Scene: At his new daycare it’s naptime, but he doesn’t sleep so he usually has a book to look at while resting on his cot.

Cooper: Ms. Andrea!
Ms. Andrea: shhh Cooper! You need to be quiet. It’s naptime.
Cooper: you need to come see this elephant!
Ms. Andrea: Cooper, I asked you to be quiet!
Cooper: and I asked you to come see this elephant!

Scene: our bathroom, where Cooper is crumpled on the floor throwing a fit about brushing his teeth.

Me: Cooper, stand up and brush your teeth.
Cooper: (screaming and crying) No!
Me: brush your teeth or else I will brush your teeth.
Cooper: No! I don’t want to brush my teeth!
Me: okay. Then I will brush your teeth.
I stand him up and start brushing his teeth. He howls and cries and drools, and screams and spits toothpaste everywhere.
Me: that’s enough! Stop crying or I’ll give you something to cry about!
Cooper: (shrieking hysterically) No! I don’t wanna stop and I don’t want you to give me something to cry about!

Something tells me I’m gonna be in a lot of trouble in ten or twelve years.

While I lied misspoke overcommitted myself to posting more often while coming into the holiday season, I can at least vouch for my whereabouts. Besides being in my car a lot longer than usual (I totally forgot all the folks who leave work a little early, or maybe on-time, and go shopping or do family stuff), and having some late-night work again, I’ve been busy creating Christmas gifts and getting more creative with my shopping. In past years, I will admit, if it’s not at Target, they’re not getting anything. But in an attempt to scale back on spending despite an enlarged pool of giftees, I wanted gifts that were maybe a bit more meaningful (not that I didn’t put a lot of thought into past ones, but you know…now they’re extra meaningful) and I often had to hunt around a lot more to find what I wanted, or the price I wanted it at. I also had to make up for the fact that a certain baby made it hard to tend to my garden and even harder to find time to make jam this past summer. In fact, this fall was the first time in over two years that we actually had to buy a jar of jam/jelly for our PB&J sandwiches! So since we have fourteen children (including my three) to buy for, and I didn’t want to leave anyone out because well, it’s Christmas, each child will be getting a small, picked-out-especially-for-them purchased gift and a small, made-especially-for-them handmade gift. Except my kids, who will not be getting the handmade gifts since I ran out of time prior to Christmas. Thankfully Gavin and Cooper were quite understanding and were more than willing to wait for their handmade items until after Christmas. Well, actually, it will be after all their grandparents get their late-for-Christmas handmade gifts (sorry guys! no jam this year!). Don’t get me started on Christmas cookies…I have all the ingredients, just haven’t been able to start them yet. Maybe I’ll make New Year’s cookies instead…

So. I have a valid excuse. Maybe if I got some voice-activated equipment that would transcribe my blog for me, that would make it easier. I definitely would not do a VLOG because I’m now past the age where I still look cute and adorable with messy hair and without make-up , and by the time I got myself VLOG camera-worthy, I could’ve just written my post.

After the first of the year, I expect to have more time on my hands (well, after getting those New Year’s gifts out of the way). There have been some recent changes going on with work that I don’t quite feel at liberty to discuss here yet, but will give me back some time so that I can start spending a little more time with my family, and allow me to turn this jalopy into a rebuilt, humming dream machine.

So here I am. I’m trying to come back because I miss this. I miss the writing, the reading of other blogs, the friendships, the commiserating with others about kids and husbands and household chores. I’ve actually been lonely because once the kids are in bed, I’ve no one to talk to, but haven’t had time to try besides spitting out a few sentences on Facebook. I have even fallen off the Twitter-sphere.

