Happy in the in Between

Terrific at Two

2012-02-02T20:56:00.001-05:00

I feel like since I came out of the woodwork to post about the difficulties about Molly at age 2 last week, I owe it to her to likewise post about the awesome parts of Molly at two. Because the truth is that the good parts are so much more frequent and lovely than the frustrating parts, even if the hard parts seem to linger longer.

:::

I have particularly loved how she has really taken to singing lately. She's always been a fan of singing, but she mostly let us do it. She would request certain songs and then let us sing them. Sometimes she would help, such as by doing the hand motions for "Wheels on the Bus" or supplying her animal of choice for "Old MacDonald," but mostly it was us doing the actual singing.

But then one day while she was under the weather at the beginning of January, I sat rocking her in her room. Suddenly I realized that she was sort of mumbling. When I leaned down and listened closer, I realized that she was singing "Amazing Grace," which is the song I sing to her every night. She knew every lovely little word and sang it so sweetly.

It had never occurred to me that Molly was taking in the words that I sang to her, and I almost melted hearing her sing it.

Now she will sing all kinds of songs all throughout the day, boisterously and enthusiastically. You've never heard a sweeter "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star."

:::

Her imagination is just exploding. We have tea parties all the time. She climbs into our bed at least once a day and pretends to be asleep (loud snores and all). We pretended to be racing cars with the Wii remotes this morning.

We got her a dress-up trunk for her birthday, and after 6 weeks of ignoring it, she has finally decided it's the coolest thing ever. One day she made me wear a cowboy hat while I drove her to daycare. She accessorized with a princess wand and reindeer antlers.

She particularly loves her doctor outfit and has taken to giving me periodic shots. Unfortunately she bizarrely thinks shots go in the mouth. Awkward.

:::

And this:

Yup. Two is pretty awesome.

Welcome to Two

2012-01-27T10:52:00.001-05:00

As Molly's second birthday approached, numerous parents told me how surprisingly easy the twos were. It's a myth! they said. It's three you have to worry about! And right around when she turned two (a month and three days ago), they were right. She was absolutely delightful in December. Fun and inquisitive and shockingly smart.

Then, just a week after her birthday, January hit. Everyone in the family took turns being sick and, just as we all got well again, Molly chose to embody the definition of the Terrible Twos.

Molly has always been a strong-willed, stubborn child. David and I are both stubborn in our own ways, so this was not terribly surprising. Mostly she didn't like being told no and would often protest, loudly, if she wasn't given what she wanted. (Surprisingly, being that she's such a little thing, the vast majority of these protests revolved around food.) But we could almost always redirect her or distract her. And these tantrums only happened about every other week, so it didn't seem like an especially big deal. She's just testing her limits, we reassured ourselves.

In the past couple of weeks, though, these tantrums have become a daily occurrence. And there is no more bargaining, negotiating, or redirecting. She wants what she wants, when she wants it, and she will scream and cry for - I kid you not - thirty minutes if her demands are not met. (Luckily she hasn't started taking hostages yet.)

Tuesday morning, for instance, she woke up and, as soon as we walked into the kitchen, she demanded a cookie. We had made cookies the previous week and, though she had only had maybe two since then, she knew that there were cookies in the cookie jar and insisted on having one. This had happened a few times over the weekend, so she knew that there was little to no chance that she was getting one, especially at seven o'clock in the morning. So I said no and offered her some more traditional breakfast fare. Molly decided to throw down the gauntlet and commenced with the screaming and crying protests.

The thing with Molly's tantrums, though, is that it starts as one issue but quickly escalates into others. She doesn't get a cookie, so she demands to go outside, but refuses to put on shoes to do so. Then when she can't go outside she wants to jump on the bed. Or play with knives. You know, the usual. So there is no easy answer because she so quickly moves on to something else to be mad about. And it's impossible to make her do something. She wiggles and squirms and only gets madder.

Tuesday morning was awful. The worst yet. I eventually got her settled on some banana bread (which she has been loving lately), got her dressed and into the car. Not five minutes down the road, though, she decided that she wanted cheese crackers instead. (Also not a breakfast food.) Of course there were no cheese crackers in the car even if I did want her to eat them for breakfast, so she began to scream and cry. Then she threw her banana bread in protest. (Throwing things - not at people, just away from herself - is another one of her tricks.) Then she was mad because she wanted cheese crackers and her banana bread, which had disappeared into thin air and was nowhere to be found, especially not while I was driving.

That was the longest car ride of her life (maybe mine). It was awful and I was nearly in tears when I dropped her off at daycare.

The problem with these tantrums is that, though I can handle them individually, the increased volume of them has begun to wear me down.

Which is why this morning, when she got upset because I wouldn't open a box of taco shells (not kidding here) for breakfast, I immediately felt dejected. This would be another Tuesday and just the thought of that had me stressed in anticipation. Her anger over the tacos turned into demands to go outside, which intensified when I tried to get her dressed only to have her pull her shirt back on.

So I sat there, right beside her on the couch, as she reached her little hand towards the backyard. I didn't say anything or touch her (since she had been swatting my hands away). Slowly, very slowly, but surely her crying slowed down and, though still whimpering, she became calm(er).

Potter hadn't had his breakfast yet, so I asked if she'd like to get it for him. (She loves being a helper and being given tasks. It's usually an excellent distraction, but not one she'll give into in the midst of her meltdowns.) She hesitantly agreed, only to smile hugely when I handed her the cup full of dog food. She poured it into Potter's bowl and asked to get him some water. I let her fill up the cup, walk it to his bowl, and pour it in. She, the girl who was auditioning for The Exorcist two minutes prior, beamed with pride.

We settled on some cereal for breakfast and I fixed her hair while she ate. She told me a story about horses and I obligingly neighed for her.

:::

Because of the unpredicatableness of Molly's tantrums, David and I have had a hard time discovering what is the best course of action. Being equally stubborn, I tend to be as adamant that she can't have something as she is that she must have it. And while withholding it is generally a sound decision, I sometimes worry that I'm doing so out of "principle" rather than because it is the best thing for this situation.

I worry that giving in to her demands sets a problematic precedence. And I worry that not giving into her demands causes equal unknown damage.

This morning I stopped worrying about that. I just let her work it out herself. It took a long time, probably ten minutes altogether. And I often feel like I shouldn't let her do that because people with "real" jobs wouldn't have that luxury and, what if she did this when we needed to go somewhere? But the reality is that, though it's inconvenient for it to take an hour for us to get out of the house in the morning, I have the kind of flexibility in my job that makes that possible. And clearly, at least for right now, that's what works for Molly. It allows me not to give in to her every demand without having to force her to get over whatever she's feeling.

I don't know if that's the right thing. I'm sure it won't always work. And I think that's the hardest part of parenting, not knowing the long-term effects of your actions.

But I do know that Molly was in a wonderful mood when I dropped her off at daycare, giving me tight squeezes and rubbing noses and proclaiming her love for me. And right now, that happiness is worth the ten minutes when I have it to give.

But please let the people who said three was worse be wrong.

Yearly Recap: 2011

2011-12-31T12:12:00.004-05:00

I apparently skipped this in 2010, but I like the idea of closing out each year with Sundry's yearly recap. (Here's my 2009). It's nice way to look back and consider the past briefly before focusing again on the future. So here she goes:

1. What did you do in 2011 that you'd never done before?

Bought a house. Made homemade cinnamon rolls. Threw a birthday party for Molly and her friends. Made Molly a Halloween costume. All kinds of home decorating. Became more comfortable with my camera and, to a lesser extent, Photoshop. Watched my mom get remarried. Was a bridesmaid in my sister-in-law's wedding.

I really like that I can look back and see both major and minor events in this year. That's just how I like it.

2. Did you keep your new year's resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

This is what I wrote last year:

So my goal for 2011 is to reclaim my badassery. The cool thing about this is that, in addition to finding the me I lost in the past year, badassery will unquestionably make me a better mother (and wife - though that's a very different post).

And this:

There's no way to know when I've achieved my goal of reclaiming my badassery, so it would be easy to give up on it and lose sight of it. To avoid being overwhelmed by the enormity of my grand resolution, I'm going to be working on a couple of other things as well:

Exercise 3 times a week.
Stop drinking soda.

I actually feel pretty good about the first goal. I don't know if I'd consider myself a "badass" now, but I do feel more like myself and that I have - generally - done a fairly good job of taking care of myself in addition to others.

The other two? Exercise and quitting soda? Laughably no. But I'm surprisingly okay with this.

As for next year, I don't think I'll make any specific resolutions. I do plan to have my own One Little Word again. More on that later.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?

Nope. Not really.

4. Did anyone close to you die?

Unfortunately, yes. Both David's grandmother and Pat, my friend and teacher, passed away. I miss them both.

5. What countries did you visit?

Only those in my mind.

6. What would you like to have in 2012 that you lacked in 2011?

More balance. More quality time with family. More professional progress.

7. What dates from 2011 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?

June 18, my mom's wedding day. July 9, my sister-in-law Anna's wedding day. July 15, when we closed on our house. December 3, Molly's birthday party.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year? 

There are two. One is buying our house, which is something we've been looking forward to for so long. I'm glad that we waited until we could afford a house we really love, and I'm glad that we finally live here. It's so perfect for us.

Secondly, I made some major professional progress towards the end of the year that was very validating. I'm looking forward to building on that next year.

9. What was your biggest ~~failure~~ shortcoming?

Despite the pride I mentioned in my professional progress above, my biggest failure (or let's call it shortcoming; I like that better) is still the fact that I didn't get as much done professionally as I would have liked to. Still, it's good to end the year on a strong note.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?

Other than some minor colds, I've been pretty healthy. The end of the year has brought a series of unfortunate events for Molly, including her first chest x-ray. Though none ended up being majorly serious, I didn't enjoy any of it at all.

11. What was the best thing you bought?

My house (as if you hadn't guessed by now) as well as my iPhone 4s. Mock if you may, but I so love having a smartphone, and this one is so much better than my last one. Yesterday when I was sitting at the doctor's office with Molly while she received her first breathing treatment from a nebulizer, it was such a relief to be able to let her watch Backyardigans on my phone to calm her down. Totally worth the money.

12. Where did most of your money go?

Rent/mortgage, daycare, home improvements, travel

13. What did you get really excited about?

The summer of weddings, Molly's 2nd birthday party, our house, family visiting our house

14. What song will always remind you of 2011?

I'm never very good at this part. It's probably a tie between Florence and the Machine's "Dog Days are Over":

and the cast of Glee's "Deck the Rooftop," because Molly loved it so much:

15. Compared to this time last year, are you:

- happier or sadder? happier for sure, though I was plenty happy last year
- thinner or fatter? about the same probably
- richer or poorer? I think richer. Particularly if you count escrow.

16. What do you wish you done more of?

Taken more "small" excursions with my family. Quick trips to Atlanta. Even to close parks. Picnics. Gone to the beach. (I don't think we went one time this year, which is a crime.) Going to local sporting events. Being silly.

17. What do you wish you'd done less of?

Worrying. Procrastinating. Planning (as opposed to doing).

18. How did you spend Christmas?

At our house. To begin with, just the three of us. But my mom and her husband arrived in time for Christmas dinner, and their visit was followed by one by David's parents. A lovely Christmas week.

19. What was your favorite TV program?

Community, Bones, The Closer, Modern Family

20. What were your favorite books of the year?

Joshua Ferris' The Unnamed, Amy Waldman's The Submission, Marilynne Robinson's Home, Lev Grossman's The Magicians and The Magician King, Tina Fey's Bossypants, Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games series.

This was clearly a very good year for books. And there are so many others that I just haven't gotten around to reading.

21. What was your favorite music from this year?

Grace Potter & the Nocturnals, The Black Keys, Arcade Fire, Adele

22. What were your favorite films of the year?

I didn't see that many, really. Crazy, Stupid, Love was sweet. The Muppets was a sentimental favorite. Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows was fun. As was The Help. Midnight in Paris was beautiful. Bridesmaids made me (and everyone else) laugh.

23. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?

I turned 29 in 2011, and I spent the day with my husband and my daughter, which was perfect.

24. What one thing would have made your year immensely more satisfying?

This is becoming an old refrain, but I continue to struggle with finding a work/life balance. I want to be 100% with everything, and I just have too much going to do that. It causes me a lot of stress, which causes my family a lot of stress. I do think it's getting better, but it's still a very long way from balanced.

25. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2011?

If it fits, wear it.

26. What kept you sane?

David, as always, and Molly (though, of course, she contributed to the insanity as well). Good books. Good TV. The light at the end of the (PhD) tunnel.

27. Tell us a valuable life lesson your learned in 2011.

Never put your present life on hold for what you hope will be your future life. (See here.)

Dress-up and Pretend Party: Part Two

2011-12-06T08:00:00.000-05:00

With all of the set-up out of the way, it was time for the actual party.

Personalized treat bags and a flag banner lined the mantle:

Chalkboards were party-fied:

[The balloons were much cuter before Molly smeared them. But I had redone them three times and she did the same thing every time, so I called it good enough.]

The food and drinks were laid out:

[inspiration here]

Decorations and party hats were gathered:

[Prop inspiration here, here, and here.]

I wanted the party to have lots of different activities for two-year-olds to do, so that they could spread out and be entertained without walking on top of one another. So, using the "dress-up and pretend" theme, I set up various "stations."

This sign hung above Molly's dress-up trunk, and each station had a matching sign.

Pretend to be an architect and build a tower.

Pretend to be English Royalty and have a spot of tea.

[Train track inspiration here.]

Pretend to be a conductor and drive the train.

Pretend to be a fashion designer and draw a new outfit.

Pretend to be an archaeologist and dig for dinosaurs.

Not pictured: pretend to be a dancer and shake it, and pretend to be a baker and decorate cookies.

Happily, the idea of the stations worked out perfectly. The kids could spread out, going wherever they wanted to, and it never felt too claustrophobic. The only stations that didn't get much action were the dancing station and the cookie station, which made me a little sad. I made sugar cookies and homemade icing in various colors in advance. I set those out with some sprinkles and the kids could decorate them any way they wanted to. Only one little girl, who was a bit older, did that, so it may have just been a bit too old for the rest of the kids. I'm going to keep it in mind for future parties.

All-in-all, the party went marvelously. Everyone had a great time, Molly included. More than once during the preparations I was worried that I was putting too much effort into a two-year-old's birthday party, but as soon as the party started, all of those thoughts disappeared. Seeing Molly and her friends so enjoy themselves made it all worth it. Every bit of it.

And because this is my blog, some more gratuitous pictures:

Itai has a tea party.

Molly and her party hat. I had no expectations of anyone wearing these, but they were cute and I decided I could use them for a future party. But Molly demanded one as soon as she saw it and left it on for almost the entire party. Adorable.

Isaac and Avery get in on the tea party fun.

Happy birthday, Molly! She did not enjoy people singing to her, but she loved the cupcake. Unlike last year, though, she ate it quite daintily, picking at it one sprinkle at a time.

Renee and I get in on the dress-up fun.

Celebrating two years as a family of three.

And that was Molly's 2nd birthday party. So much fun. I know she probably won't remember it, but I will. And I can't wait to tell her all about it.

By the way, here's my Pinterest board for this party. The ideas linked here as well as some I didn't use are there. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Dress-up and Pretend Party: Part One

2011-12-05T08:00:00.000-05:00

I started planning Molly's birthday party this summer. There's just so much going on around her birthday - being that it's Christmas Eve - that I find that if I don't work on it little by little, I will be terribly overwhelmed when it actually arrives. [Or at least that was the case last year, which is the only experience I have had until now.] I knew that we would have her party substantially early - it ended up being three weeks early - so that fewer people would be gone due to traveling. But aside from that, I had a few goals for the party:

1) Have it at our house. (Just because we can.)
2) Find a a way to ensure that the kids (and parents) wouldn't be too cramped in our house.
3) Make the party developmentally and age-appropriate.
4) Make it fun.
5) Avoid spending too much money and try to make a lot of things myself.

With those goals in mind, I decided to throw a Dress-up and Pretend Party. The basis of the idea was that David and I would get Molly a dress-up trunk and a few items for it for her birthday. The original plan was to then ask guests to bring an item to contribute to her dress-up collection. Though I ended up scrapping that idea (I didn't like the idea of telling people what to buy, or to buy anything at all), but I stuck with the dress-up theme.

When the only invitations I could find were more about tea parties than imagination, my (new!) brother-in-law was kind enough to whip up some adorable invites, with very little input from me other than that I didn't want them to be too "girly."

With the invitations in hand, it was time to work on the rest of the party. For three or four months before the party, I was always on the look out for inexpensive items to add to Molly's dress-up trunk. I added items from the dollar bin at Target, a local consignment sale, and Halloween costumes that were deeply discounted on November 1. I also used the superhero cape Molly wore for Halloween. Then I found an adorable and cheap trunk on Craigslist, which I'm just realizing I don't have a picture of. Luckily, I still plan to paint it, so I'll show it to you when I get around to that.

With the dress-up trunk firmly in hand, I went to work on the treat bags. I didn't want to spend a lot, but I wanted to stick to the dress-up/pretend theme. That's when I went back to the superhero costume idea. I didn't have the time (or money) to make one like Molly's for everybody (we invited 16 kids - luckily only 8 came; it was a perfect number), but I remembered an easier cape I saw on Pinterest.

The Southern Institute made this easy and cute cape out of used t-shirts:

Then Naturally Chic Mama used the same kind of cape (though, actually, she was much more precise with hers) and added Superman letters to it:

I was very imprecise with these. I didn't worry about the sides being even or the bottom being straight. I knew the two-year-old recipients wouldn't notice, so I tried not to, too. I combined the cape with a few other things I picked up at the dollar bins of Party City and Michael's, to make a Dress-up Kit:

The treat bags are just simple craft bags from Michael's with a Post-It label I made adhered to it. The label also allowed me to leave a note to the parents, letting them know that they can/should trim the capes so that they're not too long for their kiddo. I didn't know how long each cape should be, so I just left them long, knowing the parents could trim them.

Oh, and boys got dinosaur finger puppets while girls got woven farm animal puppets, mostly because the dinosaurs were cheaper. Both were cute, though.

I also took this party as an opportunity to start traditions for Molly's future parties. One way I did that was by making a birthday wreath, seen here on Pinterest.

There's a good chance that, before next year, I will redo this in order to wrap the wreath with some simple white ribbon before pinning the balloons to it. Though it looks great from the front, you can see the back of the straw wreath through the other side of the door's window. It's not a big deal, but I'm a bit anal, so it'll probably get fixed.

I love this balloon wreath because, in the coming years, Molly will come to anticipate its arrival, knowing it means her birthday (or party, as the case may be). I paired it with a hastily-scrawled welcome note on a $2 chalkboard sign I got at Michael's.

Last but not least I made two flag banners. Because Molly's party was more about the theme than any specific colors, I used a general rainbow theme, with red as the focus. Basically, if it was striped with red in it, it was good to go.

Like the capes, I was willing to be sloppy with these. I got a yard of the fabric for $2 at Jo-Ann's and had more than enough. Basically, I just cut out a bunch of triangles, eyeballing the first one and then using it as a template for the rest. I then sewed two triangles together, right-sides facing, leaving the top open. I trimmed the edges, turned them right-side out, and ironed them flat. I then used red bias tape (hem tape would work even better, but I couldn't find it in this color), ironed flat and then ironed again, this time doubling it over. I basically just inserted the triangle "into" the bias tape, pinned it down, and then sewed a straight line down the bias tape. Super simple.

Like the wreath, I have plans to use these again and again. I love that they are measured to fit specific places in our house. It's thing like this that make me appreciate even more that this is our house.

I feel like this is already overly-wordy and I have a lot more to say, so I'm going to wrap up for now. Tomorrow I'll show you what everything looked like and how the party "worked." Spoiler alert: I was overwhelmingly pleased with it.

(No Longer) Blank Wall

2011-11-22T11:02:00.001-05:00

I know you're disappointed that I haven't been sharing house updates recently. I can sense your pain. But the truth is, after two months of full-on new home fervor, I kind of...got sick of it. I was tired of putting my house together and ready to just start living in my home. So that's what I did.

Then, a couple of weeks ago, my inspiration was renewed. And, shock of all shocks, I actually decided to make some of the things I had pinned on Pinterest. [By the way, if you're interested, find my Pinterest boards here.]

The first problem I tackled was this wall:

This is the wall of our living room that boarders the hallway that leads to the rest of the house. But because we split our living room in half with our loveseat placement, it has always felt a bit awkward. Eventually I'd like to put a hutch there (for added kitchen storage), but that's not in the budget right now. So I needed a temporary solution.

Then I remembered Lizzy Writes' new living room:

image from lizzy writes

I absolutely love the sunburst mirror. And I liked the idea of doing an asymmetrical frame wall with just a few frames, so that it didn't feel so overwhelming.

So I looked for a similar mirror, everywhere. There were some cute ones, but they were all way more than I was willing to pay.

Then I saw this on Pinterest:

image from T, Myself, and I

A DIY Sunburst mirror! Perfect!

I followed Tamara's directions exactly, though I spray-painted mine gold instead of white. About $20 and 80 dowel rods later, I had this:

I love it so much!

Then came the arduous task of hanging it and the rest of the frame wall. Once again I turned to Pinterest, this time for a framing tip, found here. Basically, I just used craft paper, cut out pieces the same size as my frames and mirror, and then used those to arrange the wall.

Then I remembered another tip I'd seen all over the place, to use toothpaste to mark the location the nail would go. Unfortunately, there were two problems with this. For one, all of our toothpaste was clear - doesn't show up well. But the style of the hangers on the back of my frames made it difficult to mark that way. So I improvised:

I used some of Molly's washable paint and a round sponge. I dabbed some of the paint on each hook, then pressed the frame onto the paper. You can see the pink marks in the photo of the paper on the wall. It worked wonderfully!

Once I finally got done positioning everything, I had this:

I absolutely love it. It's eye-catching without being overpowering. It reflects the light from the windows on the other side of the room. And it gives me a good place to show off my adorable daughter!

The only problem is that it forced me to redo my mantle arrangement, which felt too full next to this. But considering I'll Christmasify the mantle in a couple of weeks, it doesn't really matter to me anyway.

I couldn't be happier with the way it turned out. And I'm pretty proud of myself for actually making something I pinned. Wonders will never cease.

Thanksgiving Reading

2011-11-21T19:00:00.001-05:00

Okay, let's be real. Clearly I failed in my efforts to share with you the Halloween books we read, or at least more than the first one. But, in fairness, it turned out that The Runaway Pumpkin was Molly's favorite Halloween book. We mostly just read it over and over. So I guess I just emphatically recommend it?

I also wanted to share with you some Thanksgiving books we love, especially because I found these to be harder to find and more likely to be overly-sentimental or hokey. Clearly, I'm cutting it close, but if you can't get to these this year, maybe you can keep them in mind for next year.

Balloons Over Broadway: The True Story of the Puppeteer of Macy's Parade by Melissa Sweet

This was the book I was most excited (for Molly) to read. It tells the story of how the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade initially came to be and how it was imagined by a man who had started as a puppeteer. It just came out, and I was so excited that I placed a hold for it at my local library even before they ordered it.

The book is beautiful, with vivid colors and charming illustrations.

And the story is fascinating, truly an example of one man's American dream.

Unfortunately it is also very wordy. Even Molly, who loves to read and will generally sit still for any story (at least at bedtime), lost interest.

