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They’re Heeeere…

July 9th, 2009

My cute Jakey - around his 1st BDay

The Terrible Twos… that is! :( Unfortunately, THEY have begun with my youngest already - he will be two in August. How did this happen? How did my sweet, innocent, “go with the flow” little boy turn into a frustrated, tantrum-throwing, “no” screaming monster overnight? It’s sad, really. Almost depressing. But I have been getting flashbacks during some of his temper trantrums of his older sister doing the exact same thing… it’s almost kind of deja-vu’ish! And then the panic sets in… What do I do? How did I handle this with her when she acted out? What is age-appropriate discipline at this point? You would think having experience teaching parenting courses would help me with answering these questions - but it’s a completely different ballgame when you’re dealing with your own children.

To let you know in on how this week has played out in our house with the new Jake-monster, here is a little taste of our typical day:

- Get up and rush to get in the shower and get ready before he wakes up.

- Sigh and try not to cry when I hear him yelling “MOMMAAAAA!” from his crib… he has indeed woken up early and on the wrong side of the crib… again.

- Go get Jake from his crib and proceed to take him into the living room where I will struggle to change his diaper and try and get him dressed for about 10 minutes while he undoubtedly pulls away from me, sprints out of the room, or tries to play with a toy.

- Go to the kitchen to get him some breakfast (without being seen doing so but to no avail) - Jake hunts me down and proceeds to whine about every breakfast item I pull from the pantry to give him. (This goes on the entire time I am preparing his breakfast and drink.)

- Take Jake into the dining room to eat, he kicks and screams “NO!” as I try to put him in his chair to eat.

- After a few minutes, give up trying to feed him anything and let him play while I hurriedly slap some makeup on my face and/or fix my hair and get dressed for work. Jake will also sporadically push his way into the kitchen while I”m getting ready, just to be in my way the entire time and point things out that are “no-no’s.” to put me on edge.

- Quickly grab my laptop bag and any food for the day I have time to pack… oh yeah and Jake…. and head out the door.

- Oh yeah, and somewhere in the middle of all that I have to wake up my oldest and get her ready. She’s five, so she’s much more efficient at getting herself ready, fed and out the door. But I constantly feel like I’m barking orders at her while dealing with Jake in the mornings.

- Once we’re in the van, I’m trying not to wreck the entire way to the sitter’s while fielding lots of “Mommaaaa!!!!”s and “UH-OHHHHH”s and such coming from Jake.

- Once we’re at the sitter’s, Jake will be a perfect angel as if nothing that proceeded took place….. but once I turn to leave…. it’s an all-out tug-of war game to get him off of my leg. He doesn’t want me to go, and makes me feel extremely guilty for leaving him there.

And this is just the start of our day…. don’t even make me type out an evening timeline….

I have been doing some research for new parenting curricula and a book that I am currently reading focuses on raising an “emotionally intelligent child.” In the book, the author (an expert in his field) stresses the importance of acknowledging how your child is feeling before punishing them for bad behavior. How in the world do I do this with a child that is not even two? It’s not like I can make conversation with him that goes something like this:

“I know you’re frustrated that mommy doesn’t know what you want for breakfast Jakey, but throwing a temper trantrum and screaming isn’t a good way to deal with things.”

And Time-Out (our preferred method of discipline in our house) isn’t supposed to be used until a child is two years old and can understand the lessons of discipline and the repercussions of their behavior. So what is a frustrated and exhausted mommy to do?

Well, I’ll tell you, having my cute, angelic Jakey boy back would solve everything…

Tags: parenting
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Thoughtful gifts, are they worth it?

June 19th, 2009

jamie-and-al-wedding-608 I have an odd issue - one that I do not run into very often… I cannot come up with anything unique to get my husband for father’s day this year! I typically overthink his gifts and come up with too many to choose from. This year, however, is the opposite. I am drawing a blank. When did this happen to me? Whether it’s from work stress, kid stress, or sleep deprivation - my mind is drawing a blank. And I’m beating myself up over it.

