Three bits of parenting advice that changed my life

My friend J and I have known each other for 22 years. We met in college, became roommates, and now live in the same city. I don't see her as much as I'd like, thanks to busy family schedules and a lake that separates us (though let's not be dramatic, it's only about a 20 minute drive.)

Not only is J generous with her hand-me-downs, she has given me a few pieces of parenting advice over the years which are pure gold. These were not unsolicited drive-bys - they were little gifts that came when I asked questions on the parenting e-mail list we're both on. Her younger child is a couple of years older than T, so she's got more experience, but recent enough that she's still got useful details.

Baby Zombie Eye

If she hadn't told me about this, I would *still* be wondering why my kids never nap and wake up 10x a night. It was THAT life-changing for us.  When T was about 12 weeks old, I posted a question to our email list about naps. When did we expect babies to be on some kind of schedule?  How do we accomplish that?

Most of the answers came back as "it's still early", but only J gave me the info that changed our lives significantly.

She told me to keep an eye out for T's "tired signs" and mentioned her baby used to get this glassy-eyed, unfocused look when she got tired (long before she'd get fussy). Once she saw that, she'd try to put her down for a nap. Experienced mamas, this sounds so obvious, right? But as new parents, we assumed that a newborn would just fall asleep wherever she was, and we didn't have to *do* anything about naps.  Hah!

So we made a plan. T's other tired sign was nice and obvious - yawning. We counted yawns. When she got to Zombie Eye or 3 yawns, we'd put her down for a nap - nurse her and put her in the crib in a darkened room with white noise. If we got to the 2 hour mark without seeing these things, we'd try for a nap anyway.  And O. M. G.  This worked wonders within days.

Prior to doing this, T would stay awake for HOURS (because we were too dumb to realize she needed help to get to sleep!). One day at 8 weeks or so, she was up for 9 hours STRAIGHT and then cried for the next 3 (who wouldn't!).

We tried the same tactic with M, except she doesn't typically get Zombie Eye until it's too late, after she gets to the fussy stage.  M's tired sign?  Eye-rubbing!  Again, super obvious, so lucky us.  But with M we had to be even more vigilant because she masks the tiredness and gets her second wind easily when people are around playing with her.

Don't get me wrong - we were blessed with two fairly good sleepers.  But we never would have discovered that had J not given me this magic advice.

No Power Struggles 

J told me there were a few things you couldn't make a kid do: eat, sleep, and use the bathroom.  If you try, you'll get stuck in a horrible power struggle. It's better to avoid getting into that position.

Again, *so* brilliant. It got me out of the mindset of "she *should* be doing xyz", or worse, "she *has* to do xyz". I keep this one top of mind, and trust that my girls will do these things when they need to, with our help and routine, of course.

This helped me get through potty training with T and her current habit of waking up in the middle of the night to play in her room. It makes me less crazy when M gets up at 1am and is ready to PARTY. We just go downstairs and she plays in the gated living room while I nap on the couch.

Don't get me wrong, I'm still annoyed when they don't do what I (think I) need them to do, but I don't get all dictator-y about it. Most of the time, anyway. I'm still a work in progress.

Fair Isn't Equal

J told me this one before I was pregnant with BabyM so it didn't really sink in at the time, though I recognized it for its brilliance. She said her grad school adviser told her that fair didn't mean everyone got the same thing - it's each person getting what they *need*.

*So* true for siblings, especially those with different personalities and big age gaps.  M doesn't have the attention span for more than one or maybe two short board books, while T would love to read together for hours. I don't try to make sure I read the same *number* of books to both girls.

I know M loves it when I just sit in the playroom with her and let her do her own thing. T wants me to participate actively in her games. What fills each of their cups is pretty different, despite them being sisters in the same house with similar temperaments.

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I'm grateful to have a wise friend like J! What about you - what did you learn about parenting that rocked your world?

Love and happiness

Yesterday we went to a wedding.  This was the first one we've attended in 7 years, unbelievably. I guess we're just in that phase of life where everyone is already married, has decided not to get married, or elopes.

T was very excited about it - we got her a new dress and matching hair clips, told her she could wear her dress-up black shoes, and said she could dance.  I prepped her for the part where she would need to sit quietly and listen to the ceremony.

The invitation said "aloha attire" and BabyM was the only one who had anything vaguely resembling that.  TJ and I settled on ocean blue, and T's dress had flamingos, which I figured was close.

we honestly didn't plan this level of matchiness!

