Weaning and OAMC

OAMC - have you heard of it? It stands for Once a Month Cooking, and I think it sounds like a fantastic idea. You spend one full day cooking your butt off, shove it all in the freezer and then enjoy your loads of free time. Plus your meals are more likely to be balanced with this little bit of forethought. I think I'm going to do it. Hopefully I can get Mike on board, since it'll mean blowing our whole food budget in one day.

The weaning of my son is going well. My goal was to breastfeed for one full year, and I think I may go past that. Still, without really trying more and more feedings are being dropped every day. I was worried because Ender is a very boob-dependant baby. When he was brand new he just spent hours and hours eating, which was very frustrating for busy-body me. He has yet to bring food to his own mouth and eat it, which is strange, but he does eat his solids now with great enthusiasm. Since he turns one year old in a little more than a month, I think complete weaning is a little overly optimistic, but daytime weaning is a definite possibility. Tonight he fell asleep on me without feeding. Amazing how quickly they decide to take these steps without even asking our permission! At this point, one week shy of eleven months old, he is feeding twice to three times a day. Once before each nap (which is one or two a day) and then once before/during bed. I can't wait to get my boobs back! This may sound weird to anyone who hasn't breastfed before, but the idea of having one's body to oneself is incredibly exciting.

Today I got some chores done, visited my dad very briefly to drop off some stuff, and enjoyed the beautiful weather. The whole family walked around the city, did some marketing and had lunch at a little polish cafe. I had goulash and dumplings, which I insist on reproducing at some point. Since the boys were sick, the 'to do' recipes have been piling up. So far on it are: hungarian goulash and dumplings, moroccan beef, lentil salad, chocolate souffle, and zucchini bread. Yummy. At the moment I'm making a very questionable crock-pot concoction which will most likely have bad results. Chicken, terragon, chinese eggplant and okra. Hmm. I think it will just be a tasteless mucky mess, but we'll see. It's the day before grocery day, and I had to clean out the fridge.

Due to the car breaking, we had to postpone travel plans to visit Ottawa. My friend had his baby mid-January and I wanted to go see her. I hope he's not having a too-hard time of it. She's two months old now. I had to go back and look at pictures of Ender to remember what two months looked like, and to bring back the memory of what he could and couldn't do, and what my own limitations were. It was a very different, and a very difficult, time. I found around two months that I was very hard on myself, expecting that by that time I should be 'good' at being a mom. The truth is, it's not about being good at it or not. A two month old baby is a lot of work. Full stop. And adjusting to being a mom takes a long time. I'd say I hadn't fully sublimated it until six or seven months in.

Until next time...

A post in which I lose my head, and then find it again

Babyhawk--are you as tired of hearing about this as I am talking about it? Probably. Well it was finally resolved. I have to say that for being a homegrown mommy-run business I am absolutely baffled at how rude, incompetent and completely useless their customer service representative was. She (self-admittedly) forgot to get my refund, did not respond to my calls and e-mails (though acknowledged recieving them) and brushed me off on our last call to say she couldn't deal with it at the moment because she was heading to a pta meeting. Um, ok? I called her boss. Bingo, next day I got my refund. It's not like me to get all nasty. Ok, maybe it is. But this was justified. 2 friggin months of waiting!

I've re-ordered by carrier on a Canadian website. Hopefully I have better luck. I would like to say I didn't buy another babyhawk, but I did. Just, buyer beware. DO NOT ORDER FROM THE BABYHAWK WEBSITE.

*ahem*

Today I took advantage of the lovely weather that has finally arrived and went for a walk, exploring a part of the neighbourhood I have never walked around. It was filled with cute bakeries and delis and coffee shops. None were stroller friendly, unfortunately, so I couldn't go in. But soon, I see myself spending a lot of time there. The sunshine was glorious. I think I got a bit of a sunburn.

This post is feeling skeletal because I'm trying not to focus on all the negativity lately. Still, it's hard to avoid talking and thinking about. I've been bummed out. Stressed out. I have too much on my plate, and when Mike is sick, it's all on me. Not to sound bitter, but when I am sick, everything is still all on me. So I guess I'm just a little sad about that. I try and tell myself there is always more good than bad. Glass half full and all that rot.

