burnt toast life

…and a happy new year

It’s been forever. I’m blaming technology.

Or should I say, lack thereof. I had to turn in my work laptop which was functioning as my personal laptop for the past two years. No computer = no blog posts. Eric has been valiantly trying to resurrect my old, dead HP but it’s probably a lost cause. Meanwhile, at my new job I’m on the list to get a laptop but I’m not first in line, meaning I’ll have a few months of using this sad excuse for my lack of consistent posting.

When we last left off… it was forever ago. In the interim between then and now, Christmas happened, New Year’s happened, I started my new job and things are moving right along. I have to say it’s pretty weird to once again be a functioning member of the workforce. While technically no time lapsed between my last day worked at Rodale my first day with Altitude (besides the holidays), I had been laid off six weeks prior and let’s just say things had become verrrrrry lax in December. It was really great for things like coming in late due to oil change appointments and leaving early basically every day after taking two hour lunches, but now that I’m once again expected to be in the office and working 40 hours per week, it’s a real shock to the system.

The funny thing is I don’t even miss getting paid to do “nothing.” Having no tasks and no future with the company made me bored and irritated, and as hard as it is adjusting to busyness, it feels good to once again feel like I’m contributing something. Like, if I’m going to haul my ass out of bed at 6AM, shower, dress, drop my kids off, and drive 40 minutes, it might as well be for something of value to someone. I’m very pleased so far with my new company and everyone has been over-the-top welcoming and kind. Really, my only complaint is that I need a laptop so I can blog.

On the baby front, I have my first ultrasound tomorrow. Eep! I truly have no symptoms, besides random waves of nausea that last for no longer than 15 minutes at a time. I am positively dreading telling my new employer that I’m preggo and I don’t know why. I think they will react well – besides asking the obvious question, “Are you intending to come back, or do you have an untapped trust fund which would allow you to put three kids in daycare?”

The truth is I don’t know and I didn’t plan that far ahead. It’s weird for me because I’m a planner, and a control freak, and not planning is the antithesis of everything I stand for. I guess in my mind having this baby (and the others) is way too important and since the problem had no solution, I pushed forward despite it being a crazy idea. At first I stayed calm and believed a solution would just appear. Now as things progress, I’m starting to panic a little. I still have a lot of time… but we all know time flies when you’re having fun.

My sister is having her baby in July and as of then (if not before) she will not be watching my brood anymore. I called earlier this week to price out daycare and promptly threw up in my mouth. Whyyyyy is it so expensive, whyyyyy? I think at this point, the ideal situation would be to find someone reputable who operated an in-home daycare that was accepting more children. Or, to send them to my daycare of choice (which in the grand scheme of daycares, isn’t even that expensive, but still way more than what I’ve been paying all this time) on a part-time basis and somehow finagle our schedules to only have them in 25 hours per week (which would save us something like $300/month). A final option would be to find someone to come to the house, but I can’t imagine a person like that would be cheaper than daycare. I guess I’ll just have to wait and see.

As for what happens post-September… I’m not even going to think about that right now. One day at a freaking time. In other news, if you know Mary Poppins or anyone similar, please let me know. I’m in the market.

The kids are doing well for the most part. Liam has a cold this week and in typical male fashion is just being super dramatic about it. He just wants to be held and rocked while he moans and complains, which is fine by me to some extent. He’s now walking if not running full time, still getting into everything, and starting to dabble in speaking by mimicking our tones and inflections when he babbles. If we’re in the car and I say, “Liam?” he’ll always respond with,“Mmm?” It’s super cute.

Molly went from absolutely dead-set against potty training to 90% trained in a matter of 4 days. That’s just proof that I needed to be patient and wait until she was ready. Sometimes she wakes up dry, sometimes not, but as for during the day she rarely has accidents and was VERY excited to pick out a new potty seat to go on the big potty last weekend.

Other than that, not much, just trying to survive the bitter cold temps and constantly broken down furnace. I am tackling a Whole30 this month despite being in my first trimester, which I know is pretty ambitious. The Whole30 is completely safe to do while pregnant and I’m eating plenty, don’t worry. My main goal is to feel better, function better, sleep better, and also put off how long it takes me to show so I can delay telling my employer for as long as possible. Which I realize is totally ridiculous since I swear I already have a bump. Dammit.

Ok, wish me luck on that U/S tomorrow! The thing I want most (besides seeing a good strong heartbeat) is to finally be taken off the PIO injections. She’s had me doing oral + injections for 2 weeks as an overlap so I didn’t have a sudden drop in progesterone, but I am anxiously awaiting the day I can stop injections in my poor, sore, lumpy back.

Pray for me, friends.

the 12 best blog posts I ever read

Over the years I’ve been mentally cataloging the best blog posts on the interwebs. When I need a good laugh or a good cry, these are the posts I return to again and again. They’re the ones I email around to coworkers on boring Monday afternoons so we can all take a break from the monotony. They’re the links I share on Facebook on those rare occasions I bother posting anything to Facebook. These are the posts that make me want to be a better writer and a more frequent blogger.

I want to share them with you because you’re here, reading this blog, which proves you have excellent taste (insert laughing crying emoji here). This is also a fervent plea for more posts to add to the list – what am I missing? What should I be reading? I’ve been slowly building up my list over the years, but I know I must be be missing plenty of great content. If there’s a post or a blogger who you love beyond words, please, share the wealth!

