My Little Slice of Mommie Heaven

The Lesson

2012-02-04T19:57:00.000-05:00

I woke up Friday morning. I knew I had a big day-long meeting, so the night before I had washed a load of nice work clothes (all black) and hung them up. I had my choice of items to wear that were (somewhat) flattering, made me feel (somewhat) attractive and comfortable at the same time, and would be professional enough for said day-long meeting.

Upon arising, however, something dawned on me. All of the colleges in my statewide system would be represented at said day-long meeting. All of them. Including the one I where I used to be employed.

Immediately I was excited and panicked at the same time. I might be seeing people that I used to work with! I could catch up with some old frenemies! But … I weigh 50 pounds more (at least) than I did the last time they saw me (and I was 8 months pregnant then). And you know that thing about when someone leaves everything that is wrong gets blamed on them? I totally know that has happened.

So … I start getting ready. I shave my legs, I get dressed, I put straightening solution in my hair and start drying it. I straighten my hair, I pick out jewelry and shoes, all the time thinking about my old job. The job I loved, until I didn’t. I job I wasn’t planning to leave, until I did. The job that I very abruptly made a transition from, that included 3 weeks in the hospital and a newborn. “Mixed emotions” doesn’t even begin to cover it.

I was paying zero attention to my kid. She was watching “Jane and the Dragon” and playing with the cat. I could hear her, I knew she was fine. So I could be absorbed in my “will they think I’m fat” obsession, and my “what if they don’t even talk to me” anxiety.

Until I heard a plaintive voice from the other room: “momma, I need help”.

I walked into the hallway with makeup half applied and my mascara in my hand. Her door was closed all the way, which is unusual because that usually makes her cry. I don’t see the cat.

I try the doorknob. It is locked. I block my first instinct to panic, and head to the linen closet. I pull out the un-bent metal coat hanger, and insert it into the hole in the knob. I’ve done this before. In my old apartment, the door would bang against the wall in the wind and then slam shut, and I was constantly opening it this way.

Only … nothing. It’s not working.

Panic rises another notch, but I’m clear headed. This is not a big deal. I check my bedroom door and sure enough, the lock is a thumbscrew lock, not a push-button lock. So I try talking to my kid.

Honey, do you see the line in the middle of the knob?” “Yes”. “Can you try to turn it so it points sideways?”. (She turns the whole knob.) “Just the middle part” (More turning of the whole knob.) She starts to cry, so I abandon that plan.

I run to the garage to retrieve a small screwdriver, and begin removing the doorknob. I take out both screws and take off the knob. I have her pull off the knob on the other side (since she had the one attached to the shaft thing.) Then I try sliding the thing in the middle.

Doesn’t budge.

Try again. Nothing.

Great. I have now disassembled the doorknob, half of which is inside the room, and I still can’t get the damn door open.

Thankfully, my kid is playing and doesn’t seem terribly concerned about it. But the cat is starting to reach out under the door with his paw as if to say “HelLOOOO, we are STUCK IN HERE, get us OOOUUUT”.

So, I grab my phone. Which has been erratically losing signal, and this seems to be one of those times, so I have to turn it off and back on again. Awesome.

Meanwhile I go back out to the garage and get the largest screwdriver I can find. I try all kinds of little tricks on the “middle thing” while I turn my phone back on and finally get my dad on the phone.

His suggestion? Find the biggest screwdriver you can find. Sorry Dad, that’s not working.

His next suggestion? Butter knife.

Fucking genius. I managed to turn the “middle thing” and pop the door open like it was nothing with the butter knife.

I pushed the door open and my kid looked up and smiled. “Hi Mommie!”.

I went back into the bathroom to finish getting ready. And then I realized the lesson in the event. (OTHER than “remember to not have a thumbscrew lock on the door to your two-year-old’s room”.)

I had been so preoccupied with the thought of the people where I used to work. What they would think of me now, how they would act toward me, what I would say. When in reality, my life has changed. My priorities have shifted. “This is my life now” floated through my head, and I was grateful for the reminder of what in my life is important NOW. My kid, and my cat, both of whom were safely rescued from the kid’s bedroom.

I went to the meeting, merely a few minutes late. There was only one person from my previous college, and they were probably a new hire because it was someone I completely didn't recognize. I hung out with some people I've met at my new college and I had as much fun as I could have at this day-long meeting.

And this morning I bought a new doorknob. One that doesn’t have a lock on it.

For Rachel

2012-01-10T18:09:00.001-05:00

I have had a very long day (second day of classes). But you know who is about to have an even longer day?

Rachel Maddow.

She lives for this stuff. The New Hampshire primary.

In honor of, I have made one of my favorite cocktails, renamed.

The original source of this recipe is the Montgomery Inn restaurant in northern Kentucky. When I lived in that area, during a visit by my parents, we went for dinner. I ordered this drink and simply adored it - and I am not really a martini person. They called it the Mandarin Martini, and I asked how it was made.

I continued to make it long after, and I make different variations as well. This is an awesome drink to keep you cool on a warm summer night. It is definitely one of my fave cocktails. So in honor of my favorite pundit, I bring you ...

The Maddow Martini

Equal parts orange vodka and triple sec (can substitute peach schnapps if you don't have triple sec)
Add a splash of pineapple juice, then enough cranberry juice to turn it a little orange
Shake over ice, strain into a martini glass.

Enjoy!

Read for the Record

2011-10-09T21:25:00.000-04:00

Last Thursday was Read for the Record. Our daycare participated by having a teddy bear and pajama drive, having a 'wear your pajamas' day, and reading the book for the Record: Llama Llama Red Pajama.

We were totally into wearing our pajamas to school:

Those pajamas say "It's Pasture Bedtime" Hahahahahahahaha. That totally cracks me up every time.

And no, she didn't let go of that stupid plastic phone all morning.

Light The Night

2011-10-08T21:12:00.001-04:00

Since moving home, I've joined up with a women's group that includes some ladies I haven't hung out with since high school. One project the group supports is the Light The Night Walk to support Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. So, off the Wee One and I go to support the group and hang with old (meaning, "long time" not that we're all that old) friends.

Wearing my Nu Zeta hat

Never mind, didn't want to wear my hat after all!

But I'll cheese for the camera!

Let's go!

Babywearing rocks!

Fountains!

Our banner. Obviously the children had quite a bit of input into its creation.

Admiring his handiwork.

More friends came to support.

In the sling.

The river is so pretty.

Once the sun started going down, we had to bundle up.

How many shades of pink can I put on a single kid? Let me try ...

So my kid? Can charm anything off of anyone. She walked up to a woman that didn't speak English and got part of a cereal bar. She then moved on to another group and got a cupcake and a chocolate bar for her smiles and charm. I am SO in trouble with this one.

Yay, cupcake.

So then we walked a couple of miles, went home and had cookies at Jenny's house.

Her and Me

2011-10-07T21:02:00.000-04:00

So how can a kid this pretty ...

Come from ... me?

Also ... this is what happens when your kid gets ahold of your camera and randomly shoots photos.

Mexican Pizzas

2011-10-06T20:49:00.000-04:00

Continuing Blog 4 Family Dinners ...

Mini Mexican Pizzas

Heat up some tortillas.

Put some vegetarian refried beans in a pan with 1/4 c water, heat.

Chop lettuce, tomatoes, onions.

Put it all on the table, and let everyone build their own mini pizzas.

Mine:

My kid's:

Mmmm ....

I ate all mine ..

So, my kid didn't really seem to like this as much as she likes the Italian dishes. She even asked for pasta in the middle of this dinner. I ended up pulling out some leftovers and heating them up for her, since she wasn't eating this much at all.

Meanwhile I ate the rest of hers .... maybe it will require multiple tries before she likes mini mexican pizzas. ..

The Legend of Lily

2011-10-04T18:31:00.002-04:00

I learned a lesson about a year back. I learned that it is not a good idea to celebrate your successes with sleep training by bragging about it on the internet. In the comments of a post (~~which I apparently cannot find~~ I freaking found it, yo!), a dear, adorable friend of mine birthed the Lily Legend (see Serifm's comment). She mentioned that every time I talked about "The Universe" overhearing my bragging about how well my kid was doing, she imagined Lily Tomlin in her big chair.

"Lily" was born.

Lily has become a legend when we mothers whisper about our sleep successes. When the sleeping falls apart, we are quick to pay due homage to Lily in the hopes that she will once again help our children to sleep blissfully through the night.

So imagine how stoked I am that Serifm and I are going to see Lily in the flesh tomorrow evening to celebrate a birthday. Yaaaaaaaaay!!!!! (and I hope my kid still sleeps when I get home!)

Mini Pizzas

2011-09-28T21:18:00.000-04:00

Blog for Family Dinner continues ... Tonight was Mini Pizzas!!

So today was kindof rough for both of us. I've been really tired and run down lately, and she is getting over Fifth Disease. I did the minimum amount possible for my day, and picked her up from daycare while she was still asleep on her cot. We watched alot of Caillou and SuperWhy when we got home, curled up on the couch under a blanket.

On the phone with my mom, she talked about what she was making for dinner. Hey, we can expand family dinner to include Nan and Grandpa, right? That still counts, doesn't it? So I asked my kid if she wanted to go to Nan's and have dinner.

No.

She didn't. She seems to like dinner at home in our dining room almost as much as I do! I tweeted about it, and got a reply from Blog 4 Family Dinner - apparently it is common for the kids to get on board with Family Dinner early on. Yep, that's my girl.

Anyway, so here's what I made: Mini English Muffin Pizzas

On a baking sheet, I put a sheet of parchment paper. It was supposed to help clean-up, which it did for the most part. Except the cheese that escaped off the side.

On the parchment paper, I put english muffins cut side up. I managed to fit exactly one package of muffins on the baking sheet. I am a rock star.

Then I turned to chopping toppings. (Ha!) I had a package of gourmet sliced mushrooms from Whole Foods that I chopped using my chopper. (Pampered Chef, not Slap Chop. I hate that guy.) Also, a bunch of garlic. Then some green onions.

On the english muffins, I put some spaghetti sauce, the stuff that was left over from Monday night. Then I put the chopped vegetables, then I put some cheese. Shredded cheese. Bake 350, 10 minutes or so.

Eat.

(Sorry for the sideways photos.)

If I had it to do over again, I would bake them without the cheese for about 10 minutes, then add cheese and bake until it melts. The garlic and onions needed a few more minutes in the heat. Also, I thought about rubbing the muffins with a garlic clove before topping, but I didn't want to take that time. If you only want a little garlic flavor, that might be a better route rather than adding it chopped. If you like the garlic, tho, the chopped method tasted yummy. But beware - about an hour after eating, my dad freaked out because my kid smelled like garlic. (He watches too much CSI - he mentioned selenium poisoning. Freak.)

Nan declared them delicious. Everything that we eat that my kid likes, she wants to take some to Nan. Nan wasn't complaining, tho!

For My Mom

2011-09-27T21:02:00.000-04:00

Hey Mom, remember when we went to IKEA in July? And you found a kitchen that you really loved? And you asked me to take pictures of it with my cell phone? So you could show my dad? And then you haven't heard anything else about it? Well, yell for Dad, because here's the kitchen:

I have no idea who these people are. But they wouldn't get out of the damn way for me to take the photo.
So here they are.

Family Dinner Night 2: Ravioli and Sauce

2011-09-26T18:24:00.000-04:00

This isn't what I had planned to have for tonight's dinner, but the kid said "ravioli" so many times that I changed my mind!

Also: being exhausted helped lean the decision toward "simple dinner". And simple definitely describes this dinner:

Boil some water
Open the package of ravioli

Dump into the water
Boil for about 5 minutes
Drain

Meanwhile, open a jar of sauce, dump into a pot, warm up while the pasta cooks.

An aside: I love oregano. When I was in grad school, I made a roast for a boyfriend and smothered it in oregano. It was awesome. So whenever I make anything with spaghetti sauce, I love to add oregano.

My father? Hates oregano with a passion. He can taste the tiniest amounts of oregano in a dish. Often he will go ahead and eat it, and with a pouty look mention that it has oregano in it. You know, just enough to make you feel bad that he's not enjoying it.

The last time I bought spaghetti sauce I bought some "garden herb" variety. One evening I ended up throwing together an impromptu spaghetti dinner for my kid and my parents, and my dad was forced to eat spaghetti sauce containing oregano. So when I was shopping this weekend, I made sure to get something plain, like tomato and basil, in case my dad ended up eating with us.

So tonight when I decided to switch to the "ravioli and sauce" plan, I decided that since my dad wouldn't be eating with us, that I could spruce up the sauce a bit. I chopped some garlic and sauteed it in olive oil, then added some sauce, and also added some oregano from the garden.

Oh, and we topped with some shredded mozzarella cheese. Yummy. And more good conversation with my kid.

But I'm still tired ...

Family Dinner Month Day 1: Conchiglie with Peas

2011-09-25T20:50:00.000-04:00

Blog For Family Dinner month (use #B4FD as the Twitter hashtag) starts today. I've started following lots of folks who talk about family dinner, feeding families well, kid-friendly meals, etc. So I started to see the #B4FD info in my timeline.

We are doing really well with Project Veg. Between the cookbook my friend Jenny loaned me and the one she gave me as a Christmas gift, we had been doing pretty well. But with starting back to my semester and trying to single handedly run a household into the ground, it's usually just easier to head down the street to my mom's for dinner.

I've been feeling a little down and overwhelmed lately. I think it's mostly hormonal, and I have a doctor appointment scheduled. don't worry. But I've been trying to think of little things I can do that will help me to feel better, and to better deal with the stress of ... everything I have going on.

So when I started thinking about Family Dinner Month, I realized that I really like the idea. Honestly, I am incredibly excited about the idea of my kid and I sitting down together to dinner every night for a month at our dining room table, to a meal that I cooked for us. Don't get me wrong, I'm very grateful for the nights my mom cooks dinner for us. Also, my parents will probably join us for a number of our meals this month, and I'm sure we will end up at their house for a few meals also. It just feels like this is one thing that I can do that I enjoy (I love cooking) that will help me bond with my kid, take good care of her, relax at the end of a long day, and be something that I can feel like I have some control over.

I didn't realize that last part until I was discussing it with my mom. In the middle of explaining to her that I want to try to do meal planning and eat more dinners on our own or at least at our dining room table, I started talking about how overwhelmed and out-of-control I feel sometimes, and this is one thing that I feel like I can have (or would like to have) more control over.

So, this morning my mom took the Wee One to church to see Jesus (every time you say "church" she says "I go see Jesus") and I made a list of menus, went to Whole Foods, cleaned out the fridge, put groceries away, washed all the dishes .... then took a nap with my kid. (Hey, I said I was overwhelmed, leave me alone).

So here was our dinner tonight, the first night of Family Dinner Month, inspired by the kind folks at Blog For Family Dinner.

The inspiration for this meal came primarily from a recipe in The Mediterranean Vegan Kitchen (the cookbook that I previously ~~copyright violated~~ talked about here) called Conchiglie with Green and Black-Eyed Peas, Pearl Onions, and Basil. Only it ended up being more like Conchiglie with Green Peas, Garlic, and Oregano. The other influence for the recipe was this recipe.

So here is how it was made. Easy peasy (sorry, I had to).

In a big pot, boil salted water for the pasta. When a rolling boil, add pasta. Remember to look at the time for a ballpark on when your big pot of pasta will be done.

In another pan:
Put some olive oil in the pan.
Add some chopped garlic and stir.

Oh, yea, remember to turn on the burner! (I told you this was how I made it!)
After it gets up to temp and you notice it has started sizzling, add 1/3 cup of butter and some frozen peas. Stir periodically until the butter is melted and the peas look thawed.

Meanwhile, head out to the garden to clip some oregano. Garden? Why yes, I do have an herb garden (okay, ignore the great big weed in the middle. Most of it is herbs, anyway.)

Chop a few leaves of the oregano and add to the peas/butter/garlic stuff.
Keep warm on lo heat until the pasta is done.

As I learned on Food Network, put the pasta in the sauce and let it finish cooking and soak up all the flavors in the sauce.

It was very yummy. The toddler enjoyed it immensely. Even more than the dish, I enjoyed a quiet conversation with my kid. First she told me I was a lion and she was spaghetti. Then she was a lion (I don't know what I had become, I was too busy enjoying her lion roar). I found out that her favorite food is ravioli, but I think that's just her favorite food to say. She does love her some peas, and crammed them into her mouth by the fistful.

After finishing dinner, she wanted to visit her Nan and Grandpa so that Nan could try the dish. We wrapped up the leftovers on a Dora plate and took it to Nan to try. Nan scarfed the whole plate down and declared it delicious, much as we had done.

So Day 1 of Family Dinner Month was a smashing success: simple, healthy, toddler-friendly meal. Bonding conversation with my kid. Couldn't have a better evening at home.

Also: Aveeno Calming Baby Bath with the lavendar scent really helps get the smell of chopped garlic off your hands. That's my hint for the day.

Third Day of Preschool

2011-09-24T20:54:00.002-04:00

When dropping off the kid one morning, the daycare director offhandedly said "you're going to hate me but: I'm going to move your daughter to a new room". I thought she meant like "for the day" but no, she meant ... ANOTHER TRANSITION.