I've got things coming at me from every angle and I'm having a hard time keeping up. How on earth do people live in this day and age? I feel like every time I keep up with something, another thing is crumbling apart in the background. Be a good mom, your house is a mess. Have a clean house, your kid turns into Ted Bundy. Maybe not, but you get my point. There's no way to do it all. And where did this feeling of obligation come from, anyway? I've never been the type to think I had to do it all. I never cared if my room was messy or if my friends thought I was stuck up because I didn't want to go out. Now I've become a slave to the balance. Evenings out twice a month, sweeping every day, baths on all days that start with T. It's enough to drive a woman mad.

Let us simplify. Focus on being. Ender is sleeping on my lap, with his long-lashed eyes and sleep-sweat slick hair making him look more than a little like a mewling puppy born only minutes ago. He sighs with comfort, one tiny hand resting on my breast, his jaw suckling a nonexistant teat. He is perfection. He smells of sweet spoiled milk and another delicate odour that can only be described as the smell of posession.

My days will improve. Mike will not always be sick. The car will not always be broken.

*breathe*

I will keep on keeping on.

Listen here, you, I used to be somebody.

I feel like I'm becoming stupid. Dumb-er. Umm..you know. Less intelligent. There was a time when my brain, as well as my intellect, was a fine-tuned machine. I knew what I knew, and I knew it inside out and backwards. I was looking through some old sociology papers of mine. Here is an abstract (read: short summary) of a paper that I wrote at one point in time:

Abstract: Brainwashing has long been a controversial notion in understanding religious conversion. In this paper, I utilize Foucault’s notion of bio-power in identifying brainwashing as a form of medicalized social control over human bodies and minds. Discourses created by government agencies, psychologists, and the media have all contributed to understanding the adherents of new religious movements, pejoratively termed ‘cults’, as brainwashed and mentally ill. The counter-hegemonic manner in which some adherents new religious movements live their lives frequently defies the ‘common sense’ of normative societal practices, making them prime targets for social control, as they represent bodies which have failed their purpose in society. Due to some of the lost legitimacy of brainwashing discourses, child abuse accusations are growing as the new stigmatizing force against these groups. In both cases, discourses on the ‘truth’ of the danger of new religious movements are utilized as justification for intervention and control. Conceptualizing brainwashing as a form of bio-power brings to light the political forces and discourses which frame new religious movements negatively. In identifying widely unseen forms of control, there is greater potential for new religious movement members to be seen as individuals with full agentic capacity and rich religious experience.

Ummm...what? Genius, that's what.

I couldn't write like that now if I had all the time in the world. So what changed? For one, I am no longer immersed in academic culture. At one point in time, approximately the time that I wrote the above paper, I hadn't read a novel in over five months. My reading, which took up two hours of my day every day, was entirely composed of academic papers. I was filled with an urgency of importance. What I was writing mattered and everyone needed to read it. Except, no one did. No one, except other sociologists knew what I was talking about. It was baffling. I tried to explain the import of what I was doing. That religious minorities were being consistently marginalized. Anyone who was listening had their own 'pet' cause. No one wanted to adopt mine.

Three years later and still, no one cares. For some reason, even though I claimed I read that academic literature because I found it interesting, I no longer read it anymore. Maybe it's for lack of having anyone to talk to about it. I really miss having my brain work in overdrive, my heart pounding as someone concludes their argument and then the three seconds of silence as they await my retort.

Academia is the only form of competition I appreciate. Everything else is too sweaty and smells of India rubber.

So I suppose I shouldn't complain the way I do about my completely useless fifty thousand dollar education. You know, the education that sucked away 5 prime years of my life into abject poverty so that I could be a secretary post-graduation? It had its benefits. I'm sure if I hadn't of gone, I would have been consumed by the idea that my life was in some way incomplete. I'm like that. I tend to focus on the tiny missed stitches, rather than the fabric of life. I like to think of it as being detail/goal oriented. I'm horrified by the idea that I will wake up one day, an incomplete person, too old to fix what I find lacking. I'm glad I went to university. I enjoyed the hell out of it. I just wish that what it gave me wasn't so fleeting.