Here are a few of my favorite posts of all time:

FOR LAUGHING

1) For if you’ve ever bought something from craigslist, or if you just enjoy overly dramatic storytelling:
The KINGDOM mirror– proving that you NEVER KNOW what is on the other end of a Craigslist ad. – Victoria Elizabeth Barnes

2) For if your husband thinks you’re nuts but your friends think you’re hilarious, and if you shop the clearance section at HomeGoods:
And that’s why you should learn to pick your battles – The Blogess

3) For if you’ve ever considered buying something from a super sketchy foreign website:
This is What Happens When You Order Ridiculously Cheap Clothing From Singapore – Suburban Turmoil

4) For if you read and silently judge children’s books:
All of my Issues with the “Goodnight Moon” Bedroom – The Ugly Volvo

5) For if you consider fart jokes even remotely funny (which I don’t really, but this is an exception):
The Fart That (Almost) Altered My Destiny – HaHas for HooHas

6) For if you’ve ever complained that life is hard after the year 1900:
Pioneer Moms Vs. Modern Moms – Victoria Fedden

FOR CRYING

7) For explaining infertility to someone who wants to understand but doesn’t understand:
Letter to New Moms – something beautiful

8) For exhausted new moms, especially those with difficult babies:
When Love Feels Heavy – N’tima Preusser (Coffee + Crumbs)

9) For every mother who has ever loved so hard it made them cry:
Sometimes I Cry – Motherhood and More

FOR COMMISERATING

10) For moms with young-ish kids who have totally become that microwave-your-coffee-three-times-and-keep-forgetting-about-it cliche and want to feel better about this season of life:
This stage of life? It’s hard – Austin City Moms Blog

11) For the default parents – yes, if you’re reading this, that’s probably you:
The Default Parent – M. Blazoned

12) For when it’s super hard to make mom friends and you just wanna get to 4th base already:
Dating for Moms – Unexpected

little red riding hood & the princess paradise bear

I like to think of myself as a semi-savvy shopper.

And while I don’t do any extreme couponing (because I have neither the time nor the storage space for 700 free tubes of toothpaste), I do participate in my fair share of discount shopping. Some things I don’t mind paying full price for. Some things I am vehemently opposed to paying full price for.

Example: Halloween costumes. Those chintzy polyester outfits that children wear for approximately 2 hours for one day of the year. I hate the exorbitant expense of Halloween costumes, especially since most of them are terrible quality and have a ridiculously high markup because, of course, parents neeeeed them.

I’m happy that Molly doesn’t fully grasp the concept of Halloween yet, and that I was still able to choose her costume for her (next year, I imagine I won’t be so lucky). A coworker actually came up with the idea for this year’s theme. She told me about a cute costume duo she saw for sale on one of those Facebook online yard sale sites: little red riding hood and the big bad wolf. I said, “Yes! Yes! I want them!” but of course they had already sold.

Even though I missed out on that deal, I still forged on with the LRRH/BBW theme in mind. Determined not to pay full price, I turned to my favorite of all discount sites… eBay! I found plenty of reasonably priced LRRH outfits but they were all made from that shiny, cheapo polyester, and many were missing vital components (like…THE RED HOOD). I scrolled and scrolled until I hit the jackpot – a handmade, beautiful costume with the dress, bloomers, hood, and a coordinating little basket, all for $14.99 (+$6.80 shipping). UM, HOW ABOUT YES PLEASE? I literally sent the woman a thank you note for offering such a beautiful item. It was the score of all Halloween costume scores.

Next up – BBW, which was a little trickier. Those fuzzy, cuddly baby costumes don’t come cheap, even on eBay. Most were in the $40-$50 range, and as much as I loved and needed the costume, I couldn’t quite justify that price on something he’d wear for one stinkin’ night. Just as I was about to give up and order one of the expensive options, I noticed something interesting in the “People Who Viewed This Also Viewed” section. The description said “Princess Paradise Bear Costume Size 12/18 Months” BUT the photo was exactly the same as the other wolf costumes I was looking at. The best part? It was $4.88 (+ $6.45 shipping). I was so excited! I figured it was worth the $11 gamble to see if it really was named incorrectly. (And since I was shopping in September, uncharacteristically ahead of deadline, I had time to buy a new costume if it did turn out to be a princess bear).

The week it took to ship the costume was excruciating. I kept wondering… would it be a wolf? Would it be a bear? Would it be the exact thing I was looking for and somehow only cost $11? I knew it sounded too good to be true, but I still held out hope. When the package arrived, I ripped it open and… hallelujah! It was the wolf costume I wanted! (Further research uncovered that Princess Paradise is actually a brand name, but the whole “bear” part still confuses me because it’s clearly a wolf).

little red riding hood & the big bad wolf (a.k.a. princess paradise bear)

little red riding hood & the big bad wolf (a.k.a. princess paradise bear)

So all told, I got a handmade/non-chintzy little red riding hood costume and a cute furry big bad wolf costume for a combined total of $33.12 – less than some people spend on just ONE costume. I was feeling good.

But don’t think it’s all sunshine and roses over here, because my next eBay shopping experience didn’t go nearly so well.

Last year I found this awesomeness right here:

My husband is a Star Wars fan, and I am a let’s-coordinate-a-super-cute-family-photo-Christmas-card fan, so I figured we could combine our loves and get some matching Christmas jammies. WELL. Hanna Andersson makes high quality apparel and it is (justifiably) pricey. To order the organic cotton, Star Wars themed, matching Christmas pajama sets for my family (not including the dogs) would have cost $244. YIKES. Then we also would have needed to pay for a photo session, order cards, and pay to mail all the cards. So no, we didn’t do that.

