And now, we bake.

So, just to be upfront about this, I am no professional when it comes to cooking or baking.  This is underscored every time I go into work.  (Work being my gig as PR Coordinator for Stages at One Washington.  The fine crew of chefs at Stages inspire me to kick up my dinnertime game by making it clearly evident that I got REALLY lazy after E was born.  Evan Hennessey, John Flintosh, and Will Myska are fine examples of what happens when creativity, excellent culinary skills, and great personalities come together to produce a chef.)

All of that being said, I love to bake.  It just makes me happy.  For a hot minute when I was younger, it looked very much like I was headed to culinary school, but then I bailed and went to the Texas Maritime Academy instead.  Don’t ask.

Usually, I just bake when the oven, or a really gorgeous recipe, calls out to me.  And on rainy days.  Which, if you live in New England, is forecast to happen for oh, the next seven days.  If you live nearby, give me a shout.  I’m always looking for someplace to offload baked goods.  I love making sweet goodies, and I love eating them.  But they can’t live at MY house.  No, sir.

Yesterday, I posted a comment about the scones I made yesterday morning on Facebook, and got some requests for the recipe.  Since this was a recipe I hacked together (I think I could actually say I “adapted” it, but hacked seems more honest…), I couldn’t just refer people to a source, and call it a day.  Being lazier than your average bear, I decided I’d just throw the recipe out here and post the link.  Boom.  Recipe shared.

Cardamom Scones with Vanilla Glaze
Makes 12 scones

Ingredients:
3 c. all purpose flour
1/2 c. sugar
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cardamom
1 1/2 sticks COLD unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
1 c. plus 1-2 tablespoons buttermilk

2 tablespoons melted butter for brushing
Sparkling sugar, to sprinkle over scones before baking (sparkling sugar won’t melt as the scones bake)

Handful of frozen blueberries, if you just can’t stand a fruit-free scone. (I made scones again this morning, this time with blueberries to appease my husband and yeah, they were pretty delicious.)

1 c. sifted confectioner’s sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 tablespoons milk

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 425 degrees.

In a large bowl, mix the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt and cardamom together.  Add the cold butter pieces and using a pastry blender or two knives, work the mixture until it’s a course meal, kind of like rough cornmeal.  Some larger pieces of butter are fine, you actually want some big, buttery chunks to keep the scones flaky.  (The bigger issue is avoiding over working, so stop just before you’re really satisfied, especially if you’re an obsessive compulsive perfection freak like I am…)

Pour 1 cup of the buttermilk into the bowl and mix with a wooden spoon.  Mix only until the ingredients are just coming together, but the dough is still pretty rough and shaggy.  If there is still a good bit of dry ingredients at the bottom of the bowl, add 1 tablespoon of buttermilk.  Again, AVOID OVERMIXING.  It can be rough.  It can be messy.  It will all work out fine, I promise.

Gather up the dough, forming a rough ball, and turn onto a floured surface.  Knead it BRIEFLY.  I’m talking about count to 12 and then STOP.  No matter how much you want to give it one more turn… Don’t.

Cut the dough in half, and set one half aside.  Roll one piece into a 1/2 inch thick circle.  At this point, you can add the frozen blueberries by pushing them into the dough, like little sapphires dotting what’s going to be buttery, flaky goodness very soon…)  Brush with half of the melted butter, and sprinkle with the sparkling sugar.  Cut the circle into 6 pieces, cutting like a pizza.  Place on an ungreased baking sheet, and repeat the process with the second half of the dough.

Bake for 12-14 minutes, until both the tops and bottoms are golden brown.

While scones are baking, mix the confectioner’s sugar, vanilla, and milk in a bowl with a whisk.  It should fall slowly off the whisk, and be shiny.  Add more sugar if it’s too thin, more milk if it’s too thick.

When scones are finished baking, transfer to a baking rack to cool.  For the ones that will be eaten immediately, drizzle with glaze.  For any that will not be eaten right away, hold off on the glaze so the scones don’t get soggy.  Scones are always best eaten warm out of the oven, (trust me on this one…) but any that won’t be eaten the day of baking can be wrapped in airtight plastic wrap and frozen for up to a month.  Just defrost them at room temp in the plastic, then unwrap and pop in a 350 degree oven for 5 minutes when you’re ready for them again.

Enjoy.  🙂

When I grow up…

When I was little and someone asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, they got an answer that was probably a lot more than they expected.  It wasn’t an occupation, it was a colossal laundry list of all of the things I wanted to do, be, accomplish.  The interchange went a little something like this:

Well meaning adult: “So, Ellen, what do you want to be when you grow up?”

Me: “I want to be a veterinarian, a poet, a lawyer, an actress, an astronaut, a writer and I want to have a horse.  And two dogs.  And a cat.”

Well meaning adult: “Oh my, well, um, that’s certainly… ambitious.  Ah, well, good luck with all that.”