My sense of confidence in my brain, the ability to articulate my feelings with a rational backing, is all gone. It's something that I don't think most people realise (I know I didn't) that your academic field, no matter how immersed you are in it at the moment, no matter if you live and breathe it, is just like a language. If you don't use it, it's gone. I no longer talk sociology, and I miss its adjectives, its way of wrapping everything up in a neat little package and at the same time blowing it to smithereens. But it, like the toys of my childhood, needs to be left behind. It is a part of my former self, rather than my present. It was an adult decision, realising that I needed to do concrete things with my life to be happy, rather than resting in the realm of the abstract, where the only risks I took were using Foucault as a theoretical framework for religious persecution. Since then, I've birthed a person through my body. I've promised myself to not one, but two people, for the rest of my life. I may feel stupid sometimes, but I always feel important.

Onion Bhajis and Babyhawk

It may sound weird, but I think Indian cuisine is the ultimate comfort food. I'm not sure what it is about those spicy blends of cinnamon, curry and ginger, chickpeas and lentils, stewed meats and rich, creamy sauces. It's perfect for the middle of summer, the dead of winter, and as the spring has sprung, I'm craving Indian. So I'm sharing my recipe for onion bhajis, which was created entirely by me, and therefore is by no means authentic. But it was damn tasty! Feed them to your husband, who claims he hates onions. Feed them to your children, who say they don't like Indian food. Call them 'fritters' if you must, but no one can resist the oily, slightly sweet deliciousness of onion bhajis! Adjust seasonings to your taste, if these ones don't suit you and your family. We like things full of flavor at our house.


Onion Bhajis


2 or 3 onions, roughly diced
2 cups besan (chickpea) flour
1/4 cup white flour
3 tsp gram masala
2 tsp chili powder
1 tsp coriander seeds
2 tsp fresh ginger, diced and pressed through a garlic press
1 clove crushed garlic
2 pinches baking powder
salt and pepper to taste
water
oil


1. Mix together all ingredients in a large bowl. Add 1/2 cup water to your mix, and then keep adding it by the tablespoon until it becomes a sticky batter that holds together.

2.  Fill a roomy pan 3/4 of an inch deep with vegetable oil, and heat to deep frying temp. You'll know it is the right temp when a candy thermometer reaches 370 f, or a little bit of the batter sizzles when you put it in the oil.


3. Drop the batter in by tablespoons full. They shouldn't be too large, smaller than an egg is about the right size. If you put them in and they seem too big you can break them up with a spoon while frying. They'll make those tiny yummy crunchy bits that everyone likes to steal when the big bhajis are gone. Don't put too many in at once. Four or five bhajis per regular sized pan should be sufficient. Even I am guilty of crowding the pan, but this is a big mistake, because it will lower the temp of your oil and cause the batter to absorb the oil. Instead of deep frying, you'll be stuck with a sticky oily mess.


4. Flip the bhajis occasionally, so that they don't burn. You know they're done when they are a deep orange colour. Put them on a plate lined with paper towel. Enjoy!

I also tried to make burfi, but it never set. I'm not sure what I did wrong, but I decided to turn it into a tasty ice-coconut thing. It hasn't frozen yet, but I have high hopes for it.

Ender has popped another tooth today. He's such a little trooper. The last few weeks have been rough, but that little tooth gives me such a feeling of accomplishment! All our nights of tossing and turning, drooly sobbing, all of it has lead up to this. The ability to chew. It's no small feat. Despite my prodding, Ender has yet to show any interest in finger foods. The child will bring everything and anything to his mouth except foods. Which makes sense when you have no teeth. But I have high hopes that this one little tooth will change all of that. I will admit I'm going to miss making these gourmet purees, and I dread the idea of having to think of three square meals for this little person, but there's no way around it. My little man is growing up. Soon the milky sweet smell of his breath will be replaced by the smell of Doritos, his perfect baby-powder scented feet will grow and grow and grow until I tear my hair out with frustration at the number of shoes, sitting like nesting dolls, in ascending order, along the wall.

I can't wait.

