Trip to the ER

...or, the $400 tab of zofran.

I believe that this tale starts on this past Sunday, when an older woman (at least 2) with a smoker's cough got fresh with Felix on the playground.  Holding hands?  Adorable.  Oh, a hug?  So cute.  A slobbery kiss?  HANDS OFF, TROLLOP.  Only two years old and already spreading ills.  What a shame.

By Monday night Felix started to feel warm.  On Tuesday he was holding steady at 101, spiking up to 103.  He was his regular, charming self, so I didn't worry or medicate.  That night his nose stopped up and he was having trouble nursing.  He wasn't snotty, so I gathered it was more nasal inflammation than actual boogers causing problems, and we gave him a little ibuprofen, shot some breastmilk up his nose and went to bed.  He resisted, but eventually fell asleep.

Then at 2am he woke up, which is totally normal.  What wasn't normal was that his body was very rigid and he refused to nurse; he just cried.  He was all tensed up and shaking a weird shake.  Something between trembling and spasming...like a hypothermic rigor.  What was clear was that it was involuntary and uncomfortable, preventing him from nursing or going back to sleep, and wasn't passing.  There was a tiny, panicked voice in the back of my head saying things like, "Neuro-invasive virus, seizure, meningitis, convulsions," that quickly overtook the more rational thought train telling me that he was lucid, not very hot, able to move his neck, and probably fine.

Actually, you know what it was that freaked me out - it was that his body didn't feel right.  It was so disconcerting to feel him be clearly out of control of his body.  I'm not a reactionary person, I don't spook, but it took approximately four minutes to decide to head to the ER.

I called my mom and she followed us there.  I sat in the back with Felix and he was shaking less, but his body was still very rigid and tense.  He had his arms drawn up in a bizarre way, wrists up to his armpits with his hands hanging loose, and his legs would kick out randomly.  He threw up as we were pulling into the parking lot.

There was no one else in the waiting room of the children's hospital.  We went straight back to triage, where he threw up again.  They gave him a tab of zofran to help with the nausea (although both pukes were preceded by lots of crying, and I don't think they were too related to his sickness since he's had no vomit before or since).  He had a temp but it wasn't very high.  We were shown to a room and settled in to wait.

Of course, like the car that stops making the noise when you try to show the mechanic, he stopped shaking by the time we were done in the triage room.  That's wonderful, don't get me wrong, but at that point we were sitting in the ER with a pretty happy child with nothing but a 101 fever.  Felix nursed, played with the iPad, read some books, and tried to tear off his ankle bracelet.

The doctor was great.  She ruled out a seizure, asked about some bug bites he had but shrugged them off, and said that fevers cause weird things like hallucinations and rigors.  He has no secondary infections, and told us it's just a virus that will have to run itself out.

The whole adventure took about three hours and we were home before sunrise.  John said he was just going to stay up since he had to be at work in a couple of hours, but was asleep within ten seconds of the lights being out.  It's safe to say that he suffered more from the lack of sleep, but I can't help that breastfeeding gives you amazing hormones superpowers.

Unfortunately, Felix is still sick.  This is one hell of a virus.  A sneaky one, too.  All day yesterday I thought he was fine - only 99 temp, acting his regular self, and then in the evening the fever crept back up and if he isn't medicated, it's at 104 and he is absolutely miserable.  I'm all about letting fevers do their work and not medicating them, but in this case I'm medicating the shit out of it.

Double unfortunately, both of us parents are feeling the effects of the viral invaders.  Again, my superpowers are preventing me from feeling the full effect and I just feel sort of blah and have a sticky throat, but husband is not so fortunate.

Out of my house, damned virus!

Why I Love the Honest Toddler

Have you seen the Honest Toddler blog?  Or the Twitter feed?  Or the Facebook page?

If not, please do it now.

I'll wait.

