Earlier today I was sitting at my desk at my new job (yup, I got a new job — I’ll get to that in a minute) thinking: I should really start a blog. I have a lot of ideas to shout out into the oblivion of the internet.
I went as far as to sketch out a great blog name and concept before reality checked in: I just started a brand new job — I’m kidding myself to believe I have any extra time to design launch a brand new blog. Continue reading
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Before we left on our big trip, I was kind of losing it — as in, waking up in a cold sweat at 2 AM losing it. A 12 hour flight and nine hour time change with a 8 month old — were we delusional?
Fortunately, one week before we were scheduled to get on the plane, a wise mama friend of mine shared a secret that I now believe saved our entire trip. Two words, my friends: Vacation. Rental. Continue reading
We are back! One week in Paris with our 8 month old. As it turns out, we were not insane to attempt this feat. Despite my rock bottom expectations, it was a pretty terrific trip. (Take that, Jason Good! France after parenthood is not impossible — although I still think you’re hilarious). When the dust settles and the jet lag subsides, I’ll come back and tell you all about our adventures… the good (unseasonably beautiful weather! phenomenal shopping during perfectly-timed annuals sales! a mostly happy baby!); the bad (turns out infants are not the most patient dining companions for the 3 hours it takes to eat dinner in a French restaurant); and the ugly (food poisoning. Le sigh).
In the meantime, take this post as encouragement that just because you have your own adorable, bouncing baby ball and chain doesn’t mean you can’t [insert far-fetched dream here]. You can still pursue your dreams, just as long as you’re open minded about conducting said pursuit while covered in a little vomit.
This is the first holiday season I’m spending in my own home since I moved away from my parent’s house at 18 years old. I can’t believe we’re not obligated to truck across the country on a cramped Continental flight, or that we’re opening our home to friends and family, instead of the other way around. I’m giddy.
We’re hosting Hanukkah dinner tonight — I’m making the latkes with a recipe from Smitten Kitchen. G’s best little buddy is coming over with her family, and I plan to take some choice photos of the two of them unwrapping their presents… just some wrapped up empty boxes, because to to the under 1 set, unwrapping gifts is even more fun than the gift itself. (Babies sure do know how to appreciate the little things). Continue reading
I didn’t really have much of a Parenting Philosophy when we had G. I didn’t want to purchase any baby books because I was pretty sure they would drive me crazy with their emphatic conflicting opinions. And since very few of our friends had procreated yet, I had few opportunities to observe (and subsequently judge) real live parents at work.
But while I was pregnant, I had heard about “the fourth trimester,” the idea that during the first three months of the his or her life, you should work to create a “womblike” environment for your newborn; ie. holding/cuddling baby as much as possible, feeding on demand, ignoring schedules, responding to your babe’s every little bleat and cry with whatever (s)he may need.
The concept made intuitive sense to me, so that’s pretty much how we operated. In this way, A and I bumbled through, learning G’s cues for hunger, fatigue, playtime, figuring out his inherent rhythms, and generally discovering that our little dude was — as far as these things go — a relatively “easy” baby… meaning he never cried all that much, as long as we stayed on top of his (generally easy to anticipate) needs.
Then… G hit four months old. And even though I had sworn I wasn’t going to torture myself by reading books on baby sleep… I caved. Because all of a sudden, our easy peasy little boy who had previously been sleeping in solid 6 to 8 hour chunks and seemingly trending toward a full night’s sleep started waking up every couple of hours throughout the night, like MAMA!!! FEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEED ME! Also, I discovered that while it’s totally sweet and bonding to serve as a womb impersonator for a 0-3 month old baby, once said baby (who, may I remind you, was already 10 pounds AT BIRTH) reaches 4 months old* and still can’t manage to nap during the day unless you’re doing your best womb impression by cradling/bouncing him maniacally on a supersized yoga ball, you’d be ready to wade through an entire library of conflicting advice to give your crumbling body a break and put that kid to sleep in his crib too.
