My first Mother’s Day

May 14, 2012 in Infancy | No comments

Tim helped Adelaide create a precious Mother’s Day gift for me. Adelaide’s first painting on canvas is already hanging in my office at work.

Since Tim’s birthday is on Wednesday, we took the opportunity to celebrate both Mother’s Day and his birthday with a date night. Well, I guess it was more of a date “afternoon.” Adelaide’s Aunt Adrienne came over to babysit (thanks Adrienne!), and Tim and I went to see The Avengers 3-D. We hadn’t been to a movie since Christmas, and this was the first time we had been to the theater just the two of us since Adelaide was born.

After the movie we topped our day out by eating at Chifa, Iron Chef Jose Garces’ Peruvian/Cantonese restaurant. It’s a small plates restaurant, so we ordered five dishes to share between us.

Pork Belly Bao Buns
hoisin glaze, pickled daikon & carrot, togarashi mayo

Kobe Tartare
sriracha, pear, wasabi mayo

Chaufa with Scallop
stir fried rice, chorizo, mango, edamame, scallop

Humita
charred corn tamale, bacon, mushrooms, aji cream

There was also a special, but I can’t remember what it was called. It had clams, chorizo, white bean paste and panko bread crumbs baked into the clam shell.

For dessert we had chocolate cake, but it wasn’t any regular chocolate cake. It was a porter chocolate cake with raspberry compote and a banana-stout ice cream. My mouth is watering just typing this. It was an amazing meal with the best of company.

Then, I came home to this smiley little bug. Yes, a happy first Mother’s day indeed.

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For our mothers

May 13, 2012 in Uncategorized | No comments

I’ve come a long way since last year’s Mother’s Day post. Our baby is here, and I’ve been enjoying her company for a little over nine months. Adelaide Fen is a true blessing, and I couldn’t be more proud to be her mother.

My mother and my mother-in-law have both faced health-related challenges this year, to put it mildly. They are both strong, independent women, two of the most compassionate and selfless women I know. I am truly grateful to have them both in my life and for them to be Adelaide’s grandmothers. I have a lot to live up to in the motherhood department, but I’m up for the challenge.

Happy Mother’s Day!

9 months in, 9 months out

May 10, 2012 in Infancy | 2 comments

The first three months after babies are born are often referred to as “the fourth trimester.” It’s because human newborns are so much more dependent on their parents and vulnerable than other newborn mammals. While some mammals can practically walk at birth, I remember reading that human babies intuitively know only how to suck, swallow and breathe. They even have problems breathing consistently sometimes. I believe this has something to do with evolution and since we walk upright, we have evolved to a gestation period of around 40 weeks so that we can safely birth our babies’ big heads and big brains. So, the infant human baby is still developing during that fourth trimester in a way that is similar to how other mammals develop while still in the womb.

In learning about the fourth trimester, I remember feeling relieved that parents shouldn’t expect babies under three months to be on a schedule or to sleep through the night. We need only feed them on demand and let them be infants.

Adelaide turned nine months on April 28. Tim pointed out that she has now had equal amounts of time growing both inside and outside of me. “Nine months in, nine months out” as my friend Jennifer put it.

At her nine-month appointment on Tuesday, Adelaide weighed in at 19 lbs 11 oz (50th percentile) and 28 1/2 inches tall (75th percentile). She’s leveled off a bit on the weight chart, but our pediatrician said that was normal at nine months. Adelaide still has no teeth. My friend Brooke’s son is a month younger than Adelaide and he’s had six teeth for weeks. No teeth and six teeth are both totally normal.

We also talked to the pediatrician about food. Although Adelaide has loved all the solids we’ve given her, we’ve been slow to introduce them. Knowing she’s getting all her necessary nutrients from my breastmilk, we’ve just been experimenting with solids at night and on the weekends. And we haven’t even been doing that consistently every night. But that’s all starting to change. Our pediatrician suggested that we start sending food to daycare and giving Adelaide three “meals” a day. While she doesn’t really “need” solids as a form of nutrients right now, she will start to need nutrients from solids at around a year old. She’ll be twelve months with just a blink of an eye, so we’re going to step-up her solids intake. We’ve also started letting her play with a sippie cup and drinking from a straw is next.