It is a rare gem.  I love HT for many reasons:

>>The writing is wonderful.  I almost want to find out HT's true identity so I can find out what else they have written...but that would ruin the image I have of a toddler typing out posts with sticky popsicle fingers in between bites of cake while his mother drinks wine on the couch with eyes half-closed in defeated exhaustion.  I hope he never reveals his true identity.

>>It's a lesson in empathy.  It's really, really hard to empathize with toddlers.  It's hard to accept their self-centeredness as developmentally normal.  We don't remember what it was like to be small and powerless.  We don't understand unfiltered, uninhibited, completely authentic behavior.  HT reminds us.

>>It's a subversive lesson in gentle parenting.  It's pretty clear, at least to me, that whoever is writing this blog is a gentle parent.  Meaning, non-punitive, connected, empathetic.  It isn't as tongue-in-cheek as it seems.  It's funny to imagine a toddler missing the bond he shared with his placenta in the womb, but it's also poignant and real:

"The morning you and I went our separate ways…I’m not going to lie, I cried. It felt like how breaking glass sounds. Like the Monday of all Mondays. It felt like finishing a restaurant meal and then seeing an eyelash in your plate. Like when someone shakes your hand and theirs is wet. Sometimes you know it’s just water from washing up, but still."

It's a big, bright, loud, confusing, scary world they have been born into.  Little things that are normal inevitabilities to us are big, unfathomable, unfair events in their world.  This post is a reminder of how much closer they are to what they experienced in the womb than to what we experience as adults, and that it will take a long, long time for them to learn to navigate our world.

>>It brings the funny to a discussion in desperate need of levity.  People get really up in arms about parenting styles.  The gentle parenting community especially, I think, can seem to take themselves too seriously with their library of parenting books; their idolatry of Ina May, Dr Sears, and Alfie Kohn; and the links to Mothering articles, childbirth and behavioral studies shared on their Facebook pages.  HT manages to convey the same message hidden inside a gumball of laughter.  You don't even know it's in there.

For example, one of the things gentle parents tend to do is not force their kids to say they're sorry.  I could explain why I don't/won't do that, but your eyes would probably glaze over.  Or, you could read the post Not Sorry and have HT explain it for you in a funny, tongue-in-cheek (but not really tongue-in-cheek) way.  Entertained AND educated!

>>It isn't always funny.  The post The Woman is a tear-jerker every time, about the moment HT realizes that he and his mother are separate people.  Based in fact, as well - when babies are born and for many, many months or years after, do not identify themselves as separate from their mothers.  The constant push-pull of toddlerhood, the thrill of independence coupled with the intermittent clinginess and dependence can be seen as them processing this simple but overwhelming fact that they are their own person.

"I am at a loss with what to do with the information that she can walk in one direction and I in another. Sometimes it gives me an adrenaline rush; the thrill, the risk, the excitement of being an independent being as I run away while hearing her frantic voice calling. Other times I feel lost as I look around see that she’s not by my side. At those times, a panic rises in me so urgent that I lose control and all sense of time and space."

"This is the line I walk daily. We’re one, but we’re two. One, but two. It is the two I find so indigestible right now. It sits in my mouth like a bite of food too big for me to work with…even if it tastes new and good I don’t know if I can risk choking on the very idea that one day I might run so far that I can’t find my way back to her.

So today I will cling. The collar of her shirt will remain in my fist, my face pressed against the skin of her chest as I inhale the first scent that wafted into my nose when I was still floating within her. “Don’t leave me,” my spirit whispers to hers as I try to melt back inside and remember the song we used to sing."

Then there's Dada, an ode to fathers.  More tears.

"I know you’re used to playing second fiddle. Waiting in the shadows while mama and I do our special dance. Seeing my angry disappointment after I cry out in the dark for her only and you tiptoe in to stroke my hair, helping my body relax into sleep again. But dada, my world wouldn’t exist without you.

When you walk out the door in the morning time stops until you step back in. The day happens; the clock keeps ticking but something inside me doesn’t budge from my sad place in front of the door. I play, sleep, jump, eat, explore, but part of who I am is frozen. Empty. Wanting the highest up I know. Wishing you were spinning me in circles scaring mama as we both laugh our crazy laugh."

