i'm moving

in an effort to simplify, i'm moving this site back over to wordpress and merging it with my other blog. also, i find wordpress easier to work with. sorry, blogger.

please check me out over yonder....

the new perilous domesticity

i'm in a family way

back on august 11th, i wrote this. ten days later i took a pregnancy test and sweet baby jesus! it was positive. i'm now about 12 weeks along, expecting this baby to arrive at the end of april. so far this pregnancy has been quite different than my daughter's. in my first pregnancy i was quite nauseous, plagued with morning, noon, and night sickness. i didn't have much of an appetite, and nothing appealed to my sensitive stomach. this time i've had almost no nausea (thank goodness) but i've been more fatigued than i've ever been in my life. i want to eat everything, all the time, and then eat some more. maybe these differences mean it's a boy? stay tuned.

if these babies could write, i'd ask for their autographs

so, OMG is pretty much the only way to sum up how cool this is.

my buddy kerry and her husband jeff are in the new york freaking times today, and their twin babies max and wes are on the goshdarn freaking FRONT PAGE! the accompanying article and video are also available online.

i wrote about kerry here and her baby shower here her boys' arrival here. kerry and jeff's journey to parenthood has been a long one; one that they didn't anticipate would take three years, multiple doctors and medical procedures, and more money than the entire GDP of several developing nations combined. in the end, though, it was all worth it and they have two of the most adorable babies ever to crawl this green earth.

i am so excited for them and i hope this publicity brings light to the struggle of infertility. kerry and jeff have struggled, no doubt, but through it all they have remained positive and hopeful, and have also been inspirational to others who are dealing with fertility issues of their own.

now, if i can just hop on my soapbox for one quick minute....

some of the commenters on this article piss me the fuck off. clearly they have never struggled with fertility issues personally, nor have they known a friend or loved one's struggle with fertility issues. the suggestion to "just adopt a baby" or "get over your need to have a genetically related child" or "there are millions of orphans available, why not just pick one of them" or "i'm childfree by choice and so should you" are so maddening. to those people, i want to shout a loud and heartfelt FUCK YOU. i know i am getting rankled because i know kerry and jeff personally and i know that their desire to have children was not just an "obsession" with getting pregnant. i know that the emotional turmoil for them was monumentally more troubling than the financial turmoil. and the pro-adoption view point?! that's all well and good, certainly there are plenty of children out there who need loving homes. i believe adoption is a beautiful way to create a family, but to say, "wouldn't it be easier to adopt?" is just such a naive, ignorant, dickheaded comment. it's not like adoptive couples, those with and without fertility issues, can just go to the store and grab a baby off the shelf like you would a gallon of milk or a loaf of bread. it's not like someone can just say, "hmm, those naysayers are right. why don't we just go and get ourselves a child" and POOF! instant baby. it's not that easy. my brother and his wife adopted a beautiful boy from korea after dealing with their own fertility issues. they had to pay just as much money, take just as much time, and jump through far more hurdles and cut more red tape than anyone undergoing fertility treatments. it's not a simple solution, and it's not the solution for all couples. there is nothing wrong with someone making the choice to have their own biological child, if that's the journey they choose to pursue.

arrrrggggghhhh.

i must stop now before my blood pressure sky rockets. i can only tolerate so much stupidity and ignorance before becoming enraged.

i don't need to read the comments to know that kerry and jeff are amazing people with awesome little babies. i am so happy for them and the spotlight being shone on their story today. i'm proud to say "i knew you way back when."

for sale: two-year old child, cute but cranky

motherhood is hard.

motherhood is infinitely harder when your child is incredibly willful (and bordering on bratty some days)

motherhood is damn near impossible when your willful child decides to give up napping.

this past week has been tough. i think my daughter has napped once, maybe twice, in that entire period, whereas prior to this week she would nap for a good two hours every afternoon. that two hour stretch was my time to catch up on blogs, shower, clean the house, watch tv, eat lunch, or just enjoy the silence. now that time has been stolen from me by a snotty, bratty, stubborn, whiny, over-tired child. and i'm not thrilled.