But I will certainly keep it in mind for next year (or the year after) when Molly will better appreciate everything that won it the Caldecott.

T is for Turkey: A True Thanksgiving Story by Tanya Lee Stone

I expected this to be just a simple, silly alphabet book. (Which, don't get me wrong, was fine with me; Molly knows all of her letters now, so alphabet books are right up our alley.) And it is an alphabet book, but it's not so simple.

It's also a history book. In simple, toddler-friendly words, each letter tells a little bit about the history of Thankgiving.

It also privileges both political and historical correctness (without seeming too preachy).

Now of course Molly can't give you a book report on Thanksgiving. Quite honestly, I'm pretty sure she was in it for the pictures. But I love that it kept her interested without minimizing an important piece of history.

Thank You, Thanksgiving by David Milgrim

Along the lines of simple and sweet, this book focuses on the importance of "Thank you" without much elaboration.

Its drawings are simple but colorful. Molly likes to "find" the thing that the little girl is thankful for on each page.

Molly may not understand why we celebrate Thanksgiving this year. But she does understand "thank you" and the need to say it. Any book that underscores that (in such a pretty way) is a winner in my book.

:::

So those are our Thanksgiving picks. What have you been reading?

The Highs and Lows of a WAHM

2011-11-14T11:08:00.001-05:00

Last week Molly experienced her first ear infection. She had been dealing with a runny nose and cough for about a week, but that's normal fair for Molly when she's teething. She's getting her canine teeth in and, in addition to taking forever, they're causing far more pain for her than she's had before. So the runny nose, cough, and slight grumpiness had been the norm around here for a while. That's why, when she woke up fussy last Tuesday morning, I brushed it off as teething. She had a tiny fever (99.5), but, again, I assumed that was teething related.

Still, just to be on the safe side, I kept her home for a couple of hours. Because I had a meeting at noon, when she perked up after eating breakfast, her fever was completely gone, and she started running around the house at normal speed, we headed to daycare. Everything seemed fine.

And yet I wasn't terribly surprised when we got the call around 2:30 that we needed to pick Molly up because her fever was up to 101.5. Dave went to get her and I waited at home feeling enormously guilty for sending her there in the first place.

This, you see, is the problem with being a Work At Home Mom. It seems that I have the option of keeping my child at home with me at any time. And certainly it is easier for me than most. But if Molly is home, I don't get work done. Though she'll play on her own for short periods of time, generally she wants to be around me. And if I'm on my computer, she wants to be on my computer. (Damn you, Sesame Street, and your toddler-friend computer games!) This is only intensified when she's sick and wants to do nothing but cuddle on the couch. And, of course, when she's sick, I want to be able to cuddle with her on the couch all day.

sick Molly, via Instagram

But the reality is, I do have a job that demands my time, even if it demands it while I'm at home. And while I know this, it does nothing to assuage the crushing guilt I feel knowing that I could have kept her at home with me (hypothetically) rather than sending her to daycare with what turned out to be a raging ear infection.

And lest you think that I get no help from my husband, know that David would be more than happy to stay at home with her. But here is another caveat of working at home. All of my work things - books, files, notes, etc - are at home. It is more than a little inconvenient to need to leave the house to do work. Sure, I'll hang out at Panera and do some grading every once and a while, but for a whole day? No way. Which means that even if Dave does stay home with Molly on sick days, there's nowhere else for me to be. So there's no sense in both of us losing a day of work.

It feels so complicated, and I don't think I'm explaining it well here. My goal in almost every area of my life is to be able to give my full attention to whatever task is at hand. While I'm working, I want to be totally focused on working, which is why Molly goes to daycare* in the first place. And when I'm with Molly, I want to be able to focus solely on Molly. So when Molly's home sick, but I still have to be doing work, I feel guilt both because I can't focus on work enough and because I can't focus on Molly enough. It is frustrating and exhausting and I always feel like I have been beaten up at the end of the day.

So Wednesday, when Molly was at the height of her ear pain and I happened to have a lot that had to get done for my online classes, was rough.

But, if I'm being honest, Thursday was kind of nice. I worked my tail off Wednesday night after Molly went to bed so that I wouldn't have to do much work on Thursday (and what I did do, I did while Molly was napping). Molly was rebounding from her ear infection but wasn't really well enough for us to do anything (though we did run a couple of errands). It was like an excuse to lay around and be silly with my adorable daughter. And it was kind of wonderful.

Sometimes I feel like I doomed myself with this blog title, as if I'll always be stuck in the in between, how to figure out how to be happy there. But really that's just life. Though my situation brings it's own set of frustrating complications, everyone has their own unique complications to deal with. It's not always easy. But on days like Thursday (and really the weekend that followed, which was glorious), it's kind of all worth it.

:::

*I should clarify that this post is in no way anti-daycare. I love daycare, and Molly's daycare especially. She has thrived while being at daycare, especially once she moved out of the infant room last January. It has given her so much that I couldn't have done on my own. This is more about me than it is about daycare.

A Super Halloween

2011-11-08T11:31:00.002-05:00

Lately I've been trying to give myself a break, especially regarding parenthood. I tend to hold myself to an unhealthily high standard, expecting myself to do everything myself in the most difficult way possible. And the reality is that I don't have time to do that always. So I'm trying to prioritize and put the most effort into the things that matter most. That's why, two months beforehand, I gave myself permission to buy Molly's Halloween costume rather than make it myself.

So I ordered her a butterfly costume from Peanut and Friends on Etsy. When it arrived I nearly swooned, such sweet little wings and a huge, fluffy tutu. I couldn't wait for Molly to try it on. Except, she wasn't having it. The tutu she wore for all of 5 seconds before she demanded it be removed, something she's never done before. She loved the wings to play with but wouldn't consider wearing them. Dave and I would put them on ourselves and she loved it, pointing and shouting "Daddy's a butterfly!" So we'd ask, "Does Molly want to be a butterfly?" and she'd shout with equal enthusiasm, "No!"

Though I still hoped that I'd be able to convince her to be the adorable butterfly, I needed a back-up plan. And I tried to buy a costume from the store, I really did. But I hated them all. Hated! Well, not really. The soft fluffy costumes from Old Navy and Gap (and like places) were adorable, but I doubted that Molly would wear such an obvious costume (and certainly not the hood/head!) if she wouldn't wear some wings, so I didn't want to spend the money on it. So, despite my attempts to take it easy on myself, I was back to making something.

I still didn't want to take on too much, though, and I also wanted to make something that didn't really seem like a costume, hoping I might trick Molly into thinking it was a regular outfit. That's when I remembered the super hero cape I had already planned to make for Molly's birthday party. It was simple, really easy to make, and she might not realize she was wearing a costume. Plus I was already planning to do it later. Two birds and all.

I whipped it up quickly, but she wasn't tricked at all. Again, she loved when Dave and I would wear it, but she wouldn't wear it herself.

Finally, I came up with option 3. (Can you sense I was getting desperate?) She had a cute little jean dress, some cowboy boots she already loved, and a cowboy hat. Even if she wouldn't wear the hat, she might still be able to pass as a cowgirl.

So I sent two packages to daycare for her party (they would put the costumes on after naptime), one labeled "Super Molly!" and the other "Cowgirl Molly." I told her teacher to just give it a shot, starting with the Super Molly cape, but that I would understand if she wouldn't wear either of them.

When I arrived for her party, I first ran into one of Molly's past teachers. "She is so adorable!" she said to me. She looked at me like I was a weird-o when my response was, "You mean she wore it?!" Apparently she had never protested for a minute. Of course!

When I walked onto the playground, Molly was running around with her hands in front of her shouting "Supa Mowwy!" I melted.

cape tutorial from the pleated poppy

i got a little hot glue happy, but it works

lightening fast shoe idea from here

Despite not taking a nap that day, Molly loved her costume and was in a great mood. She was flying around all afternoon and, when we got home, she didn't want to go inside. The lack of nap did produce one little meltdown right before trick-or-treating, but as soon as she saw that the other kids were being given things at the strange houses we were visiting, she was in.

And she was a pro at trick-or-treating after that. We had been practicing saying trick-or-treat, which for Molly is more like "twick-tweat" (love!), so she was ready for that part. What surprised me most was how patient she was. The other kids we were with would barrel to the front door, but even if Molly had gotten there first, she would hang back and let them get their treats before walking up and quietly saying "twick-tweat," while she carefully chose her one piece of candy. She was precious.

And I love that for Molly's first trick-or-treating experience, we got to spend it with a big group or friends, including our new and wonderful neighbors and Molly's BFF Serena (that's her in the adorable hula outfit above) and her awesome mom and dad. As well as some new friends. Molly loved pointing out everyone's costumes. "Minnie Mouse!" "Batman!"

And I loved being able to trick-or-treat in our neighborhood, rather than driving from our apartment to someone else's neighborhood. It made this house feel even more like a home.

I also love that the dress that Molly wore (though it was more like a long t-shirt at this point) is the same dress that she wore for her first birthday party. (Sometimes having a very small little girl comes in handy.) It felt very circle of life-ish and reminded me how much she's grown.

All-in-all, this Halloween far surpassed my expectations. It was definitely worth putting the effort into her costume. And besides, the butterfly outfit will still fit next year.

Rhythm-less Booty Shaking

2011-10-25T23:15:00.001-04:00

Recently I've been thinking about my own youth as I watch Molly play. I've realized that, while perhaps not true of my childhood, as an adolescent straight through high school, I was scared. I was particularly scared of what people thought of me and that, at any moment they would figure me out and ridicule me or - worse - ignore me. Even around my closest friends there was a constant fear of being too myself, of not being who I thought they wanted me to be.

Because of this fear, I missed a lot. I never tried particularly hard at soccer - my sport of choice - because, even though I loved it, it was easier to fail at something when you weren't trying to succeed. If I had gone all out only to have my coaches and peers tell me I was no good, I would have been devastated.

But the thing I keep thinking of, the thing I most regret not trying, is dancing. I went to one dance a year in high school, MORP, and my junior and senior proms, but aside from some circular slow dancing, I never danced at them. I said it was because I couldn't dance, but the truth is I never tried. I was too terrified that people would laugh at my rhythm-less moves that I convinced myself that I was destined to be a wallflower.

But with Molly, I will gladly shake my rhythm-less booty till the cows come home because it makes her happy. And she'll dance along, looking at me and saying "Shake booty!" like she can never imagine anything being more fun.

And I think she's right. There's something so incredibly freeing about bustin' a move without considering how you look.

Back in my wallflower days, I loved that "dance as if nobody's looking" quote. It seemed so romantic (not that I ever danced one way or the other). But now I think that's the wrong sentiment. I wish I had danced whether someone was looking or not. That's how Molly and I dance now, and I hope she can stick with it, long after she begins to be embarrassed by my rhythm-less booty shaking.

Bugs, Bodies, and Guilt

2011-10-19T22:28:00.001-04:00

I'm pretty sure that I've mentioned this on here before, but - hey - when have I ever shied away from redundancy? Or repetitiveness?

So, perhaps my quirkiest fear is this: I am convinced that when I kill a bug inside my house - particularly of the harmless, "innocent" variety like moths - that the family of the deceased insect will attack me in my sleep.

I know this sounds crazy. And when I hear people say things like this, I doubt how truthfully this "fear" exists for them. But this fear has actually stopped me from killing insects many a time. And I always pause to consider the ramifications of bug murder before taking action. Despite the fact that I know the lunacy of it, this fear weighs on me.

But when it became readily apparent that bug bites + Molly = bad news bears, I didn't hesitate before ~~taking action~~ telling Dave to take action against the gigantic anthill on our front walkway. The ants continued to evade our attempts at eviction, though, regularly scattering for a few days only to rebuild bigger and better than ever before.

The morning after our last attempt, I walked outside to see that the ants had moved from the enormous anthill that Molly knew the avoid to the crack in the sidewalk that she/we have to walk over every single time we leave the house. Out of desperation, I decided to use a trick a friend had told me that seemed too ridiculous to work - I poured boiling water over the anthill.

It worked like a charm. The boiling water eviscerated the anthill like nothing had done before. But the crafty little buggers just moved a foot away and rebuilt. I determined to continue my efforts until they got the point and introduced them to my teapot again this morning.

Now, despite the fact that my fear generally only relates to bugs killed inside my home, I had more than a little trepidation. I mean, I was basically scalding these things to death when they were only doing what they thought they were supposed to be doing. But they were also biting my kid, so I gave myself a pass.

Then I walked outside this afternoon and saw this:

Do you see the slightly darker areas to the left and right? In person, they were also sort of shiny. It took me a little bit to realize what they were, but then I looked closer:

Those, friends, are dead any bodies. The still-living ants were carrying the dead ants to what is, essentially, a mass grave underneath my rose bush.

To say that my fear has been significantly increased would be an understatement. Oh, and fear has made a friend: guilt.

Habits

2011-10-18T13:40:00.000-04:00

There's a strange rack hanging from the ceiling of our garage. I'm not sure what the previous owners used it for, storage of some sort I'm sure, but since the day we bought the house Dave has referred to it as his kayak rack. (He, it should be noted, does not yet own a kayak.)

For the time being, though, it doesn't serve a purpose. So every time that Dave comes in from a run, he goes into the garage and hangs his iPod armband and his bandana over the rack to dry. The bandanas tend to pile up until he washes his running clothes.

This afternoon I walked into the garage to do laundry and was greeted by this, admittedly not-unusual, sight:

Something about it just made me grin from ear-to-ear. I love that we are developing habits in this house. Making things serve purposes that are only our purposes for them, not that they were originally designed for.

I love that this little tableau is so quintessentially Dave, a runner, a man of routines and habits, and a man of this home.

We're settling in, and I love it.

Restlessness

2011-10-11T22:58:00.000-04:00

[I miss blogging, but I still don't have time to do it with any regularity. So I've decided to be more lenient with this blog, to allow myself to publish quick snapshots of my life rather than lengthy tell-alls, or at least some of both. So we begin with an evening rumination of sorts.]

I've always been a good sleeper. (Molly gets that from me I suppose.) Aside from some short periods while I was pregnant, I've always been able to go right to sleep when I want to and sleep soundly until it's time to get up. This is one of my best qualities. (Kidding.)

But it also means that I am very much used to getting a solid night's sleep, so when I don't, I feel...deflated. It's not that I feel sleepy throughout the day; I couldn't take a nap even if I wanted to. I just feel drained, and that is terribly frustrating. It leaves me without the will to get anything done, which makes me frustrated, which makes me grumpy, which means I have too much on my mind when I try to go to sleep so that I have trouble falling asleep, thus beginning the whole ugly cycle again. I do not enjoy it.

This week I started teaching online classes again after a two month hiatus. I'm happy be teaching again (though I miss teaching on campus this fall far more than I had expected to; driving through campus and visiting the library almost hurts; I'm so ready to be on a campus full-time), but I hate the way it further divides my attention. It was so nice for two months to be able to concentrate fully on my dissertation during the day and my family at night and on weekends. Now it's back to balancing teaching and writing during the day, a balancing act which necessitates a relatively unpredictable and inconsistent schedule. Considering I work best amidst consistency and organization, this is not conducive to my professional life.

I will say, though, that I feel like I'm doing a better job of not letting my professional life bleed over into my personal life. Part of this is because Molly is just so fun right now. Dave and I look at each other and remark about how stinkin' much we love her a hundred times a day. She's developing a sense of humor and she continues to amaze me with her brightness. She sings songs all day long and is constantly bringing me books to read her (though she can read along (from memory of course) with most of them). She delights me.

Of course, she's not the only one. Dave recently got a promotion at work, and I am so proud of all the hard work he's done to get this job and all of the positive recognition he's received. He's a rockstar, and I'm amazed by him. But while he's transitioning into his new position, he's also continuing to fill his old position (per his request actually). He's happy to do this and totally capable, but it's a lot, and I know it bothers him to have to spend so much time at work and to bring it home with him. So I'm concentrating on being work-free in the evening for the time being. Lord knows he's done his share of picking up my slack when I got overwhelmed, so I'm doing what I can now.

Still, no matter how successful I am at ignoring work in the evening, it creeps up on me when I crawl into bed. My mind begins to plan how I will approach each to-do the next day, reminds myself of long-term deadlines and goals, and establishes a game plan. I go to sleep with my head already in the next day, and I feel like I've skipped over sleep in the morning.

I'm restless. And yet, I'm oh so happy.

DIY Kindle Cover

2011-09-22T08:00:00.000-04:00

When I first bought my Kindle, I followed a tutorial I found online to make my own cover. Recently both Dave and my younger sister entered the world of e-readers with their own Kindles, so I went back to the same tutorial to make them their own Kindle covers. Unfortunately the blog owner had decided to take the tutorial down for various reasons but she was happy to share a PDF of the instructions with me.

To be honest, the instructions are a bit confusing. Well, sort of. Really I think they just needed more pictures to make the project clearer to sewing novices like myself. So I thought I would include a revised/clarified version of her instructions here complete with an excessive amount of pictures.

First, a few disclosures. I am very much a beginner when it comes to sewing, so excuse that. I'm also not a perfectionist when it comes to a project like this, so if you are, this might not be the tutorial for you.

That being said, the reason I stuck with this tutorial rather than the many, many others you can find online (like this one that I almost went with) is because this is the only one I found with a flap closure and a pocket, both of which I find particularly helpful. Maybe you will, too.

Finally, this is a tutorial for a Kindle 2. If you have a Kindle 3, this will be a bit roomier for your Kindle. Or you can reduce the pattern by about 1/2 an inch on both length and width measurements. You could easily make this work for an iPad as well, but you'll have to adjust those measurements yourself.

So with that being said...

Kindle 2 Cover Tutorial

Supplies:

1/4 yard each of main/exterior fabric [here noted as stripes], lining [I used flannel but you can use fleece or corduroy - this will be marked here as blue], and fusible fleece interfacing
Velcro: 3/4" wide, cut into 2 - 4 1/2" strips
pins
thread to match
scissors

Fabric Cutting:

Note: in cutting your fabrics, the top (width) of your case is 6 1/2 inches wide. Measure and cut your main (exterior) fabric [mine is stripes] carefully for both the front and back if there's a design element you want to feature; see the following diagrams:

Cut all three fabrics as follows (you should have three pieces for each section):

Front: Cut 1 piece 9 1/2 inches by 6 1/2 inches each from main [stripes], lining [blue], and interfacing. Tip: place a piece of masking tape or pin a note identifying the top (right-side) of the fabric to avoid confusion later.
Back: Cut 1 piece 11 1/2 inches by 6 1/2 inches each from main [stripes], lining [blue], and interfacing. Mark top with tape if desired.
Pocket: cut 1 piece 5 inches by 6 1/2 inches each from main [stripes], lining [blue], and interfacing. The top of this piece will be one side of the 6 1/2 inch width.

Directions:

1. Iron the fusible fleece interfacing to the wrong-side of each of the lining pieces [blue] for the back and pocket and the wrong-side of the main/exterior [stripes] front fabric piece.

2. Take the long back lining fabric piece [blue], place it on your work table with the right-side facing up and the interfacing wrong-side down. Center and pin the male (rough) side of your Velcro 1/2 inch from one 6 1/2 inch-wide edge on the right side of the lining panel. Zig-zag around all four sides of the Velcro. Set aside.

3. With the wrong side of the long back main fabric [stripes] facing up, fold over the top 2 inches forward and press. You should now have 2 inches on the right-side of the fabric facing you and the rest is the fabric's wrong side. The end will serve as part of your fold over flap and the pressed line will mark a sewing start/stop point for the next step. Open up the folded flap for the next step.

4. Place the back lining piece [blue] right-side up on your work table (the wrong-side of the Velcro should be at the top - left side in the picture below). Layer the back main fabric [stripes] section wrong-side up on the lining piece. The pocket section should be at the bottom - consider marking it as such to avoid later confusion. I marked mine with a spare piece of stick-on Velcro.

5. Pin sections from #4 matching the top and two sides. Starting on one side at the point where you pressed the fold-over seam, stitch a 1/4 inch seam from the point where you pressed the fold-over seam, around the top of the bag (the Velcro end), and up the other side, stopping at the pressed fold-over seam marking. Mark the fabric with a disappearing marker at the juncture of the pressed seam marker and the finished seam. Set aside.

6. Position the pocket lining piece [blue] right-side up (interfacing wrong-side down) on your work table. Place the pocket main fabric [stripes] wrong-side up on the top of the lining piece. Pin and sew a 1/4 inch seam along one long side (6 1/2 inch). Flip lining over the main fabric and press. Top-stitch along the seamed top edge of the pocket.

7. With the long back main piece made in Step 4 placed right-side up on your work table, lay the finished pocket piece made in Step 5 with the main fabric [stripes] right-side up on one bottom of your back main fabric [stripes] section. Baste close to the edge around one side, across the bottom, and up the other side, leaving the previously top-stitched top piece of the pocket open.

Your pocket will now look like the following:

8. Take the short front main fabric piece [stripes] and place it on your work table right-side facing up and interfacing wrong-side down. Center and pin the female (soft) side of your Velcro 1 inch from one 6 1/2 inch-wide edge on the right-side of the top of the main fabric [stripes] panel. Zig-zag around all four sides of the Velcro.

9. Layer the short front sections in the following way: front main fabric piece [stripes] right-side up with the interface side down and then layer the front lining piece [blue] wrong-side up. Pin the top in place and stitch a 1/4 inch seam along the top only. Flip the lining over, press, and top-stitch close to the folded edge. Open up the main fabric and lining and iron open. Set aside.

10. Now take your finished long section and lay it right-side up with the lining [blue] to one side and the extra flap section folded towards the lining [blue] fabric.

On top of this panel, place the short section so that the two main fabric [stripes] panels match.

Pin the main fabric panels [stripes] into place:

and sew a 1/4 inch seam from the mark (from Step 5 - the place the main [stripes] fabric and lining [blue] fabric meet) on one side, around the bottom of the bag, and up the other side, stopping at the second mark. Be sure to back-stitch at both ends and also watch out not to catch the flap fold-over piece in your stitching.

11. Now move to the opposide side and work on the lining [blue] fabric by matching up the end and sides, moving the fold-over flap piece towards the main fabric [stripes] section. Pin the lining [blue] sides into place. Starting at the mark made earlier, sew a 1/4 inch seam down the side of the lining [blue] section, stopping at the end and back-stitching. Do not sew the short end of the lining as that is what you'll use to turn the bag right-side out.

Turn the bag around and sew up the other side of the lining [blue], stopping at the mark and back-stitching at each end. Be careful not to catch the flap-over piece in your stitching.

12. Turn bag inside out through the opening at the short end of the lining [blue] and also push out the flap area. If there are any seams that you missed near the flap fold-over, you can quickly slip-stitch those small areas.

13. To close the end of the lining section [blue], turn under 1/4 inch, press, and slip-stitch close to the edge. Push lining into bag and press. Voila! You're done!

This is a simple Kindle Cover. It's not padded enough to definitively protect it from drops and the like, but it will keep it clean and scratch-free while you're carrying it around. And it's so pretty!

I find the pocket particularly handy. You can use it to store the Kindle's cord:

but I keep a small notebook in it for the occasional notetaking.

I love it. If you decide to make one, I'd love for you to let me know in the comments. And feel free to ask questions if you have them. Like I said, I'm a sewing novice, so unless it's a clarification I may not be able to help. But I'll be happy to try!

Happy e-reading!

