Brenda currently lives in Stoneham MA, but grew up in Mineral WA. She is surrounded by men, with two sons, one husband and two boy cats. She plays trumpet at church, cans farmshare produce and works in software.
There’s a huge debate going on right now about Mommy Bloggers (a literary genre if ever there was one) and product placement. To sum up: lots of people read Mommy Blogs. These blogs are about daily living. If the blogs mention useful products in daily living, lots of people are introduced to the products in a positive, authentic way. This is hard to do in conventional media. Advertisers have figured this out, and started sending free products (and more!) to the mommy bloggers. Readers of Mommy Bloggers now get suspicious every time a brand name product is mentioned.
I’m personally suspicious that Amalah is on the payroll of Pactiv Corporation, a manufacturer of fine airplane plastic cups; a company clearly looking to branch out into a toy division.
It’s all just another salvo in the war between those who want to sell things and those who want to use their money for fripperies like college tuition and retirement.
I should mention, for the record, that this blog is no way supported by the “Blogola” industry. Accusations that I’m on the payroll of the Miss Wakefield Diner, White Lake State Park or Starbucks Coffee Company are entirely slanderous and I vehemently deny any such thing. Sadly.
Dear Starbucks,
Please consider sponsoring my blog. I have been praising you to the skies for, uh, about 15 years now. I drink your coffee every day. I mention that I’m drinking your coffee in every other Facebook update. If you send me a pound of Sumatra (ground for a flat bottom drip) and a coupon worth two mochas (Grande, two pump, non-fat, extra hot no whip mocha) a week, plus an allowance for one travel mug every two months, I’m you’re woman.
You should definitely consider my blog an amazing opportunity for you. I have a readership of roughly 5 unique hits a day, three of whom are related to me. Sadly, my mother and husband do not drink coffee, but maybe reading about it all the time in my blog will wear them down. My blog traffic has been steadily growing. In 6 months I’ve gone from an average of two a day to six a day! That means by retirement age I should have a readership of at least 30 a day. You can’t pass up numbers like that!
Really, think about it. I’ll be over here drinking Starbucks brand coffee while you do.
One of the blogs I enjoy reading is Slate’s Happiness Project. It is what it sounds like — a project documenting one person’s attempts to be happier in the living of their life.
I think if it were my project, I might pick the title the Joyfulness project. In my mind, there is a profound difference between joy and happiness. Joy is a deep emotion, which is not exclusive of pain or toil or struggle. In fact, joy is more likely in that environment than an easy one. Happiness, however, I see as a fluid and fleeting emotion; an easy-come, easy-go feeling. Joy sticks with you. Happiness is a gift, to be taken or given. Joy is won in the struggle.
Anyway, I appreciate the reminders I get from reading it to be intentional about my experience of life and to connect head-on with what matters.
I had one of the scariest 5 minutes of my life on Thursday. I have failed to mention it because, well, I went camping and it faded into the background.
It was a typical last-day-of-the-week when I finally headed out the door to go pick the boys up from daycare. As I turned onto their street, I saw the flash of lights ahead. No big deal. There’s always quite a police presence in Lawrence, and daycare is right next to an ambulance dispatch facility, so lights and sirens are extremely common. As I got closer, though, I noticed that the lights were largely blue. And that there were a LOT Of blue lights.
Closer yet, and I discover the entire block is sealed off by cop cars, lights blasting. Six or seven cop cars. Sealing off the block where my sons are in daycare. I start to panic but reason that it’s a long block — it could be anything.
The closer I got, though, the closer to daycare the center of the action seemed. By the time I got to the barricade, I was in full-out panic. I thought of all the horrible things it might be: a drive by shooting, a terrible accident, a murder. It could be my sons. They could not be ok. I hastily parked the car and ran (in unseemly for running shoes) to the nearest police officer I could spot. I explained to his back (he was watching ahead) that my SONS were up the street at the daycare. He waved vaguely at the other side of the sidewalk and told me I could walk to get them.
