Danger Zone (a.k.a. Ms Jackson, 'cos you're nasty)

When it comes to considering my son's needs, I'd like to think I'm on top of things. When he had thrush, we got him medicine ASAP. When I discovered that he had a tongue-tie, we went to get it clipped so he could feed better. When it was evident that his sensitive skin was a problem, I switched out his bath soap and got hydrocortisone cream so he didn't have a forehead like a gila monster any more.

Mmm...dry and scaly.

So, when it came to a virulent case of nappy rash the other month, I was determined to make sure I took care of my boy. When it lasted weeks, and everything I could think of seemed to be of no avail, I got help from the ladies at the weighing clinic. We went from changing him every 2 hours, to changing him every 2 hours and as soon as he'd pooped. I stopped using his usual wipes in favour of cotton balls in water, just to make sure I wasn't irritating his sensitive skin. To cap it all off, I made sure that each nappy change involved about 5 minutes of time where E could be - ahem - as free as the wind blows, just to give his tiny heiney some time to enjoy the fresh air.

I feel free!

Unfortunately, today, his love of this time turned sour. Usually, E enjoys playing with his feet once he's commando. This wouldn't tend to be a problem until you realise that when you bend a baby in half, it helps to expel the contents of their intestines. I'm used to a few rude bursts of gas while I'm leaving his hind quarters to air dry, but today things got taken a step further. After the first 3 minutes, the usual sounds began to rend the air with their nose-wrinkling rhythms. However, sound was accompanied by pyrotechnics today, as E decided to release a torrential landslide of warm, orangey-yellow butt mud all over his changing mat. Nearly 20 cotton balls later, most of the explosion was contained.

I mean, I'm ready for the sudden Trevi Fountain of pee that can sometimes make an appearance when he's in the middle of a change, but I've never had a surprise poo attack to deal with. I suppose it was only a matter of time. Ah, the adventures of babies.

Perhaps when he stops being so much of a handful I'll get back to a few fun projects I was hoping to do. What are these projects? you ask. Well...

• a piece of art with paint chips
• making/framing some custom art for the sad, blank wall in our bedroom
• possibly painting the hallway
• trying to beautify the bathroom mirror
• getting/making some more art for E's room

In the meantime, there's a tiny person who needs my attention (and a nap if I have anything to say about it...)

not as fun as the real keyboard

Solids Gold

Ladies and Gentlemen...we have turned a corner. It's time to sarcastically wipe away a tear, because my little boy is all grown up. I am no longer the sole source of nutrition for my munchkin: he's eating baby food!

this requires serious concentration

After four months of exclusive breastfeeding, Ethan has officially decided that new horizons are required in the world of food. Just yesterday, my sister-in-law Rachel and my mischievous and adorable nephew Henry came over to visit. Henners is a good 9 weeks older than Ethan and has already begun his foray into the world of Food That Doesn't Come From Mommy. I asked if, just for fun, I could see if Ethan would tolerate having a go with the jar of sweet potatoes than Henry didn't seem as keen on. I'd already read that four months isn't too soon to start your baby on another food if both you and Baby agree. Well, come to find out, Ethan took to eating off a spoon like a duck to water. He loved the sweet potatoes, and handled getting the purée off of the spoon like a boss.

please, Mum, can I have some more?

It's just too cute watching him get excited about his food and go after that spoon full of puréed apples and cranberries like he's chasing a gazelle on the Serengeti.

let me give you a hand here...

I knew we were getting towards food independence when the Husband and I realised the other day that E recognises his bottle on sight. If he sees it, he will reach for it, and if you're too slow, he'll help you put it in his mouth. Likewise, if he needs a breather, he'll help you pull it out to take a break before he keeps chugging away like a fratboy at a tailgate.

tonight, Pinky, we're going to try to take over the world...

What happened to the tiny little boy with his Friar Tuck ring of hair and spindly little froggy legs that I brought home from the hospital? He's growing up!

I used to have a tiny baby.