Halloween Reading: The Runaway Pumpkin

2011-09-19T08:00:00.000-04:00

With the weather turning cooler, I can't stop thinking of autumn and, especially, Halloween. So while I brainstorm Halloween costume ideas, Molly and I headed to the library to stock-up on Halloween-themed books. There are some real stinkers in the genre, but there are also some really fabulous books. I thought I'd share the ones we like most.

First up, The Runaway Pumpkin by Kevin Lewis:

One of Molly's favorite stories is Big Pumpkin by Erica Silverman, which we listen to on audiobook almost everytime we're in the car. So I knew Molly would be apt to appreciate books about pumpkins and this one especially since S.D. Schindler illustrated both books.

But even without those things working in its favor, The Runaway Pumpkin is a lovely book.

The book has a funny rhyme about the "thumpin' bumpin' pumpkin" repeated as a refrain throughout the story, which Molly loves. And the illustrations are colorful and fun.

If you're looking for a fun (not scary) story to get your kids into the spirit of Halloween, this is a good one.

Documentation

2011-09-17T13:53:00.000-04:00

I've been meaning to tell you about this for a while but just got around to taking pictures.

Starting in the spring I started to feel guilty about my lack of documentation of Molly's life. Don't get me wrong; we take pictures. Lots of pictures. But then we don't do anything with them. We hang a few around the house and there are some in Molly's baby book. But that's it. No overall record of Molly's life.

Then Young House Love blogged about an idea I'd been thinking about - photo books. They had used MyPublisher to create a hardback photo book of two years of their lives. So I checked into it. Young House Love had mentioned that My Publisher was constantly running sales, and sure enough I was able to get 25% off of the cost of a photo book.

So I made one. I like very simple documentation, no captions or scrapbook-style flourishes. But MyPublisher has those options is you'd like. Ours is clean and simple:

It begins with the day that we found out we were pregnant and goes through the end of 2010 (Molly's Christmas Eve birthday is too inextricably tied to Christmas to stop on the 24th, so we just rounded out the year). 20 months of us.

45 pages of us.

I can't tell you how much I love it. Unlike traditional picture albums, this is sturdy enough to withstand Molly flipping through it, and I know that it'll still be in good condition when she's an adult.

I made sure to include pictures of everyday life (like Molly with her stuffed dog in the picture above) as well as the important moments, like meeting her extended family for the first time, birthdays, Christmas, etc. It feels like such a comprehensive look at what the 20 months it covers was like. It's really wonderful.

The MyPublisher software was extremely easy to use, and the book ended up costing around $45. Not cheap but, in my mind, for what we got, complete reasonable. And the book is saved so that, if something should happen to it, I can just order a new one. It makes it feel even more indestructible.

I look forward to making a new photo book each year, having a whole collection by the time Molly grows up.

Shady

2011-09-12T16:44:00.001-04:00

Despite my kitchen's shortcomings (such as cabinets that are so tall that I can't reach the top shelf without using a step-stool), one thing that I absolutely love about it is the window behind the sink.

before

But the bulky plantation blinds (which I love in every other window of our house) made it impossible to put plants or curtains on the window. So when we took the blinds down to paint the kitchen, I decided to just leave them down.

aloe plant that our sweet neighbors gave us

The view isn't much - the side of our neighbor's house (though she does have some really beautiful roses that line that side of her house) - but I liked all of the light that the open window brought in. Unfortunately I quickly learned that the kitchen gets some serious direct sunlight in the late afternoon. It only took a couple of moments temporary blindness while doing dishes to encourage me to find a solution.

So I did what I always do - headed to the fabric store. I wanted something that somehow married the sort of country/homey feel of our living room and the more modern look that I'm trying to build towards. I didn't want anything too bold, just a pop of color. This red gingham stripe fit the bill perfectly. The gingham feels homey whereas the stripe adds a bit of modernity.

I love it.

I may eventually switch out the tab for drapery rings (like this), but for now I love it. It keeps the sun out of my eyes while still allowing lovely light into the kitchen.

It's not a big change, but I love it anyway,

Jumping on the Chalkboard Wagon

2011-09-10T22:36:00.000-04:00

After finishing Molly's room, our next major project was to paint the living area. Our living room, dining room, kitchen, entryway and hallway are all in a sort of shared space with no obvious walls that would allow for a seamless transition to a different wall color. And yet the previous owners had painted the living room and entryway a very dark red:

while the dining room and kitchen were a dark gold color that had been rag-painted over a darker brownish-gold:

While there's nothing essentially wrong with either color, they just weren't our taste - especially since our living room furniture is already dark red. Plus, I just didn't like the abrupt transition between colors, which you can sort of see here:

So we set out to find a more neutral, calm color that would work in all of the different areas of the house, each of which had quite different lighting situations, as well as working with the tones of the brick fireplace.

It was a ridiculously long search, and we had 12 paint swatches on the wall before we finally decided on something. But decide we did.

But I don't have any pictures of that...yet (mostly because I want to finally hang some art on the walls before the "unveiling"). The point for this post is that, once the wall color was more continuous and less loud, I had an idea for this area:

Though the whites of the cabinets look much better (in my opinion) with the new paint color, I thought the area underneath the bar might be put to good use with something like this:

image from here

That's right. Chalkboard paint under the bar. Molly loves her sidewalk chalk. How great would it for her to be able to draw on rainy days, too?

So $12 and some high-density foam rollers later, we have this:

Y'all. I love it so much. For such a little change, it adds so much dimension to our dining room. It makes both the new paint color (which is poorly represented here) and the white cabinets pop. It ties the black of the counter-tops and appliances into the dining room. And it's just fun.

(This is probably the truest representation of the new paint color.)

Molly loves it. It cleans up easily. Even Dave loves it, so much so that we've decided to further extend the presence of chalkboard paint in our home. I can't wait for that.

And, of course, that's not the end of what we'll do with that otherwise insignificant area. I may eventually repaint it with a layer of magnetic paint underneath the chalkboard paint for added fun (inspiration here). And eventually there will be a couple of bar stools there so that we can easily conceal our "artwork" if we need to. (I'm hoping for some stools like this, red and all.)

But until all of that happens, having this little chalkboard makes this little space (and our dining room as a whole) seem so much less unfinished. We're all fans.

Molly's New Digs

2011-09-08T13:37:00.002-04:00

It should surprise absolutely no one that the first room that we "finished" in our new house was Molly's room. In part, it was because her room was fairly easy. All of the furniture stayed the same and the "idea" behind the room stayed the same. Really, the only things that are different are the paint color and the window treatments. And yet, it feels very different (to me).

Her old room (which you can see here) only had one window whereas her current room has two, so the window treatment had to change. Plus, I had never loved the curtains in her old room. For a while they were plain white, then they were a pink polka-dotted fabric that I was never totally on board with. So I used this new room as an opportunity to start over.

I knew that I wanted a big, floral pattern. Everything else in her room is relatively subtle, so I wanted something more focal. I also wanted something that would tie her quilt into the rest of the room. Originally her crib had a crib skirt made from the same fabric as her quilt that helped make it a focus, but once the mattress was lowered all the way, we had to take the crib skirt off and her quilt, which was supposed to tie everything together, seemed random.

After an ~~obsessive~~ ~~excessive~~ exhaustive fabric search, I settled on Amy Butler's Delhi Blooms in Grass. Though this is a different collection than the fabric from her quilt (which is done in fabrics from Amy Butler's Midwest Modern II Ohio Sky line), the blues and greens matched up perfectly. Plus, I loved that the fabric had just a touch of pink in the middle of the flowers so that the pink accents in Molly's room would still fit in without being dominant. After once again using the no-sew curtain method from Young House Love, we had this (that's Molly's quilt in the foreground):

Then we used the palette from the curtains to decide on a paint color. I didn't want to just redo the yellow from Molly's first room, so my initial instinct was to do a grellowy color like the larger blooms. But, just to be on the safe side, we looked at some bluer tones like the vines on the curtains. We painted two test swatches in grellow and two bluer ones. Dave preferred the bluer ones and, though my instinct was still to go with a grellow, I decide to roll with it.

We ended up using Behr's Mint Fizz color matched to Olympic Premium Satin no-VOC paint. Though it's going to look quite blue in the following pictures, it's actually one of those colors that sort of changes colors in different lights or based on what is next to it. The picture above is probably the truest representation of it. It's blue with subtle green tones, too. I couldn't believe how much I loved it once it was on the walls.

So, without further ado, Molly's room:

I almost didn't put the butterflies up in this room because it already felt like there was a lot going on, but they felt too central to her room to leave them out. Notice they are much higher than they used to be. Yeah, Molly likes to "play" with them.

The frame wall continues to be one of my favorite parts of the room, and it keeps expanding (as it was always intended to).

The empty frame on the top right will eventually have a family picture in it, but I was too impatient to wait for that to show it to you. The other new addition is the print in the middle, which came from The Wheatfield's etsy shop. It's an Emerson quote that says "Live in the sunshine, swim in the sea, and drink the wild air." It seemed too perfect not to add it to the wall.

(Sorry for the darkness of this picture. I'm too impatient to fix it.)

Eventually I want to do a frame like this one my friend Stephanie made (it's about halfway down the linked post) to hang family pictures on underneath the shelf above the dresser. Molly loves seeing pictures of her family, and that seems like the perfect place for it. So now I just have to find the right frame.

So that's it. It's never this clean because Molly likes to pull the books off her shelf (though at least now she stops to read them, too) and pull the toys out that are hidden under her dresser. But I'm okay with that; that's what her room's for. And clean or messy, I love it.

Things I Have Learned While Staying at Home with My Daughter

2011-08-29T18:30:00.000-04:00

One of the most frustrating things about parenting for me is the lack of intuitiveness. Sure there are lots of time when my intuition kicks in - I know when her cry is a whiny cry or a hurt cry or when she's hungry or overtired. But there are just as many times when I have no idea what the right solution to a given problem is. Being at home with Molly these past weeks has given me the time to find some solutions.

1. Sticker Chart

Molly was going through a phase when she didn't want to brush her teeth. With the hustle and bustle of traveling and then moving, we let her go too long having a choice to brush her teeth or not. After a long day of packing, it just wasn't worth fighting to get her to brush her teeth. But, once we got settled, it was time to get back into that routine. After numerous failed attempts, we instituted a sticker chart for Molly's bedtime routine. The chart had a column for sitting on the potty, taking a bath, and brushing her teeth. This worked well because sitting on the potty is something we're just beginning, not stressing at all, so it's no big deal if she does it or not (for the time being). Taking a bath is something she is usually a big fan of, so it would be an "easy" way for her to get a sticker each night. My hope was that getting the bathtime sticker would be an incentive for her to brush her teeth to get her sticker for that.

The first night went beautifully. She got all three stickers and didn't fuss about wanting more. Since then it's been less "perfect" but still incredibly helpful. There are times, of course, that she wants stickers without doing anything (which was my main concern with starting this). But she knows that's not how it works, so she doesn't put up much of a fuss when she's told no and redirected. I also am not a stickler about her getting stickers at bedtime, which I think helps. If she wants to brush her teeth or sit on the potty in the middle of the day, then she is more than welcome to. For me, it's all about creating positive incentives for these activities, no matter when they happen. (Though I'm grateful she hasn't requested 15 baths a day.) I can imagine her outgrowing the current system relatively quickly, but it's definitely a good start, and she is absolutely more willing to brush her teeth regularly (and thoroughly) than she was a month ago.

2. Bathtime Fun

My whole "bathtime will be the easy sticker" went right out the window last week. Molly got bit by a fire ant on her foot last Tuesday. This is not uncommon in Florida, though it's one of the most annoying things about living here. In fact, I got bit the same night. She took it like a champ when she got bit, but the next afternoon, her foot became very swollen and red. I talked to her pediatrician who said that all I could really do was give her some Benadryl for the itching. But then she woke up the next morning with a blister the size of a marble on her foot. So I took her to her doctor's office where the blister popped (as it always would have had to) while she was trying to avoid having her temperature taken. That left quite a large open wound on her foot, so in addition to giving her an oral antibiotic and allergy medicine twice a day, I had to put a medicated cream on her foot, cover that with a sterile pad, then wrap her foot and ankle in tape to insure that the wound stayed clean and didn't get infected. Bless her heart, she looks so pitiful in (what we call) her faux-cast, but she has handled it really well.

Except at bathtime. I think the water must sting her foot when she first gets in because the first few baths afterwards she would scream and flail as soon as we put her in the bath until we'd get her out again. She was miserable. But after far too long without washing her very long hair, something had to be done.

I thought about buying her a new bathtime toy to entice her, but I didn't really like the idea of buying her cooperation. Then, in a desperate moment, I pulled out her tea set and asked her if she'd like some bathtime tea.

To my surprise and delight, she went for it 100%. She still winced when she first got in the tub, but she had something to distract her so she got over it quickly. She loved being able to pour "real" tea from her teapot rather than imagining it, plinking imaginary sugar in her tea cup before taking sips. David and I, of course, got out fair share of bath-tea and Molly drank far more bathwater than is preferable, but it's worth it. I don't know how long we'll be having bathtime tea parties, but I don't mind one bit.

3. Detangling

Heather of The Spohrs are Multiplying wrote a post last week about how she deals with her daughter's curls. Though Molly's hair is nowhere near as curly as Heather's daughter's, she has her fair share of tangles. (She gets it from me I'm afraid.) Heather mentioned that she uses extra-conditioning shampoo (which is what we already used - just the Johnson & Johnson's variety) and that she applies it at the beginning of the bath but doesn't rinse it out until the end. I couldn't imagine this would make a difference, but I decided that anything was worth a try to avoid chasing Molly around the house with a comb.

The first night I couldn't believe the difference. I combed her hair with no problems. That is a miracle in my book.

Admittedly, the difference since then has been less miraculous. A lot of this has to do with the fact that Molly likes to pretend to swim in her bath - laying her head down "on top" of the water on one side and then the other, hence rinsing the shampoo out pretty quickly. But it's still so much better than it was. We still use the detangling spray after her bath as well, but I just think of it as added assurance.

Now if only I could find a magic trick to get her to let me fix her hair without complaints.

:::

It's amazing what little things you're able to notice and change when you have an extended period to focus on your child. Up next? Potty training! (duh...duh...duh....)

Attitude Adjustment

2011-08-28T23:10:00.000-04:00

If there is one thing that I have come to believe to be true as an adult, it is that - in most cases - we are responsible for our own attitudes. That's not to say that we shouldn't be tired/happy/sad/angry/depressed or whatever. But if we don't like how we feel, we have to take the action to change that, whether that be by seeking help, calling a friend, or just crying it out. No one is going to change how we feel for us, and waiting for that to happen will only prolong those unwanted feelings. We have to do it.

[I suppose I should say "I." If I were one of my students I would fuss at me for using "we" and, in this case, speaking for the reader. But I think this is almost universally true, so roll with it.]

I mention this because I am not handling Molly going back to daycare tomorrow very well. After staying at home with her for 3 weeks - something that I was initially very worried, even scared about - I am heartbroken that I won't get to spend all day everyday.

Of course, there's that annoying motherly* dichotomy. I hate that she won't be with me. But I'm also excited to be able to do my work, something I can't do with her around 24/7, and which is therefore the reason she's in daycare. It's not an easy chasm to cross. Hence the emotional turmoil.

So I have spent all night moping. The sweet way she curled into me as I read her bedtime story to her did not help matters. I kept picturing that sweet smile, turning slightly mischievous as she poked my collarbone (something I'm convinced she realizes gives me the heebie jeebies), and realizing that I would spend most of the day tomorrow not seeing it. Not even Mad Men (which I am finally watching, thank you Netflix) could cheer me up.

(Although, let's be honest. Mad Men should not be the show you turn to for cheering up anyway.)

Then, after 5 (okay, 10) minutes of crying to David, even I was sick of my whining. This is not a resolvable issue. Me not working is not a possibility. So Molly not going to daycare (a daycare that, for the record, David and I love - and Molly loves - and that we think does Molly a great deal of good) is not an option. So the only thing that could change was me.

You see, I kept walking through my morning in my head. [This is something I often do. It's one of the ways I plan. I visualize how things will happen.] Even if I didn't cry when I dropped Molly off (a definite possibility), things were only going to get worse. Sure, I had things planned to do, but they all involved coming home (being that I work from home). But the problem with that was that our home is filled with Molly, even when she's not here. Her toys. Her pictures. Her artwork. I would be surrounded by the absence of her. And I knew that I would end up wallowing in that.

But this, this is where I can change my attitude - and hopefully my day tomorrow. I changed my plan. I got up and printed out an article I had been excited to read just before my vacation with Molly, one that is important for my research. It's a nice way to dip my toes back into my research after such a long absence. After printing it out, I gathered the appropriate files and binders and my favorite pen and laid them in a pile on our kitchen table, from where I will remember to take them with me in the morning.

Now, tomorrow, after I have dropped Molly off at daycare - tears or no tears - instead of coming home I will go out for breakfast, probably to Panera. I will treat myself to a danish and some coffee and I will sit down, in the comfy anonymity the restaurant offers, and get to work. By the time I've finished the article (and the danish), I will have shifted focus. Of course I will still miss Molly, but I won't be overwhelmed with the missing. I'll be able to come home and transition from reading that article to incorporating it into my writing. And (hopefully) that plan will allow me to work consistently until Dave arrives home with Molly in tow.

Having that plan was reassurance for me. Reassurance that tomorrow would be okay - for me and for Molly - and that taking Molly to daycare wouldn't be a waste because I would be productive, working towards a goal.

Would that kind of change work for everyone? Absolutely not. But I know myself and what I need. I need a plan of action. I need something closer to a guarantee that tomorrow will not be all sadness and longing. I needed to change my attitude. And I did.

The fix is not always so easy. A lot of times there's not one. But I never ever feel better when I let myself be miserable or let myself wallow for too long. And whatever I can do to change that attitude is worth it.

*I say "motherly" only because I am a mother. I'm sure fathers feel it, too; I just can't speak for them.

I Like Her

2011-08-21T20:42:00.000-04:00

Tomorrow will begin the final of three weeks during which I am staying home with Molly during the week. Her daycare is affiliated with my university and is, therefore, closed when classes are out of session. So I have spent the last two weeks with her.

I think as a mom I'm not about to admit this. Stay-at-home-moms are supposed to think they are doing the absolute right thing, and work-at-home-moms are supposed to feel completely comfortable sending their children to daycare but somehow simultaneously wish that they were at home with them. But the truth is, it's complicated. And I was fairly nervous about being with Molly 100% of the time for three weeks.

It's not because I don't like spending time with her. I just spent three weeks in Kentucky with her and had a blast. But, at 19 months, Molly is used to the routine of daycare. And, more than that, she's used to having two teachers and 5 or 6 other kids to entertain her all day. The girl has a lot of energy, and it does sometimes seem to take a team of 8 to wear her energy off. Prior to this break from daycare, she hadn't been doing well napping on weekends because we just weren't wearing her out the way daycare does. But then she would be tired and grumpy, of course. I just didn't know if I could emulate the activity daycare enough to keep her napping and happy.

And there have been days when she hasn't napped and has gotten tired and grumpy in the evening. But on the whole, we have had a great time together. We go to the park each morning for an hour or more and then tends to satisfy her need-to-nap energy burning quota. At some point in the day we try do an arts & crafts project. We play in our backyard. She spends some time playing on her own. We just hang out.

Here's the thing that I have been most happy to have been reminded of over the past two weeks though: I really like my daughter. Not because I have to. Not even because I think I'm supposed to. Not because she's always happy or always easygoing. In fact, she can be quite stubborn and headstrong. But she also knows what she wants and works to make it happen, even if it's just to make us laugh. She tumbles through life at a hundred miles an hour and then will just suddenly stop and squeeze my legs or give me a kiss or offer me a drink of her juice. She fearlessly goes down the big-kid slide long before I think she's ready, but then grabs my hand as soon as she's at the bottom of it. She laughs ferociously and with pure glee. When she's sad or even mad, she clings to my neck and buries her head in my shoulder, like it was meant to fit there. When she wakes up in the morning, she talks to herself for at least half of an hour, naming all of the things in her room and saying "Yeah!" like she's so proud that she remembered what a door is called. She rides a stick like it's a horse and wants me to swing her as high as she can go.

In many ways - her silliness, her stubbornness, and her strong-headedness - she is exactly the kind of daughter that I expected to have. But the depth of her love, her gentleness, and and how affectionate she is blow me away. In many ways she is the person that I still wish I could be. I am so glad that I get to know her.

So, sure, I have gotten very little work done the past two weeks. I will be racing to catch up in two weeks. But my heart is full and I am grateful. So very grateful.

Sold: The Pictures

2011-08-09T09:19:00.000-04:00

I guess it's time to start talking and start showing. Here, in slideshow form, are the before pictures of our new house:

The Outside:
As I've said before, we'd eventually like to repaint the green trim, probably white. Oddly, this green/yellow combination seems to be very popular in our neighborhood. I always did like bucking trends!

We'd also like to fill out the columns to make them craftsman-esque, with brick up to the same level they are on the house and drywall above that (like this).

The rose bushes in front of the porch are amazing. Our neighbor told us they were the fastest growing roses we've ever seen. In the two and half weeks we've been here, we've already had enough roses to clip for a vase inside twice over.

The Office:
Technically this is the bedroom part of the master suite (because it has the closet). But because it is what you enter directly from the hall (and is directly across the hall from Molly's room), we're using it as the office. It needs a new paint color in a big way.

The Master Bedroom:
We've actually already painted this room, a bright blue (a la this). It needs new carpet; this just feels too "officey," which makes since as it was the office for the previous owners.

The Living Room:
The living room was the first thing we painted, just a basic white, but it probably won't stay this way. I'm having a terrible time trying to figure out window treatments with the weird spacing of the windows. Still, I love how big and bright and airy it is here.

The Dining Room and Kitchen:
I desperately want to paint these rooms. (I'm sensing a pattern here.) I just don't love the towel-painted gold. I'm planning a cool display for Molly's art to the right of the cut-out.

Spare Bedroom:
This room is yuck. It needs new paint (good-bye two-toned brown!) and a new fan. Eventually both this room and Molly's room need new carpet.

Molly's Room:
We actually painted Molly's room this past weekend, and I love it so so much. I need to put up some window treatments and then I'll show it to you. I'm very pleased.

And that's it! I can't promise I'll shut up about the new house, because we're all really loving making it ours right now. But I will try to be less obnoxious about it!

Sold: Part Three

2011-08-06T09:23:00.000-04:00

Previously: Part One and Part Two

In truth, I really only requested to see this house because of the location. Though it looked good enough, the pictures that had been posted (I know now) didn't do it any justice. They made the house look quite dark and the rooms look small. And it was hard to tell what the yard looked like because a swing-set was right in the middle of it. I was afraid that I was setting us up for failure.

The outside was good but not great. The trim needed (still needs) to be repainted (just because we don't love the yellow house/green trim combo), but it had a nice front yard with (what we now know to be) a Bradford Pear Tree and a flower bed that had clearly been cared for. Plus the mailbox was brick with a small flower box to the side, something I love more than I probably should.

Walking in the front door, the house did look extremely dark. The entryway is relatively narrow and it was painted a dark, almost crimson red. But when we walked out from the entryway into the living room, our mouths dropped a little bit. It was enormous, filled with over-sized windows with plantation blinds that continued throughout the house, a pair of french doors leading to the backyard, and a large corner fireplace with a handsome dark-wood mantle.