We have a real crawler on our hands now (no more just hacking it with an army crawl). She has pulled herself up to standing in her crib (just once that we’ve seen – but hey, she can do it). She likes to clap and is happy and social, smiling at strangers and letting everyone hold her. People ask us all the time if she is always that smiley (answer: yes, usually), and when we pick her up from daycare they always say she just smiled and laughed all day.

Someone recently told me that it’s around nine months when babies really start to develop personality. Nine months in, nine months out. Six months post the “fourth trimester.” And so much to look forward to.

 

 

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Baby Toupee

May 5, 2012 in Infancy | Permalink

Have you seen the Saturday Night Live “ad” for baby toupees?

Well, I ran across this photo of Adelaide from back in March, and I just can’t help but think it looks like she’s wearing a baby toupee. It makes me crack up every time I see it.

 

UPDATE: They’re real!
BabyToupee.com. Well, I think these are meant as a joke – “Fun for baby shower’s, birthdays and more!” But, I don’t think these Baby Bangs are quite so tongue-in-cheek. They’re homepage boasts “I’m not a boy” – as if being an infant mistaken for the wrong gender is just too embarrassing.

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Normalizing Breastfeeding

April 21, 2012 in Infancy | Permalink

My attitudes about breast feeding have changed a lot in the last eight months since Adelaide has been born. I never questioned whether or not I would breastfeed. I just assumed I would if I could. Tim and I took a breastfeeding class at the hospital a few weeks before Adelaide was born. It was a one-night class that informed parents about the benefits of breastfeeding for both baby and mom – fewer ear infections and allergies for baby and lower risk for breast cancer for mom, just to name a few. Really? Bonus! The benefits I learned far exceeded my simple expectation of “good, natural nutrients for the newborn.”

 Breastfed babies have:

  • Less instances of gastrointestinal issues, respiratory infections, and ear infections
  • Less likelihood of developing allergies
  • Higher IQs
  • A decreased risk of obesity later in life
  • Lower rates of infant mortality
  • Less illness overall and less hospitalization

Check out page 12 of the Surgeon General’s Call to Action to Support Breastfeeding for a complete list!

Breastfeeding helps mom:

  • Lose weight faster
  • Control post-partum bleeding
  • Reduce the risk for ovarian and breast cancer
  • Working parents of breastfed children have up to 6 times less absenteeism

I used to believe that when a baby is old enough to “ask for it,” they are too old to be breastfed. I saw photos of two-year-olds breastfeeding and cringed.  I’m not sure what I thought – that the children would somehow be irreparably damaged for being coddled by their overprotective mothers? There wasn’t one single event that changed my thinking.

It started with that breastfeeding class, and continued with the breastfeeding support group I attended at the hospital after Adelaide was born. The more I read and the more I became informed, the more I realized that my previous way of thinking is just part of what our society has told us to think. Although breastfeeding is one of the most natural things in the world, it’s not normalized in our American culture. Women are not supported to get through the early humps and hurdles of breastfeeding, they aren’t supported when breastfeeding in public, working moms aren’t supported to breastfeed and pump in the workplace, and they aren’t supported to breastfeed their children past some arbitrarily picked maximum age.

My attitudes surrounding breastfeeding are changing, and as Adelaide heads toward the nine-month mark of exclusive breastfeeding (she’s had some “solids,” but no formula), I’m starting to think about how long we might continue to do it. I’m becoming a breastfeeding advocate while still trying to be considerate of those who make different choices, or are somehow forced to make choices different from their intended goals. Normalizing breastfeeding in our society is not going to happen overnight. It starts and ends with education, with a lot of compassion, support and understanding in between.

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Put in my place by Ashley Judd

April 12, 2012 in Uncategorized | 1 comment

Image from The Daily Beast

Okay, so I admit it. When I first saw the commercial for Ashley Judd’s new show Missing, I said it.

“Whoa. Ashley Judd isn’t looking so good.” Or, “Whoa. Ashely Judd is getting old.” Or some other such unflattering comment, that almost surely included “Whoa.”

Today I read an article on the Daily Beast where Judd fired back at the criticisms surrounding her “puffy” face.

“…I choose to address it because the conversation was pointedly nasty, gendered, and misogynistic and embodies what all girls and women in our culture, to a greater or lesser degree, endure every day, in ways both outrageous and subtle. The assault on our body image, the hypersexualization of girls and women and subsequent degradation of our sexuality as we walk through the decades, and the general incessant objectification is what this conversation allegedly about my face is really about.”

