Category Archives: Uncategorized

I’ve been rediscovering our public libraries since having a kid.  We’ve made the rounds trying out different storytimes, checked out the various children’s rooms, and learned about cool reading programs (free books for reading every day!).

When I was 25 I landed a great job in the advancement office at a private school. It was an incredibly family-friendly environment, the campus community was warm and inviting, and my office was in a renovated old house. It was a great place to work.

Some of my colleagues were mothers of young children. Some worked part time. Some were given flexibility for family commitments. To 25-year-old me it all just seemed a little unfair. Why shouldn’t I get the same flexibility? I made assumptions about the education of the part-timers. I was not very family-friendly.

And oh how I offer profuse apologies to those women now. Profuse apologies, unending respect, and happiness that they found such a supportive work situation (with on-site childcare!).

The struggle with work/life balance as a mother hit me blindsided. I did not expect to feel so much constant concern about it, constant re-adjustment, and the amount of ‘figuring stuff out’ that goes into it.

And I’m one of the lucky ones. I went back to work 14 weeks after Evelyn was born. I had asked to start out at two-days a week before returning full time, which was a perfect way to ease back in. But my employer kept me at two days a week permanently. This was stressful financially and an unexpected slow-down in my career, but a blessing in terms of the time I was able to spend with my sweet baby. As hurtful and disappointing as the situation was, it made me realize that I had options beyond working full time and paying for full time daycare.

When Evy was nine months old, I took a new job and started at three days a week. This was the ideal balance. The paycheck was better, I still had time at home, and I had benefits- including more vacation time than I’d had in three years. I’m positive that having a part-time schedule for the first year of my daughter’s life was a huge part of the success I had with breastfeeding.

This past September, when Evy was 16 months old, I upped my hours to four full days a week. This adjustment has been harder, but still: I’m grateful that our family can get by with me working less than full time. I’m grateful that my mom has been able to take on a day of babysitting, saving us another day of daycare expense. I’m grateful for a job in my field, with a great organization.

And yet. I find myself thinking about alternatives. I study other families to see how they’ve found the balance (or, more commonly, how they seek the balance).

This struggle is more than I ever saw from the outside, when I watched working moms juggle their family commitments. No one talked to me about this before I was a mom. Or maybe they did, but I didn’t listen. I assumed I’d work full time, be an all-star mom, and magically it would all work out. You know, I’d have it all, because that’s what they said was possible.

But once I was a mom, I started looking around at the moms I knew. And what I saw was as many different work arrangements as there were families. Teachers who worked crazy hours during the school year but had summers home. Nurses with schedules that adjusted as their family needs changed. Full time schedules crammed into fewer days to open up days home with kids. Stay at home dads. Part time working moms. Parents working nights in order to be with their kids during the day. Consultants and freelancers building their career around their family’s needs. Work/life balances continually in flux were the norm. I had never seen it before seeking my own family’s balance.

I’ve been so extremely fortunate to land in a situation that fits our family’s needs. And I know that the balance will always be shifting. Sometimes working full time will be necessary and ideal. Other times it will be better to work less. It will change as our family grows, as our kids get older, as they start school, and on and on.  We are fortunate to have choices, fortunate that my husband has a good job, fortunate that we’ve dedicated ourselves to living within our means, and fortunate to have supportive families who are always willing to help out.

And to 25 year old me: Calm down. You’ll see. Enjoy life as a 25 year old!

I’d already been doing a lot of thinking about how to frame this blog, and then Meg’s comment about finding a lens through which to write pushed me further. I’m going to use this month to try on some lenses and see how they work for me. If I hit on one that feels right, I’ll stick with it.

Here’s one to try on: my daughter’s books.

At 19 months, my daughter loves books. And I admit: I’m psyched. Before becoming parents, Pat and I both really looked forward to reading to our children. We’re loving that she loves to be read to, loves looking at books, and has started “reading” books to us.

There are books that comfort her (Goodnight, Moon– a book that has comforted generations of sleepy kids). There are books that make her laugh and laugh (Potty, Hippos Go Berserk, Eight Silly Monkeys). There are books that make her happy (The Family Book), and there are books that just engross her (The Very Hungry Caterpillar).

She’s destroyed her fair share of books, too (something about the Clifford book – she loves it, and she loves ripping pages out of it and coloring on the back cover).

Already, though, these books are a part of her childhood and a part of our memories. She’s leading the way, letting us see books through her eyes, telling us stories, opening new worlds to all of us.

I think I have a lot to write about through this door.

Day four of blogging every day this month and I’m already feeling like I have no idea what to write about.