Why yes, yes we did just move from Twos I to Twos II in February. Why yes, that was after moving from Toddlers to Twos I last October BEFORE SHE WAS EVEN TWO.

Again, the director wants to keep The Clique together. Again, she's in a bind because there is a large group of children ready to move into the Twos rooms, and she has an empty preschool classroom, so it's a workable solution. Wee One will have (YET AGAIN) a new primary caregiver, but other than that, not much will be different. New room, new person, same group, same ....

Yea.

So they took "field trips" to the new room. Which has a large climbing apparatus with a loft, so all the kids loved the new room and had no issues. Remember, my kid is a freaking rock star, and I'm the one with major transition issues.

Then Shermageddon happened, and I was concerned about traffic for Monday morning. My college had not issued any statements or information to students, so I ended up posting announcements on Blackboard/email and Twitter, and trying to plan my life so I wouldn't be the loser that showed up late to class after telling my students they better not show up late for class. I was worried about having fall clothes clean for the cold snap that came out of nowhere, and the exams I would be giving that week, etc.

So I dropped her off at daycare, knowing she would be in her new room, but thinking that "everything else" was staying "the same".

Turns out ... that was my kid's First Day of Preschool.

I pick her up to find no care sheet filled out for her (normally I get something like this that says when she went potty, napped, ate, etc).

This was the first one she brought home with no potty accidents. Yay!

Instead, we received a general "Today" sheet that described how now they each have a job (Wee Ones is to pass out cups at meal/snack times), how there are "stations" in the room and the friends are learning that there can only be a certain number of people at a station at one time, how the friends were learning to use the computer, and there will be Show and Tell on Friday.

Also, with our Today Sheet came ....

The Preschool Newsletter, complete with a welcome for all the friends transitioning to preschool. Complete with a back page about tips for "students". Gah.

Wha ... what? Um ... ah ... uh ... wha...????

On Tuesday when I picked her up and had no idea when she'd slept, how much she had eaten, only that she'd had a potty accident, I realized that "everything else will be the same" was really code for "we are transitioning your kid to preschool and not really telling you so you won't freak the fuck out about it".

The only problem with that?

Most people know when their kid is starting preschool. They can take pictures "First Day of Preschool, look how cute!" They can mentally prepare themselves to transition from the world of "daycare", which is all about eating, pottying, and sleeping, to the world of "school" which is all about learning to be an independent person in the world.

Wednesday, I took my camera with me to drop-off. So here I document my kid's Third Day of Preschool.

In the car on our way to the Third Day of Preschool

Standing by the fishtank at the Third Day of Preschool

Oh, yes, everything is JUST the same

Because she's always had a "job", right?

I guess Cup Passer Outer isn't grammatically correct

Monday, September 12, 2011, my kid started preschool. She's not even two-and-a-half. But of course, she's doing great.

Riverboat Taxi, Day Two

2011-09-22T20:44:00.001-04:00

We decided to try the riverboat taxi again. One because my kid thought it was fun, and two to continue to support it. It costs them somewhere over $800 to run the thing, and they are only charging $1 a trip to roughly 50 people in the mornings and up to 100 people some afternoons. As POTUS said, "it's math".

I brought my real camera this time, so no out-of-focus cell phone picture. Nope, not this time.

Except maybe for this one ...

Less scared on this trip.

We took the earlier riverboat trip, which meant we were at the trolley stop before the trolley started running. I had the sling with me this morning, so I could have worn her in a carrier - which would have helped the 8 block walk to her daycare. But we had some time, so I decided that we would wait for the trolley.

Waiting at the trolley stop.

And by "waiting" I mean "running in circles singing Ring Around The Rosies"

She decided she was cold, so we dug her jacket and Babylegs out of her bag.

On the trolley.

After dropping her off, I walked the four blocks to campus to teach my classes. I felt all smug for using public transportation that day, until I remembered that I had made an appointment with a student at my Downtown campus office - 7 blocks away. So I walked to the DT campus, then walked to fetch her from daycare. A healthy 15 block walk - when I'm used to 0. So the bones of my lower body were quite glad that I had foregone the morning walk up 4th street.

Too Cool For School

Why yes, she is wearing a Dora dress, a Dora jacket, and carrying a Dora backpack. What?

Waiting on the trolley.

In all of it, I didn't have a pic of the actual, you know, TROLLEY.

Riverboat!

Safely back home again in Indiana.

Bye Bye Riverboat

They are only going to run the riverboat for another week. It actually isn't that helpful for the problems that exist with traffic. The Sherman Minton bridge doesn't usually carry Jeffersonville commuters, it carries New Albany commuters and those coming down from the Knobs and points north. The locks separate the New Albany riverfront from the 4th Street Wharf where the riverboat docks, so the boat can't actually service the people that are affected by the bridge - at least not conveniently.

But I'm glad they gave it a try, and I'm glad we got to try it out.

The first post on the riverboat taxi is here.

I'm Sortof Related to a Famous Japanese Movie Star

2011-09-20T10:03:00.000-04:00

who unfortunately just found out that the grandfather we share was not, in fact, a Navajo from Kentucky.
So, you know that show about famous people finding out who they are related to?

Yea, my dad was totally on one of those.

In Japan.

From the time I was born, my paternal grandmother was married to the man I considered to be my grandfather. He was actually a step father to my dad and uncle, but he was my Grandpa. I am the only child on that side of the family, so I was basically spoiled.

Apparently, however, before Grandpa married Grandma, he was stationed in Japan, where he had a wife and a daughter. The daughter had two sons, one of whom is the Famous Japanese Movie Star mentioned above (he was also in Thor, so he's a movie star here too).

So we got a call from my uncle who was contacted by the producer trying to research the story for this show. He had tracked my uncle down because he was the executor of my grandfather's estate. He relayed this story to my uncle in an email, and my dad joined in the email conversation.

A Japanese film crew came to my parents house to film an interview with my dad and also to film the wallet my grandfather carried. Until the day he died, he carried with him a picture of the daughter he left behind in Japan.

In July my dad went to London, where Tadanobu is filming a movie, to film the rest of the TV show. The producers didn't tell Tadanobu or his mother, Junko, that my dad and uncle were coming. The producers filmed them watching the interviews with my dad, and with some of my grandfather's other family. Then they surprised them by bringing in my dad and my uncle.

Family history and family ties are very important in the Japanese culture, and they were very very pleased to meet my dad and my uncle. I had supplied my dad with plenty of photos of the Wee One to take, and they thought she was very cute. Junko, my father's step sister, sent gifts home for her.

We have a copy of the show they televised in Japan. Much of what Tadanobu and his mother say is in Japanese, so we are getting that translated. It's interesting to have family that you never knew about. I'm glad that they were able to find the questions about my Grandpa that they were looking for.

Over The River And ...

2011-09-19T10:01:00.001-04:00

... up 4th Street.
So, if any of you have been following my Twitter stream for the last week, I have basically given away my super secret location of where I live.

Friday, September 9th while getting ready to take the kid to daycare, she had a potty accident. When pulling off the wet undies, I noticed ... blood. Just a little. Just a very very little. But put together with a string of accidents at daycare (usually after naptime) and my kid having to pee alot, and I was concerned that it was a sign that something was wrong.

I called the doc's office on the way to daycare and made a late afternoon appointment. Took the kid to school, took myself to work, taught a lab, etc. Picked up the kid, and headed to the doctor. To get there, we drove across the river. What's interesting is how vividly I remember the drive across the Sherman Minton bridge that afternoon. The sun was shining and glinting off the water, there was a barge coming down the river, the bridge afforded a beautiful view. Just one of those ordinary moments that you remember in hindsight.

Because the hindsight is ... almost exactly two hours later they closed that bridge because it was dangerous and on the verge of collapsing. They had found cracks in the steel in some key structural supports that THURSDAY (yes, the day BEFORE I drove over that bridge with my kid in the car).

My first reaction was to be shocked that they closed the interstate and the bridge. My second reaction was to be mad because I felt like we could have been in danger. (I mean, it's so bad they are limiting the number of contractors on the bridge at any one time. And there I was, in my car ....). My third reaction was to realize that all those people that take that bridge to get to work in the morning would add to an already congested bottleneck that occurs when all of Southern Indiana commutes to the other side of the river every morning.

It's been termed Shermageddon, because for the people that used to take that bridge, it literally is. They sit in their cars 2 to 3 hours every morning, on three different interstate highways, to get across a bridge. I'm lucky, because I live to the east of the main interstate. I drive down close to the river, and jump on the local access bridge at the last possible entry point to avoid sitting in that long line of people coming from the North and West. They have redirected the traffic pattern on the local access bridge so that instead of two lanes in each direction, there are three lanes headed south for the morning commute. So if I leave at a decent time, it's only added about 15-20 minutes to my normal commute. (Until Friday 5pm, that was pretty freaking awful).

So why the hell did I take a riverboat to work today?

Well ....

I guess it's because of my kid. And the novelty of it. After the first two days of heavy traffic last week, one of our local riverboats decided to begin ferrying people across the river during rush hours. For $1 each way. I wanted to support the riverboat taxi. And for $1 I could take my kid on a quick riverboat ride across the river. Wouldn't that be a fun way to get to work?

So this morning, we wake up early. It's raining, of course. It can't be nice and sunny like it was all last week for our commuting adventure. No, it's pouring down rain. But I'm convinced this will be a fun thing to do. So I put on my raincoat, and one of her jackets, and dig out the umbrella. We are ready to go.

When we park the car, I get all of the above back out of the car, and realize: I forgot the sling. I have no toddler carrier. (Mothers in the know will now groan in empathy.) We are due to get on the boat at that exact moment, so I yell, "run!" to the little kid and we take off toward the dock. My version of "run" is slightly different than her version of "run", so I attempt to carry her on my hip. Over a slippery raincoat. While carrying my bag, her bag, and our umbrella.

The lovely riverboat people waited for us. We paid our $2 (I don't think they were going to charge me for her, but I wanted to support the riverboat. And it's $1. And they waited for us.) and climbed aboard. They pulled away from the dock and my kid's eyes got as big as saucers. And stayed that way almost the whole trip.

Just a little scared.

We stood by the window and looked at the river. We passed underneath the bridge that we normally drive across. It was a very quick ride, but for someone who loves riverboats (me! me! me!) it was a really cool little jaunt across the river.

The only photo I took that is actually in focus.

Once arriving on the other side, we started climbing steps to get to the trolley stop. The public transportation system maintains trolleys as buses that provide local access to some downtown spots (like my kid's daycare) for free. So the last leg of the journey would be the trolley. To get to the stop: steps, and more steps.

Hey, guess what, I learned something today. Those steps are right next to (and below) the interstate. Which means that when a large truck drives through a large puddle, the only place for the water to go is over the side, and down onto whomever is walking up the steps. Fantastic design, engineers!

We get to the top of the steps as the Trolley is ready to drive away. Thankfully, I have a cute, kid, so I waved to the driver and she opened the doors and said "I can't leave a baby behind!". The kid LOVED the trolley. So much so that twice in the 8-block ride she said "I like a trolley!" and made everyone laugh. We signaled our stop, and the driver asked if we were headed to the daycare, and dropped us off right at the door (saving a half-block walk).

She hit the doors telling everyone who would listen that she took a boat and a trolley to get to school. It saved us NO time in the long run, I look and feel like a drowned rat, and was then faced with another 3-block walk to get to my office. But it was worth it since it seemed to be such a neat experience for her.

If it's raining again tomorrow, we'll drive the bridge. It hasn't been adding that much time and stress for us, and I can at least arrive at work looking presentable. I think the riverboat taxt would really help if they could pick up in New Albany and not in Jeff. The Jeff folks don't need that much help - if you can get to the dock you can get to the local access bridge and that's not where the delay is. It just saves them some parking. The New Albany folks are the ones who are stuck, a riverboat taxi would help them much more. But it would be a longer distance for the boat, and I don't know what the parking and docking situation is there.

So they don't get to have the fun that we had this morning on our way to work!

Better photos of our Day Two trip can be found here.

Why I Haven't Written

2011-09-18T21:11:00.003-04:00

I got writers block. And download-the-pictures-from-the-camera-block. But mostly?

I-don't-want-to-brag block.

Because you see, my kid pretty much potty trained herself overnight, leaving me no time to write angsty posts, develop a plan (like I did for sleeping), show you photos of all our cute cloth training pants, tell you about the amazing invention that got her to pee on a public toilet, or rant about the books that I found to be unhelpful.

So ... what else was there to write about? Other than "hey, my kid woke up one day and started using the potty and ... well, that's about it."

I originally started this blog to be a scrapbook of sorts. Actually, I lie. I started this blog to get extra entries in free cloth diaper giveaways. Seriously, now the cat is out of the bag. But then I decided it would be a good scrapbook, and a way to get feedback on some of my crazy thoughts. I didn't want it to be one big giant bitch session, and that's kindof how I thought it was going. So I took a vacation.

But I miss blogging. Sure, I miss bitch sessions. But I also miss sharing crazy events in our lives, too. If only to have them someplace where my kid can be ~~humiliated by them~~ enjoy reading them later in her life.

Besides, I am taking a riverboat and a trolley to work tomorrow, and I know I'll have alot to say about that.

Added: I finally got the photos downloaded off the camera, so I am writing posts like a mad woman. Also, I am breaking a cardinal rule of blogging - I am backdating posts. So that I don't go looking for the photos of my kid at the zoo in July and can't find them - because they weren't posted until the end of September. Unethical blogging? Possibly. So shoot me.

So if you want to catch up on all the new posts, start with July 19th and work your way forward.

Walking to Nan and Grandpa's: Grocery Cart Editions

2011-09-07T21:34:00.001-04:00

Just Generally Cute Shit

2011-08-30T21:09:00.001-04:00

AKA Random Summer Photos I Just* Downloaded From My Camera

*(and by "just" I really mean "September 24")

Walking To Nan and Grandpa's: F--K It's Hot Edition

2011-08-21T21:31:00.001-04:00

You know it's really damn hot when you walk outside and your camera lens fogs up on you.

Two By Two

2011-07-20T20:31:00.001-04:00

A good friend of Nan's has 8 grandchildren, varying in ages from getting ready for college to starting solid foods. One of the activities this friend does with one of her younger grandchildren is a summer program at the zoo designed for two-year-olds and a caregiver. My mom couldn't wait for the summer the Wee One turned two so they could enroll in Two By Two At The Zoo.

Ready to go, Day 1

Waiting for pickup, Week 2.By then we had received our special too-big shirt to wear.

So, after a couple of weeks, the novelty wore off for my mom. She had conflicting plans, so the third week Grandpa and Mommie took Wee One to Two By Two.

After we did the program and saw some animals, we did some sightseeing around the zoo. Which mostly consisted of posing for photos.

The last week had too many time conflicts - I was back at work for fall semester, and Nan had something come up. But Wee One seemed to really enjoy her summer trips to the zoo.

Motivation

2011-07-19T22:05:00.001-04:00

Potty training is going spectacularly well. The advice that worked for us was "wait until she's ready" and "use non-food rewards".

I had bought a bunch of Dora stickers for the Dora-themed birthday party that we had. They never really got used, and got put away in a bag. So when the books said find "special" stickers for potty training, I dug them out.

The Wee One saw them and went nuts. She totally wanted one of those stickers. In fact, the first morning that we were "training" she got mad when she'd sit on the potty and not get a sticker. I had to make up a rule that if her pants stayed dry she could get a sticker, just to have something to give her stickers for.

It totally worked.

This sticker chart came from a book that we ended up with (Target $1 rack, I believe). When we first started trying, I hung it up and made a big deal about getting stickers. She got little stickers for sitting on the potty at first (since she really didn't want to do it). But she wouldn't pee on the potty. Then she'd have an accident 5 minutes later in her training pants. The one time she leaked some pee on the potty I went nuts with the praise and she thought I was a lunatic. She wanted to put her sticker on the chart, but I was trying to be all anal about "this box means today and so put it in this box".

After two half-days of the no-potty-then-accident rerun, I shelved potty training. But I left the chart up (what else was I going to do with it)? So when she announced, a week ago Thursday, "I go pee pee in the potty", we had all the tools ready for the positive reinforcement. She wanted to put the sticker on herself, and I managed to talk myself down from my anal retentiveness to let her put it wherever she wanted, instead of in the box that I decided means "today". I think that gave her a little bit of sense of ownership about her stickers.

Yea, see, my OCD did NOT do well with this!

The sticker chart at Nan's house.

When spending the day at Nan's in the middle of training, we just printed out a piece of paper with her name on it and stuck one on each of the bathroom doors. So then the randomness of the sticker placement didn't matter (as much).

A pediatrician I follow on Twitter (@SeattleMamaDoc) posted that she had success with her kid waking up dry and peeing in the potty first thing (how freaking awesome is that?). She wrote a blog post about using sticker charts as positive reinforcement.

Probably because they seem to work!

The other motivation that developed was my mother and I dancing around like idiots singing a high-pitched "you pee peed in the potty! you pee peed in the potty!" that got termed "the potty dance". The three of us dancing around and singing that song makes my kid smile, so that was also positive reinforcement for using the potty. So, you know, whatever works.

