guilty

i am feeling really really about letting jolene cry herself to sleep for the past couple of naps. i have no idea what to do. my decision feels political and not only that i could be permanently damaging her brain? 

 

 

………??

The New Naptime

help. me.

Boston!

Oh my goodness gracious this weekend for the first time in what feels like years I got off the rock and to the big city!! So necessary… and surprisingly smooth. Jolene and my friend Hattie’s little one Ramona are kind of dream babies… relaxed, cheerful and easy going, even when nap time gets pushed back, which it inevitably does when traveling.

We stayed in the burbs on Friday and then took the t to the aquarium Saturday afternoon. Jolene was fascinated by the trains, very curious how there could possibly be so many people not looking at her). She sat on my lap, held the rail tightly and stared. For her, it was more exciting than the aquarium, where the main tank was under construction and the penguins were on vacation! Big bummer, avoid the New England Aquarium until 2013. The babies loved the jellies and the big heads loved touching the rays (slimy!) Jolene slept most of the time. We met up with some of my besties and walked a lot and smelled the ocean and wandered to Quincy market for early dinner, which brought many memories of middle school chorus trips.

(baby’s vest and sneakers are thrifted, the onsie has a whale on it and was made at my shower and the pants are babysoy. hair by yaya.)

I learned the key to traveling with babies is keep it simple. Go one place. The time that remains after a morning nap and getting out of the house goes by fast and rushing from one thing to another is not relaxing for anyone. Leave time to wander. You never know what you might find…

Yarrrrgh! I needed so badly to get away. That and  a day of pjs and silly college applications and cleaning and even a bit of Breaking Bad I am ready to get back to going hard. The school cancelation tomorrow is the icing on the cake, although tragically it will be devoted to all that homework I should have been doing…

That being said, you in the hurricane path get your hatches buttoned down. Love and strong thoughts to those on the coast. I hope everyone is okay.

Procrastination

..I’ve kind of forgot what that feels like. Everything in babyland is SO immediate, and if you do procrastinate, you really can’t do it for more than 10 minutes. I think ovens should have babies crying as the timer beepers…

Beanie and I had the house to ourselves today, which is a little cavernous and mostly liberating. In a perfect world, I would clean the kitchen minimally through out the day and then at 8pm blast an old episode of This American Life and clean clean clean. We dined on clam chowder and garlic bread (the recipe I used is from my real life big time buddy Sash at Fig Season) and I had a glass too many of this amazing Riesling (I am such a wana be wine snob… maybe one day), and had a loooong bath time (Beanie now regularly throws the washcloth out of the bath and then gets up on her knees and leeeans over the side of the tub to grab it. I think its a gravity experiment…), story/singing time. This is actually the way to go, when it can happen, because the time between going in the crib and falling asleep was about 7 minutes. Score.  So maybe that was procrastination? I really really should be either writing a book report OR a child observation report (wait hey isn’t that my whole life) but instead I have been…

-stringing hot peppers for holiday gifts??!!! really?!

-doing laundry

-grocery shopping

-okay for 20 minutes of beanie’s nap today I got cozy in bed and watched parks & rec. it was raining. its fair

– making granola.  I used a very modified version of this recipe ( I really like/ trust the food network recipies. Except for Rachel Ray). Okay I really don’t want to start my papers so here it is… (also you know what granola looks like so I am not going to take a picture.

-4 cups oats

-2 cups unsweetened shredded coconut

-2 cups slivered almonds

-3/4 cup veg oil

-1/2 c maple syrup (this makes for sweet granola, next time I will cut it to 1/3)

-1 cup toasted walnuts

-1 cup dried cranberries

-1/4 cup candied ginger, diced real small

Preheat oven to 350. Mix up the oats, coconut, almonds. Whisk the oil and honey and mix that in too. Pour into a sheet pan and bake for 45 minutes, stirring 3 or 4 times. While the big guys are baking, toast your walnuts and chop your candied ginger into teeny cubes. When everything is out of the ovan and cool, combine everything. Hide from your friends and family.

 

I don’t think Jolene ever procrastinates. Except for maybe taking naps. She puts those off. For real. If I write for one hour I can not write before bed. Go!

3/4 of a what what!?

Today (this afternoon) Beanie is 9 months old. This is a crazy thing. It is her first big agey milestone before she turns 1. To celebrate we will might go for a super long walk, we’ve recently discovered the best loop just down the road, I will do homework and Beanie will demonstrate her new found getting into a sitting position from lying down for an hour before she finally falls asleep for her morning nap around 11:30. Good lord. That whole “just when you think you’ve in a groove with parenting, everything changes” thing is SO TRUE.

And apparently the dragging herself around by her arms and the tips of her toes she has been doing IS in fact crawling… I recently learned in Child Behavior and Development that there are 25 accepted ways to crawl. I think the knees are tough for her because she spends a lot of time on linoleum (in the kitchen) and she’s usually wearing pants, and everyone knows pants + linoleum= ssssslippery.  I am trying to resist using the language of “she got into this, she got into that” because what she is doing is EXPLORING THE PHENOMENAL WORLD which should be encouraged, but the phenomenal world includes dog food (ew), the compost and CORDS. Babies (mine at least) love cords! I am going to start seriously bunny proofing, I mean baby proofing.

A word on that. I am trying to be a reasonable human being about baby proofing. I am not going to buy coffee table corners, a toilet lock, and door knob locks. I am working on covering the electrical outlets, putting cleaning supplies in high cabinets, and locking kitchen cabinets with sharp (blender) or heavy (pizza stone) objects in them. Also an “indoor baby fence” at the top of the stairs and around the woodstove (obviously I would never leave a baby alone in a room with a woodstove, gate or not gate). Here is a level headed post on baby proofing, the main idea being that children can learn what is off limits.  Am I missing anything important?

I had an ice cream sandwich at 4:30am when J woke up and cried for an hour plus. That was important. I am currently feeling more confident about the status of my schoolwork and less confident about the status of the election. I am not sure how I could tell Beanie that Mitt Romney is her president, the person looking out for her well being on a national level. I feel pretty confident that Romney could care less about me and my daughter. I am going to go read my sociology text book and try not to think about it, this week the chapter is on “Marriage and Alternative Family Arrangements.” I bet there is at least a paragraph on how the children of single parents are poorer than those of two parent families, maybe how they do worse in school and have  more discipline problems.  I need to gear up for class tonight because I am sure a certain loudmouth is going to spout some bullshit about how many people have children to “live off the government.” This is getting discursive. Time to be productive.

 

hi friends

i am in the midst of Beanie’s first cold, a big child study project, a college (re)admissions NIGHTMARE,the book Bowling Alone (for school, its a million pages long) and the largest laundry pile i have ever seen is reproducing all over my bedroom floor. i recently bought a snot sucker if that gives you any idea of whats happening up in here.

i am coping by means of excessive nature time, so i will share some pictures from our hike with bompi and yaya today but that might be it until everything settles down.

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