It was a perfect day for a wedding by the lake.  Both girls were in remarkably good spirits despite interrupted naps.  The room was filled with love and good wishes for the happy couple, as all weddings are.

But this wedding was different from all the others we've attended.  This one had two brides, who have been together for 14 years and married for 10, but are only now able to make it legal.  It was an honor to be invited, and I am *so* grateful to M and T for the opportunity for their wedding to be the first one my girls experienced.

T asks a lot of questions, and yesterday she asked *why* people get married.  I told her that people get married when they find someone they love very much and want to spend the rest of their lives with that person.

I love that T never got the memo about marriage being only between a man and a woman.  I hope that when she and her sister are grown up, they'll be incredulous that it was such a big deal for two women or two men to get married, just like I am still surprised that my own marriage would have been illegal in some states a few decades before I was born.

As expected, we had to leave a bit early due to missed naps and early bedtimes, but it was a wonderful, perfect, lovely way to end our weekend. 

Book of Mormon in Seattle: A Review (ish)

Apparently I had been living under a rock because until sometime last year, I had no idea that the creators of South Park had also written a musical. About Mormon missionaries. In Africa.

Take in those three facts for a minute, and you can pretty much imagine what it's like.  It reminded me a lot of their South Park movie from 1999.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. I had no idea that Book of Mormon was coming to Seattle or that it was sold out. I'm pretty much stuck in a haze of parenting, with the occasional coffee or lunch date with friends. Keeping up on pop culture is pretty far down the list.

So when my friend Ric offered me a ticket about a week before, I was EXCITED. I love musicals. I love South Park. I love the idea of having dinner and going out with a bunch of grownups to see something delightfully kid-inappropriate.

And then I found out it was a "thing". Had been sold out for weeks. Tickets being scalped for obscene prices. I am *so* lucky - this really was one of those "unexpected blessings from the universe" woo-woo things. Woot!

The show was at the lovely Paramount theater. The last show I saw there was Queensryche in 2007. (Sidebar: we need to get out more!) We had great seats.

And it was a Spectacle with a capital-S.  Big musical numbers, flashing lights, fancy costumes and laughs. Lots and lots of laughs. Which is odd. I haven't seen many *funny* musicals. (Are there many?) But this one was, as expected, *so* offensive, and yet, *so* hilarious.  The humor is in line with South Park, so it's not the musical to take your grandma or your mom to (unless they'd watch South Park with you).

There were a few things I wasn't expecting to get out of this. (Take home lessons, if you will.) I loved the clever way the writers (composers? authors?) poked fun at the casual racism that comes from living in a homogeneous culture - my favorite was the way one of the characters could NEVER get the name of the African lead female character correct.

The other take home lesson?  Discomfort. I'm not religious, but it was a bit uncomfortable to sit through 2 (award-winning, society-sanctioned) hours of making fun of one particular religion.  I know South Park has always been about edgy humor, but one of the best things about it is that they make fun of *everyone* - it's equal opportunity offensiveness.  

This reaction actually surprised me a bit - I'm definitely not a fan of evangelical religions, having been an easy target of proselytizing in the past. I do believe people should be left alone to practice whatever religion they want, regardless of how "weird" it seems to outsiders. I guess this comes from growing up in a Hindu family in Pittsburgh, PA and having gotten my share of rude comments   about it.

I may be attributing more sophistication to Parker and Stone, but I do think this is part of their humor and what makes it insidiously clever while on the surface looking like fart and poop jokes. I think they *want* us to be uncomfortable, to face all the ugly sentiments lurking beneath our usually polite society.

After all, they did write an entire South Park episode mocking Islam (which I believe their network wouldn't air), and Christianity has also been the target of their jokes as well.

Also clever?  The ads in the program for the Mormon.org website, urging people to check out the "real Book of Mormon". I was pretty surprised to see them!

If you've seen it, I'd love to hear what you think.

Project Life: November 2012, Thanksgiving Edition

I'm so close to completing Project Life for 2012 and I'm so excited!  Even more so that it's still FUN to put the pages together each time.