I Made A Magic Mountain

2011-07-18T19:28:00.001-04:00

Anyone who follows my Twitter stream has figured out that I watch The Rachel Maddow Show most weeknights. Like most fangirls, I also contribute to the online conversation about the show, using the #maddow hashtag.

A couple of weeks ago (July 1, actually), as her "Best New Thing In The World", she invited some folks from Iowa who own a restaurant to make their specialty on her show: something called the Magic Mountain. (There's some connection to an Obama town hall and ... the details are in the podcast).

A Magic Mountain is a piece of Texas Toast with meat, french fries, cheese sauce, and onions (to look like snow on top). If you put chili on top, it's called a Volcano.

OMG. I craved one for like, three days before I could get to the store and get the stuff to make one. If I had picked up a can of vegetarian chili, this could even be a Project Veg recipe. But its not.

I used the Texas Toast I had in the fridge, which has cheese on it. I mean, you can never have too much cheese, right?

Fries. I didn't put the meat, b/c at this point I thought I was doing this veg.

Melted cheese (I didn't have sauce, sorry).

Onions, to look like "snow" on the mountain.

Okay, it looks really awful. But it was SOOO good.

Church

2011-07-17T20:26:00.001-04:00

Sigh, where do you start a post about church?

Chronologically, with a little quip about the churches you grew up in, the church you went to during college, the one you drug your new husband to where you listened to him sigh and pull his collar, the one where you were on the pet ministry committee so you helped organize a pet blessing ...

Theologically, with how you started out as Lutheran, but then went to a Unity church, and now you want something in between the extremes of Unitarian Universalist and Episcopalian?

Emotionally, with my departures from the church, my experiences with the born-again Christian supervisor who was determined to guilt me back to worship, my thoughts about belief in God versus worshipping Jesus while my mother believes Revelations a little too much ...

Sigh. I'll try to stick to the parts of the story that are most relevant:

When I lived "where I used to live" I walked into a church that felt so much like home it scared me. It was Lutheran church that used the same "green book" that I had grown up with - in fact I could recite the service without looking at the weekly pamphlet. The sanctuary was sunlit and airy and beautiful. The minister was a caring and devoted woman who had been in a science field before becoming a pastor, whose other gifts were a knack for history and skillful storytelling. I started going regularly, then - as I tend to do when I start going to church - I didn't go back for six months. When I started going again, I was greeted by name, with a smile, and heart that was warmed to see me, no matter how long it had been.

I cried through tons of baptisms at that church. Every time there was a baptism I was determined not to cry. But I cried at every one. (Why do they do those right before the "sharing of the peace", so everyone gets to see your tear-stained face and embarrassment?) When I found out I was pregnant, I held my hand over my belly as I said my thank you prayers. Then my daughter was baptised in a ceremony just like those I had cried through. Photos in this post.

But, as you all know, I don't live there anymore. I live here. So I assumed I'd be going back to my old church, the church I grew up in. We did that a few times. Each time my mom and I would whisper afterwards in the car "it's just changed so much, you know." When I was a tween and a teen, there was an active youth group and lots of families. It was an active, vibrant congregation. Now it seems that attendance and enthusiasm is dwindling.

Subsequent conversations with members have helped to shed light on some of the reasons. The pastor, while many agree that he is a fantastic biblical scholar, doesn't seem to be as active in his pastoral duties as the congregation would like. Doesn't visit shut-ins to bring communion, doesn't visit the hospitalized or sick, and doesn't make much of an effort to put forth a caring personality. He's had some health issues of his own, and even (according to one story) was offended that people weren't more understanding of his own illness. There are many people that we see in the community that have now gone to other churches.

We tried. My mom and I taught Vacation Bible School last summer, and we tried to attend Sundays. But there aren't many families attending anymore, and the atmosphere is no longer vibrant and enthusiastic.

I didn't go to church for a while. After a week of workdays, I'm fine to hang out at home with my kid on Sunday mornings. But I feel a compulsion to raise her in a church environment, so I started on my quest to "find a church".

We went to a Presbyterian church that some of my friends attend. In the plus column - lots of families, a well appointed nursery, an active church community. I just couldn't get past the "aw, shucks" southern accent and paternalistic presence of the minister, after the scholarly, story weaving pastor I'd left behind.

We went to a Christian church, where my mother continues to attend and is becoming more active. They have a high quality nursery program (despite the fact that they inaccurately diagnosed my kid as having head lice). I just couldn't get past the blatant misogyny in the sermons. I know that I won't feel comfortable in a conservative setting. It was at that point that I had a conversation with my mom that suggested that she and I don't need to find membership in the same church.

I went to the Episcopal church. There were very few people in attendance the morning we went, because it was very snowy. So there was no nursery. Meaning I had to entertain my kid in a loud, echo-y wooden sanctuary and follow a worship service I don't know. The experience did inform me that I like the idea of traditional service. Oh, and a nursery.

I went to a United Church of Christ. The minister there (female) did a good job of the history and storytelling - as she read from her notes (ugh). And the sanctuary was too small. Am I nitpicking because there is some other reason I don't like this church?

I went to a Unitarian Universalist service. I thought maybe the problem was that I was visiting these Christian churches, when I'm not totally sure I identify as Christian. So why not try something more progressive, and more in line with my liberal views? As I expressed to a good friend afterward, it felt like I had been to a consciousness raising, rather than a church service. While I don't mind a good jab at Sarah Palin in a "sermon", I always thought I would raise my daughter in a more traditional setting than that.

Okay, back to the Christian churches. And if I'm going to do that, I'd like to stay with the tradition I'm most comfortable with, the Lutheran church. There are no other ELCA Lutheran Churches on my side of the river, so we start heading across the bridge to go to church.

First, a Lutheran Church in a quaint little part of town, and near one of my favorite Irish Pubs (that's a reason to go, then, right?) Their website makes a point to demonstrate that they are accepting and open. And it doesn't take nearly as long to get there as I thought it would, since we were half an hour early the first time we went. The church is a beautiful old church with a huge church building. And yes, they have a nursery. But the weekend I went was a big Synod meeting, so the regular minister wasn't there. Can you get a feel for a church if the minister is a substitute? Either way, this was on the "possibility list".

Next, a large Lutheran Church a little farther from home, but not much. Much larger congregation. So big, in fact, that we were not personally greeted and not informed where the nursery was. A nice little old couple said after the children's sermon they take them to the nursery. Only ... they never had a children's sermon. So I spent much of that worship service in the hallway chasing my kid.

Another Lutheran Church, this one near the campus where I teach. A much older congregation. Again, the minister was out (this is the problem with doing church tours in the summer) so it was all old white men giving communion to mostly old white people. I was hoping for some diversity, wasn't I? But the sanctuary was beautiful. My kid was well behaved until she'd had enough, and then a teenager took her to the nursery. And brought her back to me for communion.

I've pretty much narrowed the selection down to the last three, the Lutheran churches. That's where I get stuck. I was thinking that the question would come down to whether I wanted to attend a church with a larger congregation or a smaller one. I would think larger, with more families is what we want (even if we weren't personally greeted, which was likely my own fault - I'll be less absorbed in not dropping my kid or my diaper bag next time). But they don't start worship until 11:00 and with the driving distance, that doesn't fit well into our schedule.

The two smaller congregations (both worship at 10:30) are close together and often work together on joint ministries - for example they are having a joint VBS. So I feel the decision is slightly less "either/or" there. And with a smaller congregation comes the opportunity to get involved and practice leadership, right?

All three churches do communion every Sunday. None of them have a Saturday evening or a Sunday evening (my ideal) worship service. They all three (I believe, at least two do) have kneeling benches and have an opportunity for kneeling during the service. (See, I'm getting into really wonky details here to try to set them apart in some way).

So how do you decide? How do you pick a church? Does it feel hard because I haven't found "the right" church yet? So do I keep looking, week after week? Does it feel hard because, despite my trying, I'm really looking for my last church in this city and it's not here, so nothing feels quite "right"? What's more important, families and opportunities like youth groups for my kid? Size of the congregation? A fantastic historian/storyteller/caring minister? Openness and inclusion? Diversity? Having a Library? Having adults in the nursery instead of teenagers?

I made a list of criteria that I would like to use. Things like "the pastor" and "youth group opportunities" and "openness and inclusion" ... but then what? How do you decide between a church with a fantastic female minister - who is an interim and won't be there permanently - and a gay male minister who is young and might move when he finishes divinity school? How do you decide between a really large church where you feel like you'll get lost - but that has awesome youth opportunities - and the smaller church where you'll be able to get to know people, but where there are currently like three kids in the youth group? Is the church that says they are open and welcoming to all, but has a sanctuary full of old white people on Sunday any different than the church that has a couple of gay people?

How do you decide about church?

Yesterday morning I saw a car pull up out in front of my house. My kid and I had been outside blowing bubbles. She was in panties that were drenched by the bubble solution she had spilled, and it had just started raining so we came inside. I saw someone get out of the car and run to the front door. My doorbell is broken, so I opened the door to find a woman with a gift bag containing a fresh baked loaf of bread. The sprinkles had stopped, so I stepped out onto the porch to talk with her. She looked familiar, but I couldn't place where I knew her from, until she started talking.

She is from one of the churches that I visited. I've been twice now, once when the pastor was at the Synod meeting, and once last Sunday to meet him. She brought me some information about the church, and the bread, and a wonderful little card.

All I got from the big church was a form postcard that said "we're glad you visited, see our website".

I feel really guilty now, like I should totally join this church just because this woman brought me bread. I decided that the Wee One and I will should probably go again today. I was planning on us going to "church" I just wasn't sure where we would go, so this helps make that decision. The pastor had a neat one-on-one conversation with Wee One in the nursery, and I met his partner who was singing this morning.

Is "they brought me bread" a reason to choose a church? Is any other reason any better?

So how do you decide on a church? The people all seem nice enough. I mean, I can totally put on my academic hat, make a list of questions like "what is your approach to catechism education" and "where do you see this church in five years" and "how does your church support alternative family lifestyles" and interview the pastors and make an obnoxious ass of myself in the process. But since it now appears I'll be living in this area until I retire (God willing and I get tenure), then this could be a long term commitment.

So I'm open to any and all suggestions and advice, because at this point, I'm probably going to just keep going to the church that brought me bread. (Except I keep thinking about the other churches too.)

A Girl And Her Dog, A Year Later

2011-07-17T08:41:00.001-04:00

My Wee One loves dogs. The first day this summer that we went to the farmer's market, she saw two dogs that she got to pet. That was around the time that we were starting to say our nighttime prayers more routinely, so we said Thank You God for the good food we had purchased at the farmer's market, and Please Bless all the people that helped to grow the good things we eat. "Dogs!" chimed in the kid, so we said "Thank You God for the dogs we saw at the Farmer's Market, and Please Bless all the dogs."

Well, "Dogs!" has become a nighttime staple of our prayers. So far we have seen at least one dog each time we have visited the farmer's market, so my kid assumes that's just part of what happens there.

I have let myself begin to think in the direction of "what if we get a dog". I had a dog that I loved so much that I can't even bring myself to write her tribute on this blog. Two anniversaries of her death have passed, and I can't bring myself to boil her life down to a post of words. I feel guilty thinking about getting another dog, and then I lose myself in the details of how much time it would take to housebreak and how to teach it not to bite, and ...

So in the meantime, my parents dog serves as our surrogate dog. At the current moment, she is staying with us, since my dad is out of the country and my mom is ... well, off being my mom.

So tonight we ate supper, then went outside to blow some bubbles.

Why yes, that is my kid in the big-girl panties who tells me when she needs to go inside to pee pee in the potty thankyouverymuch!

Post title refers to this previous post.

Walking to (Nan and) Grandpa's: 4th of July and Potty Training Editions

2011-07-16T20:25:00.000-04:00

Because of the delayed nature of this posting (um, two weeks late) we will combine some of the photos taken on our walks to Nan and Grandpas house.

First, the 4th of July Edition:

Then the first Potty Training edition (that's why she's in a pajama top and undies)

Then the Second Potty Training edition (short dress and undies)

I kept her in dresses for the first week. We moved into shorts yesterday and had success! It's the little triumphs ....

Some Thoughts on the Final Space Shuttle Launch

2011-07-08T14:25:00.000-04:00

I opened my first savings account to go to Space Camp. I was of the generation captivated by the movie of the same name. As were all my peers in the advanced program. We were convinced we would be the kids accidentially launched into space, and equally convinced we could conquer/save the world.

Sometimes life gets in the way of big dreams. I never went to space camp, never studied aeronautics, never became an astronaut (nor anything close). I did, however, retain a passion for all things related to NASA.

I didn't see the Challenger exposion live, but I saw it replayed countless times. I was watching television the morning that Columbia was due to land, and followed the news that contact had been lost and debris was turning up in a large swath across the land.

I went through a phase where I stopped following the shuttle launches and landings. I also stopped going to bookstores, started watching MTV and rap music, and started internet dating. It was the year I quit my postdoc to teach as an adjunct as my sole source of income, and looking back, I think I was attempting to deny my passion for science as a way to justify the decisions I had made to leave research.

Then I found NASA TV. NASA has got to be the most transparent organization on the planet. Who else allows cameras to be trained on them while they work, every minute of every day (and night)? Would you let someone train a camera on you, with a commentator interpreting your actions, while you do your day-to-day work?

NASA TV makes watching launches and landings incredibly easy to observe. I turned on the Discovery landing while teaching a lab one afternoon, so as my students were learning muscle insertions, we were also casually discussing space shuttles. Some of students were surprised to know that you could watch the missions on the NASA website, and many of the students in the class weren't even aware that a space shuttle had been on a space mission. It became an unexpected teachable moment.

This morning was the final launch of the space shuttle program. I, like many people I know, don't agree with ending the shuttle program. I, like many people I know, wish that wasn't the state of affairs. But if they were launching the last shuttle, I was going to make darn sure I, and probably my daughter, would be watching it.

Wednesday I saw a tweet from our local Science Center that they would be streaming the launch live. I thought that would be the perfect place to go watch the last shuttle launch. Surrounded with science lovers and geeks and people who love the space shuttle and the shuttle program. Maybe there would be some tears, or stories, or sharing. I thought it would be great.

And if that's what had actually happened, it probably would have been great. Alas, though, I'm a romantic at heart. The room was not filled with space geeks and science lovers. The room was filled with screaming children and harried parents, including my Wee One and myself.

Day 2 of potty training was going well. She wanted Dora panties, and had been staying dry, so we went to the potty when we first got there. She didn't like the big potty, and was excited about being at the Science Center, so she didn't really stay still long enough to do anything. A few minutes later she mentioned the potty again, so off we ran to use the potty. Same story. Then in an exhibit about animals she said "I go potty" and I threw her up on my hip to run (we were the farthest distance on that floor from the potty, and I wanted to hurry). Halfway to the bathroom I felt wetness on my shirt ... she had peed, through her panties, and on me.

But again, she wouldn't pee on the big potty. So after changing panties and washing hands, we went to watch the shuttle launch.

I was SO EXCITED to see the tweet from NASA this morning that they released the Android app. That way if something went screwy at the science center, I could still watch on my phone. The regular video stream didn't work well, but the alternate strream did, so I thought I was all set.

So in the crowded room, with a kid who wouldn't potty but had peed on me, with talking/crying/screaming kids and parents trying to wrestle their kids to sit still, go sit with mommy/daddy, or walk without stepping on anyone, we try to watch the shuttle launch. For the previous shuttle launch, I was alone in my office, with headphones in. I could hear everyone on the comms, I could hear the Nasa TV commentator, I could hear everything that happened to build up to the launch. But I was alone. Today, I wasn't alone. But I couldn't hear. I tried clicking on the video in the app. Nothing. I don't know if it was overloaded with users or what happened, but I was pretty pissed about the failure of the app to show the launch.

The kids in the room shouted the countdown. Finally, my Wee One settled on my lap. Finally, the liftoff. I tried not to cry. I tried to force my breathing to be regular and not ragged. I wasn't in a room with space geeks. I wasn't in a room with people who all know and revere the history of the space program. I'm here with children and parents who care about their children. I'm here with someone in this room who might open a savings account to save money to go to Space Camp. Perhaps this moment changes the life of someone in this room. Perhaps this moment changes the life of one of these children.

So, as always, watching the launch changes things. Changes perspective. From now on that perspective will be changed by the Russians. Or by companies like Virgin that will rent the NASA space/equipment/resources to try to make something better/cheaper/smarter. Or by .... whatever the next thing is.

After letting my kid run through more of the science center, after she peed all over the seat in the bus in the playroom, after I gave up and put an effing diaper on her and cleaned off said bus seat, after she played in the water area and got soaked, after I put her in the sling to carry her butt out of there, after we went through McD to get chicken nuggets... I looked up at the sky. It felt anticlimactic. It felt like I'd "missed" it, even though I sat there and watched it on a big screen TV.