An update on the Me vs. Babyhawk debacle:
The carrier still hasn't arrived. I stupidly thought that ordering directly from Babyhawk was a good idea. Definitely not. There are Canadian stores which carry Babyhawks and promise DELIVERY within a week. I ordered mine on the 27th of January. It took 12 business days to make, they tell me, and then got shipped, which can take 2 to 3 weeks. When 3 weeks expired, I e-mailed them to find out what the next steps are. Apparently 3 weeks as an outlier estimate means nothing. I was informed that I needed to 'wait'. This confuses me. What is the point of a 3 week time frame except as an indication that there is something wrong with the shipment when it takes longer than that?

The weather is turning nice, and I just want my money back so I can buy a different carrier and get out and enjoy it. The stroller, my 25 lb son, and 2 flights of stairs is too much to cope with, and I need my little man strapped to my back. I am very upset with Babyhawk. I do not recommend them, and I think they have crappy shipping policies and poor customer service. I have been waiting a month and a half, and still no one has apologised. As of Monday, I'm demanding my money back.

Figures that the first thing I ever buy online would turn out this badly. 

Eliciting a Reaction, or, You can't always get what you want the nice way.

So I woke up this morning, as usual, and went through my routine. Changed Ender's diaper, fed the fish, started up a pot of coffee. Played with him, set him down for a nap and watched some indie cartoons, he woke up and I climbed the stairs to wake up Mike.

As Mike watched the boy and I made breakfast, Mike rubbed his face.

"I'm so tired." This of course, as the person who had been up three more hours than he, evoked my ire. "I wonder why I'm so tired?"

"Well you slept plenty."

"Maybe I'll take a nap."

"Maybe you're tired of being a dad." I snapped.

Oh my.

Why would I say such a thing?

I think we all have had experiences of saying nasty things we don't mean. This particular thing flew out of my mouth so quickly that I had no chance to backpedal. I continued to make my pumpernickel eggs with a hat on them in silence. And then we ate. Silently.

While we silently ate, cleared our dishes, and took showers, I had time to think about why I would say such a thing. A lot of the time, I am tired of being a mom. It's one of those things that because mommyhood is a constant flow, you repeatedly feel as though you need a break throughout the day and it makes you think, 'wow, if I wasn't a mom, I would just be sitting on my butt reading that book that is collecting dust on the dining room table.' This is a lie, of course. If I wasn't a mom, I'd be at work. Or school. Either way, that book would be collecting dust. As the verbose, emotionally attuned female I am, I feel the absence of Mike's rhetoric on the subject. Is he tired of being a dad? I believe so. If not, then he is a superhuman of emotional resilience.

I think I said something so nasty because I wanted him to say, 'yes, yes I am tired of being a dad. I'm not actually tired. I just need a break once in a while.' and then I would say, 'I'm tired too. This is hard, isn't it?' And then we would bask in the glow of mutual understanding. We would feel connected, based on the fact that this thing we're doing is really, really hard.

Admittedly, I approached it all wrong. I'm not sure why on earth I feel the need to say things to elicit reactions from otherwise placid, and well-adjusted people. Is it that I like to push their emotional buttons? Press them to their boundaries? Maybe it's that the world can seem so incredibly passion-less, my mind tumultous in comparison, and this is my levelling mechanism to pull them into my misery, my joys, my disappointments.

I can wax philosophical all I want, either way I feel guilty. After I apologized, and apologized again, and we discussed our boundaries and our exhaustion, and Ender grabbed at our faces as we hugged (my nose in his left hand, Mike's lip in his right) I knew that I couldn't promise it wouldn't happen again.

After all, I got what I wanted, didn't I? It's hard to avoid doing something negative when it achieves the hoped for results. Until I find a more constructive way to elicit emotion from the male gender (or hell, anyone for that matter) I will continue to fall back on old habits.

But I'm sorry. Being a tired mom is no excuse for being a bitch.

A million little hands, and no naps.

How is it that Ender always seems to have one million little hands, ready to grab, twist and rip, but I only ever seem to have one? While he is not crawling or walking, he definitely has learned how to scooch his little butt around the couch and across (and off) my lap. This makes any time on the couch a constant wrestling session. Except, of course, when he is asleep. Then my precious little angel can be surrounded by a number of things that usually cause a hazard and a nuisance. Nail clippers, bank cards, cell phones. These are all things that you probably keep near on hand without thinking. Now I keep filing these things away, and then promptly losing them.