i've continued to put her in her crib at nap time everyday but she refuses to nap. she chatters to herself until her chatters turn to aggravated screams. she demands books, she throws her puppy and blankie overboard and then cries, "puppy FELLLLLLL, blankie FELLLLLLLL, HELLLLLLPPPPPP!" in the most pitiful (albeit loud) voice a two-year old can muster.

today, after an hour of her squawking, i went into her room and pulled her mattress from the crib, set it on the ground with her pillow and blanket, put a gate across the door so she couldn't escape, and i gave her a choice (thank you, love and logic). she could either nap or play quietly in her room. "that is your choice," i said, "but it's nap time, so you have to rest and be quiet."

was she quiet? oh, hell no. she proceeded to pull every article of clothing out of her dresser. she pulled every single book out of the book box and threw them about the room. she pulled the nightlight out of the wall and broke off the cover. and then she exclaimed, "mama. i'm in the box!" hmmm, that doesn't sound good to me. i run to her room to find her standing inside her dresser drawer, attempting to climb to the top. of a dresser that is (shamefully) not leashed to the wall in a childproof manner. with visions of a squashed child running through my head, i lift her out of the drawer and decide that "nap time" for today is a big fat failure.

so now she's watching Noggin (hey, it's preschool on tv, right?) while i self-medicate with homemade cinnamon rolls, counting down the minutes until bedtime.

it's frustrating. of course, this whole thing makes me feel like a suckass mom. i feel like such a wimp that her non-nap days make me want to cry. i feel like a bitch for telling my daughter that we are not friends today after she zapped my absolute last nerve. i feel like i've done a terrible job as a mom, because a "good" child would never throw fits the way my kiddo does. i really hope this is just a phase.

i be kicking the new k-nowledge

my friend angelika hit it spot on when she said, "i swear that two-year olds are like cats - they are freakishly strong and grow extra limbs when angered." i shamefully admit that my daughter fits this description all too well. being two, she is particularly fond of "NOOOOO" and "THAT'S MIIINNE!" and "I WAAANNNT IT!", and she has become particularly adept at using her little slap-happy hands to manipulate me into doing things her way. and, hey, guess what? i'm a pushover.

i'm pretty good at enforcing discipline (ed. note: maybe i'm not really enforcing discipline, but just distracting her from her tantrum) when we're at home, but the public temper tantrums have become a bit harder to manage. she is certainly not an unholy terror (believe me, i've known some terrors) but she is impolite enough that i realize we need a bit of a behavioral intervention before she escalates to full on terror mode.

i listened to a "love and logic" cd tonight to brush up on my skills and plot a new course of action. it's funny because i used to work as a child and family therapist, working with the aforementioned terror tykes. i would recommend and teach (!) "love and logic" and "1-2-3 magic" to the parents i worked with. i'm discovering that it is a completely different ball game now that i am the parent and the tyke in question is my own sweet baby angel.

some of the little nuggets of information that resonated with me tonight were:

• families with out-of-control toddlers often have out-of-control dogs as well. yup. guilty as charged. maybe we also need to enroll in doggie obedience courses.
• parents who are mental health professionals often raise wacky children because they've read all the psychobabble self-help books. ummm, yes? crap.
• parents often try to justify their child's behavior by saying, "oh, it's because she is only 2," or, "this is just a phase." yes, and yes.
• parents who try to get on their child's level and try to reason with their toddler are basically shooting themselves in the foot, setting up a scenario in which their toddler becomes a drug-addicted teen and an imprisoned adult later in life. shit! really? i'm screwed. we're not saving for college, we're saving bail money.

clearly that is not the entire message of "love and logic" parenting; there are a lot of great bits of advice in there, and i think we're already doing some of them, actually. i know we just need to be more consistent, and we (meaning my husband and myself) really need to get on the same page in regards to consistent and effective discipline. (husband, this is an invitation for you to write a guest post about your view on discipline, btw)

we are still doing the star chart that i posted about a few weeks ago, rewarding good behavior with stars and jellybeans, and it has definitely clicked with her. she is totally stoked whenever she earns a star, and she understands that she needs to earn three stars to be rewarded with a jellybean. it's just not doing enough to make the fundamental behavioral changes that we'd like so we can feel less like we're living with a pissed-off, sharp-taloned cat, and more like we're living with a sweet, delightful, hilarious, cute, amazing toddler.

