"Whatcha Gonna Do With All That Junk..."

Milo came in to the world at a very average 7 lbs, 7 oz. He is now 29 inches long and almost 19 lbs at 5 1/2 months. (And I wonder why I stay exhausted). :) He still nurses every 3 hours (sometimes less) and will only take a bottle of breastmilk begrudgingly after the appointed 20 minutes of screaming, shrieking and looking around frantically for me. Yes, to say I'm loved and needed is an understatement. To say that he has a healthy appetite is an even bigger one.

I love that random people want to point this out to me. They NEED to tell me how big he is. (Kinda like the "you haven't had that baby yet??" comments when I was 54 weeks pregnant and ready to pop). Something about a chunky baby with big leg rolls makes people lose their mind. Although I have to agree, my son's cheeks are pretty delicious. :) So just for fun, here are a few of the comments I've {we've} received- especially as of late:


1. "That looks like it hurts." (Referring to me carrying Milo with one arm. And no, it doesn't hurt. Because my arm is actually numb).

2. "What are you feeding that guy??" (small animals and badly-behaved little children).


3. "Well, just look at those leg rolls. Hope nothing's hiding in there." (First of all, um, gross? And secondly- what exactly would one hide in their rolls? Like, oops- THERE'S his binky! I knew I put it somewhere...)


4. "That's a big baby! What is he, about 11-12 months?" (Nope, he just wears 12-18 month clothes...)


5. "You've certainly got your hands full." {snickering and shaking head}. This one KILLS me. I'm not sure it's actually in reference to Milo, but the fact that I'm dragging Ella to the car- mid-tantrum and in 95 degree heat- while hoisting Milo onto my opposite hip and wearing spit up on my left shoulder. Again, what is the appropriate response to this? I mean, it's kinda awkward. Maybe I should reply with something equally as obvious: "Hey, thanks! You've certainly got brown hair!"

Thankfully, for all of the inane comments I've gotten, there have been twice as many sweet ones. (But let's be honest, they're just not as fun to write about). :)

Ella and the Bee

I'm not trying to toot my own horn or anything, but I'm a good speller. Writing and reading were some of my favorite subjects in school and I loved to participate in our school's spelling bees. I actually made it to Dallas, Texas in the regional spelling bee when I was nine years old but quickly realized I was a bit out of place when I looked around and saw other kids sitting there with open dictionaries on their laps. {Dorks} I was the first one out at that bee (someone had to do it, right?) and thus ended my spelling bee days.

Until now. I've decided that perhaps those years haven't been in vain after all because as it turns out, we're living with a 3-foot tall, brown-eyed myna bird. I've already talked of having to censor myself and certain music in the car. No more wordy-dirds coming from momma (at least I try not to). But it's not even the four letter slip-ups that I'm censoring these days. It's mentioning going to the pool, or the beach, or that maybe we'll bake cupcakes later. Or that we're going to Target. Or (directed at Jake) are there any "c-o-o-k-i-e-s" left in the pantry? Have you seen her "b-i-n-k-y?" "Should she have "m-i-l-k" or water?"

I realized that we've got ourselves into a bit of a spelling rut when, the other day, Jake hollered to me from the kitchen, "hey babe, I can't find the "c-h-o-c-o-l-a-t-e...c-h-i-p-s (we keep a bag around for baking...or, well, eating by the handful, basically). But by the time he got to the end of the word "chocolate" and took a breath to keep spelling, I was already lost. It was almost 10 pm and my brain was fried. And you better believe Ella's on to us about it. She may not know what, exactly, we're trying to spell just yet- but she knows it's code for something we don't want her to know about. According to my mom and dad, we had a cat named "G-O-K" when I was three or four. Apparently, I named him that because I had heard my parents spell "C-A-T" a few too many times. As in, "do you think we should let the 'c-a-t' in tonight?" (He was a bit of a rogue, kinda wandered around and didn't technically belong to us, but we fed him and brought him in, especially when the weather was bad). So I decided that I could spell too. One night at dinner, I casually asked if we were going to let the "G-O-K" in after we finished eating. After that, he was always lovingly referred to as "G-O-K Kitty." And my parents- like us- realized the futility in spelling more than half of the words in our conversations because kids learn to make inferences awfully early in life.

