In Season

We live in a culture of instant and nearly infinite gratification with a click of a mouse or trip to a super-store. The internet gives us instant access to anything we want, day or night 365 days a year and if we spend more than $35 we can get free shipping! And while I love amazon.com and mega-store shopping, one of the things I am enjoying about having decided to do the CSA as our main source of produce this winter is the fact that it is challenging me to think differently about food. I can't have anything I want, any time I want it. We pick up the bag on Friday and what we get is what we get. This week we have:

turnips

rutabagas

celery

potatoes

some citrus fruits

leeks

green pepper

2 local hot-house tomatoes

Not what I would have picked up at the grocery if left to my own devices. Over the past 2 weeks Jim and I have realized that we are big fans of roasted turnips and sauteed collards- things we never would have tried had they not been the only veggies in the house for dinner. This experiment is teaching me to think differently, to enjoy what is available to me in season- to appreciate the lean, hearty root veggies of winter and to anticipate the bounty of summer. I have a few onions, a sweet potato, and part of a head of lettuce left over in the fridge. And that's what's for dinner at our house this week!

PS: check out the size of the green onions we got last week! Maybe this is my city-girl ignorance, but I didn't think green onions looked like this except perhaps in Jurassic Park!

picture perfect

I got my latest issue of Better Homes & Gardens in the mail on Friday. And it was covered in all of these notices that this is my final issue- special bright red plastic wrap, a card stock cover, several page inserts, and a no-postage-necessary reply envelope.

I am in a quandary about what to do. On one hand I love getting every issue of BHG in the mail. Magazines in the mailbox have the power to make my day great (I think it is something about the shine of the pages). I love paging through it and looking at the beautiful homes and decorating ideas. I love reading about recipes and I love looking at green yards. The problem is that I don't stop with just looking. There is this seductive path my brain takes at some point with almost every issue. I start off thinking "Oh, what a fun idea". This thought is immediately followed by "I could do that; it would be great in the ____ room". I earmark the page and then this idea starts to simmer on the back shelf in my mind. At first I am planning how such and such idea could fit into what we have, and what I like, and what would work for us, but then things become more sinister. A piece of my brain starts to ask myself why I haven't already finished this project and remind myself of what a mess our house is and how this project would fix that and make me happy. It keeps pointing to the dishes in the sink and telling me that painting the walls in the family room would make me into the sort of person who doesn't have dirty dishes in the sink- ever. And then this rogue part of my brain starts to call me names like "lazy", "unorganized", "unstylish", "slovenly", "boring", etc etc.

So I'm trying to decide whether it is worth it. I love projects- when I can get them done. I love ideas- when I deal with them in a healthy, reasonable way. I love shiny pages and beautiful pictures. I somehow, though, need to remind myself that no one's house actually looks like the pictures unless BHG is coming over to do a photo-shoot. Everyone has a junk drawer and dust bunnies and dirty laundry. I am not a failure as a human being when my house isn't ready for a photo-shoot at all times. The question is whether I can remember all of that next month when the shiny pages arrive in the mail enticing me with their call that "Heavenly Emu" colored paint on my walls will fix all of life's difficulties.

sharing

I read somewhere that 6-10 months or so is the "golden age of babyhood". They can sit up and have some mobility, but they aren't fighting for independence yet and they are starting to be more interactive and fun. They do cute things like suck their toes, play patty-cake and laugh out loud. yes. yes. and yes.

Yesterday I gave Jonathan a frozen bagel for him to gnaw on instead of chewing holes in his board books. He LOVED it and happy chewed off little mushy bits. Then he started t0 try to feed the bagel to me by stuffing it in my mouth and laughing when I took a bite. I laughed so hard I almost wet myself.

Seeing him recognize that I was a person just like him and therefore would like the bagel as much as him was by far the best thing that happened this week.

mundane

Today I had a rough day. I felt exhausted and alone. I kept going over my mental list of the things I was doing that were totally wearing me out: taking attendance, checking homework, changing another diaper, mixing rice cereal, picking up the stacking cups and trying to find the red one under the sofa, grading a test, buying dog food, mopping the floor (ok, not actually mopping, but feeling guilty that the floor was un-mopped). And then my brain would start making longer lists of all the things that I hadn't done yet. All mundane junk, nothing remarkable or worth feeling proud of. None of it seemed like it should wear me out like I was feeling worn out and none if it seemed like made that big of a deal...