For this layout, I used the Noel Mignon November 2012 kit. I bought a single one to see what a different kit was like.  (I already subscribe to Studio Calico.) This one was a bit too "themed" for my liking - very fall and Thanksgiving-ish, but perfect for this spread in Project Life. I also used a few of the cards from the We R Memory Keepers line at Target - the 4x6 list of T's favorite things, and the little cards with the banners and Meridian's schedule matched nicely with the NM kit.  I've finally figured out that I prefer to use all cream-based papers or all white-based, instead of mixing the two.

Apologies in advance for the photos being a bit wonky.  I got done with this spread very late so had to take them under incandescent light. I'm also learning how to use Adobe Lightroom, and am still getting used to the editing tools.

Nov 12-25, 2012: Thanksgiving, Crossroads Mall, Portage Bay Cafe

Closeup of "baby schedule" card ;)

Nov 12-25: Babies, friends, and food.

Not much craftiness this week - a sequin, a brad and a sticker.

I printed fewer photos than usual this time, because I had put a lot of this month's photos in my 30 Days of Thankful album and didn't want to use duplicates.  So I had to come up with some "filler" cards, and I just wasn't feeling as crafty this week.

I had a few cards in my stash that I added a bit of journaling and kit stickers to, and then I thought it might be nice to capture a little bit about what the girls are like right now.  With BabyM, it's all about the eating and sleeping, so I wrote up her "schedule" (such as it is). I'm sure it'll be amusing when she's a teenager.

For T, I wrote about her current favorite things - book, movie, parent (always Daddy!).  I wrote these up from my own observation, so I'm sure she'd disagree with my choices. She's 3 and tends to disagree with most things. Sigh.

I'm also totally stoked that all the pages for the year will fit into one 2.5" binder.  Other people have had to split their year into 2 albums, which just doesn't seem ok to me. I know, I'm weird.

Only 3 more layouts to go for the year!  Woot!

Linked up with The Mom Creative for Project Life Tuesday.

Something to hold on to



Friends by Vinni123 on Flickr

I've been thinking about friendship lately.  I'm very lucky to have developed friendships recently with other Caltech alums (mostly women) over Facebook and email - folks I knew in school and may have been friendly with, but didn't know well.  I love that, but also hate that NONE of them live in my city.   We have awesome deep "conversations" via email or IM and keep up with each others' lives on Facebook, but I crave that in-person connection, too.

What I really want is a close group of friends to hang out with on a regular basis.  I don't know how to get that without unleashing my inner cruise director and driving myself (and everyone else) crazy in the process.

What is it about our lives (especially with kids) that makes us so busy that scheduling a Girls' Night Out takes a level of planning ahead and coordination that is so complex I'm tempted to draw up a schedule in MS Project?  I've had several occasions in the past few months where getting together with good friends took 3-4 weeks to finally come together, after rescheduling on both sides.  I'm blaming my own life as much as everyone else.

I find this really depressing.  It's just SO MUCH WORK.  I want to be able to call or text someone and see if they can grab dinner or coffee.  And believe me, I've tried.  But no one can ever make it on short notice.

So I've resorted to setting up "events" a few weeks in advance - booking something on a calendar and sending around an invite.  The sort-of-monthly Crafty Nights I've been holding at our house since last year.  A monthly-ish night out with some of the mamas from T's toddler group. 

But I want both more and less.  I want to see my friends more often, dammit.  I want to just grab coffee or drinks and chat.  I don't want it to be a THING.  Which is how I feel when I send out invites.  It makes me so tired to do all this planning.

I know we need to coordinate with our partners, find childcare, and schedule around our work, gym time, toddler naps, and the other 9000 things we cram into our days.  But really, is it supposed to be this hard? 

I know some folks who are actually friends with their neighbors.  So popping over for coffee or an unscheduled  (gasp!) playdate is not unheard of.  But we don't have that in our neighborhood.

I've met several women locally who seem like they could be friends, but I just don't have the energy to do all the planning it requires for us to get together regularly enough to actually *become* friends.

I feel really disconnected and overscheduled lately.  I want laid-back, fun time with friends without complex strategic planning.  How do I get that? 

What do you do to "feed your soul" with friend time?  Is it enough?  How can you avoid making it just another appointment on an already packed calendar?

Versatile Blogger Thingy and Random Things

In 5+ years of blogging, I've never been awarded one of those blingy little badges you see littering a lot of mommyblogs.  I can't say I'm terribly upset about it, but anyway, it was nice to be tagged by Cloud for this one: 

Here are the conditions of the award:

1) Nominate 15 fellow bloggers

2) Inform the Bloggers of their nomination

3) Share 7 random things about yourself

4) Thank the blogger who nominated you

5) Post the award badge.