BlogHer has writing prompts for each weekday, but they haven’t sparked any ideas for me.

I have some ideas for posts to come this month, but to write those I need more than the 30 minutes before passing out in the evening that I’ve been able to find for this venture.

Experienced bloggers: Where do you find writing inspiration? How do you make time to write?

This post is a total cop out, I know. But it’s not nothing, and it counts.

We moved into this house three years ago this weekend. It marked a return to Albany after three and a half years in Massachusetts, a kind of “settling down,” and a rude awakening into the world of home ownership.

Making this place our own has been a mix of fun improvements and unexpected (often expensive) repairs – which, I’m guessing, is the way it is for anyone who buys a not-new house.

This afternoon, Evy hung with her grandparents while we went to Lowe’s to begin talking a little more seriously about kitchen renovations- part of our plan for this house since the first time we saw it. We sat down with Art in the cabinet department to dream up ways to add cabinets and counter space and blow loads of imaginary money.

We changed the placement of appliances, added cabinets along the corner and back wall, saw 3D renderings and the bird’s-eye-view, and imagined how it would feel to stand in our new kitchen. We opened and closed cabinets in several mock kitchens and looked at an overwhelming assortment of cabinet options.

After all that, it was somewhat disappointing to come home to find our kitchen exactly as we’d left it.

I’ve decided to do NaBloPoMo, if only to get myself to stick to the goal of writing more, no matter what that writing is. Every day this month, I’ll put something here. It might stink. I’ll probably worry about whether I should bother and debate whether blogging is for me. But I need to write more, and many of my future goals depend on doing just that.

So what am I afraid of?

I’m afraid that I don’t have much to say.

That it’s been said before.

That I don’t quite have a niche topic, and will end up with one of those blogs that’s just a diary that no one really cares about.

And what do I want?

I want to become a better writer.

To take some time for myself, even if it’s just a few minutes on the couch at night, doing this thing just for me.

I want to get more of my writing published.

I want (someday) to (somehow) generate some income from my writing outside of a 9-5 job.

I know I’ve written a version of this post before, and that’s where NaBloPoMo (I hate those abbreviations) comes in. For this month I’ll write every day. It might be crap, but at least it won’t be nothing.

Last night, my 19-month-old daughter spiked a fever. At 1:00 am my husband and I were both up with her, taking turns snuggling, reading books, and applying a cool washcloth to her forehead. I worried about the way she was shaking and shivering- probably due to fever-related chills, but as a first-time mom these things throw my worry into overdrive.

As the ibuprofen kicked in and her fever came down, she started to get talkative and, well, demanding. First it was asking for hugs from all of the stuffed animals on the shelf: “Bear- hug! Mama- bear, hug! Dada – bear, hug!” the on to “Eh-phant- hug! Eh-phant- Dada hug!” and so on.

In the middle of all the hugging, she caught sight of the ribbon displaying her barrettes and bows and three Hawaiian flower clips brought back from one of Grandma and Vou’s trips. “Evy- fower?” – She started out asking to wear a flower in her hair. And then: “Mama, fower?” I obliged- a flower in my hair at 1 am, mismatched to my bleary eyes, wild bedhead, and comfy-but-not-pretty pajamas. Lastly, of course, “Dada, fower?”

And so, there we were- the three of us, at 1am on Thursday morning, fighting a fever, with Hawaiian flowers in our hair. I have so much to learn from this girl.

Summer came and then went, and it was the best. As a family we focused on experiencing that sunny sunny summer. Kiddie pool in the backyard. A week and weekends at the lake. A week at the beach. Bike rides. Playgrounds. Swimming in the big pool at the J. A wee vegetable garden. Flowers. Walks around the neighborhood. Cookouts. A backyard swing. Time with family and friends. Watching our toddler go from walking to running, from observing the world to fully immersing herself in it, from baby to little girl.

Not many projects were completed. The one large project we started (the back porch) is still in progress. Other outdoor projects that we began in the spring (a fence, landscaping, gardens) are still waiting to be done. As we creep up on the third anniversary of moving into our house the list of indoor projects we want to do continues to grow. Getting them done is harder these days- it’s tough to put anything else before time with our kid.

The fall has brought a busier schedule and adjustments: I’m working more than I have since E was born, although I am lucky that I’ve been able to hang on to a four-day work week. At the end of September we traveled to visit dear friends in North Carolina. My sister’s wedding is this week (!) so the exciting preparations for that have been underway for many months. Next week marks the beginning of a quieter and cozier time for us.