Generally, my husbands gifts (from myself) are very exciting and unique, something that only he would know about and love. But someway, somehow I just cannot make my brain work it’s creative magic this time around. Which leads me to wonder if all the thought that I put into his gifts on an annual basis are really worth the effort? Do not take this the wrong way (I absolutely love my husband) but his gifts for me aren’t the most spectacular. And I’m content with that. Unlike myself, he’s not a planner by any means. So - my birthday, Christmas, and mother’s day gifts are typically thrown together at the last minute or bought the same day and given to me still in the shopping bag! :) This does not bother me one bit, except, maybe once - just once - I’d like to receive a gift from him that I know took a lot of time, thought, and effort for him to put together. We recently had a conversation about this (remember how I advocate the need for good communication??) that went something like this…

Me: “Honey, have you ever been to [entire gorgeous national park location here]?”

Hubby: “No, but I hear it’s beautiful- I’ve always wanted to go there with you, why?”

Me: “That’s funny, because I have been thinking about taking you there for your birthday and have been trying to research cabin rate information and it’s just going to be too expensive. I really wish we could go there on a getaway weekend, but I don’t think we could justify spending that much money.”

Hubby: “Oh honey, you put so much thought in my gifts. You get me the best stuff.”

Me: “I love you hon, that’s why.”

Hubby: “I know, and I love you. But your gifts from me are always so… well… cliche.”

At least he admits it….

The point is, is that even though I may not receive the world’s most thoughtful gifts from my husband during special occasions, I still enjoy treating him to unique and special gifts because I love him so much and also love to express my love for him that way… And because I’m still beating myself up over this Father’s Day thing… and will continue to well after the holiday is over.

Any ideas from anyone out there… the clock is tick-tocking away!

Tags: marriage
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Letting Go to Gain More… In Your Marriage

June 15th, 2009

…literally! And I know the title of this post sounds a bit ludicrous… but it really is true. I found this out first hand this past weekend when my husband traveled to San Diego (a cool 2,300 miles from our small town-Ohio home.) This was the first trip he had taken without me since we had started dating - so it was very nervewracking to say the least. The good thing was that it was nervewracking for both of us. Why was this a good thing? As women, we tend to worry - do we not? And I think men just do not have that instinct-driven compulsion to worry about everything (I would tend to argue this is because their women take care of everything for them…. but that is a topic for a different post…) I was worried because I was left alone with the kids all weekend long… and that something might happen to him that was completely out of my control because I was not there… and that something could happen to his friends… the list goes on and on. My hubby was worried because he had to travel alone, he had left his entire family behind, etc. He told me this when he left and after he returned last night. It gave me comfort knowing that I wasn’t the only one playing out all the worst-case scenarios in my head while he was away.

In any case, even though it was extremely hard for us to be that separated for three days, it was an extremely easy decision to be so! I am (now) a firm believer that it’s essential for us to have individual experiences shape and mold us into the people we are… even if we have those experiences without our spouse or other loved ones - but I haven’t always been this way. For me, allowing (and even pushing) hubby to travel to California was a big step for me. If you would have told my control-freak self 10, even 5 years ago that I would allow my husband to travel to such an exciting location (San Diego) for his best friend’s bachelor party without me I would have laughed in your face! It’s funny how we grow and mature over the years - finally “seeing” what is important and what isn’t. It was important for him to see his best friend who now lives so far away. It was important for him to go without me. And it was most definitely important for him to be able to enjoy himself, without listening to his wife’s guilt-trip about it all!

So here are a few things we both learned from ourselves and our marriage from this trip:

- The importance of respecting eachother: I respected him enough to realize how much this opportunity meant to him and be a major proponent that he go (keep in mind I gave up a weekend in Chicago so that HE could travel…) and he respected me enough to keep in contact with me while he was gone, take lots of pictures, and tell me how much he missed me and the kiddos!

- The importance of trust: this was huge on this trip. He was going to be thousands of miles away from me at a bachelor party people! But we had a lot of discussion about what was going on / what wasn’t going on before he left. This really helped put both of our minds at ease while he was away.

- The importance of having individual experiences: married couples seldom have grown up together and had the same exact experiences as one another. How boring would that be? Our individual interests and experiences are what make us exciting and interesting to eachother! This trip gave hubby the opportunity to have more unique experiences of his own… and then come home to tell me all about it

- Finally - the importance of working as a team and/or partnership in your marriage: WE made this trip happen. For all of the reasons I listed above and more. We both worked together to get him out there, (even kept his arrival a secret from his BFF which was awesome!), sort out the financials surrounding the trip, everything. This was a decision we were both heavily invested in and all for. And that, my friends, feels amazing.