 

I think "versatile" is code for "can't pick one subject and stick to it", but I'm cool with that.  Thanks Cloud for the nomination!  A fun fact - I started reading Cloud's blog after coming across her insightful comments on Ask Moxie posts.  I'd been reading it for months, when I came across a post that made me think we might have crossed paths in real life.  I emailed her, and it turns out we did!  Since she likes to be anonymous, I won't say where, but I think it's kind of neat that we've met.  Small world, and all that.

I think 15 bloggers is a bit overkill for a chain letter/meme so I'll pick five instead.  I'm ornery like that.

Jenn's Doings - Jenn is a real-life crafty friend of mine who is responsible for my papercrafting supply addiction.  My wallet still hasn't forgiven her.

Laura's Mommy Journal - LauraC has been mentioned often here.  She is awesome in many ways and takes AMAZING photos.

Di's Kitchen Notebook - Di is a friend from college who bakes yumolicious things and posts them on her blog.  Go over there and droooool.

Reading and Chickens - Shalini is hilarious, Indian, and from Seattle.  Someday we will meet up but we have been thwarted by deadly viruses so far.

And Then There Were 6 of Us - Shannon and Carl live in Iowa.  They used to live in Seattle.  We miss them.  Since they have four kids under 6, we'll give them a pass if they choose not to do this :)

And now for the 7 random things.  I'm totally stealing this from a Facebook post I wrote ages ago.

• I was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and contrary to popular belief, it actually is a nice city. I appreciate it more now that I don't live there :)
• I met my husband when I was 16, but we didn't start dating until I was 24.
• I'm nervous about parties or other outings where I don't know anyone else. It usually ends up being fine.
• I never imagined I would move back to Seattle, because when I left in 1999, I was done with it. Now I *love* living here, despite the craptastic weather.
• My favorite food of all time is Macaroni and Cheese, from a box, with the powdered cheese.
• I inherited a love of musical theater from my mom, who had a subscription to the Civic Light Opera touring series in Pittsburgh. I've seen tons of musicals over the years.
• My all-time-favorite musical is Jesus Christ Superstar. I don't know why since I am definitely *not* religious (maybe that's why). I've seen it 4 times.

So yeah.  If I tagged you and you do this post, leave me a link here!  If you don't, watch out for the locusts.  Kidding.  Nothing bad will happen.  I won't even be sad.

My Not-So-Secret Mission - A Message from the Universe



yes, it's a fake tree.

I promised I'd write about one of the "Secret Missions" I did for Mondo Beyondo.   I posted earlier about the "affirmations" we were supposed to put in a place where we'd see them.  I'm still not so sure about the value of these things,  but it makes me happy to see the little circles I made.
Well, one of our assignments was to leave an affirmation for someone else to find.  It seemed to me like it was putting out good vibes to the universe, and then maybe some of that goodness would come back.  But not with that expectation, of course, because that would ruin the magic juju.  Hehe.  I'm not sure I believe in all that, but I did want to brighten a friend's day a little. 

Other folks in the class put up the affirmations on community bulletin boards, or in library books, for strangers to find.  But I wanted to focus my efforts on people I knew.  I struggled with how to do it.  I wanted to mail them, but knew the Redmond postmark would give me away to most people.  So I let this assignment sit while I did other things, and hoped that my brain would come up with some way to make it work.

Eventually, it came to me.  I decided to "secretly affirm" a few women that I worked with, and picked 5 people, a nice round (small) number.  This way I could also hand-deliver the circles to their offices in the dead of night.

Ok, not really the dead of night, more like 8pm, but that sounded more dramatic and secretive, right?

So I made up the circles using scraps of pretty patterned paper, tucked them into tiny little coin envelopes with some sequins (because who couldn't use a little more sparkle) and set off into the night to deliver them.

All went well. No one saw me drop off the little packages of mystery and it was all I could do to keep it to myself.

About a week later,  I received an email from my friend D, who asked if I knew anything about a little note she got in her office.  I'm not a person who likes to lie outright, even if it's for something innocuous and fun like this, so I admitted to it.  Apparently the craftiness of the item gave it away so she suspected me.

