In addition to having her first birthday party last weekend, Niecy was dedicated at Debra and Lance’s church in Dothan. For those unfamiliar with the term, many Protestant denominations practice infant dedication as an alternative to infant baptism. It’s a little ceremony signifying the parents’ commitment to raise the child in a Christian home. It was extra special to have this pastor dedicate Niecy, because in addition to being Lance’s former youth pastor and now his current boss, he also married Debra and Lance!
I don’t have any pictures of the actual ceremony, but Niecy behaved perfectly. By now she’s used to being the center of attention in a crowd. :) After church, she toddled around in her pretty dress from Baby Gap while we took pictures. And rolled around too, because hey, why not?
My parents bought a baby seat for Debra’s bike and a little helmet for Niecy. After installing the seat, my dad showed her the helmet and demonstrated it on her doll. She watched the whole thing carefully, and when it came time to wear the helmet, she was fine with it even though she doesn’t like hats. I’m amazed by how much she seems to understand at such a young age.
This was my first trip to Dothan, so Debra and I escaped one afternoon for a couple of hours of Hermanas Only tourism. She drove me around “the circle” and through downtown (such as it is) so I could get a good idea of the area. We also stopped at the mall to visit Altar’d State, which she had been dying to show me. (I bought a dress!) Commercially, Dothan has almost everything you could want, even a McAlister’s. Plus it’s only an hour and a half from the beach. I officially approve.
On the drive home, my parents and I stopped at some Alabama attractions: an isolated warehouse store selling mainly jeans and shoes, and Durbin Farms, where we ate lunch. Lance’s dad had rhapsodized about their homemade peach pecan ice cream, and I was not disappointed.
Last weekend, I went to Dothan with my parents for my niece’s first birthday and dedication at church! I got back Tuesday night and am still trying to catch up on life, hence the quiet here on the blog. There’s a lot to talk about, but I think the birthday party deserves its own post.
Debra planned this Little Miss Sunshine party for months, and her work definitely paid off. It was the perfect theme for happy Niecy. :) The party was held at the church gym. Most of the congregation’s kids were invited, in addition to Lance’s parents and extended family, me and my parents, some relatives who live in Decatur, and my grandma, who flew in from Miami.
Because so many kids would be there, Debra planned lots of themed activities like a bean bag toss, coloring area, Play-Doh area, and sensory station (a bucket of uncooked rice with some rubber ducks in it). I was amused as kids fought for a chance to get their hands in the rice. My educator sister just nodded knowingly.
To me, the most impressive activity was a memory game with covers of the Mr. Men and Little Miss books. Debra made the cards herself!
She also printed Mr. and Little Miss nametags for everyone.
There was a wall of Niecy’s monthly photos all the way through her first year. It was fun to see how much she’s already changed! People loved looking at these.
When it was time for presents, all the kids wanted to sit in a circle around Niecy. It was really cute.
A friend made the adorable cake and Niecy’s smash cake. She says she’s just getting started with cakes, but this looked like a professional job to me! Debra got the cupcakes from a grocery bakery and printed out the Little Miss Sunshine toppers herself.
Like most one-year-olds, Niecy wasn’t sure at first how she felt about cake, but eventually decided she liked it. Later, fueled by sugar, she took TEN steps! And “danced” with Debra and me!
It was a great time. More trip recap to come.
5 Comments + Posted in: aunthood, celebrate, family
If you’re not brand new to this blog, you know that my younger cat, Peach, has feline Irritable Bowel Syndrome. It took over a year of distress and hundreds of dollars in vet bills to reach this conclusion (which, like most autoimmune disorders, is more a guess by elimination than a definitive diagnosis). I’ve written about her “journey” before, but today I want to talk about long-term treatment for an IBS cat. This post won’t apply to many people, but I hope it really helps those who need the information!