I gave up the veterinarian bit when I learned that it wasn’t all petting cute animals, and that I would actually be required to do fairly disgusting things to animals.  No, thanks.  And while I had a brief and torrid love affair with poetry in my adolescence, somewhere along the line, my ability to produce poems that didn’t make me wretch at the atrocious, cliched nonsense kind of petered out.  Lawyer?  Well, I can certainly argue my way around most situations, but when it comes to evincing passion for an argument I don’t actually believe in, I’m pretty well screwed.  Actress?  Hahahahahahaha….  We’ll just leave it at that.  Astronaut?  Uhhhh, I think that was just something I felt like I should throw in to impress adults.  Do I have a horse?  Nope.  Do I still want to?  Only on my really, really optimistic days do I actually allow myself to entertain the idea that I’m responsible enough to care for a horse.  Then I jump back to reality and realize that’s a HILARIOUS concept.  Dogs?  As soon as I’m finished cleaning up the pee and poop from the nifty human being S and I created, I’ll think about it.  Cat?  Success!  Check plus, times three.  (For the record, three cats was NOT my idea.  Everyone who knows S should pointedly ask him the next time they see him how we came to have three cats.)

So, for those not keeping track, that leaves us with “a writer”.

Of all the things I said I wanted to be all those years ago, a writer is the one thing I still want to be able to honestly list next to my name.   All my life, writing got me through.  It has always been the one thing I could count on to stay afloat, academically, professionally, and emotionally.  And I’ve always thought that perhaps there was a book, lurking somewhere in the deepest, darkest corner of my being, just waiting for the proper moment to make its way out.  But I’ve never gotten the sense that “HEY.  I should write a book about X.”  So instead, I kept journals for years, and then, when mommyhood got in the way of journaling, I started a blog.  Yep, hopped on that bandwagon.  But while I was really very dedicated about posting for oh, about a week, it’s been sort of a struggle to be a good girl and post regularly.  It’s one of my most familiar self destructive tendencies.  That which I want to do most, I will doggedly resist.

Lately I’ve been reading a lot of food blogs and cookbooks for work.  (I’ve also been reading the blogs of some really sensational writers in my spare time, ones that don’t make me drool all over myself with their glorious recipes and tempting food pictures.)  The other night, I was able to meet Cheryl Sternman Rule, author of a lovely blog (5 Second Rule), who just published her first cookbook, Ripe.  She’s on a book tour for Ripe, which is, by the way, GORGEOUS.  Ms. Rule was speaking about how writing turned into cooking turned into blogging turned into writing a cookbook.

The one most interesting question someone (not me) posed to her was about how regularly she posts, now that she’s on book tour.  The question was along the lines of “What if you just don’t feel like posting one day, what do you do then?”  Her reply was so simple, and yet so powerful.  “If I don’t feel like it, I don’t write.”  What a sharp contrast to my diligent self scolding in regard to my spotty blog posting…

It made me realize that if I really do want to be a writer, it has to be for the love of writing, and not to make a name for myself, prove a point, or appease/impress other people.    So today, I’m writing.  Because I feel like it.  I also potted tomato plants today, but I’m not going to beat myself up if I don’t do any more gardening tomorrow, so at least there’s that.

And if a well meaning adult asked me today what I want to be now that I’m all grown up?

A loving wife, a doting mother,  a steadfast friend, a consummate professional, a baker of delectable delicacies, and yes, a writer.

But now, instead of a horse, I want chickens.  And bees.

Orange you glad it’s only temporary…

When it’s forecast to be nearly 90 degrees in New Hampshire, I am always a little surprised, mostly due to the fact that I spend most of the year eliciting yelps from my husband with my icy hands and feet.  When it happens in April, I take it as a sign.

What kind of sign?  That global warming is real, that our climate is definitely changing, that the Whomever Almighty has some vengeful plans in store for us?  Well, no.  I didn’t think that deeply about it.  I simply realized that if it’s this hot in April, shorts season may be longer than normal, and I might actually have to wear them. Which is actually a radical departure from my stance on shorts last summer, which was something along the lines of oh-hell-no-I’m-not-wearing-those-I-have-MOM-LEGS.  Yep, the fact that I was even considering wearing shorts in public was a bold notion.

You know about Mom Legs.  C’mon – you know you made fun of them when you were young, and wrinkle/care free, back in high school.  It’s what you thought of when you saw a lady out in public wearing slightly ill fitting shorts and her legs had that kind of ghostly pallor that screams “I have not seen the sun in years and this bitch put a razor to me this morning for the first time in months”, nicely accompanied by a full pallette of bruises and scrapes.  If she dared wear sandals, her feet looked like they’d been taken out back, worked over and then neglected completely for a couple months.  Get my drift now?  MOM LEGS.

As I contemplated today’s weather this morning, I realized that I might actually have to wear shorts in order to be capable of keeping up with a 14 month old in this heat.  It’s like those crazy folks running the Boston Marathon today – they know what’s expected of them, so they slapped on the Shorty McShort Shorts and greased up their nipples.  (Nice image, eh?)  But after I decided I would go for it, and before I actually whipped out my long stowed shorts, there was a whole ridiculously awkward and hilarious escapade that came in the middle.

We’ll call it Bronze Quest.  And it shall be an epic failure.

I decided that afternoon nap was a perfect time to bust out the self tanner a nice girl at our local beauty boutique had promised me was idiot proof.  Idiot proof, maybe.  Ellen proof?  As it turns out, not even a little.  I thought I was being super duper crafty and wise, attempting this sunless tanning feat during naptime, because realistically, that’s the only window of the day where I had even a chance of applying a product that requires “complete drying before dressing”.  Application seemed to go smoothly, and I was proud that I was able to reach my entire back, thanks to my Gumby arms.  I thought, “Huh, that was pretty simple…”  Kiss. Of. Death.

