happy birthday oona bean!

I can't believe my little Beanie is seven. It seems like just yesterday she was in her crib scrunching her legs up and arching her back as she wiggled around while sleeping so that she looked like a little bean and thus her nickname was established. I frequently call her Bean, Beanie or Oona Bean, never Oona Beanie for some reason, it just sounds like heresy to me. She asked to sleep in my bed last night so she could be with like she was on the night she was born, bright and early at 3:16 am. We celebrated her birthday before school with a donut lit with seven slender pink candles on it.

Since Oona isn't with me tonight so I made her a celebratory breakfast with a birthday donut

I stopped by her school to serve brownies and cookies to her class. This serving the kids treats for her birthday didn't go off as seemlessly as last year. I let the secretary know my plan and asked her to check with Oona's main teacher, I heard nothing until I was called at quarter past two when the secretary called and asked if I could come in tomorrow. Um no because I'm working and it also won't be my daughter's birthday then. So then the she asked if I lived close by and would be able to come over now. So I drive over only to find Oona in art class and the teacher less than welcoming of me, the brownies, and cookies. Oona's music teacher took me down to Oona's main teacher to see if we could serve them down there. No go. Back upstairs and the art teacher said the children could get some treats right before class ended and they had to go to gym.

Oona shows  off her first present

So I took out my Christmas napkins (sad I know but for whatever reason I have an abundance of Christmas napkins) and started doling out brownies and chocolate chip cookies. The cookies looked awful, they were flat but they tasted good. I lost half of my second batch of brownies to a fracture, it was like the San Andreas fault of baking, when I turned over the pan they were in. I don't know that that batch was thoroughly cooked anyway so I guess it was no great loss- especially since I can quickly envision worst case scenarios, I saw myself having to explain how a class had succumbed to salmonella due to my not thoroughly cooked brownies. What would the headline be? Mom Sickens School would probably be sensational enough for TV. I was silently lamenting how pitiful my birthday treats for Oona's class looked when I heard the music teacher walking behind me with an older student, 'Look at that. She is on top of it. Supermom.' Perspective changes everything. They weren't aesthetically pleasing, but the kids ate everything I gave them and quite a few wanted seconds. I didn't have enough for everyone so I said we couldn't do that. As far as I know at 9:18 pm, no one got sick. I let all the kids choose what they wanted and it was pretty much a fifty fifty split with the cookies and brownies, and then I brought the leftovers to my neighbors house with the caveat that the 7 brownies on the last layer closest to the plate might be a wee bit underdone. To which my neighbor replied, It's never good when somebody brings you food over and they're apologizing. Mom Sickens Neighbors! story on eleven at eleven. I might not be the best cook but I don't think that makes me a bad Mom, although with the pervasive foodie culture, I sometimes feel scrutinized as though I'm feeding my kids a steady diet of ho-ho's, coke and cheetos (for the record, no) because my culinary skills are, shall we say, lacking.

Owen deciding whether he's interested in Oona's present

I love Oona Bean for her endless enthusiasm, for her love of everything girly (she got a fancy leopard dress and black patent little heels with her birthday gift card to The Children's Place from Grandma Cat and she's dying to wear this ensemble to dress down day tomorrow at her school), for all the delightful drawings she makes, for her singing all the time, for her missing Grandpa Boo, Lily and Frodo, for how much she loves her brother and most of all, for her just being her lovely, slightly wild, self.

Rock & Runway was a hit with Oona, and surprisingly, Owen as well

while you weren't sleeping

The you being me and that will be the extent of my writing in the second person, which I think is one of the harder literary feats to pull off. So the steroids, specifically prednisone, don't think I'll be able to take that any more. I didn't put two and two together, shameful given that I'm a nurse, regarding my mood and lack of sleep until I'd already finished my course of steroids yet I was still staying up waaay too late and crying uncontrollably. And when I say uncontrollably it was about a half a dozen times a day, coming out of nowhere and it wasn't polite little tears but huge gut wrenching sobs. The final straw was when I woke up from a nightmare at 5:00 in the morning sobbing and Oona (the cunning devil that she is, she's been exploiting my ability to sleep like the dead when I do finally fall asleep, Vicodin will do that to you, and sneak into my bed) was like 'It's okay mommy. Don't be sad.' I called the doctor's office, in tears, yet again, and was told yes what you're experiencing is definitely related to the steroids and I saw the doctor the next day and was excused for yet another week of work, 'It's too bad, a lot of people get happy and have a lot of energy from steroids.' she told me. I had a lot of energy, at night, but I was in no way happy. I bought this amazing CD of Lianne La Havas and listened to it nonstop (except track 3 which would make me cry as soon as I heard the first few notes) during my Prednisone haze. The album is amazing, but now that I'm finally clear of the medication induced craziness I can't listen to the CD, as good as it is, it's marked from that time, like when you get food poisoning and have a natural aversion to that food for however long. Hopefully I'll be able to play it again in a couple of months because it really is phenomenal.

Isn't she stunning?! And then you listen to her voice, it's as beautiful as she is and the lyrics are great, can't say enough good things about her (& she's only 23!)

Plus she includes a goofy picture like this on her website, I think she's adorable.

So the kids are back in school and I'm doing a round robin between the gym, physical therapy and the chiropractor's office in order to strengthen my core and hips and avoid my back going out like it did. Because god help me if it does since steroids are now off the list of meds to help cure my back pain. I still have pain, thus the occasional Vicodin at night. The pain in the ass is that it's literally that, a pain in my ass, wrapping around my left hip and making an insidious path down my leg. I'm sitting on a balance ball now, trying to get my ten minutes a day in, trying to engage my transversus abdominis muscle, where are you? I seem to be woefully out of touch with most of the muscles that make up my core.

But back/hip/leg pain and steroid insanity aside, I did actually manage to do something productive during my time off. I started working on a second website for the jewelry that I make. I've only been planning on doing this for over three years now. Oh well, I've got the ball rolling now, so please visit boo and the bean and let me know what you think.