so, tomorrow marks Day One of "love and logic" parenting. i foresee a lot of uhhh-ohhhing in my future. i hope i'm more successful with this than i was at training our dog. as far as i can tell the kiddo is smarter than the dog, so i'm hoping that bodes well for a better outcome.

cheap thrills

there is nothing better than a tea party with my favorite hostess with the mostess.

it was only after taking this picture that i realized my daughter is a walking cliché of suburban liberal hippie parenting: dirty faced and barefoot, wearing a gay pride t-shirt while her cloth diapers dry in the sunshine, playing with toys crafted of recycled milk jugs. awesome.

the daily DIY

i was inspired by a cool piece of art i found online here, but because i'm cheap and fancy myself to be a crafty little devil i tried to make it myself.

the original...

and my copy...

it's hanging on my living room wall, and looks kind of bare....maybe it needs a little something to snazz it up a bit. or maybe not. i kind of like the simplicity of it.

the online site is selling it for 170 pounds, which at the current exchange rate is about 282 dollars. (thank you, google). i spent about $15 to make my own version. i bought two planks of precut birch plywood at hobby lobby. i'm sure i could have bought cheaper wood at home depot, but that would have required measuring and cutting, this was a much simpler alternative and it guaranteed me that the two pieces would be the same size. i'm not certain that i would have gotten that same guarantee had my husband been manning the table saw. a bit of black spray paint, some letter stencils (lowercase, natch, as i am obviously averse to capitalization), gold acrylic paint, and a few eye hooks. done. not too bad, if i do say so myself.

coming up...DIY curtain panels for my daughter's room, modeled after pottery barn kids. but cheaper. they're done and they're cute, and they were a fraction of the cost. stay tuned!

she ain't pretty, but she's all mine

if there were a cash for clunkers program for sewing machines this little gem would be worth its weight in gold. i know a lot of the new models out there are super cool, full of whizbang awesome features that embroider monograms with a push of a button, automatically sew button holes, and probably make wicked capuccino...this is certainly not one of those. the new machines are thoroughbreds, the race horses of the sewing world. this old gal is the workhorse, the old nag. sure, she's been around the farm a few times but she has a lot of life left in her yet before the glue factory comes calling.

the users manual that came with her says that she was purchased at the sears & roebuck in oakland, ca in december of 1977. for those of you playing along at home, that means that this beauty is as old as i am. she was given to me by a friend who inherited it her from the mother of another friend who was giving away all her worldly possessions before a move to thailand, or maybe indonesia, or somewhere else really far away, thus prohibiting the relocation of an 80 pound sewing machine.

she might not be pretty, but she works like a champ. she's actually very similar to the machine i learned to sew on when i was a girl; my mom's old singer that she got for her high school graduation in 1964. incidentally, my mom still has that sewing machine and it still works just fine. a few months ago i opened up the outer case to oil the inner workings. this gal is solid! all metal, nary a piece of made in china plastic to be found. i imagine that with the proper care, i will be teaching my daughter to sew on this same machine in a few years and it will still work just perfectly. maybe someday i'll invest in one of those newfangled fancy thingamajigs with the whatnots and the buttons, that is, if i ever learn to sew more than just a simple straight line.

the weekend kitchen

banana bread, because i have 18 billion blackened bananas in the freezer

strawberry blueberry cake, because happy hour with friends is better with dessert

and tonight i made tomato-mozzarella bruschetta and a salad with strawberries, goat cheese, and pecans. but i was too busy drinking wine to take a picture.

cheap thrills

my daughter, my dog, and i ran in the sprinklers at the park today until we were soaked to the bone. our shrieking peals of laughter, hers and my own, were enough to draw attention from other park-goers, and probably made them question my sensibility. their curious stares made me question their vivacity.

missing: one perfectly intact sense of sanity

we've been on a bit of an organizing spree around here - purging junk, cleaning out closets, putting stuff into storage. my husband was taking large bins of too-small baby clothes out to the garage to store in the attic space above the rafters. when he got to the bin containing maternity clothes, i told him to stop. "i'll store that bin inside somewhere, in case we need it sooner rather than later." the Me of about three months ago - the Me that was feeling certain that we were going to be the one-and-done kind of procreaters - just shrieked "do you KNOW what you just said?!"and then promptly she lay down and died.