At times like this a little voice is usually nagging at me in my head saying things like "the little things add up over time" and "Rome wasn't built in a day" and in general trying to get me back to my normal state of mind where I feel ok about my life. But I didn't quite believe the little voice today. So I was grasping at straws all day, desperate to feel like I mattered to someone. Desperate to see progress. Desperate to believe that what was consuming all of my energy mattered.

After work I went for a walk with a friend and our babies and the dog to a park. We played for a while and enjoyed the sunshine. I came home and ate good, fresh, food and tried to concentrate on the baby. And slowly I started to feel real and ok again. I want to enjoy life and live in the moment every day. But today was really hard.

jogging!!

Thanks to a 3 day weekend and some lovely weather, Jonathan and I have managed two runs in the past 3 days!!

On Saturday it felt beautiful. Like I was one of those people born to run who can run 5 minute miles for miles upon miles. I was still running my 10 min miles, mind you, but I felt great! I think I may even have commented that "running with the jogging stroller is really easy- not much different than running normally".

HA! Then we went out today. I don't know if it was what I ate, how much I (didn't) sleep, or just the fact that running 2x per week is unheard of for my body lately, but today I was struggling. I'm sureI looked horrid; I think one car almost pulled over to ask if I was OK. But I was out there!

Operation Restore Sanity = FAIL

Operation Restore Sanity commenced on 1/3/2010 has been abandoned due to fatal flaws. After a preliminary review of the wreckage, the condensed list of miscalculations include:

1) The length of time that Jonathan will cry when he wakes up at night exceeds 1 hour

2) The length of time that Mommy and Daddy are able to listen to him cry without their hearts breaking is somewhere less than 5 minutes

3) The volume of Jonathan's crying carries clearly through the house with doors closed and baby monitors off.

4) At 3am Mommy's willpower is small enough to be considered zero.

We are back to 2 feedings per night (11ish and 3ish) plus one right before I h

ead off to work (6ish). It is just so much easier to go upstairs than to listen to him cry. And it turns out I am not convinced he is waking up purely out of habit and not out of real hunger. He is thriving in every other way and so I keep thinking that if he is doing so well and I am surviving, why rock the boat? ESPECIALLY when letting him cry results in so much less sleep for me and I don't know that the results of letting him cry it out will be what I want. Besides how can you say no to this face??

Eventually he will naturally outgrow this right? Surely by the time is heading off to college?

1st CSA

We picked up our first CSA box today. I decided just before Christmas to sign up for our local farmer's market winter season Community Supported Agriculture and I am so excited!! Almost all of the food is grown totally locally- (except for a bunch of organic, fair-trade bananas from Peru). Today's bag contained:

lettuce

collard greens

tomatoes

sweet potatoes

white potatoes

turnips

banana

While I have been living in the south now for 10 years, I have not yet ever cooked or eaten collards. I guess this week will be a first!! If anyone knows any great recipes for collards (particularly one that my super-picky husband might eat) let me know!

cooking therapy

I love food. I love growing it (when I can) and the idea of other people growing it (when I cannot); I love cooking it; I love eating it; I love reading about growing and/or cooking it and/or eating it. And right now I love it as therapy.

Between Operation Restore Sanity going wildly awry (more on this later), feeling like a chicken with my head cut off all day at work, and trying to predict what Jonathan the crawling wonder will get into next, I have been feeling a bit out of control. Like I am one of those mine carts in Indiana Jones careening wildly around corners, sparks flying and wheels barely hanging onto the rails. But when 7pm comes and Jonathan is snug in bed, I can finally take a deep breath. And my overwhelming urge lately has been to cook something cozy and wonderful. Last night I made pumpkin-oatmeal bread. Tonight I started marinating a roast and put on a pot of mushroom stock. And as I stood there slowing stirring the dark bubbling liquid, smelling browned onions, garlic, and stewing mushrooms I could feel all of the tension seeping out of my shoulders. This is something I can control and master. There are steps to be followed and an end product I know I will love. I feel relaxed and wonderful- until I look over to see the sink filled with dirty dishes....

Baby Proofing

There are all sorts of things to consider when a tiny little guy starts crawling around your living room exploring everything with his mouth. We spent some time this weekend thinking about how to baby proof our home. There were some obvious things- cabinet locks in the bathroom and under the kitchen sink, probably a baby gate by the stairs. But the thing that seems to fascinate Jonathan currently more than anything besides the dog is electrical cords. You can get covers for the outlets, but how do you deal with a baby who wants to chew the coating off of the cord? For the moment the solution seems to boil down to constant vigilance... oh, gotta run baby attempting to climb stairs!