And, she’s right.  She goes on to talk about the different conclusions that are being made about her in the so-called legitimate news sources.

“When I have gained weight, going from my usual size two/four to a six/eight after a lazy six months of not exercising, and that weight gain shows in my face and arms, I am a ‘cow’ and a ‘pig’ and I ‘better watch out’ because my husband ‘is looking for his second wife.’ (Did you catch how this one engenders competition and fear between women? How it also suggests that my husband values me based only on my physical appearance? Classic sexism. We won’t even address how extraordinary it is that a size eight would be heckled as ‘fat.’)”

The point that really got to me was when she said, “That women are joining in the ongoing disassembling of my appearance is salient. Patriarchy is not men. Patriarchy is a system in which both women and men participate.”

I was participating in the patriarchy of my society, and it is internalized so seamlessly that I didn’t think twice about it. As a new mom, and as a mother of a daughter, these issues are important to me. Creating a healthy self-esteem and body image in young girls and teenagers is hard enough without the added pressure of a mother’s judgement or attitude – whether purposeful and self-aware or not.  I had a strong female role model in my mother, and I hope to provide careful elevated guidance to Adelaide. Sorry, Ashley Judd. You may not look the same as your 25-year-old self, but who does? You’re beautiful. Appearance aside, it’s your intelligence and articulate arguments that impress me most.

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Mega Million Dreams

March 30, 2012 in Uncategorized | Permalink

So for the first time in my life, I played the lottery. The buzz about the biggest ever Mega Millions pot was just too good to pass. Although I’m 600 times more likely to get hit by lightning and 19 times more likely to get two holes-in-one in a game of golf than win, I played anyway. My chances are still better if I play than if I don’t, right? I mean, somebody has to win.

I’m channeling the power of The Secret. And until then, I’m at least enjoying 24 hours of “What would I do if I won all that money” dreams and schemes. I heard that if there’s a single winner, the winning pot will be something like 19 million dollars a year for the next 26 years.

What I’d do if I won:

  • pay off our student loans
  • pay off our friends and family’s student loans
  • buy a house in Tallahassee to be close to my in-laws
  • buy a house in Central Illinois to be close to my parents (we can spend as much time with both sets of parents as we want since we likely won’t be tied to our jobs)
  • buy a couple more houses in a couple of awesome places
  • start a foundation to give out money to special projects and organizations we believe in (my new life would consist of lying on the beach and reading through grant applications)
  • travel – Tim has family roots in Key West and has been meaning to take me there, I’ve been wanting to take him to see Portland, Oregon – the home of my mid-20s (hell, we could buy houses there too if we wanted), not to mention traveling the world, hitting every continent and getting those pesky three last U.S. states I need

This is just the beginning. Oh, the THINKS I can think up if only I try.

Friday Funday

March 30, 2012 in Uncategorized | Permalink

My friend Brooke just sent this to me. (What’s really funny is that her little brother sent it to her.) I especially like the line about the foot cramps while sleeping – Yes! And the Tums by the bedside lamp – So true!

Last summer, this could have been me:

Wordless Wednesday – 8 months today!

March 28, 2012 in Infancy | Permalink


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Best part of the day

March 7, 2012 in Infancy | 1 comment

The best part of my day is the half hour or so I get to spend in bed with Adelaide and Tim each morning. Usually Adelaide wakes up around 5:30 or 6:00 am, and I bring her back to bed with me to nurse. I comb my fingers through her hair and can only imagine she finds it as peaceful and comforting as I do when someone does it to me. As she eats, I fall back to sleep and usually she does too.

The alarm clock is set to a local radio morning show. When it pops on, Adelaide startles, pulls her head away from my body and looks around. I hit snooze and we settle for another 9 minutes. When the alarm goes off a second time, we are up for the morning. When Adelaide is done eating, I move her to a seated position. She spies her dad and smiles.  She blows raspberries and grabs at her feet laughing. The click-clack of Hugo’s nails on the hardwood floor startles her again. Her entire body jumps, and she turns toward the bedroom door looking for him. When she sees him, she grins wide and squeals, her arms flail up and down.

As Tim and I regain consciousness, we all cuddle as a family. Tim and I make eye contact and hold the gaze an extra half second. We did this. We created this beauty. Even in our sleep deprived state, we can do nothing but smile at the power she has over us.

I mean, really? How could you not smile waking up to this every morning?

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