in recent months i have transformed my thoughts on having a second child from no way, no how! you must be crazy to want another child, to okay, let's just see what happens. if we get pregnant, great. if not, no big deal, to the point i'm at now which is more like, "honey, you know i'm no biologist but i think i'm ovulating (did you know there's an app for that?) so get on over here and hop on this." clearly, i win high marks in the romance department, probably not so much in the tact department. i am clearly failing in the sanity department, but i am really excited, actually, to see where this journey takes us. hopefully we have an easy road to conception, an easy pregnancy, and an easy, healthy baby who sleeps 10 hours a night and takes two 3-hour naps a day, rarely fusses, eats like a champ, and is potty trained upon exiting the womb.

fingers crossed that this is just a phase

i'm a firm believer in using positive reinforcement to influence a positive change in behavior. i don't believe in spanking, yelling, or other sort of punitive physical or emotional punishment, though after the shit my kid has been pulling lately i can totally understand how some parents end up at that place.

we've been using timeout with her and it works to stop the negative behavior in the moment, but i want to teach her make good behavior choices; to set herself up for success by earning rewards for good behavior instead of receiving punishments for bad behavior. besides, timeout is hard on all of us when out in public, which is where most of her outbursts are occurring these days.

after a rough couple weeks, culminating in a public tantrum to end all tantrums, i've decided to implement a simple reward system for the kiddo. i've created zillions of star charts for kids in my past life as a child & family therapist. typically, with the population i worked with most frequently, our target behaviors were more along the lines of "don't set the cat on fire" and "no threatening my classmates." our target behaviors will be much simpler, more age appropriate, and specific to the behaviors we're struggling with as parents of a willful toddler.

it will look something like this:

the language we're using (use nice hands, make good choices etc.) is very familiar to her as we've been using those words with her since before she could understand what they meant. now she can fully understand what we're asking of her but her willful two-year old personality and lack of impulse control to reign in her behavior has left us looking for a more workable solution. the bruise on my left cheekbone (from a hurled nalgene sippy bottle) and the scratches on my neck (from fingernails on definitively not nice hands) are proof that our discipline strategy needs a boost. she's wearing me out and she's still 12 days from her 2nd birthday. how much more terrible can The Twos get? again, please don't answer that question.

so, wish us luck. i'll keep you posted.

so this is what crow tastes like

remember that time (was it only yesterday?) when i was crowing about how awesome i am at motherhood? well, BWAHAHAHAAA and HAAA HAAA. today totally screwed that whole notion.

i decided at 10:45 that i should go to the gym for an 11:45 class. the gym is half an hour away, so rush rush rush. YESSSSSSSS! i will work out! i will be physical! this will energize me to tackle the rest of the day! i drove to the gym and hit every single red light on the way. stressssssssss! and then the parking lot was full. suckkkkkkkkk! and then the daycare was packed. oh nooooooooooo! and the class was at capacity. dammmmmmmmnnnn! so i left. and drove another half hour through midday traffic (::stabs self and other drivers in fit of rage::) to take my daughter to the park instead.

but wait....it gets better. we're about a minute from the park and i hear my kiddo say "ewwww, yuck! sticky!" from the back seat. "hmmm," i think. "i wonder what she is talking about." and then BLAMMO.

"HOLY CRAP. IS THAT VOMIT?!"

note to parents: blueberries and yogurt do not smell good when they are regurgitated. especially after three hours of digestion. and most definitely not on a 90-degree day.

holy, lord. and guess what? of course i don't have any extra weather-appropriate clothes in the car. here, kid, put on this fleece jacket and sweatpants. mama needs to run to target to buy you some non-puke stained clothes.

of course, since this is a gold medal sort of day, her lovies puppy and blankie were soaked in purple blueberry retch so they had to be laundered before she could sleep, delaying nap time by a good two hours, in which my sweet-hearted toddler became a raging mess of toddler-tude, and i may or may not have snapped at her to "just stop hitting me for the love of god i am going to sell you to the gypsies if you don't cut it the fuck out!" certainly not my crowning moment as a mom. but you can sympathize, right? right?!!