This year I figured I’d keep up my winning eBay streak and search for those same Star Wars pajamas from last year. I thought that since it was a year ago, maybe I could find them for much cheaper. And I did! The first results that populated were those exact same pajama sets that I saw last year, same photos and everything, only this time ranging in price from $6.99 to $15.99. I happily purchased four pj sets for under $50.

Now, one important fact to mention: I did notice that they were shipping from China. But in my little eBay fantasy daydreams, I imagined that the factories who made the Hanna Andersson sets from last Christmas were simply unloading their excess inventory at a low, direct-to-consumer cost. Or that they had done some extra runs on the sly to sell for themselves. I used to work in the apparel industry but I’m still quite naive as to how it all works. Those two scenarios both sounded plausible. High on my Halloween costume success, I imagined receiving perfect organic cotton Christmas jammies with Hanna Andersson quality and China-low prices.

As I said, this story doesn’t have happy ending. The first two pajama sets arrived 3 weeks after I ordered them and they were terrible. The fabric was very low quality (basically the opposite of organic cotton). They smelled like chemicals. And worst of all, the sizes were completely off. The pants were narrow and tight while the shirts were comically short and wide. It reminded me of this amazingly hilarious post from a couple years ago about the perils of ordering cheap clothing from overseas.

I went back to the listing to check out the return policy and noticed that the vendor claimed to have shipped all four sets, yet I had only received two of the four. So not only did I need to figure out how to return the horrendous short & wide pjs, but I was also stuck disputing the shipping claim and hoping for a refund on the two missing sets. Oh, and while the seller does accept returns, the customer (ME) is stuck paying for the return shipping. To China.

The moral of this story is that you win some and you lose some. Your amazing, too-good-to-be-true eBay deal might be a crazy cheap and awesome mislabeled wolf costume, or it might be a crappy pair of wide & smelly pajamas.

Hope you all had a lovely Halloween, and happy discount shopping to all!

trick or treat night with the fam

trick or treat night with the fam

ALL THE CANDY!

ALL THE CANDY!

when it rains, it pours

Drama this week. Unfortunately.

Eric is on a business trip in Texas all week – he left Sunday and isn’t coming back until Friday. Which is suuuuuper annoying because I was counting on him to bring the kiddos in to work for our Trick or Treat extravaganza on Friday. Now that he works from home, I thought it would be so easy… but no. I work 40 minutes from my house and as you can imagine, no one in my family was jumping at the chance to schlep my kids over to my work at 4pm on a Friday afternoon. Actually, most of them were already busy with their own Halloween activities that day. So boo.

Funny story… my ex-boyfriend’s sister is a SAHM who coincidentally lives less than a mile from where I work. I am still friendly with her (I think she follows my blog maybe? Brittany? Hello?). Anyway, in desperation I messaged her and asked if there was any way she’d want to earn some extra cash watching two little munchkins for a few hours. I think my message said something like, one is super easy and helpful… the other can be a handful but he’s cute so you forgive him for it. Fully prepared for her to think I was a total weirdo, imagine my surprise when she wrote back that not only could she do it, but that people asked her to babysit all the time and she already had a pre-specified rate and backup help (her younger sister, now a teenager, who was literally 2 years old when I met her and that makes me feel hella old). So yay me, at least that mini conundrum was solved.

Sunday afternoon my cousin Kate had her confirmation. I was traveling solo with both kids since Eric had already left (Molly: “Daddy’s up in the air-o-plane! Up in the sky!”). Of course that was the day Liam decided to be a complete terror in church. I made it through about 15 minutes of mass before he started screaming bloody murder. I had to take him outside (not even to the vestibule, but outside outside, that’s how loud he was). I walked with him, I tried food, I tried a bottle, I even strapped him into the car and drove around the block hoping he’d fall asleep – nothing worked. He just screamed at me for the next hour and I have no idea why. We all went back to my aunt’s house afterwards for refreshments and he clung to me the entire time, melting into a puddle of tears every time I left the room. I mean, he’s definitely a mama’s boy, but never that bad…

I noticed when he was open-mouthed and screaming into my face that he has half a molar popped through… so maybe it’s teething? I’m hoping. Thankfully he went down for the night no problem and seemed happy enough in the morning.

But the hits just kept coming. Liam was back to his old self, but when I got Molly out of bed she started crying saying her leg hurt. At first I figured it had just fallen asleep, but every time she walked on it or put weight on it at all she’d scream and cry and say it hurt. Thirty minutes went by and her condition seemed no better. I gave her some Tylenol and tried tapping her leg all over and twisting it this way and that, to make sure it wasn’t seriously hurt. She seemed fine when she was sitting, even when I was messing with it, but when it came to walking she was completely miserable.

The only incident I can think of that might have spurred this was a minor trip and fall on the sidewalk outside my aunt’s house yesterday. She got back up and didn’t even cry, and just had a tiny black and blue mark and a scrape (plus ripped a hole in her tights, which I was not happy about). She’s not normally that dramatic over boo boos, and I could tell she was trying very hard to walk normally and wanted to walk normally, not that she was playing it up for attention or band-aids or whatever. But for now I’m taking the wait and see approach.

My sister says she hasn’t walked all day (refuses) and has her knee wrapped up in an ace bandage (it’s clear that the knee is the problem). If any of you have horror stories about toddlers complaining of knee pain and it turning out to be something really serious, please share them now. I’m probably overreacting but it’s just frustrating and sad and so not what I want to be dealing with on my week of solo parenting.

