Have I mentioned that I've become a label reader?  Yeah, I hate myself a little now, too.  I honestly never thought I would care, but then I had E.  She's like this perfect little ecosystem all wrapped up in sensitive skin and the thought of weighing down her precious belly with unpronounceable, practically inedible junk gives me nightmares.  I can just imagine all the high fructose corn syrup she'll consume in her life filling giant silos somewhere.  Does that come from silos?  What are silos anyway??  I digress.

In an effort to keep her all clean and pure and untainted by the woes of Cheetos and Snickers bars (things I'm yet unable to shake) I've started reading labels and growing our own food and shopping at the farmers market.  Ok, well I did some of these things already, but I'm just generally caring more about what we put into our bodies.  I'm pretty sure we could go several meals in a row eating only whole, home-grown or locally-grown foods and that makes me really happy.

This beast, which is now more than doubled in plant size, is already producing tons of great stuff for our little family.  Green beans, peppers, strawberries, arugula and spinich have found their way to our dinner table along with basil and cilantro from the herb garden out front.  Zucchini, tomatoes, potatoes and onions are on their way.  There are also peas which I need to ask ya'll about.  I don't really know anything about peas and frankly, I hate them.  They're gross and green and pesky all rollin' around your plate and stuff.  But E loves them and so, we're growing peas.  But since The Husband and I are pea-dumb... how / when do I pick them?  Will the pod burst open?  Do I remove the seeds??  I need help pea-ing.  HA!

A lady I know gives us farm fresh eggs and we're purchasing local, responsibly raised meat.  I know, I know, it sounds like I'm crazy hippie woman.... I've painted a very pretty picture.  But I don't want to mislead ya'll into thinking I've grown out my dreads and quit shaving my pits.  I'm still very much non-hippie.  I eat cheetos and snickers and drink Dr. Pepper like a drunk drinks cheap liquor, but at least now I feel a little guilty about it.  And then I go and ROYALLY mess it all up with a trip to McDonalds.  Yeah, last Saturday we made the farmers market rounds, watered our quaint little garden and felt all crunchy and granola when the golden arches lured us in. We eat fast food.  We actually eat fast food often, but we try not to eat it with E.  That doesn't mean she's never savored the bliss of a hot golden brown french fry, but we don't want to make a habit of it. This particular Saturday morning however, the force was just too great.  We went in.  We were greeted by a hoard of flies that should have sent us running for the hills, but we pressed on.  In a last valliant attempt to be healthy I ordered E the blueberry oatmeal.  It was disgusting:

Note how the blueberries are just floating in what is obviously non-absorbed water.  Gross.

This is how she felt about it.

She wound up eating her daddy's breakfast burrito.  So much for health nuts.

Speaking of Strawberries

I think I mentioned yesterday that E doesn't talk.  I should probably rephrase that.  That implies she doesn't know HOW to talk or that she doesn't know words, which is not the case at all.  After much worry and observation, I've decided she just doesn't want to talk.  No idea at all where that stubborn streak came from.  (I'll give you a second to quit laughing).

She has a few words that she uses on a regular basis like, "UH oh" (emphasis on the UH) "A Go!" (this means car) and "Cracker".  The last she began saying out of necessity when I insisted she eat grapes for snack one day instead of her favorite, Cheez-its (don't judge us).  Finally after much head-shaking and pointing and wailing she looked at me and said plain as day, "CRACKER."  And that was that.  Before you lecture, yes, I've used the same principle to try and force her into speaking since.  Withholding a cup for a minute or two until she says cup or waiting to go outside until she says out.  Unfortunately she refuses to say the word and eventually, with the important stuff like water, I give in.

I try to tell myself she's just not ready yet.  She'll get there; she'll learn the words.  But then we have incidents like yesterday.  The Husband was in the kitchen fixing E's breakfast and I was in the bathroom fixing my hair.  Doodlebug was roaming around in between, not really listening to either one of us as we tried to get her attention.  I kept trying to coax her to "Go see Daddy in the kitchen," while The Hubs listed off breakfast items, "Do you want yogurt? Grapes? Waffles?" She was just kind of turning circles around my bed looking for the dog unaware that anyone was within earshot.  And then The Husband asked, "Strawberries?"  Her little head whipped up and she whispered to herself, with perfect enunciation "Strawberry" and toddled off to the kitchen.  She refused to repeat the word even though I called her on the secret.  She just sat there mute waiting for us to cave and feed her because she knows that, unlike crackers, breakfast is a necessity. That sneaky sneaky little Doodlebug - it's like the toddler version of name, rank and serial number.  I think we have the makings of a secret agent on our hands!