This morning I had what is called 'civil war breakfast'. It's really great. You take some stale cornbread (which I made yesterday with cornmeal and whole wheat flour, makes it more filling) heat it up in the microwave (not period, ha) and butter it, then you put some honey on it. Pour milk over the whole thing, so it's nice and mushy. You end up with this delicious sweet cornmeal type porridge stuff. It was great because I kind of overbaked the cornbread so it was very dry and not so great for eating. There are still leftovers though, after my civil war breakfast (which my husband refused to try, despite my prodding) so I suspect it will be served with the brown sugar and mustard glazed ham that just came out of the oven.

I've also been writing a screenplay. As of...yesterday. I don't really want to give away the premise, in case it actually gets made into some crappy university movie that I can show people some day. Either way, writing it has been interesting. It's actually a rewrite of a screenplay that I wrote while in university. It seems in the computer switches over past years, it didn't survive. It wasn't heartbreaking though. I remember it being strong in concept and weak in execution, so I was happy to have a chance to rewrite it and pep it up with my older, wiser, writer's voice. Writing a screenplay is very different than writing a short story. You can't use overly flowery language, or it sounds trite and horribly contrived. The key (for me) is to dumb down the language of the characters to an almost foolish degree. Then it sounds realistic and not like ten different Nicoles in different outfits acting out a drama.

I am extremely exhuasted, both in mind and body. The winter seems to just be dragging on. My baby carrier has not arrived, Friday being the last day before, according to Babyhawk, it is officially 'late'. Last night Ender woke at midnight and didn't go back to sleep until four, and then woke again at seven for good. Mike is napping before work. I wish I could nap. But I can't. I'm not sure why, maybe it's the coffee I desperately guzzled upon waking. Sometimes I just wish someone was around to take care of me, while Mike takes care of the baby. Someone to brush my hair and rub my back and tell me everything is going to be just fine, as long as I make it through this one day. One day at a time.

In response to my last (rather pathetic) post, my grandmother suggested I attend service at a Unitarian Universalist church. For those of you who don't know abotu Unitarians, I'll send you to this site, where people can explain what Unitarians believe much more succinctly than I ever would be able to. My grandfather was a Unitarian minister and I always enjoyed attending service there. I like how God is taken in the abstract, and its emphasis on social justice and community. I think that's what I need right now.

That, and a nap.

Teen Moms

For the last three (five? I've lost count) days in a row, I've been woken up at five o'clock in the morning by a steady stream of baby babble. I sleepily attempt to reposition him on the breast, to which he reacts with a barrage of tiny fists and kicks in the bladder. Then I need to pee. So I get up, groggy eyed, changing diapers with half closed eyes, cooing back at a grinning, hyperactive, increasingly mobile baby. I plop him down on the floor and stare at him play with a giant stuffed rhino. An hour later, he starts to whine and is asleep. On my lap.

Great.

So I get stuck here, dear reader. I get stuck on the couch and while I could put the baby down, I don't feel comfortable leaving him downstairs to sleep upstairs. I've never been woken by the baby monitor, and I am afraid the empty, fleshless sound of it wouldn't be effective in waking me. Because I'd just be blogging anyway, I'd rather do it with the heavy warmth of a baby in my lap. This does not erase the exhaustion though. It's picking away at me, this lack of sleep. By fifteen minute increments, I am becoming more of a zombie, who can't remember her phone number or postal code, who keeps hanging up her phone accidentally when people call.

Would you believe that this is the result of getting only eight hours of sleep every night? Yep. By all accounts I am getting more sleep than most of the population. I am a rare breed of person though, one that needs at least ten hours of sleep to function properly. It's not that I'm lazy. I've always been this way, and while I thought that being a mom would break me of my dependence on a good night's rest, I was sadly mistaken. Naps don't help, though I usually indulge in them every two days or so. I wake up with a dry mouth and a bad attitude that can only be fixed with sugary beverages and Mike allowing me to make some mean, consequence-free comments about his housekeeping. Most of the time, even to my sleep-deprived brain, that doesn't seem worth it.