Mistake #1: I forgot you’re supposed to take it easy when applying to ankles and feet. I now look like I smeared Georgia red clay over the tops of my feet and ankles, and then rinsed off about half of it.  Nothing screams “FAKE TAN” like orange ankles.
Mistake #2: I didn’t consider that applying sunless tanner during naptime would essentially require me to wander around the house naked (don’t judge me – we have curtains everywhere, so it’s not like I was flashing the neighborhood or anything) in the middle of the day, halfheartedly cleaning as I tried not to smear self tanner everywhere.
Mistake #3:  After properly following directions by washing my hands thoroughly to avoid tan palms, I neglected to consider that by washing my hands and not reapplying some to my wrists and the backs of my hands, I would end up looking like I hung out sunbathing with gloves on.  Oops….

Everything in between my hands and ankles actually looks pretty good.  Deathly winter pallor eliminated.  And yes, I rocked the shorts…..in the backyard, where no one could see my self tanning debacle.  Except for E, who was kind enough to overlook Mumma’s self tanning shame.  But now I’m somewhat confused.  Which is worse – Mom Legs or Christina Aguilara Orange ankles that just scream “Mommy was trying to pretend she’s still got it going on”?  I’m pretty sure I’m going to embarrass the peanuts out of E sooner or later, so perhaps I should just embrace it and get some white mid-calf athletic socks and those all black Reeboks to really round out my fashion victim aura…

So much for a successful and confident shorts season.  Stick a pin in me, summer – I’m already done.

 

Three’s the magic number…

If you are a parent, (or if you just enjoy listening to Pandora’s “Toddler” genre station) you’ve undoubtedly heard the song “Three Is A Magic Number” by Schoolhouse Rock.  Or a new version by Jack Johnson.  Or possibly you remember Blind Melon’s version years ago?  At any rate, one of the verses goes like this:

A man and a woman had a little baby,
Yes, they did.
They had three in the family,
And that’s a magic number.

I have to say that I can’t agree more with the song, but especially this verse.  Why?  Because I am so deliriously happy with our little trio of a family.  We are a snug, sweet, self contained little unit, and I just really dig our cool little life.  In addition to S, E and myself, we also have three cats (wait a second – three really IS a magic number…) so we DEFINITELY don’t need any more cats.  I don’t want a dog right now. (Potty training looms large in the not so distant future and I don’t think I can simultaneously clean up poop from two species…)  But the bigger question that seems to have been coming up more and more often is about when and if we’ll be adding another little peanut to our family, a playmate/sibling/torture target for E.  It seems as though the first birthday of your first child is the landmark when everyone feels it’s now appropriate to ask when you’ll be adding another baby to the equation.  (E will be ONE YEAR OLD in a month and a half.  Crazytown, I tell you.)  Plus, I have several lovely ladies around me who are on their second go round on the baby train – and we were all pregnant together the first time, plus or minus a few months.  So, yeah, second baby has been on my mind.  And I’ve had a very… interesting reaction to the concept.

First of all, it literally BOGGLES MY MIND that anyone could be raising a 12-18 month old while pregnant.  Beyond that, my reaction upon hearing the (joyful) news of second pregnancies is sheer, unbridled terror for my friend.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m ridiculously happy for anyone about to bring another sweet little one into the world.  My panic stricken reaction is really more a result of my own feeling that I would LOSE MY FREAKING MIND if I even attempted parenting more than one child.  I have the utmost respect, admiration, love, and a teeeeny weeeeny bit of envy for any woman who is up for that challenge.  Because the honest, dirty, somewhat embarrassing truth is that I absolutely do not feel like I am capable of that particular gauntlet, at this point in time.  Maybe it’s knowing myself really well, maybe it’s that I need to wait a few more years and then I’ll be ready, but whatever the case is, I can honestly say that E is all I can, or want to, handle at this point in my life.

Admitting that isn’t easy for an ambitious overachiever like myself.  It sort of galls me to ‘fess up to the fact that there is something out there I don’t feel qualified to do.  Moreover, the “something” is this very basic thing that millions of women across the world do without blinking, and that “something” seems, to me, like trying to move a Mack truck with my toes.  It makes me wonder why others around me are saying, “Yes, please, I’ll take a second helping,” when I’m the one who hasn’t even finished the first course.  I’m no wuss, and have always thrived in high pressure situations where expectations were sky high – and I’ve almost always exceeded those expectations.  So to suddenly feel so completely bewildered at even the mere thought of trying to be a good mommy to E and be a good mommy to a brother or sister leaves me, to say the least, uneasy.  Normally, I’d take on that kind of challenge with relish.  But for right now, everything intelligent and intuitive inside of me is putting the brakes on, locking the door, and grounding all flights.  Second baby is a no fly zone in this house right now.

I’m not saying never, I’m just saying there’s no way in hell right now.  Maybe I’ll finally have the strength to consider it when E is a little older and could be a helpful big sister?  I don’t know.  What I do know is that I am an admitted ambitious overachiever.  And along with that lovely territory comes a strain of perfectionism that’s like a deadly virus – no matter how you try to shake it, it just won’t seem to quit.  And I wonder if that has something to do with my very strong reaction to this issue.  Becoming a mother has tested every fiber of my perfectionistic being, because no matter what I had planned, how I thought things were going to go, or how hard I’ve tried, some things have just been a complete mess.  For example: 42 hours of back labor for E’s birth, or E’s steadfast refusal to take a bottle until a month ago (a story for another day), or my seeming inability to accomplish more than one single thing on my mile long to do list EVERY DAY.  Yeah, it’s been a massive adjustment, to say the least.  And I think that for someone like me, adjusting to being a mommy, adjusting to being at home, adjusting to E’s ever changing needs and quirks, well, it’s just been a whole lot of adjustment.  I don’t think the aftershocks have quite settled down yet for me.  I’m pretty sure that’s why my palms start to sweat when I contemplate what it would be like to have another baby.  I can’t wrap my head around the kind of adjustments that would come with a second baby, and because I can’t picture how I’d make it work, it scares the BAJEZUZ out of me.