The living room connected to the kitchen and dining room, the three rooms forming something of a circle, making the whole space seem open and airy. Though the kitchen was on the small side, it had lovely chrome fixtures, another over-sized window, white cabinets, and a brand new refrigerator.

Down the hall was a massive hall bathroom that, though a little drab for us color-wise, was large and clean. The two smaller bedrooms were a good size, though, again, not really our taste in colors (or the baseball-themed fan).

But then we saw what is best described as the master bedroom suite. What is technically the master bedroom (though we use it as our office) had a large closet with a smart closet system inside and newish laminate wood floors (which, actually, Dave is not a fan of, but I didn't mind).
That room leads to the bonus room (which we use as our bedroom), which has waist-high wainscoting and newish carpet (though, in a reversal of the previous room, I don't like it but Dave does).

Those two rooms both connect to the master bathroom, which is enormous with tons of built in cabinetry. There's also a door from the bonus room that leads onto the same porch that the french doors face, a porch that was far bigger and nicer than the realtor's pictures had demonstrated. The porch is a great size and it borders a huge, gorgeous oak tree that provides shade to most of the backyard as well as the living areas of the house, a huge plus for these hot Florida summers.

In short, we loved it. Loved it much more than the first house we made an offer on (which this house is much bigger than). We loved it even more when we found out that the owners had just put a brand new roof on it.

We fairly quickly made an offer and the counter-offer we got back was far more reasonable than we had expected. We accepted that as quickly as possible and did a little happy dance, loving the idea of this being our home.

The process of finalizing our mortgage was one of the most stressful things I've ever been through, not because we ever had to deal with any major hiccups but because I was terrified of the possibility of any hiccups. I nearly jumped out of my skin every time I got an email from our mortgage broker.

But eventually we got word that everything was a go. Our closing took no time at all and the sellers were as nice as they could be (which is a good thing because we see them pretty regularly - their parents live right across the street!). Our mortgage broker gave us a candle and we went straight to explore our new house.

After two weeks, we still love that this is our home. I had expected some kinds of disappointments, just because I had built this house up so much in my head. But really it's better than I had imagined. We have wonderful neighbors, both Potter and Molly love the house (and especially the yard!), and we have felt at home here since the first night. And really, isn't that all you could ask for?

Sold: Part Two

2011-07-30T15:17:00.000-04:00

Sorry for the delay in follow-up. We closed on our house five days after having returned from Kentucky, where Molly and I had been for three weeks. After closing, I had a week to pack our entire apartment (because I hadn't even considered packing before then), not to mention catch up on the work that I had sorely neglected while I was out of town. Then we moved and, despite having called our cable/phone/internet provider three weeks in advance, it took them another week after we moved (so four weeks since I first called) to hook our service up. This is particularly troublesome since I am in the middle of teaching two online classes. So I have spent large portions of the past week at Starbucks getting my work done during the day and trying to unpack at night. Which is why that it is just now, two weeks after the first post, that I am getting around to the continuation.

[Part One Here]

In hindsight, our home search wasn't that long. We started looking at the end of April and entered into escrow on the house we chose in June. Not too shabby. But it felt excruciatingly long during the process.

Our price range put us at the top of the fixer-upper, needs updating range and at the lower end of the lovely, already re-done family-home range, or at least that's true because we were very picky about the part of town we would look. Tallahassee, though really not that big of a city, has real estate spread all over every inch of it. We could have gotten a much bigger and/or more affordable house had we been willing to move to the north side of town (where there are lots of new developments), but then our drive to work and Molly's daycare would have probably been at least 45 minutes one-way. That's fine for some people, but after five years of living in-town, we weren't ready to leave it.

So we saw a lot of duds. We only looked at a couple of shortsales because they were both in such bad shape. They would be these beautiful homes that would be perfect, but because the previous owners had taken such poor care of them they were not at all a possibility for us.

About two weeks into looking, we actually found two houses that we loved. The first one was an absolutely gorgeous 1940's bungalow with yellow siding (for some reason I am most drawn to yellow houses, so that was a major plus for me). The house had original hardwood flooring, gorgeous windows, built-in shelving, a nice-sized yard, and was walking distance to downtown. I loved it...except for the fact that the yard was bordered by a train track. Though the neighbor assured us that she never even noticed it anymore, it was less-than-ideal.

The second house was in a neighborhood that we loved (which our realtor referred to as the "local hippie neighborhood"). It was a 1970s ranch that had clearly been loved and taken care of. The kitchen had been totally redone and opened up to a spacious dining room. It had a den with a stacked stone fireplace, a huge backyard, and sat at the end of a dead end street bordered by a small creek. We both loved it and made what we thought was a generous offer.

The sellers came back and told us that they wanted every penny of their asking price with no concessions on their end (such as no help with closing costs) and they wanted us to close faster. Not only was I completely put off by how unreasonable their "counteroffer" was, their house simply wasn't worth what they were asking. So we passed on it.

[Note: the owners recently dropped their asking price $10k lower than our offer. I feel inappropriately triumphant about that. Bad form, I know, but I can't help it.]

I was surprisingly okay with losing that house (I tend to take these things quite hard), but I was starting to lose hope that we would find "the" house. I spent an excessive amount of time scouring the internet for houses, and I just didn't see anything that I thought I would compare to our first offer.

The following weekend our realtor showed us another ten houses. At the last minute, I asked her to show us another house that had just gone on the market. The house looked gorgeous in pictures, so I couldn't understand why the price was so low (or what seemed awfully low compared to other houses we'd seen). The nine other houses that we looked at that weekend were duds (some were lovely, but none were for us), but the last-minute house was amazing.

This house was a 1940's Colonial with a huge backyard (complete with sailboat-shaped sandbox!) It had four bedrooms and a bonus room, which had been used as a homeschooling classroom. The whole house was in immaculate condition and had clearly been lovingly cared for. The sellers even set out cookies for us when we came to view the house. (Tip to keep in mind for future home-selling. We loved it! Another house left fliers about the neighborhood; we loved that, too.)

There were, of course, two problems. The first was location. It wasn't really in a neighborhood, more of a collection of houses, and it bordered a very busy road. However, the yard had a large, privacy fence and we couldn't hear any of the traffic from inside the house.

The bigger problem was that the roof was old enough that we would have had to replace it before being able to get homeowner's insurance. We couldn't quite decide whether or not the house was worth it for us, so we decided to sit on it for a bit.

While thinking about it, our realtor encouraged me to take David back to see a house that she had shown me already. I wasn't a fan, but I couldn't really pinpoint why. There was nothing wrong with the house. In fact, it was in our dream neighborhood. But, though it was in fine shape, the previous owners hadn't really done anything to it. It needed new paint everywhere, the kitchen needed updating; it just felt old. But, in lieu of other options, we agreed to go see it.

For no reason at all, the idea of seeing that house again depressed me. I was terrified that Dave was going to love it and, without being able to find a decent reason against it, we would buy it. It would be fine, but I wouldn't be excited about it. It would just be a place to live, not a home.

[I should point out that David would never have bought a house that I didn't love, but I couldn't help fretting over it.]

To cheer myself up, I asked our realtor to also show us a house in the same neighborhood. I had been watching it for awhile and was excited to see that the price had just been dropped, though it was still on the upper tier of our price range.

Further proving how right for each other we were, Dave hated the first house. Like me, he couldn't pinpoint why, but he just didn't like it. It was a clear no-go.

But then we went two streets over to see the other house. And that's where we fell in love.

Sold: Part One

2011-07-18T08:00:00.000-04:00

A few months ago, David and I decided to start looking for a rental house to move into. We love our apartment; it has absolutely everything an apartment can offer us. So we would never move out of it into another apartment here in Tallahassee. And when we moved into our apartment, it was our third move in less than a year (long, miserable story), so we were pretty turned off of the idea of moving any time soon.

But here's the thing: Molly loves being outside. Loves it. Even in this crazy Florida heat, she would play outside all day, every day if we'd let her. But our options are fairly limited in our apartment: play outside on our cement porch (which, while quite large for an apartment, still isn't exactly roomy), take a walk around our apartment complex, or drive to one of the local parks (which is fun but inconvenient). So for Molly (and Potter) we started looking around.

The search started off promising. A friend mentioned there was a house that had just put a For Rent sign up in her neighborhood (which we love). So I looked it up online and it was perfect - size, locations, price - perfect, even Dave agreed. I called that afternoon, less than 24 hours since the sign had gone up, and it had already been rented. I was dejected to say the least.

That same experience, though with increasingly less perfect homes, was repeated over and over again for the next couple of weeks. It became obvious that we were going to have to pay much more in rent than we were used to to be able to rent a house that would work for us.

Then we went to look at one final house. And we loved this house. The landlord was a sweet, southern gentleman, the location was great, it was a beautiful (though unfenced) backyard, and the price was only slightly more than what we had expected pay.

And yet the small things that we didn't love about it (the lack of fence, an ancient stove, a slightly higher than desired rent) made us realize something: we were sick of renting. Though we love our apartment and have had no problems with our apartment complex, we hated being asked for references to move into a rental house and having to call someone else every time anything need fixed. We wanted to be able to paint a room without worrying about how someone else would feel about it. Though we love our current neighbors, we didn't want to have to worry about who the next people would be to share a wall with us. We were ready to be homeowners, to nobody's shock more than our own.

Next up: Part Two - the hunt is on

this moment: 7.2.11

2011-07-02T16:06:00.000-04:00

{this moment} - A Saturday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

If you're inspired to do the same, leave a link to your 'moment' in the comments for all to find and see.

. . . . . . . .

Inspired by Summer Rhythms

2011-06-28T22:01:00.000-04:00

Hi all! Sorry I've been MIA lately.

Except, really, I'm not sorry. (No offense.) I'm in the middle of three weeks that I'm spending with Molly in Kentucky, staying at my in-laws' house (Molly's Nana and Papa) in my hometown, between my Mom's wedding and my sister-in-law's wedding.

In truth, I expected it to be a crazy, hectic three weeks (which it probably would have been if we'd flown back to be with David, who we will continue to miss terribly until he gets up here on Saturday, as we had originally planned). But it instead, it has been wonderful. David's parents are wonderful at taking care of us no matter how often I ask to help, and it feels so comfortable and relaxing to be in this position. All of our trips to Kentucky since we moved to Florida (almost five years ago!), especially since Molly was born, have been quick and hectic, filled with much more going than enjoying. This trip, on the other hand, feels like coming home.

Even better, though, has been seeing Molly in this place that I love so much. She was under-the-weather with teething pain and an unusual schedule when we first got here. But after the ceremony of my mom's wedding died down and our pace became slower, she has settled into her days and nights here. And her time is filled with people who love her, from my sister, to family friends, to new friends, to - especially - her Nana and Papa, whose love for her is just overflowing all day, every day. And she loves them right back, lighting up each time she sees them, running to greet them in the morning and offering them sweet good night kisses every night.

And that love has made this once-shy girl come out of her shell more than ever before. She entertained her Aunt Anna's friends at her bridal shower and danced in front of a dozen or more strangers at story time this morning. She is a delight, even more than ever. And I love that this place, this place that shaped me in so many ways, has made her this way.

So I'm not blogging. I am enjoying every second here. Every second with her.

Which is why my breath caught a bit when I read today's post by Ali Edwards: The Change of Seasons : Summer Rhythms. Ali's words always have a way of speaking to me (so much so that I clearly feel like we're on a first name basis), but her list of goals for this summer screamed at me. This is exactly what I want to do. Read it. You won't be sorry.

Yes, I have to work. I have to travel. Life will be crazy when I get back to Tallahassee. But above all that, I want to live this summer, slowly and sumptuously.

So far I'd say it's going pretty darn well.

Confidence & Growth

2011-06-07T09:21:00.000-04:00

I feel like I've spent far too much time complaining and/or worrying about daycare on this blog, so I have tried to avoid the subject for the last little bit. For one, I don't want people to cringe when they arrive at my blog, Crap, another daycare post. But also, I know that I've given the wrong impression. I am now and always have been pro-daycare. Though I think it's important to find a quality daycare full of caring, well-trained teachers, once you've done that there are a lot of benefits to daycare. Molly, who dealt with separation anxiety far longer than the average, has become comfortable in the care of others or while playing on her own, in large part because of her involvement with daycare. I am a better mother* because I am able to devote some of my time to work and intellectual growth thanks to daycare.

In short, I'm a daycare fan.

And the truth is, Molly is thriving at daycare lately. Around March, she began to act really excited about daycare. She loved her teacher, Ms. Abby, furiously, and was always excited about seeing her. So when we found out that Ms. Abby would stop being Molly's teacher (she's still at the daycare, just in a different capacity), I was worried about how Molly would handle it. It turns out, though, that she loves Ms. Sam, her new teacher, just as much, if not more.

Dropping Molly off in the mornings used to be frustrating and emotional. David usually took her each morning, so on the occasions when we switched roles, she would cry and cry when I left her. It broke my heart and though I know, thanks to the assurances of her lovely teachers, that it ended almost as soon as I was gone, it was a rough way to start the day.

This summer, though, we've altered our routine (for reasons of productivity), and now I almost always take her to daycare in the morning. Within the first week of this change, Molly stopped crying when I left. At first I thought it was just the consistency that had made her more confident. But than I noticed one other thing. Each morning after we sign her in and walk into her classroom, Molly - without so much as a glance back at me - runs to Ms. Sam.

Now, Ms. Sam is terribly sweet and always tells Molly to say bye to Mama, but the look I get from Molly is something I expect to see a lot in her teenage years: Mom, you can go now. Sheesh.

And I am thrilled, thrilled!, that Molly so loves her teacher and her daycare. We've started going to a monthly Saturday playdate with some of the other daycare parents/kids, and it's honestly reassuring and heartwarming to see her so sweetly interact with her friends and classmates. Ms. Sam and the other teachers regularly tell me how wonderful Molly is and share hilarious stories of what she does each day. And that is exactly how it should be. I wouldn't want it any other way. Really.

So why does it break my heart so much?

I want, and have always wanted, Molly to be a (relatively) independent child - another benefit of daycare. I want her to be comfortable with others and be willing to be brave and try new things. And I certainly do not want her to cry every time I leave her, not because it's hard on me (though it is) but because it's not in her best interest. So in theory, I'm glad for this change in events, this new confidence.

But a little bit, in a completely selfish way, my heart breaks to see how much she loves these teachers. A couple of nights ago she was talking to herself in her crib at bedtime, like she always does, and started saying Ms. Abby over and over. (It's so cute how she says it - she draws out the "Ab" and then emphasizes the "by" - AaaaaaaaBY! - as though there's always an exclamation at the end.) Sure, she spends plenty of time, far more really, saying Mama and Dada. But that was like a verbal confirmation that my sweet little baby is become a little girl. She's growing up and having experiences that don't involve us.

And though that is exactly what we had hoped for her, I'm not sure I was ready for it so soon.

*Hopefully unnecessary clarification: I don't mean I'm a better mother than anyone who chooses not to use daycare. This is what works for me. I'm not advocating it as the best way for everyone.

this moment : 6.4.11

2011-06-04T08:35:00.000-04:00

{this moment} - A Saturday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

If you're inspired to do the same, leave a link to your 'moment' in the comments for all to find and see.

. . . . . . . .

Sleeping Girl

2011-06-01T08:00:00.002-04:00

Yesterday I went to wake Molly up for daycare (after letting her sleep an hour longer than normal), but she was not interested in waking up. So I did what any normal parent would do: I grabbed the camera.

(the progression starts at the top, left-hand corner then moves counter-clockwise)

Molly has officially reached the age when she is not interested in having her picture taken; either she wants to grab the camera or she is too busy to look at it for very long. So I love these pics even more than I would otherwise. For just a moment, my busy, always-on-the-go toddler was caught, just for a moment, being sweet & still.

Goodness I love her.

Toddler Trick: Hiding the Power Button

2011-05-31T16:43:00.000-04:00

When we redid the office, one of the unexpected results was that Molly became fascinated with the power button on our desktop computer's CPU. The computer designers (who clearly weren't parents) thought it would be smart to put a bright blue light behind it, like so:

(excuse the blurry picture)

This attracts Molly like a flame attracts a moth, resulting in our computer being "improperly shutdown" more times than we can count.

(Interestingly, the button was just as visible and reachable before we redid the office, she just never noticed it somehow - probably the mess in the rest of the office distracted her.)

Because there's not anywhere to move the CPU without it becoming quite inconvenient, I decided to whip up a solution.

Using some leftover fabric from the office curtains, I made a detachable "curtain" to hang in front of the tower, like so:

Making the "curtain" itself was extremely easy. Though I could have gone the no-sew route like I did with the window curtains, this was so small that I simply used a straight stitch to sew a 1/2" hem around all four sides.

Then I attached the "soft" half of one long strip of peel-and-stick velcro (which you can get at any craft store), almost the entire length of the fabric, about a 1/2" from the top of the front side of the curtain. I also sewed a straight line down the middle of the velcro to keep it secure, but that's probably not necessary. I then folded the curtain about a 1/2" below the velcro (with the top folding backwards, so the velcro would eventually face up) just to create a seam.

Finally I attached the "scratchy" half of the strip of velcro to the underside of the desk, double-checking the placement. After letting the velcro sit for awhile to adhere well, I simply attached the curtain like so:

The curtain has had no problem staying adhered and does a nice job of covering the alluring power button so that we don't have to worry about any accidental shutdowns anymore.

Not the most difficult DIY, but it has definitely been helpful.

The Big List: A Painting I'm Proud Of

2011-05-30T08:00:00.001-04:00

During the process of revamping my blog (have you noticed? I thought it needed cheering up.), I was reading over my Big List and realized that I had completed a task without even thinking about:

34. Paint something that I would proudly display on my living room wall.

Even though this painting currently resides in my office, I love it and would be more than happy to hang it in my living room, so I'm counting it. As I mentioned the first time it showed up on the blog, I got the idea of Elise Joy and then used colors from the curtains (in the right on the above picture).

Even though this isn't a particularly technical painting - really there's no skill required it - I love how much it brightens up the office and I'm quite proud to have done it on my own.

Playing at Parks and with Photoshop

2011-05-29T15:11:00.001-04:00

For Christmas, Dave gave me Photoshop Elements 9, which I was thrilled about. I have wanted to be able to do more with our photos for a while, and I knew this would allow me to do more with editing and the like. Unfortunately, I have just now been able to give it any attention. Better late than never, though, right?

I'm still just figuring it out, but I wanted to share a few tutorials I've used that I have found particularly helpful. They helped me do this:

Not fancy, I know, but it looks good, right? (It doesn't hurt that the subject is so stinkin' adorable.) So here are the guides to check out:

Specific to blogging:
Check out the Blog Guidebook for lots of hows and whys.
Then watch this on How to Widen Your Blogger Layout to allow for larger photos.
How to Post Large Photos on Your Blog

And my favorite this far:
Grouping/Collaging Photos in Photoshop

Not a lot, but enough for me to get started on certainly.

Do any of you use Photoshop or Elements? Any tips or tutorials to share?

this moment : 5.28.11

2011-05-28T11:52:00.002-04:00

{this moment} - A Saturday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

If you're inspired to do the same, leave a link to your 'moment' in the comments for all to find and see.

. . . . . . . .

{this moment} is a project begun by Amanda Soule from SouleMama. I'm hoping to make it my own Saturday ritual.

An Office to Work In

2011-05-17T15:59:00.003-04:00

Though I'm actually quite enjoying my blogging hiatus, I realize that I never gave you the "after" pictures of the office that I started complaining about last summer). We finally purchased the furniture in February and then spent the next few weeks putting everything together, but my energy apparently stalled right before I blogged about here. So, a few months late, here is our new and improved office.

(See here for my inspiration and here for the before pictures.)

[Beware: super long and photo-heavy post follows.]

This is the view as you first look in the room from the hallway with our desks on the left and the bookshelves (which you can't see yet) on the right. On the wall as you walk in on the right you see this:

Yep, that's Molly's handiwork. I wanted this room to be colorful and comfortable, and Molly's sweet art work seemed to strike the perfect balance of that. Plus they match the curtains, which were really the basis of the colors in the room.

Once you enter the room, our desks are on the left. Virtually everything in here came from Ikea, including the desks. The set up here is perfect for us. By putting the drawers in the middle and the printer on top of them, it created a distinct break between David's desk and mine, so neither of us has to worry about each other's stuff encroaching on our space.

David's desk in the one on the left and this is probably the cleanest it's ever been.

The poster on the wall is from a Hemingway conference I went to in Spain in 2006. It was Dave's first time out of the US, so it has sentimental meaning for the two of us. Likewise, he helped his mom make the quilt hanging on the back of his chair as a gift to me in the early days of our relationship.

One of the things I love most about my side is that it has a distinct "work" area and a distinct "craft" area. The drawers have been amazingly helpful in staying organized.

I even have an entire drawer dedicated to nothing but the eighty-million things we have that plug into our computers. (FYI, they're all wrapped up with basic binder clips - super handy!) Feeling organized makes my life so much easier.

The right side of my area is a dedicated sewing area. It makes it so much easier for me to be crafty when I don't have to pull out and put back my sewing machine (and/or leave it sitting out on the dining room table) every time I want to use it. And having all of my supplies within arm reach is even better.

Above the sewing machine is my craftiest moment. Are you ready for this? I painted that! I stole the idea directly from Elise Joy and used colors from the curtains (which you can see to the right - Ikea!). When I first hung it up, I thought it was just a temporary solution while we had some visitors; I wanted to fill it out some more. But it turns out that I love it just the way it is, so it's staying.

I also, believe it or not, made the curtains. (Don't you just love the curtain fabric? I absolutely do.) I used Young House Love's No-Sew curtain tutorial; easy peasy.

Under the curtains is Molly's own little table with a simple crate full of books and toys beside it. I got the idea for the hanging buckets from my friend Stephanie; the buckets themselves were $1 clearance buys from Target's after-Easter sale. They hold her collection of play fruit (which is one of Potter's favorite things to steal, so it's important to keep it up off the floor or even table). It's so cute to see her sit and draw at the table while David and I work (or, more likely, peruse the internet).

Do you see all of those shelves? AMAZING! This is as close to an in-house library I'm going to get anytime soon. You know what else? There is still TONS of space. More of the shelves on the side of the bookshelf you can't see are empty as are all four of the storage boxes. It's amazing and SO organized. I love them. Love, love, love them.

There are still lots of things I want to do, from hanging something on the wall where the guitar is (I'm thinking of getting some cheap-o diploma frames, painting them a funky color, and then hanging our diplomas there) as well as figuring out how to accessorize the top of the largest bookshelf.

The original goal of this re-do was to give me a place that would encourage productivity at home. And you know what? It has completely worked. I get so much more done in this space than I ever got done in our cramped, dark, disorganized office. I am so happy with how it turned out.

She & Me / May 2011

2011-05-05T20:54:00.001-04:00

Because Molly's daycare is associated with the university I work for, it closes any time classes aren't in session. Normally this wouldn't matter because I would keep Molly at home with me anyway (like on Memorial Day or over Christmas Break). But there are times that this is less convenient, such as over Spring Break when I would normally catch up on work or, more applicably, the two days after the end of each semester when I am rushing to finish grading. That was the Monday & Tuesday of this week. It's not a major problem, but it does make my life more hectic for a few days.

In addition to balancing final grading (I had 80 essays and 80 exams to grade), I was a little concerned about being at home with Molly all week. Normally I would be incredibly excited about it, but the last time Molly and I spent a week together, just the two of us, was Spring Break. As happy as I was to spend so much time with her, it did not go as well as I had expected.