So while the baby sleeps on me, I blog, I facebook, I do a number of things that only recently became verbs. I watch bootlegged television online that I wouldn't be caught dead watching if anyone were around.

Mostly, I watch old episodes of 16 and Pregnant, and Teen Mom on MTV.

For those of you who have never watched the show before, it follows pregnant teens in a docu-style around their daily lives while pregnant, and then as moms. It's astounding the way their families treat them, telling them how hard it is to be a mom and then just taking the baby for them so that they can go out and party all night long. Sometimes the revelations that these girls have are heartwarming. Most of the time it's just damn depressing.

So then why do I identify with teen moms so strongly?

I am by all accounts, a responsible mother. I go out to the bar probably once every two months, and even then my enjoyment is fairly muted. I am on the younger scale of moms, but still acceptably old. I have a partner who is emotionally and physically available for fatherhood. But there is something that makes me feel like I am a teen mom. Maybe it's the uncomfortable enthusiasm with which my friends approach my motherhood. Maybe it's the fact that I am the only one in my social circle that is married and a mom. Maybe it's the fact that I never really thought I would have a kid, and the culture of motherhood was so new to me. Or maybe, just maybe, all moms feel as lost and unprepared as teen moms do. Teen moms just get more shit for it.

I ask myself if I was a teenager doing this, how it would be different. I'm not sure that it would be, not from the inside out anyway. Mothering is, in many ways, an emotive process. One could argue that they are emotions that need to be developed, that adolescents are not prepared to provide. Certainly, Teen Mom portrays several moms not stepping up and remaining the vision of self-absorbed-teenagedom. Still, I see the emotions that were elicited by my having a child as ones that stand alone. I was not developing them until I became pregnant and I think this is something I would have felt regardless of my age. What would have been different would be the support that I would have available to me. Doubtless me and my mother would have argued about it, my boyfriend would have taken off, and it would probably be me and my dad (who I lived with as a teen) raising the baby. That would be damn hard to take, even now, with my hard won knowledge about phone bills, and a bachelor of arts.

I guess my point is, teen moms are probably as good as their surroundings. I think I relate to them because they're the few who aren't posturing about how their baby is 'so well-behaved' and 'sleeps through the night'. They are clear about their limitations, surprises and exhaustion. Like all of us, they need strong people to hold them up as they go through the most vulnerable experience in a woman's lifetime. Let's face it, without support, all of us are teen moms.

Baby Steps

While holding onto a finger in each hand, Ender can now steadily walk across a room. And around, and around, grinning and dragging his feet like a little rehab patient. He truly looks like he's re-learning to walk, except it's the first time. Yeah. Time is moving way too fast.

It's as though he is becoming more beautiful by the day. And his smell! The only thing I was not prepared for was the delicious salty-sweet smell of your own baby. People rant and rave about how great babies smell in general, but I've smelled them and they're not that great. The smell of my own kid, however, is enough to make me swoon. I want to wrap him up in bunting and rock him to sleep with my cheek against his downy soft hair. The only problem is that he now hates to be wrapped up, and finds being rocked to sleep insulting. Ah, the halcyon days of babyhood are over. Welcome to toddlerhood.

The weekend was quite nice. I can't remember much that happened, except that it was a relaxing long weekend and I took a million baths. My mother took Ender out of the house for a few hours, and Mike and I had some quality me/him time and remembered why we like eachother. We made homemade pasta together and drank a bottle of champagne and snuggled. Hard to believe that pre-baby, that was pretty much all we did together.

Today I have a dentist appointment to finish my crown. About three years ago I had a root canal that I was told HAD to be crowned, otherwise it would break apart. It didn't break apart, despite my sloth, and now I'm finally getting it done in a bout of adult-type responsibility. It will be a gold tooth. I had the option of porcelain, but I think the idea of having an entire gold tooth is way too cool to pass up. Plus it's cheaper. Double bonus. I actually prefer metal fillings. Everyone is all about porcelain fillings now, and it's actually hard to get silver ones nowadays. All I know is, my parents both have mouths full of metal fillings that they got when they were teens, and I keep having to return to get these damn porcelains redone. They chip and crack, and cost way too much. It still baffles me that we live in a country that will pay for sweat-gland botox, but it won't pay for dental upkeep. Especially since links have been made between heart disease and gingivitis. It's a whole body, people. You can't just seperate out the expensive parts.

