I am not a cautionary tale.

I am an interesting person with a great life. This is the conclusion I came to yesterday after having lunch at the Art Institute of Chicago. I had just finished up with a Stroller Tour of John Marin's Watercolors (so awesome!) and headed down to the Garden Cafe to get some much needed sustenance and discretely nurse Lily. The tour was right after Baby and Me Yoga, so I was wearing black yoga pants, Ugg boots, and an aqua 3/4 sleeve shirt. 


When I first sat down there was a table of women, all in their early 20's, sitting a little behind me and to the right. At first they ooohed and aahhed over how cute Lily is (really, how could you not?). Then they immediately began talking about all the different kinds of birth control they've tried and what they did and did not like about each. I found this mildly amusing and totally understandable. Even though I knew I wanted kids someday, I certainly didn't want a baby at 21. 


Then an elderly woman who looked like she exclusively shopped at Chicos and her teenaged granddaughter sat down behind me. After they arranged themselves, the woman says, quite loudly, "Now see, that's why you need to go to a good college and get a useful degree, so you don't end up like that girl." I took a quick glance around. The table of 20's women was gone, and besides me, there were only couples in their 40's and 50's in the restaurant. I had finished my lunch, Lily was in a good mood, and after already being used as an advertisement for birth control I was a bit bolder than I might have otherwise been. So I turned around. Here is a transcript of what followed:


Me - I'm sorry, I couldn't help but overhear. I was just wondering what about me you think is such a cautionary tale?


Woman - Well, you're a young, unwed mother. 


(The granddaughter is literally trying to melt into her chair.)


Me - I can understand the confusion, but I left my wedding rings at home because I came right from a yoga class. I've been happily married for two years. 


Woman - Well, you're so young, you can't have gone to college.


Me - I'm flattered that you think so, but I actually have a Master's Degree.


Woman - Well, it can't be in anything useful or you should be starting a career. 


Me - Not to toot my own horn too much, but I have a Bachelor's Degree in Math and Chemistry from St. Olaf College, in Minnesota, and a Masters of Science in Earth Sciences from Dartmouth College. All three, extremely useful and hire-able areas. I have started two careers already. I was an Environmental Consultant for a year, before I decided that I wanted to become a teacher. These two 'careers' have made it financially possible for me to now stay home and raise my daughter for a while. 


Woman - What a waste of all that education. 


Me - Not at all. I use something that I've learned nearly everyday. I am considering making yet another career change, once my daughter is a bit older, and I use my scientific research and experimental skills to test and refine recipes, not to mention raising a child. That's all trial and error, isn't it? And when we go for walks I like being able to know why the planet looks the way it does and understand the forces that are shaping it. 


Woman - Well, all of that is quite unexpected since today is a Free Day at the Museum. 


(I almost laughed out loud here because, hello, she was at the Museum on a Free Day as well.)


Me - Not that it matters at all, but I wasn't aware that it was a Free Day. I just finished a Members-Only tour of the Marin Watercolors. Have you seen that exhibit, yet? 


Woman - No, we were going to after some lunch.


Me - You'll really enjoy it. They're beautiful. I hope you enjoy the rest of your visit. 




The woman nodded in response and I walked away. I'm NEVER that confrontational with strangers. I don't know what came over me. I just didn't want to be used as an example twice in one day. I chose this life. Nothing about my situation is accidental or unplanned. Nothing about my life makes me feel limited or trapped. I feel like I complain a lot about things, and this conversation made me realize how good I have it. 


I am a knitter, scientist, baker, runner, chef, musician, teacher, researcher, daughter, wife and mother. Do not pity me. 

Week 3

Back to 167 (as of Monday). Hooray!

M: 10 min jog + 30 min walk + 45 min Wii
Tu: Baby yoga.
W: Marathon nap?
Th: Hibernating.
F: Errands.
S: Target.
S: Go Bears!

My Very Own Cake Wreck

Remember the pile of cake crumbs from last week? Well, I managed to turn it into a cake, after a fashion. I lined a cake pan with plastic wrap and filled it with cake bits. Then I threw it in the freezer for a couple of hours, and out came a cake! 

The first step to decorating a cake is to 'dirty ice' it, or apply a crumb coat. This is a thin layer of frosting that evens out the cake surface and catches any crumbs. After that sets up, you apply the final coat and any decorations. I just used some vanilla icing from a can and added some blue gel. I was going for a wintry feel, but it came off more Hanukkah-like. 