The key is to use this type of camaraderie, this type of partnership throughout every aspect of your marriage. It’s not always easy (you can end up thousands of miles away from one another for example!) - but it is so worth the effort.

Tags: marriage, travel
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How to Survive a 7 Hour Baseball Game… with Kids in Tow!

June 3rd, 2009

Hubby and I had been planning a special trip to watch our beloved Cincinnati Reds for quite some time… and Monday (Memorial Day) was THE big day! The forecast called for a “chance” of a pop-up thunderstorm, which in Ohio weather-language means “85% chance nothing will happen” so we took the bet and carted both of the kiddos down to Cincy. Neither of us had a clue, mind you, as to how the kids might act and/or if they would both make it until the end of the game. Jake is typically pretty laid back - however - the starting time for the game was 1:10 = 10 minutes AFTER Jake usually goes down for a nap. So we were going to go with the flow and hope that he didn’t turn into a sleep-deprived monster by the sixth inning!

Without boring any anti-sports fans out there, I will say that the first inning was very exciting! The Reds scored 5 unearned runs by the end of it - pretty impressive if you ask me - and we were there to witness it! Our seats weren’t bad either… which proved to be a blessing when the sky above us darkened in the fifth inning and rain started coming down (we were under the overhang.) Drats! Blah! Ugh! Now what do we do with two figgity kids who have missed their nap? Jake was already getting to the “slap-happy” point (as we like to call it in our household) - you know, the point when you are past exhaustion and don’t actually know what you’re doing? He was there - big time. The dude behind us knows this all too well after having his knee angrily slapped multiple times by our Jakey boy. Our sweet, innocent little boy began wailing on any vulnerable victim in his sight… the men in front of him, beside him, and of course, behind him. So with the threat of a long rain delay looming and still 4 1/2 innings of baseball left in the game, Al and I had to switch to survival mode. Here is how we (and our little troopers) made it to the end of the game without sacrificing our sanity:

We headed straight for the food - after the lines died down. The Great American Ball Park now has $1 concession stands - would have been the BEST THING EVER if Marissa wouldn’t have begged for cotton candy ($4.50) and a soft pretzel (also $4.50) which when combined cost more than all of our other food - Ugh. At any rate - eating kept the kids occupied for almost 45 minutes - SCORE!

I then spotted a slew of gumball and other toy machines. Which, at first thought, might seem like a bad idea to go stand by, but actually it was quite the opposite! Marissa was allowed to pick out one toy machine to put her quarters in - the small little bauble that came out kept her occupied for another 20 minutes or so while Jake tried like crazy to figure out how people were getting the gumballs out of the gumball machine - it was too cute to watch!

We spent the rest of the two-hour rain delay walking around the stadium and checking out different views of the baseball field. Jake loved this - but Marissa could have cared less. She may have asked “Can we go home now?” about 10 times by that point.

Once the rain let up a bit, we made our way back to our seats (which thankfully, were still pretty dry) and watched the field crew roll up the tarp. I tell you what, I never thought that it would elicit such joy and excitement from Marissa! Holy cow did she think that was fun to watch. We were relieved when the game started 20 minutes later - but we still had all of those innings to get through and by this time - well, it was almost din-din time for the kids. But Al and I made sure we kept the kids involved and interested in the game by doing what parents do best and exaggerated everything. We danced everytime a song came on, we roared “Charge!” everytime we were cued to, we pointed out our favorite players to the kids (Adam, we love you man!) and we let Marissa run down to the Reds’ dugout to try and catch a ball at the end of every inning.

By the time the game was finally over, the kiddos had made it through a two-hour car ride, five hours of baseball and 2 hours worth of a rain delay and were to say the least, POOPED! Jake fell asleep 5 minutes after he was buckled in. Marissa, being the stubborn mule that she is, kept herself awake by playing her Leapster the entire way home.

I guess when all is said and done, it pays to get creative to pass the time and to let your kids know that you are there to have fun with them - even if the game doesn’t go quite as planned. If you learn to “go with the flow” your kids will be likely to adapt right along with you…

Jake, a born & bred Reds fan couldn’t take his eyes off of the game!