That same week, my friend J asked me if I knew anything about it, and I couldn't lie to her either.  She and her coworkers loved it - she said it was like "a message from the universe".  Which I thought was pretty awesome.

The other 3 folks haven't figured it out yet, and I don't think they read this blog so my secret might be safe.  Even if it's not, I had a really fun time plotting this adventure.  Maybe that was the point?

Did I mention the next session of Mondo Beyondo starts the first week of January?  Oh yeah, I did.  If you need some magic in your life, go sign up.  Really.

On a vaguely related note, I found out yesterday I was chosen for a workshop/training program at work.  It was something my friend J had done a few months ago and highly recommended.  It's about balancing work and life, finding happiness and focusing on your health.  Yeah, it's right up my alley.   I applied a few weeks ago, figuring that tons of other people would apply, and not really expecting to be chosen since I work part-time and I don't participate much in our 'Women's Leadership Council'.

So it was a pleasant surprise to find out they picked me!  There are 12 women in the class, and we'll have monthly 2 hour peer group sessions plus two all-day workshops.  The whole thing runs for 6 months.  Apparently the women who run this program are fantastic career/life coaches, and the folks who have gone through the program RAVE about it.  Some have even quit their jobs as a result ;)  So I'm looking forward to it starting next month.  I love working for a company that invests so heavily in training for its employees.  Watch this space as I learn how to hate group interactions a little less...

handcrafted life plan part 5 - i've got dreams to remember

So this has been Week Zero of the Mondo Beyondo class I'm taking, and I LOVE it so far.  The geeky me also loves that they are using a zero-based index.  I was skeptical that the exercises would be too fluffy, airy-fairy, filled with things like "open your third eye" or chakras or other new-Agey type concepts that I'm just not into.

But it's not.  It's surprisingly down to earth for being a class about dreaming.  Which is just what I need to ease into it.  I'm looking forward to the emails that arrive each day to see what new activity they'll bring.  It's a little slice of quiet contemplation in the middle of my busy days.

One exercise this week had us identify our core values.  Here are mine:

• AMAZING WIFE & MAMA – guide my daughter and partner with my husband by being patient, kind, gentle and loving
• KICKASS WOMAN – be me, be joyful, experience life, have fun, be crafty, redevelop close friendships
• CONTENT & CALM – have time for quiet moments, mellow days, no envy or major unmet wants, low stress, happy and present
• HOME BASE – make our home organized, functional, warm, comfortable, imprinted with “us”
• LOOKIN’ GOOD – get to a healthy weight, exercise and challenge my body, dress well in clothes that make me happy

I know, nothing earth shattering here.  But it was good to go through the process, and the way they framed the exercise was cool.

Another activity was to print a bunch of positive phrases and put them somewhere we'd read them regularly.  It wasn't enough for me to just print them on plain white paper - I needed some color.  So I got crafty, and made pretty circles out of them.

I put them in a ceramic bowl made by my friend June our senior year of college.  She didn't like it, but I thought it was cool that she made it herself (this was long before I became crafty). 

We're not in touch, really, but I like to keep it around. She is someone who follows her big dreams - seriously pursued an acting career, quit her job to travel the world, went to business school after working as a scientist, just to name a few.  So I thought her bowl was a fitting place for these statements about dreaming big.

There are still a few spots left in the class and it's not too late to catch up.  If you want to sign up, use the link here or in my sidebar and I'll split the referral bonus with you so you'll get a little discount.

The girl at the rock show

We were such hip Seattle parents yesterday. Or at least we tried to be.

Since it was a rare Saturday that TJ was home, thanks to my parents' visit last week, we made plans to have brunch with our friends Dave and Lisa and Baby Max at Norm's Alehouse. It was odd to go to Norm's without the pups, since it's one of the few places that lets you eat with your dogs inside. Peanut especially likes it since he gets a hamburger if he behaves. Spike likes it because the WHOLE PLACE SMELLS LIKE FOOD!!!

But we went with Trillian and no dogs, since we weren't sure how long Baby Good Humor was going to last and we are new enough at this to know we'd be bad at managing both baby and dog(s) in the event of Baby Meltdown 2010.

The car trip over to Seattle (Westside, yo!) was uneventful and we were rockin' out to Star Anna and the Laughing Dogs while BabyT stared out the window from her new big-girl carseat.