I've come a long way since the Space Camp movie, since 6th grade and Challenger, since planning to be an astronaut. I really don't know what the future is for NASA, and I hope that they have vision and direction and support. But I do know that the space shuttle program has influenced and affected many, many lives. Today was no exception.

Waiting patiently in the parking lot

Not waiting on the pedestrian walkway to the museum

Self portrait

Admission bracelet

Staking out our seats early in the viewing room.

To watch the launch here

About 20 seconds after this photo was taken, this seat was flooded with pee. Whoops!

More NASA stuff

Oh, look, water play. (Moth to a flame).

Very sleepy, zoned out kid.

Closeup of the sleepy face.

Potty Escapades

2011-07-07T20:38:00.000-04:00

My plan was to start potty training full-on when ~~I was off for~~ my workload was reduced for the summer (still teaching summer classes to pay for expensive daycare, and chairing a faculty hiring committee in my bid for tenure). I planned to spend my three days a week that I'm home with her teaching her to use the potty in a loving, positive, constructive way.

I emailed a fellow blogger I met through Our Mommyhood, who is a mother and a physician. I told her I'm having a hard time using my physiology background in parenting my potty training toddler. I asked if she knew of any research-based methods of potty training, and if she had any other advice for me.

She did. I really love my online network of friends/mothers/people who have been there/people who know more than me!

In addition, I read two books (they have the same information - in fact, I believe one plagiarizes the other - and I will be reviewing that issue in detail in an upcoming post).

So, armed with my views on attachment parenting and respecting individuality, a custom post from my personal blogger-pediatrician, and information I'd read twice by reading both books, I was ready for potty training, right?

What's that line about the best laid plans?

The first day of potty training was basically a cycle of (1) sitting on the potty trying to keep the kid sitting on her potty and entertained while nothing came out, (2) putting fresh training pants or Dora panties on said kid and (3) cleaning up a puddle 5-10 minutes later. After four hours of that futility, I beat my head against the wall, pulled my hair out, screamed, and put the kid down for a nap.

Not really. I did, however, simply give up and put the kid down for a nap.

We tried once more the next day, before I called the whole thing off. She was still leaking some urine into her training panties, and wasn't releasing urine on the potty. I concluded that she probably didn't have quite the muscle control needed for the venture at this point. While she is dry after some naps, and some naps she is just a little wet (a good sign) I wasn't sure that she was physically ready for the expectations of "hold-it-then-release-it" that potty training (and my hardwood floor) requires.

So I shelved it. Also? Diapers are easier. Way easier. Even though I wash and dry and fold mine, still WAAAAAY easier. I don't have that "plunking money down every week" thing to really motivate me to get my kid out of diapers. So we just cooled our jets for a little while.

I started thinking about it again about a week or so ago. At work we are talking schedules pretty nonstop because of the faculty hiring thing. When are people available for interviews, when does summer session end, when is the new person due to start, when do classes start? My kid starts back to daycare five-days-a-week (my checkbook just dry heaved) August 1st, and I had figured she'd be in training pants at that point. But it's now July and we've been doing just diapers all summer so far.

Yesterday at daycare I noticed her two bff's were wearing pink Pull-Ups (I keep forgetting that the rest of the country spends excess money on landfill fodder). We were leaving while they were still on the potties and I noticed my Wee One watching. At home, she announced "I go potty!" and off we went. Potty training has begun again.

So this morning when we woke up, I decided to try again. If she did the cycle of no peeing/accidents 5 minutes later again, we'd shelve it again. But lets just see where we are.

This morning she did great. She wore her Dora panties and her pajama top. I prompted her to sit on the potty pretty frequently. Nothing was happening at first, and she was getting mad at me for not giving her the Dora stickers, so I made up a rule that if her panties stayed dry, she could have a sticker. Two panties checks garnered her a sticker each, so when she did finally pee pee in the potty, she got two "Swiper" stickers, which she thought was just Teh Awesomesauce.

Dora panties on, and we play some more. She wants to go to the basement to play on her climbing thing and read books, and I suggest we potty first. More pee pee in the potty! More cheers and stickers! (Backpack, this time!).

Lunch, and then one more potty time before her nap. A little pee pee this time, but I totally went with it. This time she got a sticker out of her Potty Book (Fisher Price My Very Own Potty). No accidents all morning, 3 "pee pee potty"s was the scorecard.

I let her have a choice at naptime of a diaper or (waterproof) training pants, and she chose a diaper. Good thing, because all the fluids I'd been pumping into her to try to get successful pee pees came back out during naptime! We also kept a diaper on after the nap for the trip to the bank and to get allergy shots, because our allergist's office doesn't have a bathroom. It's down the hall, behind a locked door.

We stopped by the photography studio to see Nan and Miss Lori and tell them all about our pee pees. She pee peed on the potty there twice, but just a little, then had three accidents. I think the distraction of her favorite people, the ringing phone, and all the interesting things to play with didn't help. Also, being tired and the lateness of the day contributed.

Tomorrow we are going to the Science Center to watch the final shuttle launch. I'm trying to decide if I want to mess with training pants or just go with a diaper, since she'll be distracted by everything. This is the part of potty training that is still a bit of a gray area to me. Do you just throw the diapers out (well, in my case, stash them away in a drawer) and try going all potty full bore? (Taking tons of extra clothes to cover accidents?) Or do you do it a little at a time, with diapers while you're out and training pants/panties at home? What about daycare - we have waterproof cloth training pants but they won't hold a full pee, just some leaking/minor accidents. I'm not sure if daycare is willing to go with that if they have to change her clothes 5 times a day.

Last concern: one of the pairs of training pants she had on at the studio caused her to break out on her bottom, thighs, and across her stomach. I'm going to have to do process of elimination to figure out which pair, but it seems like she's allergic/sensitive to one or more of those pairs. I'm sure daycare won't want to go straight to panties without some of kind of waterproof layer. So I'm not sure really what to do there.

So I now have plenty of fodder for future posts, including reaming a certain potty book that is a complete copy of an earlier work, and recommendations for cloth training pants.

I also have poured a glass of wine :)

Grocery Shopping

2011-07-03T15:42:00.000-04:00

When we go to Whole Foods, usually the kids carts are all being used (because they have like ONE of them). So I keep thinking "we need to bring our own". But I always forget.

Then when mom and I were discussing going to the grocery, the kid politely reminded us by running to her room to get her grocery cart.

We stowed it in the trunk and went to the grocery.

Next time, I'll wait to give it to her until we get into the store. I was trying to help her steer through fast-moving cars in the parking lot while she yelled "No, Mine! My grocery cart! You no touch! Mine!"

But she pushed that thing through the entire grocery store. Through the line (Mommie paid) and then back out through the parking lot.

Bananas, fruit juice, chips. Ice cream in-hand. What more is there in life?

Have I mentioned how big she's getting?

So Big!

2011-07-01T20:36:00.003-04:00

"Our" photography studio offers birthday parties, which are so much fun. They're geared toward girls in the tween/teen age range. Miss Lori gives the girls free reign in the camera room to try on tutus and other costumes, and she snaps individual and group photos. Like this one:

Did you notice the small child in the bottom left corner of the photo?

This particular party was the daughter of a close family friend. So we headed to the studio, mostly (I thought) to observe the party. But the girls all love my Wee One, so she just got absorbed into the festivities like one of the bigger girls.

How big is the Wee One? SO BIG!

She got to wear angels wings and be in all the group pictures.

And she even got some affection from the birthday girl's dad.

(She's so big.! I can't believe she was so well behaved at a 12-year-old's birthday party!)

You can see more of the photos from the party here. There are some more adorable ones of the youngest partier. There are also some outside photos that ~~will be added at a later time.~~ have been added. Go look at them! The ones of the group with this little tiny kid in the middle are so adorable (even if it is MY little tiny kid that's so freaking cute)!

Best Easy Summer Dinner Ever

2011-06-30T21:28:00.000-04:00

Okay, so I had to complement the previous post with this recipe from tonight's dinner, since this is much more representative of what we've been eating for dinner.

The genesis for this recipe:

1. I had "cooking onions" that I bought at the farmer's market last weekend.

2. Jellybean Mama made a great looking hobo supper for the big campout last weekend.

3. I didn't want to heat up the house by cooking inside so I was looking for something to make on the grill. Other than meat (for that, see the previous recipe).

So while at the grocery last night, I picked up little red potatoes, baby carrots, and chocolate milk. The latter item is not essential for this recipe, but is essential for the well-being of my household :)

Tonight I made a little foil packet of the chopped farmer's market onions, red potatoes, and baby carrots. I added a bit of olive oil and butter, then trimmed some herbs from the garden (marjoram and oregano, but I think marjoram and thyme would have been better. No thyme in my garden. Le sigh.) I didn't feel like getting the leaves off the stems and chopping them, so they went in whole (just push them to the side when you open up the packet). Salt and pepper. Grill for 30 minutes.

I thought I might want something to make it a bit more hearty. While grilling, I found some awesome cheese in the fridge that I got at Whole Foods last week (Havarti with Dill, how freaking awesome is that?). So in the last few minutes of cooking, I put a thin slice of that on top.

It doesn't heat the house up, but DOES make your house smell like you've cooked a gourmet meal when you open that packet up and dish up some steaming veggies.

Mmmmm...

The big space is the huge spoonful that became my dinner.

NOT a Project Veg recipe - Cheddar Wurst

2011-06-30T20:54:00.000-04:00

So, it's summer. I haven't bought meat in over 6 months.

It was time.

The one thing I couldn't give up was my summertime craving for cheddarwurst and sauerkraut with spicy mustard on a bun.

Sorry, my wee one was trying to wrestle the camera from my grasp.

Why, yes, this is a photo of my garbage. I was trying to show what kind of brats I was using.

Put in a large pot. Add beer. Boil.

What, you need more instruction than that? What kind of beer? Something nutty and brown, or belgian. Or cheap, whatever.

Boil about 30 minutes (longer if you start with frozen meat, about 45 min then) then grill for about 5 minutes to make them all crispy on the outside. They're really yummy that way.

Mmmmm ... summer.

With spicy brown mustard and kraut on a bun.

Other Than Pink

2011-06-30T13:42:00.000-04:00

So, my mom bought my kid the Pinkalicious book, took us to see Pinkalicious the musical, and then bought my kid a Pinkalicious sticker book.

From all of this pinkaliciousness, my kid seems to have internalized the message that she "should" want pink, or that everything "should" be pink. She has started getting upset if we use the yellow bath towel in the evenings after bathtime (we have three yellow towels and one pink towel. Odds are, the pink one is in the wash.) She even gets mad if she doesn't get a pink plate to eat off of - and there are no pink plates at my house. I asked her why she didn't want the purple Dora plate that had been her favorite and she said "pinkalicious".

I told her "pinkalicious" would forgive her if she didn't eat off a pink plate, then I distracted her with the very coveted blue "Pooh" plate that she gets to use occasionally.

So I'm combing Amazon for other books about girls and colors OTHER THAN PINK. I found Ann Likes Red and ... yea.

Anybody got a book on the shelf that says "sure, pinkalicious is great and all, but you can use a yellow bath towel without throwing a damn fit"?

A Nightly Ritual

2011-06-28T20:43:00.000-04:00

Some time back I started a blog about books. It was really a way for me to reflect in essay format on how certain books were impacting me personally. Unfortunately, I didn't save the posts or the blog, I don't remember its title, the email I used to create it, or much of anything else about it. It only had two or three posts. I think blogger probably trashed it. I thought it was called Book Gurl or something like that. I have been unsuccessful in finding it.

But one of the posts that I did write and post was related to some insight I gleaned from Nathaniel Branden's How to Raise Your Self Esteem. In it he discussed how people with high self-esteem are mentally in the present, while people with low self-esteem tend to relive the past in their minds or spend an inordinate amount of time worrying about the future. And usually, it's both. I believe there were some exercises for helping yourself to remain focused on the present.

Then in another book, I also read about ways to boost your self-esteem, by reviewing your actions and activities at the end of the day. It connects with what this book discusses about self-esteem and growing being related.

So fast forward several (!) years and we have me still trying to shore up my sometimes shaky self-esteem, but now with a daughter in tow.

So every night, after reading books and before saying prayers, we review our day. We (okay, I) talk about the things we did that day, they way they made "us" feel, the things that were good, and the things "we" could have done better. Now that she is understanding that process more, I can ask her what her favorite part of today was. If there were discipline issues, I mention them very briefly and then just as briefly mention how "we" can do better tomorrow.

Usually this review segues nicely into our prayers, since our prayers start with "Thank You God, for Today" and then Thank You for the things that were wonderful about our day. Then Blessings, and then Please Help Us with ... unless the kid starts yawning and needing to get into her bed. So some nights we just say a bunch of "Thank You"s and a bunch of "Please Bless"s and I have to think that God likes to hear those kinds of prayers.

So between the daily review and the prayers, I am hoping that I'm teaching her the skill of looking back over your day. What worked, what didn't, and what to work on for tomorrow. Not in a guilt-inducing way, just in "being present" and "growing" kind of way. Which, according to all the books, is one of the basic skills of self-esteem.

Won't it be wonderful if it works?

Great American Backyard Campout

2011-06-27T19:00:00.000-04:00

(Um, that's what it's called, Jellybean Mama! he he)

So I wasn't sure how into this we were going to get. I still hadn't actually, you know, FOUND the tent in all the crap in the basement. I still hadn't actually, you know ORDERED the anti-mosquito stuff I saw in an expensive catalog. I wasn't planning to, you know SLEEP OUTSIDE WITH A TWO YEAR OLD. Right?

Or was I? Because you know, I was actually looking forward to this.

I used to camp all the time. With a dog. We camped in the cold (okay, so one night we slept in the car with the heater on), in storms (okay one night we slept in the car since I thought the rubber tires would protect us from lightning).

But a toddler?

MY toddler?

My toddler whose favorite things are (1) yelling "no", (2) yelling "mine", (3) throwing herself to the floor in a fit, and (4) NOT SLEEPING?

Well, hell, what's the difference between not sleeping inside and not sleeping outside?

So the day of, I located the tent, dragged it out, and waited until she was napping to put it up.

And I will admit taking a very LONG moment to soak up the atmosphere from this spot right here. Breeze, sun, tent. It really does make everything right with the world.

With the tent hidden from view by the back door blinds, we ran to the grocery for cookout stuff, and then back at home I unveiled The Tent.

Which, if you come by, has to be called a "tunnel", just so you know.

She loved it. She laughed when she saw it. Out loud. Then she called it a tunnel. I tried talking about "the tent" but got "TUNNEL" yelled in my face, so we didn't call it anything after that.

Tent Self-Portrait!

Oh, I so regret showing her how to zip/unzip the door

Grandparents and family friends came so she got to show them.

We ate meat, a rare occurence around here.

Mmmm, cheddarwurst boiled in Honey Nut Brown Ale then grilled.

Despite Deep Woods OFF, we still got mosquito bites. By then she was ready to call it a night - inside.

But not before posing/mugging on the sleeping bag.

So we got all the fun and benefits of a campout - good friends, good food, adult beverages - but then we got to sleep in comfy beds indoors.

Hey, we're doing this in stages, leave me alone :)

I'm a Freaking HERO Mom

2011-06-26T21:26:00.002-04:00

I don't like bugs. (There are certain people who know me well who are rolling around on the floor laughing their asses off at the sheer understatement of that sentence.)

I have been known to shower in a different (much smaller) bathroom because a bug is slowly dying in my main shower because I don't want to kill/touch/deal with it.

I have been known to scream bloody murder at the sight of a harmless little spider.

I have been known to try to bang a bug with something heavy, miss, crawl up in a ball on the floor and cry until someone else kills it and removes the carcass.

(Yes, I am a Biologist. I'd rather deal with people's body parts and microscopic organisms than a bug any day of the week. Thanks.)

However ...

I now have a daughter. And a house with a basement. I can no longer scream bloody murder when I spy a bug. In fact, I have been trying to calmly hide all fear of things-with-more-legs-than-me-that-can-move-faster-than-me-and-chase-me-in-my-nightmares from my daughter. I don't want to teach her to be afraid - if she's going to be squeamish about bugs, she can find that out on her own.

But then, I went a step further.

I bought a Bug Kit. A plastic box with a magnifying glass in the lid, a net for catching flying insects and little plastic tweezers.

I had put it away with some post-birthday stuff and she found it one day.

I took her outside and helped her look for bugs.

I even picked up a worm and a bug with the tweezers and put them in the bug box.

See, magnifyer.

The bug kept flipping over on its back. I put the leaf in there to help it stay upright.

The worm was stretching out and showing off for the camera.

Then when she lost interest in the bugs, I put them back in the garden.

Then I scrubbed my freaking hands until they were red.

And had a nightmare about a tarantula.

Pinkalicious

2011-06-21T21:37:00.000-04:00

So, do you know the story? (Totally not sure why I can only find the Spanish edition on Amazon.)

Well, a local playhouse was putting on the show. My mom bought us tickets, so last Saturday morning we loaded up and headed out to see the show.

A certain Wee One had her pink on:

It was rainy, and had been storming the night before. As we pulled up to the front of the theater, a woman told us the power was out and they were asking guests to wait in the car. We got a decent parking spot and kept our eye on the front door.