I’m still busy as all get-out at work. We got a short reprieve from working late nights, but then things changed and we’re back to doing late nights (on top of daytime work). Juggling the hours with my other responsibilities (like these tiny humans in my house) can be frustrating at times, but it’s a good job in a great team that I enjoy, and I’m grateful to have it. The commute, however, has gotten out of control. Even with coming into the office on the tail-end of rush hour, I’m still in my car a total of three hours a day, which is making me crazy because it keeps me from everything I want to be with: my kids, my husband (when he’s in town), my house (I’m waiting for the county to condemn it), and my hobbies (blogging, reading, knitting, and couch-potato-ing).

So now that Nolan is six months old (and more willing to be ignored while he plays in his exersaucer), and Justin is in town for more than three nights, I figured I would take a stab at getting back in the habit of writing, particularly since I’ve got a plethora of junk just waiting to work its way out of my head and onto your computer screens. Consider yourselves warned.

What a relief! I sure do I hate when they use old, lumpy cream.

I finally to spit in the face of conventional science and put in several variables into a test. So I (1) gave Nolan a bottle when he hadn’t had one in a few weeks, and (2) only put formula in it. I still have all these Good Start 3oz nursettes from my Trip of Panic at 37 weeks, and figured I’d be able to see how much he’d drink, and if he tolerated the formula, both drinking it and digesting it, since once I return to work, I might not be able to pump as much as he’ll be eating and will need to supplement with formula.
Results? He tolerated the bottle (he was a little annoyed, but drank suspiciously once he realized it was squirting something in his mouth when he bit down), he didn’t seem to mind the taste of the formula, he drank all but a few swallows, he didn’t seem overly gassy or grumpy, and a few hours later he had a pastier poop. I call that a success!

After he finished his bottle, I pumped what I would’ve fed him: 4.5 oz…whoo-hoo! Take that you snotty LC that poo-poo’ed my non-Medela pump!
Sorry. That was my only negative encounter while staying at the hospital after Nolan’s birth: this rather snotty, self-righteous, If-It’s-Not-Medela-It’s-Crap lactation consultant. She tried to tell me my awesome Playtex Embrace Deluxe Double Electric Breast Pump was crap just because she had never tested it on the suction-meter and because it wasn’t Medela. You should’ve seen her hair stand on end when I told her that I found the Medela pump uncomfortable since it just seemed to tug on my nipples, whereas my Playtex pump did compressions about an inch up on my breast, about where a baby’s mouth would be. She also poo-poo’ed my non-lanolin nipple butter, asking me “would you feed your baby an avocado at this age? or an olive?”, to which I shot back, “would you feed yours some sheep wool?”
I will give her props for giving me some good info on treating and preventing thrush and the underlying yeast causing it, but beyond that, the woman really rubbed me the wrong way. So you can imagine how vindicated I felt when I pumped over four ounces in one sitting, when I used to only pump five or six total over the course of three 20-min pumping sessions at work. I can only hope and pray that I am able to continue pumping such decent amounts (and continue taking my More Milk Special Blend herbs).

(Originally Posted on Sunday, November 29, 2009 at www.justinrummel.com)

I have maintained a personal site now for over a decade where I have generated:

* almost 500 articles
* posted over 6100 pictures
* archived too many memories to recount

This site has been my learning playground of PHP scripting and site design, which has helped me greatly in my professional life and my abilities to contribute to open source communities.

With that, I’ve decided to stop posting personal updates. This decision did not manifest because I became overly security conscious of identity thieves, but because of my professional life now deals with highly technical and smart individuals who can easily profile me professionally and create prejudices before we even meet. With that, beginning in 2010 this site will change to a purely professional site that won’t hold much more than a bio, resume, and current events that I may be attending in a professional environment.

It has been fun and I will miss writing articles of new adventures that Gavin and Cooper experience, and Baby #3 will never exist on this site which is sad. However, I now have a Flickr Pro account where I can upload as many pictures as I desire, and Colleen always has her site to get family updates.