Family Photo by the dugout

Tags: Reds, Summer
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OAMC Big Day Re-Cap

June 3rd, 2009

May Big Cooking Day Highlights & Tips:

Oh, if I only knew what I was getting myself into… My friend Tricia hosts a website called “Once a Month Mom” in which she documents her once a month cooking adventures for her readers… and she also goes a step - okay a leap forward by providing everyone with monthly menus, grocery lists, instructions, recipes, labels, and even an instructional podcast! This makes it insanely easy for those who are interested in doing once a month cooking but are extremely intimidated by the amount of time and brain power that goes into organizing the Big Cooking Day. Tricia has been wanting me to participate in this for awhile (I secretly think she wants to prove to the world that a working mom can survive one day of cooking an entire month’s worth of food…) and she had finally won me over when she sent a OAMC meal home with me one day and I was able to experience the ease of just popping a meal in the oven. So, I called up my sister - who by the way is a much better cook than I am - and asked if she would be willing to try out this new hobby with me… and she was very excited. I’ll take a minute to explain why two working moms would want to spend an entire day cooking food for the month: 1) it saves a lot of time and energy not having to make dinner after coming home from work every night of the week and it gives us more time to spend with our family because of that and 2) we will save at least $400 a piece per month on our grocery expenses!

Here is a re-cap of how our Big Cooking Day went this month as well as lots of tips and suggestions:

We decided to have our Big Cooking Day on a Monday (June 1st) - this worked best for Hollie’s (sis) schedule as she works third shift in a sleep lab and has Sunday and Monday nights off. After reflecting on taking a vacation day off from work for our Big Cooking Day, I think I wish I would have given myself another day off to recover! Anyway, we did all of our grocery shopping for the ingredients we needed the day before (so on Sunday) and went together in order to split the cost effectively. We had an issue with the flank steaks at the store - there wasn’t enough in stock! Thankfully, a worker came to my rescue and offered to cut us the amount we needed right then and there. 10.5 lbs of steak is a LOT OF STEAK! In the end, we spent approximately $186.00 on groceries per person. I believe the cost was a little high due to: 1) myself forgetting ALL of my coupons - Doh! and 2) the expensive meats on this month’s menu. No matter what, we will still SAVE on our monthly grocery budget, so no worries there!

On Monday morning at 8:30 sharp, I headed to Hollie’s with my crock pot full of cooked chicken from the night before and kitchen odds and ends that we needed extras of. I also brought an extra table for the crock pots (thank you Misty for the hint!) We took all of the groceries that we had purchased straight to her house the night before, and that really helped lighten my load on Monday morning. When I arrived, Hollie had already organized most of the food items on one table and had placed cutting boards and appliances on the countertop. I cannot stress enough the importance of having everything already laid out before beginning your cooking endeavor.

Hollie decided the night before that she would be “Person A” in the instructional list and I would be “Person B” - thank you, Hollie for letting me know this ahead of time - her reasoning: she cannot bake and person B was assigned all of the baking. So, I got started chopping and dicing a million and one ingredients and she got started on well, whatever she was supposed to be working on at the time - I’m not joking when I say that you end up in your own little “cooking world” oblivious to whatever the other person is doing… Anyway, I chose to hand chop all of the ingredients because I thought it would save time over using a food processor and having to clean it out constantly, etc…. let me tell you that I highly do not recommend this! It took me almost two and a half hours just to chop everything and I developed a few nasty blisters because of it! This seriously ate up my time and I fell way behind Hollie during our morning tasks… I do recommend having a sink full of soapy water at all times for cleaning dishes and utensils, this really helped keep the kitchen somewhat-tidy.

Without going into too much detail about the rest of our day - here is a list of other tips and suggestions when participating in once a month cooking:

- Be sure to double check ALL of the ingredients and match the amounts from the menus to the grocery list. Hollie and I put all of our faith into Tricia’s organizational handy-work and did not do this = big FAIL on the amounts that we had (or didn’t have) of some of our ingredients. This was totally our fault and we should have taken the time to double check for typos. Tricia may be uber-organized but she is after all, human… I think.