At about 14 months (incidentally about the same time we stopped using the pacifier), Molly began a temper tantrum phase. I expected tantrums eventually, but these came earlier than I had anticipated and they were, to be honest, terrible. They were usually the result of her not getting her way about something, at which point she would begin to scream-cry and tighten her body in such a way that we would have to sit her down to avoid dropping her. But when she got on the ground, she would scream louder for us to pick her up. If we did, the whole cycle would repeat. This could go on for as long as 20 minutes. There was no calming her down, only distracting her, usually with food or cartoon theme songs. It was incredibly exhausting and even a little demoralizing. Even if this only happened once a week, I found that I was constantly on the lookout for them, giving into her wants whenever just to avoid the potential meltdown. It was not my best parenting.

Spring Break felt like the climax of this tantrum period. She had one almost every day, even two on one day a couple of times. I felt like a terrible mom and felt like Molly would be happier and better off in daycare (where we were assured she never had tantrums like this). For the first time ever, I was glad to go back to work/send Molly back to daycare the following week. It was a low point for sure.

But over the past 6 weeks or so, Molly has slowly come out of her tantrum-ness. I'm not sure why it happened, other than that she just moved out of that phase. But it's wonderful. She has become a hilarious little ball of joy. She gets the biggest kick out of making us laugh, which only makes her laugh harder than anyone. She is full of energy, not slowing down until the second that I lay her down in her crib. Lately, she has just been fun.

[That's not to say that she's not still strong-headed. She absolutely is. And stubborn. But she gets over things more easily and is more likely to accept redirection. It's a welcome change.]

So this week, this week of Molly and I being home together all day, every day, has basically been the exact opposite of Spring Break. I've purposely left our schedule virtually empty, so we've just hung out at home most of the time, reading books, playing games, and spending lots of time on our porch. But more than anything else, I've just followed Molly's lead. And it has led to some pretty hilarious places:

One day Molly started blowing raspberries on the little orange maraca that she had gotten in a party bag a couple of weeks earlier. It hilariously looked like she was beatboxing, so I (who have absolutely no rhythm or musical ability) decided to encourage her skills. The fact that I was willing to post this here is a testament how desperately I love her (and her dancing skills).

I love that she's at this stage where she makes things up. She's using her imagination more than ever and it's so fun.

So this week we've had a blast. I am more in love with my daughter than ever.

She : April 2011

2011-04-16T22:00:00.003-04:00

She is a bundle of energy, moving at 900 miles an hour at any given point in the day.

She is the epitome of Miss Independent. She wants to walk everywhere on her own. She wants to use a big girl cup and doesn't want us to help her hold it. She doesn't even want us to cut up her food for her anymore.

She continues to be an amazing sleeper. Nap times and night time are consistently wonderful. I know how lucky this makes me.

She adores being outside. We recently set up a water table and a DIY sand box on our porch, and she would happily play out there all day, every day. It's even sweeter because our porch is surrounded by trees and as planes fly overhead, she'll point up and "say" plane. When birds start singing, she looks for the sound and signs bird. She loves to be there.

She is beloved by her daycare teachers. I picked her up on Thursday and one of her main teachers (her classroom has two) handed her to me and then proceeded to go on and on about the many things she loves about Molly. It made me proud of my girl and so pleased with the place she spends her days, even more because she loves them right back.

She loves to eat, especially if it's a snack food or any variety of bread. But she's getting better about healthier varieties of food, too, especially if we give her the "big girl version," a whole pear instead of pieces. And yet, she's still skinny, skinny.

She still mostly babbles, but it's amazing how quickly she picks up new words. Today she said "touchdown." Clearly she misses football season.

She is a funny girl, and she thinks she's funnier than anyone else. If she catches you laughing at her, she'll keep repeating whatever she's doing over and over, laughing at you laughing at her. And it's a full belly laugh every time.

She is slowly but surely becoming a daddy's girl, which I knew was inevitable. He makes her laugh like nothing else can.

She still loves books. When we stopped nursing at night, we started reading books before bed. The first couple of nights she was too antsy to sit still for long, but now she (usually) sits contentedly while Dave reads to her, entranced by the pages and his words. Her current favorites are Brown Bear, Brown Bear and Olivia.

She is so much more perfect than I could have ever imagined.

[blog post inspired by Ali Edwards.]

Where I Am

2011-03-30T17:28:00.000-04:00

That stack of books above? That's what I've been doing lately (that it's 5 or 6 or 10 friends). And that's a very, very good thing. For the first time in a long time I'm excited about my project. It feels smart and cool and, well, me. And I'm pumped to see it fully coming together.

Of course I've also got teaching and hanging with my amazing daughter and sweet husband. But the rest of the time? That's for those books. So the blog is taking a hiatus.

But it's such a good thing.

Monday Five Countdown

2011-03-21T12:03:00.000-04:00

My weekend ended on a sad note, so today I'm participating in Bookish Penguin's Monday Five Countdown to help me focus on the big picture and the good things I have going on.

Five Things I'm Grateful For:

Of course, Molly and David. It's so hard to stay down in the dumps when you have an adorable daughter making faces at you through the door and a husband who makes a list of "character-building moments in our relationship" to make me laugh.
My job. It is easily the thing that causes me the most frustration, but Pat's loss (and the many rememberances of her that have been written around the web) has reminded me what I love about what I do.
This is going to seem like a strange one, but I love that I live far away from my family. I miss them like crazy, but I also appreciate them so much more than I did when I lived in the same state with them. I try to soak them in when we do visit because those moments are so infrequent.
The first day of Spring!
Related to #4 - air conditioning. It was already 90 degrees yesterday, and while it feels awesome for now, I fear this is going to be a very uncomfortable summer.

Four Things I Can't Stop Thinking About

Japan, of course. I have a tendency to feel more personally affected by major disasters than I might have a right to (I think the fact that I'm knee deep in 9/11, since my dissertation project focuses on post-9/11 literature, exacerbates that tendency).
The Circus! FSU has its own student-led circus, and I have wanted to go to it every single year but we haven't. This year we are going, along with Dave's parents who happen to be visiting the weekend they open, and Molly and I will get to experience the circus for the first time together. Can't wait.
My dissertation. Always, unfortunately.
Easter. I'm making Molly's dress this year, and I need to get on it.

Three Things I Want to Accomplish This Week

Five pages of dissertation writing. Seems small, right? Not so much.
Cut out the pieces for Molly's Easter dress.
Finally order prints of our family pictures (that we had taken in October).

Two Things I Am Working to be Positive About

Weaning Molly. It's time for both of us. She's only been nursing at night since January, and lately even that has been brief and filled mostly with her showing me her nose instead, and yet, I'm having a hard time coming to a complete stop.
Not to be redundant, but the dissertation. I think I can finish it. I think I can finish it.

One Random Thing

I never watch basketball during the regular season. (of course I mean college basketball. I don't want pro basketball ever.) If Dave has it on, I'll check in, but it's never by my choosing. And yet, when the tournament rolls around, I become obsessed. Dave gets tired of watching it before I do. And this year we've taught Molly team spirit, which makes it even more fun.

If you're interested in doing your own Monday Five Countdown, head over to Bookish Penguin and link up.

Loss and Rememberance

2011-03-20T14:46:00.004-04:00

It's been almost a month since I've posted, though I have lots of stories to tell. Of trips and friends and silly and sweet little girls. Of work and expectations and demands and rewards. Of birthdays and sweet husbands and darling daughters. Of life.

Then this morning I woke up to an email telling me that Pat Taylor had died, unexpectedly, yesterday. Pat was one of my undergrad professors at WKUwho led the semester trip to Cambridge, England that I took. The trip that changed and shaped me and broadened my world. I decided to teach college because of her. I decided to refuse to let the academy's expectations of what a (female) college professor should look/be like define me. Because of her, I decided to be me.

I took every single class that Pat offered while I was an undergrad. She was eccentric, wearing bright red wigs and red leather mini skirts in her 60s. And somehow it all - her personality and attire and homey cosmopolitanism - made complete sense.

I was taking one of her classes the semester my dad died, one semester before I was scheduled to follow her to England. The care that she showed me has in so many ways informed my belief of how a professor should be with her students. She never tried to be anything but professional, and yet that didn't stop her from being caring and kind, even loving. She adored us, especially those of us who went abroad with her, almost as though we were her own children. She and her loving, devoted husband drove two hours each way in one day to attend my wedding, because she cared.

She was 73, old enough that it shouldn't be surprising and yet young enough that it still seems much too soon. Despite her age though, the possibility of her dying had never occurred to me. She was such a force that I imagined her rattling around the English building for decades to come.

Right now I'm mostly stunned. I'm trying to remember that Pat would demand that we celebrate her enthusiastic life rather than be saddened by her loss. To remember how strongly she believed in molding college students, having faith in them to change and shape the world based on their unique individual talents. To remember the faith that she had in me.

To remember.

:::

ETA: My good friend Corey has written a wonderful and smart (and much more complete) memorial to Pat. Corey's "Pat-isms" line many of my notebooks, too. I am, more than ever, glad I still have them.

:::

Update 03/22/11: Pat’s husband Craig is establishing a student scholarship in her name. If you are interested in giving to this scholarship–designed for literature students–you can learn more by contacting Laurie Basham at 270-745-5082. Donations may also be sent to the following address:

Patricia Minton Taylor Memorial Scholarship for English Literature Students
College Heights Foundation
WKU
1906 College Heights Blvd.
Bowling Green, KY. 42101

Pacifier Drop Redux

2011-02-22T22:15:00.000-05:00

I feel like I owe you all some kind of "after" picture of our decision to stop giving Molly a pacifier cold turkey.

Best. Decision. Ever.

Okay, that might be overselling it. And perhaps I should begin with the downsides so I don't run you all off with superfluous gushing about my daughter. It's true that Molly has never, not once, "requested" her pacifier since we took it away. A lot of this has to do with timing. Molly hadn't started calling her pacifier anything, so she never asked for it. If she could see it, she would point to it to request it. But if it wasn't around, she never seemed to think of it. So we haven't had to deal with tantrums from her wanting it and not getting it.

We have, however, had tantrums. Molly has always been a stubborn child (a trait we have been expecting as payback for our own stubborn childhood ways). Only one kind of pacifier would do, the same being true for bottles, then sippy cups. Her biggest fits have always been when she didn't get something she wanted or when we forced her to stop something she was enjoying. But, until recently, we could always abate a massive meltdown by providing her pacifier (something I realize now, and realized then, too, I suppose, we were doing far too frequently). Without the calming effect of the pacifier, her fury has been unleashed.

Dave took the following (admittedly poor quality) picture of Molly with his cell phone a week or so ago, and it gives you something of an idea:

In most cases, the tantrum begins when Molly is denied something she wants. In this case, she wanted dinner, which I was in the process of fixing. Because she could see me with the food, she thought she could have it right that minute, but it was still being fixed. If she's being held at the beginning of a tantrum (or if we pick her up to try to calm her), she flails and twists until we have to sit her on the floor to avoid dropping her. Once on the floor, she literally rolls back and forth flailing her fists. The state pictured above is the begging stage, when she realizes that her flailing won't work and attempts to climb up our legs for pity. Don't be fooled though! If we pick her up without giving her whatever she wants (if she even remembers what that is by this point), the process begins all over again with the flailing.

In general, this is a 5 or 6 minute process, either abated by giving her what she wanted (if appropriate, as in the case of dinner being ready) or distracting her with something else. 5 or 6 minutes is not that bad in the grand scheme of things, but of those are a painful 5 or 6 minutes. Especially when she was so easily calmed before...with the pacifier.

Luckily I am just as stubborn as my daughter (at least for now), so there's no way I'm going back now.

The upside of the tantrums is that she already seems to be learning from then. She is more understanding now of the fact that putting dinner together is a process, so she waits while I cook much more contentedly than before. She finds other things to tantrum about, of course, but much of the time she seems to be learning from them.

So that's the bad. The good is this: my daughter's personality has exploded with the removal of her pacifier. Literally overnight, she became more outgoing, more vocal, and more confident. She has always been a fun, happy child, but now she's Molly to the Tenth Degree. She is constantly laughing and playing and just generally going, in the best possible way.

Perhaps nowhere has this been more apparent than at daycare. Molly has been content at her daycare for some time now, but she has never seemed to enjoy being there per se. She didn't dread it, but she didn't look forward to it either. Since we stopped using the pacifier (a decision her daycare teachers were more than supportive of...when we told them after the fact), she has become the life of the daycare party. She blows kisses to me as she leaves with David in the morning. She claps as she sees her friends and points to her teachers. Though she still occasionally gets a little upset when we leave her there, it's only occasional, and even then it's a mild reaction. When we pick her up, she is almost always in an amazing mood, happy to be in the care of her teachers and spending time with her friends.

Just this morning in fact, one of the daycare teachers (not one from her classroom, but one she spends a lot of time with in the early mornings) remarked to David how amazing Molly's personality change has been without her pacifier. "It's almost like she has a whole new personality," she said. And while the difference is not quite as pronounced at home, it's impossible not to notice the changes in her. Without her pacifier, Molly has become less of a baby and more of toddler.

The emotional change has been mirrored in her willingness to walk independently. While she has spent much of her time at home walking while holding onto our hands since Christmas, her independent walking was still limited to quick bursts of movement, almost always to a specific thing or place. Since she stopped using her pacifier, she has become far more willing to walk aimlessly, unassisted in any way. Her new-found confidence and independence astounds me.

I don't entirely understand the psychology behind how discontinuing our reliance on the pacifier has prompted these changes in Molly, but I know that I am grateful for them. And I know that I will be braver myself when it comes to hypothetical future children in terms of quitting the pacifier even sooner.

Because seeing this face 90% of the time:

is totally worth the occasional 5-6 minutes of tantrums.

Operation Cold Turkey Pacifier Drop

2011-02-13T09:31:00.000-05:00

Before Molly was born, I was pretty dead-set against using pacifiers. Though I would never say so out loud (knowing that there was a lot I didn't know and wanting to avoid having to eat my words), I had no intention of giving Molly a pacifier...ever.

And then she was born and, for those first days in the hospital, we spent her every waking moment holding one of our pinky fingers in her mouth. She had such an insatiable urge to suck. But in the hospital it didn't seem like such a big deal because she slept so much, and it's not like we had anything better to do.

When we got home and had the option of doing other things, like making ourselves dinner or even just changing the channel on the TV, constantly holding a finger in her mouth became impractical (and uncomfortable). Finally my mom urged me to just try a pacifier and, though it was my own stubbornness that had prevented me from trying that before, I was so very grateful for the suggestion.

[Of course, my daughter has inherited my (and her father's) stubbornness and was extremely picky about what kind of pacifier she would take. Only Nuk for her thank you very much.]

I quickly became a pacifier convert, appreciative of the fact that we could eat out without having to go through a long process of calming her down. And in the beginning I was purposeful in only using it when absolutely necessary. But as she got older, I realized that Molly had been conditioned to expect her pacifier when she voiced her displeasure. I began to dread the day we would have to get rid of the stupid plastic things.

Ideally, I would have started to get rid of the pacifier when Molly turned a year old. But having a Christmas Eve birthday means there's a lot of traveling around her birthday, and I didn't want to change up Molly's norm anymore than we already were by being on the go. Plus, when we got home we were starting the process of weaning. So the pacifier stayed around.

But I found myself get increasingly annoyed with my own use of the pacifier while simultaneously noticing that Molly seemed to be depending on it more and more often. The bigger problem, to me, was (once again) her stubbornness. Even if I only gave Molly her pacifier in moments of extreme need, she would refuse to let it out of her sight or let it be taken away afterword. It seemed like we were using the pacifier more and more rather than less and less, especially after she cut five new teeth in one weekend.

Then this past Friday something amazing happened. Without planning or forethought, Molly went the entire afternoon without her pacifier. I didn't even realize it until bedtime. And it wasn't even that she hadn't used it. She had been in an amazing mood without it (not necessarily because she was without it, but still). A crazy, spontaneous idea hit me while Dave was giving Molly her bath. We were going cold turkey.

[This, you should know, is completely unlikely me. I am a third degree black belt planner. In fact, my previous get-rid-of-the-pacifier plan included a four-month progress, slowly cutting the pacifier out of Molly's life. That is much more like me.]

But I figured, what the hell? She is an excellent sleeper, so I actually wasn't terribly worried how she would do without it at night. (She's still nursing at bedtime, and she usually falls asleep nursing - though not always - and I decided we would let that work in our favor.) So I decided that we would go all night without, and if that went well, we would try to go the next day without it, too.

I wasn't obstinately convinced of my plan (as is often my way), but I was willing to give it a go. If it seemed to be a nightmare, we'd go by to my (overly thought-out) plan.

The next morning, Molly woke up in a great mood. Astoundingly great, in fact. Whereas she usually acts like she's still tired and cuddles on the couch with me for a half hour or so, she immediately wanted to play in her room, laughing the whole time. She even let me change her diaper without a fight (a huge win for Operation Cold Turkey Pacifier Drop).

And, much to my shock, she stayed in that same mood all day. Yes, there were a few trying moments, but they were much, much shorter than I had ever expected them to be and they really only seemed trying for me. Though I would immediately start doubting my parenting skills (why can't I comfort her without a pacifier?), Molly bounced right back. She went down for her nap like she had never slept with a pacifier. We even went out to eat without the dreaded public meltdown. All-in-all, it was a great day.

:::

I know this might be me projecting, but it seemed like Molly was happier without her pacifier. She certainly vocalized her happiness more often. It was wonderful to see her huge smile all day long rather than just when she happened not to have her pacifier.

Admittedly, this is not the end of the story. It's only day two. And on day one we were careful to avoid situations that would be more likely to create a meltdown, situations that won't always be avoidable. I am particularly dreading dealing with her next bout of teething without a pacifier. But if the past 36 hours of told me anything, it's that (for my child, at this time in her life) it is so worth it.

For Those of You with the Snow

2011-02-12T22:21:00.000-05:00

Unlike 90% of the country, our weather has been fairly pleasant lately despite an excess of rain and gray skies. Today, in fact, was downright beautiful, sunny and 60s, and we spent a fair share of it outside. Inspired by the mild temps, I decided on Friday to make a mini-sandbox for Molly (something I have been planning to do since last summer). It's simple enough: fill a large tupperware-style container (actually, a wreath box works perfectly) with sand, add toys, and voila! Instant sandbox that can be closed, moved, and stored. Since we live in an apartment (and, therefore, have no yard that is specifically ours), this is the perfect way to take advantage of our wonderfully large porch and give Molly a chance to play outside more regularly (because that girl loves to play outside).

(No wait. This post really is for those of you with snow. Bear with me.)

Unfortunately, Home Depot (and every other store like it really) is nowhere near convenient to my apartment; in fact, it's not even in a part of town that I am anywhere close to with any kind of regularity. And Target apparently doesn't carry sand in February (shock!). So the sand box thing hasn't happened yet.

But when Molly spotted the $4 sandbox toys I had already purchased (from Target, who apparently thinks it's close enough to summer to have sand toys - like this one but even cheaper), she made it very apparent that she wanted to play with them now. And because this happened on the day I randomly decided to get rid of her pacifier (more on that in a later post), I was all for keeping her happy.

So, necessity being the mother of invention and all that, we ended up with this:

I filled the bucket with cotton balls. Simple, right? But she loved it. I mean really, really loved it. She played with it for at least an hour before we happened to be leaving the house or I feel confident she would have played with it even longer.

The reason why this is so perfect for the 90% of you getting sick of snow is that it's such a nice, easy way to bring a little outside activity indoors. Even though Molly repeatedly dumped the cotton balls out of the bucket, the mess (if you can even call it that) takes about two seconds to clean up.

Molly would dump the cotton balls out and then sort them back into the bucket. Then she would take the shovel and "stir" them in the bucket. Or she would hand me the sifter and place cotton balls onto it for me to dump in the bucket. She seemed endlessly enthralled by it.

And, as an added bonus, I realized it's probably a good precursor to using the same toys in the sand because it's much easier to stop her from eating cotton balls (see the first picture) than it is to get sand out of her mouth. So hopefully by the time I do get around to making her makeshift sandbox, she'll have figured out that these toys don't involve eating (or at least I'll have gotten lots of practice saying "Not in your mouth, Molly").

So, whether it's cold and snowy or lovely and warm where you are, what are you doing to keep the kids happy?

Introducing: The Big List

2011-02-11T20:51:00.001-05:00

I've been working on a Life List for a long time. I was first intrigued by Maggie's Mighty Life List. it seemed so inspiring to create a list of things you wanted to do - from the simple to the crazy - to encourage you to make those things happen that might often get pushed aside when we're too busy focusing on the practical day-to-day of our lives. But it also felt intimidating because I honestly couldn't think of 100 things to put on my list. I had been so focused on my one dream of finishing my PhD that I had ignored every other wish. So I let go of the idea of a life list.

Then Karen Walrond of Chookooloonks (she who gave me the courage to reclaim my badassery), likewise inspired by Maggie, created her own "list of 100+ things I want to do before I go." I don't know what it was about Karen's list that felt different to me, but somehow she made it feel less...magnanimous. One thing I loved about her list was how evolutionary it was. When she discovers something else she'd like to do, she'll add that to her list. Her list was also full of both the silly and the serious (take a trapeze lesson and start a scholarship fund for kids who want to be photographers), the simple and the life-changing (grow a flower from seed to bloom and obtain literary recognition for something she wrote). And perhaps most inspiring was that she got to work on her list write away. She didn't just write it and forget about it, something I feared I would do were I to make a list.

As I was contemplating Karen's list, I happened upon an older entry of Maggie's about How to Write Your Life List. It basically addressed every pause I'd had about composing a life list and took some of the (self-imposed) seriousness out of it. Then Karen created her own post on creating a life list. It spoke to me and inspired me. Around the same time as her how-to post, Maggie also did a series of posts featuring other people's life lists. Reading through their dreams and aspirations was inspiring, and I renewed my resolve to create my one.

The file marked "The Big List" has been sitting on my desktop for months now, mostly untouched. It has hovered right around the 50-item mark, sitting stagnant and ignored. But lately I've been feeling like I need a little inspiration, so I decided that it's time to stop waiting for some big reveal. Maybe I'll publish this on my blog and continue to ignore it. But maybe, hopefully, I'll put it out there and it will inspire me to continue adding to it and, better yet, check items off of it.

But first (because it's who I am), here are the guidelines I'm setting myself, though even these are extremely flexible:

Go Big. My list will include lots of items, at least 100 (as soon as I think of them). I like Karen's point that there's something optimistic about creating a list with a ridiculous number of items on it, even more so if it contains crazy, seemingly unattainable goals. That craziness takes some of the seriousness out of the list, which makes it feel more fun and more likely that it's attainable.
Mix It Up. The Big List contains items both seemingly insignificant and seemingly unattainable. That way I don't get too bogged down in the "dream big" of it all. While I'm waiting to have the money to travel to the four corners of the earth, I'll also learn how to knit or teach Molly how to swing. This keeps the momentum going and makes it feel more likely that I'll be able to cross the "little" things off.
Be Encouraging, Not Discouraging. Though there are some practical, sensible items on The Big List (like paying off our debt and eventually paying for a car with cash), there can be no items that would make me feel bad about myself if I could not complete them. There is no "lose weight" on here. This list is about my hopes and dreams, little and big. It's not about practical and expected. Like Karen said, "Your life list should be about adding moments of joy to your life, not about adding moments of guilt. Life can guilt you enough, I think. Your life list shouldn't."
Be Flexible. This list can be modified, expanded, or eliminated at any time. If I decide that I'm no longer interested in one of the items - not because I'm afraid to do it or doubt that it'll ever happen, but because I just genuinely don't want to do it anymore - it comes off the list. My list can likewise be as long or as short as I want it to be. Nothing about this list should feel restrictive. If it begins to, it goes.