I keep thinking of things I wish I could write in a blog.  Things like the war I'm waging against high fructose corn syrup, or like how my child refuses to speak words I know she knows, or like how we have a new SUPER CREEPY neighbor who makes my skin crawl.  I want to blog about our new house, and my garden, and E's love for all things water.  I want to write about all these things and yet somehow.... I don't.  Maybe I forgot I have a blog?  Maybe I'm scared that writing down how awesome my life with The Husband and E is will jinx it?  Maybe I'm lazy?  Yeah... it's probably that last one. 

Regardless, I'm here.  I'm writing in this blasted, oft-neglected blog and I'm not even going to TRY to catch you all up.  There's no way.  I'm still reeling from my first year (and a couple months) with E.  I swear she should still be learning to crawl (something she never did, by the way.  Just skipped that step all together).  However, she's not a tiny little giggly, crawling ball.  She's big.  She's busy all the time.  She's quiet and thoughtful and full of wonder.  She's like no child I've known before.  She's nothing like I expected.  She's Eleanor, my quiet light.

Ok ok ok enough sappy.  Let me tell you just on thing I know.

It's apparently difficult to learn to smile.  Something about all those muscles working in tandem and not being able to see your own face that makes it a difficult trick to master.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Happy Tuesday.  Talk soon. 

Chompers

E has had some adorable bottom teeth for months now. Can you spot them in there??



They're cute as a button and although teething wasn't exactly a walk in the park, it was nothing compared to 3 months of colic. I considered us pretty lucky. That was, until last week. Last week I noticed E was sprouting some fangs-- little dangle teeth on top without teeth in between. I thought that was cute and appropriate for the season. Visions of vampires and bats and other funny Halloween costumes starting floating through my head.

And then ... the top middle teeth made an appearance. I began to have dreams of a different sort... ones involving self-committed mental institutionalization. Those top two puppies are MURDER!! She's a crying, cranky, emotional wreck. She's sleeping in small bursts, refusing to nap and is drooling buckets. Forget stem cells, scientists need to figure out how to cure diseases with baby drool. I'm pretty sure Miss E could single handedly produce enough slobber to rid the world of cancer.

They've finally broken through and the torture has eased a little, but the poor munchkin is still feeling some pain. We've tried frozen wash cloths, frozen teethers, Tylenol, warm baths and anything else we can get our hands on. However, the most effective product to date in my very official scientific double blind taste-test....er....I mean survey, has been Teething Tablets. I know, I know, they were pulled from the shelves for a while because there was rumor that contained trace amounts of heroin or something, but they're BACK! (I'm kidding, it wasn't heroin, but it was something equally as bad I think.... if you're really nervous, Google it). I understand that they're unresearched and probably no more than an overly hyped sugar pill (with trace amounts of narcotic), but whatever the case, I popped one of those babies under E's tongue and she was out before her head hit the mattress. It was GLORIOUS! GLORIOUS! I'm not advocating drugging up your kiddos, I'm not even saying you should try teething tablets, all I'm saying is that before teething tablets I was considering shaving my head and living out my life in seclusion and after teething tablets I'm dancing through the tulips with rainbows and unicorns. Of course that could just be the teething tablets talking.

So....

The following things have happened:

1. I got a new job. At said job I'm paid to mostly twitter and facebook and chat all day -- I'm the marketing director. It's, in a nutshell, amazing. Except for the part where my boss doesn't really talk to me. That part is less than amazing.

2. Eleanor has teeth. She walks and says mama and dada -- correction, she cries Mama and says Dada. She also says Bob. I don't know who this Bob is, but judging from her tone, he's pretty obnoxious. Bob? Bob! Bob! Bob? I kid you not, he's a pest.

3. Our landlord lost her ever loving mind. She wrote us a three page hate letter because, from what I can gather, we didn't hose off the bottom of the house after we mowed?? I'm not sure... I didn't even know that was a thing people did. Anyway, she lost it and then I lost it and then I miiiighhhttt have called over the neighbor just to get him in the middle of it. And there were tears and yelling and a possible unrelated bloody nose that landed someone in the hospital. The details are ugly... let's skip to number 4.

