Fairy House

In one of the parks near our apartment, Lily and I are building a fairy house. It's this wonderfully twisted, knotted old tree just off the path. Every time we walk through the park we pick up a stick or a rock and add it to the house. 

First, we started by just clearing out the alcove so the fairies could have a place to stay dry when it rains. Then we added some stone we picked up from the beach as something for the fairies to sit on. They obviously needed a little wood chip table so they could eat. Now that the alcove was filled with furniture, they needed a place to sleep, so we added a little lean-to for a bedroom. The floor is covered in soft pine needles. 

The picture is at sort of a weird angle, but the furniture is actually sheltered in the little alcove and the bedroom is just around the corner and also partially sheltered by a different little recess. It's pretty cute. And Lily loves to add things to it. I would put some pretty flowers in, but one of the rules of fairy houses is that you can't take anything living to put in it. Therefore, you can't pick flowers. I'm thinking about making a little path to it with some fallen leaves and smaller twigs like little tiki torches. 

We come back to check on it about once a week, and it's been there about a month. It's holding up remarkably well. I managed to pick a spot that's pretty sheltered from the wind, and because it's off the path and on the opposite side of the tree, no people have messed with it, at least as far as we can tell. Our most recent visit was this evening. I can't wait for the weather to warm up a little more and go a little later in the evening when the fireflies will be out. Maybe we'll see some fairies then. 

Mother's Day Woes

So Mother's Day was a little rough this year. And from what I can tell from other friends' blogs and facebook updates it was rough for everyone. Maybe it was something in the air, or just that we expect it to be an easier day and it never is. I wasn't planning on writing about it, but since everyone else was miserable I figured I'd show a little solidarity. 


We skipped church because Lily had been sick the day before, and was still a little sniffly with a pretty nasty cough. We thought it would be particularly cruel to send her off to spread her germs on Mother's Day. Joe made 'special breakfast' at home (eggs, bacon, toast and delicious, delicious coffee). We took our time getting ready and had lunch with Joe's parents. Afterwards his parents watched Lily while Joe and I went to see 'The Avengers'. It's awesome and totally worth seeing in the theater. Go now. After picking Lily up, we made it home in time to heat up some Thai take-out leftovers and crash to watch the season finale of 'Once Upon a Time'. 


Then chaos broke out. Lily's cough had been getting worse throughout the day and her nap schedule was different so she was kind of cranky all evening. Bath time was a complete disaster. There was screaming and crying and shampoo in MY hair. Joe managed to wrangle her into an angry sleep and I laid down on the couch because now I was getting the sniffles and the cough and the fever. Great. A couple hours later we go to bed and between my coughing and Lily's coughing pretty much none of us got any sleep. At about 1:30 I gave up and went to sleep on the couch. Joe is a pretty heavy sleeper so I figured he'd be okay with Lily's coughing/crying/thrashing cycles, and he did. 


So Mother's Day itself wasn't bad so much as Mother's night. Needless to say we were all exhausted the next morning. Lily and I skipped music class, took two naps during the day, and generally wallowed in our sick and tiredness. Thankfully last night was better, not stellar, but good enough so that I can function today. Maybe we'll just skip Mother's Day next year. 

Gardening

The garden has been growing like gang busters. We've got strawberries, radishes, spinach and chard all set to harvest. Lily LOVES to go to the garden. She likes to dig in the dirt, point to weeds for me to pull out (she's usually wrong), and just generally run around and get dirty. Oh, and how could I forget watering. I got her a tiny little watering can that she thinks is the greatest thing in the world. 

Here she is clutching the strawberries we picked last week. This week we got twice as many. I'm probably being a little impatient and picking them one day too early, but I'd rather have a slightly less ripe strawberry than a rotten or bug/rat nibbled one. And they taste GOOD. They're small and oddly shaped, but juicy and oh-so-strawberry-tasting. Every one we saw Lily shouted "Ooohhhh!" and then "Mine!". She would have gobbled them all up right there if I had let her.