Oh and let’s not forget the dog! As if on cue, Ryder is once again battling his skin issues, and has been relegated to the cone of shame. I called the vet this morning and thankfully he agreed to prescribe the medication without an office visit, so that’s a small relief. Still didn’t take the sting out of the fact that the prescription costs over $100. That dog…

Guys, all I want to do is go home, have a glass of wine, and watch The Walking Dead (which people have come SO CLOSE to spoiling for me all day!) Instead, I’m going to a late work meeting, running out the door, picking up both kids (literally, because neither can walk at the moment), racing to the vet (so far away and closes at 6pm), getting home, letting the dogs out (not normally my job and I hate it), dragging in the recycling bin, throwing something together for dinner, assessing Molly’s knee situation, and then most likely collapsing into bed.

Is it Friday yet? The husband I love to complain about is actually more helpful than I realized.

new name, new look

Friends.

My blog got an overhaul.

It’s not finished yet, but it’s finished enough. I spent way too many hours yelling at WordPress and pleading with my husband to “fix it please” and cornering the web producer at work for her wisdom (she is the only reason the header fits properly). I still need to add things and change things but for now, I’m saying it’s good enough.

I really need a profile picture that doesn’t suck. That’s harder to come by then I would have imagined.

At first I thought I’d have someone build the site from the ground up, but as it turns out, that was way out of my budget. Instead I opted for the paid theme route, since of course the free themes aren’t quite as pretty. The logo I commissioned from Fiverr, a site I highly recommend. She gave me a really great start and then I had a graphic designer friend do some tweaking.

Truthfully, I didn’t need to change my name since it didn’t have anything to do with infertility. But I did it because I wanted a fresh new start in general. I’m still going to keep all those old posts, but I’m forging on as Burnt Toast Life. My new url is easier to remember: www.burnttoast.life. If you want to keep on using the old one, that’s cool, it will redirect to the right place.

So coming up I plan on submitting a few articles to some essay sites, but it’s kind of awkward because I can’t decide whether or not I should post those here. They include backstory that most of you already know, so it sounds strange – mini introductions of myself to people who have been following me for years. But at the same time, I’d like to be posting something here… I’ve been slacking lately on that front. So much to say, so much to catch up on.

I’ll figure it out.

Hope you’ll all stick around for this wonderful Burnt Toast Life of ours!

Also, because I haven’t shared in a while, here are some recent photos of those little people who live in my house.

waiting to catch candy at the Halloween Parade

waiting to catch candy at the Halloween Parade

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Could they possibly be any cuter?

Could they possibly be any cuter?

FOMO sales & santas

I’ve been stressed out lately for really stupid reasons.

These are not real problems.

And yet I’m still stressed.

I know I’ve mentioned my extreme case of FOMO before. In case you didn’t know, FOMO is a real affliction that stands for “Fear of Missing Out.” This applies to so many facets of my life – it’s the reason Eric gets annoyed as I’m trying to rush everyone out the door to arrive at casual gatherings on time, because in the back of my head I’m always thinking, “…but what if we miss some of the fun?” FOMO is the reason I rarely say no to activities, even if I end up scheduling multiple things in one day. It’s the reason I get so bent out of shape when friends hang out together without me (those bitches).

Lately I’ve started to realize how much my FOMO affects me in other ways. Namely, discount shopping ways.

You see, I’ve always felt a little twinge of anxiety walking towards the entrance of Marshall’s. If I see someone walking slightly ahead of me, I’m always thinking, “What if she’s also a size 6.5 shoe and grabs the perfect leather booties on clearance before I can get to them? What if she is also coincidentally shopping for a gray and white striped storage cube and snatches up the last one?”

It’s ridiculous. Yet, this is how my mind works.

So you can imagine my distress when it comes to things like sample sales. We just had one at work and I was a bundle of nerves for the whole week leading up to it. It’s not even like I wanted anything specific – I didn’t even know what would be in the sale. But still, I was so nervous about it and kept re-confirming with my friend (thankfully, the sale organizer) that I would be helping her set up (in other words, getting a first look at All the Things). I panicked over how the setting up would play out… would I be able to set things aside as I was organizing them, or would that seem greedy? What if someone accidentally started going through the box of things I set aside? What if I missed out on the most perfect cheap thing ever? I kept getting angry at myself for freaking out over something so inconsequential, and yet I kept freaking out nonetheless. I tried to remind myself, 1) that I did not deserve or need the things more than any of my coworkers and 2) that there are people in this world with real, ACTUAL problems who were probably handling themselves with better composure than I was.

The sale happened last week and I got a huge box of stuff that I definitely did not deserve or need. With my items safely packed into the back of my van, speeding away from work, I finally breathed a sigh of relief. And felt stupid for ever being anxious in the first place.

And then Santa Claus came to town.

A little backstory on this one – ok, not much backstory, because there isn’t much backstory to give. About a week ago my sister mentioned Santa photos with a local photographer. Seems innocent enough, right? Except no, it’s not simple at all. You see, this particular photographer has the best Santa (who she creepily refers to as the REAL SANTA so many times that I’m convinced she actually believes it). Apparently there are 275 spots available for 10-minute, $50 sessions with Real Santa and last year they sold out in 7 minutes. This year they were predicting (and I think accomplished) a 30-second sellout. These Real Santa sessions were hot, hot, hot.

And yeah, he does look like a good Santa – real white beard, kindly face. My sister was sending me photos of last year’s Santa photos from the gallery and they were really cute. But the hype seemed a tad extreme… Facebook posts with numerous multi-paragraph explanations of how to secure your spot. Complicated instructions. A go-live time of 9 pm and imperative warning that the sellout would be SWIFT and BRUTAL. May the Wi-Fi gods and quick typing fingers be with you.