I used a petal tip and a round tip to make the bottom ruffled border. I really like this technique. It is fun to do and fairly forgiving. Then, still with the round tip, I piped the swags. This was surprisingly hard. I didn't put it in the picture, but the first couple of swags broke and just left gobs and streaks of blue icing. It's also really hard to keep your hand steady on a vertical surface. I switched to a star tip for the top edge. I was trying to do the classic shell border, but I can't for the life of me get it to tail off like it should. So I ended up with more of a swirly wave effect. And finally, I used a smaller petal tip to add some bows where the swags met. The icing was getting really warm so they are kind of droopy. 

So, all in all, not too bad for my first attempt at piping a whole cake. I decided to write Cake Wreck on it because of all the disasters that went into making it, and in honor of one of my favorite blogs of the same name, Cake Wrecks. And I have to give credit to the book  that I got the design elements from: The Whimsical Bakehouse. This is such a great book. They have delicious sounding recipes, easy to follow instructions, and great ideas. My plan is to essentially bake my way through this book. Let me know if you would like a cake and I would be more than happy to make you one because believe it or not, there is such a thing as too much cake and Joe and I are coming close to that. 

6 Months Old!

I can hardly believe it, but Lily is 6 months old today. Somehow it seems much longer and much shorter than that. Being pregnant, giving birth, packing up our life in Tucson, and Joe starting school seems a lifetime away. At the same time it feels like we just moved in. I uploaded a bunch of pictures to the computer and I can't believe how small she was! I know she's still a little sweet pea, but she was even smaller then. And she was such an angry little lump. Poor thing, before we started supplementing with formula she was hungry all the time. 


Now Lily is 10lbs 13oz and 24.5 inches long. She can sit up by herself (with some pillows around for padding when she tumbles over), laughs hysterically at peek-a-boo, babbles most of the day, rolls over, loves to chew on her toes, turns pages of cloth books, and likes to cuddle with large drinking glasses. She's starting to show some real personality. She is a huge ham and loves having an audience other than myself. She's very silly and flirts with everyone by acting all shy and batting her long eyelashes before smiling and laughing with them. She really likes listening to music and when I sit at the piano with her she likes to put her little hands on mine like she's playing. Sometimes she even presses a couple of keys. So cute.


To celebrate her half birthday, we did a couple of things. She is FINALLY big enough for the Johnny Jump-up so we ran out and got one at Target yesterday. So far she likes it. She's not quite heavy enough to make it bounce much but she likes spinning herself around and chewing on the edge. This morning we had a little dance party while listening to some Pete Seeger on our record player that I just figured out how to use again. And Lily tried her first bites of solid food! She's been acting ready to eat for about a month. She makes chewing motions when we eat, watches every bite we take, tries to grab food from our plates and gets pretty angry when we take it away. We ground up some steel cut oats and mixed them in with some formula. As soon as she's used to the more solid texture we're gonna jump in with some delicious fruits and vegetables. Woohoo! 


Even though she acts like she really wants it, she made the funniest faces ever when we gave her the oatmeal this morning. But she kept coming back for more. I doubt she actually swallowed much of anything, but we had a good time. 

Tell me I'm not a bad parent.

When you're pregnant you have all these ideas about how you're going to raise your baby. Only breastmilk until 6 months, cloth diapers with biodegradable liners, no TV, etc. Already, I've failed at the first two. Now, it's not sooo bad. Lily is down to less than 2 ounces of formula a day and we only use regular disposable diapers at night or when we go out. And I have been doing a really good job of not having the TV on at all during the day. 


All of a sudden, it seems, Lily is going through extreme separation anxiety. Usually I can put her on her playmat and hop in the shower for 5 minutes and she'll be fine. Last week I did that and 30 seconds in she started shrieking like I had never heard before. It sounded like she was being murdered. I jumped out of the shower and ran over to her to make sure the cat wasn't eating her face or anything and she immediately stopped. I made sure everything was ok, and tried again. Same thing happened. So I moved her into the bathroom. Again, she screamed bloody murder. So I stayed in long enough to rinse the shampoo out of my hair and called it quits. It took almost an hour to get her to calm down. The next day was a repeat performance. I've tried all sorts of distractions, music, toys, books, different places in he apartment, everything. 