Radishes are so fun to grow. They grow quick, they're delicious to toss in salads, and they're really fun for little hands to dig out of the ground. We have a million of them, so if anyone wants some I will gladly bring you some. We planted these along with some carrots, and not a single one of the carrots has sprouted. We even did a second planting of carrots. I don't get it, last year the carrots went crazy, this year nothing? We'll keep trying.

I also sort of hap-hazardly planted some spinach and it's coming up pretty well. I harvested some today to put on my sandwich for lunch and throw in with salad for dinner. 

I haven't been doing a good job of going down to the garden to water regularly enough. I've mostly been relying on rainfall, which there hasn't been a whole lot of. I'm going to try to get down there more than once a week to see if that helps the next batch of carrots and maybe some more spinach. I'm really excited to plant some watermelon seeds soon and I can't WAIT to get tomato plants in the ground. 

And I am apparently a terrible house plant gardener. We started some broccoli and pepper plants in peat pots, and they're all dead now. First they grew okay, then they covered themselves in mold, then I forgot to water them for three days in a row. So we might try that again, or not. I'll probably do what I did last year and buy the pepper plants, and plant broccoli seeds in the ground along with one broccoli plant so I know what it's supposed to look like and how it should be growing. As much fun as I have in the garden, I actually know very little about plants and sometimes have a hard time telling which are my plants and which are weeds. 

Hooray for growing things and eating them!

Resolution Check-In 4

1) Exercise for 20 minutes per day. I did so-so, 24 out of 30 days. And the days I didn't I was usually working or doing something else fairly active. Still chugging along at 160.    

2) Send one letter per week. This month was rather spastic in terms of letter writing. Two of the weeks I sent out 4+ letters both times, and then no letters the other weeks. That averages out to at least one per week, right?   

3) Bake and decorate one thing outside of work per month. Well, I baked vanilla lemon cupcakes for Easter and decorated them with a classic cupcake swirl. Then I made oatmeal cookies with Lily, which is quite an undertaking. And the last week in April I was making decorations for a cake that was delivered during the first week of May. I forgot to take a picture, but I may be getting one from the client soon.  

4) Stop comparing myself to other moms. This mama who goes and does was exhausted this month. We did go a few fun places, but truthfully I was a weather wimp. We watched more TV than I'd like to admit and we took full advantage of the large common room on the second floor. We made some new friends while running off steam and getting out of the apartment for a while each afternoon. 

Cold Turkey

Lily is done nursing. This was my decision, not hers. I know breast is best, blah blah blah, but I was just done. She was only nursing two or three times a day, and it was completely for comfort, not nutrition. She was starting to bite and was trying out gymnastic moves while nursing. A couple of weeks ago I just decided to stop. I did it for 20 months, and that's enough. Now that she's old enough to ask for it she's old enough to be comforted in other ways. 

The first day was pretty rough. All she did was cry and cry and cry and would not be consoled by anything. The next day was much better. She only cried once, and was mollified by us both crawling into her hut and reading a couple of books together. 

The real challenge has been nap time. She usually takes a nap sometime between 11 and 1, and it's either in the stroller, the car, or she nurses to sleep. Because of allergies I've been pretty tired lately myself, so I had been enjoying just being able to lie down with her, nurse real quick, and a take a nap in the middle of the day. Also, I've just always been a napper. Even through college I managed to get a mid-day nap in a couple of times a week. At my first job at the environmental firm, there was a break room specifically designed for quick 20 minute naps. I loved it. 

Needless to say, I wasn't looking forward to walking or driving for two hours a day without a nap for me. She hasn't been nursing to sleep at night, so I figured we'd give it a shot and just lie down, no nursing. She cried and pulled at my shirt for 40 minutes before passing out in anger. The next day, it only took 5 minutes. And after that there's been no crying at all, she just snuggles up next to me and we go to sleep. It's wonderful. 

