Dementia Sucks

My dad has dementia. He has for years, but now, there is no denying it. He isn't just "a bit wierd".. he is blatantly and obviously ill.

He's had 2 brain surgeries, many many knee surgeries, surgery for colon cancer, and surgery to have more than half his liver removed.

What did it to him? I don't know. But the brain and liver surgeries are the most likely culprits.

The liver filters poisons from the body. He has less than half of his now. Ammonia builds up in the body when the liver can't remove it.
He drinks over a 6 pack of coca cola a day. Eats packs and packs of cookies. More sugar than I can ever imagine eating. I'm betting that makes it a lot worse. He could probably keep it partially at bay by eating a veggie heavy diet with a lot of whole grains but I've never seen more than a few veggies ever leave his plate to anywhere except the trash can. I keep looking at reasearch about ways to help this particular brand of dementia but all of the things that could help it are things he would never do.

Right now my parents are visiting ostensibly to help take care of my kiddos while I get used to having a toddler and a newborn. But my dad is like another toddler himself in attitude and maintenance.

He has developed all the common hallmarks of dementia. The wandering. The paranoia. Loosing things. Sundowners.

Sundowners is particularly strange. For some reason people with dementia almost always get worse when the sun goes down. He can seem just a little slow most the day, but when the sun goes down that's when we get to see how truly sick he is.

I don't know why I'm posting all this here, except out of pure frustration. There's no one else to talk to it about so I'm letting it out to float around the interwebs. For anyone who made it this far, thanks for "listening." Time to go check on the newborn.

Now Presenting

Little Miss Ivy Adelia

That's right, we finally decided on a name!

Nesting, derailed

I had so much planned to do, as my energy level permitted, in the next month. So I'm still kind of reeling because my little bean decided to come rather early. At first possible chance to be born at home, really. She was born at 36 weeks, but the gestational age worksheet my midwife filled out put her at 35 weeks. She was 5 pounds 6 oz, 17 inches long, and her head was only 12 inches around!

She had a little trouble breathing at first, but luckily we got it cleared up without having to take her to the hospital. Now, she's tiny but doing just perfect.

Now if her dad and I could just agree on a name for her!

edited to add: a few more portraits I took, more "professional" style are here at my photo blog.

New room for the big sister

Here's a rather picture heavy post for you, about the state of some of our baby preparations (possibly better called Big Sister preparations really)

We've decided with the new baby to give her Lorelei's current room and move Lorelei into a room that is slightly further from our bedroom. Her current room shares a wall with our bedroom so I don't need to use a baby monitor. Also the changing table and crib are already in there so it makes more sense to move her out as she progresses to the big girl bed (or at least we HOPE she progresses to using it soon.) Right now she and the cats use it as a play place

In the works, painting the little room, adding a larger area rug (the room has big white tiles), changing out the light fixture and in general dolling it up in a way that Lorelei will hopefully love it.

The color I chose to use for her room is sort of a robins egg blue. Yes, blue for a little girl's room-- because so many accessories and toys and such are pink. Her current room is a nice limey green for similar reasons.

I'm trying to figure out what shade of blue I want to use. I'm leaning towards the darker one, because I want to paint a white tree mural, and I don't think it will show up well in the lighter blue.

She already has this stripey rug which she loves, so I got her some polka dotted sheets in the same colors.
As you can tell the room is already being used as a play room.

That's all we have for now though. I'll be getting a solid colored fitted sheet to cover the box spring, and at some point she will get a dresser, blinds (there are already white curtains) and a cleaned out closet.

I have a lot to do...
including convincing the cats that it's not "their" room...

Marble Magnet tutorial

A simple tutorial for a cute little craft.


I've seen these things everywhere (here are some other peoples tutorials for them), and I decided to use my old business cards to make some of my own as a promotional item I'm giving away at the WonderCraft's grand opening. I'll be there doing a free photo booth for people who feel like goofing off or showing off their newly embellished neckties. The first 25 people in the door will get gift bags filled with little goodies from local artists.

Enough talking about that, and on to the tutorial. There are other tutorials all over the blogs, but this is what worked the best for me.

Materials:
Old Moo business cards with pretty pictures (or other pictures on thick-ish paper)
1/2" round magnets
small clear flat marbles (found in the floral section of Joannes)
glue-- I used Elmer's Craft Bond Ultra Stix All

A pencil
Scissors
and of course a table to make a bit of a mess on. It's really an easy to clean up mess though. I love low fuss low stress projects. They are so satisfying.

1. Use the marble to find parts of the image pleasing in small format. I found that many of my favorite pictures wouldn't work well for this project because it would just have part of a kid's face or some other odd unidentifiable subject that didn't look right through the magnifying effect of the marble. Of course if you are already using abstract images this won't be a probem, but don't expect photos of people to work too well.

2. Trace around the magnet over those areas you have found work well, and then cut out those little circles. I found this worked better for me than tracing around the marbles, because of the tapered shape of the marbles. Too big of circles that show much on the back look a bit sloppy.

3. Smear a thin layer of glue on the magnet, and then stick the back of the image to the magnet

4. Put a slightly thicker layer of glue on the back of the marble, then place the marble on the image and press until there is no air space between the image and the marble. If you can still see some slightly foggier areas, lift it off, add a little more glue and try again. You'll see what i mean when you go to do it, I'm pretty sure. You do NOT need much glue at all, but it will take more than it did to stick the image to the magnet.

5. Once you have it how you want it, set it aside. Don't set the magnets too close to each other to dry or one will either push the other away or they will stick together and knock the images askew. Once you have them set aside don't touch them for a while. It's harder to fix them once they have started setting up than if the glue is fresh.

6. Enjoy your new magnets!

It's that easy!

A few notes about how I did things, if you still have questions about it:

1. The thick moo cards keep the glue from seeping through. I have not tried this with thin craft papers or magazine pictures so I don't know if this glue would work well or if it would do odd things to the paper. I chose the glue because it is strong, dries clear, and has no odor. I'm pregnant, so the no odor part was a kind of big deal to me.

2. Some people recommend hot gluing the magnets to the back. I don't recommend that if you want them to hold up. Hot glue really isn't that great for high use items. Now if you are just going to stick your magnets somewhere once and never moving them, go for it. Also, the idea of using two different glues for the project doesn't appeal to my desire for simplicity.

A year??

Has it really been that long since I had this baby (and long hair??)?

This was her third day of trying solid foods!

Today she was pilfering ginger candies outta the pantry and running around with a bottle of juice at a coffee shop saying "no" when I asked for it back. Brattish? yes. Cute? I'l admit it... yes it was.

Hermit-ness

Two of me, originally uploaded by Bakiomau.

I've been feeling fairly non social recently, and oddly, feeling down because I haven't seen any friends in several weeks.

If I'm remembering right I felt that way during parts of when I was pregnant with Lorelei too. I want to focus all my energy on making things or relaxing, or cuddling with my little girl. There's some sadness there too, like I'm mourning for Lorelei's only child-ness.

Some extreme fatigue has set in too, after a few high energy weeks. Hoping that it's just a touch of anemia I've gotten some Flordix liquid iron supplement finally (my midwife recommended it a few weeks ago because my levels were a tad low) but I'm sure it takes a few days for it to work assuming that is it.

Oddly, with my exhaustion, I have had some creative flashes with my photography. I really want to do more with this technique


This picture was just a quicky I did in maybe 30 minutes for both photo taking and editing. Obviously I didn't really set anything up or even pick up trash in the "under renovations" living room. I've been told I look grouchy in the picture. Probably because I kind of was.