So that’s what I did. I read a bunch of Jerky McJerk Jerk “expert” guides to sleep training, until I lucked out and discovered the one that actually works. It’s called the Sleepeasy Solution, and it is now our baby sleep bible. Continue reading
Last weekend, our friend Andy invited us to participate in the “First Annual Outlaw Soapbox Derby.” Now, Andy and his wife are of the can-do, hands-on, Make Stuff persuasion, while my guy and I would probably hire a handyman to hang pictures on our wall if doing so wasn’t mercilessly pathetic. So the idea of spending our weekend constructing soapboxes and illicitly racing them through a random neighborhood got us all Scrooge-y: we were way too busy; we had a million things on our To Do list; participating would screw up baby G’s lockdown nap schedule; not to mention we’re Just. So. Tired. Still, because we couldn’t bear to let Andy down, we said no to entering the contest but agreed (begrudgingly) to cheer them on for race day.
Fast forward to Sunday morning and I was still bah-humbugging the whole endeavor. I considered telling A to attend the race as our family representative so I could stay home and make sure the baby got his naps in. But it was one of those perfect Indian Summer days we get in the Bay Area, and the prospect of staying home by myself to subdue a leaning tower of dirty dishes without disturbing the slumbering dragino was just too depressing. So we blew off the nap schedule and piled in the car.
Would ya believe it? Not only did nobody get killed, or poke an eye out with that thing, or any of the other naysaying, school marm-ish warnings I was grumbling under my breath on the way to the race… in fact, it turned out to be a terrific day. A bunch of us showed up with our kiddos and friends of friends in tow, and we had ourselves a nice little hoedown in the sunshine (with some outlaw soapbox racing on the side). And as it turns out, people are much more forgiving of a group of hooligans showing up to blast “We Will Rock You” and careen through their very fancy neighborhood in homemade racers when several of said hooligans happen to be adorable babies.
Moral of the story? Sometimes you just gotta say eff the To-Do list and join your friends for whatever ill-advised antics they’re getting up to. Here are some of my favorite shots from the day.
Who's gonna call the cops on these cuties?
Hooligans-In-Training
Dig the space-age bubble wrap and electrical cord togas
More fun than doing dishes
A dear friend of mine, with whom I see eerily eye to eye on most things, hates mom’s groups. Granted, she hasn’t had a baby (yet), so it’s probably more accurate to say she hates the idea of mom’s groups: a clatch of Lululemon-clad stay at home moms clogging the coffee shop with their SUV-sized strollers and noxious air of self-entitlement.
Ask me about mom’s groups two years ago, and I might have said the same thing. But then I got pregnant — and all of a sudden, all I wanted was to geek out on the intricacies of pregnancy, labor, and delivery with women whose abdomens were expanding as suddenly as mine. “Pre-natal Yoga” is a bit of a joke — or at least our class was — it would have been more accurate to call it “Pre-natal Group Therapy.” I loved the community, loved the insta-intimacy and shared understanding among a group of strangers, loved meeting women who understood how nauseated, freaked out, and ridiculously excited I felt because they felt exactly the same way.
After G was born, I tried to keep the warm fuzzies going by joining a facilitated mom’s group recommended by a new mama friend of mine. Part of me worried that the group would devolve into navel gazing gripe sessions — or, even worse, one-up(mom)ship: weird, competitive, back and forths between type A Super-Moms, out to prove they birthed the best eater, grower, pooper, napper, slash Happiest Baby on the Block.
Given the hormonal PTSD of new motherhood, my mom’s group might easily have gone that way. But it didn’t. Instead, we 18 moms and babies (the largest in the history of the program) hold absolutely no pretenses — everyone is riding the same roller coaster of parenting ups and downs. Yes, sometimes we wear Lululemon and turn the coffee shop into a stroller parking lot. But we also genuinely applaud each other’s milestones and breakthroughs and offer advice and support during the (endless?) challenging moments. Joining the group has turned out to be the smartest move I made post baby.