The way it would work was the link would go live at 9pm sharp, then 550 people would be able to register before the link disappeared forever. The first 275 of those registrants would get a guaranteed time slot with Magical Unicorn Real Santa while the remaining 275 semi-losers would be put on a waiting list. Spots would free up from illness/bad scheduling availability or from generous single-child households offering to share their ten minute time slots with other single-child households. No one on the wait list would know their order, or if they would have a chance at getting a session… they would all just have to wait it out.

A few things. First – I literally didn’t know about this hulabaloo until two days before it happened but suddenly, upon realizing the hype and seeing the (arguably convincing) REAL SANTA, I became very anxious about getting it for myself…I mean, my kids. And second – the Santa who came to my church last year for free and who was probably coming again this year was pretty good. I liked the pictures a lot.

But still. Real Santa. Magic Santa. Everybody-Wants-Him-So-He-Must-Be-Amazing-Santa.

FOMO Santa.

So I asked Eric if he had any “tricks” for quickly filling in forms and, to my surprise, he didn’t make fun of me for being so insistent over needing some stupid overpriced Santa pictures. He told me that he had it under control. At 8:58 I anxiously wrung my hands as he kept refreshing the registration link over and over again. Finally – at 9 sharp – the form appeared! He tried to right click to autofill the form and… nothing. Thrown off his game, he started typing as I hopped up and down behind him, yelling, “FASTER, FASTER!” and cursing myself for having the longest email address in the entire world. We were able to submit the form but had to wait several hours to see if we made the cut or got stuck on the wait list.

I was so anxious over this non-event that I actually woke up at 2am and saw the email – we were officially wait listed. Which is better than nothing but still… wait list? Dammit. My sister is apparently a faster typer because she got one of the coveted guaranteed spots.

And now that it’s over, I’m so much more relieved and honestly not that upset about it. Maybe I’ll get bumped off the waiting list and get to see real Santa and maybe I won’t. Either way I’ll get a cute photo of my kids sitting on some bearded man’s lap (screaming bloody murder I’m sure) and it will all turn out fine.

I repeat: THESE ARE NOT REAL PROBLEMS.

My next annoyingly stressful FOMO event is happening this Friday. There’s this huge rummage sale in a swanky town and I’ve been driving my two shopping addict friends nuts about it. I’m so anxious – for myself, but also for them because I invited them to go with me and promised lots of good stuff. We’ve been going over “the gameplan” on a daily basis and at this point we’re arriving two hours early to stand in line before it opens.

And after that, maybe my nerves will calm down again.

Until the next big sale, of course.

our village

He got another call this week.

I don’t know why I’m surprised. Despite how many times he has explained to me how good he is at his job, and as much as I don’t understand half of the skills listed on his resume, I still stubbornly think of myself as the brains of our relationship. And that’s not to belittle his intelligence at all… he’s wicked smart, otherwise I wouldn’t have married him. But I was always better at “school stuff,” whereas he’s better at common sense, life experience stuff. It’s always nice to have both in a marriage to help balance each other out.

And yet, here I am with my fancy, oppressively expensive liberal arts degree and the student loan debt that goes with it, and I have to fight for any job I’m lucky enough to get. Meanwhile, my community college educated husband is constantly being contacted by recruiters, even when he’s not actively job-hunting. I’ll admit, it makes me a little jealous. That has to be SO validating.

Most of these jobs require relocation. Some are easy to turn down —Detroit. Cleveland. But then there was one earlier this week, in Seattle.

Eric is in the tech industry, so any jobs on the west coast are guaranteed to pay significantly more. One of my non-negotiable stipulations for even entertaining the idea of a cross-country move is that I must be able to stay home with the kids (as much for practicality as anything else… I shudder to think what two kids in daycare would cost in Seattle. YIKES.) In other words… the salary would need to be what we make combined, or ideally more than that, especially since our cost of living would go up considerably.

It’s also understood that moving that far from home would be temporary. It would be the means to an end. On one hand, we’d want the life experience of actually living in another state. But also, it would help to catapult Eric’s career to the next level, and would then open up more positions here at home once we returned. We’d also try to do it all on a budget, and use any extra money to pay down our debt, therefore putting ourselves in a much better position once we did come back.

But it would take years.

It’s always fun when he first gets these calls. I dreamily Google “Seattle family activities,” start looking at apartments and picturing our stuff in them, imagine our once-in-a-lifetime cross country road trip to get there. When he mentions the salary range, I imagine my eyes light up with flashing gold dollar signs, like a retro cartoon character. Apparently, all it takes to put us in a new tax bracket is a cross country move.

Plus, of course, my babies. I could spend all day every day with my beloved children, and I would no longer miss out on the largest chunk of their weekdays. My life would be more awesome than it already is, and as I’ve mentioned before, it’s pretty damn great right now.

And yet.

And yet…

Whenever he gets these recruiter calls, I always say, “This is the problem with having a close family. If we had shitty parents and awful siblings, decisions like this would be so easy.”

And it’s true. It would also be easier if, say, we were already spread out all over the place. If brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles and cousins lived hours or plane rides away from each other. But the fact is, every member of our extended family on both sides lives within an hour of one another. As for immediate family, with the exception of my brother (who is about an hour away), we’re all situated in a 5 mile radius. Five. Miles. With the right amount of effort, that’s walking distance.

Moving to Seattle would mean no more Saturdays sitting poolside with the Harding clan, keeping an eye on all the kids splashing joyfully in the shallow end and taking turns putting our babies down for naps in the communal crib. It would mean no more Sunday dinners with the Hurds, which often includes marshmallow roasting in the fire pit after the sun goes down.