About halfway up the street, I spotted their daycare provider, on her front porch with all the other gawkers. She waved at me, dandling Thane on her knee. I took a deep, deep breath of relief. My boys were ok. Shaky, I went to claim them. She had no idea what was going on either. I nervously escorted my sons back down the block to the car, hoping that the fact the police hadn’t shooed the passers-by meant that they weren’t expecting a shootout anytime soon.
My hands shook as I clipped them into their carseats. I momentarily contemplated taking a picture of the fuss, but decided that was dumb. Police don’t block off entire city blocks for parking infractions.
One of the strange things about our modern era is that you never know what will make a big stir. The cops arrest one guy in Cambridge for (they say) throwing a fit and it makes the national news for like a week. 10 cop cars barricade a block in Lawrence, and it might disappear from the record without mention ever being made. I wasn’t sure if I’d ever find out what all the hubbub was about.
I did finally find out. A teen mom and two male thug/accomplices went to her baby-daddy’s house and drew a gun on him, threatening to kill him if she didn’t give her the child, who she then made off with.
Police said a woman, 19, showed up at her ex-boyfriend’s Canal Street home Thursday night with the three men.
“Give me my kid or they’re going to kill you,” Santiago allegedly told Elvin Rosado, as two big men loaded and pointed guns at him and a friend.
She lived in the house the police were surrounded. Apparently they were waiting for her? (What fugitive from the law is like, “Gee, there’s a jillion cops surrounding my house. Guess I’ll go check my mail and and then see what they want!”) It ended not-tragically, with her showing up at the police department with the child in tow.
It was serious. There were deadly weapons involved. A child was in danger. But it wasn’t a drug bust or something that makes me scared for the neighborhood.
It also comes close. I’ve seen that child’s toys in the trash on the curb on Mondays, as I walk to daycare. I’m quite sure I’ve seen the kid, even if I don’t remember. (On nice afternoons, the entire neighborhood is usually out on the front porch.) And it’s very hard to get over that moment where you wonder if your children are dead or in danger, and whether you’re 15 minutes too late to save them.
I’m very, very grateful this was a false alarm, and hope never to come so close to any alarm again.
The internet can be full of negativity. Twitter feeds and Facebook updates are often either a) inscrutable b) what’s happening at ComicCon or Blogher (what happens if you want to attend both?!) or c) complaining. I confess, I’m just as guilty of this as the next girl. Well, that and coffee-related posts. I had a few whiny posts playing around in my head. They involve having to schedule time to shower and the utter insanity of my next 7 days.
Instead, though, I thought I’d give a list of some things that please me, and continue to please me. Mt. Rainier and Adam, two of my top favorites
1) The great outdoors. Ok, this is no surprise given that half my posts this summer are OMG CAMPING! But I had forgotten or underestimated just how restorative and joyful it is to look at a horizon of mountains and trees and breathe an unhurried breath.
2) Lois McMaster Bujold What can this woman not write? And it all translates beautifully to audiobook (not universally true). This is how I’ve gotten through, uh, 6 months of pumping in the server room.
3) Sateen sheets. I already have trouble getting out of bed in the morning, but when my sheets are sooooooo soft and comfy it seems completely unfair. Then I get two boys bouncing on top of me, and I narrowly avoid a foot to the face and I get up. But man, those sheets are awesome.
4) My house/town. Every time I walk up the steps I’m happy. Every time I take a two block stroll to post some letters and make a deposit at the ATM, walking home past the crowds coming out of the local theater well… it’s an awesome home in a great location filled with the things I love best.
5) Northwest Art. I just love looking at it. It seems mysterious and ancient and reminds me of my long-childhood daydreams. Did you know that the NW was once called New Albion? If I’d known that when I was, say, 12, I might possibly have died from overexcitement. Two great tastes that taste great together.
6) Advice columns. I can’t get enough of them. My favorite was when two letter writers sent the same problem (from their opposite perspectives) to Anne Landers and Dear Abby on the same day.
