Showing posts with label things I like to complain about. Show all posts
Showing posts with label things I like to complain about. Show all posts

Friday, September 19, 2014

Absentee Blogging

In the craziness of two little boys, and freelance history-ing, and weekly 5ks, and the occasional pause for a deep breath, a chapter of a book, and a mocha coconut frappucino, this poor little blog has become neglected. Blog Protection Services should be making weekly visits to my laptop to ensure it doesn't suffer from benign neglect. Of course, they'd probably be the same sort of organization that took away your terrarium and potted succulents if you were talented enough to kill the things in them. Put you on crafting probation if your dip-dyed curtains were a hot mess. Freeze your accounts after another Etsy rampage.

But none of that for me! I've been Tweeting (the refuge of the blogger too busy to blog, but too convinced of their own wit not to share their quips with the internet) in between all the work and cleaning and running and baby-keeping-alive. I'll share those and frightening photographic evidence of just how much my sons have grown since last I kept a regular schedule of blog posts. Seriously, though: how has it been so long!?

Top row: Tristan
Second row: Ethan
Third row: Ethan, boys sharing pound cake, boys at National Trust site, Tristan
Fourth row: Brand new brothers, slightly less new brothers, sunglasses, and finger chewing

























Work has been brilliant. Who knew you could do the whole historian gig as a freelancer? Well, as a stroke of luck would have it: you can! So I've spent a few weeks going to east London to teach workshops on archives, genealogical research, and WWI. I fully admit to feeling all grown up (thus negating any true semblance of adulthood) when all the little tweens called me "Miss" the other day as they excitedly shouted over each other in a desperate bid to show me the results of their research. You have not enjoyed teaching until you honestly hear a 12-year-old give a disappointed sigh at the end of class only to announce, "Now I'll have to look up Hitler at home..."

Also, I've read some lovely books lately, which I must gush over in more detail. Consider the Fork is the all-around winner, though The Little Coffee Shop of Kabul was fun, if chic-lit-like, and The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden was hilariously sympathetic.

Some day, I will manage to do all of these things with greater balance. I will schedule longer runs, I'll bake with Ethan, and get Tristan to sit through more than one book at bedtime. Perhaps more freelance projects will come along, and maybe - just maybe - I'll even get to have a date night with the Husband! Hey: a girl can dream...


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Friday, March 21, 2014

Tech and Toddlers

Alright, I have to jump in now. Particularly as I definitely have a dog in this fight (disturbing as that metaphor is).

As evidenced by the fact that I'm currently on my laptop blogging (as I listen to a podcast playing Just A Minute from BBC's Radio 4), I'm definitely in the camp of people who have a positive attitude towards technology. I have a laptop, we have a desktop, I have a smartphone, and at Christmas we bought a tablet. And guess what? Horror of horrors, I let my 2 1/2-year-old son play with some of these things. He watches Toy Story and Cars on our home computers, I've loaded up episodes of Sarah & Duck on long car trips when Ethan gets bored and irritable, and he has his own user on the tablet to play puzzle games.

So, when I saw this nonsense on the Huffington Post, I had to take a look. To be frank: it's scaremongering. It's reactionary, misleading, and - while well-intentioned - not helpful. I seriously side-eye anyone whose academic rigor is so lacking that they can reductively blame modern technology use, wholesale, for delayed development, epidemic obesity, sleep deprivation, and mental illness. All of those things are much more complex issues than Cris Rowan made them sound in her article. Not to mention, she didn't even make a good case for a causal relationship between heightened technology use by children and any of these conditions. Thankfully, the HuffPo gave airtime to another article which addressed a lot of these points. (Incidentally, most of their rebuttals boil down to Rowan's repeated confusion of correlation and causation and ignoring third-party issues in order to make a stronger case.)

To indulge in a bit of anecdotal evidence: I remember as a kid when we got our first PC. It was a Commodore 64, and I must have been about 6 years old when my dad first set it up on our first floor landing outside of my parents' bedroom. A short time later - after a few games of Jet Boot Jack - the Commodore died and we got a Compaq Presario. My sister and I played all sorts of games on it (including my favourite PC game ever), most of which - if I'm being fair - weren't overtly educational. Sure, I learned how to type properly with that computer: I learned to use the Microsoft Office Suite back when most computers still ran Windows 3.1 (feel old yet?). I learned how to surf the internet and use a search engine on that computer, but mostly it felt like a toy. When I was 14 or 15, my grandfather bought me a Gateway and I did my summer AP assignments on it. I learned to navigate the infancy of social media: chat rooms, MySpace, and AIM. I never realised until later that my years of typing, chatting, surfing, pointing, and clicking had given me useful skills for the workplace and for keeping up meaningful relationships with friends and family half a world away.

And yet, I still got outside, climbed trees, rode bikes, rollerbladed around the car park pretending to be a drive-thru waitress with my best friend, held footraces down our close, and developed the best pitching arm of all the kids on our street...even including the boys in little league. While I never got to keep my tech in my room (beyond my stereo, that is), I never had restrictions on its usage. My mother saw me use it for play and for school. I still did my homework, practised my music, and kept up a healthy social life.

I expect that my boys will be able to do the same. Sure, they're much more inundated with advanced electronics and technology from an earlier age than I was, but that doesn't automatically mean that they're doomed to be obese, lethargic, attention deficit, violent addicts. To suggest a ban on these technologies is irresponsible. Does my son need his own tablet? No. He's two. That's why he only has occasional use of the family device. But should I be restricting all watching of Disney DVDs and CBeebies on iPlayer? No. He needs to be taught responsible consumption of media from an early age. Being allowed small portions of fun things - while it may bring on tantrums when it's time to put toys or tablet away - will help him to mature and learn. He'll learn what my rules are. He'll learn that every activity has its place. He'll learn that throwing a tantrum won't get him what he wants and that disappointment is a part of life that we all deal with.