Mamas at the park
Now that our facilitated sessions are over, we continue to meet in smaller groups throughout the week and stay in daily communication over email (an email chain way more worthwhile than any BabyCenter newsletter — with all the babies the same age, we’re all grappling with the same stuff). In this way, we’ve supported each other through ongoing breast feeding and sleeping woes, and more recently, the struggles of going back to work, introducing solids, finding and keeping quality care givers, and navigating the relationship and family curveballs fate throws our way.
The early years of your child’s life are such an emotionally fragile time for a first time mom. A friend of mine, a mother of a toddler, put it this way on her blog: “You are always going to feel envious of somebody else’s parenting situation, for what you realize are totally inane things. See a family whose kid is eating and *gasp* actually sitting down for an entire meal in a restaurant while you chase after your little pest, trying to convince him he’s not allowed in the kitchen? Read someone else’s facebook post about a 6-month-old baby who’s learned to sleep through the night like a champ? You’re going to start hating people — people you would otherwise adore, for the most ridiculous of reasons: they seem to know something you don’t.”
No one tells you this while you’re pregnant and starry-eyed waiting to meet your bundle of love: parenting an infant is LONELY. You’ll never feel more Woe Is Me than when you’re looking out at a world (wide web) full of parents who seem to be keeping it all together as you’re falling apart. That’s why I am so thankful to my mamas for their honesty and friendship. If they didn’t have my back, it would be that much harder to get up each morning and do it all over again.
Our little dragon will be 5 months old on Sunday! (And really, it’s not entirely fair to call him “little” — at 97% in the growth charts, he’s huge… at least for a baby, the same size as his 8 and 9 month old pals). Accompanying this milestone, I’m thrilled to discover myself getting a better grip on parenting. The first few months of Gray’s life I was just hanging on, using whatever spare energy was left over from taking care of him to bolster myself to do it all over again the next day (thank you, beer). But over the last few months as Gray has moved out of the fresh, fragile, floppy, brand new human stage, I’ve felt my attention freeing. And all of a sudden I have the mental space to attend to other parts of my life… like my relationship. My friends. My career. My sweet, neglected Alice dog.
This second wind arrived just in time, and I’m loving it. It’s set off a flurry of exciting conversations around our house. Let’s upgrade our 1o year old car to something with space for the dog, a couple of kids, and their associated gear (no, not a minivan, although believe me, I see the appeal — suggestions?). Let’s articulate what we really want out of our work lives (Answer: creative challenge; brilliant, inspiring colleagues; work/life balance; family-friendly flexibility). And while we’re at it, let’s get pre-approved for a mortgage and start investigating school districts!
It feels great to lift our heads out of the sand and start engaging with the world again from the vantage point of our new parenthood. SO, if you’re a freshly-minted mama reading this, wondering if you’re ever going to feel competent and in control again… hang in there. It gets better, and easier, every day.
Update August 9th: AND the winner is… Amanda West! Congratulations Amanda! Enjoy your GroVia’s and come back and tell us how you like them!
Since we had Gray, friends, family and Doublefab readers have been asking us how the whole cloth diapering thing is going. Answer: pretty great. My lovely sister in law gifted us a month of a local cloth diaper service when G was born, and we’ve been hooked ever since.
The service provides the cloth diapers, but we still had to invest in diaper covers. There are plenty of different brands on the market — enough to make a new mom dizzy, as I soon discovered after a little Googling — but allow me to do you a favor: Save yourself the research and just go with GroVia. GroVia sent me a few diapers for review and after comparing them to a host of other types, I can’t say enough good things about their product line.
In general, cloth diaper covers are pretty cute, but GroVia dipes go above and beyond with a sweeet selection of colors and some ridiculously adorable prints. They offer all-in-ones, as well as “hybrid” diapers which allow you to use their removable soaker pads or, in our case, cloth diapers from our diaper service. You can choose between diapers with snaps or diapers with “hook and loop” closure (like velcro, just way, way stronger).
My husband handles the night time diaper changes (bless him!) and after a few mishaps with other brands, he specifically requested we use only GroVia hook and loop hybrids (nothing like a 3AM blowout to make you brand loyal to diapers you can trust to do the job). We bought Gray a few more GroVias — and now our baby has the cutest butt on the block.