That being said, I wouldn't be at all surprised if the first words Ella learns to spell are in some way related to chocolate or cookies or bubbles.

"The Cheese Stands Alone..."

I always wondered why The Farmer and the Dell ended with the phrase, "the cheese stands alone." Was it Linburger? Was it waiting around for the right glass of wine? Perhaps someone couldn't eat it because they would then suffer hours and hours of horrible stomach cramps, diarrhea and nausea. (On second thought, maybe the reason as to why the cheese stands alone is better left unsaid).

Over the past few years, I've had an on-again, off-again relationship with ice-cream. With the exception of those glorious ten months when I was pregnant with Ella (okay, make that eight months- the first two were not glorious by any stretch), I haven't been able to eat so much as one bite of ice cream without dire consequences and lots of toilet paper, if you get my drift. I tried taking Lactaid pills and was frustrated that they had little to no impact. So I thought, well okay. I just can't eat ice cream. Probably better for me in the long-run. I moved on to sorbets, even though I continued to stare longingly at the pints of Ben and Jerry's at Kroger and reminisce. Those were the good ol' days.

Then one day- not long after my eventual split with ice cream- I went to Starbucks and ordered my usual tall, non-fat caramel macchiato and within minutes of drinking it, I was racing home to the bathroom, doubled over with stomach cramps. It seemed that milk was the next dairy item to be put on the "eat this only if you want to feel like you're dying" list. Yogurt eventually followed suit. I mourned the loss of my Chobani greek yogurts I used to eat every day.

Milk and ice cream were things I knew I could do without, however. I knew I could drink Lactaid, eat other refreshing cold desserts, and I could even say farewell to yogurts, but I clung desperately onto my cheese. I said (to my small intestines, I guess) you can take my ice cream, dammit, and you can take my milk and yogurt, but if you think I'm going to part ways with my beloved cheese, you've got another thing comin'. Of course, it's not like I can very well tell my small intestines to shape the eff up and start breaking down lactase again. But I tried. I willed it to happen. I ate my cheese hesitantly, cautiously, and with a dimming glimmer of hope as the cramps inevitably set in.

It's been one week without cheese. I feel so alone. No more lasagna, no more pizza, no cheese on sandwiches, no chips and queso, no macaroni and cheese....no cheese and wine....I'll stop the list there as I'm sinking into more and more of a depression. I'm aware that in the long run, this is a much healthier direction for me to go, but I don't wanna. {said in whiniest voice possible}. I'm kicking and screaming all the way.


"The cheese stands alone,
The cheese stands alone
I can't eat dairy-O
The cheese stands alone."

Number Five

Five years ago on July 22, 2006, I married "a guy named Jake" (as he came to be coined in the many back-and-foth emails between me and the mutual friend who set us up on our blind date). I wish I could say I remembered a lot about that day, but it was such a blur and it went so quickly that only a few things (albeit, AMAZING things) still stand out in my memory. So, in honor of the day that changed my name- and my life :) - here some of the more humorous things I do remember:

1. It was hot. I'm talking sweat running down my legs under my dress, gross, sticky HOT. But hey, that's what happens when you're finacee proposes in December and you realize you're too impatient to wait an entire year to get married and have the December wedding you've always dreamed of. So I decided mid-July would work. (I still scratch my head over that). But I guess that means plenty beach trips to celebrate our anniversary. Thankfully, we "only" had 92 degree weather that day, as opposed to the 106 it reached yesterday.

2. I only got one bite of my beautiful cake- the bite that Jake gave me. ONE bite. I won't even say what was spent on this cake. Thankfully, everyone else raved about it, but I was pretty bummed that I more or less had to take their word for it since I was simply too busy to partake.

3. We decided to cut costs by hiring an {amazing} band to play for the first two hours and then loaded up Jake's iPod with some of our favorite tunes for the last 2 hours. Seemed like a great idea, right? Until our first dance song came on (which wasn't played by the band) and there was this awkward silence as someone was trying to find it on the iPod. *crickets* And then Justin Timberlake's "Like I Love You" blasted through the speakers. Definitely NOT our first song by a long stretch, but a good little comic relief, if anything.