But do you know what else my sons will learn from being trained on technology from a young age? They'll learn how to do research; something that their historian mother knows is an invaluable skill for school, university, and life beyond. They'll learn STEM skills (science, technology, engineering, maths). With a mechanical engineer for a father - someone who is himself a STEM ambassador at work - we'd be remiss if we kept them from being able to easily develop the sort of skills my husband uses every day in his job. They'll be technologically literate, which is so important; but here's the thing: it won't be at the sacrifice of their social, emotional, physical, or mental development.

Unless you want to move onto a commune or join an Amish community, there's little escape from technology these days. Yes: it's always good to take the time to unplug and unwind, but an outright ban just tilts the ship too far in the other direction. For every stereotype of children using smartphones at the dinner table, or parents distractedly yelling at children while playing Angry Birds or checking Facebook, or overweight children parked on the sofa with cheese puffs and Call of Duty, there are responsible people. People who teach their children limits, as well as technological prowess. Who see smartphones, iPods, tablets, and PCs for what they ought to be: tools to navigate life in the modern world rather than crutches or babysitters.

The real key is to teach balance. To teach healthy respect for handheld tech as a tool: something that makes our lives easier...not something that is our life. Rowan's ostrich-like attitude, her reactionary totalitarian tactic - the ban - isn't helping anyone. It's not helping the children who need to be exposed to technology to learn how to navigate the world around them, and it's not helping the adults who need to be taught healthy limits and self-regulation. And if we're saying that these people who use the TV to babysit their children, or who can't tear themselves away from Candy Crush Saga long enough to be an engaged parent are exactly the reason Rowan calls for a ban, then guess what? Big Brother hand-holding, draconian restrictions, and fearmongering aren't the way to improve them as people.

Of course there will always be people who have the requisite personality and skills to overcome a generational divide in technology adoption, but why bet on your child having the ability to jump an unnecessary hurdle? Teach computer skills and responsible media consumption in the same way that you teach them how to read, how to share, or how to show good manners: early and often.
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Friday, March 14, 2014

Some Thoughts on Vaccinations

In general over the past few years, and more frequently in recent weeks, I've seen plenty of articles in my Twitter and Facebook feeds about various facets of the anti-vaccination campaign and its consequences; it's proponents, detractors, and controversies. Now, considering that I took my lovely 9-week old boy to get his first round of vaccinations earlier this week at our GP's office, it's pretty damn obvious where I stand in regards to all this nonsense. But, without name-calling or vitriol, I want to spell out my position and the reasons behind it.

To start with a fairly inflammatory statement on purpose: if your kids aren't vaccinated, don't expect them to play with my boys. This has nothing to do with me crucifying your character based on one decision you make for your family. I'm a parent too: I get the very natural impulse to reduce risk for your children. You love them. You want the best for them. But here's the thing: the diseases we're vaccinating against are so much worse than the temporary discomfort of an injection, a slight post-immunisation fever, or the slim possibility of complications. We as a society have lost sight of just how awful diseases like mumps, measles, and rubella are precisely because we've been so effectively protected against them for so long by vaccines and the resultant herd immunity they give us.

If your kid is one of the few who is likely to suffer ill effects, by all means, take the advice of people who have been trained in this understanding of the world around us and skip the vaccines. But for those who are simply exercising their right to disagree & do their own poor research...I'm not exposing my kids to the risk of disease because you want to conscientiously object to science. Thanks. It's a bit like a seatbelt, in my opinion: you put it on every time and hope against hope that you never experience a car crash where you need to use it. Likewise, I vaccinate my sons and hope that their immunity is never tested by being exposed to someone who actually carries polio or rubella.

I'm not going to enumerate all of the science behind the vaccine debate: other people have done that far better than me - among them Dr. Steven Novella - and so I'd just pass their work along for reference.

So yes: a few of the articles I've linked to will resort to words like 'wing-nut' or 'nut job' or 'loon'. Despite their (to me) understandable, but unfortunate choice of words, I think the points still stand.

But why, you may be asking, aren't there any good sources on anti-vaccination? Why nothing from the Natural News or a health & wellness site? Well, for the simple reason that not all evidence is created equal. I'd like to refer to the brilliantly concise site Your Logical Fallacy Is... to pinpoint just some of the problems I often see with the anti-vax argument:

False Cause: otherwise known as "correlation doesn't equal causation", this conflates two independent phenomena. Just because the noticeable signs of autism coincide with the current vaccination schedule, it doesn't mean vaccines cause autism.

Straw Man: misrepresenting one person's argument to make it easier to argue against. This one tends to take the form of a misunderstanding of scientific principles.

Bandwagoning: or the appeal to popularity. In the anti-vaccination articles I've read, this tends to work in the opposite form. It's not your usual, Nancy Reagan style peer pressure scenario: "everyone's doing it, Dave...", but rather: "don't be sheeple! Follow the evidence! If all your friends pumped scary-sounding chemicals and viruses into their children, would you do it, too?" The popularity, or lack of it, for any given position is not a reliable indicator of its truthfulness or validity. The one place where this tends to hold some water, however, is in the consensus opinion of experts in a field. With the caveat that our understanding can always be improved or deepened, if a group of people with in-depth knowledge and extensive study of a subject come to an overwhelmingly similar conclusion, it's not bad practise to give some weight to their collective understanding of reality. (And for the record, 'in-depth knowledge and extensive study' does not mean 4 hours with Dr. Google.)