- DO wear comfortable clothes and shoes! Tricia (always my angel) talked me into Crocs while we were in Baltimore - so so glad I wore these shoes while cooking yesterday! And no, they’re not ugly at all! Take a look for yourselves here. I was surprised at how affordable they were too. I wore a comfy pair of my Old Navy walking shorts and I brought Alan’s (hubby) apron over but never used it - it probably would have come in handy when I was trying to portion out the meatballs = mess!

- Chop the ingredients the night before OR use a food processor the day of to chop, mince, and dice veggies and fruits. Another option is to have a third person there just to chop and wash dishes. A husband would be great for this LOL.

- Be sure to cook in a large, open kitchen if you are able. I am so glad that we decided to cook at Hollie’s house - even though her appliances are little more dated than mine, her kitchen is much more spacious and it eliminated a lot of unecessary run-ins with eachother! Plus we were able to pick out our own cooking spaces and stay there for the majority of the day.

- DO clean out your freezer and refrigerator. Hollie did this the day before and it was a HUGE help - we ended up needing to utilize BOTH on our Big Cooking Day.

- Wear plastic disposable gloves if you are going to be chopping ingredients or working with most of the raw meat. I should have listened to my wise, intuitive hubby and taken his advice on this one. Even though I trimmed my fingernails, I’m still finding yucky pieces of food under them and my hands smell like they will forever be tainted with the stench of onions!

- Be sure to use VERY LARGE mixing bowls, pans, stockpots, etc. We underestimated just how big our mixing bowls needed to be and thus had to halve some of the recipes and make them one at a time. This put us a little behind schedule - we will definitely invest in larger bowls next time, or hunt some down to borrow!

- Keep any ingredients that you have left over that are already cooked. I’m not sure how it happened, but we ended up with an entire extra box of spaghetti, two bowls of extra cooked chicken, and two bowls full of various extra “stuffing” for some of the recipes. Instead of wasting all of that energy and $, we threw the extras into freezer bags and divided it between the two of us. We plan on making shredded chicken sandwiches out of the chicken at least.

- Make sure the kids are with the daddies and not in your work area. My niece Hope wanted to sample I think, well, pretty much everything we were working on and when we weren’t looking she decided to stir all of the spices and herbs for the BBQ sauce together = big mess all over the stovetop! Of course, if we would have been able to finish at a decent time this wouldn’t have happened as I would have been gone before she arrived home.

- Have a bottle of wine handy, but if you’re going to partake in that kind of refreshment, make yourself eat something during the course of the day. Which brings me to….

- EAT SOMETHING! I’m very finicky about eating while I’m cooking. If I have been around food for most of the day I usually do not have much of an appetite to speak of. And so during our big cooking day I hardly ate anything - this led to feeling like a Mac Truck had run me over by the end of the night. Even if you have to force yourself, make sure you are eating and drinking all day long to keep your energy up.

- Keep the music playing! This helped us get through our sluggish time, around 4-5:00pm when we knew we weren’t going to finish by 6pm and we still had so much left to do!

- Start SUPER EARLY if you are participating in your first Big Cooking Day - or be prepared to work from sun up to sun down. We totally underestimated how long it would take us to cook. I had a target end time set for 6pm and that was allowing for extra time because we were “newbies.” However, before we “new” it, it was time for the hubbies to pick up the kiddos from the sitter and then it was dinnertime…. and then it was bedtime! Yes, we did not finish until almost 10:00pm. Talk about a major time management malfunction, and I’m not sure how that happened either. Neither one of us took a break that was longer than 5 minutes and we may have only taken two of those during the entire course of the day! I’m going to chalk it up to inexperience…. at least that’s what I’m hoping!

All in all, I truly do feel that all 13 hrs of hard work, smelly hands, sore feet, back aches, and mental drain was worth it… we will be able to come home at night, pop some food in the oven or microwave and just relax. The pocketbook savings won’t hurt either.

Us hard at work.

About 1/3 of the food we made. Don’t let that empty space in the freezer fool you! I was too tired to think of taking a picture after we made everything….

If you would like more information on Once A Month Cooking, stop by Tricia’s blog to see the new June menu which just premiered yesterday. Or, check out the May menu to see the recipes that Hollie and I made to eat throughout the month of June. I am looking sooooo forward to chowing down on the homeade granola bars and fresh strawberry muffins…. and the chipotle chicken corn chowder… and the shakes….I could go on…..!

Tags: OAMC, Sisterly Love
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