Interests:christianity, photography, reading, writing, camp counseling, children, college, volunteering, hanging out in coffee shops or at the beach, shows, concerts, car rides, friends, randomness, violin, piano, guitar, the season of autumn, seasons in general, nature, camping, traveling, knitting, baking, sleeping, dreaming, people watching, learning, rebelling, eating, Occupation:Program Director Industry:Other
It has been one of my somewhat unspoken goals lately to learn to love the things I hate. I realized that there are several things in life that I hate simply because I am lazy. Because I am lazy, I haven't necessarily given these things a fair chance, or have at least worked them up in my mind to become unbearable when they are actually tolerable and even enjoyable, if I would only change my attitude about them.
I hate doing the dishes. Since we don't have a dish washer, it can be a daunting task, especially when pans with tough grease are involved.
To remedy this situation, I made a time lapse video of me doing the dishes. I've posted it here before, but in case you missed it, here it is again:
That day, I loved doing the dishes. Why? Because I love time lapse videos of people accomplishing things. It's one of my lesser known quirky interests. So now, when I do the dishes, I sometimes pretend I am making a time lapse video. I imagine my progress being played back in fast-motion, my hard labor looking simple and fun. And then it doesn't seem so bad. Do I love doing the dishes? Maybe not, but I sure love a clean sink, and I don't think I HATE doing the dishes anymore.
So I'm moving onto a new obstacle: cooking. I just don't cook. In fact, I have informed many people that I HATE to cook. Truthfully, I don't completely hate to cook; I just hate the before-cooking process: locating recipes, making shopping lists, going shopping, tallying ingredients, putting them away, pulling them back out, making meal plans, etc. This whole process just seems like so much work to me, and so I will only cook things that contain 2 or 3 ingredients and can be made in half an hour or less. My repertoire includes such gourmet meals as: macaroni and cheese, hamburger helper, frozen pizza, shake and bake chicken, omelets, tacos, soup from a can, grilled cheese, etc. I have never thought about dinner until I'm hungry and want to eat it as soon as possible.
Yet lately I've been thinking about my daughter, and how much I want to have family meals, while also setting a good example for her in terms of proper eating. I want to be able to whip up delicious meals using natural and healthy ingredients. When I do actually cook a meal, I feel pretty good about myself, so I'm thinking that if I could just get over my laziness when it comes to the setup process, I would actually enjoy cooking.
It's so difficult for me to make meals plans though. As much as I love making to-do lists, I HATE making grocery lists, even if it's full of simple things like eggs and milk. And it gets doubly complicated once real meal ingredients are added to the list. Let's say I'm cooking something and it has 12 different ingredients. Some of them are basic spices I already have on hand, but other ones are more difficult: a tablespoon of sour cream, a little bit of relish, a cup of bread crumbs. Since the store doesn't sell these things in these increments, I have to buy entire tubs, bottles, and boxes of this stuff. Then I can't let it go to waste which means I have to locate and make OTHER recipes using similar ingredients. And those recipes use even more ingredients that I have to use up with even more recipes, and it's like this big, endless puzzle of recipes. Creating a successful meal plan for the week that is not only tasty and healthy, but also cost-efficient is this huge, mind-boggling challenge that I just never have the energy to tackle. After writing down the ingredients I lack from just one recipe and realizing how expensive the meal is unless I put those ingredients to use in other recipes, I tend to just give up. When I can cook a meal out of a box of macaroni and a side of steamed vegetables for just a few bucks and a quick trip down aisle four, the prospect of a complicated meal with ingredients totalling $30 and the pressure of using up the excess ingredients before they go bad makes me throw up a little. This is what I hate about cooking, and there doesn't seem to be a good way around it if I want to start eating right.
We have one great cookbook that my parents gave us. It's great because it has chapters that teach us how to cook; there are chapters on meat and fruit selection and how to best cook various vegetables. And the meals in the cookbook are delicious. The downside is that delicious doesn't necessarily mean healthy. The meals in this book are the "mom's good home cook'n" kind, with lots of butter, sugar, and salt to taste. I look through the pages of this book, and I think Paula Deen. What I need to do is sit down one day, develop a month or two worth of healthy meal plans, and then just repeat the same meal plan and shopping lists for months on end until i get sick of something and swap it out for something else. That way I can eliminate the constant preparation stress, keep things efficient, and learn to love cooking.