Genetic Fallacy: assuming something is good or bad depending on who said it. While this happens on both sides - discrediting a given article based on where it appeared (like the Natural News) - it often happens when anti-vaxxers decry any claims made by "science" or "the medical industry" as if these were monolithic entities who all speak with some sort of hive consciousness like a bad sci-fi movie. All claims need to be taken into consideration on the merit of what they say, not just who said them. That said, you should probably trust the word of a medical doctor above my own in a discussion about how the body reacts to vaccines, because biochemistry, immunology, and pharmacology aren't subjects I know anything about. I can armchair diagnose until the cows come home, but it's not my area of expertise. On the other hand, if you want an opinion on Regency fashion and neo-Classicism, you're better off talking to me than, say, the Surgeon General.

There are plenty of other logical fallacies evident on both sides of the debate, but in the end, I'll stick with the overwhelming body of evidence that vaccines do what they say they will and protect us from what were once devastating diseases. I will accept the fact that just because something sounds scary and convoluted and unpronounceable doesn't mean that it's harmful...it's irresponsible of me to require the world to fit into my limited understanding. The better proposition by far is to expand my understanding to encompass the intricacies of the world around me.

To use a good-old-fashioned cliche, "no man is an island, entire of itself". Vaccination isn't just a choice you make for your own family like whether to shop organic or join little league or attend Mass. It's a public health issue, and while I'm far from advocating an Orwellian compulsory vaccination program, credible research and scientific reality shouldn't bend to misinformation, fearmongering, and indignant and misleading rhetoric about rights. Rights aren't the issue here: health and safety are.

As the old saying goes, "the road to Hell is paved with good intentions". And I have no doubt that most parents in the anti-vaccination movement have the best of intentions; but when we're dealing with the health of our children, intentions don't count nearly as much as results. And when the result is a resurgence of horrible and preventable diseases, we need to seriously consider where good intentions have led us. 
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Friday, February 14, 2014

Life in 140 Characters or Fewer

The old less vs. fewer conundrum. #sticklersunite

In case the title and opening line didn't make it painfully obvious, I've decided that the easiest way to update the blog today is to have a little Twitter crossover. It's been quite a crazy few weeks for us so often, little updates are the best.
























And now to go get my crying baby...who has cried all morning. Thankfully, I have a heart-shaped box of Recee's cups to fuel me through the day. Happy Valentine's Day to me!
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Monday, February 3, 2014

A New Normal...Sort Of.

I had wonderful plans of a return to blogging on Friday. I was going to have wonderfully witty and pithy statements about how I managed to make it in-tact through each day: my first week with two little boys.

Monday was great: we didn't do much, but I got some tidying done and the boys were still well-behaved and in one piece. We even got to Starbucks to meet up with friends for a couple of hours. Tuesday went over a treat as well: more cleaning, successful naps, and a whole slew of errands in the morning. Wednesday was play group and a quiet afternoon in. That's when things started going wonky.

Thursday morning I woke up feeling a bit sore. Babies who occasionally sleep through nighttime feeds will do that to you. There's only so much milk a boob can hold, after all. (#keepingitreal) The day wore on, I felt more and more tired...and that soreness wasn't going away. I kept feeding (when Tristan would cooperate), kept pumping; but by the time I had to break out the paracetemol & hot water bottle, and then a fever started setting in, I came to the conclusion that - joy of joys - it was mastitis. Goody.

So I spent the night feeling awful. We limped through the next day with some much-appreciated help from my friend Nikki, - who watched the boys while I napped and settled Ethan for his nap - the Husband, - who came home early - and my GP who prescribed antibiotics. A big shout out also goes to McDonald's. Some days you just need comfort food.

So with most of Friday under my belt, imagine my mood when I realised that E was getting sick, too. He spent the whole night in our bed with a barking cough. Saturday progressed to a fever, more coughing, and lots of wheezy breathing. By Saturday night, I was convinced it was time to call someone to see what else we ought to be doing. Turns out that "what else?" meant a trip to Paediatric A&E and overnight observations. Oh yeah, and hourly sessions with an inhaler. For my two-year-old.

 

The Husband stayed in overnight while I headed home with Tristan around 1:00 in the morning in an attempt to get a bit more sleep. Four hours of sleep later at 7:30, I was up and getting dressed to go back to the children's ward of our local hospital to see how my boys were doing.

In the end, it turns out Ethan was having a reaction to a viral infection in his chest. Loads of sessions with the inhalers and nebulizers, a couple of x-rays, numerous pokes with stethoscopes and ear thermometers, and a failed urine sample later we were finally discharged to go home with him. I now have two inhalers and a giant volumizer sitting next to my couch. Every four hours I get to listen to my poor little boy, with his hoarse croaky voice say, "Keep breathing! Keep breathing!" while I attack him with medicine for 90 seconds. It breaks my heart hearing him say that: it's just so pitiful!

So this week we're getting over our rather sensational-sounding bout of illness and attempting to get more towards whatever our new "normal" is going to look like. I have my gym membership back (le sigh, my happy place), and we have a few play dates to make good on. Add that into the mix with the ever-present cleaning that needs doing - oh, and don't forget that I ought to start looking at nursery schools soon! - and I think we've got enough to be getting on with.


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Thursday, January 23, 2014

In the Space of a Breath

I am tired. And I'm meant to be having a nap. The Husband has just taken both boys off my hands so I can rest after a lovely morning that shouldn't have been stressful at all, but somehow felt it as we got in the car to drive back home.