I know that many, many, many mothers do it, and do it just fine.  In fact, I’m pretty sure that, outside of China, single child families are by far the minority, so it’s pretty much the most normal and basic thing for a woman to do.  But I never said I was good at normal and basic, so it’s kind of oddly natural for me to be so flippin’ freaked out by something everyone else doesn’t think twice about.  And I know that it’s likely every woman who finds herself pregnant a second time has a moment of sheer terror, but then just manages to make it work.  If modern contraceptives failed me, and I did find myself in the family way again, I’m certain that despite knee shaking fear, I’d find a way to manage, and would most likely be insanely happy with a foursome family.  Every child is a gift.  I can’t endorse that sentiment more heartily.  But for right now, I’m pretty content to focus all of my mommy love on E, and will let the second baby question rest for a few years.  I wish I could be so brave as to make that leap, but for now, I’ll stay wimpy.  And will remain very, very happy with our trio.

By the way, I’m pretty sure we can manage to raise E not to be a spoiled brat only child by socializing her well, teaching her good manner and morals, and oh yeah, by being the kind of parents who don’t let her get away with being a spoiled brat only child.  The same way we don’t plan on letting her get away with becoming a bully, a sociopath, or a mean girl.  We’ve already heard that argument when we mentioned we weren’t sure about having more kids, and we just don’t buy it.  I do have reasonable arguments, ones that don’t revolve around my fears,  for keeping our family a trio.  For our family right now, it’s the most logically, emotionally, and financially responsible decision.  If things change in the next few years, we’ll reconsider.

But for right now, Schoolhouse Rock got it right: three really is a magic number.

Chaos. Wait, no – I meant Christmas.

I used to be the kind of person who loved everything about Christmas.  I loved spending every disposable penny available to me buying gifts for people, buying a tree, decorating everything in sight, and so on.  I loved our family traditions, how festive everyone seemed to be, and that this was the season that copious eggnog consumption was actually appropriate.  (Um, I still want to know why eggnog isn’t available year round.)  On Christmas morning, I have always been the first one downstairs, usually HOURS ahead of everyone else.  And this behavior isn’t limited to my elementary school years – last Christmas, while approximately 29.5 months pregnant and with the worst sinus infection of my life, I was still giddily opening my stocking at around 5:45am.  (My parents decided years ago that stockings could be opened individually, but gifts had to wait until everyone was up.)  My family has always done Christmas big.  And I loved every second of it.

And then S and I got married, bought a fixer upper of a house, launched in on a massive kitchen renovation, and got pregnant in the span of like, 37 seconds.  All of a sudden, we were on a BUDGET.  All caps, no jokes, budget.  As Christmas neared, I knew our budget didn’t allow for the kind of consumerism-run-rampant gift buying extravaganza I was used to, so I did what any normal 30 year old pregnant woman would do.  I got crafty.  I made STUFF.  And was amazed at my ability to produce THINGS that could be given away.  It was magical.  (And somewhat astonishing, considering how big my belly was, at that point.  It’s surprising I could see what I was working on…) I’m not sure how ecstatic our friends and family were about being on the receiving end of those gifts, but hey, I did it all with a lot of good intentions and nesting-inspired creative energy.  And I even did it before I discovered Pinterest, so I feel I should get extra crafty bonus points.

This year?  We’re still on a BUDGET, but my ability to produce anything crafty (which includes dinner) is severely limited, thanks to our  pint-sized roommate of the last ten months, the lovely and sweet Ms. E.  Though she isn’t very good at paying rent, doing chores, cooking, cleaning or laundry, she makes up for it in drooly, open mouthed kisses and her own attempts at decorating by creative distribution of toys throughout the house.  Since she started walking a few weeks ago (and a few months earlier than I was expecting), most of my time is now spent chasing after her, with lots of “Don’t put that in your mouth!” thrown in the mix.  The last time I tried to wash two bottles and a dish with her loose in the living room, she managed to rip two books, terrorize a cat, pull her mittens out from underneath the closet door, and get stuck halfway under the couch while trying to chase a toy that rolled away from her.  Nap time is my only hope for avoiding being a star on a show like “Hoarders”, since our house appears to be a black hole for crap stacks.  (Which would be the stacks of all of the useless stuff nobody wants, but doesn’t ever seem to get thrown away…)

But since this is E’s first Christmas, I really want to make it special and amazing, buuuuuut… I’m pretty sure that special and amazing might just be beyond my capacity right now.  This is my first Christmas with a kid, and it makes me want to go back in time, give my Mom a million high fives, and a pat on the back to every mommy I’ve ever know who manages to pull off simultaneously raising children AND preparing for Christmas.   I honestly don’t know how they do it.  Maybe money has something to do with it, but even if I had buckets of dollars, my kid has a deep seated hatred of car seats that makes any multiple stop shopping trip more than a little nightmarish.  She is better now that she’s in the convertible seat, but she’s got 2, MAYBE 3 in-and-outs before she gets fed up, and decides that nonstop crying is really her only option to let me know how she feels.  I love the idea of shopping local, but jeepers.  If I can’t walk to every store I need without putting E in and out of her car seat more than twice, we don’t need whatever you’re selling that badly.