And with that, The Big List goes live. (There is a link to it under the blog's header, creatively labeled "The Big List.") It's still a work-in-progress, both in terms of making the list and working on the list. But I'll let you know as both progress. And I'll post about anything I accomplish (or even attempt to accomplish) from the list.

Because, quite frankly, I could use a little inspiration these days, and dreaming is never a bad thing.

New Pretty

2011-02-05T21:28:00.000-05:00

I'm in the process of giving this old bloggy blog a makeover. It seems that my desire to minimize clutter and unnecessary stuff is extending into my cyber home, so it's getting a little polish and trim. It's not finished yet. Who am I kidding? I'll probably be tweaking it over the next few weeks. But I wanted to go ahead and give a shout out to Tammy of Sunny Fiona Design who did an amazing job with my kickin' new header (seen below).

My blog feels prettier and so do I.

My Girl is Mischievious

2011-02-05T10:59:00.001-05:00

Molly is under the weather today, a side effect of cutting four teeth (including two molars) at one time. In fact, she has yet to wake up this morning (she's at 15 hours of sleep and counting) and it is taking every ounce of restraint I have not to wake her up.

Instead, I thought I'd share with you images of my darling daughter's sweet, mischievous self.

This cabinet usually holds a basket full of Molly's cloth diapers. On a regular basis, she dumps the basket onto the floor and climbs into explore the cabinet. She also loves it when we try to close the door while she's in there. Such a little stinker!

My girl loves to stack things, any things. Usually it's her blocks, but this day she decided to stack the toilet paper. She crawled right into the bathroom and went to work. Hilariously, she ended by stacking her rubber duck on top.

One day after daycare, we went outside to play on the porch. Despite my repeatedly telling her "no," she kept taking off her shoes and pushing them to the other side of the porch. (She inherited both of her parents' stubbornness for sure!)

I attempted to redirect her by giving her huge, brown, crumbly leaves to push outside the porch instead. It worked...for a while.

Eventually it was back to taking her shoes off, though. She will not be deterred!

Even though it occasionally causes me some headaches, I love how strong and determined Molly is. They're characteristics that I have and, though I've had to learn to temper and restrain myself because of them, they have also helped my plow through difficult times and work to achieve things that might seem difficult. I hope that they serve her the same way.

For now, I'm just enjoying watching her be my lovable stinker.

11 Years of Music

2011-02-04T11:01:00.000-05:00

Eleven years ago today, David and I became boyfriend and girlfriend (how very high school of us). In some ways, it's hard to believe it's been that long, but mostly that feels just right.

When we first started dating, I was fiercely independent. We both felt strongly about maintaining our separate selves while coupled, even as we went to different colleges and then later after I transferred to his (though not for him). I think we were both proud of the way that we were able to have separate lives without diminishing the nature of our relationship as a couple.

I don't think this changed when we got married. Instead, that emphasis on independent identities, while still part of our relationship, became less and less important when we moved away from our home to a place where nobody knew us. It took us a long time to feel settled here in Tallahassee, so we learned to rely more on one another and appreciate the closeness that our long-term coupledom offered us.

I didn't realize this while it was happening, but recently I've been able to recognize ways that I have been changed through my relationship with David. My personality is still largely the same (yes, I'm still independent and stubborn...and good things, too), but David has added more variety and depth to my life as I learn to appreciate and, sometimes, even love his interests, too.

Perhaps nowhere is this clearer than my taste in music. In my family, though we loved music, it wasn't really an active part of our lives. We never really invested in CDs (or tapes before them). My dad had a decent record collection, but I only remember listening to them a handful of times. We were primarily a radio family. So if I loved music, it was just music in general. I never cultivated specific tastes and interests.

David's family, on the other hand, loves music. One of the first things I loved about his family was that there was always music playing in his house. His mom listened to music in the kitchen while she cooked. There was often music playing softly during dinner. David's conversations with his dad were reguarly about new bands or CDs that they had discovered. His mom helped organize a local music festival, and his whole family made it a priority to be there. His sister loves going to concerts.

Even better was that the really do love (almost) all music. They each have their preferences (from folk to rock and everything in between), but they appreciate the tastes of each other, too. Their family is like a smorgasbord of musical interests.

Over the years, David's love of music and desire to search out music that he loves (rather than just tolerates) has helped me to find a distinct musical style that I love while simultaneously appreciating the music I normally wouldn't choose for myself. I often tease him about his musical obsessions (you should see his iTunes), but really I love it.

So, in honor of my music-loving husband, here's what I'm loving right now:

Arcade Fire - "The Suburbs"

The Black Keys - "Next Girl"

The Weepies - "Be My Thrill"

The Decemberists - "Down by the Water"

Mumford & Sons - "The Cave"

Vampire Weekend - "Cousins"

and last but not least, my absolute favorite right now (which is why you get two songs), Grace Potter and the Nocturnals:

"Apologies"

"Paris (Ooh La La)"

So what are you listening to right now? Who's your musical guru?

Living and Learning from Grandmother

2011-01-31T21:54:00.000-05:00

Last October we flew to Columbus, Ohio to introduce Molly to her Great-Grandmother, David's paternal grandmother. [It happened during the Great Blog Drought of 2010 so there's no post, but you can see pictures here.] Taking the trip wasn't an easy decision, or at least not an automatic one. We knew that taking a 10-month-old on a plane could be problematic and plane tickets, of course, were not cheap. But we both felt it was important to go - for Molly to meet Grandmother as well as some of her great-aunts, great-uncles, and second cousins who live in Columbus.

I have a very small amount of extended family and wasn't geographically close to the family that I do have, resulting in a lack of closeness that I have always regretted. David has a huge extended family and has always been extremely close to them, something he wanted to be true for Molly as well. For our completely opposite reasons, we have always known that doing anything we can to allow Molly (and any hypothetical future children) to be close to our families will be not just a preference, but a necessity.

four generations of David's family

So we flew to Columbus and had an amazing time. We stayed at Grandmother's house and David's parents, sister, and her fiance came up, so there was lots of quality family time. My mom and her fiance even drove up from Kentucky for a trip to the zoo. It was a weekend surrounded by people we love who have been immensely important in our lives, and it was precious to see Molly interacting with them, too.

:::

Last Monday David's grandmother, the very one we flew to Columbus to introduce Molly to, passed away. She had been increasingly sick since Christmas, so it wasn't exactly a surprise. But it was heartbreaking none-the-less.

The sign at the bottom of Grandmother's stairs; I've always loved it.

Grandmother was an amazing women. Strong and loving. The mother of six children, each one of them speak of her with a loving reverence that testifies to what an exceptional mother she was, something I saw firsthand in her interactions with her first great-granddaughter, my Molly.

Molly and her Great-Grandmother

In all of my discussions with David about Grandmother's passing- when we first found out, as we flew to and from Columbus for the services - the one thing that we keep repeating is how incredibly grateful we are to have been able to visit in October and introduce Molly to Grandmother (and vice versa). Maybe Molly won't remember the trip, but we will, and we will tell her all about it and how amazing her Grandmother was. We will show her the pictures and remind her how much Grandmother loved her.

:::

As a graduate student, I don't make a lot of money (duh), and I know a lot of PhD students who live in tiny, depressing apartments and never participate in anything that requires money. I am lucky enough to have a husband with a solid job, but even without that, I decided (in discussion with David) long ago that my choice to work on this degree would not and could not put my life on hold.

David, Molly, and I could choose to never venture outside of Tallahassee. We would still get to see a lot of our family who is generous enough to visit us, and that would leave us with more money in our bank accounts. But we wouldn't get to see all of our family, and Molly wouldn't get the experience of long car trips and flights to spend nights in her grandparents' homes and exploring the places that mean a lot to us. To me, that's just not living.

Grandmother lived a long, full, wonderful life. She lived to the fullest. And I plan to do the very same, even if it means that I hold onto my debt longer than I would want to. Even if I get behind on my schoolwork. Even if hotels make my nose dry. That October trip to Columbus might have been the best decision of our short parenting tenure, and I (we) plan to make many more decisions like it.

Ready to Renovate

2011-01-24T08:00:00.006-05:00

Nobody is more shocked to say this than me, but David and I are finally making progress on our office renovation. I realize that you may not understand why this is such a big deal, but there's just no way for me to appropriately convey in words the disaster that this office had become. It was already disorganized to begin with, but when we shoved a whole extra room's worth of furniture into it (when Molly's room took over the spare bedroom), it went beyond repair. It became a dumping ground for things that we just didn't have another home. This intensified over Christmas when it became the room where we shoved all of Molly's toys and party decorations so that she couldn't see them. By the end, it looked like this:

Now, in fairness, these were taken in the midst of cleaning things out in preparation for total renovation. But, sadly, the reality of this room isn't that far off from these pictures. It was unbareable.

So for the last month, Dave and I have been working our tails off to completely start over in this room. Anything that can be gotten rid of is going. The TV that you see in the first picture was donated via Freecycle this morning. The large bookshelf in the same picture is going to (eventually) be painted and moved into the dining room (which has been reconfigured to make better use of it) and will be used multipurposely as a bookshelf and toy storage for Molly. My desk (which you actually can't see in the pictures) will be put into storage to await Molly. (My dad had it made for me, and I just can't stand to part with it.) All of the craft stuff (much of which you can't see) on the hutch in the second picture was moved onto a dedicated shelf in our newly-organized/purged hall closet. Every other piece of furniture is being given away.

In its place will be a new, beautiful, organized, Ikea-heavy office. In addition to that which I've already showed you, here's my inspiration:

The Save Ferris Print and You & Me print, though I doubt I will get the actual prints (though I'd like them) are the general color scheme I'd like. In general, we'll be working with red, orange, and white. We have a couple of things already hanging in the office that I want to stay that will play up the red, but I want to add some playfulness with the orange. The Save Ferris print has some of those colors but also opens things up to a bit of whimsy.

Young House Loves' DIY'd desk is similar to what we'll be going for, though ours will be longer. Specifically we'll be using two Ikea Vika Amons, one long and one short, with a Vika Alex on each end. In between the two Amons will be an Expedit to distinguish "David's side" from "my side." My side will be the longer Amon so that my sewing machine will have a permanent home on the end (and will hopefully get used more that way). The whole desk will take up the entire left wall (the one the bookshelf is up against in the first picture) of the office.

On the wall opposite the desk will be a full-sized Expedit, which will give us space for both book storage and storage in general (we'll use crates and baskets to keep camera gear, cords, and the like organized but out-of-sight). There will also be another, smaller Expedit on the wall beside the window (to the far right of the hutch in the second picture) that will hold all of the DVDs that currently live in our hutch. I love the organization of the Expedit in Making It Lovely's office.

Then I want to put some bold, graphic curtains up (the window is to the direct right of the hutch). We probably won't get the Stockholm curtains because, for one, I don't want to spend that much money on curtains, and two, I want something with more red and orange, but that boldness is what I'm looking for.

:::

I know that's probably more information than you were looking for about our office redo, but this feels like a big deal to me. This is probably the most thought we've put into decorating (aside from Molly's room) and it's definitely the most we've collaborated. We're really thought about this and planned for it, so I'm thrilled to see it beginning to take shape.

The plan is to head to the Ikea in Tampa this weekend (to avoid Ikea's insane shipping charges) and then it'll be all systems go. And don't worry, you can guarantee I'll show you the finished product.

Sick Day Bonus Points

2011-01-23T11:06:00.000-05:00

If you want to lower your Mommy Handicap, I have a good tip for you. On sick days, there's nothing better than building a blanket fort:

:::

Then, make the following Chicken Noodle Soup. It's not very soupy at all actually, so it's perfect for little fingers to eat. Plus it's easy on upset tummies, and incredibly fast and simple to make. Perfect.

Ingredients:
1 can cream of chicken soup
1 can cream of celery soup (could substitute cream of mushroom if you prefer)
3 14.5 cans chicken broth
2 cups cooked, diced chicken (I just use a rotisserie chicken; it's easier and tastier)
2 teaspoons onion powder
1 teaspoon seasoning salt
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
16 oz. package of egg noodles*

Directions
In a large pot, mix the cream of chicken soup, cream of celery soup, chicken broth, and chicken meat. Season with onion powder, seasoning salt, and garlic powder. Bring to a boil and stir in the noodles.

Reduce heat to low, and simmer for 20-30 minutes. [The liquid will reduce quite a bit, so be sure to stir fairly frequent to keep it from sticking to the pan. Add some extra broth if you decide it's reducing too much.]

*The original recipe says to use 2 9 ounce packages of frozen egg noodles, but my grocery never has frozen egg noodles. If you use pre-cooked noodles, you might want to add a bit more broth, but otherwise it makes no difference.

:::

Oh, and for added bonus points, feel free to let your child run around pant-less if they please. It's one of the rules of sick day.

Mommy Handicap

2011-01-21T14:32:00.000-05:00

I have realized that parenting is a learn-as-you-go endeavor. In fact, it's perhaps one of the very few things that I know to be true of parenting. I sometimes joke that because Molly has had such an easy time with some of the typically rough first-year issues (such as sleeping and breastfeeding) that I have a handicap when it comes to parenting. [It should be noted that I am in no way complaining about this, just commenting upon it.] It completely throws me off if she wakes up in the middle of the night, for instance, because she has always slept so well at night.

That's why, since she's never been sick (aside from the occasional cough and runny nose), it threw me for such a loop when I went to wake Molly up for daycare this morning and found her covered in vomit. Let me just demonstrate the many ways that this was alarming:

Molly vomited, for the first time. She didn't even spit up much as a baby, let alone vomit.
She had slept in her vomit. I heard Molly fussing around 10 last night, but after 30 seconds or so she went right back to sleep. She does this almost every night, so I had no reason to assume vomit was involved. I will now, however, never be able to stop assuming she's vomiting.
My child has a lot of hair. My child with a lot of hair slept in her vomit. That's as far into the details I'll go, but it was not pretty.
A fact I did not know/had not expected: one-year-old vomit smells exactly like all other vomit. I knew what it was as soon as I walked into her dark room.

Initially I handled it really well I think. Because she had no fever and was acting quite normal (though she's always a little sluggish in the morning, so it was hard to tell if it was normal sluggishness or sick sluggishness), I assumed that the evening's event was an anomaly. I decided to keep her home until after breakfast and see how she did. I was hoping she'd be fine because we had an impromptu trip to Tampa (and the Ikea there) planned for this evening and tomorrow, and I knew that if she wasn't well enough for daycare, she wasn't well enough for a trip. [Cue feelings of guilt for selfishness.] So we went about the morning as normal, including her morning milk (which is a fairly new thing in and of itself as we only quit nursing in the morning last weekend).

Yeah, this is where my handicap kicked in. Molly proceeded to throw up her milk for the next two hours (including once in her carseat, in the Target parking lot - where we had gone to get Pedialyte because we didn't have any on hand - another handicap, while it was raining, before we went inside), during which time I talked to the nurse at her pediatrician's and was (very politely) informed that it was a huge no-no to give a child who was vomiting dairy. Doh! That seems like such common-sense parenting knowledge, but I had never even considered it.

After Molly seemed to be finished with her milk (so to speak), had successfully kept down the little bit of Pedialyte I'd allowed her, and had spent quite a bit of time cuddling with me and watching cartoons, she fell asleep for a two-hour morning nap (though she hasn't taken a morning nap in months). When she woke up she was in much better spirits. I know she may still get worse (if this is, in fact, a virus), but I feel like starting with so many hiccups made me get a bit of a grip on sick-kid parenting, for the moment anyway.

There's so much about parenting that you just can't know how to handle until you get there, and I know this is a fairly tame example of it. But I am constantly reminded that parenthood is a humbling experience, reminding me over and over again that I don't - and can't - know everything about it. Instead I focus on knowing Molly and, by knowing her very well, being able to handle what comes in the way that is best for her, even if I do have to figure it out as I go.

Molly's sick-day set-up, complete with comfy chair, books, and cartoons.

Bath Time

2011-01-19T20:48:00.000-05:00

Molly's bath time is one of my favorite times of day, but it's not because Molly loves her bath so much, though she does. It's because of these two together:

When Molly was very little, still taking baths in her pink tub on the kitchen sink, bath time became daddy/daughter time. I felt bad that there was no dedicated time for David and Molly. Sure, they spent plenty of time together, but there was nothing that she would consistently associate with David, always expect him to do. Because I was breastfeeding, I had plenty of time that was just me and Molly; I wanted David to have the same.

So he took over bath time. Each night he draws her bath while I get her ready, then I hand her off to him. It's probably the only time that she consistently leaves me without complaint. While David bathes her (which now involves more toy corralling than actually bathing), I go across the hall and into her room where I get her nighttime diaper ready, pick out her PJs, and fill up her humidifier. Then I just listen. I listen to him telling her about the difference between African and Asian elephants while he squirts her with her toy elephant. I listen as he helps her learn her body parts by naming them as he washes them. I listen as he laughs at her splashing. I listen as he splashes her back. And I listen while he tells her how much he loves her.

Then he wraps her up in her towel and brings her to me, dripping wet and thoroughly happy. In fact, all three of us are thoroughly happy.

It's no more than 20 minutes or so every night, but it's 20 minutes of moments that are extraordinarily precious to me. I never knew bath time could be so wonderful.

Practically Perfect

2011-01-17T23:12:00.000-05:00

This was just about as perfect a weekend as I could have asked for. I had a moderate cold, Molly had a minor cold plus teething, and David had a minor cold of his own, and yet, perfect.

Because we were all slightly under-the-weather, we hardly left the house with the exception of going to church and running a few quick errands. That meant that we spent the past three days at home, being lazy, and just enjoying each other's company.

:::

Well, except the lazy part doesn't describe Molly's weekend. The girl is on the move. She took her first steps on New Year's Eve, but hadn't really progressed much further since then. She's take 3 or 4 steps in a row once, maybe twice, a day, and that was it, at best. But she clearly wanted to walk. She had started simply holding her hands above her head to signal us to offer her our pointer fingers to hold onto, and she'd take off, walking aimlessly (but quickly) from end to end of our apartment. If we were too slowly when she wanted our help, she would grab our hands and hold them above her head so she could hoist herself up and get going. So she wanted to move, she just...wasn't.

Then on Friday I realized that this completely fits her pattern. She started army crawling around 5 or 6 months, consistently. And she happily continued doing that until roughly 9 months, when she finally decided to move onto her hands and knees. It was as though she was practicing before switching over. She didn't want to fall while crawling; she wanted to be good at it before she started crawling. She's doing the same thing with walking; she's practicing, waiting until she's good enough to make the switch.

Luckily, with walking, I can help her practice more than I could with crawling. She got an adorable mini-armchair for Christmas that she loves, and it just so happens to be the perfect height for her to easily stand up on her own from. So periodically through the day (mostly when she was in a particularly good mood), I would sit her on her chair, scoot back a few feet, and call her towards me. At first she thought just standing up and falling back onto the chair was fun, but soon enough she figured out the "real" motive of the game - walking. By the end of the night, she was consistently walking to me as soon as I'd sit her on the chair.

And her walking didn't stop there. She's not walking 100% yet, but it was amazing to see how quickly she became braver, faster, and sturdier. In the blink of an eye, she went from barely taking a few steps a day to walking from point to point any chance she could get. It was amazing.

:::

Come to think of it, Dave and I weren't particularly lazy either. It seems that 2011 is the year of Get Organized! in our casa. Last weekend I hauled four bag of clothes and accessories (all of which were mine) to Goodwill. This weekend David, who is the master t-shirt hoarder, followed suit, truly shocking me by how thoroughly he purged his wardrobe. And that was just the beginning. We crossed all kinds of things off of our long-term to-do list, including finally deciding how and with what we were going to re-do our office. (Now I just have to click the "Purchase" button on the already stocked shopping cart.)

And I think that's what was most amazing about this weekend. We got a ton of stuff done, but it didn't feel like it. The weekend felt restful, despite our productivity. To often I think it's the other way around - I get too little done but feel exhausted from doing it.

Better still, there was lots of family time mixed in with our to-do-list-crossing-off. All that walking Molly was doing? Dave and I were both there for all of it. Everytime she'd take another series of steps, David and I would catch each other's eyes and beam to one another - that's our girl.

That's exactly what I needed - more beaming, less stressing. Lots of productivity and lots of family time. I don't know how we found the balance, and I have no idea how to maintain it, but for this one weekend, it was about as perfect as I could have asked for.

(gratuitous picture of my adorable daughter, snotty nose and all)

The Story of a Cupcake

2011-01-11T08:00:00.000-05:00

I know that many of you have already seen these pictures, but they're too adorable not to receive their own post.

This was on Molly's actual birthday, December 24, which we celebrated with just the three of us, a simple gift, and a yummy cupcake. She was clearly a fan.

SMART Resolve

2011-01-10T08:07:00.000-05:00

In addition to my grand resolution/One Little Word, my friend Leigh reminded me that it's important to have achievable SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely) goals. There's no way to know when I've achieved my goal of reclaiming my badassery, so it would be easy to give up on it and lose sight of it. To avoid being overwhelmed by the enormity of my grand resolution, I'm going to be working on a couple of other things as well:

1. Exercise 3 times a week.

Admittedly, this is the most unoriginal resolution in the history of resolutions, but whatever. It's something that's important to me, so I'm listing it. While I'm pretty happy with my post-baby weight, I am not as happy with my post-baby body. Let's just say that I'm a little more jiggly than I used to be. But it's no coincidence that the jiggliness remained throughout the loss of my badassery because I was spending too little (if any) time focusing on myself. Heck, I spent so little time at the gym last fall that I finally canceled my membership altogether in November.

But instead of just putting "exercise" out there and hoping it happens, I'm trying to be specific and practical. So here's my plan:

On days that Molly goes to daycare, I get up at 6:30am to wake Molly up, feed her, and get her dressed before Dave takes her to daycare at 7:15 on his way to work. On three of those days, I will then, as soon as Molly and Dave are gone, head to the (very small) gym in our apartment complex to use the elliptical. Eventually I'd like to do an hour on the elliptical four times a week, but to start with I'm aiming for 30 minutes 3 times a week.

The benefit of this plan is that not only will it get me exercising, but it will also help me kick-start my day. If I immediately go exercise, come home, shower, and then go straight to my office on campus, I'm much more likely to have a productive day than if I have to summon my get-up-and-go out of nowhere.

Day 1 starts tomorrow. We'll see how it goes.

2. Stop drinking soda.

I can no longer remember a time when I didn't drink soda. Of course, this is probably because I have a horrible memory. But at least since high school (and especially since I started driving), I have consistently been a soda-drinker. Post-college I have cut back, rarely keeping caffeinated drinks in my house but almost always drinking them at restaurants and picking up a 20oz in most check-out lanes. (Primarily Coke if you're interested.) I've tried to give sodas up before and have (obviously) never found permanent success.

It's not the caffeine, though that obviously doesn't help me give them up. It's just that I prefer the taste of these (high-sugar) drinks. I can't stand to drink water, but I know that I need to drink more water. And I did do much better with it while I was pregnant, only drinking soda rarely if ever (though still drinking non-caffeinated sodas like root beer and 7-Up). But in the last six months I have found myself drinking more Coke than ever.

