Mom V. Dad – Dressing the Kiddo

4 Comments

This will make sense in a minute.

We all know that moms and dads are different. I think every couple has great examples of what dad does better and what mom does better – everything from discipline to bathing are unique. Peter is great at putting Baylie to bed and I think better at swim lessons with her. I think I can get her to eat just about anything and can usually defuse the worst tantrum.

There is one thing I KNOW I’m better at…and now I have proof. This is how Peter dressed Bay:

And this is how I dressed her later that same day:

Now, in all fairness, it was Thanksgiving morning and they were getting ready to go for a bike ride. I’m not really sure why that meant she had to wear pink socks and shoes of two different hues and a sweatshirt from the lodge where he goes bird hunting (note the pheasant).  But really, there’s a clear winner, no?

So Much to be Thankful For

1 Comment

I hope all of you lovely readers had a great Thanksgiving. We had one of the best yet. We hosted for the 4th year in a row and had 18 guests. And I think it’s safe to say we’ve finally worked out a lot of the kinks we’ve run into in the past. The weather cooperated (I rented two heaters, just to be sure) and our family and friends were in festive and happy moods!

One of the things I’m so very grateful for is my sweet little niece and nephews. Well, they’re not so little any more, but still. They are all at the ages and stages where a 17 month old could very much be in their way, but they all choose not only to be nice to Baylor, but they include her in almost all their activities. It makes my heart happy to see her face light up when she sees them and for them to be so sweet to her is something I think everyone loves. Here are a few pics from this year’s dinner:

Dear Mother Nature…

4 Comments

Dear Mother Nature,

I find it adorable that you decided to make it finally feel like fall THIS week. I’m sure you remember Thanksgiving ’08 where you thought it would be cute to make it cold and rainy. I can fit 20+ people into our house for dinner, but it’s not pretty. You know what is pretty? Our backyard. Which is where I intend to feed 18 people a delicious Thanksgiving dinner. Now, MN, you know most of us are natives or have lived in AZ so long, we’re considered natives. We can deal with 110, but 60…60 is just too cold. My mom can’t eat dinner with gloves on.

So let’s make a deal: you make it 70+ for Thanksgiving and you can do whatever you want for the rest of the year. Sound good?

Kisses,

Beth

Kiddo Milestones I’m Grateful For

3 Comments

I read another blog this week called Ironic Mom. She is a Canadian mom of twins and writes very funny and honest posts about life with her kids. I also hear her read with her Canadian accent in my head which makes it even better. Her post last week was about ten milestones that her twins had reached that she was grateful for and I started thinking of my own list. There aren’t ten of them, but they are huge milestones so I figure a few will do.

Sleeping through the night – Baylie might be the only kid I know that waited until she was almost 7 months old to finally sleep for a consecutive 8-11 hours at night. I am not a person who deals well with a lack of sleep, and after roughly 210 weeks of rarely sleeping more than 4 hours at a time, I was near death. I looked like a zombie and felt like one too. Finally, the excitement and exhaustion of getting together with family let her sleep for 10 hours Christmas Eve.  It was a Christmas Miracle!

Taking less than 40 minutes to drink a bottle – I never knew it would take so long to feed a baby. The first month of her life, it felt like it took hours to feed her. I remember watching reruns of talk shows at 3am willing her to eat faster.

Feeding herself – for a long time, Bay was a really picky eater. I would have to trick her into taking a bite of food and then push her to finish a few bites so that she would actually eat solid foods. Once she could feed herself finger foods, all that went away. She could feed herself what she wanted and at her own pace. I wasn’t locked to a chair but could make coffee, feed dogs or, gasp, feed myself!

Walking – I was so excited for B to walk. And then when she did, I was ready to jump off the roof. She was into everything that had previously been out of reach. She was also suddenly silent – there were no more hands slapping the ground as she crawled so she was able to slip away when I wasn’t looking. She instantly knew how to climb the couch, chairs, tables, walls and proceeded to do so often. After 2 days of baby proofing,  I was suddenly back in love with her walking. We could play chase, she could carry things, push things, be set down in a public place without me worrying about her contracting something horrible off the floor.