So, if you hadn't already come across HT, you're welcome.

Paper Free (in progress)

I sometimes startle myself with how loudly I crunch these days.  Long gone are the days where I would sheepishly admit to maybe being a little bit of a hippie.  I am not a bashful card-carryer anymore.  I will soon be the one handing out the cards.

Honestly, this is getting out of hand.  I actually lose perspective and forget that not everyone does, or cares to do, or is even remotely interested in this stuff.  I suppose it is called an alternative lifestyle for a reason.

My latest effort has been to get our house as paper-free as possible.  Useless waste has started to really bother me.  Filling up a garbage can with dirty paper towels just to clean the bathroom actually makes me queasy.

Paper towels and toilet paper and napkins have become categorized as needs.  They're not.  They're purely frivolous convenience.  And really, if you have a washing machine and dryer, they hardly even qualify as conveniences.

>>Paper Towels
About six months ago I bought a pack of these rags and I haven't bought paper towels since.  We still have them around for particularly disgusting messes, but I'd say we've used one roll of paper towels in that time, if even that.  In the kitchen we have two open storage bins, one for cleans and one for dirties, and I wash them along with our regular laundry, about every other or every third day.

>>Toilet Paper
A month ago I decided to do the same with our toilet paper.  By virtue of being the only girl in the family and also the one home the most, I am the chief consumer of toilet paper.  John had filled a donation bag with old undershirts, and I cut them up into squares big enough to be folded a couple of times.  I bought a basket at Goodwill for clean rags and a tiny step can for dirties.  I sewed a little fabric bag liner for the step can, so I just lift out the liner and wash it all together.

I know there's a bit of an ick factor involved with cloth toilet paper (known among the savvy as "family cloth").  Before having a baby and dealing with all manner of bodily fluids, it probably would have grossed me out as well.  But I've been pooped on, peed on, barfed on, drooled on, and had food smeared on me for twenty months.  It would take more than a little pee dribble on a rag to make me wrinkle my nose.

But I will admit that poo on a rag (or rather, poo on a rag that then sits in a lidded can next to the toilet for a few days) grosses me out, which is why I haven't totally sworn off toilet paper.  John hasn't shown an interest in started to use the cloth, and I won't ask him to.  I might actually discourage it...So don't worry - if you come to visit, there will be Charmin in the bathroom.  And no, it doesn't smell.

>>Napkins
As for napkins, we really just use the same bar towels that we use in the kitchen.  We were never big napkin people anyway.  If I were so inclined, I would sew up some pretty ones, possibly different patterns for different seasons and holidays (if you know me at all, you may start laughing now), but I'm not.  Bar rags and old cloth baby wipes do us just fine.

>>Feminine Hygiene
As yet, I don't have to worry about finding a non-disposable alternative to feminine hygiene products (one advantage to having a toddler who is a voracious nurser, day and night), but when I do, there are several options.  Glad Rags and the Diva Cup are two that I hear about often.

>>Diapers
We primarily used cloth diapers on Felix since he was born.  My use of cloth wipes was sporadic; I kept losing the cleansing spray (rather, Felix would relocate it).

And as for being in progress, we still use a disposable diaper on Felix at night, and I'm nervous to try cloth options because he nurses several times throughout the night and pees a lot.  While he is fully potty trained at home, there are some outings where he wears a pull-up (like at the park: he is not about to stop playing to walk all the way to the bathroom and pee).  We have padded trainers, but I'm looking into getting a few pair of waterproof training pants.

For more info and inspiration, check out this post at the Frugally Sustainable blog.

The Sassy Pea Market

This morning my mom and I took Felix out to the Sassy Pea Market/Good Earth Farm up in Leander.  I'd heard about it because they sell local, pastured chickens and grass-fed beef, and I happened to notice on their site that they also had a petting zoo.  Maestra had the morning off of work, so we headed up there.