And now that Molly is old enough to notice what I'm doing and want to take part in it (just try to eat an apple around that girl by yourself), I feel more seriously than ever that I need to give up soda, for me and for her.

Precedence tells me that this won't be easy, though. So, hoping to be SMART, I'm going to take this step-by-step:

Quit drinking caffeinated soda at home. [This is the step I'm on now and so far it's going really well. To help me out, I'm drinking Cherry 7-Up, which helps me avoid craving caffeinated soda.]
Quit drinking caffeinated soda anywhere.
Quit drinking any soda, caffeinated or not, at home. [This will probably be a juice-heavy period of my life.]
Quit drinking any soda, anywhere.

Despite the "T" of SMART, there's no timeline for this goal. Ideally, each step will be one month long, but I'm more than willing to extend or shorten depending on what works best for me. If I can actually quit soda, it will be huge for me, so I don't want to rush it. I also refuse to get down about setbacks. They're almost inevitable. But I'll keep chugging on (or not, rather). If I can be soda-free by the end of the year, it will be a major win for me.

So that's it. My SMART goals. Maybe they'll happen. Maybe they won't. But the least I can do is try, right?

What are you resolutions like? SMART or lofty?

Reclaiming My Badassery

2011-01-08T11:21:00.000-05:00

Forgive the now belated post on New Year's resolutions. I started it in the car, on my phone, on the drive back to Tallahassee. But the beginning of the semester and a broken laptop (which has now, finally, been replaced) caused me to ignore the blog for a while. So I hope you'll excuse the untimeliness and read on.

I am a believer in resolutions, New Year's or otherwise. I'm a goal-oriented person, but often those goals are typically on a micro level (clean the fridge, return books to the library). The tradition of resolutions at the start of each new year reminds me to think bigger, have macro-resolutions if you will (like my past resolution to live more intentionally).

When I started brainstorming what to resolve for 2011, I immediately knew what it should be. But not wanting to admit it (or face the logistics of what such a resolution would entail), I ignored it and avoided any resolution-forming at all.

Then Karen Waldrond (aka Chookooloonks) started talking about "badassery" on Twitter. Something about the word, and the discussion, struck a chord with me. But like the initial resolution, I ignored it.

Then I read her post which attempted to define badassery. She gave it the following general definition [sections that most struck a chord with me are italicized]:

Someone who isn't afraid to wish good things for herself. Someone who believes she's worthy of being happy.
Someone who isn't afraid to make goals, and then once those goals are made, isn't afraid of taking those first, tiny steps toward achieving those goals.
Someone who realizes that taking care of himself isn't selfish or egotistical, but that sometimes you have to put the oxygen mask on first before you start helping others.
Someone who realizes that at his core, he's a good person. And that given this, when he makes a mistake, maybe he should go easy on himself.
Someone who, when bad things happen (and make no mistake, they will happen), will not spend valuable time thinking about who did her wrong, or why the world is conspiring against her, but will instead spend that time working through it by taking care of herself, leaning on friends as necessary, asking for help when needed, and treating herself as she would a good friend going through a similar situation. Someone who, when life knocks her down, does what she can to pick herself up, dust herself off, and try, try again.
Someone who makes kindness to friends, people around him (like waiters and others in the service industry), and even strangers his primary focus; and who also takes care to surround himself and cultivate relationships with good friends who have equal focus. Someone who is never afraid to speak his mind or his truth, but always does so with kindness.
And finally (and probably most predictably), someone who works hard at reframing the things that make him different, recognizing them as attributes that are sources of great beauty, and when used for good, maybe even superpowers.

Each description sounded like that of someone I used to be, someone I was proud to be, but not the person I am today. Though it was a fairly light-hearted definition of a relatively silly word, I cried through it.

You see, the resolution I thought of was to take better care of myself, because not doing so has allowed me to neglect and subsequently lose my badassery.

This last year I have poured every bit of myself into Molly, and that has given me an intense, wonderful bond with my daughter and has cultivated some of the most beautiful moments of my life. But it has also overshadowed part of myself, what I now acknowledge as my badassery. My oomph, my fight, my sense that what matters to me is worth it no matter how difficult it might be to achieve. It has slowly seeped out of me. Though I sensed the loss, I ignored it, too.

And so it was gone.

When I'm away from Molly, I feel untethered, as though I don't quite know how to fit into the world without her. This has allowed me to float adrift at work, abandoning or ignoring goals that were once of the utmost importance to me. And if they had become unimportant, that would be fine, a personal choice. But they do still matter to me. It's just that without my badassery, I seem to have lost the will and/or ability to achieve them.

So my goal for 2011 is to reclaim my badassery. The cool thing about this is that, in addition to finding the me I lost in the past year, badassery will unquestionably make me a better mother (and wife - though that's a very different post).

It's win-win, and it's a win I desperately need. So here's to badassery in 2011.

:::

In addition to thinking of this as a resolution, I'm also choosing "badassery" as my One Little Word for 2011. If you've never heard of Ali Edwards or One Little Word, you should really check it out. For me, it's one of the most inspiring thing on the blogosphere these days.

Merry Christmas, of course

2010-12-25T23:46:00.001-05:00

I admit, I have not been in the appropriate Christmas spirit this year. I allowed myself to get bogged down by the hustle and bustle of fall semester wrap-up, spring semester planning, Christmas shopping, Christmas travel, birthday party planning, and so on and on and on.

Luckily my beautiful one-year-old snapped me out of it. Beginning with a simple, family celebration of her first birthday (which I'll tell you more about when I'm not posting from my phone, though you can get to the adorable pictures by clicking the flickr link on the right of the blog). I'm not generally a happy crier. [Case in point: many women cry when they're proposed to. I laughed. And laughed and laughed. It was wonderful.] But as I reflected over the last year and how greatly Molly has changed my life (ALL for the better), I couldn't help but tear up. [Okay, twice.]

Then last night we went to the family Christmas Eve service. Dave and I have gone to the midnight service all our lives, so we're used to solemn reflection on Christmas Eve. This was anything but. And at first I was annoyed by the constant murmur of the families packed into the sanctuary. But then at the end of the service, the assistant pastor (who is a friend of ours) invited the children up front for a sermon. There were at least 100 kids, each receiving a small star and hearing a quick simple message about how, like the Christ star, they can each lead people to Jesus. It was a sermon meant for 5 year olds, but it was exactly what I needed to hear.

We went home and put Molly to bed after reading her The Night Before Christmas. Long after she was asleep, I continued to track Santa's travels thanks to NORAD. And I finally, finally felt ready for Christmas.

Christmas morning came and, though I know she didn't, Molly seemed to know exactly what to do. She crawled right to the (unwrapped) gift Santa had left for her. She went back and forth from gift to gift all day, barely pausing to eat. Her enthusiasm was contagious, and her delight delighted me.

Now we're on the road - Dave, Molly, Potter the dog, and me - having made the last minute decision to make half of our trip to Kentucky tonight (I blame Molly's contagious enthusiasm). And though I normally fall asleep the second we hit the interstate, this time I'm up, already trying to remember the day we've had - this perfect, very merry Christmas.

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One Year

2010-12-24T08:00:00.000-05:00

One year ago today (at 11:23am to be specific) I gave birth to Molly Bennett. It was unexpected. Well, not entirely unexpected, obviously, since I was 9 months pregnant. But as I had not had any signs of labor (other than slight dilation) when I went to bed on the 23rd, I had no idea that Molly would be here halfway into the 24th. But she was ready whether I was or not.

The determination with which she came into the world has been truly indicative of her personality. She is fun and spirited and brave, and she knows what she wants. And if she doesn't get what she wants, she is not at all hesitant about voicing her displeasure. But when she does get what she wants (even if it's just a parent making a silly face at her), her whole face lights up and she smiles with a big, open mouth, as if a simple smile couldn't accurately express her joy.

She does everything on her own time. She army-crawled for four months before one day just suddenly deciding she would crawl on her hands and knees - no contemplation, just doing. I expect the same will happen with walking. She has been cruising for two months and walking while holding our hands for weeks. One day she'll just take off on her own two feet, never looking back.

She is inquisitive, always checking out new things and people around her. And despite her boldness, she is also incredibly shy. It takes her a while to warm up to people. She has been a Mommy's Girl since day one, and while that doesn't bother me one bit, I think her dad is ready to be the favorite.

We have been so lucky to have such a healthy little girl. She is always energetic and raring to go, moving from toy to toy to thing-she-treats-like-a-toy, keeping me on my toes all day. She loves to read, flipping through books like she knows what they're saying to her, and play with blocks, stacking and sorting them all day long.

She is my heart. I hate it when I have to be away from her and just looking at her brings me more joy than I ever before knew I could feel. I knew I would love my daughter, but this? This is so much more.

Happy first birthday, sweet Molly.

*photo by Casey Yu Photography

Stockings are Hung (and Waiting to Be Filled)

2010-12-16T10:33:00.000-05:00

Because Molly is going to be receiving a lot of presents in the next two weeks, and because she doesn't really need that much (if anything), and because she's only one (or will be a week from tomorrow. ack!), we decided to take it easy on the gift-giving this year. But we couldn't just opt out entirely. I (selfishly) want the experience of watching her figure out how to open her presents on Christmas morning and then get excited when she realizes that they're for her and she gets to play with them. So she will be getting a few things, from us and from Santa. Luckily Santa was cooperative enough to let us plan some of the things that he'll put in her stocking, and I think they're pretty awesome, so I thought I'd share them with you.

[Note: almost everything listed here is from Land of Nod, but I swear I'm not trying to become their official sponsor. I just love the well-made, kid-friendly gifts that they offer.]

I absolutely adore these Handle Cars and thought that Molly would love them, especially after seeing how much fun she had with the trains at her Great-Grandmother's house. Unfortunately, by the time I went to order them (after letting them sit in my "cart" for at least two weeks), they were out of stock until January. So, no Handle Cars this year, but I thought they were still cool enough to mention.

One thing Molly is getting is this adorable Boom Blocks Mini iPod Speakers Dock. First of all, it looks like a Lego! How adorable is that? Second of all, Molly loves to dance. Any time there's music playing (and sometimes even if there's not), she's shaking her little groove thing. But our iPod dock is in the dining room/kitchen, so when she's playing in her room she can't always hear it. This will give us an easy way to play music from our iPod in her room without spending a lot of money or taking up a lot of space.

Molly is very into "reading" on her own right now, so I thought these Block Books would be perfect. Not only are they big enough to allow her to easily flip through them and small enough to be portable, they're basically little flash cards, meaning that we can practice our letters or animals while "reading" them.

I also really love these big, sturdy, wrapper-free All Color, All the Time Crayons. But, like the Handle Cars, they were out of stock when I tried to order them. So I instead we got these Jumbo Triangular Crayons from Melissa & Doug, but I love them just a little bit less.

And that's it. We'll also put some baby-friendly snacks in there (instead of the traditional candy) and maybe a coloring book for her crayons, but I think this will keep her more than occupied for a while.

So that's Molly's stocking. What's going in yours?

Christmas Lessons: Box It Up

2010-12-15T20:32:00.000-05:00

This Christmas Molly has learned...

...that there's nothing quite like a good box.

(And I have learned that Land of Nod uses the best bubble wrap ever. So fun.)

Prepping for Molly's 1st Birthmas

2010-12-14T21:00:00.000-05:00

When Molly called an audible and decided to surprise her dad and me by making her grand entrance on Christmas Eve, we knew that balancing her birthday and the Christmas season in a way that celebrated both without diminishing either would be an issue for the next 18 years or so. (I'm sure it will still require good balance after 18, but that's more up to her than David and me.) David already has some experience in this area, being that his birthday is December 30, but I suspect he is much more laid back than most people; I also suspect girls might react to this differently than boys. I suppose we'll see.

But I naively expected this year to be exempt from that worry. I, being the over-achiever that I am, would obviously still obsess about it, but I felt pretty confident that Molly wouldn't be too concerned.

[Sidenote: numerous people have suggested the half-birthday celebration. Though I understand the urge, I would never want to give the impression that there's something wrong, or even inconvenient, about Molly's real birthday; I feel like that would only increase the likelihood of Molly disliking her Christmas Eve birthday. Instead, I want to make a huge deal out of it, showing her how wonderful it can be to have a holi/birth/day.]

Though it's true that Molly is quite laid back about her upcoming Birthmas (you'd think she doesn't even realize she's about to turn one!), I was completely wrong about the idea that Molly's contentment would mean that there would be no difficulty or frustration. [Insert your "duh" here.] Here's why:

Twice the Gifts - Admittedly, this seems like a good thing. And I'm sure Molly will eventually love it. But at 12 months, there are only so many things I can think of for people to get Molly, so I keep coming up short when people request gift ideas. And I completely understand the disinterest in buying clothes and shoes (especially for this first big celebration), but at some point I ran out of more "fun" ideas. On the plus side, hopefully this will earn courage creativity and ingenuity (instead of uninspired plastic blah).
Gifts Once a Year - Related to the "twice the gifts" issue, this is the reason I completely understand the urge to have a half-birthday celebration. I hadn't considered that Molly will really only have one "gift-receiving" time a year. Practically, that means that she'll get a lot of 12 month gifts that she may grow out of long before next December. Hopefully enough of the things she gets will be interesting for the next year or so, allowing me to hide some from her and bring them out later as a delayed surprise. Her "big gift" from us is technically for 18 months, and I'm hoping that will be true of some other things she receives as well. Additionally, this means that in the future she'll only have one time a year that she can ask for something really big or out of the ordinary (I always "save up" big things I want for my birthday or Christmas). I want to come up with a way to do something extra special for her during the summer to make up for this, but I'll wait to figure that out when the times comes.
Party Planning - I knew that finding a convenient date for her birthday party would be difficult [And that's true. Our options were either to have it two weeks early in Tallahassee with her friends or a week late in Kentucky with family. Family and friends is a no-go.] What I didn't think about how difficult the planning for the actual party would be. The end of the semester and planning for Christmas (both gifts and travel) is difficult enough. Squeezing in party planning (which is admittedly only minimally difficult this year) makes it much more of a time crunch. Note to self: start planning in June next year.

All that to say I am no less excited about Molly's first year than were it at any other time of year. She is at the coolest age (though I know I say this at every age). She is full of energy and spontaneity and fun. [Example, she has a refrigerator magnet toy that, if you put the wrong combination of magnets together, says "You're silly!" and then laughs. Today she kept pushing it, waiting for it to laugh, and then cracking up herself. Priceless.] She is going to love the excitement of her birthday and Christmas, so this year, that's all I care about. I know that it will become more of an issue as she gets older, but I am always going to do my best to make her love her Birthmas, because I know that I will.

*All credit for the awesome combiword that so aptly describes the 24th and 25th of December in our house goes to my friend Stephanie, who is tied for wittiest person I know with her husband.

Holiday Over-Achiever

2010-12-10T08:34:00.000-05:00

I am a classic over-achiever. I know this about myself. I am never willing to do just enough; I have to do more than enough, enough to be noticed, enough to be praised. Happily, I know that this tendency has been lessened as I have progressed towards my PhD, though not necessarily by choice. As life got more and more hectic and my plate began to crack under the weight, I was forced to accept that I can't do everything at 110%. I allowed myself to stop attending lectures that in no way benefited my area of study or progress towards my degree. I stopped feeling like I had to attend every departmental social engagement. My load lightened, and it felt good.

As Molly has gotten older and has become increasingly part of the world outside of our little home, that over-achiever mentality (this time as a mom) has crept back in again. I worry that we are becoming those parents at daycare, the ones with too-specific requests and too many questions.* To make up for that, I went a wee bit overboard with the Christmas gifts for her teachers.

My initial idea was way too labor-intensive and expensive (considering there are seven teachers in Molly's room, not to mention the teachers in the "toddler room," where she hangs out in the mornings). So, after adjusting my expectations, I decided to do something inexpensive but handmade/crafty, hoping that the time & effort put into them would demonstrate how truly grateful I am that they take such good care of Molly (because I am).

So I ended up making Design Mom's DIY Monogram Mugs, which were super easy and fun. I made one for each teacher in Molly's room (with mugs from Walmart for $1.50 each) and then filled them with a bag of homemade hot chocolate mix. I also made a couple of tins of cookies for the director and the toddler room.

All of that was easy enough, except that this week has been crazy because it's the end of the semester, which means that I was scrambling to make the cookies, cocoa mix, and assemble the mugs last night. Oh and I had the awful, early stages of a head cold. So by the time I went to bed last night, I was exhausted and frustrated that I had, once again, done too much.

I don't want to be an over-achiever mom, the kind of mom who spends more time stressing about her to-do list during the holidays than enjoying the holidays and having fun with them.

Ironically, though, that means that not stressing is going to be on my holiday to-do list next year.

We'll see how that works out.

*This is suggested by the fact that Molly is the only child with a "to-do" list (written by the daycare to remember our requests) on her cubby. And though that makes me feel a little bad, the requests seem completely normal. We let them know when we transitioned to 100% table food (because they provide her meals), when they could give her whole milk, etc. Why does no one else need to let them know those things?

This Girl Is My Heart

2010-11-30T08:00:00.000-05:00

Eleven months is by far the most fun age yet. She's becoming such a kid, with a personality as big as the Great Wall of China and the energy to match.

She loves to sort. These blocks are by far her favorite toy (and have been for months). She takes them out of the box and then puts them back in the box. Then she puts them in one of the various baskets around our living room. And she's just recently learned how to put the right shape through the right slot. Blocks are her thing.

She is a speed-crawler. When it took her so long to move from scooting to official crawling, I was convinced that she would quickly move on to walking. And though she does love to cruise all over the place, and quite quickly at that, she primarily crawls everywhere, faster than I can get to her (or to the dog's water bowl, which she is often crawling to).

She is such an eater now, and she finally figured out how to give herself her sippy cup. It's so amazing to watch her feed herself an entire meal. She is a person, all on her own.

Her actions seems so much more purposeful now. Instead of rolling onto her back only when she loses her balance, she flops over and kicks her legs to entice us to tickle her (which we happily do). She crawls down the hall, stopping only to look back and make sure we're chasing her. She has our number for sure.

She adores making noise, whether playing on her piano, tapping two wooden blocks together, or just banging on the side of the drier. She likes to be heard.

But more than anything else, she melts my heart. Even if she's being fussy or throwing a baby-sized temper tantrum, I love her so much I might burst. I love how big her deep blue eyes get when she sees Christmas lights all lit up, and I pray to be able to remember that look forever. It seems like holding that image (and the many like it) is the only way to hold my heart together.

Grainy pictures brought to you courtesy of Dave's cell phone, where perfect little moments are captured.

Thanksgiving, This Year

2010-11-29T10:50:00.000-05:00

For the fifth year in a row, we celebrated Thanksgiving here in Tallahassee. Though it's always nice to avoid the stress and hecticity (like that word?) of traveling during the holidays, there's a certain bitter-sweetness to it as well. I miss visiting with our families, of course, perhaps even more so as I know that Molly is missing out on the various familiar traditions. But I'm also more aware than ever that we're making our own traditions, too.

This year, as with years past, we began by going to Tallahassee's annual Turkey Trot - Dave running, Molly and I cheering and watching from the sidelines. We then headed home where I began the cooking (or continued, rather, as I had made quite a bit of headway the day before) and introduced Molly to the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade (and by "introduced" I mean that I gleefully watched, pointing out my favorite balloons, while she played with far more entertaining toys in the general vicinity of the TV).

Here's the part where I make you realize what an over-reaching moron I can be. I decided that this weekend would be the perfect time to transition Molly from two naps to one midday nap. You know, because I didn't have anything else to do on Thanksgiving Day. Her afternoon naps lately had been painfully short and at daycare she often only took one (though the timing was sporadic). Plus, when she transitions from the infant to the toddler room after she turns one, she'll need to switch to one nap anyway.

My plan was to keep her entertained and awake until 12:30. I had no idea, however, how exhausting watching a 15K is for a baby. By 11:30, she was begging to be put to sleep. I worried that she would only sleep for an hour or so, meaning she'd be awake for around 6 hours after her nap and would be terribly cranky by bedtime. To my great astonishment, though, she slept for three hours*. Thanksgiving truly is an amazing holiday.

Not long after Molly woke up from The Nap of All Naps, we sat down to dinner. I was so glad that we had decided to leave purees behind the previous weekend because it was fairly amazing to watch her eat everything we were eating for Thanksgiving. She ate everything I fixed (unlike my husband, ahem): turkey and mashed potatoes and stuffing and cranberries and, perhaps her favorite of all, broccoli and cheese casserole. Though of course we've been a family of three for the past 11 months, sitting at a table, everyone eating all the same food at the same time, made us feel so much like a family unit, all of us together. I won't lie, I got a little teary staring at Molly as David and I made professions of gratitude. Because while we of course have so much to be thankful for, Molly is far and away at the top of that list.

The rest of the weekend was, thankfully, extremely relaxing (except for the screaming - both good and bad - during the Ohio State game). Molly slept late(ish) most of the weekend and, having vowed not to go shopping during this crazy consumer weekend, we instead spent time together just the three of us. Our little family.

Thanksgiving has never been my favorite holiday. Though I've always enjoyed, it always seemed overshadowed by the homework and/or grading I had to do over the weekend or the lead-up to Christmas. This year, as I overflowed with gratitude for this new and wonderful family dynamic, I appreciate the holiday more than ever.

The Spread

Molly approves!

*The Nap, of course, was a fluke. Her other naps averaged about an hour and a half, other than one late two-hour nap after she fell asleep for half an hour in the church nursery, ruining any semblance of a nap schedule.

Thanksgiving at the Daycare

2010-11-24T10:50:00.000-05:00

I've had it in my head to write a post in defense of daycare for months (though my friend Stephanie did a pretty great job describing the bitter and sweet of it), but it just hasn't happened. Sending Molly to daycare (& then subsuquently dealing with her being in the care of others throughout the day) has been one of the hardest parts of being a parents (obviously, since I can't stop whining about it), but it has also been incredibly rewarding and definitely beneficial for Molly.

One of the rewards that I wasn't expecting, though, was the surprise of picking up Molly and being greeted with her first crafts:

I know what will be adorning our Thanksgiving table this year.

She eats!

2010-11-22T08:55:00.000-05:00

Saturday I lamented Molly's frustrating eating habits, and you offered advice from your own experiences. [And keep the comments coming; I can use all the help I can get!] What I learned is that I haven't been trusting Molly enough (again). I had expected the transition to table food to be gradual, beginning with eating soft fruits and veggies regularly and then moving up to chunks of meat. But because she wouldn't eat steamed fruits and vegetables, I didn't think she'd be able/willing to eat heartier table food.

I was wrong.

So yesterday I decided to be brave and try a new tactic. For previous meals, I would introduce each food one at a time, starting with the food I expected her to like least because she had a tendency to refuse all other foods once she saw the one she liked (cheese, raisins, bananas, etc). Clearly that wasn't working. So I decided to present all the food for the meal to her at one time and see how that went.

Here's what I served:

Mashed sweet potatoes, Applegate Farms Chicken Nuggets, & fresh blueberries

Let's just say that it was a hit!

During*:

After:

TA-DA!

That nearly empty plate (which David adorably called an almost-happy-plate) may not mean much to you, but it looks like a very happy miracle to me.