Understanding what I’m saying – We have been at the point for a few months now where Bay can comprehend what I’m saying. It’s amazing to be able to communicate with her. I love asking her where her nose, ears, fingers, belly button and booty are and she can find all of them. She understands that “bye bye” means that the person, place or thing is going away – or more likely that we’re going away. So when it’s time to leave the park we say “bye bye park” and she gets it. No tears, no fuss, just time to go. Mostly I like asking he to pick up all the toys out of the living room (one by one I identify them, but hey, it’s a start) and take them to her room. Some might call it child labor, I call it creative parenting.

I can’t wait for what is coming next. Although I’m concerned that when we get to the talking phase that I’m going to really regret not curbing my snarky remarks and swearing…

Highschool Reunion

2 Comments

Peter and I had our high school reunion a few weeks ago. Truthfully, I wasn’t really looking forward to it. Not for any other reason than it just really didn’t register that we had been out of high school for 10 years. I blame the 4 really good years of college for that….

To my surprise, it turned out to be very fun. It was nice catching up with people and finding out that a few of them (not all of them) grew up and became nice people. It was fun to hear what people were up to and think of how far we’ve all come in the last ten years.

This week, a friend sent me a message on facebook. He said he was flipping through his yearbook after the reunion and was reading what all his friends and classmates had written. I got credit for being quite funny – my entry went something like “I wish we could have been better friends. But you were mean so I blame the fact that we weren’t better friends on you. Have a great summer!”.

Apparently I was a decent comedic, albeit snarky, writer even then.

Things I am Ungrateful For – part 2

2 Comments

By popular request,  a new list of crap that bugs me:

– Anti Meth commercials: They are big right now in  Arizona and consist of a recovering addict telling horrible stories of what they did while under the influence of meth. Do they REALLY think there is an addict out there or potential addict saying “wow, that sounds terrible, I better stop this”. My guess is that the addict or potential addict is saying “that won’t be me!!”. I’m not against anti-drug ads, just  this one.

– People who think the kids playground equipment is a great place to practice yoga: No sir, you “downward dog” is not at all freaking my child or me out. By all means, continue your creepiness.

– Parents who think their kids are geniuses: I think all parents think their kids are bright, I know I do. But I’m talking about the parents who think their kids are Harvard bound at age 8 months because, and I quote directly from a parent at swim lessons “Tommy is so smart! He made up his own sign language for milk!!”. Tommy is not smart. Tommy is hungry and is doing anything to get your attention and if patting his head is getting your attention, then that’s what he’s doing.

– People who give you a dirty look because you don’t let them go ahead of  you: Normally, I will let someone with less groceries in their cart go in front of me. But when the kid is teetering on melt down, my cart is slammed with food and I know we’ve got less than 20 minutes to get home, get cold stuff put away, and get a snack before nap time, I will not be letting you in front of me. Deal with it.

And now for something I am grateful for – good friends! Please check out Stephanie’s blog and enter for a chance to win a beautiful necklace. See the blog for details: http://www.babycross.wordpress.com.

Monkey Dance

2 Comments

Baylie slept until 7:40 this morning. She hasn’t done that, well, ever. Maybe this whole “no morning nap” thing isn’t so bad after all…

Bay loves music and to dance so I thought I would find some cute kids songs to put on the Ipod for her.  I went to ITunes and typed in “kids music”. I disturbed a little by the lyrics of some of the kids songs – i.e. do you know all the words to “Pop goes the weasel”? I do now and they’re weird. It turns out it’s about drinking too much and having to pawn your good coat. I kid you not, look it up.

So I figured if we’re going to listen to something we can dance too and the “kids” songs are about drinking, we might as well listen to something that is actually enjoyable, even if it’s about drinking. Que my running playlist and the classic Beastie Boy’s Brass Monkey.

Brass monkey. That funky monkey…

Thankfully she makes the gestures for when we sing “No More Monkeys  Jumping on the Bed” and not like she’s tipping up her cup.