7) The internet. It’s great time-sink, but it helps me feel connected and informed. Plus, I don’t think I ever would’ve written, despite wanting to, without the maybe-audience of teh intarwebs.
8 ) America’s Test Kitchen. Their recipe books are fantastic. I love how they not only contain really good recipes, but they define their criteria for good and explain the different things they tried to combat the different problems that arose. So now I have not only a great recipe but an understanding of what I can do if I ever want to branch out on my own.
9) The concept of tea. I still have this fantasy about the perfect pot of tea, the quiet moments, the stillness and listening, the poetry. Even when so many of my other daydreams have abandoned me, this one somehow remains.
10) Christmas. It never gets old. I never get past it. It is always a hallowed, golden time to me — full of light, possibility and the sensation of being set apart. I start wishing it was Christmas in about June.
What about you? What’s something in your life that continues to bring you pleasure?
Thane already has started looking like a boy, not a baby
I took Thane to his 9 month checkup last week. He doesn’t actually turn 9 months old for another 6 days, so I’m splitting the difference here.
To sum up the stats, Thane is tall, medium weight and right on target.
His weight is 19lbs 12oz (50th percentile). This increases to roughly 90 pounds when he falls asleep.
His height is 29 inches (80th percentile)
His head circumference (which I’ve never figured out why I care about) is 18 inches (70th percentile)
So far so good.
Thane has totally taken off. He’s a very speedy crawler. He easily pulls up to standing on flimsier and flimsier props. He knows how to get back down from standing (this is not always obvious to children). He can climb up stairs and down steps. He is very, very strong. He is morally opposed to lying quietly while having his diaper changed and twists his body with amazing strength.
Thane is also at the “huh, wonder what this tastes like?” stage. The other afternoon, I noticed he was chewing on something in the front yard. The “something” happened to be the treated, dyed mulch I had proudly put out on my flower beds. There go those 1000 brain cells. The next morning, it was a foam dinosaur sticker he found on the floor. While we were camping, in the shallows he’d pick up fistfuls of sandy lake muck and attempt to ingest them. The thing is, we’re not lacking for vigilance! He is just faster than we are, with preternatural spidey senses for finding overlooked objects with which to freak out the grownups in his life.
Foodwise, this is becoming a blessing. A child who happily masticates beauty bark will also make a manful attempt on cucumber. The preternatural skill for gnawing on various of his brothers toys also extends to Cheerios, blueberries and little mini-bagel things. I’m on a push to have him eat up the last of his babyfoods, because unless he’s STARVING TO DEATH (which, well, is not infrequent) he’d much rather feed himself than be fed. But man, that kid is messy. I think he saves food for later by throwing it on the floor. Rubbing your eyes is a BAAAAAD idea when the meal was chili and you insist on crushing it in your tiny fist. The prophylactic 3 oz of prune juice he gets a night darken his cute dinosaur onesies like the blood of his victims. (On the very plus side, the prune juice is working! The, er, issues he was having are much improved.)
So downside: puts everything he can reach in his mouth. Upside: puts everything he is served in his mouth.
The next two milestones on the list are talking and walking — probably the biggest two. For a while I thought he might walk in a week and a half — at grandma’s house. It only seems fair since he first crawled at OTHER grandma’s house. Now I think he’s going to need to work harder on cruising and standing before he’ll get to walking. He’s certainly strong enough, but he hasn’t made enough progress on balance. I’m almost certain he’ll be walking (God help us all) before his 10 month update.
Talking he is working on. “Da da” seems to mean, “Hey, you there. Person who can do stuff for me.” Grey is greatly affronted that Thane thinks he is “Da da”. I’m working on teaching him “Ma ma” but he just replies back, more intentionally and tentatively, “Da da?”
Grey has settled on a nickname for his sibling. I have started a therapy fund for my youngest. I suppose that there are worse nicknames than “Thaney-Waney”. I just hope it doesn’t stick.