Meanwhile, this Wee One was playing in the car.

People were walking up to the door, and were being turned away, back to their cars.

Still playing.

Finally, some people were leaving. We assumed they were upset at the long wait. It had been almost 40 minutes, by that point. There were two people from the theater walking around in the parking lot with umbrellas, stopping to answer questions when people flagged them down. We were told they would try to start the show at 10:00.

Still playing.

Still working.

"I get OUT!"

Finally we overheard a conversation in the parking lot that informed us that they would not be serving the breakfast included with our tickets, that we were encouraged to go get our own breakfast and they would try to start the show at 10:00.

I was pretty peeved. Here there are representatives from the theater wandering aimlessly around the parking lot, but not going car-to-car to inform the guests of what the plan is. Apparently someone found out something because there was a mass exodus of cars/vans/SUVs a little while earlier (we found all those people at McDonalds when we went to get our own breakfast). The woman who answered our questions did manage to bitch that her pant legs were all wet from walking around the parking lot, but didn't mention to us to go get our own breakfast? Thanks.

So we pulled out of the parking lot to head to McDonalds. Can you imagine the tears and screaming from my kid? Who has been talking about Pinkalicious all morning long and has had to sit in the car for 45 minutes in the rain? I finally calmed her down by explaining that we just had to go get some food, and we would come back for the show.

After our McDonald's run, we come back to a much lousier parking space. Another conversation in the parking lot told us that the show was being cancelled, and rescheduled for Monday. (One of the few days of the week that I can actually get my shit-ton of work on online classes and faculty hiring done.) So, again, we pull out of the parking lot. With a disappointed kid.

Monday morning we repeat getting ready. We repeat talking about Pinkalicious. We repeat putting on the pink. I called daycare to tell them she would be arriving at lunchtime, and again we headed to the theater.

This time we got out of the car.

Went inside to stand in line to get our table.

Met up with Nan.

Had breakfast.

Cheesed.

Took our token picture on the edge of the stage (similar to last time).

And finally we got to see Pinkalicious.

So now my Wee One's favorite color is pink. If you ask her what she wants to drink, she says "pink". If you ask her what she wants to eat, she says "pink". I'm so freaking sick of reading that damn Pinkalicious book I could throw it out the window. Then tonight she wanted to sleep with it. But it was worth it, and I bet it will be something she remembers!

Fatherly Advice

2011-06-19T21:52:00.000-04:00

The best advice my father ever gave me was sometime either during the summer before I left for college or sometime during the fall that I left. Or maybe the summer after. During my sophomore year?

Okay, that part isn't important. It's what he said that's important.

"My hope for you is that you find something that so captures your imagination that you want to spend the rest of your life learning about it."

This was sandwiched between him trying to talk me into going to Officers Training School in the military and telling me that if I chose to get married while in college, it better be to a rich guy because he would be responsible for paying for the rest of my education.

It's that part in quotes that has stuck with me. It was really good advice, and I've passed it along to others. I'm hoping to pass it along to my wee one.

Because it really is true.

More Genius

2011-06-16T20:27:00.001-04:00

Okay, I hope Miss Lori forgives me for this. This violates every kind of copyright violation, I know. I hope she doesn't stop posting our photos on FB after this. But I just HAD to show you ...

My girl. I simply love this arrangement of all these photos together. Seriously, if you're planning to vacation in the Southern Indiana area this summer (because, I mean, it's the place to go, right?) then please go see her. Tell her we sent you. (Ignore the large photo collage of my kid in the lobby.)

Other posts about (and work by) Our Miss Lori can be found here and here. (And here. I can't believe I put that thing about the underwear on the internet.) Oh, and birthday party invitations here and here.

Prefolds - Action Shots

2011-06-15T20:46:00.000-04:00

One of the posts that brings people to my blog is my CD 101 post on prefolds. I have always thought prefolds and covers were one of the simplest diapering options, and it is still one of my favorite parts of my stash. If you're looking for cheap, if you're looking for easy, if you're looking for all the benefits of cloth diapering, look no further than prefolds.

But looking back on that post, while it has some great information, it still makes prefold diapers sound kindof complicated. I wrote about different types to try to help explain options. Likewise with folds. I hope it doesn't discourage any mamas from trying prefolds and covers - it really is quite simple to cloth diaper with prefolds. I probably would have never switched from prefolds as the main part of our diaper stash if it wasn't for starting daycare (where we need to use pockets).

1. Pick a cover type and size. If I had it to do all over again, I would go with Thirsties Duo covers in snap versions. Two sizes cover the range from small babies to potty learning. Those covers weren't out when I started, so I used Thirsties sized covers. Which are still awesome, and we stopped at size Medium, but that still means we've gone through three sizes of covers (XS, S, M) and it would be four if my kid wasn't so darn petite.

2. Pick a prefold fabric. I prefer hemp because it's so darn absorbent. But that also means expensive. (Thirsties, Knickernappies, Baby Kicks, or my newest fave, Hemp Babies are my recommendations for hemp. Panda Tushies is my recommendation for bamboo. Little Lions or Econobum are my suggestions for cotton prefolds.)

3. Pick the size prefolds that you need to fit in your chosen cover type and size. (Preemie sized prefolds worked in XS covers, infant size worked well in S covers. GMD reds work well in size Medium covers, but by then I had moved on to hemp. Thirsties Duo Hemp Prefold in size 2 works magically in Medium covers.)

4. Trifold the prefold. Lay in the cover. Fasten cover around baby.

That's it. Prefolds boil to down to simply that.

Trifolding works awesome because it puts the most fabric in the wet zone. I've tried - and describe in the prefolds post - a couple of other folds. I've come around to the conclusion that trifolding is the way to go.

And now for some action shots of prefolds in covers on my kid. Maybe she's so cute, she'll convince you.

Most recent shots of prefold in cover in the backyard swimming pool are here.
Prefold in cover on the beach can be seen here. The green snap cover is a Flip with a prefold in it.

Others:

Econobum cover.

Purple Flip cover. Doll stroller.

Econobum cover. Grandpa shoes

Econobum cover. Messy kitchen. Melting down kid.

As always, feel free to email or comment with questions about prefolds, cloth diapers, or anything else.

The Circle of Blankets

2011-06-15T10:00:00.002-04:00

Gifts come in, gifts go out ...

Hopeful responded to my post by giving me both her email address and her home address, so I could ~~stalk her~~ send her a baby gift. Two essentials: Aden+Anais swaddling blankets, and Babylegs (well, the Target version). I also almost sent her a copy of Happiest Baby on the Block but I couldn't find it on the Target website. She loved the gifts (yay!) and I know she's going to get good use of them. I have followed her journey from Thinking to Becoming, and it's so exciting that her bedrest is almost over!

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, while I have tons of useless crap in my house, I gave away almost all of the cheap receiving blankets I had when the Wee One was really wee. The couple that I have she loves to use as blankets for her baby dolls, but they keep getting left in the car or at Nan's, or get dirty in the outside play. I tweeted that I was kindof cursing myself for not having the foresight to keep them as doll blankets, when another mama that is part of my online circle came to my rescue.

Thank you to @StumblingGrace and Isa, the blankets are much appreciated.

Because doesn't every mother wear sunglasses and vamp for the camera when swaddling a baby?

And Hopeful, don't worry, you get the hang of swaddling pretty quick.

Thank you, God, for my Circle.

Yea, So I Totally Let My Kid Play In The Rain

2011-06-14T07:00:00.001-04:00

But why wouldn't I, when she's so darn cute?

Well, He's Somebody's Daddy, Just Not Yours

2011-06-13T20:06:00.000-04:00

So, Father's Day is this weekend, apparently. Who knew. Anyway, apparently they have been "discussing it" at daycare, because my kid has been all about "Daddy" for days.

I've tried "we don't have a daddy at our house. We have a Mommy. And a Nan and a Grandpa that love us very much."

I've tried the above plus "every family is different. Some families have just a mommy like ours. Some families have two mommies like (name-of-kid-at-daycare)."

She's been out-of-the-blue saying "Daddies". When we sing "Wheels on The Bus" we ALWAYS have to do the Daddies Go Read-Read-Read part. (What, don't mommies read on the bus? WTF?) Sometimes I just let it go, and sometimes I try to remind her of the above conversation.

This weekend, she called my father "Daddy" from another room. We jumped on that with "Grandpa? Do you need Grandpa?"

Today at dinner, out of the blue she said "Daddy". I said "we don't have a daddy, honey" and she said "Two Mommies" (from the aforementioned conversation).

At this point, I'd rather talk about "two mommies" than "daddy".

If I just didn't have so much guilt about depriving my kid of a father, these conversations probably wouldn't bother me so damn much. I hope I'm doing it right. Suggestions?

Backyard

2011-06-13T07:00:00.002-04:00

One evening, while having couscous and vegetables for dinner, my kid saw two bunnies in the backyard. She then had a fit about the two bunnies in the backyard. So I drug out the camera, and you ~~get inflicted with~~ get to see the rest:

The Great American Backyard Campout is coming up. I've been dying to take my kid camping, but I haven't camped in a couple of years. I used to think it was challenging to camp with a dog. I had no idea. I think she'll like the backyard campout. I think it will be a good test to see if my tent is still seam-sealed. And if it goes horribly wrong, we can just come inside. Right?

Is anyone else doing Great American Backyard Campout?

It's Hot, The Sequel - A Story in Five Acts

2011-06-12T20:43:00.000-04:00

Remember last summer when it was really hot?

Somehow it seems to have done the same thing this year. It went from very cold and raining to very hot and dry. Thanks, Mother Nature.

So to keep cool, we play with water in Nan's Backyard.

(Yes, we have cloth swim diapers. Both were at home - I never seem to come prepared. She just kept her regular diaper on, and I changed prefold + cover after the swimming was over.)

My Kid Snores

2011-06-11T21:27:00.000-04:00

The first time I heard it, she was napping. Then one night before I was going to bed, I heard her again. I tried to catch it on video. Then Friday my mom was watching the kid at the photography studio where she works. I came in to find this:

This is the first video I took:

They all thought it was the cutest thing evah. I can't wait to show this to the guy that comes to pick her up for her first date.

Community Shout Out

2011-06-10T17:00:00.000-04:00

In the process of trying to pare down my diaper stash and get rid of diapers we are not using (and fighting the urge to "save them for the next baby" that I don't know if I'm even having), I thought I had my stash simplified.

Well, it is if you consider all my prefolds in a category called "prefolds". Then I use "some Thirsties pockets" and "some prefolds and covers" and that's a pretty simplified stash, if you ask me. It's a far cry from the many varieties of pockets that I did have in various totes in my kids room.

So I thought about doing this post. A Community Shout Out. Okay, MommieV Readers, what's in YOUR stash? Diaper stashes tend to change over time for various reasons - your kid starts daycare so you get more pockets, you want to try some new diapers that you've heard about, your kid gets bigger and you need to size up or try One Size diapers, etc. So while several readers have commented on various posts about what diapers they use, I thought this would be a good time to take a snapshot of what's in your current rotation.

I thought I would win the prize for the simplest stash currently. Until, while folding diapers today, I started taking an inventory of the actual kinds and brands of diapers in my load.

Pockets:
12 Thirsties Duo Diapers, Size 2. Used for daycare and supplemented for nighttime.

Prefolds:
7 Thirsties Duo prefolds (hemp/cotton jersey)*
1 Flip organic insert
3 Econobum prefolds
2 Knickernappies hemp prefolds*
2 Panda Tushie bamboo velour prefolds
12 GMD reds
As backup: a dozen Gerber organic cotton prefolds
(* I would buy a whole lot more of these if I had the money)

Covers:
2 Flip
2 Econobum
2 Thirsties sized covers
1 Thirsties duo cover
As backup: 2 more Thirsties sized covers with the laundry tabs coming off.

Inserts: (used to supplement pockets at nighttime)
3 Thirsties hemp
4 bamboo/zorb from a now defunct Hyenacart store
3 bamboo/zorb from Twinkletoes Diapers

And then, there's the 30 flats I was gifted. I actually used one today during naptime. My kid has heat rash, and I was looking for the absolute lightest diapering option I had. I ended up pad folding a flat in an econobum cover, since she's sometimes dry when she wakes from naps. It was damp, but worked nicely to help (try to) keep thighs and bum from being too hot.

So what about you? What diapers are in your current rotation? Do you have a "rotation" and then a "stash"? Or are you simplified enough that you are using all your diapers currently? Anything you are looking to get? Describe a snapshot of what diapers you have right now.

Baggage

2011-06-08T22:24:00.000-04:00

So, about this time two years ago, (maybe a leeeetle later in June), my father started having this conversation with me:

Dad: so, we need to figure out what we're going to do when its time for you to go back to work.

Me: *blink, blink*

See, I was in the hospital for three weeks on bedrest. Then I had a newborn that I nursed nonstop for a week. My mother scooped us into her car and drove us to her home, two hours away from where I lived, where I managed to get my newborn on a 2-to-3 hour feeding schedule and take some naps.

What was going to be "a few weeks" turned into "a few more", and then there I was, a little over a month away from going back to work. I'd been living out of my parents guest room with a baby. I'd spent maybe three nights total back at my apartment with my newb. We'd been living as a family of four - my parents, me, the nursling. My father's question was pretty legitimate.

I was hoping (praying!) that my mother would come live with me for at least fall semester. I didn't have any daycare arrangements made, so I had no idea if I could find quality care for a four-month-old to start in a few weeks. I would be teaching under the college's new workload policy, meaning I'd have a 21-contact-hour teaching load (that's ALOT if you're not familiar). I knew it would be rough, but I was hoping that my mom would come help soften the blow of the return to work with a baby.

Nope. Nada. Uh-uh.

My dad started talking to me about quitting my job. You know, the Census Bureau is hiring, you could get a job there. I'm a freaking college professor, and you want me to just quit a full-time faculty position and take an hourly job doing data entry? Seriously?

Also, I loved my job. At least I had loved it in the beginning. I loved the area where I lived, I loved my apartment, I loved being where I was.

But over the course of a couple of weeks, I realized that I loved the way my job had been in the beginning, not currently. When it had been a reasonable workload and I had favor among my peers, not after they knew unseemly secrets about me, and I'd had a fall from grace. And there was that pesky matter about the unreasonable teaching load policy that would be going into effect. The more I thought about it, the more the worm bore into my brain, until I found myself making an appointment with my college's president to break the news, and filling out an application at a college close to my parents house.

My lease was up in mid-July, so that's when the move took place. I was still living out of my parents guest room with a baby in a cosleeper wedged against the wall. So the move was actually to fill a U-Haul truck with most of my belongings and drive it to my parents house, where we stacked it all in the garage to weather a few months. Luckily my friend Tom broke the glass coffee table so that was one less thing to pack.

Dad got a little too close to the house ...

Neatly stacked

Not-so neatly stacked after a while

I heard the good news about the new job while in the car in the grocery store parking lot. I was trying to balance a cell phone under my ear and nurse a baby in the backseat and talk about workload and schedule with a new boss while not being able to take notes.

The discussion then turned to ~~GETTING THE FUCK OUT OF MY PARENTS HOUSE~~ the fact that I wanted to get a place of my own. I was extremely grateful to my parents for letting us stay, but I was feeling the turmoil of losing an apartment that I loved, a job that I'd loved at one time, and moving back to the place I said I wasn't ever coming back to. I was starting a new job and trying to work, pump, nurse, sleep, and repeat it all the next day. My mother the realtor started the process of pre-approval, looking for listings, weeding them out based on the neighborhood, and helping me hone my expectations.

A house down the street from them was for sale. It was a cute little ranch, not at all like the houses I'd asked to see. Was it really big enough for three bedrooms? Something tugged at me as my dad and I would walk through the neighborhood, pushing a baby stroller to try to get her some late day sunlight and fresh air to HOPEFULLY make her sleep well. I'd look over my shoulder at the empty house and wonder.

I moved into that house in October, when my baby was 6 months old. In the middle of my first semester at a new college, with a 6 month old nursling, we loaded all the stuff into a moving van to get it five houses down the street to the new house. We stacked it into the garage in a very neat and orderly way, but as I needed to find packed items, boxed quickly became strewn all over the garage.

--

As the second winter in the house approached, my mother gave me a gentle nudge. Don't you want to clean out your garage, honey? So you can park you car inside this winter? Another gently nudge: I've asked your cousin to come help me move some things, do you want him to help you carry things down to the basement? So finally, we hauled the crap that hadn't been unpacked down to a large empty room in the basement.

Where it's all been collecting dust for 9 months or so.

This is my "if I have another baby WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU THINKING?" pile

My goal is to get it all unpacked this summer. I'm teaching two online classes, chairing a faculty hiring committee, and taking yoga. But if it doesn't get unpacked this summer, it is likely to sit down there until it rots. So my hope is that by doing a couple of boxes at a time, I can get the basement unpacked this summer.

Tonight was the first night. I had an hour, a kid, and nothing else to do. She loves the basement. So I let her play on her climbing toy while I went through boxes. The first one had jewelry, the second one photos. I couldn't have started with something easy like old purses I want to get rid of. No, bring on the emotionally laden crap in the first box.