All this to say, I’ll be slowly making my way back to the land of writing on the internets, continuing to seek out the best way to do that. And hopefully bringing back the Project a Week series. There are rooms to organize, recipes to master, and there is the looming winter inviting us to hunker down.

Once upon a time I shared links that I thought were interesting on Google Reader, but ever since they took away the ‘share’ option my favorite internet reads have piled up, unshared (unless I decide to inundate a friend with links to things I think they should read. I’m so bossy. Sorry, friends!) This seems like a good place to share- here are some links to things I’ve been digging lately.

Food:

From Scratch Club: This is the site run by a great local group with a focus on real food, gardening, community, and education. They’re blog posts and tutorials tend to deliver inspiration at just the right time. I’ve been paying a lot more attention to what we eat lately and aiming for as much “real food” and as little processed food as possible. I was just saying that I need to find a replacement for the chocolate syrup we have in the fridge (I love a bit on my ice cream….) and today FSC posted a recipe for three-ingredient homemade magic shell. Can’t wait to try this! This group (and some nudging from foodie friends) has also inspired me to make my own yogurt, use more dried (instead of canned) beans, and has been a big part of my realization that cooking from scratch isn’t as hard, time consuming, or complicated as I thought.

100 Days of Real Food: Like I said above, now that I’m responsible for a small young human, I’ve really focused on what we’re putting into her body, and ours. For over six months she was exclusively breastfed– nourished by the most local, unprocessed, natural food there is. So when we started introducing solids, I wanted to keep that trend up as much as possible. I’ve been making more from scratch, buying as much local as possible (so much easier in the summer), and buying organic when we can. I found this blog at the perfect time. It’s full of simple ideas for real food based meals, ways to avoid processed foods, and how to do it all affordably. I love the resources here and I’ve already used several of the ideas.

Recipes:
Tasty things I’ve made recently:

3-ingredient cheesy crackers: great toddler (and grownup) snack- Evy loves these.  Most of the new recipes I’ve made lately are snack-focused. Evy will eat grapes or bananas for snack, but I wanted some more whole food options to mix things up a bit.

Energy bites: There are all kinds of variations on this recipe. I used this one as the base but used almond butter and added (in addition to the oats and coconut) puffed rice cereal, flax meal, and cinnamon. I skipped the vanilla. They are so tasty, we all love them. One is plenty filling, a perfect afternoon snack. Evy watched me make them while she ate her lunch. I told her she could have one after she finished lunch. She really takes her time with her meals these days (all about the slow food movement, I suppose), so I had forgotten about the energy balls when she was done. She didn’t, though! “Ba, ba!” she demanded, pointing at the fridge. Yes, m’am!

Crunchy roasted chick peas: This was on my ‘to make’ list for a long time. Super easy, super tasty, a favorite of mine and Evy’s. I haven’t figured out a way to store them so they stay crunchy, but they aren’t awful once they get chewy.

Things I haven’t made yet but plan to:
Coconut oil popcorn
peanut, carrot, and cabbage slaw
radish slaw (we got a bunch of radishes in our farm share today – yum!)

Kid stuff:

Baby-led weaning: this is the general approach we used to introduce Evelyn to solids after she was 6 months old. It worked great for us — no purees or spoon-feeding, she was totally in control of how much she ate, and we’ve eaten meals as a family ever since we started seating her at the table with us. She currently eats all kind of things- from chicken curry to pasta with pesto to pitas with hummus and cheese. The best resource for learning about baby-led weaning is the book, but the website and Facebook group are pretty good, too.

Janet Lansbury: Her parenting approach makes a lot of sense to me- the website is a good resource for those days when toddlerhood boggles my mind.

SquintMom and Science of Mom : These two blogs take on parenting ‘hot topics’ that can be truly confusing, review the scientific research, and draw rational conclusions about the facts. I love them so much. It can be agonizing to figure out what the facts are about things like vaccinations, sunscreen, breastfeeding, sleep, parenting styles, and solid food. On both of these sites the research is presented clearly, with clear citations, and all sides presented. For an over-thinker like me (and many parents), this is a godsend.

Week: 4
Project: Reign in the toy chaos with some hidden toy storage.

I had to keep it simple this week – dreary weather and plans to travel this weekend mean that it isn’t the week for anything too ambitious.

All of that to say that one of the concepts that resonated with me was cutting back on the number of toys a child has access to in order to simplify the child’s environment. I can see a difference in how Evy plays based on the number of toys around. Giving one or two simple toys, she focuses on those, playing independently for long stretches. But given an overflowing basket of toys, she flits from one to the other, pulling everything out, leaving trails of toys as she moves around the house, never focusing on one toy for more than a minute. It’s not a good scene for anyone.