Thane is an interesting combination of unutterably patient and demanding. If you keep changing the scene, he’s incredibly patient. He’ll sit in his stroller for a long time while there are people doing interesting things or if the stroller is moving. (He spent a lot of the time we were camping in his stroller. See also: puts everything he finds in his mouth.) He misses naps and is subjected to relatively gruelling days (doing things like swimming and hiking), without a murmur. Long car rides are a cinch, compared to what they were with a similarly young Grey. But once he gets bored. Hoo boy. He lets you know that he isn’t happy and you better change something, stat.
His sleep patterns are relatively regular right now. He goes to bed between 7:30 and 8, after having eaten a dinner of solid foods and consumed his 3 oz of prune juice. He absolutely ADORES books and will sit very quietly and attentively in your lap while you read to him. He generally goes to sleep quickly and quietly on his belly in his crib. Between 10 and 11 pm he’ll wake up or we’ll wake him up for a nursing session before bed. Around 4 he wakes again to be fed. At 6:30 or so he’s up for the morning. Grey gets up at the same time every morning. My poor husband, who gets most of the morning duty, is VERY TIRED. Grey can be placated with Avatar: The Last Airbender. Thane? Not so much.
Thane is still very grabby, although it’s fading. I haven’t worn a necklace in about 3 months, after he broke two of them with his wily ways. He has a tendency to have razor sharp claws that can do serious damage to noses, and he’s not afraid to use them. “Gentle” has not been a concept he’s learned yet.
Thane is boisterously energetic. One of his favorite things to do is play “tag” with Grey, as Grey runs back and forth and Thane lumbers happily after him. Those two boys love each other. In fact, Grey will try to wake Thane up on car rides because he wants to play with Thane. (I frown on this.) Thane takes it with good grace, although he’s a heavier sleeper than Grey was. Sometimes when I go to lunch, Thane will be fast asleep in his crib in a room full of exuberant kids.
I think I have started to see glimpses of Thane’s face — the one he’ll have when the babyfat is gone and his features stand defined. I think he’ll be handsome. I think he’ll look a lot like his father, although he may have my cheeks. I’m not really ready for it. I’ve enjoyed Thane’s babyhood so much, I am not eager to progress towards boyhood at such a quick clip.
Ah well. You cannot hold back time. And it is a joy to watch my son grow in health and strength, even if wisdom seems to be a lagging indicator. My happy, smiling Thane
I was lying in the summer-warmed water of a small New Hampshire lake. The sun was gently warm on my upturned face. Pines surrounded the lake with taller peaks framing the tableau. The air was full of the sound of happy children playing — the yells and shouts and laughter. My ears were stopped by the water, where it was blessedly blissfully quiet. I noticed I was far more buoyant than normal, with my nursing-large breasts and Tevas dragging the rest of me towards the surface. And for that glinting moment in the sun, I just WAS and it was good.
Later that afternoon — after a long leisurely tent-nap — I noticed my watch had stopped keeping time on that swim.
Every once in a while, the symbolism just comes down and smacks you.
We had a fantastic three-day weekend camping. We spent two nights at White Lake State Park, this time. The water was the best. When I was playing with my sons in the water, I had the rare sensation of being completely engaged. I was entirely present in the play, and not thinking ahead or behind or calculating or listening to something else or wishing that I was anywhere but where I was. I threw my laughing children into the air and caught them as they splashed in the water. I watched them discover what they could do in this unusual medium — sand squishing between small toes and eyes squinting against bright sun. I watched my husband, strong and lithe, play with the boys who look so much like him.
The camping parts were great too. We made a vast improvement by putting Thane to sleep in his car seat inside the tent. He was far more comfortable AND we had more room for important things like stomp rockets, rope for practicing making knots and marshmallows. My husband delighted in knot tying (really delighted — he was nearly illuminated with the joy of learning this new skill — and our tarp only took about 4 hours to get up!) Grey poked things with sticks and stayed up too late and ate his bodyweight in marshmallows and made his brother laugh. Thane? Well, Thane probably got the short end of the deal. He really liked the water (a lot!) but spent most of his time hanging out in his stroller, which is probably not as much fun as getting to eat dirt and rub pine needles into his hair.