The chicken, obviously, was a huge hit. She went for it first and loved it, but without the must-eat-quickly-before-it-disappears drama that there was before.

For the mashed sweet potatoes, I gave her a spoon and kept a different one for myself. Though she mostly waved her spoon around, she did manage to get a few bites for herself. While she was waving her spoon around and eating bites of chicken, I would offer her sweet potatoes from my spoon. And she would eat it...without screaming!

I mentioned before that she had turned on blueberries, but I realized yesterday that she had only started refusing them when I started keeping a bag of frozen blueberries instead of constantly buying fresh. But since they were on sale yesterday, I picked up some fresh "blues" to see if she would eat them. Sure enough, she found them quite tasty, though she clearly preferred the chicken and sweet potatoes. These, too, she would let me feed her, though it was more like half and half in terms of her eating them and me feeding them to her.

A few things to note:

This was the first time we offered her food on a plate. I wash her highchair tray after each meal, so it seemed unnecessary to use a plate (and I expected her to play with it more than anything else). But it seems that having the structured compartments helped her somehow. And she didn't attempt to play with the plate until almost all of the food was gone anyway, which I took as a sign that she was finished.
Molly's still not very good at drinking from her sippy cup by herself, so I've always just sat it to the side and offered it to her periodically through a meal. But by sitting it directly on her tray, she would reach for it when she was thirsty, which turned out to be much more frequently than I expected.

One of my concerns about switching entirely to table food was the time that it would take her to eat. And sure enough, it took her 45 minutes to eat last night. But that was 45 minutes with no screaming. In fact, she was practically giddy the entire time, which makes the extended dinner time entirely worth it in my book.

I know this was only one meal and tonight could be entirely different. But last night's success felt epic and was a major boost to me after a tiring weekend of early mornings and short naps. Here's hoping tonight goes just as well.

*Excuse the crazy hairstyle. At one point during the day they were normal-looking pigtails, but this is her post-nap, hurriedly re-pigtailed looked.

Thanksgiving for Two and a Half

2010-11-21T15:29:00.000-05:00

This year, like every year but one since we've moved to Florida, we'll be spending Thanksgiving here in Tallahassee with just our wee little family of two and a half (in terms of appetites anyway). The first year I made Thanksgiving dinner for just the two of us, I made way too much, trying to accommodate the traditions and preferences of both David and I.

Over the past few years, though, I've gotten much better at balancing Thanksgiving flavors and traditions with a minimalism more appropriate for just the two of us. So this year I thought I'd share my planned menu (with links to those recipes I found online), in case any of you might be making a small feast and wondering how to do it.

[I should warn you, however, that this meal is in large part governed by the fact that David is a relatively picky eater. So as much as I'd like to have sweet potato casserole or the like, it's not worth making it for just me.]

Thanksgiving for Two and a Half - 2010

Rolled Turkey Breast* with Sausage Pecan Stuffing

Sausage and Apple Stuffing

Cinnamon and Clove Cranberry Sauce**

Mashed Potatoes & Turkey Gravy

Honey Glazed Carrots

Traditional Dinner Rolls

Dreamy Apple Pie

So there you have it. It's not too much, but it will be more than enough for David, Molly, and I and will even allow for a couple of days of leftovers.

What are you planning for Thanksgiving? Are you going to be at a large gathering or are you toning things down this year?

*A key of the mini feast if opting for the turkey breast as opposed to the whole turkey. It still makes plenty, tastes just as good, and takes much less time to prepare.

**This is a simple yet flavorful cranberry sauce. I'll share the recipe later this week.

Help Wanted: How do I get my kid to eat?

2010-11-20T20:57:00.000-05:00

Dear Friends,

I know I've been an absentee blogger of late, but I could use some advice lest I lose any more of my mind than has already gone missing.

Here's the deal: Molly seems to have reached a plateau regarding her eating habits. Despite a failed initial attempt to introduce solids at 5 months, Molly has been a steady eater since we tried again at 6 months. In the past 5 or 6 weeks, she has come to increasingly prefer feeding herself (by hand, her spoon skills are a bit lacking at the moment - you know, because she's not even a year yet). Foods that I feed to her (largely purees, of the chunkier varieties these days) that she used to love (and still seems to when I can get her to eat them) instigate screaming fits when she sees them coming.

The fix seems easy, right? Feed her more table food. So that's why I spent a couple of hours last weekend chopping and steaming various fruits and vegetables for her to feed herself.

But she won't do it. She won't touch the fruit at all (which I've read is not uncommon because of the fruit's slipperiness). The veggies she'll eat and seems to enjoy, but she'll only eat two or three bites. Then she ignores them. She doesn't get mad about them, she doesn't want me to feed them to her, but she won't eat them either.

So there are currently very few foods she will eat, and a substantial number of them are snack foods or foods I don't want to give her too much of (for fear she'll become, you know, stopped up). We've got cheese (her #1 favorite), puffs, cheerios, bananas, raisins (which she adores), any bread product (pancakes, muffins, etc.), rice cakes, cookies (the baby version), and that's about it. [She also loves yogurt, though I feed that to her of course.] She won't even eat blueberries anymore, though she used to eat them like candy.

Obviously she can't live off of cheese, raisins, bananas, and starch products alone, particularly because she's already so low on the weight/age ratio. So mealtimes, with the exception of breakfast - during which she happily gobbles yogurt and a muffin or pancake or some other bread product - have become a match of wills which I almost always lose.

At just shy of 11 months, I have resorted to tricking my daughter into eating more appropriate foods. At lunch today, I would give her a piece of cheese, hold the next piece up, and tell her she had to take a bite of the chunky fruit mix on the spoon before she could have the cheese. She would do it almost every time.

Eat a piece of cheese. Begrudgingly eat a spoonful of chunky fruit mix. Eat a piece of cheese. Try to avoid having to eat a spoonful of chunky fruit mix. Give in and eat the fruit mix then gobble the piece of cheese. Fuss and flail to avoid more chunky fruit. Give in. Eat the cheese. Try to sneak another piece of cheese. Allow Mom to barely force some chunky fruit mix off the spoon into my mouth. Eat cheese.

Repeat as long as I can stand it. And then repeat again at dinner (but substitute bananas for cheese and chicken & sweet potatoes for chunky fruit mix).

I want to beat my head against the wall after each meal. It's such a test and, while I could normally handle her strong will (where do you think she gets it from?), it eventually becomes emotionally draining as I worry that I'm not getting enough nutrients to her. This, more than any other part of motherhood thus far, feels the least intuitive to me and it is infuriating.

So before I start literally banging my head against the wall, I ask for your advice. What helped you transition from purees to table food? Any tricks up your sleeve? I'll take any and all advice you've got.

Dueling Celebrations

2010-11-17T09:11:00.001-05:00

Just yesterday I realized that Thanksgiving is next week. I mean, I knew it was soon, but next week? Ridiculous! I haven't even considered buying a turkey yet or put a single thought into what else we're eat (although, since it's just the three of us, that's not such a difficult decision). But more than realizing I might want to make a trip to the grocery store, I couldn't believe that I was so unprepared for the holidays.

Though that's not entirely true. Our travel plans are arranged. I have a good idea of what almost everyone will be getting. Amazon's Universal Wishlist feature (which lets you add items from any website to various Wishlists on Amazon - I have one for everyone I buy Christmas presents for & I add to it throughout the year) has become my best friend. So I have been thinking about the holidays. It just doesn't feel like Thanksgiving should be next week.

Part of that is the all-consuming reality of school. I spend so much time thinking about the ten-thousand things I have to do today, that I'm rarely able to consider what's coming up next week, let alone next month.

The exception to that is that I have been busy planning Molly's birthday party. And being that she's a Christmas Eve baby, planning for her birthday will always coincide and, to an extent, overshadow early holiday planning. Rather than thinking about what Christmas ornament to get her, I'm decided what to do for party favors.

And I don't mind the focus shift, not really. I am thrilled to be planning Molly's birthday party. And I am practically giddy at the idea of experiencing Molly's first Christmas season with her - the music, the smells, the Santa Claus picture (which I fully expect to be a train-wreck). It's going to be amazing. But it's going to take me a while to learn how to think of Molly's birthday and the holidays simultaneous, without feeling like one has to take precedence over the other. I'll get there, but this year's a bit...odd.

So what about you? How is your holiday planning going?

Formula Frustration

2010-11-04T12:00:00.001-04:00

I am one of the lucky mothers who has had an easy time breastfeeding. With the exception of the first week when Molly would fall asleep as soon as she started nursing and a few weeks later when we had a nasty bout of thrush, Molly has nursed easily and consistently. I have loved breastfeeding her; it has been one of my favorite parts of motherhood.

But oh I hate the breastpump. It's just mechanical and uncomfortable and a nuisance. But that I can handle. What is more problematic is that my job has an unpredictable and inconsistent schedule. I have to meet with students around their schedule and, beyond that, one can knock on my office door at any given moment. I can't control if a meeting overlaps with a traditional pumping time, and I certainly cannot excuse myself from it to pump. So it's difficult and frustrating at best.

Which is why (or at least part of why) I have only ever intended to nurse for a year. After that we'll gradually wean to mornings and evenings, then just evenings, and then...

I both dread and look forward to weaning Molly. I will miss those intimate moments, just the two of us, but I will also be glad that David will be able to take a more equal role in taking care of Molly (and I know he will be glad for it, too).

These are all things I have known and anticipated all along, things I could handle.

Then, about two months ago, I refilled my POP birth control prescription and found that I had been given a different brand. It's not uncommon; my insurance gives me whatever is the cheapest at the same dosage. But I still read the included pamphlet carefully to make sure it was still a POP and would be safe to take while breastfeeding. It was, so I took it as normal.

Over the course of the next couple of weeks, I noticed a significant drop it my breastmilk supply, something I had never had an issue with before (just the opposite, in fact; another thing I was grateful for). Then, much to my great displeasure, my period returned. I put two and two together and decided that it was unlikely that those two changes didn't have something to do with the different birth control. So I called my doctor, switched back to the POP I had originally been on, and crossed my fingers.

Though my supply did increase, it never got back to where it had been originally. While Molly has never seemed to notice a difference when she's with me, I have since had a hard time pumping enough. I have been having to send at least one bottle of frozen breastmilk every day that Molly went to daycare. Luckily I had a good supply of frozen breastmilk, so much so that I had previously donated about 60 ounces to a mother who needed it. Unfortunately, the supply I kept has quickly dwindled over the past two months, so much so that I now only have enough for 4 or 5 daycare days left.

Which means, of course, that in the next week or two I am going to have to start using formula to make up for the bottles that I can't pump.

Of course there is nothing wrong with formula. Formula is a perfectly wonderful way to nourish a baby. And if I had needed to use formula from the beginning, I would have accepted that and been fine. But to have to use it now, 6 weeks from the finish line, feels like a complete failure. It's as though I spent 9 months training for a huge race, then got 80% of the way through it and had to drop out.

And yes, I know, it's not like that. I'm not dropping out, more like eating an energy bar to get to the end. But it's feels like dropping out, like failure.

I think this has far more to do with the enormous expectations we mothers have for ourselves. We not only want to do it all, but we expect to do it all, which of course we can't. And when we fall just the tiniest bit short, it feels like a permanent blemish on our mother badge.

Why mothers do this to themselves (ourselves) is far too long a conversation for this already-lengthy post. And yet I find myself contemplating it all the time. For the past ten months, I have fallen short of my expectations for myself - as a wife, a friend, a family member, a student, a teacher. To the best of my knowledge, I haven't let down the other sides of those relationships, but I haven't lived up to my standard. But I have allowed myself to fall short in those areas in an attempt not to fall short (of my goals) as a mother. By introducing formula, I will.

Will Molly suffer for the introduction of formula? Not one bit. Will it alter our relationship? Not at all. And in 6 weeks it won't matter anyway as we'll switch from formula to full-fledged cow's milk. It's not a big deal. I know that.

And yet, when I look at it, my mother badge looks slightly less shiny than it did before.

Prehistoric Halloween

2010-11-01T22:35:00.001-04:00

When it came to deciding what to dress Molly up as for Halloween this year, all we had to do was check out her hair:

Of course she had to be Pebbles Flintstone!

Surprisingly, my Pebbles-knowledge was general at best, so I first turned to Google Images for inspiration. Though you can find lots of variations of Pebbles' style, the traditional, early-days Pebbles looks like this:

With that image in mind, I did some searching for instructions on how others had created their own Pebbles costumes. I didn't find much in the way of directions, but I did find my perfect inspiration image:

Though I found this image on a random blog, the costumes are from RaeGun's etsy shop. The Pebbles costume was exactly what I wanted to make for Molly.

Though the shirt would be very easy to model off of a shirt you already own, that is a skill that I do not possess. So after unsuccessfully scouring the blogosphere for a similar (free) shirt pattern, I ended up picking up a pattern from Jo-Ann's - Simplicity 2684. I made the shirt without the ruffles and it worked out perfectly. However, you could easily use Prudent Baby's Swingy Summer Tank Top; I would have used it myself, but I didn't find it until Molly's top had already been made.

It just so happens that the pattern for the bloomers came from Prudent Baby's site, too - the DIY Diaper Cover tutorial. It was easy peasy, despite the fact that my sewing machine tried to thwart my every move.

For the spots on the shirt, I tried to take the easy route and use peel-and-stick felt. (I free-handed the first spot, taking a couple of tries until I got it to the right size, and then used that one to trace the rest of them so that they were uniform.) Unfortunately, the stickiness only held up for a day or so, which is why I was hurriedly sewing spots onto Molly's Halloween costume on October 30. Oh well, you live, you learn, and it worked out just fine. I hand-sewed the spots because of time; but next time I would use a sewing machine for sturdiness.

With the top and the bloomers ready, all I had to do was make a bone barrette. I simply bought some white felt and, after mimicking (yep) Prudent Baby's Monogrammed Hair Clip tutorial for attaching the snap clip, I cut out two identical bone shapes from the white felt and stitched them together with white thread, leaving about an inch un-stitched. I then stuffed it as full of cotton balls as I could get it and sewed it closed.

The end result was an absolutely adorable and very convincing Pebbles impersonator:

I have to admit that even I, my own worst critic, was really pleased with how it turned out. Molly seemed comfortable in it - a huge plus - and though we had a long-sleeved onesie and white leg-warmers waiting in the wings should the weather warrant it, Florida's unseasonably warm temperatures allowed her to live it up in just the top and the bloomers - just as Pebbles would have wanted.

The entire Halloween weekend was pretty perfect - with pumpkin carving, trick/trunk-or-treating, It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, and lots of candy eating. [What can I say? Molly has a huge sweet tooth!] So far, it has definitely been my favorite family-of-three holiday.

Semi/Temporarily/Partially-Retired

2010-10-22T10:22:00.000-04:00

Life has been busy lately, insanely busy. Teaching, research, writing, mothering, wifering (like that?), and taking time to breathe was just running me ragged. My to-do list began to feel overwhelming and blogging began to feel like one more thing weighing down that list. So I made the command decision to walk away from it, at least for a time. Just until it felt natural, rather than obligatory, to start blogging again.

I didn't expect to stay away for a month. But I'm glad I did. My evenings (when I would normally blog) have been full, especially since I don't get home until almost 7 on Tuesdays and Thursdays. And not having to consider blogging in that time was refreshing. Instead I come home and soak in as much time as I possibly can with David and Molly.

And Molly is so much fun right now. She's all over the place. She crawls over to one piece of furniture, climbs up, cruises the length of it, then crawls to the next and does the same. She laughs and smiles all the time and has a blast playing with her toys. She's inquisitive and loves exploring. And being a part of that is the most important thing to me right now.

So I won't be around these parts as regularly anymore. I'm giving myself the freedom to pop in and out of this space when I feel like it. That might be four times a week, it might be four times a month. I don't know. But I hope you'll forgive the inconsistency. Someday I'll be back here more regularly. But right now, it's all about this:

9 Months / 39 Weeks & 1 Day

2010-09-24T09:07:00.000-04:00

Today Molly turns 9 months old. Coincidentally, she is also 39 weeks and 1 day old, an age of significance only in that it is how long I carried her before she was born. She spent 39 weeks and 1 day living and growing inside of me, and now, 9 months later, she has spent just as long living and growing on her own (admittedly, with some help from me and David).

I had assumed that I would be in shock when she officially turned 9 months old, just as I had been with her previous milestones, from smiling to crawling, which is why I have refused to allow anyone to refer to her as a 9-month-old until that is her official age.

Instead I find that my reaction is, actually, not much of a reaction at all. Of course she's 9 months old. In no way does that surprise me.

:::

When we transitioned Molly to her current daycare (a month ago yesterday), she had a reversion of sorts. She became the shy, uncertain girl she had been when we first began taking her to daycare in July. It wasn't unexpected, though I was hoping that it wouldn't happen. Though she napped well from the beginning (something that had always eluded her at the first daycare), it seemed to us that she was always being held. And while we were glad that her teachers were kind enough to hold her when she needed it, we wanted her to be able to have fun and play, something it didn't seem like she was doing much of.

This suspicion was confirmed last Monday when they did a routine emotional and developmental check (that they do for all of the kids) and said that, though she was hitting every marker, they weren't able to check the developmental skills that required her to be sitting on the ground on her own (such as reaching for a toy, finding a "hidden" toy, etc.). These are things that she easily does at home, and has been for quite a while now, but she cried every time they put her down to do on the floor. The teachers weren't worried about her and were supportive, but it bothered me.

That night David and I realized that we were going to have to encourage Molly's daycare teachers to leave her on her own, even if she cries. There simply wasn't anything we could do at home, where she happily plays on her own and crawls all over the place. We know it must be disruptive for them to let a baby cry around the other children, but it was in Molly's best interest. And we simply had to advocate for her.

It turned out, though, that we didn't have to have the conversation after all. When David picked Molly up the following day, her teacher laughed and asked if we had given her a firm talking to the night before. Apparently she had been wonderful that day, playful and independent in a way they had never seen her be. And that trend has continued. Now when we pick her up, she's on the floor playing, on her own or with her friends. One day she was even standing and trying to cruise, holding onto a piece of their furniture.

:::

At 9 months, Molly is coming into her own in an amazing way, and her new-found confidence at daycare is indicative of that.

She is strong and independent, but also joyously playful. When I walk into the house after a long day of work, her face lights up and her smile takes up her face as she gets frustrated that her crawling speed doesn't get her to me fast enough.

She still loves to be outside; it's pretty much the only place where she contentedly sits still. She simply stares at the trees and smiles as the wind blows through her abundant hair.

Oh, that hair. It makes me laugh everything single day. It is absolutely crazy: part curly, part wavy, part 'fro. Every morning, I walk into her room and laugh as she stares at me through a wall of hair, surely not seeing anything past her brown locks.

I think she already has her dad's sense of humor (and I mean that in a good way). She loves to blow raspberries on my shoulder and then laughs at the fart noise it produces. She cracks herself up. (Another thing she gets from Dave.)

Of course Molly is 9 months old. Everything she does reminds me that she is growing up, but for the first time in her life I find that I'm not shocked or saddened by that fact. Instead, I'm excited by the baby she is and the kid I know she's going to become.

That's What Bathroom Floors Are For

2010-09-22T09:08:00.000-04:00

Molly had a fever this weekend, which I'm 90% sure was the result of teething, though it crept much higher than it has before. At its highest, it was 103.5; that's also the point at which I called the on-call nurse. Yet despite the high temperature, Molly was, generally, her usual self. She ate well, slept normally, and played with her same gusto; she was just slightly clingy and more easily upset, like when stumbling while crawling would upset her though it normally wouldn't. But because she was still so normally Molly, it wasn't difficult to avoid getting too worked up about the fever. My ability to remain calm was impressive, if I do say so myself.

Sending her back to daycare, however, was more difficult, and only in small part due to their "no fever or fever reducers for 24 hours" rule. So on Monday I stayed home with her because her temperature has peaked Sunday night. She was ecstatically happy the whole day, which was a relief. We bumped into a friend at Target and, after hearing that I wasn't at work because Molly had been under the weather all weekend, she laughed and said, "She's clearly better now" as Molly babbled loudly and pointed to the signs hanging from the ceiling. And she was better.

I'm so grateful that I have a job that allows me to stay home with Molly if I need to. Yes, it would have been much harder had it been a Tuesday (when I teach), but it was easy enough for me to rearrange my schedule to be able to focus on her on Monday.

When I was little, I always became a desperate Mommy's girl when I was sick. I would curl up on the floor of our bathroom* and just whimper while she took my temperature or ran a bath for me or did whatever needed to be done. Even later, through college really, the only time I shed my fiercely independent persona was when I was sick. I knew that there was very little my mom could do for me when I had strep throat or a cold, but I always hated that I couldn't just lie in the floor with my mom until I felt better.

I hope that as Molly gets older, I'm always able to be there for her when she's under the weather. Yes, at some point, she's going to have to take care of herself. But for now, I'll happily care for her when she needs it, providing toasted crackers or popsicles or even just a few extra cuddles. And if she wants to lay on the rug in our bathroom, I'll gladly lay right beside her.

*I have no idea why the bathroom floor was such a comforting place when I was sick (aside from its obvious proximity to the toilet, if you know what I mean), but I always ended up there. I hated being sick in college because there was no way I was going to lay on the gross dorm bathrooms, but it seemed impossible to get better without doing so. Weird, I know.

Not Reunioning

2010-09-20T10:09:00.000-04:00

This weekend was my 10-year high school reunion, our first since no one planned anything for the 5-year (which, really, what's the point of a 5-year reunion? how much have you or your classmates really changed by then? heck, most of us were still in college). And I wasn't there, a fact which surprised me more than I expected.

As a pretty typical middle child, I have an intense fear or being left out and/or forgotten. So anytime I'm invited to something, I feel like I must go because, if I don't, I will never be invited to anything again nor will I even be remembered by that particular group. Even if I don't particularly care to be included by the people doing the inviting, I have to go. If I don't, I have serious anxiety about the potential repercussions about declining that invitation.

So, as you can imagine, high school was one enormous anxiety pit for me.

I had always assumed that I would go to my reunion, in part due to my middle-childness, and in part due to pure curiosity regarding the fates of my classmates (although, admittedly, Facebook has dulled that interest since I already have a basic understanding of what's happening with most of them). Other than that, though, the assumption that I would attend didn't make much sense. My closest friends in high school were never in my graduating class. They either went to different schools in the county or were older or younger than me. So while I got along with just about everyone in my class, we never spent time together and didn't have close relationships.

But the thing about going to a small school (my graduating class had 82 people in it) in a small town that I lived in from birth until I moved away to college is that I had known most of my fellow graduates my entire life. I went to their birthday parties in elementary school and got in trouble for "running away" with them - though we only walked from one house to the other. Those were the people I was with when I kissed a boy for the first time. They are in my ridiculous gymnastic pictures (think blonde hair down to my rear, permed, and a lime green leotard). Though I very rarely talk to any of them, aside from the occasional Facebook comment, I can't help but wonder what has become of them.

But I didn't go, mostly because I just didn't have the energy for another 10-hour (one-way) car trip. I expected that I would feel the typical middle child anxiety every time I remembered that it was going on without me this weekend, but I didn't. I never once wished I was there, or felt like I should be there. If I had been in town, I would have gone, but not being there was fine with me, too. Much to my surprise, I realized that I'm not concerned about whether or not I'm remembered or thought of. I got to spend the weekend with my husband and daughter, two people who think quite highly of me, and that is more than enough for me.