Walking from the car to the restaurant, we passed a bunch of people standing outside of Cafe Lladro and I thought to myself "hey, that girl looks like Star Anna" and figured it was just because we had been listening to her in the car. As we got closer, I realized it actually was her, and we saw Justin (guitarist) and my friend Dave (their manager) as well. So they got to meet BabyT, since the last time they "saw" her was in my belly last August when we saw them play the Triple Door. Anyway, it's totally random occurrences like that that make me love living in Seattle. It's even more astonishing since we rarely get into "the city" since T was born.

They invited us to their show later that day, which was a free performance at a record store downtown. They were scheduled for 6pm which was still early enough for us to consider it and Justin actually used the words "kid-friendly" which I doubted, but wanted to give it a try. (I not-so-secretly yearn to be one of those baby-wearing hip mamas who goes to rock shows and still maintains some semblance of her old life while toting her cute baby around with her.) I had visions of wearing T in the Ergo and dancing with her to "Hawks on a Pole" - what could be better than hugging on my baby and listening to awesome live music at the same time?? Yes, I know the experienced mamas are already laughing at me.

Brunch was good, though rushed. We didn't get to chat with Dave and Lisa much, and Max peacefully slept through the whole thing. I felt nostalgic for the time T was little enough to hang/sleep in the infant seat through a whole meal. She hung in there long enough for us to eat, downed a bottle of milk, and then decided it was time to go. Fortunately it was loud enough that we weren't THOSE people, and in a place that has an occasional dog barking I wasn't too worried about it either.

So we headed home and got T some quality napping time before heading downtown for the show. We did get to see Exene Cervenka (former lead singer of X) do some of her solo stuff. Her voice is still really great. Trillian was pseudo-cooperative, but the room was hot, so we took a lot of breaks and walked around outside. Eventually we had to feed her more milk on the sidewalk in front of a sketchy bar (from a bottle, thankfully!). We saw about 3 minutes of Mark Pickerel's set, and then made the call to go home. Star and Justin probably wouldn't have been on before 7, and that's our pretty strict Baby Bedtime, or else we risk Major Meltdown and Multiple Night Wakings. But it was a valiant effort.

Sadly, we still paid for it at night. I think all the activity was a bit much for babyT, who woke up at 11pm and 4 am to eat and fuss a little. We're hoping for a better night tonight.

Brown eyes I hold you near

I've done a decent job of keeping up with Trillian's baby blog, but at the cost of my own. Plus that whole work thing is getting in the way of my life of leisure :)

I've survived 4 work weeks so far, and it's going ok. I like that my two days in the office are long because I can just concentrate on work and get a lot of things done. I'm so much more efficient when I know I have limited time. As a full time person, the work sort of expands, and there's technically always more hours you could put in, so there's time for that occasional game of pool, or the coffee break, or whatnot.

But the part time schedule affords me time to do some fun stuff, in addition to the seemingly endless cycles of feed baby - change baby - get baby to sleep.

Yesterday, Lisa and I did CRAFTS! Woo hoo! We got the idea from Stephanie, a friend from Caltech, who told us about creating stencils from freezer paper so you could make cute designs on baby onesies with fabric paint.

I Binged, found some instructions, and collected all the supplies. You know how I am about craft supplies. I got several packs of plain onesies from Old Navy (great quality!!), two starter sets of Jacquard fabric paints - 18 different colors in little 2oz bottles, which is plenty, plus a couple of fabric markers. I also dug out my brand new Xacto, and some old silver fabric paint I got a couple of years ago to decorate the puppies' Christmas stockings.

Here are the results - I was pretty pleased, given that this was my first try. I've got a bunch more blank onesies so I'm excited to work on more designs. Now that I know I can print on the freezer paper directly, and then cut out the designs, I have a lot more freedom, since my drawing skills are non-existent.




Lisa used her fabric markers to draw a bunch of really cute designs - she's an amazing artist. Baby Max is a lucky guy and will be very stylishly dressed this summer!

Love is a word so small

Yay, Day 2 of blogging about What We Did Today. BabyT has a very busy social calendar, so busy that we had to turn down an invitation to lunch yesterday from a friend and postpone until next week.

Today we went over to my friend Jenna's house for a little while. Her BabyE is about 7 weeks older than BabyT. Which seems like a LOT now, but the gap is steadily closing, and by the time they're 2 or 3, it will probably seem tiny.