Then I tried the one thing I swore I would never do: I turned on the TV and left the room. She was on her playmat on the floor and it was the PBS kids station so it was slightly educational. (Yes, I know she's only 6 months old.) It worked like a charm. She was totally distracted by it, and was even 'talking' to the TV like she does when I read to her or we play together. And it was only for 5 minutes. 


Am I a horrible person? You hear about all these stories how people use the TV as a babysitter and kids are getting dumber and have poor eyesight and are obese because of it. I'm worried I'm setting her up to be fat, dumb, and blind. I have promised myself that I will ONLY use it to shower. She has no problem sitting in her high chair watching me clean or cook or do anything else. I will not let it become a crutch. 

Cake fail.

My cake stand arrived! I love it oh so much. It has a cheery green base and shiny silver top and it rotates like nobody's business. We were tempted to sit Lily on it and spin her around, but resisted. Maybe I'll try it on the cat later. 

I found an interesting cake recipe last week, but I have been putting off making it because I wanted to decorate it on the stand. I had it all planned out: two layers of chocolate cake with a vanilla hazelnut filling, finished with white vanilla icing and light blue piping. Sounds delicious right? 

Lily was very obliging this morning and slept in by herself for a couple of hours after I got up. I excitedly mixed together all the ingredients for two 9 inch round cakes, popped them in the oven and waited for magic. Because I had two cakes in the oven at the same time, they took a couple of extra minutes to bake through. When they were done, I took them out of the oven and promptly forgot everything I know about cakes. Maybe it's because it wasn't explicitly written in the instructions combined with the uncertainties of a new recipe, but I did the stupidest thing I've ever done while baking. I turned the cakes out onto a cooling rack. Immediately. I'll wait for you to stop laughing...

If you're not a baker, let me explain. If you don't let the cake sit and cool for a bit and you try to turn it out it ceases to be a cake. It becomes a pile of crumbs. (See picture below.) And I was idiot enough to do it to BOTH of them. You would think that maybe after the first one ended up looking like a pile of dirt I would have stopped a minute and thought, "Hmmm, what am I doing wrong?" Nope. I charged ahead thinking the first one was just a fluke. So I now have two piles of cake bits cooling in my kitchen. So dumb. 

The good news is, the cake bits are delicious. And I can freeze them for adding to random desserts. I see some chocolate cake milk shakes in my future. The other one isn't quite as bad so I might try to cobble it together to see if I can get anything that resembles a cake out of it. I still can't believe I was that much of a flake. Oh well, hopefully I'll remember next time.

Yogurt: Part II

I take back everything disparaging I said about my homemade yogurt. I left it in the fridge for a couple of days, and it magically turned into the thick, creamy delight I was expecting. I didn't realize this until I had decided to turn it into blueberry frozen yogurt, though. Best idea ever. Usually frozen yogurt is sort of a "healthy" option when it comes to frozen treats. This frozen yogurt was not. The yogurt was made from whole milk, and we didn't have any more whole milk to add to the frozen mix so I used half and half instead. Delicious. I'm totally psyched to make yogurt again and just gobble it up. 

Week 2

So... this morning I ended up at 170. I did great all week, and then the weekend happened. Frozen pizza, home made nachos, guacamole flavored dip, and home made full-fat frozen yogurt are the culprits. Sigh. I just can't seem to get out of the 5 lb swing. And it is totally due to my own weakness.

We bought a Wii fit before Christmas. It's totally cheesy, I know, but the silly little games are amusing, and can actually amount to a workout when you're wearing a 12 pound baby. I like it because it gives me something to do in the afternoon when Lily just wants to hang out with me instead of sitting on the couch watching TV. (She just won't tolerate not being held after about 2:30PM.) I'm also going to try to work in some more running again now that I have appropriate cold weather running clothes again. Living in AZ for 3 years has decimated my supply of cold weather gear.

I hope this week goes better.

M: 45 min walk + 30 min Wii fit.
T: Baby Yoga
W: 45 min walk + 30 min Wii fit.
Th: 45 min walk + 30 min Wii fit.
F: Nothing
S: Nothing
S: Nothing.

A Qualified Success

Yesterday I tried to make yogurt. I was inspired by this article on Salon. It sounds amazing: "smoother, softer, clear-tasting, stabilizer and gunk-free, with a level of tang that you can control." I was particularly interested in this last bit. I really don't like the tanginess of yogurt, especially in plain yogurt. So I skipped off to the grocery store to get some milk and plain yogurt to use as a starter. And so the experiment began...