Disclaimer: I am not a vet. The following is based on amateur research and LOTS of trial and error. What works for my cat might not work for yours. Also, some say that the proper term for chronic stomach upset in cats is Irritable Bowel Disease, but I’m sticking with IBS for simplicity, so please don’t attack me on semantics.
Medication. The most crucial need of your IBS cat is a regular dose of prednisolone. The vet will start her on a fairly high dose to get the vomiting, etc. under control. Once she’s eating and keeping food down consistently, you can slowly begin to scale back the dosage. The idea is to get her to the lowest dose that will keep her healthy. Peach was diagnosed in January and started on a whole pill twice a day. Over six-week intervals, I’ve cut that back to a quarter-pill twice a day. I’m currently trying to wean her to one daily dose instead of two, but I can tell she starts to feel puny around day three. So the experiment is ongoing. My vet says some animals only need medicine a few times a week, but it doesn’t look like Peach is one of them. We’ll see how it goes over time.
Happily, prednisolone is super cheap AND your vet can call it in to a regular pharmacy for convenience. I get mine at the corner CVS for $8 a bottle (which now lasts two or three months!). My first pickup there was hilarious: “Um, I’m picking up medicine for my cat?” Then I had to set up an account with her name and date of birth. It was fun for everyone.
I give Peach her medicine in a pill pocket treat and have never had any problems. She loves the treats and will actually remind me when it’s time. The only kind I’ve found is Feline Greenies pill pockets, and they’re fairly expensive – $10 for a bag of 45 (which lasts a month at most) – and only available at pet stores. I alternate the chicken and salmon flavors so she won’t get bored. I also split the pills all at once and keep them in an old Tic Tac container. It’s easier than digging the fragments out of a deep bottle.
I’ve read that natural enzyme supplements are good for even healthy cats’ digestion. So most days, I sprinkle a little onto the cats’ wet food. It dissolves and has no flavor. One large bottle costs about $10, and since you only need a tiny bit, it lasts forever (as in, probably years). I keep it in a salt shaker. The verdict is still out on whether it’s really helping Peach, but it can’t hurt.
Food. Your IBS cat should be on a high-protein, grain-free, varied diet. I actually switched both of my cats to grain-free food last fall, before I knew what was wrong with Peach, in case her problem was a grain allergy. That switch might have saved her life.
I provide dry food to my cats constantly (about half a cup in each dish per day) and give them each half a can of wet food in the evenings. I started with Nature’s Variety Instinct wet and dry food, but after a few months, both cats refused to eat it anymore. I think it was too healthy. :) So now I get a variety of canned foods. They love Halo Spot’s Stew, Canyon Creek Ranch, and Merrick Before Grain CAT (only certain flavors). Their current favorite canned brand is Avoderm, which has a lot of seafood options, but of course is the most expensive. For dry food, the cats like Innova, but I just found out it’s been recalled. YIKES. So now I’m trying Blue Buffalo.
Again, I’m not a vet, but one key to feline IBS is to keep the stomach guessing. The more varied your cat’s diet, the healthier she’ll be. Your cat might be intolerant of certain common meats. I’ve noticed that beef and some brands of lamb make Peach sick instantly, but she does fine with chicken, especially in combination with other meats (like Before Grain’s Quail and Chicken). She also eats fish, shellfish, and venison with no problem. If you’re a hunter and have a lot of wild game on hand, giving some to your cat is a really healthy option!
A lot of cat owners swear by raw diets for managing or curing their cats’ IBS, but I haven’t tried it. If you’re interested, there’s plenty of information out there (and plenty of judgment, because people on the internet will rip each other to shreds over anything).
I wistfully remember my days of picking up a cheap bag of Purina One and a few cans of tuna while at Target. Now I make special trips to the pet store and spend around $75 monthly just on cat food. It’s rough… but she’s worth it! I recommend getting a loyalty card and sticking with one store for all your purchases. I chose Petco because it’s closest to my house. They give me a $5 off coupon for every $50 I spend, and offer semi-regular 10% off deals on cans. Also, you can set up an order on their website and get automatic deliveries. That would make my life much easier, but they currently only offer canned food by the case. Petco, if you’re listening, a mix-and-match option would be GREAT.
