! The “get more organized” resolution is limping along, too, I guess since I have remembered to write things on my calendar more and actually check the calendar the night before or the day of so I know what the heck is going on in our lives. But organizing our stuff really hasn’t happened a whole lot. And with all the other resolutions going on, I have NOT learned more html, which was the last pathetic resolution that I had.

Now that I look at all of the above, maybe I bit off a bit more than I could chew. What about one or two of those resolutions? Wouldn’t that suffice? I think it would. This is Typical Me. I tend to think that I am Wonder Woman and should be able to do whatever I put my mind to no matter how much else I have going on. Nice idea but not very realistic….or practical. Ok, New Plan. Pick two. Any two. And stick to them. Approach them in an organized fashion. Set goals and design baby steps to get you there. Yes, I am a control freak. Ok, gotta go. Gonna spend the last 10 minutes of Morning Freedom contemplating which resolutions to focus on and devising a plan. Focus much? LOL…

No, not pregnant. I didn’t mean that. I’ve had a rather traumatic month in “the girl parts” anyway. Not much chance of even an accidental pregnancy. I meant that I can’t tell if I’m still fighting this thing off or just not taking good enough care of myself. Or it could be another thyroid wig-out…who knows? I think it’s probably a little bit of the first two but I never rule out the thyroid wig-out, either. “Taking it easy” and not expecting much from myself feels like it’s becoming a habit. And, no, I don’t mean that in a good way. I just never feel like doing anything because I’m so tired. Not even make sure we all have clean undies…that can’t be good.

It doesn’t help that The Mucous has woken me up coughing frequently the past two nights. And last night Tater Tot decided to wake up twice, asking for grapes one time and for “Mommy to rock ‘zhyou’ for a song” the other time. The books I’ve read say that I should ignore her and I probably will if it becomes a pattern. In hindsight, I probably went in too quickly the second time. But, in my defense, I was severely sleep-deprived by that point since I had not only been awakened once by Tater Tot already but I had also been woken up by The Mucous twice. I can’t even estimate how much sleep I didn’t get last night because every time I fell asleep, I was woken up a short time later.

Blah, blah, blah, negative, blah, blah. Sorry about that. I’m feeling a lot better than the last time I posted. At least I can breathe! But the energy level is low and I’m having a real hard time making it through the afternoon without a second cup of coffee. For many people that wouldn’t be an issue but I’m trying to decrease the amount of inflammatory foods that I eat. Long story. I’m not doing that well with it but I’m still trying.

The short version of the long story starts with the fact that I just asked for and got copies of the last two years’ worth of my Pap tests, colposcopies, and the LEEP procedure I just had done. They had told me that I had a high grade lesion but really didn’t tell me what that meant or where I stood in the progression from abnormal cells on the cervix to cervical cancer. So I did some diggin’. Turns out that the lesion they removed from me most recently is not considered cancer but only by a hair. If it goes through the top layer of the skin to the tissue below, it is considered cancer. Mine stopped just short of going through that layer. In the past couple of days I’ve read a lot about what causes recurrence of “CIN 3″ or “High Grade Squamous Intraepitheliel Lesion” and, honestly, I think it could go either way with me. The bonus of the situation is that cervical cancer is generally slow-growing and a hysterectomy can cure it as long as it hasn’t spread to other parts of the body. Not that I want to go that route but you get the picture.

I currently am feeling pretty ambivalent because my nature is to want to control the heck out of the situation which would mean eating completely organically, avoiding any and all xenoestrogens, and generally living in a bubble to avoid recurrence. However, as Gammaw and I realized the other day, the plastic that the bubble was made out of wouldn’t even be safe since it probably would be made out of one of those plastics that has PVCs or some other harmful chemicals. And, honestly, right now we can’t afford to eat all organically. And I’m too invested in just living my life to live in a bubble. Yes, I will take baby steps to change some habits. I’ve already made some changes in my personal care products but I am looking to make more. And, if you wear make up, you just can’t escape harmful chemicals. I am just not secure enough a person to go completely without make up. It’s just not gonna happen. I wish I had that “peaches and cream” complexion but mine’s more like “sunburn and dishwater”. All uneven and blotchy with nice grey pits by the eyes. Yeah, attractive without makeup. And my eyes? They kind of disappear unless lined and mascara’d. Ask anyone that I have surfed with and they will tell you, “She cleans up nice.” because I look like a completely different person without make up. It just makes me feel more confident. Anyway…I will look for make up that is even less harmful and leave it at that, I think.

I have read alternative health articles about how xenoestrogens affect abnormal cells, how they and “inflammation” cause increased cell division (which increases the chance that cells will mutate and become cancerous) and what I can do to keep that from happening and I feel like making that many changes right now would just suck all the fun out of life. I know that eating an anti-inflammatory diet and avoiding xenoestrogens is good for me and that there is beginning to be more scientific evidence for this but I just don’t feel capable of changing that much right now. There appear to be too many crutches that I use on a daily basis to boost my mood, energy level and, let’s face it, self-esteem to change them all at once without major backlash! Oh well, what can you do? As Gammaw says “Your stress level can impact your health as well. Let go and relax.” or some such thing. Sorry for the bad paraphrase, Mom. But the message is the same. And I hear you loud and clear.

I’ve been banished upstairs to “be sick”. The Daddy brought something home from work the other day and was home sick for two days. Tater Tot got some snots for a couple of days with no fever and no slowing down. She gave them to me. Unfortunately, they are slowing me down. So I am up in my room trying to type and read on the computer while sniffling, sneezing, and dripping from just about every orifice on my head. Oh, and while we’re at it, I hadn’t stopped bleeding from the LEEP yet and I think I’m starting my period. It’s not very fun to be me today. Luckily The Daddy is taking over the Tater Tot duties and some of the household ones even though he’s not 100% yet. Today it’s a game of “Who Feels Crappier” and the “winner” is me.

I don’t feel much like a winner. In fact, I wish I had been the loser in this game. I’d much rather be running around with The Tater Tot. Heck, I’d rather be cleaning the toilets than feeling like this! Tried Sudafed. Nothin’. Tried Actifed. Zippo. Zilch. No relief from symptoms. I hate putting extraneous drugs in my body so when I do, I expect them to work for heaven’s sake! What’s the point of putting them in there if they’re not going to relieve me?! So I drip. And sniffle and sneeze and wipe. And drain from my eyes. And abuse the skin on my nose with every use of the tissue. I’m just grateful my body held out for the weekend to get sick so that The Daddy is home…