The lunch outing today was to Geraldine's Counter, which is an amazing yuppie diner. I had a grilled cheese with bacon and avocado. OMG YUM. Oh dear, there's a bacon trend going on, isn't there. I should probably be careful about that. Again, BabyT slept through most of the meal. I think the car ride and ambient noise in the restaurant puts her to sleep.

The babies are too little to really play together but they were definitely watching each other. BabyT got to try out BabyE's Bumbo seat (an assisted baby-sitting chair thingy), which fit her perfectly. I'm starting to regret my purchase of the main Bumbo competitor, the bebePod, just a little, because it's slightly too large for BabyT right now. But I bought it specifically because I thought she might grow out of the Bumbo more quickly. Oh well. It's hard to know with these baby things, until you try them out with YOUR baby. (Ask me about the 4 carriers we bought before finding one that works well...)

But a good time was had by all and Jenna even got a couple of really nice pictures for me (so I'm off the hook for DailyBaby today! Yay!)

This weekend is going to be a mad scramble for me to get done with all of my pre-Christmas Etsy and 1000 Markets orders. I'm in pretty good shape for those, but still have several to finish up. And I'm still getting a steady stream of after-Christmas orders as well. The luggage tags have been very popular this year.

And now, I'm leaving you with a picture that Jenna took today of me and two babies.

Every day is a start of something beautiful

I really should blog more often, if only to have a quick record of the things BabyT and I are doing together in these early months. My Caltech friend Laura blogs *every day* about her little guys, and she has *twins*. So if she can find time, I should be able to. Geez.

Plus, it's like talking on the phone (which I hate, incidentally). When you don't talk to someone very often, you struggle for things to say because you're not sure what's important enough to discuss. But if you talk to someone every day, you can talk about the most banal random things and it's fine, because they are "caught up" with your daily life. With those once-every-six-month phone calls you have to try to remember the important big stuff to try and do the catching up.

Incidentally, I hate talking on the phone. I think it started after email became ubiquitous, because I spent HOURS on the phone in high school talking to friends I had just seen all day long. In college I discovered email and it was great. I could think about what I wanted to say, and I've always been better with writing than talking. TJ is the same way, so I guess we're MFEO. (that's "meant for each other" - remember the girl in Sleepless in Seattle?) He likes the fact that email is "asynchronous" which means you can respond when you are ready, unlike with the phone where you are literally on the hook to answer questions and make conversation right then. But I even like IM better than the phone - it must just be that I type better than I talk :)

So anyway, banal random things. Today BabyT and I went over to the big city of Seattle to visit our friend Lisa, and the Baby Bacon who's still on the inside. Lisa is due at the beginning of February so BabyT and I are anxious to meet the little guy. All we know about him now is that he likes hamburgers. (Lisa and I had a couple of lunches where we were both pregnant and craving hamburgers.)

Some background on how we know Lisa. She's married to Dave, who we met in college and might be one of the smartest people I have EVER met. Those final exams where the average score was 6/100 and one person scored over 90 and we were thinking "who the heck did that?". That was Dave. He's now a research professor studying quantum computing. Basically, he's smarter than rocket scientists. But once we beat him at Trivial Pursuit and that makes it all good. Apparently Lisa had read my blog before I met her, which was weird when I met her, because she already knew stuff about us. I guess that's what happens when you put your life on the Internet. But anyway, Lisa and I got along, and fortunately she works near us, so sometimes we have lunch.

We went to the Five Spot, which is one of my favorite restaurants in Seattle that I never remember when we're trying to find somewhere to eat. Every quarter they feature a cuisine from a different place. Right now it's St. Louis. I didn't know they had a special cuisine :) But I think they try not to repeat places, so they've probably done a lot of the interesting ones already. But since they had pumpkin pancakes on the menu, I got those. I'm pretty sure they're not a St. Louis specialty but boy, were they yummy. BabyT hung out in her infant seat looking around for a while, and then fell asleep for most of the meal. She's cooperative like that.

Then we hung out at Lisa's house for a little while, because BabyT needed to eat. She snorked down 8 oz of milk which was pretty impressive for one so tiny. We also got to see Baby Bacon's room, which is quite awesome. Lisa is creative and talented and has put together a roomful of vintage treasures and bright colors that don't scream "baby" but look cozy and perfect together. I really admire people with those design skills, which I am sorely lacking. And BabyT got to try out the changing table. She approves.