and now i may or may not be buzzing on half a bottle of sauvingnon blanc and a delicious vodka limeade cocktail, and am most definitely be praying that tomorrow is a better day.

culinary challenge #1: homemade wheat bread

i've been wanting to bake our own bread for some time now. i've mastered cinnamon rolls and pizza dough (two other yeast breads) i figured that it couldn't be too hard to make regular whole wheat bread from scratch. and guess what.....total success! i used the recipe for quick rising white bread from the joy of cooking, and made their suggested modifications to make a tasty wheat bread.

from start to finish it was a long process because there are two periods of rising time (of an hour to an hour-and-a-half) needed. the actual hands-on prep time is quick and easy, and kneading the large mass of dough is a great work out for your arms, upper back, and abs. makes up for the fact that this mama was too tired to hit the treadmill today after her daughter's early wake up scream this morning.

the ingredients are simple and few: active dry yeast, water, flour, melted butter, salt, sugar. i think that was is. and the actual preparation is quite basic. the waiting really is the hardest part, if you're like me and addicted to baked goods. fresh bread hot out of the oven is one of my weaknesses, so the rising time was dreadful, and the baking time even more torturous still as i could smell the warm, comforting scent of bread wafting throughout the house. and then the cooling and waiting. GAH! deathly! i see mah bread, i wants to eat mah bread. gimme mah bread!

then.....ooooHHHOoooo. totally worth the wait. spread with a little butter and some fresh local star thistle honey i bought at the farmer's market last weekend. to! die! for! i'm giving myself a pat on the back for kicking ass in the inagural bread baking challenge, and giving myself a pat on the tummy to soothe the bloated belly that resulted from eating a few slices...maybe many few slices. maybe almost a loaf. shhhhh. i wouldn't want it to get stale, right?

because cereal for dinner just sucks

my husband would tell you that i am a great cook. fortunately for me, he is a man of simple tastes. seriously, you can throw a bunch of ingredients in a dish, add cheese and call it a casserole and he's a happy camper. he's easy to please which is just my style, but it doesn't give me a ton of motivation to get creative in the kitchen. our meal preparation lately is probably best classified as "scavenging", but this is something i'm hoping to improve. after all, what sort of domestic goddess allows her husband to eat cold cereal for dinner three nights in a row? (that was a hypothetical question. please, no finger pointing.) so, in an attempt to get this kitchen cooking again i'm going to tackle some new recipes, take a stab at menu planning, and challenge myself to make actual meals for my family. not only will this give me a chance to improve my skills in the kitchen, it will be better for our health, and way better for our wallets. if only i can find someone to do all the dishes after dinner....

i may not have a 401k, but i get paid in hugs

once upon a time i had a "real" job. it was a "real" job that required about seven years of higher education but it was a job i was eager to abandon in order to become a mom. although i spent four years in college and another three in graduate school, i always knew that motherhood was my true calling. i'm sure if you asked anyone in my old profession they would tell you that i was good at my job, but i never felt that way. my heart just wasn't in it and i never felt confident in my abilities. i will be the first to tell you that i am a kickass mom, however. i'm not being boastful - well, maybe i am, just a little bit, but shouldn't we all toot our own horns once in a while? - i just love feeling totally confident in my role as a mother. certainly, like all mothers, i have those days that feel like absolute failures, but most of the time i feel like i am doing a fantastic job. i will likely always have laundry piled to the rafters, 18 zillion items on my to-do list, and toys strewn about every room in the house, but i'm learning to be okay with that. it's part of the deal. also, my current boss is way cooler than any other boss i had in the working world...even if she is only 37 inches tall.

adventures in homemaking

another blog? don't mind if i do. join me as i attempt to chronicle my life as a stay-at-home-mom with a never ending list chores, crafts, renovations, recipes, and general to-do's. motherhood isn't the easiest job in the world but it's way better than any other job i've ever had. i'm just another mom trying to do the best that i can, stumbling at times and soaring at others.