It was amazing!  I was expecting a store and a little corral with a sheep and some bunnies out back, but it was actually a child care center on a farm, with a little store off to the side that sells meat out of a little freezer in one room, and handmade wares (pottery, wooden children's toys, soaps, etc) in another.

You pay $4 to get into the farm area and they give you a handful of carrots to feed the animals and a map of the farm.  Rather than being a petting zoo where you have full access to the animals, they come up to the fence of their pens and you're able to pet them and feed them.  I'm sure the animals appreciate the separation from grabby little hands!

As if the animals weren't cool enough, everywhere you looked there was something fun for kids to do.  A gated fairy garden with a table set for tea, painted tree stumps to jump on, a gigantic "giant's chair" to climb on, a path through some woods with a play kitchen to play house in, a balance beam, a rope swing, a huge climbable tree, play houses, huge industrial spools brightly painted and used as tables, all hand made and hand painted with love.  I might have enjoyed it more than Felix did, and now my brain is whirring on how I can transform my backyard into something resembling this magic place.

They were unsure about one another

Hi goat!

He wouldn't get close enough to actually feed the pig

See how tiny the goats were?!

Beautiful climbing tree right behind the daycare

Dear husband, please make us one of these

Totally worth the thirty minute drive up to Leander.  We will be back!

Less is more

I think people sometimes get the impression that I must be one of those hyper-involved helicopter or snowplow parents because I take such an interest in parenting and because I continually try to be a better mother by holding myself to my chosen standard.  That's very far from the truth.  A good chunk of the time, less is more. 

A couple of weeks ago I was at the playground watching Felix play with another boy slightly older than him (he had just turned 2), and I realized after a few minutes that the father of the other boy was giving me the stink-eye.  Well, it wasn't full-on stink-eye, but it was definitely a quizzical sideways glance, trying to figure out what I was doing.  Or not doing, as it were.

This dad, we'll call him Lance because he was decked out in cycling gear, was very engaged with his little boy.  I mean, VERY engaged.  Excessively engaged.  Their stroller was full of sports equipment - regulation sized football and soccer ball, and a miniature (real, not play) tennis racket and ball - and Lance and Lance Jr were tossing the football back and forth.  Lance was keeping up an enthusiastic commentary - "Way to go, LJ, what a toss!  You're going to be a great football player!  Throw back to Daddy!  WHOA, what a catch!" and so on.

I sit calmly on the complete opposite end of the interactive spectrum when we're at the park.  If Felix isn't playing with another kid, then I fill the role of playmate and chase him, go down slides with him, play peek-a-boo, but follow his lead on what activity he'd like to do.  Run through the field?  Wonderful, I'll chase you.  Swings?  Great, I'll push you.  When he finds another playmate, I fade away to the background and monitor, ready to intervene before sand gets thrown, but otherwise I'm a silent chaperone.

When Felix approached LJ to play with the ball (throwing a ball back and forth is his ABSOLUTE FAVORITE), I faded back, thinking Lance and I would chat while the little ones played.  Instead, it became a three-way game and Lance kept up the commentary while including Felix.  "Throw it to me, Felix!  Oh, well that was a nice try, maybe next time it will go farther."

All the while Lance is glancing over at me, no doubt wondering why I wasn't jumping in or telling him "good job" every time he threw the ball.  And I'm watching him thinking, "Bro, just let the f^&*ing kids play!"  

Every time LJ threw the ball to Felix he looked to his dad for his response.  Every single time.  If his back was to his dad, he would turn around and look at him expectantly, like "How did I do?"

That is precisely what I want to avoid.  I don't want Felix to look for me for approval; I want him to just enjoy throwing the ball.  I don't want to teach him to be disappointed when it doesn't go far.  I don't want him to think that his self-worth has anything to do with how far he threw the ball, or with what I think about it.  