We’d miss the craziness of Easter at my aunt’s house and the Christmas morning jammie party at Eric’s sister’s house. If we needed to borrow tools or trucks or a cup of sugar, we couldn’t just run down the street to our choice of family member. Our trusted babysitters would go from plentiful to none.

Imagining Molly growing up without her cousins makes me want to cry. She wouldn’t go on daily park outings with her Nana. We’d make other friends, sure, and she and I would have more quality time together. But those potential friends are still strangers. When I think of what we’d leave behind, I already know what I’m missing.

We contemplated moving before we had children. Back when we were in the throes of infertility, with no end in sight, I was desperate for a change of scenery. We took a trip to Denver in hopes of getting a feel for the area, to see if it would work for us long term. Even then, without the added complication of kids growing up without family, the thought of missing out on everything felt physically painful.

Eric claims that I’m more sentimental than he is. That I’m the one holding us back. But in reality, I think he’s just as bad, but maybe not willing to admit it. He claims his parents would come visit, and I’m sure they would, but it’s not the same. To go from seeing our families weekly to seeing them twice a year, if we’re lucky, is a huge change.

When we were first married, we rented an apartment in a charmingly quaint city 25 minutes west of where we grew up. We still attended plenty of family events, but it wasn’t quite the same. The drive was annoying. We missed out on casual weekend get-togethers because we didn’t feel like driving there and back. Even though we were close, we felt too far away. We were both relieved that we had opted to rent and not buy, and vowed that our home would be in Nazareth. When we did start house hunting the following year, we had one requirement for our realtor: 18064 zip code only. No surrounding neighborhoods (even the cheaper ones). We wanted Nazareth. Our home.

If it takes a village to raise a child, then we are doing just fine where we are. Our village is full of loving relatives who are all just around the corner. Molly knows them by name, Liam knows them by sight. I feel at home in every single one of their houses. I love our village more than words can describe.

But am I limiting our potential by stubbornly staying put? Am I keeping us from greater things? It’s about the money, clearly, but it’s more than just that. How about adventure? How about excitement? Is my obsession with family ties actually hindering my ability to experience the vast richness this world has to offer? These are the questions.

So clearly I’m torn. Granted, there are plenty of what-ifs… It’s not like he has a job offer, just the theory of one. But if it came down to it, could we go? Could we really live that far from our family, even if it’s only for a few years? My head says yes and my heart says no. My bank account says yes and my emotions say no.

I don’t know the right answer. Maybe there is no right, no wrong… each side has pros and cons. What I do know is that no matter what happens, the future looks bright.

And maybe he really is the smart one. (Dammit.)

screen time, the alphabet, and me

Like many modern moms, I have a decent amount of “mom guilt” when it comes to kids and iPhone usage. I’ve seen plenty of fights for both sides – those who believe technology helps children learn, and those who insist that it stifles creativity and imaginative play.

For example, this gave me pause:

IMG_8056
(source)

Scary Mommy just did a post about this topic entitled “Why I Don’t Feel Bad About Giving My Kids Unlimited Screen Time.” The author brought up some good points:

So much emphasis is put on kids to be well-rounded and to excel at sports that it’s reaching a fever pitch. We place arbitrary rules on our kids because we are so worried about their childhoods differing from ours. Maybe we should pause to consider that our parents didn’t grow up with Atari, Nintendo, and Commodore 64s, either, and we turned out just fine, didn’t we, Generation X?

Our mothers survived without microwaves and cordless phones, and we are doing a pretty good job of surviving as grown-ups in spite of having all those things. We survived the technology of our generation, and our kids will survive the technology of theirs.

In theory, I think most of us (kids AND adults) could stand to get off our phones and connect more with the people around us. I’m guilty of it too – if I have a few moments of downtime, I quickly check Instagram. If a new email dings, I give it a read (but that could be more about my obsessive need to clear the red bubbles off the screen).

At our house, we don’t have set limits on screen time, but if I notice Molly getting too engrossed in her phone I take it away and direct her towards toys. I mean, the fact that she has a phone at all is probably controversial – but honestly, it’s been a lifesaver for situations such as 7 hour car rides. It’s not like she’s on the thing 24/7.

I always ask my sister for app advice and she recommended something called Endless Alphabet. It was $5.99 (the most I’ve ever spent on an app) but it looked educational, so I got it for Molly. It’s very cute! Even the background music is pleasant. Basically the narrator says the word, then the letters scramble and you need to drag each letter back to its spot. As you drag, the letter makes its sound (so as you drag P, it says “ppuhh-puhhh-puhhh!) and once you complete the word, the narrator repeats it again and there’s a short animation illustrating the definition.

When she first started using the app a few months ago she had trouble dragging the letters and would give up fairly quickly. But lately I’ve noticed her repeating the words with the narrator and dragging the letters like a pro. It’s also adorable because the words are more complicated than her vocabulary, but she is getting great at mimicry, so she’ll sit there repeating words like “gargantuan,” “abominable,” and “portrait.”

So last night she was playing with the magnets on the fridge. We have one that’s a stop sign and as I’m standing there not really paying attention, she points at it and says “O!”

I looked down and wouldn’t you know it, she was pointing at the letter O.

Then, with no further prompting, she pointed at the P and said “P!”

Holy shit, right? CHILD PRODIGY.

Next, she pointed at the T. But instead of identifying it as “T”, she said, “Tuhhh-tuhhh-tuhhh-tuhhhh!” and that’s when I realized this early stage letter recognition was 100% thanks to the Endless Alphabet app.

(Then she pointed at the “S” and said “C!” but I’m gonna go ahead and cut her some slack because the kid isn’t even two years old).