My dad returns from his almost month-long trip to Nova Scotia tomorrow. I've missed him terribly. He was my only guaranteed visitor from the outside world. There's something so reassuring about having a person in your life who you have no doubts about the fact that they genuinely enjoy your company. No matter what, I know my dad likes me. It's more than I can say about most people. Not that most people dislike me, but that I assume they don't, thereby sabotaging any chance of a closer relationship. Anyway, the point is that my dad visits me when no one else does and I feel like I'm going insane. God bless his heart. I can't wait to see him.

To conclude the slap-a-dash nature of this entry: I've been having lots of very weird dreams lately. I think I've got too much on my mind and I'm not leaving the house enough.

But my Babyhawk *still* has not arrived. Sigh.

On Kindness

I was supposed to go to the symphony tonight. I say 'supposed to' because I am no longer going. I mean, I'd like to go, but with a clogged duct and a baby with a clogged nose, I've decided not to. It was a plan I'd made with my mother-in-law to go to this wednesday series, which I did once and have now cancelled twice. I am a bad symphony partner. I believe it will probably be many years before I can hold tickets in my hand and say with certainty that I will be attending. There are too many variables. And unlike the usual variables, these variables trump everything else. Baby trumps everything. Husband who I only get to see a few hours a day trumps everything except baby.

That said, I probably should have gone. I am spending so much time alone with the baby that I am practically surprised when people talk to me in plain english.

"Are we going to the store today Ender?"

"Blamabababa-ma."

"We don't have time to go to the library"

"oooh-mabagaboo"

While this is representative of a conversation, it's not representative of our activities. Mostly we sit around on the carpet and play with blocks. I've called Babyhawk about my carrier, which still has not arrived after 11 business days of waiting. When speaking to their customer service representative, I recieved the same crappy customer service I've come to expect from most American companies. Bored, unfriendly and unhelpful. I'd like to give her the benefit of the doubt and say that she probably worked in some horrible office building, wearing sensible shoes and a modest-lengthed skirt, staring at the clock, counting the minutes 'till she could get home to her babies, but I can't. Her kid was in the background. She was working at home, and still couldn't even muster up any form of friendliness.

I'm not quite sure why friendliness is cultural. It makes people happy to be smiled at, to be talked to positively. And yet there are countries that are well-known for their friendliness, or lack thereof. Friendliness is even interpreted differently, it would seem, as I find Montreal to be one of the more friendly cities, and my mother feels constantly the butt of some kind of joke she didn't hear when she visits.

It still begs the question though, which ancestor was it that decided that friendliness was something that was important to instill in his children? And who was it that decided that his common man required no courtesy?


We're very close to finishing our school applications, and then I'll have a weight lifted off my mind. My mom is coming to watch the baby for Mike and I on Valentines Day. She's taking him out of the house, which means we will be alone together in our home for the first time in 9 months. I need this so badly. There's something about parenting that just makes your relationship so public. Privacy is highly underrated, and a lack of it makes us snap at eachother and not appreciate one another as we should.

Anywho...I'm now going to drink two very measured glasses of the fancy organic wine we bought the would-be babysitter, and encourage Ender to crawl. A night to remember indeed!

Letters of intent

Well there's been a bit of a lag in my posts over the weekend, but I think that's probably characteristic. Somehow having my husband around to help out around the house makes my days busier, not calmer. I've also been dealing with Ender's cold, my cold, and a bout of mastitis. For all of you who don't know what mastitis is, I'll spare you the gory details. I treated it with hot rosemary poultices and an overdose of echinacea, and I'm on the mend. From what I understand, it's normal for mastitis to strike when you're doing too much, and that probably is the case. As my son becomes more independent and able to play on his own for minutes at a time (oh the sweet luxury) I am spending less and less time on my butt and most time on my feet. Today I'm trying my damndest to relax, but both Mike and I are trying to get our transcripts in order for school applications, and because we do not have a printer nor fax machine, it's proving difficult. We briefly had a printer, gifted to us from my in-laws electronic graveyard, but after battling with it for several days, we decided it was definitely broken.

