That Feeling

You know when you know it, in your gut? Whatever “it” may be. You just get that feeling.

We go to a home daycare about 10 minutes from my house. She’s an older lady in her early 70’s who shops at the grocery store my husband manages. She filled in during an unexpected daycare crisis, and it became a long term solution. We started 2 years ago.

About 6 months ago, Finn started crying when I told him it was a daycare day. I would ask him why, and he always gave reasons like, “I want to stay home” or “I want to be with mommy and daddy”. At first, it was only a couple of times a month that he would react like that. Then, about 2 months ago, it was daily.

She’s a nice lady. She’s has that funny old lady spunk. She ADORES the kids. When I was laid off, she didn’t try to recruit more kids, just waited patiently until I found another job. She’s flexible. She’s insanely reasonably priced. These were all the reasons I didn’t listen to my gut.
My gut said, “She never really answers your questions completely.” It said “She makes you feel uncomfortable when try to look around the house.” It tried to tell me, “Finn NEVER acts like he wants to stay.” But my brain consoled me. My brain said “What could she have to hide? So the house is a little messy. The kids are LOVED. And he rarely cries when you leave. I’m sure everything is fine. It’s going to be IMPOSSIBLE to find another flexible daycare situation for what you pay.”

6 weeks ago, I picked the boys up, and asked Finn if he had taken a nap that day.
“YES,” he said, with a weird sort of tone in his voice.

Naps were becoming a struggle at my house, hard to keep him in bed even though I could see so badly that he needed the rest. “Why do you always nap at daycare, but you don’t want to nap at home?”

“She gets MAD at me if I don’t nap,” he says in that weird voice again.

ALARMS. Heart in my throat. This feeling of I knew everything wasn’t right. I try to steady my voice and stay normal. “What happens when she gets mad?”

“She slaps me.”

“Where?”

“On my legs. Like this, “he says and slaps his shin, hard. “And like this,” he says, slapping the other leg.

My eyes well up with tears, and I stare straight again, my eyes darting between the road and the rearview mirror. “Anywhere else?”

He slaps various spots on his legs and feet. He slaps himself in the face, and I say with panic “She slaps you in the face?!” and he quickly says, “No, just on my legs.” I try to calm myself down again, hoping that will encourage him to be honest.

“Do you cry when she does it?” I ask.

“No,” he says, very matter-of-fact.

I’m quiet for a moment. “Does she do anything else?”

“She says, ‘Shut up, Finn!’”.

“How does it make you feel when she says that?”

“Sad.”

:::

The kids have been at their new daycare for 6 weeks. Finn gets excited in the morning when I tell him it’s a daycare day. I’ll never ignore that feeling again.

I'm right 'cause you're wrong

In one blogger's quest to get more than 3 hours sleep at night, she turned to the internet for ideas on sleep solutions and came across this article. In it, the author details the 10 reasons that you should not utilize the cry it out method. This portion of her argument has me particularly disturbed:

I worry that if I leave my children to cry it out, then they will not see the point in reaching out to us if they have problems later in life and could try to deal with serious issues like bullying, drug addictions, teenage pregnancy, gambling problems, or flunking out of school on their own or turn to peers. Unfortunately, those problems are often too big for a teenager to be left to deal with alone or with peers and it can have disastrous results ranging from making poor decisions all the way to committing suicide out of a feeling of hopelessness.

Whaaaaaat? Seriously, what? Wow.