See, my friend Yasmin is a photographer and we got her to do a newborn shoot of our newly finished family of four this morning. She was brilliant: putting on Finding Nemo, pulling out toys and books, letting E have a go outside in the garden; carrying, rocking, and cuddling my littlest boy so he would settle for some cute photos...and then taking all the photos she could of my men and me. I barely had to do anything other than pose, feed E snacks, eat cookies, and be patiently urinated on as I breastfed on the couch. The experience was a lovely one, and I'd do it again, no questions asked...but I suddenly found myself tired and short-tempered as we drove home.

Two weeks and he's already changed so much!
E was asking for sweeties, T was screaming because his binky had fallen out, and rather than fishing in my purse or reaching around in my seat to address either of these concerns, I clenched my hands in my lap and closed my eyes as I tried not to yell at two people who very much did not deserve it.

"Do you want me to stay home this afternoon and take the boys so you can nap?" Oh, sweet lord, yes.

I let out I breath I didn't think I'd been holding and just felt utterly relieved. I wouldn't be wrangling a hungry newborn and a toddler who had missed his nap all by myself! Though he must be as sleep-deficient as I am right now, my husband is a saint. We are technically at the end of his fortnight's worth of paternity leave, but he's accrued enough time to stay with me for another day before heading back into the office. If only I could now not feel guilty about my desire to cry, eat hash browns, and fall asleep watching Sherlock reruns.

So now, covered in milk, milk sick, wee, and tears from my sons, I sit in bed, torn between being so tired I could weep, and wanting to unwind by reading design blogs. I can hear Owen Wilson as Lightning McQueen shilling Rusteeze Medicated Bumper Ointment on the TV in the next room as I look around at the mess in my bedroom. There are clothes and muslins that desperately need washing, presents that need Thank You notes written, junk mail to sort through, and two half-empty packets of paracetemol on the dresser next to a pacifier in its sterilising box. There is dusting to be done, rubbish to be taken out to the skip, carpets to be vacuumed, and post-natal exercises to do. Right now, the knowledge of all these things threatens to drag me under like James Bond falling through a riverbed in the title sequence to Skyfall.

Yasmin and the Husband are a brilliant, baby-posing team
So, for the moment, I will live a fantasy. Two gorgeous Englishmen - tall, pale, dark-haired and blue-eyed - will save me from the utter exhaustion of even the best days of motherhood: my wonderful husband...and Benedict Cumberbatch. Bring on the Sherlock, baby.


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Monday, January 6, 2014

New Year, Old Bump

So the new year has come and still I find myself with a bulging middle, wildly displaced hips, and no outside baby to cuddle. Needless to say, I've been doing a stellar impersonation of Grumpy Cat lately. But currently, my youngest brother-in-law is playing trains with my son on the hallway floor, which means that not only is my son being enthusiastically entertained, but it's happening while I get to have some calm time to myself to relax with some cocoa and Pinterest before our next preemptive run to the potty.

Fruit Ninja: entertaining adults and toddlers alike.
The holidays were lovely. It was great to have the time to relax and sit on the couch and not worry about anything but when this baby was finally going to decide to show his face. Incidentally, that did mean that some moments were more stressful than relaxing, but overall we did enjoy quite the break from everyday life over Christmas.

So what have I been up to in the lull between the end of the holidays and this Thursday, when the midwives will finally insist on getting this baby out of my uterus?

1) Watching the new season of Sherlock. I'm a little bit in love with Benedict Cumberbatch.
2) Watching BBC's Luther. The Husband and I just got around to watching this months after my long-suffering sister recommended it to us. Seriously people: taut scripting, good acting, excellent pacing, brilliantly witty dialogue, and a skeptical nerdgasm nearly every episode. I love seeing a dramatic show with level-headed characters who don't morph into credulous hysterics at the first sign of a crisis. We're only one season in, but we're thoroughly addicted.
3) Reveling in E's newly acquired skill. What does a snake say? Hisssss. What does a horse say? Yee-haw! What does Gollum say? (In the creepiest voice possible) PRECIOUS! Yup: he's been trained by nerds.
4) Spending as much time with the Husband as I can before we both get swamped in the sleep-deprived world of two small boys who will run our lives (and in all cheesy sincerity, our hearts) for as long as they can. I almost wish I could say I was approaching being a mother of two with some sort of sensible trepidation, but at this point, I just want this little boy to make his appearance so that I can be done with pregnancy and get on with adjusting to new motherhood again.

So, here's to holding out until Thursday, when my new year will feel as if it has well and truly started.
I'm so done looking like this.
(And not being able to roll over in bed.)

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Monday, December 2, 2013

Another Quiet Spell

It's been another long period without any news on the blog. While everyone else was wishing the world a Happy Thanksgiving, I was cooking a big dinner...and then promptly getting sick afterwards.

Our house has been a plague house over the past week. While the Husband was supposed to have a relaxing week off, we spent most of the time fighting off the flu, and then a stomach bug. Of course, there was still Thanksgiving to do, grocery shopping to do, friends and family to visit, and a house to tidy after a week spent lying in bed.