All of the commentary - the good jobs and the way to gos - just serve to suck the simple joy out of play by casting judgement on it, albeit a positive one.  And the oh, it's okays when the ball doesn't go far or when they don't catch it, is shielding them from a nonexistent threat.  They don't even know the difference between a good and bad throw until you tell them, so there's no need to protect them from disappointment.  A child doesn't need to know that it was a good throw; they already know that it was a fun throw.  

Fun should be the only motivating factor in a 2 year old's play, not good.  And they already know how to find fun, so your job is done!  Well, you know, other than keeping them safe blah blah blah... ;)

NYC Trip

We're back home in Austin after a whirlwind trip to NYC with my family.  We had all of my siblings in one place, with doesn't happen too often now that we're grown and scattered.

Felix did really well, especially considering the amount of activity.  He definitely let us know when he'd had enough.  When it's just the two of us, he has free reign to decide what he wants to do and when.  Even when we have to do something that isn't on his agenda, I've gotten really good at waiting for the perfect moment - when he's in between impulses and vulnerable to suggestion - to get him to the car or wherever.  When you're traveling in a herd of nine people, that isn't exactly possible, so we found ourselves saying, "Okay buddy, time to go," quite a bit, which is not something he hears a lot of and apparently has little patience for.

Our hotel view was AMAZING

Walking through Central Park with Dad and Uncle Adam

He spotted me.

In FAO Shwarz

The whole crew (Felix was highly uncooperative)

When did he get all that hair?!

Plane coming home

The Dilemma of the People-Loving Introvert

This week I'm flying this parenting ship solo.  John is on an extended work trip and is gone for ten days.  Or, as I've been thinking of it, an eternity.  He regularly takes two to three day trips that are more of an annoyance than a burden.  I don't like it, but we do just fine.  Ten days, internationally, with a 14 hour time difference - I'm just grateful that this kind of trip is a rarity.  

Being by myself for so long is really bringing my introversion front and center.  I can see very clearly how small my circle is.  That's good - I like it small.  That, coupled with some of the natural isolation and friend-dropping that comes with having a toddler who is ill-fitted to most social situations, has made a small circle even smaller.  This is only problematic when the entire circle leaves town at once.  Which it has. 

Even so, being alone is not a problem.  I like being alone; hence my introversion.  But I also like people.  I'm horrible at making plans and I have a perpetual case of the you'll-have-fun-once-you-get-theres.  I don't even mind crowds of people, provided I know them all and I have a "safe" anchor friend with me.  I tend to befriend extroverts, people who will (sometimes literally) pull me out of my space and do the plan-making for me.  Oh, have you met my husband?  I don't know that they come more extroverted.  At any rate, it doesn't take much social interaction to fill up my people cup.  But none at all for several consecutive days...even if I don't like making plans, I at least like having the option to make them (or not make them).

Potty Training Before 2

I'M POTTY TRAINED!  Felix has been without daytime diapers for almost two weeks now, and I think I've pretty much got the hang of it.

I say that I'm potty trained because Felix isn't necessarily leading this charge.  Since it's outside my general child-rearing philosophy to take the lead, largely preferring instead to let him show me the way, I should probably explain.

Shortly after Felix's first birthday I noticed that he could control his bladder to some degree.  One day we were waiting for the bath to get warm and he squatted down and peed on the bathroom floor.  I got a rag and wiped it up, then he peed again, and I wiped it up again.  Then he peed a third time, just a few dribbles, with a little grunt that told me he was obviously doing it on purpose, just so that he could play with it.

Even being somewhat familiar with elimination communication and babies' ability to control their sphincters long before we tend to think they are capable, it surprised me.  I didn't do anything at the time with that knowledge, because the whole world of EC seemed pretty daunting, and I admit to having little faith that it would work.  It also seemed like a huge pain in the ass.  Sit my baby on a potty every twenty minutes while making a psss sound and hope that he connects the dots over a matter of months, in the meantime cleaning lots of pee off the floor?  Yeah...plus we had carpet.  No thanks.

Young and Moony-eyed

Today is our five year wedding anniversary.  Five is a good round number.  Five is something to stand on.  Five means we must be doing something right.