Jonathan Learns to Crawl

Jonathan's first crawling "steps" were taken on Friday Jan 1 when we were in Minnesota after Christmas. But this week has been AMAZING to watch him refine his crawling skills!! I managed to catch a few bits on video and have loved watching his progress in just 1 week!! Go Baby J!

funk

I have been in a funk all week. A lot of things are conspiring to make me feel bad in all sorts of ways. My husband thinks it is a sign of my progress in the mental health realm that I can identify the sources of my malcontent, but I think real progress would be to be able to move past them.

The first and most obvious stressor is that we are back to school. The first week back after a holiday always feels long and gruelling and I am in shock that work is this much work and that 5am comes as early as it does. But this week at school we have been focusing as a department on a new district policy of "credit recovery". Someone downtown has basically decided that it makes our numbers look bad when students fail classes and we are now moving towards a policy where it is unacceptable for teachers to issue failing grades. The plan is that any student who fails a class for any reason will have the opportunity to come in for 6 days after school, do some make-up work, retake some tests and then pass the class. The problem s that if you could do all that is required to pass a class in 6 after school sessions, why are the rest of us spending so much time in class from Sept-Jan? And why is the assumption of the district that teachers aren't compassionate and reasonable to be working with their students to help them pass all along? I feel totally devalued and disheartened by this new policy and it is making me hate my job this week. I know that what I do in the classroom day in and day out is valuable and I care about my students. And I have known for years that many of the people downtown don't share that perspective. But I am still feeling the sting of this new slap in the face this week.

The other stressor is that we started giving Jonathan formula on Sunday night. To some extent my internal reaction has been to feel like I am a failure at nursing- obviously I am not working hard enough at the whole nursing process and therefor a failure as a mother. I can see how irrational that is and I know that I have been successful with nursing for 8 months! But I still feel bad about it.

So at the end of the week I am feeling exhausted, devalued and like a failure. The exhaustion is totally reasonable. I just wish my brain could convince my heart not to feel the other two!

Operation Restore Sanity (phase 1)

We have commenced phase 1 of Operation Restore Sanity. The preliminary results are in and it is looking good so far!

Our plan was to start giving Jonathan a bottle of formula before bed (instead of nursing) and then work in phases gradually eliminating night time feedings/wakings. Phase 1 includes the transition to formula and limiting night time feedings/wakings to 1 per night prior to feeding him on my way to work (between 5 and 6am). Phase 2 will be the transition to not waking up to eat at night at all. Phase 3 will be me getting enough sleep regain some normal level of brain function.

Last night was part one of phase one. We decided to give him a bottle, but not start letting him cry until tonight. So yesterday we gave Jonathan his first bottle of formula ever and put him to bed praying that the formula wouldn't give him some sort of gastrointestinal distress. He woke up at 10:30 and cried for about 8 minutes before I went up and patted his back a few times and he went right back to sleep. He then slept until 12:30 when I went up to feed him. So far so good!! The improved sleep could have been because the formula is magical or because he was completely worn out from crawling around our house like crazy yesterday. Either way I am hopeful that this will become a pattern and was not a fluke!

like white on rice

Jonathan is going through what I can only hope is a phase in which he is super clingy to me. It came on pretty suddenly about a week ago. One day he was totally fine with pretty much anyone; the next day only Mommy would do. I guess separation anxiety starts around now, but this isn't him being unhappy when a stranger is holding him; this is him totally freaking out when Mommy is not holding him. Daddy is like chopped liver. This is especially true at night and it is driving us crazy. He starts back at the preschool tomorrow, and I am pretty nervous on behalf of Daddy who will be getting him up and out the door after I have gone to work and for his teachers.

Resolutions

I'm not super into the whole New Years thing, but there are a few goals that I have setting into January:

1) Get the baby to sleep through the night. The current situation is getting desperate. It is currently exacerbated by sever factors including the immanent emergence of tooth #3, sleeping away from home, and the whole family sharing one room but the past few nights have had us up every 2ish hours rocking a screaming baby. Things will start changing when we get back home tomorrow.

2) Get myself to the gym 2x a week and yoga one additional day. Anyone available to come over and watch a quiet baby monitor from 7-7:45pm once a week? I can pay you in baked goods!!

4) Figure out how to cook all of the veggies that will come in our CSA boxes!

Wish me luck!!

crawling baby

Yesterday Jonathan took his first definitive crawling "steps"! He's been inching around and working on scooting himself backwards for weeks and finally yesterday he got it! You could almost see the connection light up in his little eyes. I'm afraid we are in for a whole new world of baby adventures from here on out!