On a positive note, E is, without a doubt, the best gift S and I have ever gotten, so even if we have a stick for a tree this year, and decorate it with cheerios and lint (because we have a surplus of both of those), I think we’ll probably be pretty happy.  And though this is E’s first Christmas, at 10 months old (today!) she’s still a little young to remember any of it, so I think we can safely assume we won’t be scarring her if things are a little sparse under the tree.  We’re incredibly lucky to have amazing families and as long as we get to spend time with them, we’ll be happy.  And we’ll hope it’s cool with them to show up with homecooked/handmade gifts.  Our plan is to give them to E to hand out, and hope that her blinding cuteness is enough to make up for our homely, sticky, glue covered, crafty gifts.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays, everyone.  I sincerely hope this year brings each of you all of the wealth, wisdom, love, contentment, peace and kindness in the world.

Disparity (Or: Yeah, we’re poor, too.)

FYI – This might get quasi-political, and possibly a little rant-y.

So, granted, I don’t get to watch a whole lot of TV anymore, which means I don’t catch a ton of news.  And my online reading to brush up on what’s going on in the world is limited to very brief, stolen moments of hastily scanning headlines from a few different new sources.  (I aim for a smattering of news from across the political spectrum.) So basically, I’m admittedly not nearly as aware of current events as I once was, but still – you can’t help but hear SOMETHING about the state of our economy, and the Occupy(——-) movement.  And the only way you could miss the shenanigans of the presidential deathmatch race is if you live under a rock.  (Even that might not be enough… I’m pretty sure they’d excavate a cave to get one more vote.)

I will freely admit that I long ago threw up my hands in utter disgust at politics. I know, I know, it’s incredibly jaded, I’m lucky to live in a country where I can take part in the political dialogue, and I shouldn’t allow the bad behavior of some (many) politicians to dissuade me from participating actively in our nation’s government.  But all I can say is that I really, really, really hate the ugliness, the underhandedness, the do-whatever-it-takes-to-win tactics, and how I can’t shake the feeling that unfortunately, the exact people who shouldn’t be in control of the most powerful nation in the world also happen to be the only ones narcissistic enough to vie for the job.   Given the lackluster performance of a president I really thought was going to change our country, and the current ridiculous antics of the GOP candidates (Really, Rick Perry?  You can’t remember your own campaign promises – epic fail debate #2?  Really, Herman Cain?  In light of your current sexual harassment scandal, you thought belittling/attacking a high ranking female politician was a good idea?), I’ve pretty much given up on feeling good about anything in the realm of politics.

So yeah, given the dismal state of our economy, and my aforementioned dispassion for the power of our political system, I’m not all that hopeful that things are going to get better anytime soon.  And yes, my sweet little family absolutely falls into the 99% that is the cornerstone of the Occupy movement. (Honestly, y’all, if I were in the 1%, I would be waaay too busy enjoying my own private Caribbean island to blog…)  But while I agree that the income gap is growing larger by the moment, and yeah, things definitely need to change, I sort of feel like the Occupy movement is becoming one more political hate fight, instead of finding a constructive way to have a strategic dialogue that will foster a sustainable change that will benefit all families in a meaningful way.  And I feel like that same way that Sarah Palin/Barack Obama are polarizing figures who ends up distracting people from any kind of bipartisanship, the Occupy movement is topic of conversation that instantaneously sets people on edge, ready to verbally battle it out, defending their own point of view while body slamming the other side.

But it’s undeniable that there is massive disparity in our country.  And since this is my opportunity to tell my side of things and how said disparity affects my family, here it is:

Both my husband and I are college graduates.  We both grew up in white collar families who gave us the amazing gift of allowing us to graduate from college debt free.  We also grew up with parents who encouraged us to do something that makes us happy.  After starting out on a track that would have landed me in a career that would have been incredibly lucrative, but would have made me almost certainly unhappy, I transferred schools and changed my major to Anthropology, which I love, love, loved.  After graduating, I found myself working in the nonprofit sector, and it kind of stuck.  Before abandoning employment in favor of crawling around on the floor six inches in front of my daughter, picking up every speck of dirt, lint, fuzz, hair, debris that she might put in her mouth, I had worked for several amazing, and somewhat prestigious, nonprofit organizations in varying positions of management.  S graduated with a degree in business management, but after a few years, went back to a lifelong passion, working on cars, because it makes him happy.  He’s now been a mechanic for nearly 15 years, and in addition to having the almost mythical ability to fix ANYTHING, spent 8+ years building BMW race cars, and traveling the world with a top BMW race team.  This is a man I am so insanely in love with, a man who makes me brim with pride at who he is, what he can do, and how he conducts himself.  This is a man who had the intelligence to choose a career that was interesting, intriguing and made him happy each day over one that would make him quick money. He’s a man who operates with the highest level of honesty and integrity, would give a stranger the shirt off his back, goes out of his way to help others, loves his family, works incredibly hard to support us, and deserves the highest level of respect.  He deserves more respect than any of the once celebrated white collars on Wall Street who made such a shameful mess of our economy, no matter how messy his hands get each day, that’s for sure.