The author has every right as a mother to choose the technique that works best for her children. But this tactic of proving she is right by detailing how others are wrong has me seriously peeved. What is it about making someone feel terrible about their choices that make you feel better about yours? If you would rather get up with your kids every night as many times as they get up, good for you! Make a list of all the reasons that this is fabulous parenting and how studies show your kids will be little geniuses. But don't make a list of how I'm ruining my child because I choose to take a different path. This self righteous and completely arrogant way of thinking serves no purpose. Why can't moms just put their arms over another mom's shoulder and assure her that she's making the best choices for her kids. Parents are forever second guessing their decisions - should I keep breastfeeding, should I put them in daycare, should I vaccinate, should I only feed organic, should I put them in special classes, should I force them to stop using their pacifier - why not make lists about the benefits of the reasons you made your choice, not a list of reasons that woman who don't agree with you totally suck. Can't we just agree that what may be working for my kid most likely won't work for yours? Why do you think there are a hundred different books on baby sleep solutions? There is no one size fits all with kids. If you encounter a solution for any part of your life that's working for you - for your children, for your diet, for organizing your wallet, whatever! - I want to see the list about all the reasons it rocks. But a list about all the reasons I am making the wrong decision if I don't agree with you? No thanks.

Going green

So I read this post by this amazing girl. In it, she gives the recipe and a weird compelling argument for making a smoothie with spinach in it. Waitwaitwait, don't leave. I know, spinach. I'm not really in to it either. But here goes nothing:

Honest Fare Green Smoothie
Original recipe here.

2 big handfuls of fresh, raw spinach
½ pink lady apple, chopped
1 tbsp fresh parsley
1 coin fresh ginger root, minced
1 c vanilla soy milk
4 strawberries, frozen
½ banana, frozen
½ peach, frozen
¼ c plain low-fat yogurt (optional)

Blend all ingredients. Serve chilled.

But see, there's nothing like a seemingly simple recipe to freak me the fuck out. There are 4 items on that list I've never bought, and the idea of putting parsley in the blender was seriously wigging me out. But hey, I love a challenge:

Challenge 1: Find all the items in my grocery store. This wasn't too complex, except for the parsley and the ginger root. The produce dude pointed me in the general direction of a bunch of green leafy items, and when he noticed that I was still staring at everything 5 minutes later, he came up and handed me the parsley. Also, I couldn't find any pink lady apples, so I got the most pinkish apples I could find, I think they were Galas. I also opted for vanilla yogurt, because I've never had a tasty experience with plain yogurt, and I can only be SO experimental in one day.

Can you really trust a vegetable that looks like a weapon? Or wait, is it a fruit?

Challenge #2/3: What the fuck is a coin of ginger? And how do you mince? Okay, so I used my common sense with a coin, although the fact that some of the circles were dime shaped and some were half dollar shaped kinda threw me. And then I realized I was supposed to have taken the skin off before I started cutting. I trudged on.

I almost stopped here. This kinda gives me the creeps to look at even now. I mean, hairy? REALLY? Plus, the smell of it reminds me of the first trimester of my last pregnancy when everyone tried to shove ginger-flavored shit down my throat to ease my nausea. I trudged forward.

I'm not sure if this is a good mince or not, but my knives suck, so this was the best I was gonna do.

I took all the stems off the parsley before I chopped it. Nope, I don't eat the stalks of broccoli, either.

Then, at the genius suggestion of Laurie, I portioned the servings of ginger and parsley in an ice cube tray.

Added a little water, then stuck it in the freezer. After it froze, I popped out one cube for each serving of smoothie.

Cut up and froze all the bananas and peaches.

I chopped up the apples tiny too, because my blender suckkkkkkks and I wanted to make it as painless as possible.

I really went for it with the handfuls of spinach - go green or go home, right?

I threw everything in, making sure to add the soy milk and yogurt in first so it was closest to the blades for my finicky blender.

I doubled the recipe, and it made a HUGE amount - not pictured: another HUGE cup of this stuff

The verdict: A serious and surprising success. In the words of Laurie, "This recipe isn't 'good for a green smoothie'. It isn't 'ok except for the spinach'. It is delightful, addictive, ohmygod delicious. It tastes like heaven." I couldn't have said it better myself. It's gritty, yet perfectly smooth. Sweet, but perfectly flavored. Earthy, but insanely delicious. My husband LICKED THE GLASS. My 3 year old begged for more.