God, grant me strength to keep the things I need, the ability to throw everything else away, and the wisdom to know the difference.

Bizzy Gurls

2011-06-07T21:12:00.000-04:00

We have had a coupla busy weekends.

We did some yoga.

Then we went to the mall for new shoes. She has these Princess shoes that she picked out the last time we shoe-shopped that she has rubbed all the glitter off. So, back we go to plunk down 20 bucks for another pair of cheaply made Princess shoes.

Just outside the shoe store was a cluster of kiddie rides that included a pink ice-cream truck. So of course we had to stop and play.

Whaddya think of the new shoes?

We played outside.

We played inside.

Sitting on a pillow wearing no diaper. Risky.

We went to a swimming party. I have no photos of that, I was too busy trying to hold a slippery fish.

We went to a local festival to hear some family friends play in a band.

We tried out a new church.

We went to a graduation party.

Last weekend was breakfast with Nan and Grandpa,

playing outside,

and another graduation party.

Is it any wonder that we're not getting any sleep?

This is only okay if she ends up making millions of dollar off her makeup line and buys me a mansion and a car

2011-06-03T17:05:00.000-04:00

We've had some trouble in the past about the lipstick. Remember?

So it shouldn't surprise me that I walked into the bathroom where I left her to wash her hands after a potty trial (that didn't result in a potty) to find her slathered in lipstick again. Not as bad, this time. She managed to confine the damage mostly to her face.

Last week my mother got her ready for some event. "Look," my kid said, "Look!". At her painted fingernails and painted toenails.

Great. Great. My kid is a diva and my mother is a rule-ignoring* enabler. Great.

My kid is totally disappointed that her fingernail polish has worn off. My mother is totally ready to paint them again. I stick to my belief that this is a slippery slope to Toddlers and Tiaras, and I want to communicate to my daughter that she is beautiful without having to don the trappings of female grooming standards at TWO YEARS OLD.

Meanwhile, she's moved on to lipstick. Which was going to be verboten until she was 16. I have a battle to fight for the next 14 years, apparently!

Thoughts on a two-year old wearing fingernail/toenail polish?

*Full disclosure: I guess I hadn't exactly set a "no painting fingernails and toenails rule. I thought the conversation we had in the bathroom the LAST TIME my mother attempted to paint fingernails, or my comments when she got the kids fingernails painted clear at the nail salon, were communication enough. So she isn't rule-ignoring as much as comment/conversation-ignoring.

Dear HopefulSingleMommaToBe

2011-05-31T14:32:00.000-04:00

Dear Hopeful:

Your blog hates me.

I've tried to comment twice on your most recent post. It won't let me. I get into this endless run where it asks me to log in, tries to make me comment as anonymous ... it's horrible. I tried on two separate days. I tried logging in first. I tried just posting as anonymous. Finally I gave up :)

Here's what I wanted to say:

I have a baby gift for you. I need your mailing address. Please email it to me at mommiev1 at gmail.

And you might want to consider listing your email on your "about you" page. :)

Hang in there on the bedrest. Been there, done that. When you hold a precious little baby in your arms at the end of it, it's totally worth it. Also, this is the last time you will sleep in 6 months, take advantage.

Love ya,
Me.

Even My Kid Hates Disposable Diapers

2011-05-30T17:00:00.001-04:00

One Spring evening at the MommieV household:

The first time she took the sposie diaper off.

The second time, I came out from stirring supper to find this.

The third time. (It's a perfectly dry diaper, and I REALLY needed to do diaper laundry).

At least she pulled her shorts back up. Mostly.

The fourth time, I gave up.

And put her in a Knickernappies side-snap pocket.

Hey, yo, look at me now!

Angst-ish

2011-05-30T07:00:00.001-04:00

I wrote a whole post a while back about the situations, choices, experiences, etc, that led me to being a single mother. Then I canned it. It has too much personal information about people that haven't agreed to have their personal information on the internet. (Mostly because I don't want them to know about this blog, and mostly because I don't want to bring up the conversation.)

But I struggle with some questions. I'd love to revisit the post, because I'm looking for some good advice and affirmation from some of the Choice Moms who did things "the right way" (in my mind). Like having actual donor agreements or using a physician so its legal.

I did have part of the conversation with Jellybean Mama, but we were both chasing toddlers around the beach and shivering, so I never really got her thoughts on the questions that were the important part of the conversation. We mostly shared "what we would do next time".

I'm still not ready to put the post up. Maybe one night this summer after too many margaritas you'll see it.

In the meantime, if you're also struggling with "daddy question" angst and bio-dad/known donor issues, there are some decent posts up at singlemommyhood.com, specifically here, here, and here (that last one makes me feel better. At least I don't have THAT issue to worry about. I don't think.)

We are doing the "every family is different" thing. We read Todd Parr's The Family Book all the time. She's been talking about daddies, since that's obviously a topic at daycare. I just reply with "we don't have a daddy in our family, we have a Grandpa, though, and he loves us very much". Others have heard me say the "we don't have a daddy in our family. Every family is different, right? And we have a Nan and a Grandpa and an Aunt Patti and ..." and commended me for the skill with which I handled the conversation. (Totally, planned, baby, that's the secret!). So maybe I"m laying good groundwork for when the questions get really hard.

My Kid is So Freaking Smart

2011-05-29T20:47:00.000-04:00

We come in from my mom's tonight. The kid is a mess, having had a late supper and various confrontations involving putting the bubbles away and leaving Nan and Grandpa's house. As I'm ushering both of us through the door into the kitchen, she notices a pair of my shoes.

I was gifted a pair of flip flops from a family friend. They have a flower stitched onto them, so they are very cute for summer. I was wearing them while working in my campus office the other day. While walking down the hall to the printer, I noticed a wierd sensation on my foot. I looked down to notice the flower coming off. I pulled it the rest of the way off, and wore the shoes home, thinking I would toss them when I got home. I decided to keep them around as an extra pair of shoes to wear when gardening or doing yard work. That's why they were out in the middle of the floor, I'd been wearing them while gardening while she was taking her nap.

She immediately noticed one shoe was missing the flower. "Where flower? Where flower?" she repeated until I answered her. "I lost it" was the simplest answer I could come up with. "You lost it" she repeated.

I headed for her room to pull out pajamas and a bath towel to start the bedtime rituals of the night. When I returned to the kitchen where she was,

this:

had become this:

The Baby In The Mirror Is Still There

2011-05-29T07:00:00.001-04:00

Since she's two years old, she may now have to be called the "kid" in the mirror.

So we have more photos to add to the Baby In The Mirror collection.

We Don't Have Lice

2011-05-28T21:15:00.001-04:00

Mother's Day arose grey and rainy. I got myself showered and ready, then got my kid showered and ready. My mom picked us up, and we went to church.

I'm still in between churches. If I could pick up the church I attended where I used to live and move it here with a crane, all would be well. Life doesn't work that way. I'll get there eventually. In the meantime, my mother has found a church she really likes, so I have been going occasionally with her.

This church has a hard core kids program and nursery. The area is complete separated with a locking door and entry area. You have to sign the kid in and out, and they give you a code number. If there are any issues during the service, your little number will pop up in the corner of the screen.

So it's Mother's Day. They sing some sappy song about a daughter always needing her mom and I cry. They sing some other song and I cry. Finally the preacher begins the sermon and I settle in. Then I notice our number has popped up on the screen.

I arrive at the nursery entryway to find a woman with my daughter. She informs me simply "they found nits in her hair".

They. found. nits. in. her. hair.

Deep breath. I need to escape. Get me to the bathroom so I can cry. And paw through my kids hair to find the nits. The woman, probably also a mother, tries to reassure me. Don't worry, lots of kids get lice. Meanwhile I'm hoping to God the ground swallows me whole.

Retreating from the nursery area, we encounter a woman in the doorway. Balancing a child and two cans of coke, she recognizes us from a local consignment sale. She obviously is aware of the diagnosis, because she, too, launches into her "it happens to everyone" reassurance. She then starts telling me exactly what I need to do to rid ourselves of the lice. "Wash everything in the house. Put stuffed animals through the dryer. Get the RidEx, not the other stuff, the other stuff doesn't work. Be sure to use the comb. You're going to have to comb every night for, like, a week. And wash everything for like, a week. And get the spray for the couch and stuff. Put everything in the dryer on hot, or use the spray. It's really horrible. But it happens to the best of us. I have three kids and they ALL had it. Like, three different times each. It's horrible. It's really really horrible. But you'll be fine. Bye!"

Meanwhile, I'm looking at my kids head. I don't see any nits. I don't see anything that looks like anything on her head. But I don't want to paw through her hair in front of these women, and these mothers obviously know more than I do about the subject, so .... just get me to the bathroom. I have a really good cry and then look for myself.

In the bathroom, I search her head. I find nothing. My mother comes to find us, and I report the conversation. I also report that I haven't seen anything. My mom looks through her head and finds something white and pulls it off the hair. I say "that just looks like fuzz to me" and she says "well, that's what they look like. Small white things."

Okay. So she must have lice. All the people that know much more about this than I do say so. So we go home.

I send my mother to the store for the chemicals to douse my child, a new pillow (which was on the shopping list anyway) and whatever else the store might sell that might get rid of lice. I texted her to check for Tea Tree Oil, which she bought. Despite it being close to nap time, I stripped her bed and began washing bed linens, I gathered all the stuffed animals to the basement, I pulled her bed away from the wall and swept and mopped the floor, and I cleaned the rest of her room like a mad woman. Then while she napped, it was on to my room. Clean sheets and pillowcases, dust mop for the floor .... But I knew I couldn't do all of it.

Did I mention grades were do the next day, and it was also Commencement? Did I mention I still had 60 exams to grade, 120 grades to calculate, and a 14 hour day to work the following day? I asked my mom to call my aunt to come help clean, her specialty. So since the "deep cleaning" wouldn't happen until the following day, I put off the dousing of chemicals, and just tried the Tea Tree Oil treatment I had read about online.

I combed her hair with a fine-toothed comb, since the kid had stolen the one that came in the kit and hid it somewhere (dirty laundry basket is where it was later recoved, several days later). I didn't see anything, but I combed every inch of her head. Maybe it was just a mild case. Maybe the TTO got them all out.

The next morning she woke up with two small white things in her hair. I pulled them out, thinking they were nits. I called daycare to tell them of our problem. I left the kid with mom and went to grade and calculate and pomp and circumstance and everything else a professor does on the last day of the semester. Frequent phone check-ins told me the consensus was my house was getting really clean, and my kid's lice seemed gone. Noone saw anything in her hair. When I came home for a break during the afternoon, I saw two more little white things, so I asked mom and her friend who would be watching her while I attended Commencement to be sure to do the TTO treatment again. If there were still white things the next day, we would move on to chemicals.

The next day I was off work. In the morning, two more little white things. I'd thought my aunt sprayed the furniture with the lice bedding spray. She actually used Lysol, which she'd heard was an insect repellant. I got frustrated thinking that we still had nits and the correct spray hadn't been used. I started dragging couch cushions out to the porch and began spraying the stuff.

In graduate school I became sensitized (allergic) to organic solvents. Like the ones used to dissolve chemicals like insecticides. So immediately my head feels like its going to explode, and I have six more couch cushions and pillows to spray. I did it in shifts, spending time in the fresh air of the backyard in between spraying toxic chemicals on my couch cushions in the front yard.

After her nap, a few more little white things. This is really starting to bug me. I'm treating with TTO, I'm combing, I'm spraying toxic chemicals in the house. Also, all I'm seeing are the nits. I'm not seeing actual lice. How are the nits getting there if there are no adult bugs to lay the eggs? This is really driving me crazy. But after a day of headache, I am NOT doing the chemical shampoo on her hair. That would probably kill me. So, one more night of TTO.

The next day we go to the doctor. She'd had green snot and congestion and cough for days, its about time to get that taken care of. Also, we can mention the lice issue, and see what the doc has to say. The intake person asks us lots of questions. When she asks when I started treatment, I said "Sunday". Then I clarified - I have only been treating her with Tea Tree Oil. She stops and looks at me. "Not the shampoo?".

No, I am one of those crazy mamas that cloth diapers her kid and tries "alternative" treatments. Not always. But this time, I did. You can see it in this woman's eyes. "Ha, this woman thinks that Tea Tree Oil gets rid of lice. Ha!"

The nurse practicioner checks my wee one's head. And checks, and checks. She finds something, but brushes it to the side. Checking, checking. The verdict: my kid has dandruff.

Whatever the ladies at the church saw, was probably dandruff. If it was big enough for them to see without pawing through my kids hair (and why would they be doing that anyway?) then it was probably dandruff. Since I treated with an oil, that probably got it. Since I didn't know what I was looking for, I assumed "white thing" meant nit. She said if you see the white things, try to brush them away. Dandruff brushes away. Nits don't. She said that TTO is an insect repellant, so treating with it - or using shampoo or conditioner with the oil - can help prevent, and can probably help with treatment (take that, judgemental medical assistant!). But it's unlikely that just using TTO will get rid of infestation. So, she couldn't be 100% sure because she didn't see what the church ladies saw, but probably ...

My kid didn't have lice, she had dandruff.

*Now that I've told the story, this post's title and first sentence may make a little more sense.

Cookbooks and Tomato Coulis (i.e. Project Veg update)

2011-05-27T22:34:00.000-04:00

Project Veg has still been going strong. It's pretty much all I can do to get the food fixed and on the table, so I've been very lax about photo-ing, and post-ing, etc. But I know that alot of other mamas had a positive reaction when I first started writing about Project Vegetarian, so I wanted to make sure and post an update.

I haven't been purchasing unprepared meat. That's a line I drew early on. If I'm in a particular mood, I will eat meat if it is prepared by someone else. My kid loves chicken nuggets, so I have purchased frozen chicken nuggets that just need to be microwaved (I also by meatless ones). But there has been very little raw meat in my house in recent months. And I feel very good about that.

My friend Jenny, the guest poster who helped kick off Project Veg, who cooks vegan for her preschooler and husband, and has a new baby at home (and happens to be a personal hero) has turned me on to the key for Project Veg:

Good cookbooks.

The first good cookbooks is hers, despite the fact that it's been in MY kitchen for more than 6 months (she has a new baby, what does she notice?). It is Better Then Peanut Butter & Jelly , and is an awesome cookbook for simple Vegetarian, and some Vegan, dinners for kids. It has a great potato and leek casserole recipe, and several good recipes that use black beans.

The second good cookbook is mine, only because she gifted it to me for Christmas. Probably because she didn't want me to keep her copy for months and months. It is the The Mediterranean Vegan Kitchen. And it. Is. Awesome. Words cannot describe how incredibly awesome this cookbook is. Simple little dinners. Fancy recipes for when you want to show off. It has everything, and its all delicious. Two of the recipes that I have tried so far I have actually made multiple times and incorporated into the kind of dishes that I can make off the top of my head. I have quite a number of recipes in this book marked for trying, and that has inspired me to pursue local sources for food to try lots more of the recipes in this book.

So tonight I made, for the second time, a recipe that I now refer to as Tomato Coulis. It's a very simple, minimal ingredients recipe. It works for Sunday dinner (I made it last Sunday for my mom and dad) and for weeknight dinners (I made it tonight). It's yummy with both the spices called for in the recipe, and the spices you can use to substitute when you realize you don't have that spice in your cabinet like you thought you did.

Chop some garlic. Saute in some olive oil while you chop some tomatoes. Lots of tomatoes. Dump tomatoes, liquid, seeds, etc, into pan over garlic. Add other spice (furst time I used basil plus a touch of marjoram, the recipe calls for thyme which I used tonight). Simmer 20 minutes to reduce while you boil pasta and set the table. Serve.

The real recipe (included below) calls for asparagus. That could help make it super fancy. It works well with some mushrooms, too.

It's similar enough to a regular spaghetti sauce that small ones might go for it. The benefit versus using a bottled sauce is the lack of preservatives and knowing that you're sourcing local and making homemade. You can control ingredients, you can control spices and flavors. And you know you've simmered a little pot of good for your family. I always thought that a homemade spaghetti sauce made with tomatoes would take forever to cook down. This isn't really a sauce, per se. Just cooked tomatoes and spices over pasta. What could be simpler than that?

Well, if you must know ... NOT cooking a summer tomato dish would be simpler. So that brings me to my favorite recipe from this book ... Bruschetta.

Chop two tomatoes, six black (or Kalamata) olives, some artichoke hearts. Chop basil and italian parsley (both of which I'm now growing in my herb garden). Spring with red wine vinegar, olive oil, salt, pepper. Rub a garlic clove on your bread, spread with the bruschetta. Eat.

Heaven. Oh, wait, open a bottle of white wine with it. Now THAT's heaven.

--

Total copyright violations appear below this line. Here are the two recipes from the book, in their entirety, as published. Please consider purchasing a copy of the book so I don't get in too much trouble. I don't think you'll regret it. Love, me.