Bedtime, For Reals

...and now, officially, on the first night of trying to have a real schedule with an honest-to-goodness bedtime, I claim victory. After a brief gym session, I came home to a baby with swiftly closing eyes lounging contentedly in the Husband's lap on the breastfeeding pillow (such a brilliant investment, by the bye). I ran a bath, got him in it, and cleaned him off...only to discover a limp armful of baby drifting off to sleep in the warm bubbly water! Seriously: if I'd let him, E would have happily passed out in the bathtub until the water got cold enough to wake him up.

So, out of the tub it was to quickly get a clean nappy and some pyjamas. Minutes later he was feeding happily, and come 8.15pm I had - joy of joys - a soundly sleeping baby boy. Sleeping so soundly, in fact, that he barely stirred when I put him in bed by himself and popped some socks on his hands. Why socks? you ask. Because otherwise, he scratches at his forehead and scalp enough that it looks like I'm raising Ethan Scissorhands.

I am now officially on the other side of Late Night Grown-Up Time. Now I am the parent who sits up watching TV and chatting with my spouse while my offspring slumbers peacefully in the other room. I wonder what it says that I can still remember so clearly trying to sneak downstairs after my bedtime. Or the feeling of just how cool it was to be allowed to stay up for a little bit - as a fluke - when coming downstairs after having been put to bed. To be allowed to re-emerge from the bedroom late at night and sit downstairs with my parents...as a kid, you just don't know what to do with yourself. It's like you've been allowed inside a secret club: until you see it yourself, you can only imagine how much fun must be had while you're keeping quiet upstairs, pretending to sleep when really you're reading books curled up by the night light because you just have to finish that chapter. Then again...maybe that was just me.

Well, E can't stay up in his room yet reading books by the glow of his night light. For one thing, he has no night light...for the other, he can't read. But I can now revel in the baby-free hour before bed, fold my arms across my chest, and make my best gangsta face, because I'm now part of the club. I'm a parent, and I go to bed after my child.

...And The Schedule Was God, And The People Did Worship

After one too many sleep-deprived nights, I'm officially putting my foot down. It is now time to administer The Schedule to E's daily routine. I have a lovely wonderful little boy...who is still waking up every 1 1/2 to 2 hours in the night. And I'm sorry, but I just don't do 90-minute naps through the night. 8 hours sleep or GTFO. I'm the sort of person who needs her sleep. Just ask my mom or my sister: I was practically narcoleptic as a teenager. It was a miracle that I managed to get up for early morning Seminary during high school. Even when I was staying home during the second half of my pregnancy: the Husband was lucky if I was more than half-concious when he left for work. It isn't just that I'm not a morning person - though that's indisputable - it's that without about 8-10 hours of sleep I'm a cranky, lethargic zombie. I could be an extra in The Walking Dead: hair tousled, bleary-eyed, generally dishevelled, and stumbling around like I'd spent the night before drinking heavily and being beaten around the shins with a cricket bat.

With this in mind, it's time to regiment Ethan so that he starts sleeping better. Primarily, this will mean adding in another daytime nap, but it'll also include more structured bouts of play time, lots of time in the door bouncer, and time in the Moby while I run errands/clean the house/get dinner ready. I figure if he rests well, eats well, and plays well during the day, he'll sleep well at night...and we can stop all of this foolishness of waking up at midnight and 2am and 4am and 5am.

Now, I've been looking up things about getting your baby to sleep better on teh Interwebz, and I have to say that few things about raising tiny humans breed more controversy than the debate about how to get your kids to sleep. If you leave them to cry and soothe themselves back to sleep you're a heartless, unfeeling wench, who clearly uses the time while her helpless child is crying to kill puppies and cackle maniacally in a swivel chair whilst stroking a Persian cat. If, on the other hand, you constantly, rock, feed, and soothe your child to sleep, leaving them with you in your bed, then you're a permissive, spineless mollycoddler who will raise weak-willed children incapable of facing the harsh realities of life as we know it. Personally, I think both extremes are absolute crap. Personally, if I'm already holding E and trying to calm him down, I can't just set him down in his crib to let him cry all on his lonesome. It's not that I think it'll scar him emotionally for life, but unless I'm absolutely at the end of my tether and standing on the dizzying precipice of Crazy, I just feel like I'm wimping out on my responsibility as his mom to set him down and say, "you're on your own for now, babes." That's not me making a value judgement on moms who do need to set their kids down when they're screaming and crying so that they too don't start to scream and cry...I'm just saying that it's not for me.