Tonight I wanted to test her skills, so I broke out the Elmo Alphabet letters she got for Christmas and quizzed her. No lie – she knew the name or the sound of about half of those letters.

Meanwhile, in an ironic twist of events, I tried to get a cute photo of her playing with the letters because I already knew I was going to write this post. So verrrrry quietly I took out my phone so that I could capture her engrossed in her task. But then of course she caught me red-handed and started throwing a tantrum when I wouldn’t let her have my phone. This is because her favoritest thing in the world is to sit on my lap watching all the videos in my camera roll. And when I say videos, I mean the first three seconds of one video before frantically skipping to the next one. Which is totally not annoying. At all.

So the lovely photo below was snapped after I had just insisted, “NO PHONE. NO VIDEOS. PLAY WITH THE ALPHABET.”

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As for screen time… I’m still on the fence. I can see both sides of it, really. The first picture I posted does make me sad. But you can’t deny the power of the mighty Endless Alphabet.

And if you’re like me (the kind of parent who lets your little one play with an iPhone while still questioning yourself at every turn), I highly recommend this expensive app. It helps soothe the guilt a little bit.

savasana = fail

As I mentioned last post, I’ve been reaping the benefits of the company gym now that I’m back at work. I do yoga Monday/Wednesday and Pilates Tuesday/Thursday. I love our yoga class – I was actually doing it well into my third trimester while pregnant with Liam. The instructor is the sweetest woman (she’s pixie sized, but claims she weighed 200 lbs while pregnant and then lost all the weight doing yoga. I’m skeptical, yet intrigued). The class is mildly challenging but not too intense. It’s such a nice break in the day.

In general, my mind is constantly going a million miles a minute. When I first began my practice, Savasana was so difficult. It took every ounce of strength I had not to laugh. Clearing my mind was next to impossible. But as the weeks and months went on, I got better and better at it. Eventually, I was able to (mostly) quiet my inner monologue and enjoy a few moments of total peace.

Aside for non-yogis:
“Savasana might look like a nap at the end of your yoga practice. But it’s actually a fully conscious pose aimed at being awake, yet completely relaxed. In Savasana—also known as corpse pose— you lie down on your back and relax your body and mind so you may fully assimilate the benefits of your asana practice.” –source

But not today. I don’t know what it was about today, but for some reason I felt like one of those dolls whose eyes open when you sit them up, except backwards. When it was time for Savasana, I tried to clear my mind and relax, but every couple seconds my eyes popped back open. I felt electric. I could barely lie still, let alone relax. In the space of 5 minutes, inside my head, this is what happened:

At what temperature should I reheat that casserole for dinner?
Why the hell won’t Molly say please and thank you?
It’s like, embarrassing.
Do I have bad manners in front of her?
No, I definitely say please.
Seriously, no more cookies unless she says please.
And no more grapes.
That’ll teach her.
If we ever refinish the basement, we should line the entire thing with built-in shelves.
Build them right into the wall.
How cool would that be?
I need to put all of the Steel Hawks home games on my calendar.
Is it seriously March already?
Dammit, why won’t that craigslist lady write back to my email?
I bet she sold those end tables to someone else, that bitch.
They were so freaking cute.
And cheap.
Craigslist is so fickle.
I really want to go for a walk today.
It’s finally sort of nice out.
But I have that 3 o’clock, and I bet it will run over.
Why do I even bother setting my step goal so high?
It is really nice when I hit it.
I cannot wait to find out if Krista is having a boy or a girl.
I bet they induce her next week.
I’m going to wait to find out the gender of the next one.
Even if Eric won’t.
He’ll totally slip and tell me.
And that’ll make me mad.
But seriously, we have plenty of clothes either way.
I should definitely go through all of them again and put them in nicer boxes.
Mouse proof boxes.
Actually I need to reorganize the whole attic.
And have a yard sale.
But when?
May is ideal.
But so busy.
Seriously, whatever’s left is going out to the trash.
I’m so over it.
Why did I marry a hoarder?
Without me, he’d be on that show, I swear.
It’s maddening yet endearing.
I save stuff too, I guess.
Like do I really need my high school notebooks?
Yes.
They’re funny.
I can’t believe we used to pass notes.
Like, paper notes.
Kids today won’t have those memories with texting.
Not like you save old texts.
Or can you?
I could go on Shark Tank with an app that prints out text conversations so you can save them.
I bet that already exists.
And wastes paper.
Crap, I never texted my sister today to check on the kids.
I’m the worst mom.
It’s OK.
They don’t even know.
I’m sure they’re fine.
Kohl’s cash starts tomorrow.
I don’t want any more clothes in this size.
But I have nothing to wear.
eBay or poshmark for my rejected clothes?
Poshmark intimidates me.
I really want to create a capsule.
But like, a nice one.
I need to get rid of all my Target clothes.
Isn’t 31 too old to have the majority of my clothes come from Target?
I’m not sure where 31 year olds with minimal budgets are supposed to shop.
Forever 31?
Not like I have time to shop.
Will my ski pants fit in 3 weeks for skiing?
If they don’t, whose can I borrow?
I do see a difference.
A little bit.
Baby steps.
But I’m afraid to try the pants on again.
Are we done here yet?
I really need to pee.

one-handed typing takes twice as long

Finding time to blog?

HA.

Now I’ve been back to work for close to a week and a half and yeah, it’s not awful. Not great but not awful. There were company-wide layoffs during my maternity leave and my team was impacted significantly, so really I’m just grateful to have a job at all.