4. We piled ourselves- elated, but also hungry and exhausted- into the limo that was taking us to our hotel, popped open the bottle of champagne that was chilled and waiting, and then asked our driver to please, for the love of God, stop at the nearest Wendy's so we could stuff our faces with a few Jr. Bacon Cheeseburgers. It was dire. And amazingly, they paired well with the subtle notes of almond, vanilla and cherry blossoms in our champagne.

5. The ironic thing that sticks out most in my mind about that day is my complete lack of ability to actually remember the finer details, try as I might to conjure them up. Which is why I'm glad we didn't spend tens of thousands of dollars on the event, even though it would have been incredibly easy to do. I remember thinking that everything would be thrown completely off if I couldn't have those centerpieces and that color for the table linens. But at the end of the day, I was just as married as I could be- just as happy as I could be. nd five years (and one day) :) after the fact, though the days may be long and exhausting, I can't imagine going to sleep and waking up beside anyone else. :)

"Mommy Kisses"

We are right smack dab in that cute stage when kisses can keep a trembling lower lip from becoming an all-out wail. In our household, they cure just about everything from eczema to a bloody elbow. On top of that, we're stocked with Dora and Snoopy band-aids out the wazoo, but Ella often declines them in favor of having me hold her in my lap for a few minutes and giving her "mommy kisses."

So it seems, for now, that my kisses have healing powers. And I'll gladly kiss her scabby toes and knees and goose-eggs as long as she'll let me because I know a time is fast approaching when the cuts and scrapes will go much deeper and won't be easily numbed by anything I do or say.

In her little two year old noggin, I can make anything better (well, almost anything). How I wish I lived in that sweet naivety with her, too. Instead, I have to continually remind myself that being "mommy" isn't defined by my ability to make things "better" or less painful. Obviously, there are days when that's part of the job description and it satisfies something deep in my soul to be able to comfort them in a way no one else can. But, as cliche as it sounds, pain is inevitable and it's counterpart, fear, is seductive. Our culture has made it increasingly easy to grow up believing that there are ways to get around everything that's difficult and especially, to be exempt from the latter two.

To let Ella and Milo believe this for themselves as well would be the ultimate disservice. I can't keep the pain from happening. But I can be there to give "mommy kisses," in whatever form it takes over the years.

The Grass Is Greener (No, Literally, It Is!)

One of the things I love most about our new house is that it has a front and back yard- with GRASS. Those who know us and have been to our last house know that our yard was, well, hardly a yard. We were good at growing weeds and our grass was best described as "ground cover." We bought the house as a starter home with plans to be in it for about three to four years and then put it on the market sometime between our first and second baby.

But the economy wouldn't have it that way. And as it turns out, Milo followed Ella by a close 20 months and I wasn't in any shape- physically or mentally- to try and move while pregnant. So nearly five years after we first moved in, my rambunctious daughter was confined to a deck and a small area of dirt behind it. After Milo got here, we finally decided that we just couldn't put off moving any longer. I was so desperate for Ella to have a yard to run around and be a kid in that I told Jake our next house could quite literally look like the Haney place on Green Acres as long as it had a decent back yard for her to run around in.

Turns out, we have an awesome backyard and a great house. We feel extremely grateful for both. But there have been several times in the past 2 weeks when I've found myself wanting more. Not necessarily a better or bigger house, or even a better or bigger backyard. But more...STUFF. I've been in the throes of brainstorming, decorating, and essentially re-doing every room in our house. (Ah, Pinterest, how I love thee). Milo now has his own room and moved into Ella's crib, therefore inheriting her dresser and other furniture. Which meant Ella needed "big girl" furniture, which meant spending more money. We now have a formal dining room...which, of course meant we needed a dining room table and chairs (and right now, we can still only seat four people at a time. Sorry, everyone else will have to get their Kabuto on and sit on the floor Japanese-style). Then there was a new kitchen table and chairs. Then oops- our old bedroom furniture wouldn't fit up the narrow back staircase. Voila! New bed and dresser for our bedroom. New sectional sofa for the living room. We haven't even begun to tackle area rugs, wall decor, art and new window treatments. I now refuse to let myself go on Etsy because of the 11 items currently in my cart that I can't purchase all at once because whadyaknow, we're not made of money after all.