First you are supposed to warm the milk until it has bubbles on the surface and is steaming. Well, it turns out the length of time between that and boiling over is about 3 nanoseconds. I had been watching and stirring quite diligently, noticed the bubbles and the steam, and as I was reaching out my hand to turn off the burner it boiled over and covered my entire stove in a fine layer of hot milk that immediately solidified because the surface was hot. 


Then you cool it a bit, stir in some starter, put it in a warm spot and wait. Our apartment is usually around 75*F because we have no control over the radiators. I put the covered bowl wrapped in a towel on our milk-crusted stove and waited the recommended four hours. When time was up I excitedly uncovered the bowl hoping to experience some cultured euphoria. "Tender like the softest custard, it's sweet, creamy, eternally round milk, leaving you with the aftertaste of a soothing, buttery sip." Instead, I just got warm milk. But not warm enough so that I thought "Mmmm.... warm milk." It was more like yucky, tepid room-temperature milk with no trace of yogurtification. Fail. 


I added some more yogurt and moved it over to directly on top of the radiator and waited some more. Then the magic began. It definitely needed to be warmer than I originally had it. After a few hours it started to thicken and get more yogurty. It was just beginning to get a little of the tang, so I put it in the fridge to solidify a bit more. In then end, I had a soupy, mild tasting yogurt not unlike Kefir. It would be delicious on cereal or fruit. I might try to make frozen yogurt out of mine. 


Overall, it was a success in that I now have a yogurt type substance in my fridge. Was it worth the effort? Not really. I'm not really a big yogurt fan and I thought this might make me one. It did not. I will happily consume what I made and I think I will give it one more try with keeping it very warm from the start to see if that makes any difference. 

Back in the swing

Finally, we seem to be settling back into our normal routine. As nice as it was to have Joe around for three weeks, I was beginning to miss the easy rhythm that Lily and I had established. And because I'm such a neurotic neat freak, having another person around meant more dishes, more clutter, more stress. 


Last week was pretty rough for Lily. I think it was the transition back home plus a growth spurt. I swear she's like 3 inches longer. The first night we were back she slept very soundly, but used me as a punching bag for most of the night. Maybe she was just working off some of the stored up energy from being in the car for two days. She was kicking and hitting and squirming. I kept trying to get out of her way, but I still ended up with bruises in the morning. She slept all the way through baby yoga on Tuesday morning (along with the other babies which meant we got to do mama yoga instead. Musta been the phase of the moon or something.). Wednesday was awful. She started doing this weird groaning and pushing back thing interspersed with bouts of screaming. Nothing seemed to help and I tried everything. I haven't been so relieved to hand her off to Joe ever. She continued to be cranky the rest of the week. This made it hard for me to exercise, which makes me irritable. Also we were eating lots of frozen meals and take-out because I couldn't cook. 


This week has been the complete opposite. Each day has been better than the last. Lily is sleeping great, nursing great, and having lots of fun playing with her new toys. She's even tolerating sitting in her highchair while I cook and clean. I got a new cake book, and a rotating cake stand is in the mail on its way to me. Right now I have some yogurt culturing in the kitchen, all the dishes are done and Lily is sitting in my lap trying to fit both her foot and the ear of her Purple Bear in her mouth at the same time. 


With the swings back and forth between good and horrible, I've been thinking a lot about going back to work. I've even gone so far as to send my resume a few places. I really don't know what to do. Part of me is definitely ready to be doing something other than just making silly faces and changing diapers all day. Another part of me doesn't want to be gone a single minute. And yet another part of me knows that I would be totally stressed out because I wouldn't be able to do the things I like (exercise, cook, and clean) as well as work even part-time and take care of Lily. And realistically, in any part-time job I could get I would only earn enough to pay for childcare. It's a zero-sum game. Sigh. 


Lily has a bunch of new tricks. She rolls over in both directions and likes to scoot around on her tummy if you put your hands behind her feet to push off of. She is also working on sitting up by herself. And she's suddenly become a lot more vocal. We must be using her squeaky giraffe chew toy too much because she's started emitting a high pitched squeal all of the time. Her little hands are getting to be very dextrous and quick. We had lunch at Chili's on our trip to Nebraska and she got ahold of the paper liner under the tortilla chips. Before we could stop her, she yanked the whole sheet off of the tray. She managed to do it so fast that all of the chips stayed on the tray just like when a magician pulls out the tablecloth from under the place settings. It was awesome. She was very proud of herself. 