That said, rather than subscribing wholesale to Dr. Sears or Dr. Ferber or any of the other hundreds of baby experts teh Interwebz will give me access to, I'm amalgamating my own approach. And that approach starts with giving Ethan The Schedule.

Do I know yet what this schedule will be? Nope. But I have a rough plan on a desktop Post-It note. Do I think it'll work perfectly the first time I try it? Not a chance. Today, I've already set him down for what was meant to be a second nap, but is really a third an hour later than I'd planned because we had to hit up the GP's office to stick needles in my baby's legs. But do I think that in the long run this schedule, whatever form it takes, will save - not only me and the bags under my eyes - but Ethan from hours of weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth every day? If I didn't think that, I wouldn't be doing it. So here's to the success of The Schedule. (I feel like this needs some sort of special plea to the Baby Jesus...and yes, I'd specify the infant as opposed to the adult. It just seems to fit.)

A Lecture on String Theory

...er, well, that's what it could be, at any rate. For all I know, I'm harbouring a tiny quantum physicist in the baby door bouncer. (This is his current location, talking and stomping away in the living room doorway.)

E has decided lately to start making up for lost time in the "talking" department. And by talking, I really mean 50% howling like a wolf and 50% yelling and laughing. Of course, whenever I try to prove this to people, he suddenly goes quiet, and so I sound like I'm telling people that my son wants me to build a baseball field, they just don't hear it. Likewise, he knows when the camera comes out, and generally promptly proceeds to stop talking or bouncing or doing whatever he was previously engaged in to contemplate the camera in stillness and silence.

And since stillness and silence are things I'm not getting much of from him right now, I'll let the video do the talking and go rescue E from what sounds like the dreadful torment of being in his door bouncer with me more than 2 feet away...

Baby Blue Eyes

As a kid, I was always jealous of my dad's eyes. I mean, sure they were squinty and small, and he has pretty rubbish eyesight, but that wasn't the point. My father, though not on the list for People's  Sexiest Man Alive, has the most gorgeous green eyes. I mean, bright, vivid, lime green - and with gold flecks in the middle, no less. now, just take a look at the scrummy Jessie Williams of Grey's Anatomy, and I think you'll see why I always wished I'd gotten my dad's green eyes: mixed kids with green eyes are hawt...

Now, I've made peace with the fact that my green-eyed days have always been numbered. I'm no good with contacts (trying to touch my eye like that just creeps me out), and so if I want to enjoy light coloured eyes I need to live vicariously. That's where my adorable son comes in...

jeepers, check out them peepers!

We went to a christening for the Husband's cousin's little girl yesterday, and all of her Indian in-laws were absolutely smitten with E's eyes. They were so big, so blue, so gorgeous, I was the proud mother of a future heartbreaker. A regular Casanova...without the sleazy reputation. So, even though I'll always be a Brown Eyed Girl, like the Van Morrison song, I still make some pretty cute blue-eyed babies!

Baking Bread Bowls: A Discovery

The Husband and I have finally realised why so many of our baking projects have been a bit - shall we say - lacklustre. When making pizzas, or cinnamon buns, or fun artisan breads, we somehow neglected to realise that our bread dough needed to be proved in the oven before the real baking commenced.