Linguine with Asparagus and Tomato Coulis

2 T extra virgin olive oil
3 large cloves garlic, finely chopper
3 pounds vine-ripened tomatoes, peeled and chopped, all the juices included
1.5 T fresh thyme leaves or 1.5 t dried
0.5 t sugar, or to taste
salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste
12 ounces pencil-thin asparagus, tough ends trimmed and discarded, tips trimmed from stalks, stalks cut diagonally into 2-inch lengths
16 ounces dry linguine (do not use fresh)
0.5 cup Nicoise or other good-quality black olives, pitted and chopped

In a large nonstick skillet, heat the oil over medium heat. Add the garlic and cook, stirring, until just golden, 2 to 3 minutes. Add the tomatoes and their juices, thyme, sugar, salt, pepper, bring to a brisk simmer over medium-high heat. Reduce the heat and simmer gently uncovered, stirring occasionally until the mixture is reduced by one-third and sauce has thickened, 20 to 30 minutes. Correct the seasonings, adding additional sugar to taste if the sauce tastes too acidic.

Meanwhile, bring a large stockpot filled with salted water to a boil over high heat. Add the pasta and cook until almost al dente. Add the asparagus and cook until the asparagus is tender and the pasta is al dente, 2 to 3 minutes. Drain well and transfer to a large warm bowl. Add the tomato coulis and the olives, if using, and toss well to combine. Serve at once.

Bruschetta and Tomatoes, Black Olives, and Marinated Artichokes

1 medium ripe tomato, seeded and finely chopped
6 kalamata or other large good quality black olives
0.5 cup drained marinated artichoke hearts, finely chopped
1 T finely chopped fresh basil
1 T finely chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
1 T extra virgin olive oil
0.5 t red wine vinegar
salt, preferably course, to taste
freshly ground black pepper, to taste
about 6 0.5 inch thick pieces of italian bread, lightly toasted
1 large clove garlic, halve

Place the tomato, olives, artichokes, basil, parsley, oil, vinegar, salt, and pepper in a medium mixing bowl, toss well to combine. Set aside for a few minutes to allow the flavors to blend.

Rub the toasted side of the bread with the flat sides of the garlic halves. Top each side evenly with the tomato mixture, using about 2 T per piece. Serve at room temp.

Mommie Productivity - The Wrap-Up

2011-05-25T20:40:00.000-04:00

I started a series of posts at Our Mommyhood about being productive. The first post explained an overall philosophy I use to try to stay organized and productive, and that is the idea of contexts. By breaking your to-do list into contexts, you can better deal with what you need "to do" where you are, and not get overwhelmed by a long list. The second post explained the tool I use for said to-do lists, an online program called Toodle-Do, which also has a free app I use on my phone. The last post discussed ways to use a Calendar to stay organized. (Note, Google Calendar does now allow you to color code different appointments, as well as an overall color code for different calendars that you are viewing. LOVE.)

This is the final post in the series on Mommie Productivity. There are several other little tools that I use to help myself be productive, and get everything done in my little compartments of my life. None of these really warrant a post on their own, so I'll tie up the series with this little list of miscellaneous tools to help you get jump started, or keep you on track.

1. My phone. I used to carry my organizer with me everywhere. When I was single and childless, and a busy, hardworking Division Chair, that wasn't difficult to do. My work bag went with me everywhere, so my organizer was never far away. If I needed to schedule a drink with a friend, write down some ideas, jot a to-do, or something to look up online, it was usually within arms reach. Now, the diaper bag goes with me just about everywhere - except to work. I struggled for a long time with an organizer solution that was big enough for my essentials, but small enough to fit in the diaper bag. I found myself not carrying it nearly as much, and not having it when I needed it.

Around the same time, I was discovering the online to-do list. While you can print it out and take it with you, I would often not have it when I needed it, and not have access to the computer to pull it up. I needed my calendar and to-do list to have some portability. That's when I got my new smartphone.

Since Google created Android, it is very easy to get Google products on your phone, such as Gmail and Google calendar. I have even created a link to Google Documents so with one touch on my phone screen, I can see my monthly budget spreadsheet, or any other document I have saved. With the addition of the Toodle Droid app icon, I now have access to my tools simply by carrying around my phone - which I would be doing anyway.

Again, this part of the solution may not work for everyone who doesn't have access to a smartphone. In that case I recommend printing your weekly calendar and your to-do list periodically if you need to carry them with you. Or carry notecards or sticky notes, and make it a habit to add the items to your online tools once a day, or whenever you do your GTD processing (discussed in the first post).

2. A sticky note. Not just any sticky note, but this one. Specifically, it says:

One thing at a time.
Most important thing first.
Start now.

I picked up that saying at 43 folders, a website devoted to personal productivity, particularly using the same tenants of Getting Things Done that we are discussing in these posts. So it's not original, by far. But it's a great reminder when your mind is going a mile a minute, when your adult ADD/mommy brain is in high gear and you can't get focused. You can only really be effective at one thing at a time. Multi-tasking is a myth. Psychological studies show that when you think you are multi-tasking, you are actually switching your attention back and forth quickly, not really focusing on multiple things. So pick the most important thing for you to focus on, work on it, and start immediately. Don't justify why it's the most important, or worry about something that is only slightly less important. Do one thing at a time, pick the most important thing for this moment, and get started.

It seems simple. But having it in front of you really does help. When I come barrelling into my office first thing in the morning after dealing with chocolate milk and daycare and ... it helps to have a reminder. What do I start with? What should I work on? I have a thousand things to do today. Where is my to-do list? Don't check email. Don't just jump in.

One thing at a time.
Most important thing first.
Start now.

3. Baroque Period Classical Music. Yes, that sounds really strange as a productivity tool. There are some studies that show that the timing of the rhythm in Baroque music helps to entrain your brain for focus. This may be the basis for the Mozart effect - the theory that listening to Mozart makes you smarter. When trying to prove the effect, researchers found that what is actually happening is an increase in attention and focus.

It sounds really crazy, but it really seems to work. When I've come into my office rushed and harried, with a long to-do list and class in an hour, and I have several things to do but I can't seem to decide where to start, I have turned on some Baroque music, and it helps me to get calm and focus. When I use it in conjunction with the sticky note above, it almost seems magical how I can transform into a focused person, tackling a stack of papers to grade and starting to get things accomplished.

Pandora Radio offers free radio based on music genre. Pandora lets you judge individual songs, and can tailor the station to play more music that is similar to your preferences, and to play less music like the songs you tell it that you don't like. Over time, you can customize a station that plays soothing background music that will also help you with attention and focus. When I know I need to be focused and work, I start my Pandora station that I have labeled "Office Baroque". Perhaps it is just a placebo effect, but it helps me to start working in a more focused way.

Pandora also has a free app for my Android phone, so if I am home, or at the library, and want the same attention focusing effect, the same station is waiting for me wherever I go. I love it.

There are challenges. I'm a bit of a Covey-ite, in spite of professing my allegience to GTD in the first post. My most productive times are when I take the time for weekly planning. Taking a little time, usually on Sunday, to journal a bit, reflect on what has been working and what hasn't been working, what got accomplished and what is still in process, and what the priorities are for the week, help me to make sure I address everything that I need to. Covey suggests putting in the Big Rocks on your calendar - for me those are classes and bedtime routines. Neither are negotiable, and both occur routinely and at the same time each day. Once those are in place you can plan your week around them, making sure to look at your big picture goals and making sure you are doing something each week to advance toward them. That last step is key to personal growth, but is the step that tends to get lost when you plan day-to-day. Especially as a single mother to a toddler when I'm having trouble just keeping up with the laundry.

I haven't found a good solution to this step, and I am open to suggestions. Lately I have been doing this step on paper, which makes it difficult to fit into my technology described above. Perhaps I am too noncommittal to the plan to commit it to Google calendar, so I would need to address that issue. I have a printed schedule of the week - usually from Google calendar, so it already has the time-bound items listed. Then I draft - in pencil (noncommital, remember) - a framework of my week. This afternoon I'll write an exam, this afternoon I need to try to set appointments with students. It works well when I do it, and I always start Monday morning feeling more prepared and less panicked - and have less of a need for the sticky-note-and-music cocktail to calm myself down to get focused at work. I can't seem to figure out if it works so well, why I have a hard time doing it.

So I'm not perfect at it. I keep trying to do everything expected of me in the time I have to do it in. I've been late with a couple of obligations in the last couple of months, and my students were pretty annoyed at the grading time this semester. It's because I took on too much with the online graduate classes I'd been taking at the same time. Now I'm busy getting summer online classes developed and helping with some department service that look good in the tenure notebook. Just trying use my tools to get things done!

Flats Challenge: Just Use Prefolds

2011-05-24T21:04:00.000-04:00

So my overall conclusion to the Flats Challenge? Just Use Prefolds. There's a reason that mamas years ago switched from flats to prefolds. I've been giving lots of commentary on my experience using flats, so I won't reiterate all of that. What I want to use this post for is an analysis of the use of prefolds versus flats.

The initial motivation for the Flats and Handwashing Challenge was that some parents are letting their babies sit in disposables for many hours to save the number of diapers used/purchased, to save money. The idea was that even parents trying to seriously pinch pennies could be successful cloth diapering by using flats and handwashing them.

My argument is that by using prefolds rather than flats, you still have the same capability of cloth diapering your child to save money, you are still able to handwash and hang-to-dry, but you don't have to endure the drawbacks of flat diapers.

Cost:
A package of 10 flats would have cost me around $14. I'm not taking into account the specials offered for mamas participating in this meme, since any other month of the year, those specials might not be available. They wouldn't have been available to me when I was expecting. I'm basing that price on what they cost at my local discount store, or what they would cost including shipping to order online. I started the challenge with 30 flats but given that we had to change diapers hourly at times, I really needed about 40 flats to truly go three days between washing, which is my preferred schedule.

Meanwhile, when we use prefolds, I can get by with two dozen or less in three days. I have a dozen GMD reds, I have a dozen cheap prefolds (not the polyfill stuffed ones, but the thin cotton ones.) Total cost of those two dozen prefolds: $52. Total cost of 40 flats? $52.

Econobum advertises that you can cloth diaper your baby for $99. (That includes the covers, not mentioned in the cost analysis above, and includes prefolds that are thicker than the cheap prefolds mentioned, and not quite as thick, but softer, than the GMD reds.) If I was a mama starting out with very little money to spend on diapers, I would ask for people to buy me Econobum packages and seconds and use that as the diaper stash. The econobum line is definitely the way to go for quality prefolds and covers offered in packages. If you're buying on your own, GMD and Little Lions prefolds are high quality, and Thirsties covers can't be beat. It's hard to get that stuff as gifts when you have to buy from different place and buy them separately, though.

Handwashing and Hanging to Dry:
Part of the meme was to use flats because they are reportedly easy to hand wash and hang dry. Some mamas might not have access to a convenient washer/dryer and might not want to wash cloth diapers at the laundromat. Handwashing is a pain no matter what kind of diapers you are washing. Personally, I would sink rinse and still bite it to get to washer some way, some how. And that comes from years of apartment living with only a single washer to a building, or a laundromat as an option. I will admit, the drying time for the flats was less than the drying time for the prefolds. Its because they hold less moisture. The cotton prefolds dried faster than the hemp prefolds. Again, because they hold less moisture. Just because flats dry easy does not make them the ideal diaper choice.

Fit and Absorbency:
Flats are thinner than prefolds. That means covers designed for use with prefolds don't fit as well. That means the diapers aren't nearly as absorbent. That is supposed to mean that they will dry faster if you hand wash and hang to dry (see above). So as a mama, you have to decide: which is more important? 30 minutes of faster drying time? Or not having to change a diaper every single hour of your day?

Ease of Use:
They're tied here. I used them both just folded up in a cover. The prefold I trifolded and put in the cover. The flat I folded twice lengthwise and laid in the cover, then folded the excess into a good spot to catch the pee when I fastened the cover. That makes a few more folds for the flat, but I think you're getting too much into semantics there. I'd call them matched, because they're both very easy to use in a cover. Also, I think prefolds have won out in the other categories so I don't need to be that detailed to prove my point.

I think the meme was helpful to create awareness about cloth diapering as a viable option for lower income families. I think the meme was helpful to point out ways that flat diapers can be used for certain ages of babies. Personally, I don't see much of an advantage over prefolds - cost is similar, ease of use is similar, drying time may be better for flats, but you're diaper changing every hour because of the decreased absorbency. If I was advising a penny-pinching mama, I'd tell her prefolds and covers all the way.

Handwashing and Flats Challenge - Day 2

2011-05-24T20:54:00.000-04:00

Observations:

Kid is 24 pounds. Cover is a M Thirsties sized cover. Flat diaper is bunched in the bottom. Had been on about half hour.

- The flat diaper, even folded, is thinner than any other diaper we have, including just hemp inserts. Therefore even the size M Thirsties cover seems big on my 2 year old with nothing in it but a flat. The Flip cover worked better, mostly because I snapped it to a smaller setting than we normally use. I wish my Econobum covers hadn't been misplaced - I bet those would be awesome to use with flats. For now, my cover recommendation is a snap Flip.

Much trimmer, and keeps the flat in place better.

The up side to the thinness is the trimmest looking fluffy bum on the planet. The down side - see next.

- The first flat of the morning only lasted an hour. Sure, the diapers are cheap, but it looks like we're in for a day of hourly changes, and that's going to get old fast. Also is going to use twice as many diapers, so where is the cost savings? We got up at 7 and at 8:05 she had pulled her diaper off and left it on her play ironing board chanting "wet, wet, I wet mommie".

Pantless kid on right. Wet diaper in cover on ironing board. She was done with flats by this point. It was 10 am.

Yes, this does bode well for potty training. And no, I'm not one of those people that wants their kid to sit in the same diaper for hours at a time. But when you're used to getting two hours out of a hemp prefold, one hour until soaking of a flat is annoying. If you don't want leaks, you're going to have to change every hour.

- Later in the day, we went to our photographer so I could get a passport photo taken. I was trying to watch the clock, knowing that her diaper wouldn't last the entire time we were there. I always try to present cloth diapering in a positive light when I'm out in public. I always try to set a positive example and let others know it is possible to use cloth diapers - even when "out and about" - with minimal hassle and fuss. I couldn't do that if I were using flats all the time. I could barely do it today when I was watching the clock and inconveniencing myself in the name of the flats challenge. There's no way I could do that for 2+ years.

I'm interested to see what the other mommies are writing about Day 2. Maybe it's because my kid is no longer a newborn, but there are so many more quality, and still affordable, diapering options that are more reasonable to use.

The BFF's Birthday

2011-05-24T07:00:00.001-04:00

Not my BFF, the Wee One's BFF. Had a birthday at a local bouncy-party place.

It was a big hit, let me tell you.

Waiting in the lobby:

In one of the bouncy houses in the bouncy room:

And video:

All the BFFs had the same blue face!

Birthday Girl in the police car, My Girl in the other car. I mentioned that running into a police car isn't a good idea. General life lesson one should always teach their kids, no?

My kid LOVED the cars.

She did eventually leave the car for the slide.

Okay, so we had also received an invitation to the wedding of a close family friend. I had hemmed and hawed about our attendance - I wasn't sure how we would feel after the BFF party, so I hadn't made any promises. But we (by that I mean the Wee One) seemed like we were up for it, so away we went.

We changed clothes in the car into appropriate wedding attire:

What a day. Happy Birthday to the Wee One's Best Friend. Best wishes to the Happy Couple! And I got to catch up on some sleep this morning! Much to be thankful for!

Flats and Handwashing Challenge, Day 1

2011-05-23T21:26:00.002-04:00

So, being a mommy blogger has its advantages. I have made me some friends, yo. One took me to Myrtle Beach, and one sent me a box full of diapers.

So I first posted that I was thinking about doing the flats challenge. Then I did a post about why I wanted to join up, despite the fact that technically I'm not supposed to, because I have a job outside the home and pay someone lots of money to care for my child, so I'm grateful that they at least let us bring pocket diapers. Sorry for yet another run-on sentence.

I was just going to buy a couple of packages of flats at some discount store, and then donate them when done. Then Funky Mama Bird came through, to send me a box of 30 flats that she is no longer using.

So, I washed them. I dried them. I folded them.

Now what? Am I using them?

Yesterday, I wasn't sure what I was going to do. If I can't join the linky, what's the point? If I don't meet the narrow ~~minded~~ requirements of the meme, why do it?

Because using cloth diapers makes me feel superior and smug.

There, I said it.

That's not totally accurate. I do feel like I'm going something great for my kid. I do feel like I'm doing something great for the environment. Those are the reasons I began cloth diapering, Those are the reasons I continue to cloth diaper.

So, I figured, I'd do it.

At 7:30 this morning, when I dressed my kid for daycare, I put a flat on her. Correction: I put two flats on her. I put two flats in a Thirsties cover, because I also put an adorable outfit on her, and I didn't want a leak to lead to a clothes change first thing after getting to daycare. That's how much faith I had. But I did, indeed, put flats in her diaper cover, and took her to daycare.

When the wetbag came home, I investigated. Yes, as I took diapers out of the small daily wetbag and added them to the big weekly wetbag, I paid special attention to the diapers in the cover that I sent her to daycare in.

They were wet. Pretty wet. But the cover wasn't soaked, and her clothes hadn't needed changing.