And here’s the thing – I can, without a doubt, confidently say that both of us have worked as hard (if not harder) that many people who (in a month) make double our household income.  In the last decade, we have both busted our bottoms, given 150% of ourselves, worked insane hours, gone above and beyond to prove ourselves, sacrificed, pushed ourselves to exhaustion, and beyond.  And we’ve done it all for careers that made us (for the most part) happy, even if they didn’t result in stacks and stacks of money.  While that particular uneven equation was irritating and annoying before our little family became a trio, now that we have E, it’s almost intolerable.  How is it that we can both work so hard, and still be in a moderately precarious financial position?  We purposefully bought a very modest home that would allow us to live on one income even back when we had two incomes; we have one car that almost predates my ability to legally drink and one that predates entry to junior high; we are very careful about what we purchase; we are committed to saving for our (and E’s) future; we don’t go on vacations; our credit card usage could be categorized as “miserly”; we pay off our existing debt religiously; we don’t buy things we can’t afford and when we do buy things we need, we wait until we find bargains/coupons/deals.  And while we have savings for emergencies, and savings for the future, we’re still only one or two minor crises away from financial catastrophe.  (I know, I know; aren’t we all?)  We are a responsible, hard working, modest family.  And it’s not enough.

There are plenty of families out there who work just as hard as we do, and are worse off.  And that’s what bothers me so much about the whole situation.  Isn’t is supposed to be that hard work, ingenuity, honesty, and intelligence are rewarded?  If S and I started off with every advantage, worked our butts off and still have to stress out about finances, what step did we miss out on that would have enabled us to live in financial comfort?  From where I stand, it appears that the only thing separating us from those who live in big houses with nice cars is that some professions are more highly valued than others, no matter who works harder.  And I think that’s why so many people are so fed up with how things are.  What’s the point of working yourself to the bone if you have no foreseeable chance of a better life from all of your efforts?  But I just wish that instead of another endless standoff that doesn’t actually produce any action, we could find the temperance to enter, entertain, and complete a meaningful conversation with both sides.

I’m not sure I have a conclusion for this particular ramble.  I just felt like the most meaningful addition I could make to this issue is to be honest and admit that money is tight, life isn’t always fair, and that I desperately want a better future for E.  One where she pick whichever career she wants, and know that if she works hard, she can live a life without the oppressive fear of financial ruin.

And I just couldn’t find a way to say that in less than 1500 words.  Sorry….

“Real pants just aren’t my thing anymore…”

The title of this post?  That’s (unfortunately) a direct quote from me.  Those words actually escaped my mouth somewhere around a month ago, and though I would dearly love to be able to claim that I was being snarky or sarcastic, nope, I wasn’t.  It was a genuine, heartfelt admission to a fellow mommy in the heat of a playdate moment.  It’s a sentiment that had been rolling around my head for months, but I hadn’t been planning on admitting it publicly because, really, who says that kind of thing out loud?  I was just kind of hoping we could all ignore the fact that I now live in yoga pants pretty much full time, and was praying no one would submit me to “What Not to Wear”…

I don’t even have a good excuse – my pre-mommy clothes fit.  And I have some really nice, high quality grown-up-lady pants.  I just have no interest in wearing them.  Why not? Well, let me tell you:

1. I spend 90% of my day crawling/rolling around on the floor. And since they basically invented snazzy yoga pants to make rolling around on the floor in contorted positions more comfortable, I feel that jeans are inferior mommy uniform material.
2.  Sports clothing material shares some similarities with Swiffer cloths, instantly picking up every morsel of dust, cat hair, grit and grime, and thereby makes wearing them while rolling around on the floor count as cleaning.  Jeans do not possess this same magic quality.
3.  I wear jeans/real pants when I want to look casual, but nice.  E thinks I look nice in pretty much anything, as long as I’ve got the canister of her organic strawberry puffs with me, so real pants are unnecessary at home.  And I care very little about impressing the patrons of Target or the grocery store, so I generally roll through those high class boutiques looking like I fell into my car directly from bed.
4. Though I love my husband dearly, and really, really, really hope he can vaguely remember the way I looked when we met, after scrambling around after E all day, attempting to clean and organize a house that’s categorically incapable of being clean and organized , battling through 2 naps and 1 bedtime, preparing meals for E, foraging a few stray carrots for my own lunch, picking up toys 3,000 times, doing 17 loads of laundry, and cooking dinner while E holds on to my legs and screeches at me forlornly, honestly, putting on a pair of real pants is just asking too much.

When I do put on real pants, I feel oddly overdressed, even if I’m in jeans.  And I can’t help but count the hours and moments until I can cast off those fancy lady pants, what with their hems, zippers, and non-elasticized waistbands, and slip into the soft, stretchy embrace of my cherished Beyond Yoga leggings.  I’ve even found myself scouring the fashion pages, trying to judge whether a tunic/sweater/shirt will look appropriately put together paired with leggings, so that I can have the best of both worlds.  Instead of wanting a wardrobe that is fabulous, I now covet a wardrobe that will hide my legging addiction.

Considering E appears to be about theeeees close to walking, I’d say my days will soon become all the more frantic, scrambling and messy.  So, if you see me out, don’t worry about feeling bad for the disheveled mommy who couldn’t find the time to put on real clothes.  In all likelihood, if I’m in yoga pants and look like a hot mess, I’m a much happier camper than if I were were in jeans, and looked smashing.