Thankfully, the Husband decided to give the proving a go this time when we made bread bowls to accompany that potato soup I made the other week. Good job he did, too. When we peaked in the oven before turning up the temperature, we realised that 10-15 minutes in the oven at about 90*C was just what the dough needed. Our little awkward spheres had plumped up nicely and nearly doubled in size - making them just right for holding tiny servings of soup. It's always the easiest mistake to correct that takes the longest to realise. Sigh.

Mmm....

Truth be told, it was a bit more trouble than it was worth, and all that soggy bread at the end is a bit awkward, but at least I can now say I've done it. I may yet try it again with a different sort of soup. There's this spiced butternut squash recipe I'm dying to try out...

just wait until you can have real food...

Hello, Dearest

So being the foreign language-loving nerd that I am, I've attempted in my life to learn French (this did not last long. About one semester of middle school, if I remember correctly), Spanish (two years of high school), German (one year of high school and two of college), and even - prepare for a pocket-protector-wearing fest of nerd-dom - Welsh. For fun. Well, really, because I wanted to know how to pronounce Ioan Gruffudd's name and then was magically sucked in via the power of a "Teach Yourself [insert foreign language here]" CD. This random affiliation for languages that are not my own also means that, thanks to the 3 years of study I've successfully forgotten most of, I know that the German word for "dearest" is "Liebster". Interestingly enough, that's also the name of the lovely chain-letter-style award I just received from the wonderfully witty Rachel over at Make A Long Story Short.

Seriously: go check out her blog, she's hilarious and charming and has quite the way with words. Not to mention any post that talks about and features the adventures of her bouncing baby boy, Henry. Long before I properly knew this girl in real life, I had stalked enjoyed her blog for months, consistently thinking to myself, "I want to write like that."

So in the spirit of passing along a good thing, here are a few of my other favourite and lesser known blogs:

I come from what I feel is a pretty literary family, and my cousin, Jen, is most definitely not the exception to this rule. In fact, I think she's the case that best proves the rule. Her blog - Greybon - is a wonderful collection of well-worded anecdotes about her life, and other random and interesting tid-bits.

Looking for a delicious and easy veggie recipe? Look no further than my awesome friend Alicia over at Real Delicious Food. The dishes she posts about look good enough to make even a carnivore like myself consider adding a few more veggie dishes to my life. (I'm pretty sure even the Husband wouldn't protest.)

Small Girl, Big City is the blog home of Krystle, who has the awesome distinction of being the only person in college who was cool enough to make me want to live with her for two separate years. She's also in the midst of being awesome while living in DC and manages to blog about it with the sort of smiley wit and enthusiasm I have to appreciate, even in my most sarcastic and curmudgeonly moments.

And now for the hard part: five fascinating facts about myself. I can promise five facts, but I make no claims about their ability to capture anyone's interest...

1. I used to live down the street from Sir Derek Jacoby. For realsies. I saw him walking his dog twice and was about thisclose to walking up and asking him about his dog. All the while, of course, I'd be nonchalantly pretending that I didn't care a fig that he was a famous actor, while inside doing the most embarrassing fangirl dance imaginable...complete with flapping hands and squealing noises.
2. When my mom remarried a few years back, my new stepbrother was in England doing missionary work, and spent some of his time partnered with the guy who was later housemates with the guy who would end up - after my own semester in England - becoming my husband and the father of my gorgeous Ethan. They all know each other now and we still laugh about the coincidence.
3. (And this is where we start to lower the tone...) My toes are weirdly short. As a kid I never realised this - I just though other people had freakish monkey toes - but no. Mine are the anomaly, apparently.
4. My mother, once, as a kid was approached from behind by a random adult in her neighbourhood whilst talking to one of her sisters. The grown-up in question asked, "are you Viola's granddaughter?" When my mom said yes, she was told that she sounded just like her grandmother. I now use the transitive property of math to conclude that - allowing for variances in accent (my accent is the bastard child of four regions of two countries, now) - since I sound just like my mom, I also sound just like my great-grandmother. The historian in me finds that sort of heritage of sound pretty awesome.
5. I am - according to family lore - descended from the families of two US presidents: Zachary Taylor and James Madison. Oh, and like any child of a good Virginian family, a Confederate general, too: Ambrose P. Hill. (Sadly, there's a special kind of awkward-looking that runs in the family that leads me to believe from daguerreotypes I've seen that these old family stories are totally legit.)