I've been avoiding sitting in our usual nursing spot so she isn't reminded of what she's missing out on. It's been two weeks now, and she's completely over it. Every once in a while she pats my chest and says "mama" (her sign for nursing) and then smiles and shakes her head no. This is usually followed by a hug and a request to read a book. 

It's been nice to wear real clothes again and not have to worry about easy access. And I think it's helped her cope with getting upset in public. I haven't been nursing in public for a long time now, mostly only at home. But if she was really tired or upset she would cry and pull at my shirt until we got home or to the car/stroller where I could strap her down and she could sleep. Now she just comes over for a quick hug and runs off again. 

Of course I did some googling on this subject AFTER I just decided to stop. And all of the advice sites say to do it gradually. Oh well, she doesn't seem any worse for wear. It has been gradually less and less since she turned one in July, so I guess that counts. 

Sick Kid Etiquette

So the not so unofficial rule of parenting is if your kid is sick, you keep them away from other kids as much as possible. In general, this is a good rule. And I'm pretty good at following it. When Lily gets sick we don't go on play dates or to music class and we usually just chill at home taking it easy. 

Today that just wasn't going to cut it. I was antsy. I didn't want to watch a lot of TV. Lily doesn't sit still for very long when reading. I'm sick of the cold and wind. I'm too much of a wimp to brave it for a walk, and I didn't want Lily to be out in the cold too much. But we needed to go somewhere. She just had a runny nose, so I figured a museum would be ok. Public places are filled with germs anyways, so I thought she wouldn't be contributing too much to the germ pool. 

So we went to check out the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum. I had heard about the Butterfly Haven as a good place to go with stuffed up kids. It's warm and humid and they can just wander around looking at butterflies and birds and plants and fish. And it's free on Thursdays! 

It was fun, but it was also packed. We stayed for about an hour before Lily was ready for a nap. She slept the whole way home, through a quick stop at the grocery store to pick up some soup for lunch, and all the way up until we got inside the apartment. 

She wasn't that interested in drinking water or milk today, and I don't want her to fill up on juice, so we had a tea party. With real tea. Barely warm herbal orange blossom tea, but real tea nonetheless. She thought it was great fun and gulped down a couple of teacups full. Then she was just more interested in pouring the liquid from the pot to the cup to the sugar bowl and back again. We might do it again tomorrow if she's still congested. 

So I apologize to any parents who took their kid to the Nature Museum today and they came home with a cold. What kinds of parenting faux pas do you commit? 

Back to work

I've been back at work at the bakery for about a month now. It's tiring, but I really enjoy it. 


Right up until I started again I was seriously debating about going back at all. Last summer I NEEDED to work. I needed to feel like something other than a mother. Maybe it was the two weeks plus of 100* temperatures or I don't know what, but I was feeling really trapped. 


This year, not so much. Lily is my little buddy and we have a pretty good time hanging out together. We go places, we do things, we see people, it's all fun. I was worried that if I went back I would be missing out on lots of fun things. But I told myself I couldn't make that decision until I actually went back to see how it felt for a while. 


Turns out I still really like cake decorating. I talked with my boss, though, and I'm only going to work one day a week. Last summer I was working two or three days, and while it was what I wanted it was still pretty tough. Surprisingly, cake decorating is hard work. You're standing in awkward positions, bending down frequently to scoop icing, carrying around 30+ pounds of cake, washing, sweeping, climbing ladders for supplies, and all manner of random things. 


One day a week for this last month has been just perfect. It gets me out of the house and out of mommy-mode. I get to be creative and still spend a ton of time just hanging out with Lily. Every once in a while I think about what my life would be like if I took the museum job instead. And every time I do, I come away knowing that I do not regret my decision even one little bit. Having so much fun and so much free time to enjoy silly things like naps (see later post) make it totally worthwhile. 
I'm looking forward to many days at the beach, impromptu museum trips, and just being outside (once this cold and wind goes away!). Come on summer!