7QT: March 20, 2015

Linking up with Kelly for 7 Quick Takes!

1) Happy first day of spring! It is flipping snowing.


2) This is the end of my second week back to work after maternity leave. I miss my little man, and he misses me. So far at daycare he's opted to eat or sleep, and not a single day has he done both. His record for eating there is something like 10 ounces of breastmilk in a whole day (so much is getting wasted! Waaaaah!), and yesterday he drank four. All day. Four ounces. This from a kid who is not even three months old and already weighs 15 lbs. But he slept over five hours, so there's that. And he spends his evenings like this:

Blooooooooob.

3) I got so much work done these past two weeks; my job depends so much on having a full pipeline and obviously after twelve weeks off my pipeline is somewhat diminished, so that's a big deal. As a reward I spent my lunch break yesterday seeing Cinderella. Disney has a history of getting things very wrong, in my opinion, but they got this one right. I give the credit to Kenneth Branagh -- although I really want to know who's responsible for Helena Bonham-Carter's teeth. She couldn't talk around them! And that is literally my only complaint. I'll be buying this one for my daughter, who at two is not ready for the movie theatre.

Have courage, and be kind.


4) During my last week of maternity leave, my husband happened to be traveling for work. My mom and sister came into town from Pennsylvania for two of the four days to help me out with the kids. While they were here, we sent the toddler to daycare one day and we did an epic cleanout of my closet. You may remember that my Lenten sacrifice has been shopping; I had enough clothing for... I don't even have an apt comparison. It was a horrorshow. I opened my closet door and my sister actually gasped. I didn't take a "before" picture, even though it occurred to me to do so, because it was so bad that even for the sake of an extreme before-and-after I just couldn't show anyone.

We went through every. single. item. My sister went home with a whole new wardrobe; my mom took quite a few pieces too (plus some for a couple of my other sisters and my sister-in-law). When he got back, my husband still dropped off 8-10 garbage bags of donation items. And my closet is still full. Just not over-full. Look!

To the left, to the left.

Straight on.

Aaaaaand the other side!

Furthermore, I'm implementing a strict "item-in, item-out" rule when I'm allowed to shop again, but I think I'll be doing less of that anyway now that I know what I have. Being able to see what I own and being able to find what I need are amazing.


5) I had a bunch of stuff that was brand new with tags or very gently used that I don't need, so I'm going to be selling it through ThredUP. I ordered a cleanout bag from them but I haven't yet sent it in. I have a laundry basket full of items to send in and now that I've seen how big the bag is I think I'm going to need at least two more! I'll report back on my experience.


6) Did I mention that it's snowing? I am so completely over winter, you guys. This year just seemed particularly horrible. I had a sweet baby to snuggle, which helped some, but it was so cold and icy all the time that I never took him out so we were just in the house all the time. I'm ready for spring to get here for real and stick around!


7) As someone who struggles with meal planning, I have to say I did really well this week! On Monday I made ham-and-cheese quiche, on Tuesday for St. Paddy's I made shepherd's pie...

This is before the baking step, obviously. I used Irish cheddar for the top too, obviously.

...On Wednesday I forgot to defrost the frozen chicken so we had leftover shepherd's pie, and yesterday I made roast chicken with asparagus and creamy parmesan rice. And tonight I am OFF DUTY.

Me + Followthrough = Largely Theoretical

Two days in a row I half-wrote (different!) blog posts in the shower, in my head. And then promptly forgot everything. Two (different!) topics, fairly well fleshed-out during the length of a mom-shower (so, you know, short -- I think much faster than I write), just gone.

I'm going to put a notebook in the bathroom next time. This is getting ridiculous.

Stay tuned!

P.S. My hand smells like barf and I have no idea why. I'm still damp from the shower. What the heck.

Read...

This.

It's a long read, but worth it. I'll be back in a couple of days to discuss, once I've finished absorbing.

Lent 2015

Lent begins in 11-ish days. Usually I haven't even begun to think about my Lenten sacrifice by this point; shamefully, it's usually three or four days into Lent before I have decided what to give up.

This morning, I looked into my disaster area of a closet and immediately realized what I'm being called to do this year: I need to give up buying stuff.