Pinterest Challenge

I may be on my own as far as the timing is concerned, but I'm doing the Pinterest Challenge. What is it? you ask. Well, the idea is to find something you've pinned on Pinterest, stop being lame, and just do the project.

You may remember that the last time I mentioned this idea, I had selected this as my project to complete:

...some sparkly, vintge-y Christmas ornaments to complete and hang on the tree next year. Well, my take on it went a bit astray of the lovely Bible verses in an Albrecht Dürer-style font. That said, I'm still not done with this endeavour, so we'll see where else it can end up once all the details are settled on.

I decided that a fun idea would be to have literary Christmas baubles. As a parting gift from Jane Austen's House Museum, I was given a book of Hugh Thompson's illustrations to Pride and Prejudice from the early 1900s. (The illustrations, that is, not the book itself!) At some point, I may go back and buy a copy of this to keep in tact, but I have to confess that I cannibalised it in the name of crafty Christmas cheer.

all supplies gathered together

In the name of having a bit of diversity - and because I wasn't sure I had enough illustrations in my Hugh Thompson book to cover all 6 baubles - I made a run to the charity shops back on the high street of the old neighbourhood and picked up two other books to cut apart all for the princely sum of £1.10. (Actually, for that price, I didn't just snag Roald Dahl's The Twits and Homer's Iliad - both of which I already have copies of - but also a dirt cheap copy of Eat, Pray, Love. I read the sequel ages ago and liked it well enough. I figure for 50p, even if it's relatively rubbish, I could throw the same amount away on a chocolate bar.)

So that's 60p for the books, £1 for the baubles (on post-season sale at B&Q), 40p for the gold ribbon to hang them, and about £4 for the glitter spray paint. (I had the glue and paint brush already, but those only added about another £2) All told, about £8 for 6 baubles...but realistically, I only spent about £3 on this project, since there's enough glitter spray for several other projects when I decide to work on those.

After ripping out some of the pages of The Twits with the best illustrations, as well as some snippets of text, I mixed a bit of water with the glue to get a nice Mod Podge-like solution. Then, I'd paint my paste on the baubles and on both sides of my strips of paper, shellacking the paper to the bauble until I had a good covering...

First half done and drying under the keyboard

my paste painting technique

Of course, I have to point out that your hands still get pretty sticky even with the paint brush. The brush is really just to smooth out the strips of paper nicely without it ripping and sticking to your tacky fingers. Eventually, I just put the ribbon on and let the baubles hang under the keyboard in our bay window and decoupaged them there. Of course, that decision was inspired in part by the need to keep E entertained. He's refused to nap until now today, really, having slept in an additional two hours this morning, so I stuck him in the Moby in order to get the first three of my six baubles completed.

Now, the P&P illustrations presented a challenge. You see, the camber of the baubles was drastic enough that I couldn't use any really big illustrations...for that matter, even the small ones were a challenge. So, I cut out individual characters from the half-page reproductions and then filled in the gaps with the captions.

A very Darcy Christmas ornament

Once all of the hideous silver plastic had been hidden away under a layer of paper, I shook up my can of glitter pray paint, cracked open the living room windows, and went to town with a thin layer of spray. I held up one of the book covers behind the ornaments to keep glitter from getting all over my curtains, and eventually - holding to the Sherry Petersik rule of Lots of Thin Coats when it comes to spray paint - I'll go back and get these things a bit more sparkly. Perhaps more Edward Cullen than Liberace. (That's the only time a Twilight reference is a positive thing.)

Another project I'll get the Husband's help with this weekend? Bread bowls. You see, I decided to go out on a limb and make soup for the first time this week. Not that it ended up being that difficult, but it's always a bit daunting when you haven't done something before.