There were, of course, tribulations. Notably, the first night was an absolute deluge. The rain was phenomenal. On the plus side, we had a drum-tight tarp to keep us dry, which it did. On the negative side, we therefore had a snare drummer playing above our head all night long. Also, Thane woke up inconsolable, which is really hard when we’re all in such a short space. I’m not sure what was wrong with him, and therefore I couldn’t fix it quickly and that woke up Grey and that meant, well, let’s just say we were sleepy by the time the weekend was over.
Also, let us discuss for a moment the word cheap. Cheap can mean inexpensive — a bargain. Cheap can also mean low-quality. When one encounters “cheap” firewood, perhaps one should not be surprised when it turns out to have been cut last week in a bog, where it has been stored since. It took me two and a half hours to get a fire going with said “cheap” firewood. I can usually get a fire going with one match using no man-made materials in about 15 minutes. (We used to heat with wood. I’m really pretty good at fire-building.) The tinder would go up, the fire would appear started and then in 5 minutes it would be dead. The cheap firewood didn’t just smoke, it steamed.
There was also a plague of frogs. If I had to pick a plague, I think the plague of frogs was probably the one I’d mind least. They were pretty cute little buggers, but TINY. There were so many of them that on a walk with Grey we could hardly step without imperiling the little froggy bodies below us. The forest floor twitched with the movement of perfectly camouflaged frogs.
Tiny little frogs everywhere!
I think we will go camping again SOON. I keep wishing we could go with friends or another grownup so that my husband and I could go witness the miracle of stars, or listen to the loon sing a night-song on the lonely lake. But even if my husband didn’t like camping (which he does), I think he would go just to watch the petals of the flower that is me uncurl and turn to the new-shining sun. The wilderness is manna to me. It is sunshine. It opens me up and drops my defenses. It makes me remember what I like about myself and forget my mantras of doubt, gloom and distraction. I like who I am in the woods.
Driving home, I couldn’t help but be excited by what we were doing, and had done. Already, a grand two trips in, we have traditions. There’s the “Miss Wakefield Diner” and their chocolate chip pancakes. There’s the spooooooky stories (not so spooky) around the fire. There’s rough-housing in the tent. There’s swimming in the lake. There are memories saved up against cold February days and the creeping sense of dismal sameness.
So in my “blog queue” I have a cute picture and I have a developmental update. The cute picture is Grey. The developmental update is Thane.
The deciding vote comes down to laziness. Posting pictures? Easy. Posting developmental updates? Not easy.
So here you go. I paid $15 for this picture. I removed for you the truly hideous border that used to surround it. There is one child in this picture that doesn’t look terrible. Happily, that child is my child.
This, my friends, is a ripoff:
I trust I don't have to point out which one is mine
Ok, so the girl in the upper left is pretty cute too
I’m still walking to daycare when the weather is nice. It’s just about two miles. I’m working on getting my body back to a place I’m comfortable staying. After I had Grey I realized that my body wasn’t going to miraculously return to prepregnancy state. Nursing, my normal amounts of exercise and food, none of that was going to get me back to where I used to be. I was convinced that it must be hormonal or thyroidal or otherwise not because of my actions, but before I called my doctor to discuss the possibility I figured I’d track my calories to prove just how virtuous I was.*
This was, shall we say, eye opening.
So I spent several months tracking what I ate and how much I exercised (doing a lot less of the former and a lot more of the latter) and I got back to what I consider my “set weight”.
Well, Thane is almost 9 months old. In another few months I’ll be into Thanksgiving and Christmas and the cold, dark times of year. It’s a lot harder to diet/exercise when it’s freezing out and there’s no fresh fruit to soften the blow. So I’ve resumed running an intentional calorie deficit. By Thane’s first birthday I hope to be back at my set weight, and from here on out only make sure I don’t gain weight.