What things do you hate doing? What does your weekly meal plan look like slash what are your favorite meals to cook? have any good healthy recipe/cookbook recommendations?
It's funny how much parenthood can change people. Just last summer, literally the day before we found out we were pregnant, my husband and I sat in a smoky cafe with a friend drinking beer and discussing this very thing. We mentioned our friends who had recently had kids and how they all seemed to disappear after their kids were born. They would never come out and do things anymore, whether they had an opportunity to find a sitter or not. It's understandable, we said, but it was still sad.
Then we became parents. And we realized it really wasn't all that sad. Post-baby, we're still the same people. Except some of our priorities have changed. Now, on a Friday night, when we have the choice between taking a much needed family nap and snuggling up with a movie after an exhausting week or hiring a sitter (pumping enough milk to last), and heading out for a night with friends during which we're not allowed to be irresponsible because we will arrive home to a demanding infant who will still need to be fed and cared for despite our state...well, it's just easier (and frankly, more fun) to go with the first option. Once we had a baby, bars and drunken parties just didn't seem so appealing anymore. "Nights out" are just so expensive, what with hiring a baby sitter. And the whole time we just miss our baby anyway, and end up being THOSE PEOPLE who just won't shut up about their kid the entire night.
The occasional "night out" with friends is still a lot of fun; it just becomes more of a hassle and less of a reality once kids enter the equation. But nobody can survive for long without interacting with other adults. So invariably, we begin to seek out the company of other people who can understand us and our situation. We look for people who know what it's like to hang out with someone whose idea of a good time is lying in one place yelling at their hands. We look for people who don't flinch at projectile vomit, and whose ears don't bleed at the sound of infantile screaming. We begin to look for opportunities for kid-friendly fun while also enjoying the company of people our own age. In short, we start befriending other parents.
Post-baby parent friendships are odd because they are desperate in an obvious sense. They bring people together who might otherwise never think of interacting, and everybody knows exactly why they are there. "We're lonely and we need other friends who have kids," they may as well say, when introducing each other. Both parties are usually extremely aware of how odd their friendship may seem, but they don't care! Because you have kids, they have kids, and hell, that's enough material to keep conversation going for YEARS. Besides, when you run out of constructive things to talk about, you can always just start comparing your kids Nothing better than determining once and for all WHOSE KID IS THE BEST. (ha).
The luckiest of us are able to take these unlikely pairings and develop TRUE friendships that are held together with something more than the common kid factor. My mom became friends with a woman who had a daughter my age in school when I was little. At first their friendship was based purely on the fact that they had kids the same age; they had little else in common. My mom was shy; her friend was outgoing. My mom didn't smoke; her friend did. My mom was conservative, her friend more liberal. Her friend was also a good 5 years older than my mom. Yet they are still friends to this day, long after all their children have grown up and (mostly) moved out. They still get together for regular coffee dates and chat for hours when they can. Their highly unlikely friendship became something real and important. I only hope I can develop similar friendships with other moms.
Today I went to the first of what will hopefully be many play dates with a group of moms my age. I started the group when I realized that out of my facebook friends, there were about 10 other moms living in my area, all around 24 or 25 years in age whose kids were all 21 months or younger. And we all shared a common faith. Most of us had graduated from the same religious college and a few were married to graduates of that college or went to local churches. Other than that, we didn't necessarily have a lot in common. Only one of the girls was (and is) a good friend of mine. The rest were either acquaintances or else I barely knew them at all. Back in college we were in entirely different social groups. Yet the power of desperation for other mom friends brought us all together this morning. While back in college we spent our evenings and weekends very differently, as moms we are all in the same boat. We found ourselves laughing and talking like old friends as we watched our children steal toys, poke each other in the eyes, and occasionally give the obligatory mom-demanded hug or kiss. Whether we become lifelong friends or just use one another for temporary social interaction remains to be seen, but for now, I'm branching out, and so far, this has been a very good thing.