Thanksgiving went off quite well in the end. It's one of those meals I always anticipate will be much harder than it actually turns out to be. With my friend Kerri's help we managed to pull off:

  • turkey with gravy
  • warm green bean salad
  • cocktail sausages
  • corn & peas
  • carrots
  • buttermilk biscuits
  • cornbread
  • mashed potatoes
  • apple pie &
  • pumpkin pie
So much for the misleading picture of instant stuffing up there! I meant to make it, and in the end it just got lost in the shuffle. Cranberry sauce somehow also got left off - a shame as it's probably my favourite part of the meal. Oh! And for those wondering what constitutes a Warm Green Bean Salad...Kerri and I just sort of made it up on the fly:

  • Green beans
  • Cherry tomatoes
  • Garlic
  • Onion
  • Thyme
  • Prosciutto 
We steamed the green beans, then pan-fried the other ingredients with a bit of olive oil (the cherry tomatoes were halved first). Then, once the tomatoes were smelling nice and looking a bit wrinkly, we took them off the heat and dumped them over the steamed green beans. All done! Nice and simple, but a good way to get in another vegetable...seeing as how eating a good selection of veg isn't really my strong suit most of the time.

Now, of course, it's on towards Christmas. We set up our tree the other night, and E has been loving the bright lights and the "fluffy rug" under the tree. It's a faux-sheepskin from IKEA that I bought the other year specifically so I could use it as a tree skirt. Advent Santa is out and counting the days, my giant Julebukks are coming out to flank the tree, and the last of the gift shopping will soon commence. Oh yeah, and then there's that whole packing-my-hospital-bag-to-be-ready-to-have-a-baby thing. No rest for the weary!
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Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Hobbling to the Finish Line

My body hates having babies. Trust me, I know that I have it better than some, and for that I'm exceptionally grateful, but pregnancy sucks. You can't sleep, you go off all your usual foods, sometimes you get physically ill...and if you're me, your acid reflux kicks up (meaning your GP prescribes an antacid), you get enough headaches and backaches that you could prop up the paracetemol industry all on your own, and then your pelvis decides to separate too much...so the physiotherapist sends you home with crutches.

I had this problem before, but never to the point that I was sent back with crutches. Oh, and two different support belts to take the weight of my bump. So that's part of why I've been off the radar for a few days: I had the appointment to go see my physiotherapist and then spent the next few days trying to take it easy, adjust our normal routine, and get used to hobbling around with my snazzy new medical gear.

E has already connected the dots about these newfangled metal sticks that migrate all over the house with me:


I've explained it pretty well if he got all of that in just a couple of days. That, or he's just really smart. Of course, complimenting your own kid always comes off as a roundabout way of complimenting yourself, so there's a slightly narcissistic element to it however you slice it.

I have to admit, I didn't appreciate just how reluctant I was to get crutches until I was walking through the hospital car park last week. In my mind, everyone I passed would catch sight of the bump and the crutches, see no plaster cast or obvious injury, and judge me just a little. I hated the feeling that I somehow had to justify my crutches to everyone who gave me a passing glance: "I swear! My physiotherapist said I should take them! My joints have moved so far apart that I'm not supposed to do much walking! I really do need these: they make everything hurt less!"

Today, E and I headed out to run 2 very short errands. Even knowing that overextending myself during the day means losing sleep from pain during the night, I almost felt bad when the lovely assistant at the bank offered to take me out of the queue, watch E, and coach me through using a machine to complete my transaction that much faster. Perhaps my years of attempting to overcome my hypochondriac tendencies have made me the sort of person who can't admit to needing help until I'm bleeding from the ears or missing a limb, but I hated the idea of taking advantage of someone's solicitousness if I was still perfectly capable of standing in the queue.

So now, I'm keeping us closer to home, using the car more often, and trying to take life as easily as I can for the rest of the year. I don't do well with not being busy, but I know there are a lot of things I need to avoid if I'm not just going to make things harder on myself...at least I have some creative solutions to avoid standing too much while I make Thanksgiving dinner next week!
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Monday, October 28, 2013

The Lazy Girl's Guide to Birthdays

A week when you're seven months pregnant and watching your toddler alone because your husband is out of the country on business is not an ideal week to plan and prep for a birthday party. Especially not when you've had no motivation to even settle on a theme for the previous month. So what did I do? Settled on a few projects, kept the guest list small, and never turned down an offer of help.

My big project was going to be the cake. Given E's current obsession with Thomas the Tank Engine, I thought a train theme was the one to finally settle on, and his favourite engine at the moment is Percy. The Husband managed to talk me into a 3D cake rather than a simple sheet cake silhouette, so I decided to run with it.

In the spirit of keeping it simple, I bought a Swiss roll, two boxes of Betty Crocker red velvet mix, two boxes of cream cheese icing, and a few tubes of writing icing and food dye. On Tuesday night, I baked my two lots of cake mix: one in a flat 9x12" tin and the other in a small loaf tin. Once they were out and cooled, they were wrapped in cling film and put in the freezer.

Wednesday night brought another project as I took a break from the cake: hanging streamers. After a brief and unsuccessful quest to find crepe paper streamers at a local store, I decided to make it easier on myself and just order things online.



So, with E in bed and Simon Pegg saving Gloucestershire in the background, I got my streamers hung from the ceiling. The next afternoon saw the balloons inflated and hung so that, by Thursday night, I was ready to crack on with the cake.

With all the separate cakes frozen, it was easy to get straight lines when I cut the pieces I needed without creating too many crumbs in the process. Then, it was time to quickly spread on the crumb coating: just enough icing to catch most of the crumbs and stick everything together. Finally, assembled, the whole thing went back into the fridge to be properly frosted and decorated on Friday night.

That's when things started to go downhill. The red dye for the bottom of the cake worked a treat, but the green dye that I needed for most of the cake made the frosting incredibly runny. There was washing on and the kitchen was getting hot: drips and dribbles of green frosting kept sliding down the sides of the cake all over the places I didn't want them to go. The whole thing was quickly becoming a gloopy mess, so I shoved it in the fridge to help everything set. Still no good. So, after half an hour of trying to salvage everything while the cake stayed in the fridge, I opted for more drastic measures and popped it in the freezer.