Potatoes, garlic, part of an onion, and a couple of celery stalks gave us a really delicious soup for dinner throughout the week. Specifically,
4 stalks of celery
2 cloves of garlic
4 medium potatoes
2/3 of an onion
4 cups water
2 cubes of chicken bouillon
2 cups milk
salt and pepper to taste

Basically, you just boil the potatoes in the chicken stock until soft and cook the celery, onion, and garlic in a bit of butter. (Of course, you've chopped everything up before this.) You take maybe 2-3 ladles full of the chicken broth after 10 minutes and add it to the celery, onion, and garlic, and let those cook for another 10 minutes. Chuck everything into the blender and mix it up until it's smooth (or as smooth as it gets) and then combine everything together, adding the milk and adding as much salt and pepper as you see fit. I warn you: this makes a lot of soup. I had to break out my huge teal le Creuset pot to handle this batch of soup. But the thing is, it's simple, it's tasty, and it doesn't require a lot of time to put together. In fact, I did all the prep with a baby strapped to my front.

So those have been my creative outlets for the week. Hopefully, I can get up to something else fun next week, too. Baby willing, that is.

Rearranged

Notice anything different? How about now...

Yeah - not only did a new coat rack get installed in E's room, but we also rearranged the whole thing on a whim over the weekend. It was the Husband's idea, actually, and I'm really glad he suggested it. The room feels so much more open now that the shelves are all along one wall. I don't have a picture of the shelves on that last wall yet for two reasons:

1. there was a whole drying rack of rather personal clean laundry in the way
2. the shelves are still unorganized and, thus, are a hot mess.

Le sigh. Once I can utilize a few naptimes to get everything in its place, perhaps more pictures will be forthcoming. In the meantime, I'll consider a post about my first foray into soup-making and start looking at paint chips for another project I have in mind...

practising chewing for when those pearly whites come in

Baby's First Snow!

Last night saw the first snowfall over our part of Hampshire in E's entire life. I'll be honest with you; he was way less jazzed about this momentous occasion than either of his parents.

why are we doing this whole standing malarkey anyway?

We bundled him up as best we could - to the point of closely resembling the Stay-Puff Marshmallow Man - and put him in shoes for the first time ever so that we could rush outside before church this morning to capture our little boy's first encounter with the most awesome variety of frozen water.

what's going on here?

Granted, this will be far more exciting when he's old enough to appreciate being allowed to frolic with reckless abandon through snow drifts higher than his head, but for the moment, it'll have to do.

Welcome, my son, to the wonderful world of snow!

we could get used to this...

LOLs

Who knew that jostling E like he's on a PowerPlate was a good way to get some giggles out of him?

Baby's Ten Commandments

My latest Facebook status update gave me an idea. Granted, probably an idea that's been done to death in other venues, but it's my blog and I'll do what I want.

E's been suffering with a bad cold for the past few days. Unfortunately he caught it from me. I can't feel too guilty because there's nothing to be done: if he chooses not to let me sleep, I'm ridiculously susceptible to becoming Typhoid Mary, and yet - unless I'm dying - I can't keep the Husband home from work to take care of E so that I can rest and keep from infecting him. Of course, when he's sick, most of the rules I'm learning about raising a tiny human are suddenly even more imperative. Witness the following lessons I've learned:

1. Thou shalt always check to see if thine infant suffers the pangs of hunger when he cries. Verily, this is an assured balm to ease his sorrows.
2. Behold, the fruit of thy womb doth know when the rocking and walking have ceased. If thou shalt cease moving, then shall there be much weeping and wailing and gnashing of gums.
3. Thou shalt have a schedule; yea, and this schedule is thy God. Thou shalt abide by its timetable with much exactness lest thou receive unto thyself a child who is wroth in his weariness. (And again there shall be much weeping and wailing and gnashing of gums)
4. Verily I say unto thee, thy baby must breathe. And yet, lo and behold, the bulb syringe is a scourge and a torment most grievous to be borne. Thou shalt employ it but sparingly and make much atonement for thine offence.
5. A baby's hands are a great joy; yea, they bring much rejoicing when wiggled about or clapped together.
6. Even in slumber, thy child is omniscient: yea, his knowledge is exact. If thou shalt put him down to clean, verily I say unto you that he shall awaken with much swiftness and loud lamentations.
7. Behold, the drum and pipe and tabor do make joyful noise. Yet the drumming thou hearest from thy child's nappy are the sounds of wo and call thee to thy duty. Be thou swift to change these soilings.
8. When sore wailings begin and lamntations wax strong, remember thou that sometimes these things must simply be borne with patience and long suffering and love unfeigned..
9. The sleep of a child is most precious; disturb it not, even to rest the weariness in thy limbs. Bolster thyself with cushions instead to receive strength unto thyself once more.
10. Carry on in thy way with patience and diligence and love thy child with all thy heart and behold his smiles and giggles and cuddles will reward thee with a joy greater than all the treasures of the earth.

And now, in strict adherence to commandment #3 we're going to peace out for a walk around the neighbourhood.

Hair There & Everywhere

There's so much I could say about hair. My own curly black locks are something it took me years to appreciate. And if I'm being honest, I still fight against them a bit. I think I'm looking back to the golden age of my hair, when I was about 11 or 12 and it was perfectly curly in it's little pencil-width ringlets and it was long. It's that last bit that's the kicker: ever since I cut my hair back in middle school, I've never realised the sort of elbow-length tresses I've always envied on others.

Plus, I have to add this, I need to find a way to get a decent haircut. I mean, I've had some nice hairstyles, but never a life-altering cut. Mostly because there are two types of hairdressers I've seen in the places where I've lived: white-people hairdressers and black-people hairdressers. Now I'm not being racist here, but for a girl who sits squarely between both camps, I'm screwed. I'm not enough of a sistah to have hair that takes well to relaxers or hot combs or really heavy moisterising creams. Likewise, I can't get into this crucible of every-day hair washing or the low-maintenance "brush it and go" sort of philosophy. For the first, my hair is too dry in its own state to stand up to daily washings: it just gets brittle and fuzzy if I try. And as for brush-and-go? Unless I'm loving the electrocuted poodle look, my curls need to be wet and conditioned in order to re-set, and when straight, these ebony tresses still require a good spritz or two with a leave-in to avoid looking like Doc Brown from Back to the Future.

Of course, this leaves me wondering what sort of hair Ethan will inherit. The Husband and I are both anything but pin-straight in the texture department, so it seems that curls or waves of some sort are a given for our kids. But what about colour? See; here's where things get tricky. We, both of us, are dark-haired. But, Sebastian's dark brown started life as a sunny blond, believe it or not. I actually didn't at first: I was shocked to see baby pictures of a little blond boy who was most definitely my husband. In every other picture I'd seen he was the sole dark-haired child in a sea of blondes in his family. And even my black hair has its auburn traces - my sister would go blonde in the summers as a little girl, and apparently my dad's first moustache managed to grow in like freaky Neapolitan ice cream: horizontal bands of blond, ginger, and brown.

So after a wondering nose wrinkle at his passport photo, I took a closer look at the scant little hairs on E's head today only to discover that - aside from the last vestiges of the hair he was born with in his little infant mullet - some flavour of sandy brown seems like it'll be the order of the day. At least while he's still little. After the first few years, though, it's anybody's guess. Though I admit, I'd be amused if he stayed relatively fair-haired.

Mini-Daddy and Momma

Super Mum

There are days when I shrug off my mild-mannered alter-ego to become a human beacon of awesomeness. Okay, so I know you read that last sentence and said to yourself, "Pfft! You? Mild mannered? Whatever." and - of course - you're right. But let's pretend, shall we? I slough off the bleary-eyed, sleep-deprived persona of other days and become an Olympian in the world of parenting. Ethan is dressed, changed, (these days medicated), and enjoys so much fun playtime both on his own and interacting with an insane Children's TV caricature of Yours Truly that he settles down to his daily naps, not only on time, but without much cajoling from his mother.