A Truly Disturbing Story

3 Comments

I almost never ask Peter’s permission to write about him the blog.  He only finds out after reading the day’s post and then he calls me to comment and then say “and stop writing about me” (ha, as if everything is about him). However, this particular topic was his idea. It is truly a disturbing story. What is more disturbing is that he doesn’t think it’s disturbing which is why he suggested it would make a great post.

My sweet, loving, smart, magna cum laude undergrad, top ten law school educated, cum laude graduate, bills-out-at-$250-an-hour, big firm lawyer husband eats lentil soup out of a can for lunch at least three days a week. Yup. Straight out of a can. No heating it up. No separate bowl.  And he informed me that he didn’t want to walk down the hall to find a spoon so he at yesterday’s lunch with a fork. Insult to injury. The only thing worse would be slurping it directly out of the can or a spork. I think he didn’t use that only because he hadn’t been to the indian food restaurant lately and saved his disposable silverware. The really disgusting part is that he likes it. In fact, he chooses to eat it over anything else.

This is doubly disturbing for me, a person who makes a home cooked meal at least five nights a week. I even pack the leftovers in a separate container so he can take it for lunch the next day, free of the hassle of dishing it into a separate tupperware. I even bought him the kind of soup that you can stick in the microwave without having to find a clean, microwave safe bowl and he said it didn’t taste as good.

I fear the day when I’m going to have to tell Baylor that yes, her daddy is a weirdo. But something tells me that she’s probably going to figure this out on her own. What can I say? He was cute in high school (and still is!).

Nap Time No More

Leave a comment

I knew this day was coming. I’ve been fighting it for months. But apparently now at 17 months, Baylie has won and so she no longer takes a morning nap.

Now, I know all the non-moms are saying “Yeah, so?”. But all the moms are giving me a solomn, sad and knowing nod. Because the end of a morning nap means there is only one nap in a day instead of two. The whole day’s routine now has to be adjusted and new events and activities planned to fill the void left by the lack of a nap.

Even though Baylor no longer needs that morning nap, I still very much want and need that morning nap! Well, nap time any way. It’s at that time I do crazy things like shower, dry my hair and attempt to look like a human, laundry, dishes, ironing, dog washing, house cleaning, blogging, bill paying, connecting with the outside world, etc. And other important things like go to the bathroom without an audience / assistant waiting to pull out the toilet paper for me.

The upside is that with this new phase of circadian rhythm is that Bay is content to entertain herself for longer periods of time. On a good day it  means she will play nicely in her room while simultaneously watching Baby Einstein and without taking a header off of anything. On a not so good day, it means this:

 

 


So farewell morning nap. You will be missed!!

Fresh and Easy Tomato Sauce

1 Comment

I really dislike jarred tomato sauce – I think it has a funny taste no matter how much I mess with it. (There is a yiddish word that I want to use here and although I can say it, apparently I can’t spell it to even begin to look up how to actually spell it!). So I made up my own little sauce last night and it was delicious. It was approved by Peter by evidence of his second helping of dinner and actually eaten by Baylie so it must be a winner:

2 cans of diced tomatoes. I like the organic kind and without added salt if possible

20-30 basil leaves depending on size

1 tablespoon of sugar

2 diced cloves of garlic or about a tea-spoon of minced, jarred garlic (I think Safeway’s organic is the best)

some spices – oregano, “pasta sprinkle”, whatever sounds good and is on hand

salt and pepper

Saute the garlic in some olive oil. Add in the two cans of sauce and stir. Chiffonade the basil leaves and add them to the pot. Add in a dash of whatever spice sounds good (oregano is my favorite) and salt and pepper. Add in the sugar and stir. Let it simmer for a few minutes and then taste for more seasoning.

That’s it! It’s a thinner sauce but the fresh taste is great. Add in partially cooked pasta to soak up some of the juice and or turkey meatballs to warm in the sauce. Serve with garlic bread, as a sandwich, with pasta or by themselves. If you don’t have canned tomatoes or would prefer fresh – hull the fresh tomatoes and put them on a foil lined tray. Add some salt and olive oil and roast for approximately 45 minutes in the oven. Add all parts of the tomatoes to a sauce pan and then the same ingredients above.  Enjoy!