You have changed so much in the last two weeks. It's like you hit baby puberty. You started gaining weight. Ok, I know I say you gain weight every time because you do, but now you look like a BABY. You're all chunked out and adorable and have that cute little double chin and pot belly and squishy arms and legs. At your one month appointment, you weighed 10.5 lbs and were 22 inches long, meaning you gained 3 lbs and 2 inches since birth. Now I'd guess you're already over 11 lbs. You're like this solid little mass of a person. We don't bother holding your head at ALL anymore, unless of course you're head banging it into our shoulder during a crying fit and we're afraid you're going to hurt yourself.
Other features of baby puberty: baby acne and a voice change. Today you were crying and you sounded so weird to me. Your cries used to be simple and unvaried. We'd hear the usual dinosaur noises interspersed with the "i"m hungry" or "I'm wet" cries. Today your crying seemed lower and your voice was cracking much like a boy hitting puberty. You were also making some funny wheezing cries and WIMPERING. You were whining, not like a baby, but like a small child. Such sad little noises you were making. I would make a sad face and repeat them back to you and you would make an even sadder face and sigh while making yet another sad sound as if to say "nobody understands me." You've also added YELLING to your repertoire of noises. You'll scream at us with something that sounds like a mixture of yelling and laughter. "HA!" you'll say. Other times it's more of a "NAAAAAAAA!" You yell out your demands and start screaming if we don't immediately meet them. It's getting a little harder to tell what you want, to be honest. It's like sometimes you just have to vent about something and let out a lot of drama, and you're fine. Sometimes, you will even stop crying without us. We usually respond promptly, but there are those occasions where we can't-like when I'm stuck on the toilet and you wake up from a nap. After a minute or two of crying, you give it up and just start talking to yourself. It's really cute the way you're learning to self sooth a little bit already. I've been trying to catch all your noises on camera, but it seems that as soon as the camera comes out you either stare at it, transfixed, or you just straight up BAWL your eyes out, so that I end up with a million videos of me looking like the worst mother in the world, recording your pain while you sit and scream about how nobody loves you.
(this was you at only 3 1/2 weeks, but you get the idea)
Last weekend we took you down to IL to hang out with your grandparents and at one point we went out to lunch with your great grandma at Olive Garden. You mostly slept through the meal until the very end, when we had just ordered dessert. Then you woke up with a sudden whimper which dissolved into an urgent SCREAM. Luckily, we'd been seated near other families with small children so most just gave us sympathetic smiles as I whisked you off to the bathroom to see if we could fix your problems. When we got to the handicapped stall with the baby changing center in it, I saw that you had completely crapped through your outfit. Why oh why does this only happen when we are far from home? The entire time I cleaned you up (which took awhile, as I had to fix the diaper situation, remove all your clothing, and then put on new clothing) you WAILED. Your dad said he could hear you from the table, that's how loud you were. You were getting to that inconsolable point of no return, so after I fixed you up, I decided to nurse you. Only, the bathroom didn't have any chairs. And I wasn't wearing a very nursing friendly outfit so I couldn't do it discreetly at our table. So i just sort of stood there awkwardly in the handicapped stall, nursing you standing up.
A few minutes later, I heard a woman or two walk into the bathroom and comment on how there weren't any free stalls. Crap, I think. I'm going to have to emerge from the stall with an infant attached to my boob in order to let other people use the bathroom. Just as I'm working up the courage to pop out of the stall, explaining that while these women crossed their legs, all I was doing was using the stall as a privacy mechanism for breast feeding, I hear the door open in the next stall over and a girl's voice says "you can use the bathroom; I was just using it for this." By the response of the women, i gathered that the girl in the next stall had ALSO been nursing. Oh jeez. Well, at least I wasn't alone. I threw open the door, stepped out with my baby hanging from my boob, looked straight at the girl and said "join the club!" The two women who walked into the bathroom seemed to think this was hilarious. They'd "been there, done that." they told us. We then proceeded to rant about how it should be mandatory to have a chair or two in every woman's bathroom. While nursing with one hand and cleaning crap off my baby's clothes using a tide stick with the other hand, I chatted with the other nursing girl, also a new mom. Her baby was 3 weeks along. And at the time, you were 5 weeks. And I guess the point of this whole story is that you already seemed SO MUCH BIGGER than the 3 week old baby. I felt YEARS ahead of this other mom, like I had SO much more experience. And I'd only been a mom for two extra weeks. It's amazing how much can happen in two short weeks.