In summary, feline IBS isn’t curable, but you can manage it easily with food and medication. Since Peach was SO sick for SO long, her quick response to treatment is still miraculous to me. I don’t know how much weight she’s gained since her all-time low of six pounds, but she started filling out immediately and looks much healthier. She may still have a shorter life, but it’ll be of a higher quality than she had before. I’m thankful for every extra day of wellness!
Any questions?
7 Comments + Posted in: cats
It sometimes happens that a woman is handsomer at twenty-nine than she was ten years before; and, generally speaking, if there has been neither ill health nor anxiety, it is a time of life at which scarcely any charm is lost. – Jane Austen, Persuasion
Earlier this week, on a beautiful spring afternoon, I was driving home with all my windows down. While waiting to turn left, I heard snapping and whistling. I looked up to see a teenage boy in a nearby car waving at me. Perplexed, I figured he was waving at someone behind me. But as he turned and his car passed mine, he shouted through his open window, “Hey lady, looking good!” This kid was probably just being a goofball. But my knee-jerk reaction was telling: I instantly assumed that he meant the compliment sarcastically. Was my hair a mess? Was the sun shining on me weirdly? Was something caught in my teeth? My natural response to unfamiliar attention is a traumatic flashback to my ugly duckling days.
Looking back, I wasn’t the hideous preteen and teenager I believed myself to be at the time. I didn’t realize then what an awkward age that is for most people. I felt exceptionally unattractive, and was treated as such by a lot of my peers. In middle school, I had thick aviator glasses and out-of-control frizzy hair crowned by 80s puffy bangs and cut by the fine folks at Fantastic Sam’s. My overbite was so severe that it barely escaped corrective surgery. I had a nice figure, but was encouraged to hide it in too-large clothing, which I did until well into my 20s. I was constantly called names ranging from teasing (Bugs Bunny) to appalling (I’d rather not dredge them up). The boys in my neighborhood bullied me because I didn’t know enough to stay quiet and invisible. When I took walks around the block, they followed me on bikes and barked at me to remind me of my dog status. One terrible day, one of them spit on me on the school bus. Basically, if a guy tried to get my attention – at school, on my street, at the mall – something awful was guaranteed to follow. This continued for several years.
Eventually, I started high school, found my tribe, befriended guys who weren’t jerks, survived three years of braces, and rebelliously grew out my puffy bangs. (My mom disapproved, insisting that I would have a “flat head.”) I was too busy with activities to be fodder for the neighborhood boys. Everything improved. While classmates still took shots at me occasionally, it was no longer a daily experience. As I grew up, they had less and less to insult, and got less and less of a response.
I didn’t fully transform into a swan – or at least a respectable goose – until my late 20s. It took me that long to learn to love and make the most of what God gave me. Around my 30th birthday, I looked in the mirror and saw an objectively attractive woman. Not gorgeous or a supermodel by any means, but not someone who should expect to be barked at. The dog days were officially over. I had bloomed. For the first time in my life, I was satisfied with my own appearance. That satisfaction hasn’t been erased by my ex-husband’s rejection or the general rejection that’s followed, so it must be real. I’m confident that I am the most attractive ME I can be, and that’s good enough for me. The key is to see it as succeeding at looking like myself, instead of failing at looking like someone else.
Even so, I still feel a surge of unpleasant adrenaline when certain types of people call attention to me – the “popular kids” grown up, or even the popular kids of today. I have to remind myself every time that they’re not making fun of me. (Right?) It bothers me that after so many years, I still struggle to believe that when people compliment me, they actually mean it. But I’m working on it.
19 Comments + Posted in: beauty, reflections