We use disposable diapers when we’re traveling, and the we give the GroVia disposables a big thumbs up too!
Sound good? Then here are two ways to give GroVia a shot. First up, you can enter to win my GroVia giveaway. Here’s what you’ll get:
1 Owl Hook and Loop shell
1 Soaker Pad Pack
1 Size 3 BioDiaper
1 Vanilla Wetbag
10 Tiny Bubbles Samples
If you already know you love GroVia and you’re ready to invest (or augment) your own stash, then check out the GroVia sale on Gilt Groupe. Starting TODAY at 12 EST, July 25th, Gilt is hosting a 5 day members-only GroVia sale, offering a huge discount on all GroVia products. Better check it out quick because they’ll sell out fast… www.gilt.com/grovia
WIN THE GROVIA GIVEAWAY!
Enter to win by completing one or more of the following, and leave a separate comment for each one you complete (including links to your original tweets) at the bottom of this post. Each completion qualifies you for a separate entry to win.
Winners will be selected randomly through
http://random.org
. No purchase necessary to enter. Giveaway ends at 11:59 pm PST on August 8, 2011 . This giveaway is available to U.S. residents only.
UPDATE 7/11: We have a winner! Congratulations to Caroline. Enjoy the pacifier set!
Dear me, dear Doublefab, I sure have missed you! It’s been far too long since I’ve posted, and while I have the world’s greatest excuse (learning to be a mom), I still wish I had more time to share the latest.
Long gone are those lazy days when all I had to do was lug my aching bod around and dream about the arrival of el bebe. Gray turned six weeks on Monday, and though I’m a better mom every day, I’m still in that phase where dressing myself in something not covered in spit-up and remembering to put my boob away when the UPS guy rings the doorbell could be considered an accomplishment.
Still, thanks to my cadre of wise mama friends, I am picking up new tricks of the trade and gaining motherly confidence with every passing day. I could go on and on about how proud I felt the first time he took a bottle, or the first time I nursed him in public, or the first time I took him out just the two of us (to baby yoga — so fun!) but then he’d wake up from his nap and I’d be covered in baby barf again before I could tell you all about how you can win way cool stuff.
The Hevea pacifier — BPA, PVC and phthalates free
Specifically, this pacifier set from eco-fabulous Danish baby company Hevea, complete with a BPA-, PVC- and phthalate-free 100% natural rubber pacifier, plus adorable organic pacifier clip and storage bag.
As a sleep-deprived new mom, I appreciate products I can trust not to pollute my precious newbie with creepy chemicals (just ask my husband about my fevered search for flame-retardant-free baby furniture — oy). No need to waste your scant free time screening this company; Hevea was built by a mama who’s as eco- and health-conscious as I am. Every single Hevea product meets the highest health and sustainability standards and is packaged in recyclable materials.
The Hevea pacifier storage bag: 100% organic cotton printed with soy ink
It’s funny how companies that care about this stuff tend to make the highest quality products that babies and kids love, and Hevea is no exception. The Hevea pacifier is ergonomically designed for a comfy fit — your sweetie pie won’t end up with an angry red mark from the pacifier smooshing his wee nose, unlike some other eco-pacis on the market that shall remain unnamed.
The Hevea storage clip: organic cotton and soy ink — so cute!
This pacifier’s natural rubber seems to magically soothe Gray no matter the situation. It’s our secret weapon on long car trips — a priceless find, as any mama who has endured a traffic jam with a screaming infant in the back of the car well knows.
Hevea also makes teethers and bath toys — if you thought you had to give up on the chemi-ridden rubber ducky, Hevea’s got your back.
Happy baby = Happy mama. Here’s how to win it!
WIN THE HEVEA PACIFIER SET!
Enter to win by completing one or more of the following, and leave a separate comment for each one you complete (including links to your original tweets) at the bottom of this post. Each completion qualifies you for a separate entry to win.
Winners will be selected randomly through
http://random.org
. No purchase necessary to enter. Giveaway ends at 11:59 pm PST on July 8, 2011 . This giveaway is available to U.S. residents only.