Was this that long ago?

Did we live here...for two and a half years?

Was I THAT BIG?

Was he THAT SMALL?

Or THIS SMALL?

Were we THAT DRUNK?  (Obviously this one is not chronological)

I wrote this in a journal not long after we got married, and nothing has changed.  We are still young and moony-eyed.

“i know that we are young and moony-eyed, and at the risk of sounding naive, it’s just so easy. it’s easy to be in love, i don’t stretch and we don’t meet in the middle, because neither has to leave where they are to be together. i’m proud and flattered and i have the ultimate freedom to never have to apologize for being what i am, to not be afraid to misstep, to not hold my breath. c’est une vie sans souci. it’s hard not to smile about it all, and why would you try to fight it.”

Recipe: Fat Pops!

When you eat a paleo diet, as we do, it can sometimes be challenging to eat enough fat.  A low-carbohydrate must also be a high-fat diet, and it's tough to be a fat-eater in a low-fat world.

If our routine weren't somewhat dictated by my husband's work schedule, we would eat a big fat breakfast and a big fat early dinner and that's it.  When I eat a big fat breakfast, I'm not ever hungry by lunch time, but around 3 or 4pm I'm ready to eat again.  Ideally, I'd just go ahead and eat another big meal, but John doesn't get home from work until around 6:30, so I need to hold out until then.  Those two or three hours are dangerously snacky.

I don't want to cook anything because I'm about to have to cook dinner.  I don't want to eat anything carb-y and virtually all convenient foods are.  Fruit and nuts just make me hungrier, and beef jerky is too expensive to buy often and too much of a pain in the ass to make often myself.  Most lunch meat is suspect, but even the good stuff doesn't do a whole lot for me.

Dreaded Twiddling

Can I just take a moment to talk about twiddling?

I hate twiddling.

Twiddling, diddling, fiddling - whatever you want to call it, I hate it.

I am, of course, talking about what older nursing babies love to do more than anything in the world: play with the other nipple.  It seems that some are more fanatical than others, and I think mine is right up there with the most eager and persistent of them.  One boob is simply not sufficient - he must have them both.

It's a compulsion.  He can't help it - he must keep trying no matter how many times I brush his hand away and try to distract him.  Anyone remember that cinematic gem Idle Hands?  He has no control over it.  His particular style is to flip his hand upside down in a manner that is very difficult to convey in words, he sort of twists it so that his fingers are pointing back towards his face, and slips his thumb into my bra and then passes it back and forth over my nipple.  Oh, my skin crawls just thinking about it.

It's worst when he's trying to go to sleep.  You would think nursing would be enough of a comfort, but if one chi-chi is good, then two must be better.  

It's obviously an extreme source of comfort for him, so I hesitate to deny him outright, but this is one thing where my needs come out ahead, because if I allowed it I would hate nursing him, and that wouldn't be fair to either one of us.  Every now and then I entertain the idea of just letting him go at it, in the hopes that once it isn't forbidden it will lose its appeal, but I never last.  Five seconds into it I've got goosebumps and restless legs like I've got the DTs.  The Dreaded Twiddles.

Having just spent twenty minutes shooing away his e'er-wandering hand, I needed to let that out.  I don't hate many things about mothering, but I hate that.  

Some answers!

WHOA.  I got a lot of response to the last post, and it seems I need to clarify some things!

First - I don't have a "No I-love-you" policy.  I do have an authenticity policy, and I won't force myself to say something that doesn't feel right.  If it's instinctual for you, gracious, by all means say it twelve hundred times a day!  That post was meant as an explanation for why I feel silly saying it to my son, but not to anyone else; it was not a how-to.

I will reiterate that the biggest reason I think I don't like saying it is that I feel like it's unnecessary (I might as well make a ritual of telling him before he goes to bed, "I am your mother"), and besides, seems to insinuate that there is another possibility: that I'm capable of not loving him, which isn't true.  It's like...if John came home one night and said, "Sweetie, I would never divorce you."  Well, I would hope not!  Shouldn't I be able to take that for granted?