4. We bought a house!!!! WOOOO raddly HOOOOOO!!!! We found a house online and fell in love. Then we went to check it out and fell through the floor. Not literally, but pretty close. It was a disaster. Whoever took the pictures that appeared on the website could make Richard Simmons look like a beef-cake. It was awful. But we didn't give up. We looked at another house and another and another until finally we had looked at all the houses in Pittsburg and settled on the second house we saw. It's adorable. Actually, we're considering it an investment property. We have a master plan to pay it off in 10 years and fix it up a little and then rent it out after we buy our DREAM HOUSE! So I'm calling this one the Doorway Dream House because that's what it is, a doorway to our perfect perfect perfect house.

5. Eleanor's eating everything in site. Bananas, crackers, carrots, random non-food objects (ok, she hasn't actually eaten anything like that yet, but she's freakishly fast at getting stuff to her mouth). However one of her FAVORITE things to eat is pears. This leads us to the best most amazing point of all........

6. The new house has a working pear tree! We have pears. Glorious, juicy, beautiful, delicious PEARS! Eleanor's in heaven and so am I! Technically they're not my pears until on or before November 30, but still... PEARS!

Well, I think you're caught up. Expect this blog to morph into house making / disaster projects / toddler spills and pear recipes. You can probably also expect me to fall off the planet again sometime, but know that I'll be back someday!

Dial it down

Since I began staying at home, my darling Eleanor has been getting lots more attention. I think she loves it, but I'm worried I might be a tad stifling. I snapped the following picture of a recent play time:

Do you think she could be overstimulated? If you break it down, there really aren't that many toys. Lola chucked her mutilated dinosaur into the picture right before I clicked the shutter, so that shouldn't count. And there's a book in there. Books can't possibly be overstimulating -- they're BOOKS!

Yeah, I might need to cut back just a bit.

Before I completely reevaluate my approach to parenting can we take a second to zoom in on what's really important in this photograph:

Do you see 'em? BUNNY SLIPPERS!! I can't think of a single greater reason to have babies than to dress them up in bunny slippers. My heart is melting and my tatas are lactating just looking at that preciousness! How could you not just shower this darling little rabbit-shoed ball of adorable with anything her little heart desires?!

Yeah, I might need to cut back... just a bit.

Stay at Home Mommy

So, turns out I'm no longer employed. There's a long story as to why, but it's really not all that funny so I'm gonna avoid it. Let's just say the decision was born of many tears and much soul searching. Yeah, so NOT funny. But, until I'm again gainfully employed I suppose I'm a stay at home mommy. This leads me to 2 points.

1. Being a SAHM (stay at home mommy) is AWESOME! This morning E and I cuddled in bed until the sun was too bright and beckoned us outside for a walk in the park. She nursed while gazing into my eyes and is now blissfully sleeping in her swing. The house is quiet and bright and I'm still lounging in yoga pants and a holey t-shirt.

2. Being a SAHM SUCKS! Holy hell, this is HARD! E and I hid under the covers as long as possible this morning trying to avoid seeing the mountains of dirty clothes and dirty bottles and dirty dishes and dirty diapers screaming to be cleaned. Unfortunately, E's diaper and my bladder finally demanded we leave bed. I tripped over the bouncer, Lola's leash, the swing, a pacifier and a receiving blanket on my way to the bathroom. I sat on the toilet praising myself for managing to avoid dropping the baby while braving that obstacle course when it dawned on me I was holding the baby while on the toilet. That has to be some sort of health code violation.

I thought maybe a little fresh air would perk us up so we headed to the park. Did you know that there are actually other people in the park at 9:30? People who look at you funny when you wear your pajamas to the park. We made it around the lake once before practically running back home -- it was colder than expected. And really windy. Yep, I'm that mom who drags her half-naked baby around the park in inclimate weather.

Trying to salvage what's left of my mommy pride I decided to nurse E to sleep and rock her in my arms. That was until her little icicle fingers and toes touched my bare belly which caused me to shriek, which caused the dog to shriek, which caused the drowsy baby to shriek... and continue shrieking.... still shrieking.... until I gave up, put her in the swing, cranked it up and let her and giraffe sort it out. She stopped crying instantly. I'm telling you, that giraffe has healing powers.
And there she lies. Sleeping peacefully in her swing as I reflect on how much I suck at being a SAHM! Please God let me go back to work soon before she realizes I don't know what I'm doing.