The freezer was just the trick: the frosting set enough for me to tidy the earlier drips and smudges without much fuss, and the writing icing for Percy's stripes and the roof of the cab stopped running as well. On Saturday morning I got everything touched up and then printed off a face on cardstock to finish the look.

We kept the rest of the decorations simple: a level crossing into the living room, a railroad sign on the closet, and a 'Snack Station' complete with two platforms for the two-year-old birthday boy. I did find, though, that by Saturday, I had a bit more energy than I'd expected, so with the Husband back to help, I left the tidying and gift bag assembly to him and decided to have a go at doing the individual seven-layer dips from The Girl Who Ate Everything. They were a huge hit!
The original: via The Girl Who Ate Everything
My attempt: not too bad.
The difference? I was too lazy to make pico de gallo and this household doesn't eat olives, so we technically had six layers instead of seven. Plus, I made proper taco meat as one layer using my own homemade taco seasoning recipe.

So, all the family (minus one brother-in-law who's over in the States at the moment) and E's BFF and her mum came round to ours for nibbles, cake, and a chance to let the toddlers run wild. My mother-in-law offered to bring crips, cake, and quiche pinwheels, which I gratefully accepted; my lovely sister-in-law Rachel brought biscuits; and Angus & Emily brought some scrummy doughnuts. This padded out our own offerings nicely since I had Organix snacks for the kids, the seven-layer dips, some frozen spring rolls that we popped into the oven, and drinks.

The kids are all a bit too little for games, so they just ran around and played with E's toys. We let them watch one or two episodes of Sarah & Duck in the slower moments of the day, and that kept them fairly happy. All in all, I'd call the day a success.
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Tuesday, October 22, 2013

Life On Our Own

We are Husband-less this week.  My charming partner in crime is flying out to the States - again - on business - again - and won't rejoin us until the morning of E's birthday. So I have been making plans and lists and frozen pizza in an attempt to puzzle out just how I, err... we will cope.

Learning to fly.
Last night involved lots of staying up late for all three of us (though E most definitely was not up until 1am, like Yours Truly, or until 3am, like Husband), and many a foot ride before bedtime stories. E would not be satiated in his desire to keep being boosted into the air. 'Fwy! Fwy! Fwyyyyyyyy!' (Or, 'fly, fly!' for those of you who have mastered pronunciation of the letter L.) He yelled this gleefully for half an hour, begging to be put back on Daddy's feet so he could wobble, flap his arms like wings, and talk about aeroplanes and penguins...the Oliver Jeffers kind who fly when propelled from circus cannon.

Just relaxing, playing with some trains.
Today involved strategic viewing of Thomas the Tank Engine, a bit of shopping, and play group. Really, play group meant 'getting a snack and keeping the other kids away from his train track', but it was a good time. On weeks like this, I'm all about what gets us out of the house. I get to see other mums, E can interact with other kids, and we even got to play with a busted pumpkin today. Yes, it was on purpose for one of those toddler sensory experiences that no official play group is complete without.

Makes you think about the Batmobile in a whole new light...
The evening was taken up with a bath, a repeat viewing of Cars 2 over pizza and hash browns, play time, stories, and bed. I keep it classy here, people. Though honestly: I'm 7 months pregnant and watching a 2-year-old by myself for a week...I'm not doing anything I don't have to do. Cooking, much as I love it, is at the top of that list. Especially since I'll be prepping for E's birthday party on Saturday afternoon. Oh yeah. Look forward to seeing how that unfolds. (Seriously, scope my Twitter...I'm sure I'll be sending updates from the cake-baking trenches.)

Once E was in bed, though, I did enjoy some quiet time to myself. A few podcasts while tidying the kitchen, some blog reading in the living room. I contemplated a game of Portal, but the updates took too long to load. What caught my weary eye?







via, Dig Haushizzle
This gorgeous antique dough bowl from Dig Haushizzle looks pretty snazzy. I have nowhere to put it, but I'd cuddle it like a newborn if I could.

via, Spoonflower
Also, I've had my free sample of this fabric from Candyjoyce on Spoonflower for ages. I want to hang it in my bathroom, but first I'd like a fun 5x7 or 8x10 print to go with it. Any thoughts?

For the rest of the week? Getting together with friends, some local sightseeing, scoping out a new baby shop, and birthday party prep! Stay tuned here, on Instagram, and on Twitter...you know, in case you're interested in that sort of thing.
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Saturday, August 3, 2013

Mothering, Judgment, and Kate

I almost can't believe I'm weighing in on this, but after seeing a few links to articles today, and actually reading the articles in question, I decided I had enough of an opinion to comment. Part of me wants to open this with a snappy call to correction: something in all caps, perhaps, like, 'LET'S ALL STOP JUDGING' or 'ENOUGH OF THE MOMMY-SHAMING ALREADY!' But none of that really seems to get at the whole point of what I'm trying to say, and anyway, I'm not some snarky op-ed writer trying to score a blow for the over-stressed, under-valued Everymom.