And by the way?  For the sake of full disclosure – there’s a very good chance I have no business wearing leggings in public, but for the sake of my sanity, I put them on far, far away from a mirror and then leave the house with the absurd and false notion that in those leggings, I look approximately the same as the model from the catalogue.  It’s just that kind of blatant self delusion that gets me through the day.  And I’m OK with it.  Because at least I’m a very COMFORTABLE self deluded individual.

This one’s for you….

OK, OK. I know. I fell off the face of the earth. It happens. Naptimes got a little short for a bit, and then I got a little…. distracted. I found myself VEEERRRRY busy with a new found obsession. When I tell you what I have been doing, instead of blogging, during each afternoon nap, it will a) make perfect sense to you (if you happen to share the addiction), b) seem completely illogical to you (for those who know me well) or c) create a new found obsession in your life (please don’t blame me).

So, what have I been doing with my precious 45 minutes of afternoon free time? Fervently catching up on all five seasons of “Friday Night Lights”. Were those crickets I just heard? Yes, I agree. It makes almost no sense for me (who, despite dating the quarterback in high school) knows NOTHING about football, and still doesn’t have any particular interest in watching a real football game. I can’t quite explain it myself. Other than to plead exhaustion, and quote a good friend of mine who found herself similarly addicted and reported to me that, “They could call it “Tim Riggins Washes His Truck”, and I’d still watch it.” Even with a healthy dose of eye candy, I still can’t fully explain myself, but I guess I was just kind of going through something, and needed an outlet for mindless relaxing.  Considering there are only four episodes left for me to watch (sniff, sniff) before the end of the series, you can expect I’ll suddenly have some free time for writing again by oh, say, Monday.

Considering there is a very active little person tugging at my socks as I type, I kinda need to get back to business.  But I promise, I’ll be back in business soon.

Oh yeah – and thank you.  For those of you who have given me nudges to get writing again, it’s a huge compliment.  It was easy to convince myself that it didn’t matter if I didn’t post, it was a huge honor to know that this little thing I started has become a part of your day that you actually miss, and want to return.  🙂

And um…. it’s snowing.  I know I live in New Hampshire, but REALLY?  All I can say is that I’m really, really glad we didn’t go nuts on buying Halloween candy yet this year, because it would be a long weekend stuck inside with a whole lot of undeniable temptation.  I can already see the justification – “We probably won’t get any trick or treaters anyway, what with this bad weather.  It will be fine if I eat a 47th mini Almond Joy.”

 

And now, I kick myself. Repeatedly.

Why no afternoon post today?

Because that would require a napping baby.  Which isn’t going to happen, if you’re an IDIOT like I am and dare to flout the Rules of BabySleep.

I can’t tell you about the disaster that was bedtime last night, or the catastrophe that was morning/afternoon nap today.  Because we will not be discussing E’s sleep ever, ever, EVER again.

But this is how you know that it was bad – this post will be lucky to exceed 100 words.  My average post is 1200 words.  It’s that bad.

And now you know why I’m psychotically superstitious about BabySleep.

 

 

Sleep training… AKA water boarding for mommies.

In an earlier post, I mentioned the Rules of BabySleep.  And the number one rule of BabySleep is you don’t talk about BabySleep.  (It’s like Fight Club, only more intense, and much more superstitious.)  But – it’s kind of a writer’s goldmine.  So, I’m going to go ahead and most likely jinx the hell out of myself.

S and I were incredibly fortunate with E – she was a good sleeper from the start.  She would wake up once or twice to eat, go back down quickly, and I was managing, even as a new mom.  At six weeks, she started sleeping through the night – usually going down somewhere around 9pm, and sleeping until 6:30am.  Granted, she had pretty much worn herself out with four hours of nonstop crying (hello, colic…) immediately preceding her final nursing, but at the time, the crying seemed worth it for the full night’s sleep.  I was sleeping.  She was sleeping.  Life. Was. GOOD.

(For all of those who want to hit me with something large and heavy right now for having a baby who slept through the night at six weeks, read on. I promise you, I get what’s coming to me…)

And then, around 4 months old, that sleeping through the night gravy train ended.  BIG TIME.  All of a sudden, she was up 3,4,5, even 6 times a night, with no rhyme or reason.  The biggest problem was that from the beginning, I let her fall asleep while nursing (because I was a new mom, didn’t know any better, and was flipping exhausted, don’t yell at me, OK?) so E didn’t know how to get herself to sleep. She’d wake up and wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep unless I went up to nurse her back down.  She’d go several nights sleeping from 7pm to midnight, but then waking up every two hours after that.  And then she’d flip flop, and wake up every hour from 7pm to midnight, and then wake up twice between midnight and 5am.  And no, these weren’t quick wake ups, they were marathon, 20-45 minute ordeals, with the occasional 90 minute session thrown in for fun.  Even better, once or twice a month, she’d sleep through the night – just to get my brittle hopes up, only to be dashed the very next night by an especially bad night.  It was like trying to sleep in a minefield – I would lay my head down on the pillow, never knowing when I’d get jerked out of sleep by a screaming baby, never knowing how long I’d be up with her before I could finally get her back down, and never knowing if I’d have a couple hours between wake ups, or a few minutes.  It was all the more intense because, since E wouldn’t take a bottle, I was the only one who could do the night shift.  S would sleep on peacefully, as I trudged up and down the stairs, to and from her room, fumbling for my glasses, bumping into things, stumbling around in a nursing tank top and undies, trying to get upstairs to her before she fully melted down.  (How’s that for a sexy picture?)