In addition to becoming heavier, you're also noticeably "longer." I like to sit you up while holding your forearms. You grip my thumbs with your fists and practice sitting or standing that way. My hands used to entirely engulf your forearms. The other day I noticed I had a good inch of space between my pinky and the crook of your elbow. The purple overalls you were wearing, which used to go down to your feet, now meet your knees instead.
As your limbs get longer, they're also learning to do more things. Your legs are now so strong that they can fully support your weight at times. You LOVE "standing," and you will push at our laps with your feet until we help you stand up. Sometimes, I will stop supporting you fully (while keeping my hands there so you don't fall) and you will literally be standing up without my help. Your arms are even more amazing. You used to flail them around in "one piece." The entire arm would move as one unit. But now, you're starting to bend them at the elbows more often, and you're even sort of reaching for things. You spend time staring at your hands with deep concentration as they flail around, as though trying to figure out just what they are and how you can go about getting them in your mouth. And sometimes you will even bring your hands together; When you do manage to get a hand into your mouth, you sit there sucking on it happily like it's the best thing in the world.
The funniest thing, to me, is watching you use your newfound arms and legs to fight us. You've already learned what you like and don't like, and you will squirm away to the best of your ability when faced with unpleasantness. If I try to remove an eye boogar or clean off a part of your face, forget about it. You squirm your head away like crazy and wrinkle up your face, threatening to scream. If I try to put a burp rag over your arms and under your chin before feeding you, you get so excited about eating that you start cooing at my boob while your arms keep flailing at the rag, removing it from your chin. I literally have to pin your arms down or swaddle you before feeding you if I plan on using a burp rag. If I leave you in your crib unswaddled or if you manage to escape from the swaddle, you will use your arms and legs to turn your body, so that I always find you lying at a different angle than the one I put you in. A few times I have caught you trying to roll over or sit back up if you happen to shlump over in your bumbo chair, and you're already really great at holding your head up, supported by your arms, while rocking back and forth on your stomach. It's only a matter of time before you figure out how to coordinate all those strong body parts of yours, and then we're really in trouble.
Other things you have been doing lately:
Saying "Ah-goo" and other two-syllable sounds Whining communicatively, not just crying out of instinct or reflex Staring at more toys Grabbing my hair while nursing Crapping your pants loudly in church during the silent prayer Blowing spit bubbles
I have a question for people who know digital cameras.
I have a canon digital rebel, and it's always worked great and taken really nice, crisp photos. It's now about 2 years old. however, the past 6 months or so, I've noticed something strange about my photos. Sometimes, especially in dark areas, the photos look strange. They seem to be covered in lots of green and red dots. It's imperceptible unless you make a habit of editing photos like I do. I notice it especially if i zoom in, but it's become so that I'm starting to notice it with "the naked eye" as well. I can't explain it except my pictures are starting to get a weird, newspaper-y quality. here is a cross section of my daughter's face.
In the shadow on the right side, you can see all the red and green blotchiness, like it's a close up of a color newspaper photo. The blotchiness is all over, not just in the dark areas, but it's most noticable with the darker colors. Here is a section of a photo that is supposed to be a dark solid black:
Both of these photos are cross sections of the photos viewed at their maximum size, i.e. the size at which the photo was taken.
I used to be able to zoom to a photo's max. size and it would look exactly the same except magnified. It would be just as crisp. If I zoomed in on a black area, it would be black, not a mess of red and green. I don't know where all this red and green stuff came from. It's not the lighting or external factors because it's been appearing in all of my photos. It's not an external filter either; I've experimented with that too. And I've tried different camera settings. So I'm wondering if anyone knows what it might be. Is the lens broken or going "bad"? Is there some camera part i should have checked out? Is there a camera setting I neglected to check? Ideas are welcome.
Hi all, A friend of mine is trying to get the pepsi grant so she can buy kayaks and equipment for a program she runs for at risk kids. Last time they tried to take the kids kayaking, the kids loved it; unfortunately some kids couldn't go because they didn't have proper clothing or equipment. They're trying to make this a year round program. If they make it into the top 10, they get 50 grand, and they're currently at #35. Please help her by taking 2 minutes to go over there and vote. It's super simple to vote, and you can vote once every day until the end of march. Just click on the link below. Thanks!
True
Nothing better than determining once and for all WHOSE KID IS THE BEST. (ha).