First, let me tackle the third article that my internet daisy-chain brought me to: Caroline Palmer's piece for Vouge: The Post-Baby Hospital Exit: The Royal Standard and the Rest of Us. Palmer starts off by recounting - in what, I'm sure, was meant to be grisly detail - her foggy memories of exiting the hospital after giving birth to her son. But then, she lets out this gem:
 the sight of the Duchess of Cambridge exiting St. Mary’s Hospital this week was yet another blow to my already shaky postpartum self-esteem. Let’s leave aside the Barbie-dream blowout, the subtle eye makeup, and the neatly manicured nails—the woman was wearing a dress with a zipper, people. A zipper!
Can I please start off with a simple, So What? The 'Barbie-dream blowout' aside (for the time being),  putting on a bit of make-up and doing your nails isn't terribly hard while you're still in hospital. I'm not necessarily saying the Duchess did or didn't do her own manicure and make-up, but between any visiting grandparents, your waiting husband, and an army of midwives who will take the baby at any time of day or night if you ask them desperately enough (oh yes, I'm speaking from experience), a new mummy can certainly find a 10-minute window to touch up her face or nails if that's what makes her feel better.

via, The Daily Mirror
So, I suppose, this is where the call to stop judging comes in. Palmer grudgingly admits that as a public figure and future Queen of England, Kate is held to a higher standard than your average mum wobbling her way out of hospital, baby in tow. But let's also consider that in spite of whatever we may have to say about the objectification of women and society's unrealistic expectations, perhaps having herself done up made Kate feel better. I mean, even for someone who's had some time to get used to being in the public eye, it has to be at least marginally daunting to know that you'll be facing an army of press mere hours after squeezing a human being out of your body. You might not have slept. Your newborn baby might not have slept. You may still be working out that post-pardum shuffle that happens when none of your supporting abdominal muscles are anywhere near where they ought to be to help you walk. You could feel tired and gross and ungainly - but if you're the Duchess of Cambridge, you'll still be expected to smile nicely, and give a few blurbs about what it was like to give birth, what you've named your baby, and what he seems to be like. In the face of a proposition like that, I can't think of who wouldn't feel a little more confident and ready to bear it with a tiny bit of pampering time to make you feel more like the usual you.

Perhaps some of this judgment is coming from the way we women judge ourselves. That old saying about being our own worst critic is true, up to a point, but it seems that with those in the public eye we allow ourselves to take our insecurities out on them: after all, we aren't saying it to their faces.

But I'm not really out to simply condemn that sort of spiteful, 'couldn't you just look bad once?' sort of rhetoric, because it really does seem to be coming from a place of hurt (though that doesn't make it acceptable). The mantra here should be, '...and that's okay.' Let's try it out a bit, shall we?

Kate Middleton came out of hospital looking as gorgeous as usual...and that's okay.

 Even 6 months after my baby I didn't look as thin as JLo 6 weeks after her pregnancy...and that's okay.

 I barely had the energy to put on lip gloss after I left the hospital...and that's okay.

The thing is, the media are going to continue touting post-birth recoveries that would rival Lazarus for how miraculous they are. Should we try to change that? Sure. Let's denounce harmful attitudes wherever we find them. But that also means we need to keep reminding ourselves that these sorts of things aren't the norm. And even if every other woman you know barely gained 15 lbs. while she was pregnant, that doesn't make your 35 lbs. or 10 lbs. some sort of moral failing. And to blame someone like the Duchess of Cambridge for not looking enough of a hot mess after giving birth, or for not gaining enough weight during pregnancy to be 'normal' certainly doesn't give the blamer the moral high ground. (Around 7:40 in the video, panelist Wendy Widom insists that the Duchess was 'way too slender; way under what the average woman will ever be.' As for why I think that's bollocks, the Daily Mail sums it up nicely.)

That's the sort of attitude I see here. And it's the same sort of problem that derides women in the media spotlight for not being thin enough, or for trying to get too thin, or for getting a nose-job, or being anything other than what we think they ought to stand for. So for those who felt that Kate wasn't big enough to represent a 'real' pregnant woman: get over yourselves. Some of us get barely the bump. Some of us look like we're smuggling a watermelon. For some of us, being pregnant means that our cups floweth over in all directions: a little side-boob here, a little love-handle there, a little saddlebag just for good measure. ...And that's okay! And as for her being too well-presented and made-up after birth? Surely, as part of the royal brand, that comes in the job description.

I gained what was an apparently average 30 lbs. when I was pregnant with Ethan. Now, I'm the same height as Kate, give or take an inch, but even allowing for some difference in weight gain, my bump was far more prominent than hers. Was I doing something wrong? Was she? Neither. My height is mostly legs: I have a fairly short torso, so after about 20 weeks there was nowhere for baby to grow but outwards. Kate, on the other hand, seems to be like a friend of mine who had her baby back in January: very long in the torso. This friend of mine and the Duchess; they're both tall, thin ladies, and they both carried with what looked like quite small bumps all through pregnancy, despite having healthy-sized babies. Some people just carry the weight differently. And unless these writers are digging through her little blue antenatal folder and interrogating the midwives like they're Woodward and Bernstein, pictures alone aren't a good way to tell if she's gaining enough weight. And who's defining 'enough' anyway? If mum and baby are healthy, then it was obviously enough to get them through.

So this isn't my variation on a theme of 'Leave Britney Alone' or anything like that. It's more about the general unhealthy attitudes about pregnancy, body image, reality and the media, motherhood, and personal insecurity that I see being manifest through all the hype about whether or not Kate Middleton ought to roll of bed with raccoon eyes and fuzzy hair just to make the rest of us feel better. If what you need to feel better about yourself is to see someone else struggling at life and looking like James Brown's mugshots, then that just means you need to do some work at being a better human being and finding validation somewhere other than at another person's expense.