Which reminds me of why I like living in Seattle so much even though we've started the season of 9-months-of-grey-yuck. We have some really great friends here, who also happen to be in the same life stage as we are. (and some just ahead so we can get advice and hand-me-downs!) Though as TJ will tell you, our trial period in Seattle isn't over yet. And in the darkest depths of winter, on the 37th day in a row of grey drizzle, sometimes I fantasize about living somewhere warm and sunny. But that would mean making new friends, and I'm not excited about that. What is it about getting older that makes it so hard to make new friends? Sigh.

Cuz I Never Told

I was going to write a rant-y post about my missing Amazon Fresh delivery and the subsequent troubles with their customer service "process", but now that they've *finally* delivered my groceries (13 hours late) and given me a full refund, I'm done being mad at them. It did take them longer than it should have to make it right.

Instead I'll write about something much more pleasant. You'll remember that I wrote a few months ago about winning a private cooking demo/dinner for 8 at Crush Restaurant, with Chef Jason Wilson, through a charity event at work.

Last Monday was our scheduled dinner and we were joined by our friends Jenna, John, Travis, Sandra, Dave and Lisa. And it was incredible. The food was good, of course, but even cooler was the amount of time Jason spent explaining to us what he was making. And of course we got to drool over his professional kitchen with some nifty equipment, like the rubberized cutting board (we will soon own 2, thanks to TJ) and the salt block used for quick-curing thinly sliced raw meat and fish.

Again, it was fascinating to peek into a different professional world than my own. Jason told us how he got into cooking, about going to culinary school, and how he came to own his own restaurant. It seems like extremely long hours and hard work, but as we ate the food, I am so glad a place like that exists.

We had a halibut and lamb appetizer, an amazing carbonara gnocchi pasta with lobster (yum!), salad with fresh apples and blue cheese, a lighter pasta with leeks and kale (leekleekleekleek), handmade chocolates that he snuck from the pastry chef's stash, and for dessert, a light financier cake with quince and maple syrup. Everything was different, surprising and YUMMY.

I also found my new favorite thing in the world to drink. I am trying very hard to eliminate caffeine and artificial sweeteners, which rules out my all time favorite diet Coke. But I also hate plain sparkling water.

Jason introduced us to DRY soda, which was developed by a woman in Seattle and still made by her small company here. It's like a more grownup, less faky version of the 'New York Seltzer' stuff I had growing up. It's sweeetened with just a little bit of real sugar, and comes in 6 flavors: vanilla bean, rhubarb, kumquat, juniper berry, lavender and lemongrass.

It's just barely flavored, very subtle, but not salty or bitter like most flavored sparkling water. A few days ago I bought some for myself, and our grocery had only lemongrass (which I had at dinner and knew I liked) and lavender (which I figured I'd try).

And then to my surprise, I came home from work on Thursday to find a case of DRY soda on my doorstep. Burning with curiosity about who sent it, I opened it to find a variety pack of every flavor they offer, and a very sweet note from our friends Dave and Lisa thanking us for the dinner experience. So nice! I am now drinking the Kumquat and enjoying it very much.

So anyone who comes over can try it out, unless I drink all of it in the meantime!

And I just can't hide it!

We're leaving for our Great Canadian Road Trip in a few hours. I started packing last weekend, which was good because it gave me a chance to think about what I might forget.

Traveling with the pups adds a whole new dimension to this - we've packed a bag just for their stuff, and it also means they are going to take up the space where we would usually put our bags.

Last night, I got some girls together for a "beauty exchange", which basically meant that I asked them to bring all the old hair products, unopened cosmetics, and jewelry that they no longer wear/use and we could swap. One woman's "too greasy" is another woman's "amazing find", right?

We did surprisingly well, with only 4 gals - yeah, people ended up taking some of their own stuff home with them, but for the most part we did some good swapping. And managed to drink 2 bottles of yummy red wine, from Argentina and Spain. (Thanks Lisa and Adrianne for giving me those!)

I got some nice travel-sized color safe shampoo and conditioner for our trip, and some of the John Frieda "brilliant brunette" styling products that I've always wanted to try.

But the real awesome find for me - tons of beaded jewelry to disassemble and remake. I can't wait to get started on that. It's really too bad jewelry making isn't exactly a portable craft, or easy to do in the car.

Well, off to do the last few bits of packing!