Honestly, it started to feel like I was undergoing some sort of cruel form of torture.  And I feel like it was made worse by those two and a half months where she was sleeping – I had tasted the forbidden fruit of restful sleep, and then it was ripped from my hands.  Maybe it wouldn’t have felt so God-awful if I didn’t know any different?  I don’t know.  I know a lot of other moms have had it worse than me (um, my sister-in-law, for one, who deserves a medal of honor for making it through 8 or 9 months of bad sleep with my nephew…), but all I know is my story, and I was going down hard, like a ship run aground.  I was so sleep deprived, life in this house got a little desperate and ugly.  I was like a junkie, jonsing for a good night’s sleep.  And I began to plot against my husband’s sleep.  I didn’t want to hurt him or anything, I just wanted him to be awake as often as me, to even it out a bit.  But no amount of throwing off the blankets, noisy exits and entrances to our bedroom, or huffy breathing seemed to faze him.  The man could sleep through the apocalypse, I tell you.

I’d heard all of these techniques for sleep training, including going cold turkey, the Ferber method, the no cry method, hybrid mixes, old wives tales, and on and on and on.  I read The No Cry Sleep Solution, and maybe that lady had the magic touch or maybe her baby was way more laid back than E, but lemme tell you, that s*&t did NOT work for us.  But the book had very effectively scared the bajeezuz out of me about the dangers of any sleep training where your child might cry for even a nanosecond.  (I believe the section that got me was where she claimed that a sleep training method that included crying would result in a child who would grow up to be a less empathetic adult…  Christ on a bike.)  So, despite my rapidly declining mental state, I put off sleep training like some people put off getting their wisdom teeth pulled. I probably would have had my wisdom teeth yanked out without anesthesia rather than sleep train my little bean.

But finally, we came to an impasse.  It became clear this wasn’t a phase she was going to outgrow, and it was abundantly clear that if I didn’t start getting sleep pronto, I might go a little Mommy Dearest.  A friend (who I now view as a saint) sent me Sleep Sense, and after reading it carefully, highlighting, role playing, strategizing, and then re-reading for a 9th time, we embarked upon the “This-Is-Not-Funny-Anymore-Mommy-Needs-To-Sleep-Right-The-@#$%- Now” program.  I was pretty confident it was going to be a trainwreck with hours of hysterical crying.  And E would probably be a little upset, too.  Turns out E was probably ready for it way before I was, because she really didn’t put up much of a fuss.  I stood my ground, did my little hybrid sleep training dance, and after a few nights, she was good to go.  She learned really quickly how to get herself to sleep – I’ve never been so proud of anything in my life.

Though I dare tempt fate by talking at all about E’s sleep, I’m not stupid enough to talk in depth about how she goes down, how long she sleeps, etc.  Momma NEEDS to stay on a winning streak, folks.  We’re not out of the woods yet – there are still a few kinks to work out (ahem, 5am wake ups…) but I will quietly tell you it’s MUCH improved.  E had her occasional less than stellar moments, like deciding a couple weeks ago that 3:45am is a good time for an impromptu play session.  She played pretty happily (and for the most part, silently) until 4:16am, when she somehow managed to end up sitting up, both legs stuck through the crib bars, like she was sitting on the edge of a dock.  After that, the happy playtime was pretty much over and it was time for mommy to step in.  Well, she’s still young, and we all backslide sometimes, right?

So, what did I learn from all of this?  Here you go:
1. DO NOT ALLOW AN INFANT TO GET USED TO FALLING ASLEEP WHILE NURSING.  Seriously, it’s the kiss of sleep death.  Boob =Food, NOT Boob = Sleep.
2. Your husband can’t feel the light saber of resentment, so just get over it and recognize that when she’s 16, driving and dating, you can just call it even.
3. Sleep training doesn’t have to be an epic saga of horrors.  I wasted a lot of time and imagination thinking about how badly it was going to go…
4. Babies catch on quick.  Putting herself to sleep was E’s ticket to a much happier mommy, and E’s a smart girl – she totally gets it.
5. You aren’t finished with sleep training until the baby is putting herself to sleep at naptime, too….

And #5 is what we’re working on at the moment.  As soon as E had bedtime covered, I was so grateful for the sleep, I slacked off and let her continue to rely on nursing to fall asleep for naps.  I’m only human, and I had a LOT of missed sleep to catch up on.  Today is Day 1 of Naptime Sleep Training.  And as evident by the epic rambling length of this post, E is obviously down for her afternoon nap.

I would have written about something less Mommy-centric today, but I still have this knee jerk reaction to the idea of sleep training – I get all anxious about it, my palms get sweaty, and my belly feels like I’m on a roller coaster.  I knew I was going to kick off the naptime training today, so it’s pretty much all I’ve thought about for the past three days.  As a result, I have very little left in my brain that doesn’t relate to BabySleep.

And yes, for any desperate moms who might have stumbled upon my humble little bloggity blog, I will totally give you a blow by blow of EXACTLY what I did.  I make no guarantees, because I am NOT the no cry sleep solution lady, making empty promises to desperate women.  Anyone who swears they can tell you how to get your kid sleeping through the night with no crying should be viewed with the deepest level of suspicion.  Snake oil, I tell you…