But man, the reason people don’t usually do this successfully is because it’s hard. When you eat fewer calories than you burn, you (shockingly) end up hungry. Your body tells you that something is wrong. You get grumpy, cranky and fragile. My worst time of day is when I’m preparing dinner — I often haven’t eaten since lunch 6 hours ago and the kids require patience and handling and there’s traffic and I’m like-as-not on some sort of deadline and several times a week I’m doing it alone. Not only that, but I’m trying hard to make sure Grey doesn’t notice I’m dieting, because I do not want him to think that it is normal or necessary to count calories on everything he puts in his mouth.
Anyway, this is less about the woe of dieting than it is about today’s walk. My quest to return to pre-pregnancy has been working. I’m wearing the jeans I wore pre-Thane. Today I have on a rather fitted shirt which shows off my, uh, nursing-supplemented assets. And I got no fewer than four friendly catcalls during my two miles. Including one “Hey, you’re gorgeous!”
I know that I’m supposed to mind catcalls and find them 1) degrading 2) insulting 3) threatening. I must admit that I’ve never managed to do so. Here on my walk I find them … welcoming and appreciative. Welcoming because the guys (usually young to middle aged Latinos) doing the catcalling don’t seem to see me as outside their community — not some stuck up gringa, but a part of their town and their warm summer days. Appreciative because they’re usually saying NICE things. Their comments feel quite friendly. They are an invitation with no hard feelings if I don’t take them up on it (which, obviously, I don’t).
And I have noticed that certain outfits are much more appreciated than others.
Now that I’ve managed to terrify my mom and horrify my husband (“Are you sure it’s SAFE to walk to daycare?”), I’ll move on. It’s very hard, after you have had a child, to find yourself in your own skin again. I used to be a blonde. Now I’m truly a brunette. I’m a brunette with silvery threads wending through my darkening hair. The dimensions of my body shift and change with the demands put upon it. Very few of my blouses, for example, can contain my abundance, even though most of my pants fit. I haven’t been able to wear a regular summer dress in two years. My body has been swollen, shared, deflated, inflated, strangely hard, shockingly soft, blurred around the boundaries. And now it is coming back to me, to be mine again. I am the sole occupant, again. I may control my body with concern only for myself, after a long period where that was not true. (Well, coming up. I’m still nursing so there are still constraints, but they are more limited than they were.)
This requires a re-understanding of how I relate to my body — how it works, what it looks like, what I see when I look at myself, what others see when they look at me. This, too, is hard work. The only picture of me among the 141 currently on my camera
*I know that intentional weight loss and dieting can be controversial. I know plenty of people cannot lose weight for good reasons, ranging from eating disorders to hormonal imbalances. I have also learned that I do not have any of the conditions that would make losing my pregnancy weight unusually problematic.
When he was born, I labelled Grey a barracuda. But Saturday morning at 9:45 am he became a Pike.
Grey, on the left, with green noodle
It was amazing to see the difference between swimming lessons this year and last year. Last year he was wearing a swim diaper. This year he’s potty trained. Last year I had to change all his clothes for him. This year, he gets in and out of his own clothing. Last year I held him throughout the lesson during the mom-and-baby portion. This year he bravely jumped into the pool while I sat clothed, drinking coffee and pretending to read Virgil on the benches.
I think the part that got to me most was watching his enthusiasm, energy and concentration as he listened to his teachers and followed his instructions. He was trying so hard. No one could kick more vigilantly. No one bounced up and down and the water more vibrantly. He gave the swimming lesson everything he had, fearless and without holding back. And I took the place a parent should — quietly supportive on the sidelines.
Grey has a phenomenal, amazing memory. It’s been a full year since we went to swimming lessons, right? More than a quarter of Grey’s entire life has passed since last we went to the Y. But do you believe that blessed child remembers that there is a Starbucks right next to the Y and that if he behaves himself he is entitled to a chocolate milk therein afterwards? For sure he does. How he remembers this, I do not know because I SWEAR I didn’t bring it up, but he did.
My Truant Pen 