On the menu today: Sole Chowder and homemade bread. I've never made chowder before, so this will be an interesting experiment. The bread is made with leftover fat from a pork roast I made last week. Very depression-era style baking. I can only imagine animal fat would make bread even better.

I'm also kind of creatively tapped out. I'm trying to write my letter of intent for a costume studies program (so many letters of intent this year!) and I'm coming up completely empty. I guess it's hardest to write about the things you're passionate about. That is, without sounding creepy. The letter in my mind is playing out like this:

Hello, there. I think everything you guys do is awesome. I used to work across from your classrooms and stare forlorn through the window. Even if you don't let me in, I'd like to just stand around for a little while and touch things. Is that ok?

No that's not okay, Nicole, you weirdo. So the letter writing continues, fruitlessly.

I guess that's all for now. I'm not feeling well so forgive me if I'm not as loquacious as usual.

Raw Milk

Today Mike and Ender and I had a proper English tea, with homemade scones, double devon cream and jam. Devon cream is a pasteurized approximation of clotted cream, which I had in York when I went to England and is the greatest thing ever. I would describe it as one step down from butter (milkfat wise) and one step up from whipped cream. You spread it on the sweet, biscuity scone and top it with some rasberry jam and it has this creamy delightful flavour. The Devon cream, which I purchased from Global Cheese in Kensington market, was very good. Not quite as good as the stuff I had in Europe though. Which got me thinking. None of the dairy products that I've had in Canada have quite compared to those that I've had in Europe. From the butter on my toast to the cream in my coffee, European milk just tastes better. And that's because a lot of it isn't pasteurized. Not pasteurized? You say. Well then it must be unhealthy! Indeed, 'raw milk' as it's called, is not good for those with compromised immune systems, or children, but it would seem people have been happily consuming it in many parts of the world for hundreds of years. And the reason that it's not recommended is based on the possibility that the milk is bad, not a certainty. As some raw milk advocates say, it's more work to keep cows healthy enough for healthy unpasteurized milk.

I also had unpasteurized milk when I was staying with the Twelve Tribes (lovely people, and I'll say more about them in a later post) during my masters thesis research on new religious movements. They had bought a cow to provide milk to the whole community. They made their own yogurt out of it, as well as drank it with mate and it was wonderful. They weren't allowed to serve it in their shop, however, due to Canadian milk law.

For more information on the raw milk debacle of late here in Canada, click here.

So I would like to make my own, proper clotted cream with it's delicate palatability, and for that it would seem I need to buy a share in a cow. Let it be so. Updates on this quest to follow.

According to the babyhawk website, my baby carrier is about to ship! Soon I'll be trucking around the city again with my baby like a free woman. I'm starting to get really cabin feverish. While this has been the easiest winter in recent memory, I still am antsy for the warm weather to return. And me, without a full time job, it's just extra sweet. I've already promised my little man that we will spend most of our time in the park, sun on our faces, grass between our toes. He'll be walking then (!) and I'll probably get rid of this doughy winter flesh simply by running after him.

I've been implementing a few steps in improving Ender's sleep, or rather, his transition into sleep. After reading a few books on the subject, even cosleeping advocates seem to agree that a bedtime routine is reassuring and healthy for children. Sometimes their days can be so chaotic and different that a little bit of familiarty really helps them wind down. I still remember coming home from a birthday party when I was 8 and being jerked out of sleep every five minutes due to half sleep hallucinations that I was still involved in a water pistol fight. So now our routine involves sitting in some warm water in the sink for about five minutes, getting toweled off and put in pj's and a fresh diaper, reading a story, and then nursing to sleep. So far it has been working fabulously, and Ender seems to think it's peachy keen. He's teething at the moment, so anything that keeps him calm and confident that the world isn't ending is a good thing.

Well, I guess that's all my friends. Nicoliosis out.