The flats worked. Despite 8 ounces of chocolate milk in the car (what, she doesn't eat, she needs some kind of calcium), despite what little breakfast they report that she ate, the flats held the pee, the diaper didn't leak.

Wow. Hmm. Flats might work.

When she came home, I changed her into a flat in a Flip cover. Observation: wow, that's the smallest "fluffy bum" I've seen in a while. That diaper only stayed on about half an hour, before a hysterical meltdown occurred because "I poop". (She hates poop now. Good for potty training!!)

Another flat in the Flip cover. Hey, I think I can do this Flats thing. That one was slightly wet when we got ready for bath and bedtime.

Bedtime diaper is a Thirsties hemp insert (pre-Duo style) with a bamboo/zorb insert, wrapped in a flat, in a Thirsties cover (because nighttime needs leg gussets, amIright?). So we'll see how nighttime goes.

I decided to pass on washing diapers tonight, and do a larger batch tomorrow. I'm home with her all day tomorrow, so there will be plenty to report on, and plenty to wash, tomorrow evening.

So far, thumbs up for flats.

Thoughts on Flats

2011-05-22T21:00:00.001-04:00

Tomorrow morning is supposed to start the Flats and Handwashing Challenge. I'm still really trying to decide if I'm participating. I mean, I've been totally getting ready, as if I'm totally going to do this. But then this evening I realized ... I have misgivings.

Maybe this is healthy. Maybe this is all going to be dispelled by actually, you know, USING the flats we have been gifted. Which is why I'm chosing to write this post. Expressing these thoughts is a good idea, I realized tonight as I'm pulling these diapers out of the dryer and STILL wondering what diaper, exactly, am I going to put on her when she wakes up in the morning.

Concerns:

Are these diapers going to actually, you know, work? I'm concerned about absorbency. My little one is 2 now, and is getting into potty training. She saves up her pee and seems to let go of it all at once (which is a sign of potty readiness). If she'd been a newborn, or some number of months old less than 18, I think I'd have less reservation about this. Perhaps flats is a great idea for new parents, but is it so great for older (or bigger) babies? (I guess we'll find out!)

Why 5 covers? Why not 4, or 6? Any why not limit the number of wetbags, since that can be an even bigger expense than covers? As I hung my $28 WAHM-made wetbag on the back of the bathroom door this evening, I thought "you know, if a mama can only afford birdseye flats, she can't afford this wetbag". Why isn't that included in the meme?

I have to admit, one of my stumbling blocks is the issue about what mamas can participate in the meme. You're only supposed to link up and do the survey if you do the flats challenge full time. Out of 8 days of the challenge, my kid will be in daycare 3 of those days. Meaning pockets (still cloth diapers!) instead of flats. But also meaning ... I'm not supposed to participate. It's apparently a SAHM meme, and those of us with professions that require us to obtain care for our children to bring home a paycheck are not welcome to link up. Even if its only 3 of the 8 days.

The survey, I can totally understand. When one is doing any kind of research project, one usually wants to gather data from a specific population. I have no intention of corrupting the data pool by participating in the research project if I can't fully comply with the requirements by the researchers (even if said researcher is a mom with a blog who knows nothing about IRBs,use of human subjects, informed consent, or scientific method). I never had any intention of completing the survey if I didn't participate fully in the project.

But the linky?

So you think all mamas that are thinking about using flats as cloth diapers don't use daycare? You think all mamas that are expecting, and broke, and wondering how they're going to use their limited resources, just sit at home all day and have the full capability to use flats every diaper change? What if they don't fit that profile? What if they're looking for a mama more like them? What if they don't care how the SAHM's use flats, what if they want to know how it worked for a mama whose kid is in daycare 3 days a week? What if the details like "flats work great, so only get 12 pockets to deal with daycare days" is a helpful bit of information for them?

So apparently, this has hit a hot button for me. It's totally not that big of a deal. It's just annoying.

Another thought: I really love prefolds. It's not that expensive to build your stash in prefolds. You're still doing cotton diapers and covers. You can still hand wash and hang to dry. You can still save money (unless you go hemp, which are the prefolds I prefer). I actually look forward to days that I'm home with my kid if all our prefolds are clean and folded and ready to go. I used prefolds on her exclusively from 6 weeks to 4 months when we started daycare. So I'd be doing this flats challenge that I can't link up to, rather than just using our hemp prefolds that I love so much.

I still don't know what I'm doing in the morning. Tomorrow is a daycare day. I could put a flat and cover on her in the morning, and take pockets as usual. Or I could just start on Tuesday when I'm home with her. I haven't decided on covers, since I have 6 in my normal rotation (which one doesn't get used?).

But I did receive a wonderful care package of flats from Funky Mama Bird that I really would like to use. I did bring detergents up from the laundry room to the kitchen, since I'll be handwashing in the kitchen sink. I have considered how the challenge will add to my view of cloth diapering, so I'm excited about trying flats. I'm just not sure I'm going all in for the challenge.

I'll let you know in the morning.

Color Days (Updated)

2011-05-22T07:59:00.001-04:00

(updated, now includes Rainbow Day)
Right after we came back from vacation, Wee One got moved up to the Two's II room. Not too long after that, a newsletter came home describing the upcoming project to teach colors. Each week would have a respective color. On Wednesday of that week, she was supposed to bring in a magazine photo featuring the color. Then on Thursday, she should come to daycare dressed in or wearing the color.

Thankfully, they provided a handy reminder that Mommie could hang on the fridge.

The first week was Red. I was so freaking giddy that I got her to school with all her red on, that I didn't take a photo.

The second week was Green. See this post for lots of photos of her in her Green.

So this post will show you the rest ....

Blue:

White:

That was the week of Wee One's birthday. So Mommie took cupcakes for snack to celebrate. Brightly colored cupcakes. On White Day. I'm sure the other parents were thrilled with that.

Orange:

Purple:

Yellow:
Um ... apparently I missed this day too. I seem to have no photo of my kid on yellow day. Let me check my phone ... Nope. Missed it.

Pink:

Brown: (was the day of the Derby parade, so many other shots can be seen in this post).

Black:

Gray:

This is what "Don't play in Mommie's garden" means, apparently"

Next week is Rainbow. Then I'll no longer have a guide for what to Wear on Thursdays. 'Sok, she won't be going to daycare on Thursdays over the summer anyway!!!

Rainbow:

When You Run Out Of Laundry Baskets, You Can Go To Bed

2011-05-08T22:25:00.001-04:00

It's not been the best Mother's Day around here. I'll spare you the details for now. Just wanted to show you something I noticed.

This is a photo of me and the wee one when she was around 5 months old.

This is a photo of me and the wee one from last week.

Maybe if I start nursing her again I'll go back to looking thinner?

Diapers for Sale

2011-05-07T17:03:00.005-04:00

This is still a work in progress!! I am trying to find links to photos of action shots of my kid.

I thought I would give some of our MommieV and Wee One faithful readers the first shot at some of the diapers we have for sale. I will update this post as items are sold, so if there is strikethrough text you'll know.

The prices that I have listed include the cost of shipping to anywhere in the US. So if I have a diaper listed as $5 and you paypal me $5 you'll get the diaper in your mailbox. That's the benefit to being a buyer. The benefit to being a seller is knowing that you're helping other cloth diapering mamas. If you buy more than one diaper, I will of course combine shipping. If you were to want to buy, say, everything is one big box I would give you a discount. And a big fat kiss. If you're not a US mama, I will still ship to you, but we might need to work out the details of the shipping. I will only ship to the address on your paypal account, in line with paypal policies.

I have a couple of diapers listed as FFS (free for shipping). They will be free if you buy any other diaper with them, if you just want that diaper, let me know and I will weigh and tell you what shipping is.

First up: Woolies. The shorties and longies have been hand washed and lanolized and are ready to wear.

These wool shorties are a size M. Measurements are: waist 8 in (unstretched), hip 10 in (unstretched), 2 in inseam. Asking $8.

These longies are also size M. Waist 8 inches, hips 9 inches, seen on my kid here. These probably could use a good shave. Asking $10.

This is a felted wool diaper cover. This was too small for my kid when we received it. Felted wool doesn't stretch much, but I have heard felted wool is bulletproof as an overnight cover. Waist is about 6.5 inches. It's about 9 inches at the widest point, just above the leg holes. I have not washed/lanolinized these since they were never worn by us.

Pockets: These are most likely not going to come with the original inserts. If you think I'm that organized you give me far too much credit. Besides, the ones I bought used or on clearance/outlet didn't come with any inserts to begin with. I have tons of inserts - if you want one let me know and I'll send one with it. It just might not be the same brand as the diaper.

RumpARooz onesize pocket diaper, Hoot Owl print. In great shape, not used much, no stains. Asking $10.

Fuzzi Bunz, size L (the original with the pointy tabs), light green color. Well loved, but elastic is still in good shape. I bought this used when we still used these as our nighttime diaper, but it was big for my wee one. $5

Another Fuzzi Bunz, size L, I think the next iteration with the not so pointy tabs. Pink Gingham print. Same story as above. $5

Periwinkle Fuzzi Bunz, size S, which is bigger than it sounds. Bought new by us, still in great condition. Wouldn't it be great if I took a photo of the outside too? You can see it on my kid here, majorly stuffed for nighttime.

These diapers have never been worn. They were bought on outlet clearance and are too big. They are Drybees pockets size Large. The first one is White with ruffles on the butt. The second one is a print and the third one is peach. Asking $12 each.

Happy Heineys. I have one pale pink and one pale purple. I have original inserts (a large one and a newborn one) for one of the diapers. Hardly worn, no stains, asking $12 for the one with no inserts, $14 for the one with two inserts. First come, first served on the inserts, be sure to be specific about color and if you want the inserts.

MORE POCKETS AT THE BOTTOM OF THE POST.

Fitteds: These are not waterproof, so they will need a diaper cover. Several of these can be seen on my kid at this post.

This diaper is FFS (free for shipping) or just free if you're buying another diaper. It was made by a WAHM (work at home mom) who was going out of business. I love the giraffe print and I loved the absorbency of this diaper, so we wore it into the ground. There is a small hole in the cotton lining and the velcro is gone on one side. If you're handy and can sew a patch of velcro on, you will love this diaper. It is perfect for naps because it is so absorbent. Bamboo inner.

Bumgenius Bamboo Fitteds. These are a discontinued style. I had a bunch of these that I used when she was a newborn and bought these to use under woolies. Unfortunately that was toward the end of last winter, and this winter we didn't use woolies much. They haven't been used alot and are still nice and squishy and soft. These are a very high quality fitted diaper. These have no stains are in great condition. Asking $8 each.

Kissaluvs size 1s (cotton sherpa). We adored our KL0s for newborn fitteds, and these are the next size up. Kisslauvs has come out with a new version of their fitteds - these are the old version. I have 5 of them. They are in good condition - they aren't as soft as brand new, but there aren't any stains and the snaps and elastic are in good shape. Asking $5 each.

Mandi's Menagerie (hemp and bamboo): These are three "fitteds" - I use the quotes because these do not have any kind of fastener. These are snappi-able, but I always just used them inside covers and they worked great. They are made by a WAHM who sells (well, these are an old style) them on Hyenacart. They are S/M size, and have a bamboo/hemp insert inside. I used the inserts for a long time as boosters for a microfiber insert for nighttime. They were awesome.

Tiny Tush fitted.

Lavendar edged Goodmama (bamboo velour). I wondered what the huge craze about Goodmamas was. These are super soft and very absorbent fitteds. Ended up being kindof bulky for my taste, but rock for naps or under woolies. These fitteds retail for $30. Asking $10.

If you're going for expensive fitteds, skip the Goodmamas and go for these. Made by a Canadian mama, these are Bububebe fitteds and I adore them with all my heart. I'm starting to get sad that we're going to be out of diapers soon.

Fairy Princess diaper with cotton velour inner. $12.

Lavendar flowers with bamboo velour inner. $12

Periwinkle with yellow bamboo inner. This was our first B4 diaper so it has been loved a little more than the others. Asking $10.

Pink flower with cotton velour inner. $12. This is newer than the others so still a little softer.

I have 5 Drybees Gone Natural fitteds. These are bamboo velour fitteds with a snap closure and a bamboo insert. They are pretty well loved, so not the softest. Also a few have stains that I think will sun out. Asking $5 each. Seen on my kid in this post (about halfway down.)

Covers: these are Motherease Airflow size M. There are two of the savannah print, one of the wetlands print, and one white. I'd like to sell these as a group since I have them priced so inexpensively. $7 for all 4 covers. These are actually really great covers. They are just a single layer of PUL, so they are nice and lightweight. They are really roomy so they fit over bulkier one-size fitteds well. Since they are so roomy, they aren't the best for using over a trifolded prefold - the prefold tends to shift. But they fold up tiny and are awesome as a backup cover in the diaper bag or if you're using them mostly over fitteds. Also excellent as a nighttime cover.

To buy: Send an email to Mommiev1 at gmail dot com. Include the specific diapers you want (brand and color) and if you're making me an offer for combining let me know what your offer is. Once I send you my paypal address, I consider the sale to be finalized. Please feel free to inquire, ask questions, make offers, but once you ask for my paypal address, that's the handshake.

Trades: the only thing I am looking for in trades are Blueberry trainers, Imse Vimse trainers, or a couple of Thirsties Duo Diapers Size 2s.

More pockets:
This diaper was made by a WAHM. Some of the snaps don't work. I'll sell it FFS (free for shipping) with any other diaper you buy from me. We used this diaper once and it leaked - I think it was wicking because it was too big, and some of the snap-down rise snaps don't hold. I'm hoping that someone else can either use it, or can use the fabric for something. The yellow microfiber towel came with it as the insert, so that will be included also.

I have several Knickernappies pockets for sale. All of these are size M, but some are the old medium, some are G1 and some are G2. Asking $8 each for them. All of these are in good shape, snaps and elastic are fine, no leaking PUL.

Periwinkle G1:

Sage green G1:

Bright Pink, G2:

Lavendar, I think this one is a G2

Light blue G2:

Also we have a yellow that has a very narrow crotch. It's one of the oldest styles they have. We keep it as a backup at daycare, so it just sits in her tote. I will send that one with an insert, because most inserts are too wide to fit.

Pocket Change. These pockets have an opening in the front and the back, so you don't have to remove the insert, it comes out in the wash. (People rave about that function of the Thirsties Duos, but that feature originated with this brand.) These are size M, but they run SMALL. By the time I got these, they were too small for my kid.

This is a Piddle Poddles AIO that I will send FFS if you buy any other diaper. I had a mama sell it to me for $5 and she didn't tell me the issues until she shipped it to me with a note. It is well loved. Basically, you can use it as a fitted with a cover, but the inner PUL layer isn't waterproof and it wicks to the front. Also, the inner is stained. I am glad that I got it to see the fit (it runs a little smaller than other AIO fitteds like B4s and GM's) but this diaper isn't worth much more than a fitted diaper in its current condition.

Pink Fuzzi Bunz size M - old style with pointy tabs. Asking $4. Still in decent shape, doesn't leak. There is some thread that pulled in the back so the elastic is exposed - doesn't affect function of the diaper at all.

I believe this is from a company called Cloth Diaper Wholesale, but I can't find their website at all. It's got a really soft, thick fleece liner. The pocket is in the front, which makes it a little easier to stuff. This is a pretty olive green color. Asking $7.

Thanks for taking a look. I can take more photos of the diapers that I have in multiples, or the ones that I dont have inside photos of. Just let me know what you want to see.

The Real Derby Parade

2011-05-06T16:35:00.001-04:00

So, in addition to the Daycare Derby Parade, there is a real parade that occurs during Derby Week too. Last year we had planned to go, but when I picked her up at daycare she had a fever, so we went to the doctor instead. This year there was no fever, it was a beautiful day for once, and there was still space to park in the faculty parking lot, so we went to the parade.

Getting our carriage loaded up with snacks

Quick self-portrait in case I forget later

Our first location was prime real estate. The closeness of the buses startled a certain someone, though, so we moved.

Chillin

The crowd begins to gather

Hey Jellybean Mama, thanks for the hat!

More cute girl

Like a moth to a flame, girl to cheap parade peddlars

And yes, I bought her one of the damn thngs

Another self portrait

Campus buildings. The porta-potty isn't normally there. (Maybe it should be.)

Someone is in the spirit

Making friends

And eating their food

She was dying to sit on the bleachers, despite my explanations that we had not purchased a ticket to do so.

"Ticket? We don't need no stinkin ticket"

More crowd

The Red Hat ladies

USA! USA!

Therapy Dogs

The guy with the water for the dogs is my HERO!!!!

Super Grover was a big hit with my kid.

We didn't stay to the end. I apologize to my colleagues (who I hope aren't even reading this or know this blog exists) since I didn't stay to watch the float that our college sponsored. There was a large break after the start of the parade, so by the time we left it was an hour and a half after the parade had started, and it was over 3 hours since we'd been standing on the hot concrete sidewalk. My kid was amazing for almost 4 hours straight. Then we basically came home, took a bath, and crawled into bed for 12 hours.

But her first real parade was much fun!