-Justin

What is the saddest thing is that I’ve yet to see any news coverage (though I admit I missed our local Fox 10pm news). One of the other sad things was that when an 80-something year old priest, who had one of the 2,000+ pages of the current version of the Health Care bill, tore the page in half in the office of a member of the House, that house member felt “threatened” and had the priest handcuffed, arrested, and removed bodily for “demonstrating”. Once the police brought him outside, fellow protesters surrounded him, offering him words of encouragement and comfort, and sang patriotic hymns, but it seems all the activity was too much for him and he was taken away in an ambulance. One man I met caught some of this example of overreaction by the House and police on video, but I’ve had trouble finding where he may have posted it. If I come across it, I’ll be sure to post it.
Meanwhile, enjoy the pics:

p.s. I would like to dedicate all these pics to those who weren’t able to come and join us, but were there in spirit.

Update: Another local blogger caught wind of the idiot who represents my House district, Gerry Connolly, trying to arrest a constituent on assault…for touching his arm.

It’s not that I think fighting against the more “visible” cancers like breast cancer or prostate cancer aren’t important. It’s just that if you really needed to, you could potentially remove them to save your life. Most children don’t have that option because they aren’t afflicted with those cancers. Instead they have brain tumors, leukemia, lymphoma, and others that are harder to fight because they affect vital organs and body systems. Last time I checked, it’s hard to live without your blood.

So instead of saving boobs and semen this time, would you please consider saving the children? I guarantee that it’ll be worth it.

Here are a few links to great organizations devoted to information, research, and/or treatment (did you know that a cancer by the same name in an adult is different than in a child?…they’re not mini-adults and need to have different treatments than adults to be effective). I also keep a permanent badge for St. Jude’s in my sidebar if you ever want to come back at a later time to donate or learn more.

• St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital (and hey, eat at Chili’s this Monday the 28th and they will donate 100% of their profits to St. Jude’s)
• Gold Ribbons
• Kid’s Health
• Stand Up to Cancer
• National Cancer Institute

Justin ran out and bought us steaks and bought me flowers to try to keep what he thought would be an explosive reaction down to a minimum. Instead of feeling out-of-my-mind angry, I just felt disappointed and defeated. Because I knew he was irritated at the circumstances behind this assignment. Because now that Gavin is in kindergarten there’s even more for our family to balance until we get into a good morning routine to get the kids to daycare even earlier than before school started. Because I was tired of leaving my office at 5pm and not making it to daycare until 6:25pm. Because I was tired of preparing barely nutritious and/or appetizing dinners for the kids in the evening. Because I was tired of drill-sargenting the kids into eating the aforementioned pathetic excuse for a meal, then chasing them up into bed by 8pm. Because I was tired of being up until midnight because I have so much to freakin’ do for work, or school, or the house after I get the kids to bed. And because I knew there was nothing I could do or say that would make things change so that I, we, could have Justin home with us.

Then I got to work for a sizable portion of the weekend. We launched a new channel for our customers that everyone is incredibly excited about, even me. But in order to support customer notification about this new channel, I worked Friday night, Saturday morning, had a conference call Saturday afternoon about it, had to work more on Saturday night, and again Sunday morning. And since Justin had to be at his location first thing Monday morning, he left around 7pm on Sunday evening. That made for an incredibly short weekend. This weekend isn’t looking promising either since Justin will come home late Friday and need to leave again Sunday evening, and I am scheduled to work on Saturday and Sunday nights.