A Case Against "I Love You"

I have a confession: I don't tell Felix I love him.

I am very conscious of not saying it, but if I try to say it, it feels forced and awkward and so I just don't.  I don't write about loving him, I don't talk about loving him, I don't tweet or Facebook or blog about loving him.  I freely tell other people that I love them without any hesitation, so what makes it different with my baby?

For a while I thought it was maybe that I felt silly since he couldn't understand me.  But that can't be it...I talk to him all day long, I ask him questions he can't answer, like which brand of pickles we should buy.  I tell him plenty of things that are beyond his limits of understanding.  Then I thought it was maybe that he wasn't able to reciprocate, at least in words.  But the point of telling someone you love them isn't to get a parroted response (is it?), so that can't be it either.

It isn't something that bothers me much anyway, so I let it go.

Epic Book Report: Unconditional Parenting

Unconditional Parenting has blown the lid off everything I thought I knew about parenting (which, admittedly, wasn't much).  It actually surprises me how blown away I am by the entire concept, considering that it isn't dissimilar to how I was raised.  Or maybe that's exactly why it's clicking with me.

It appeals to my logic.  Everything in this book is perfectly rationalized and incredibly well supported.  Like, with actual behavioral studies.  If I have any complaint about the book at all it's that there are parts that get muddy with research citations.  It's hard at first to get your mind around it, but once you do, you'll be in awe (or possibly horror) that you ever thought differently.

It's very difficult to even characterize unconditional parenting, because it isn't an XYZ technique book of how to make your kids obey.  Obey is actually quite the four-letter word.  It entirely circumvents the need to make kids do what you say. 

It's a gentle, empathetic approach to parenting that is based on mutual trust and respect.  It holds children in high esteem, it gives them a voice and takes their needs seriously.  It's a long-view approach that focuses on overall wellbeing and happiness rather than manipulating specific behaviors.  Most parenting advice tries to answer the question, "How do I make my kids be good?" and this book asks, "How do I raise a good person?"

A Day for Us

This is the second time I'm on the receiving end of Mothers Day, but I feel so much more like a mother this year.  This time last year I feel like I was still transitioning; I hadn't quite shed my old skin.  That process took longer than I'd thought it would.

I'm tempted to get overly sentimental, to say that what my mother always told me is true - that I would never truly be able to comprehend her love for me until I had children of my own.  I get it now, and I'll just leave it at that.

Before I go back to enjoying my day, I wanted to share a post from another blog.  Because I can't say it any better, and because it helps remind me that the work I'm doing matters, even on days that feel wasted and unaccomplished, even when it feels like all I do is sow but there's nothing to reap.

He's going to grow up, and I can't stop him.

Dear Moms with Littles

A reluctant note on that TIME piece.

Against my better judgement, I feel compelled to say...something...about this.  I don't know what though. Which train of thought to follow?  That Time wants readers, and putting a hot mom nursing a 3 year old who looks 7 will do it?  That these articles always pit working moms against moms who stay at home?  That attachment parents are always portrayed as extremists for following their gut maternal instincts?  That the misinformation about AP is rampant and arbitrary and completely lacking any basis in fact?

I'm not going to read the article.  I'm not going to read comments on the article (I promise you I've read them all before).  The title alone is enough for me to dismiss it.  But I can't let it go without saying something from my tiny cyber soapbox.

Celebration!

Yesterday was celebration day.  My brother graduated from Southwestern, he and his twin brother are about to have a birthday, and John's birthday is tomorrow.  Ma famille came in from Houston and Dallas (except for Claire/Aunt Dave, who lives in NYC),  I met The Girlfriend, Felix wore a bow tie, I made cupcakes (from a GF box mix, which was kind of a mistake), and everyone was merry.  Except for Felix, who was not feeling so hot, and barfed in the car.  Twice.

But at least he looked adorable, right?  Oh, Adam too ;)