Make it. Now.

p.s....for those who are conscious of price, all the ingredients cost me about $15, and I was able to make around 7 (BIG) servings before I ran out of some of the ingredients. I still have more than half the parsley/ginger cubes and half a carton of the soy milk. At around $2 a serving, that's pretty awesome.

p.p.s....seriously, make it now.

Reason #476

We had friends over for dinner tonight and they brought pie for dessert. Can you guess which plate is my husband's? Hint: He doesn't believe in crumbs.

Yet another reason that I love him.

Quick takes from 30

So, I'm 30. Just like that. The highlights:

- My husband took me to a SUPER swanky hotel while my parents watched the boys. How swanky, you ask? This place has an entire collection of REALLY WEIRD art. You know a place is posh when their art makes no sense. Example 1:

No wonder that lady looks like she is in great distress. There is a tree growing out of her body. That is a serious bummer. And then there is the pesky problem of that piece of sod not staying on her head and so she has to keep it on with a shoelace.

And check this chick out! She's obviously annoyed because someone stole a great big piece of her prize winning watermelon, so she is not sitting here to make sure no one takes any more and then a damn bird built a nest right on her head. That is serious dedication to watermelon watching.

Also, our room had an entire wall that is cork. It's that kind of unnecessary attention to detail that makes it so you feel somehow okay to have to spent a ridiculous amount to sleep somewhere 20 miles from your house. Oh, and the remote control had it's own little cradle. And the bathroom had q-tips and sea salt. So, obviously, this place was fancy.

- I got my nose pierced.

I've been wanting to do it for a long time, but my last boss said "no!" when I casually brought it up and then I tried to get it while I was pregnant on my 29th birthday, but apparently you can't get anything pierced while you are pregnant. The reactions have been mixed. The mom and mom-in-law were both like "oh. look at that." and then quickly changed the subject so as not to say anything rude. Most of my friends have loved it. Two different coworkers asked me if it was some kind of pre-midlife crisis act.
Nose ring blue steel! Yeah, these pictures aren't that great, but that won't be a problem much longer because...

- My new iPhone will have a flash :) Between the hotel and the phone, my husband really hit it out of the park this year in the gift and surprise department. This was a welcome change because...well...haha, remember honey that year before last when we were really broke and I told you not to get me anything, so you didn't get me a card or even say happy birthday until the afternoon because 'don't get me a present' was somehow translated to mean 'don't acknowledge my birthday at all'? Haha, wow, reminiscing is fun.

Bring on the heat

If I'm lucky, this is where I'll be spending a great deal of my summer:

Then and now in a wordcloud

13 months ago, I used Wordle to create a word cloud from my tweets. (The bigger a word is, the more often it's been written). Here's what it looked like:

And today, here's what it looks like:

Predictably, "baby" has replaced "pregnancy" as the biggest word. And "think" is now the same size as "nausea" was. That's progress, people.

Quick Takes from Target

1. There is only one time when I am sad that I don't have girls - when I'm clothes shopping. I've been told it only gets worse as you go from toddler sizes to boy sizes. That's why I was thrilled to find this shirt at Target the other day that my kid could wear to something nice-ish. Great color, simple, but a little more interesting and stylish than the typical polo shirt.

Then, I turned it around.

Ugh.

2. The other day I accidentally wore khakis and a red shirt while I was shopping at Target. Someone asked me where dog food was, and I told them it was in the toy section, on the Barbie aisle. They actually thanked me and headed that direction. The power of the red shirt.

3. This absolutely did not happen, I completely made it up. But I'm telling you, it's not beyond the realm of possibility.

4. I found coupons for paper towels and toilet paper after I had JUST bought them at Target the day before. I brought them in with the receipt and asked the lady if I could use them. She looked at me like I was a fucking loon, but guess who is $1.25 richer?

5. Does anyone actually put their kids in those super gross looking built-in baby seat carrier things that are attached to some of the carts? I think I got ebola just from looking at one the other day.

6. I want to like Target shoes. I really really really really do. But I don't.