Obviously you’ll notice from my lack of posting that I’m still getting the hang of this whole “time management with a full time job, husband, two kids, and two dogs” thing. I work all day, rush home to cook dinner as quickly as possible, then spend those precious few evening hours after dinner and before bedtime creepily staring at my children and trying to soak up as much of their cuteness as possible in a very short amount of time. It’s never enough damn time. I’m currently typing one-handed so I can hold Liam while he sleeps.

But we’re good, you know, we’re surviving. Getting into the routine of life again. I was granted the benefit of work from home Fridays for the next month, which is nice. As much as I’d love to work from home every Friday (or better yet, every day) forever and ever, I’ll take what I can get at this point.

Last Friday was a lot tougher, productivity-wise, than I expected. Working from home and watching Molly was easy. As you’ve probably noticed from my posts, she’s a very independent girl and excels at entertaining herself (blame it on being an only child). On work from home days before Liam came along, I got a lot done. Now… not so much. I didn’t notice it as much when I was home and not working, but toddler + newborn is not conducive to many hours of uninterrupted work. Who knew?

Going back to work also means I’m back at the gym. One of the huge perks of my job is the free company gym a short walk away, and the ability to use my lunch hour to take advantage of it. New for this year is a Pilates reformer class, which I am loving already. I took a weight training/interval class Monday called CoreWorks, which wasn’t that difficult as I was doing it, but 24 hours later my muscles strongly disagreed with that assessment. I spent the entire day today lumbering around like a moron because I can’t bend my legs correctly or raise my arms higher than shoulder height. It’s like the Walking Dead up in here, moaning and groaning included. Oh well, I legit have 50 lbs to lose in 5 months, so this is the price I pay.

I’ve realized, especially since going to the gym and finally being forced to confront my body decked out in spandex in front of full-length mirrors, that I have body dysmorphic disorder…in reverse. Rather than obsessing over a perceived flaw and seeing myself as fat when I really weigh 99 lbs, I have the opposite delusion. My brain thinks of me as basically average weight while my actual reflection in the mirror begs to differ. Blame it on being thin most of my life – I still catch myself grabbing for size Small or even Extra Small while shopping, looking at the proportions and thinking, “Yeah, that should fit,” and being genuinely confused when it doesn’t. I almost laughed out loud while observing myself in the mirror during Pilates today. Like, my body shape is so beyond how I think I look/how I think I should look, it’s almost funny. I caught myself wondering, “Whose thigh is that? Is that seriously what my thigh actually looks like?”

And before you say, “But you just had a baby!” …don’t say that. Everyone says that. I know I just had a baby, and the weight doesn’t magically disappear overnight, and breastfeeding may burn calories but it also makes you hungry as hell, and I have two kids under two so I should really cut myself some slack. I know, I know, I KNOW. But this is not who I am. I remember writing a similar post when I started gaining weight while on fertility drugs (which is actually hilarious because I’d LOVE to weigh that much right now). I cannot reconcile the person in the mirror, the person who has no clothes that fit, with who I see as myself. The ‘me’ I’m familiar with is petite and small. It’s a huge adjustment to just look completely different, you know?

But since I can’t cut calories in an unhealthy way because it would affect milk production (plus it’s like, unhealthy or whatever), I am eating a 90% Paleo diet and working out 4 days a week. Baby steps. I’ll get there. I just went through some old posts and it looks like after Molly it took 8 months to lose 50 lbs. I’d say that’s doable again this time.

Speaking of working out – I was at the gym on Monday, chatting with the instructor who knows I had a baby recently, and we inevitably wound up having a version of the conversation I’ve now had with friends, family, acquaintances, and strangers alike. It goes something like this:

“So you had a baby! Boy or girl?”
“It was a boy.”
“And at home… you have a… what?”
“I have a girl.”
“Oh that’s wonderful! So you’re done having kids now?”

And depending on who that person is or how exasperated I am about answering this question for the millionth time, I have a few different answers prepared:

“Nope! We want a big family.”
“Nope! We aspire to be the Duggars. Late start, but we’re still shooting for at least 10.”
“Nope! We’ve got three more on ice. It’s a long story.”

Sigh. I’m not sure what it is about the one boy, one girl thing that leads people to assume my family is “complete.” Granted, my situation is way different than most, and I don’t expect anyone to realize that I have three frozen embryos chillin’ in New York City and a strict personal ‘no embryo left behind’ policy. But still. It astonishes me that even complete strangers size up our family situation so quickly and automatically assume that I’m done having kids, and then react with bewilderment when I admit to wanting more. Which I would want whether or not I had the frozen embies. And frankly, the stunned reactions make me feel weird for feeling that way.

Once I give some variation of the response above, the person usually replies with,

“Really? Wow! Good for you!”

And I agree. Good for me. Having more than two kids may be expensive and chaotic. It may even be totally batshit insane crazy. But the fact that I went from wondering if I’d ever get to be a mom to contemplating the possibility of five children makes me feel very lucky, indeed.

Other than that, not too much going on. I’m a little pissed off at myself for procrastinating my last week of maternity leave, which is the same thing I did last time. I was insanely productive the first few weeks, and then sort of just regressed into laziness as time went by. I’m hoping to get a few projects done this weekend, since I do have off Monday for President’s Day. Somehow my 2-month-old has outgrown his 3 month sized clothing already and I need to switch out his clothes, again. Also, and please don’t be too shocked at this one – I never finished Molly’s baby book or made my big year in review photo album that I swore I’d make before going back to work. I know! And I know that at this point I should just give up on the stupid baby book but I can’t. It will get done. IT WILL.

Well friends, hopefully I’ll be inspired to write again sooner rather than later. I’m sure there’s more to say but one-handed typing is really no fun at all.