Is this what y'all want?
via, crime.about.com

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Wednesday, June 19, 2013

My (no longer) Secret

In case it wasn't painfully obvious from all of the beating around the bush I've been doing when I haven't been maintaining an apathetic radio silence on The Interwebz lately, I've been growing myself a little secret. A baby, in fact, with tiny fingers and toes and a huge baby head, complete with all sorts of nausea, tiredness, and pelvic discomfort. You can see now why I haven't been running for the better part of three months.
here we are sucking our thumb and sleeping.
It's been hard to enjoy this baby so far. I'm sure it was the same last time with Ethan. The first months of pregnancy for me are always difficult. I get ill, I get headaches, I get insane cravings, I get weepy, I get exhausted and climb into my bed for as long as the world will let me. Today, though, we finally had our first ultrasound and got a chance to see the little monster up-close and personal. It's nice to be reminded that I'm only miserable like this because I'm growing a tiny person inside of my body. That there is a good cause lurking behind the ever-changing need for egg mayo sandwiches and prawn cocktail crisps, ooh, no! burgers...no wait, pepperoni pizza...or perhaps nothing but salty, greasy chips...or just some water and a fromage frais and the chance to lie down and cry until I sleep.

As anyone with more than one child can attest, weathering this maelstrom of hormones doesn't get any easier when you already have an outside child running around, colouring on your walls, begging for your attention. Ethan and I have seen through our mornings all too often lately with me napping while he watches cartoons on my laptop. Charlie and Lola on Netflix has saved my life more often than I care to admit.

The part of pregnancy, though, that is hardest for me is the fact that feeling tired and sick and sore makes me lethargic. Part of me wants to go outside and go on walks and go swimming and try to get in short runs with Ethan in the jogger again. But most of me just wants to want these things. Lovely as I know they are, these pursuits feel entirely unappealing when your hips and back ache, and your round ligaments protest every time you want to stand up, and you get to enjoy the sporadic pain of that just-kicked-in-the-crotch feeling that comes as one of pregnancy's many little gifts.

And yet, come the end of December, I'll have a tiny new person to bring home. Someone else with my nose and my eyes (in shape, if not in colour), and my lips, and my hands. (Seriously, I need to find pictures to prove just how much Ethan reminds me of myself at his age.) It's an exciting prospect. We've already been trying to get Ethan psyched about the idea of getting a new baby. The Husband and I between us have read him There's Going To Be A Baby more times than I can count, and I have Ethan trained to point at my stomach whenever I ask, 'where is Mummy's baby?' Every baby under 6 months that I see is an object lesson for my little boy: 'Look, Ethan! There's a tiny baby. You're going to get a tiny baby at the end of the year!' I don't think he really gets it yet, but he does enjoy seeing the babies. He gave the 5-day-old little brother of a friend at playgroup the most adorable kiss on the top of the head yesterday. I was impressed with how gentle he was.

So there it is: my newest beginning is as the mother of more than one child. If all else is an abject failure, at least I know I can competently carry a newborn in one arm whilst dragging an angry toddler along with the other. Some skills you just gotta learn.
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Wednesday, June 5, 2013

Same Old Stunning

In what has now become weeks of internet apathy I've come to realise something as I occasionally turn back to Feedly to browse through all of the blogs I read: I've gotten so tired of all the beautifully staged and decorated homes I tend to see in the various articles on the various blogs that I follow. It's not that they aren't lovely or well put-together or enviably executed...they've just all started to look the same. Know what I mean? If not, I'll endeavour to be a bit more specific.

All white walls.
Shoot me. Shoot me now if I have to look at another house with its boring attempt to get that neat, clean, bright, minimalist Scandinavian look by refusing to add colour to the walls. Sure, it looks nice on a beautiful sunny day, or in those overblown white-balanced photos, but white also shows a lot of dirt. Every fingerprint, every smudge, every spot where you didn't realise that the black cardstock bats you hung for your son's first birthday party would leave nasty marks on your walls. Okay, so maybe I'm just fed up with my own white walls to some extent, but I'm really tired of nearly every house I look at looking like these:
via, French by Design
via, Design Mom
via, Design*Sponge
Dip-dyed and partially-painted furniture.
I get it: this was a thing...and apparently still is in a small, waning sort of way. But it's officially (in my not so very humble opinion) stopped looking cutting edge or chic or new to paint most of a chair but leave the legs unfinished. Or to have a stool that's bright yellow...until you get to the last 6" of the legs. I get that a bit of contrast is a fun thing; that sometimes you want a little of the natural grain and colour of a wood piece of furniture to show through...but let's find a new way to do that. Find fun stains, stencil the stains or paint in fun, simple patterns uniformly over the whole object, paint the whole piece and use an unfinished wood accent piece somewhere else, but for the love of DIY get over the dip-dye trend. Now. Thank you.
via, a Life's Design
via, Stripes and Walls
via, Dosfamily
via, Luvocracy
Black and white.
Yes: it's bold, it's graphic, it's striking...it's bloody well gotten boring now. Black and white striped rugs. All black-and-white rooms. Black and white geometric patterned pillows. Black and white art work in black frames on white walls. I'm tired of it. It's stopped looking clean and now just looks soulless. (She says, sitting beneath a giant b&w print her husband made, hanging in a black frame on a white wall. But you've seen my house: I love me some colour.) Don't get me wrong: I could love some black-and-white square floor tiles in a kitchen as much as the next girl, but some of this has just gotten ridiculous. Like MJ said, you can still have a stylish room, it don't matter if it's black and white...or, well, something like that.
via, Sköna hem

via, Glitter Guide
via, Lady Blueprint
via, Sköna hem
So what do I want to see more of?
via, Lisa Roy
via, Birch & Bird
via, Design*Sponge
via, Design*Sponge
via, Pink Wallpaper
via, Pinterest

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