I have no reason to wallow and every reason to be thankful. But for every minute I'm thankful, there's another minute not far behind it when I'm thinking, "I want....we need..if only..." My tunnel vision prohibits me from seeing everything we already do have. And then Ella comes up to me with her bright pink ball and says, "Mommy, go outside and kick the ball?" So I stop unpacking, stop playing decorator, stop thinking that our house would be just a bit more perfect if I could go ahead and buy that armoir I saw listed on Etsy...and we go outside to run around in our yard, our yard with GRASS...and I watch the sheer delight wash over her face as she runs around, giggling and squealing. This is all she wants. Even though it's a new house and new surroundings, as long as Mommy, Daddy and Milo are here, her world is okay and she's perfectly content.

So somewhere between two and twenty nine, we trick ourselves into believing that having more means living more. Having better stuff means living better. And sometimes, it takes running around barefoot in your backyard to bring everything back into focus. :)

My Week In a Nutshell

Life has been a bit hectic, to say the least. Here it is, in a nutshell:

1. We finally moved back into the city. Do you hear that? That's me breathing a deep sigh of contentment. Conveniently right behind us is a cute wine shop, an eclectic little coffee shop, several restaurants, and an antique shop. What more could I need? :)

2. I love everything about our house- except for the fact that we don't have internet until next Tuesday. Nothing charming about that. Since blogging by iPhone is difficult at best, I'll be making up for lost time next week.

3. Ella had her first scary-high fever last weekend. It just happened to coincide with our first night in the new house and her first night in her "big girl" bed. I was so exhausted that I didn't even have the energy to cry. Thankfully, she turned a corner yesterday and is much better now. Meanwhile, I keep looking for the box that contains my sanity. I swear I packed it somewhere.

4. Jake and I have decided we're DONE with big life changes for, oh, at least the next decade. Between Milo's arrival in February, Jake's new job "promotion" (of sorts) in March/April, and this move, I'm surprised that I haven't picked out but just a few straggly gray hairs. People ask if there's going to be a third baby and I laugh in their face. I do this because if I don't laugh, I think I might cry.

So that's all for now. Boxes are 98% unpacked, a few pictures have even made it up on the walls and everything is pretty much put away. I'm a bit anal-retentive about organization, so while we're still sleeping on a mattress on the floor in our bedroom, our pantry looks pretty spectacular (if I do say so myself). :)

Pictures to come later (once I figure out which box I put the USB cable in). :)

"Not Fair."

I- like the rest of the nation- struggle to accept a verdict that just shouldn't be. Every time I see Caylee Anthony's picture, I can see Ella's face instead- her big, inquisitive, brown eyes and mischievous grin. I begin to feel my blood boil, my stomach turn, the tears begin spilling over. I'm reminded of the occasional times I would catch my mom staring at the tv screen with tear-stained cheeks as yet another story unfolded of neglect or abuse. Of course, I could understand why it upset her, but it never fully resonated with me until now. When I became a mommy, suddenly, every story on the news became extremely personal. How could he leave his kid in a hot car in the middle of August? What possessed her to drive her car into the river and drown her kids? How could someone leave a 12-hour old baby in a dumpster? How? Why?? And so I will never again watch the news without thinking, "that could be Ella...what if that was Milo?" Unfortunately, at times like this, we come face to face with the sobering reality that we don't choose the families we're born into. And so on the one hand, I'm reminded how eternally grateful I am for the my own upbringing. My own sense of purpose is re-defined in the life and legacy I'm creating for my own children. But on the other hand, I struggle to come to terms with this word, "fair."