Thankfully, there are a few bright spots for me to try to focus on: I spoke with Gavin’s kindergarten teacher and she said he is doing great (he won’t talk about school, so I was afraid that it was going poorly for him). We also have a birthday party to attend for one of Gavin’s little friends from daycare. He cannot stop asking when we will be going to the party and I kind of suspect he may have told the child what we bought him. I’m also working with my friend Andrea on coordinating a little baby “sprinkle” for Kari and Dave’s second baby, due next month. It will be so nice to sit with a bunch of other gals and just ooh and ahh over cute baby clothes and have some tasty food (just don’t ask me what that tasty food is yet…haven’t gotten quite that far in the planning). I also found out that my mom is able to come out again this year on the weekend of Justin’s company holiday party. I’m always so happy when she and I can spend some time together, and I love that the kids look forward to her visits as well. The nice thing about her coming that weekend is that it allows Justin and I to attend the holiday party and then stay the night at the hotel so that we don’t have to worry about playing Rock-Paper-Scissors to see who will be the DD. It also allows us to stay out later, sleep in, and remember how fun it was before the kids were around–not that we don’t have fun with the kids, it’s just a different kind of fun–like cutting up everyone’s food and threatening Time-Out while barely tasting your own dinner that you’re wolfing-down.
So…while that is nearly three months away, I can’t wait: date-night with my husband that includes a nice dinner and dancing, a few hours away from my kids that I love (really, I do), and being able to spend some time with my mom. We’re also trying to plan a trip to visit Justin’s family, so while we don’t have the details hammered out, it’s another item to look forward to while I try to get through the next three weeks without losing my mind.

I wasn’t sure how to start this post but I knew I had to write something, especially after DC101 radio host, Elliot from Elliot in the Morning, did his annual four moments of silence in remembrance of the four planes that were hijacked and crashed. He has done this every year, one moment at the time of each plane crashing: 8:46am, 9:03am, 9:37am, and 10:03am. I hadn’t given it too much thought until I happened to switch stations to see if anyone else was observing moments of silence at that time. Every other preset station on my radio (nine, total) all had chatter, music, or commercials airing. I couldn’t believe no one else seemed to remember; no one else was doing this when it has only been seven eight years, and our area was one of the targets.

I switched back over to Elliot where it was still silent and I fell into my own memories of that day. I remember gathering in the NOC at work with most of my co-workers, trying to make sense of what we heard on the radio while driving in, and what we were seeing on-screen. Everyone in that room was scared and confused. We kept getting odd reports coming from other parts of the country and when we started seeing the first footage of the smoke coming from the Pentagon, we really started to panic. We could see one of the control towers for Dulles Airport from our office windows and were located only 20 aerial miles from the Pentagon. It was truly the most frightening day in my entire life.

As my thoughts rambled on I began to think of how much more frightened and confused those people in the planes, the WTC Towers, the Pentagon, the First Responders, and the even the air traffic controllers were. It brought to mind a musical piece I performed in 1995 while in Symphony Band at Ball State: Symphony No. 1 (In Memoriam, Dresden, 1945) by Daniel Bukvich. The piece was written to musically “depict the fierce Allied bombing attacks on Dresden, Germany, on February 13-14, 1945″, coming from the perspective of the victims on the ground. It is done so by incorporating alternate playing styles of instruments and using sounds and speech made by the human voice. Despite many weeks of practicing and playing this piece over and over, all of us on-stage, including our conductor, were terrified and in tears during the performance in the auditorium. Several of my band mates who had parts where they were shouting words in German got so frightened themselves that they believed what they were yelling and broke down mid-performance. This fear was also seen in our audience–most of the people I could see in the audience were crying, holding hands with others, or gripping the armrests of their seats; all were visibly shaken.

As the last note of the piece reverberated within the walls of our chests, we turned the page and very quietly, reverently, began playing a somber arrangement of the hymn It is Well with My Soul (written by Horatio Spafford after great personal loss, music composed by Philip Bliss). The comforting, familiar melody was like a salve to the fear. It led to more tears, but they were more of relief that the terror was over. It gave hope and strength to both the audience and those of us performing.

I recalled hearing the piece Flight of Valor composer/arranger James Swearingen created for Flight 93 a year after the attacks, and that it contained that same hymn of comfort through great heartache. I feel all three pieces should be dedicated to all affected by 9/11…the victims, the rescuers, the victims’ families, the American public. We cannot afford to become complacent or apathetic. We cannot afford to forget.

Symphony No. 1 (In Memoriam, Dresden) — Daniel Bukvich, as performed by the University of Idaho Wind Ensemble and Conducted by Robert Spevacek