I run errands, I go for runs or walks, I clean my house like the Pope's going to show up with white Armani gloves on and inspect every surface. Sometimes I even bake. Oh yeah.

The last two days have felt like Super Mum days. I've made pumpkin pie and Swedish Heirloom cookies, taken E to the doctor's and to get his passport photos taken, we've gone on two 2+-mile walks around the neighbourhood, and I've done a fair share of cleaning around the apartment. Show me those white gloves, Benny.

Today in particular was a great day for a walk. I decided to do things properly and put on my trainers before heading out the door with a sleeping baby, so I could run a good 1/3 to 1/2 of the distance I wanted to cover. And I have to say, English neighbourhoods are brilliant for randomly picturesque walks...at least where we live. There's a canal with some willow trees planted beside it, a thatched roof pub just down the street, old narrow bridges for the train tracks, and - my latest discovery - a crenelated Catholic church, complete with atmospheric graveyard! That may make me weird, but I really enjoyed walking through that graveyard with E's stroller.

Anyway, to share some of the Super Mum love, I figured I'd talk a bit more about those Swedish Heirloom cookies. These are one of the Holy Trinity of Christmas cookies I grew up with. When I was little, it wasn't Christmas without my mom baking these, Speculaas, and shortbread jammies. Now, of course, I'm the mom, and so the cookie-baking duties fall to my lot. Good thing I actually managed to learn how to cook through osmosis. (I'm not joking, people: I hated cooking and baking as a kid. I ran and hid. And yet, I'm pretty darn good now, if I do say so myself. It's a miracle that astounds science.)

In the interests of having some cookies to take to lunch with some girlfriends of mine tomorrow, I hit up my buddy Google to look for the recipe. After spot-checking the ingredients of about 4 different recipes, I decided that this link right hurr was accurate enough for my purposes.

Nicely turned out cookie dough

After creaming the butter and adding the icing sugar, you stir in the flour and unceremoniously dump in the almonds, vanilla, and water. Unless, of course, you'd like to add some ceremony to the whole affair; then you can wear a crown and a cape and stir your dough with a royal sceptre.

I admit, I hadn't left my butter/shortening out for long enough, so I resorted to the awkward trick of putting on a small pot of boiling water and jerry-rigging a double boiler to soften everything up enough while I attacked it with our hand mixer. Incidentally, I don't recommend this: until the cookies went in the oven the faint undertones of warm rubber from the bottom of my mixing bowl lingered in the air.

little squished balls of goodness

Dough balls rolled and flattened with the business end of a spoon, I popped them onto the ungreased baking sheet and into the oven for about 16 minutes. I know the instructions I linked to say 12-15, but I think really, 15 is the magic number here...unless you own Satan's oven, that is, and it's powered by the red-hot fires of Hades. Then, maybe, 12 minutes will do just fine.

Of course, for the second half of this whole process, I did have the help of my capable sous chef...

the next batch is ready, chef!

Mostly I just keep him around for decoration. He's just so darn nice to look at!

In the end, the cookies turned out beautifully. I especially enjoyed the thoroughly nostalgic smell of sweet almond baking in the oven. It made me feel about eight years old again, asking to lick the spoon and help with only those steps that allowed me to sneak some cookie dough to tide me over until everything else was ready to eat. I like the idea that my little E and any subsequent rugrats will have similar memories where the smell of these cookies is - to them - one of the harbingers of the Christmas season. I mean, as a historian I'm all about tradition...it gives me something to study!

ready to knock their socks off with sugary almondy bites of joy.

In the meantime, I'll tighten my belt another notch (soon, precious...) and go on imagining that sparkly cape billowing behind me in the breeze. Because...say it with me: I'm Super Mum.