We hear it over and over again, don't we? "Well, sometimes, life's just not fair." Just the other day, I said those very words to Ella as she crumpled to the kitchen floor in a sobbing heap when I wouldn't let her have more goldfish. And there it was again- one of the first thoughts that crossed my mind when the verdict was read last night. "Not fair" is a sore understatement in a circumstance like this. So are we simply placating each other because we just have nothing better or more productive to say? Interestingly enough, studies conducted at UCLA in 2008 indicated that reactions to fairness are "wired" into the brain and that, "Fairness is activating the same part of the brain that responds to food in rats... This is consistent with the notion that being treated fairly satisfies a basic need." [1] Unfortunately, issues of "fairness" are everywhere we turn. It's not fair that some children slowly starve to death while I wash down three-quarters of Ella's leftover pasta and veggies every night that she won't touch. It's not fair that babies are born with HIV because their mommies have HIV because there's an epedimic and there's really no other alternative to life. It's not fair that the choices an adult or parent makes can forever influence the rest of their children's {sometimes short-lived} lives. It's not fair that cancer chooses to strike whoever it pleases without any consideration to age, family or prior health condition.

But I think the looming question underlying the issue of "fairness" is, "where's the justice?" How do we right the wrong? As soon as our children develop the cognitive ability to understand the concept of right and wrong, we begin the process of discipline and setting boundaries and we explain to them that there are consequences for wandering outside of those boundaries. Often, the worse the choice is, the worse the punishment is. And in the case of a murdered 2 year old- when something is this wrong, there is a burning indignation. Outrage. Shock. Maybe we even feel a sense of personal responsibility. We feel we shouldn't have it this good when others don't. I think deep down inside all of us, there is the innate desire go to sleep at night knowing the villain is behind bars, or the cure for cancer has been found, or that children won't go to sleep hungry. The American philosopher John Rawls says this: "Justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought."

And today, I- like the rest of the nation- fight against the growing paranoia that our institution has let us down, and that justice has not, in fact, been served. Again. So it seems, we will continue to go to bed each night with diminishing hopes for reconciliation of the warring parts of our government and ourselves. We wait for rectification. And we are reminded to hold even tighter to all the good things we have, because sometimes, that's really all we can do.

Distressing vs De-Stressing

I'm pretty sure I've always displayed a natural bent toward the arts. My parents will tell people it started when I scribbled silver crayon all over the back of their 70's orange corduroy couch when I was two (but really, in my defense, I thought it could use a little help). Writing, drawing and tinkering on our piano were things I always gravitated towards, especially since being an only child forced me to create my own fun.

The trend has continued, however as of late, I've found myself wanting to be a bit more adventurous, like getting into photography (although I really haven't done much with that over the last few months) and baking Ella's Yo Gabba Gabba cake for her birthday. I find something quite addicting about throwing myself head-first into some kind of creative outlet, especially one that seems involved and/or difficult. My problem is that I tend to romanticize the process and have exceedingly high expectations of the end result (read: perfectionism). So half-way into Ella's YGG-turned-WTF- cake, I realized that I might be in over my head. But I had stacks of cake and globs of fondant on every square inch of our counter and the thought of crying uncle made me sick to my stomach (or was that the exorbitant amounts of buttercream icing I was licking during the process?) In the end, a two day-long process ended with a pretty good-looking cake, if I do say so myself. Of course, it wasn't as perfect as I wanted it to be (although nothing ever is, right?). And I'm not even sure that Ella really cared as much as I thought she would because- wait, that's right- she's TWO. But I felt the gratification of seeing a project through to it's completion (and the fact that the completion was edible and didn't look like crap).

So the next daring project I'm throwing myself into is furniture restoration. Originally, I had looked at some furniture at Pottery Barn Kids, but since we're moving and moving costs money, I nixed that idea. Then I looked at Target, but felt I would be sacrificing quality for convenience (though I'm not knocking Target because God knows I spend entirely too much money in that store). I eventually ended up scouring Craigslist for a furniture set and came across this:

Although it's definitely in need of a little TLC and a fresh coat of paint, it's in great condition overall, and has a lot of potential. I love the girly, vintage-ness of it. :) So once again, I've plunged myself into all things furniture restoration and beefing up on a few blogs like this one and also this. Then, I went to Home Depot, sporting the same lost and confused look on my face that I see some men wearing when they're in the grocery store. An hour and approximately 70 bucks later, I headed home. And now, on this long July 4th weekend, the fun begins.

Did I also mention we're moving this week and that I'm painting both Ella and Milo's rooms in the new house?

Who bites off more than she can chew?? THIS girl.