Anyway, things are back to normal. Joe's back at school. I'm cooking and exercising. Lily is changing and growing. Life is good. 

Week 1

Back down to 167. Eating home cooked food is helping me recover from the holidays. Also, my newly replaced Nike+iPod sensor, oh how I've missed you.

M: Boo holiday eating. 30 min Yoga video + 40 min walk
T: Baby Yoga
W: Nothing, sick.
Th: 4 miles walking
F: Aquarium adventure!
S: Nothing.
S: Galavanting around town

Cookies and a Cake

As I've been settling into my stay-at-home-mom-ness and figuring out how to keep an infant entertained while doing other things, I've become obsessed with baking and decorating. Maybe it's from watching too many episodes of Cake Boss on Netflix while nursing Lily. 

Before Christmas I got my first set of piping tips and pastry bags. I decided to make some snowflake cookies for my mother-in-law's birthday. Since speed is a priority with a baby around, I used a boxed sugar cookie mix and vanilla frosting from a can. I decided to just make drop cookies so they would be irregularly shaped and then paint on a background color before piping the detail. I mixed some of the vanilla icing with some blue gel dye and almond extract then spread it on the cooled cookies. After letting that set up for a while I piped the remaining white vanilla icing in snowflake patterns. It wasn't nearly as hard as I expected it to be. I think they turned out pretty cute, and they were REALLY delicious with the almond frosting. I need to work on keeping my hands steady to make straighter lines, and figure out how to lift up the tip without creating that little tail of icing. 

After my early success, I went my usual way and took things to the extreme. I started looking into culinary and cake decorating schools. Because clearly, I had found my calling. Turns out culinary school is expensive. So, I decided to just go it alone. There's a YouTube video for everything, right? 

For Christmas, Joe and I decided to make a Yule Log to bring to my mom's house. The first step was to pipe the holly leaf and berry decorations so they could harden for a couple of days. Again, I used my trusty vanilla icing in a can and added some leaf green dye gel. Using a leaf tip, I piped a V-shape of leaves. Again, it was way easier than I expected. Then I kneaded some taste-less red gel dye with marzipan for the berries. They looked so good! I would have liked a darker green color for the leaves, but this was close enough. 

Then on Christmas Eve we baked the cake, mixed the filling, and rolled it up. We used a combination of recipe. We got the cake recipe from All Recipes (one of my favorite recipe sites) and the filling recipe from Cooks Illustrated. We were making it a day ahead so the simple whipped cream filling would have fallen and made the cake all soggy. The mascarpone cheese helped stabilize it. We decided to not use any espresso, but a touch of vanilla extract instead. We sculpted the mushrooms out of marzipan. You can't see it in this picture but the have little stubby stems and I scored the bottoms of the caps with a knife to look like little gills. I tried to make marzipan pinecones from marzipan mixed with cocoa powder. They ended up looking like poop, so they became brown mushrooms instead. The joy of sculpting with marzipan is if it looks bad you just mush it up and start again. 

Christmas morning I frosted the cake with whipped chocolate frosting from a can and dragged a fork through it to make it look like bark. I arranged the mushrooms artfully and dusted them with confectioner's sugar and cocoa powder to look like a little bit of dirt and snow. Finally, I was ready to add my piped holly leaves! I made 8 in case something happened to them. That was a good thing because I managed to crack every one of them trying to get them from the parchment paper to the log. So the least destructed one was placed on and partially repaired. Apparently frosting in a can doesn't set up as well as freshly made royal icing. Oh well. The cake was absolutely delicious, and I'm pretty proud of the way it turned out. 

As Lily gets older and more tolerant of being somewhere other than in my arms I'm looking forward to experimenting with different cake recipes and decorating techniques. I want to find some natural food coloring agents and see what all I can do with only organic ingredients. So if you're in the Chicago area and you want a delicious homemade semi-experimental cake, I'm you're girl. 

A New Year

So. I have been pretty delinquent about the blog recently. Part of that has ben due to holiday fun and part of it from boredom. Already I'm bored of writing about losing weight and I REALLY don't want to turn into one of those moms that only talks about her child all of the time. Thus my blogging resolution is to take the time to write about more non-baby topics. And I will be continuing to post my weekly workouts on Monday for my own sake, but I will be starting from Week 1 (because I have no idea what week it should be). And here's a picture that's just too funny not to post.

Happy New Year!