I'm a great bargain shopper. I have a closet jammed full of stuff: clothes, shoes, purses, accessories. Almost everything in there was at least 30% off, and more usually upwards of 50% off, when I bought it. However: I have enough clothes to outfit five of me for a month and hardly repeat a stitch (this assumes that the five of me range in size, but two or three of me at my current size would be well clothed).

I need for nothing. (Except to stop buying stuff.)

So this Lent, I'm going on a spending diet. I will not be buying -- no matter the discount -- clothes, shoes, accessories, purses, or makeup. I may buy things like shampoo and toothpaste if I need them, but beyond that I may not spend on myself. And Sundays are not a cheat day, like it would be if I were giving up, say, Diet Coke. (And I stand firmly behind the Sunday cheat day, for reasons that Kendra explains more eloquently than I ever could. As always.)

Not only is this going to be really hard for me, but it's going to be good for our family. I haven't fully made the transition from our dual-income, childless lifestyle to our one-and-a-half income, dual-child lifestyle. I wouldn't say I overspend, precisely -- at least not in the sense that I'm spending money that we don't have -- but I could certainly be more responsible.

And it starts in 11 days.

Now, the challenge will be not hoarding new stuff between now and then. Pray for me, friends.

7QT: Sleeplessness

Whew. I wish I could say "the baby is a month old, ain't no excuse to not hop back on the ol' blog train," but I cannot (CAN. NOT.) say that. I'm going to link up with Kelly for 7 extra-quick takes about why that is a thing which I cannot say.

1. Did you guys know that babies sleep like garbage?! I mean, this isn't my first rodeo of baby-having but I am OLDER and TIREDER than last time. (Also less worried about everything, and thus ripe for a good, old-fashioned overnight coma.) I have been experimenting nonstop with sleep conditions to coax a longer sleep out of Declan, and tonight I hit on a surely-not-to-be-successfully-repeated combination that netted me four straight hours: nurse baby until he is passed the heck out, in very specific low-light-but-not-no-light and low-sound-but-not-no-sound environment (I find that a brightly lit iPad screen and a podcast playing out of my phone is about the correct amount of light and noise); VERY GENTLY AS IF HE IS A BOMB, put said baby in the Rock'n'Play (with vibration, natch); turn on the sound machine to rain (no timer, rookie, because why would you want it to turn off? HE MIGHT AWAKEN EARLY!); and dive for the bed, burrow beneath the covers and pray for silence. And I just realized that my boast of four consecutive hours is a big fat lie (what the heck my phone said it was 2:30am but it was only 12:30am waaaaaaaah). I'd say "back to the drawing board" but I'm all drawn out. I have tried everydarnthing.

2. Meanwhile, after Declan's baptism last Sunday and a wonderful visit from all his Pennsylvania cousins -- someday I might have pictures! -- we're all feeling under the weather again. I'm mostly okay, but Declan is a little congested. Big sister seems mostly fine but her sleep has been interrupted like nobody's business so something must be bugging her. But my husband...

3. MANFLU. The less said about that, the better.

4. So since I've been so tired and useless I've been mostly just nursing continuously and watching Netflix. I just watched season one of Reign, which I honestly expected to hate but do not as long as I pretend to know nothing about Mary, Queen of Scots. And then I picked up where I had left off when I somehow forgot I was in the middle of watching Peaky Blinders. I've been dreaming in a Manchester accent.

5. What else, what else... Oh! Last night was one of those nights where I was feeling cocky and overconfident about my ability to get this kid to sleep without being snuggled up against me (see #6). Michael was in the guest room to sleep because the plague that is MANFLU was making his snoring so bad it was even waking him up out of a dead sleep, and I was feeding Declan when I heard a familiar explosive diaper sound (breastfed babies, amirite?). Three seconds later I realized: it's about three inches from the bottom of his hairline. Which means that his clothes, his blanket, the diaper-changing pad and the Boppy cover are all now covered in poop. And it's 2am. And my phone was dead from listening to podcasts so I couldn't even text for reinforcements. Somehow -- I think maybe it's because of all the screaming from a baby who did. not. like. having his whole back scrubbed down with baby wipes? -- Michael happened to come check on me (with a giant 2-year-old in his arms, while she guzzled her fortieth cup of warm milk for the night), so he was able to put all the poopy, goopy items in the washer and/or soaking tub of OxyClean water for me. It was delightful.

6. So all these sleeping woes are maybe my fault, in part. I mean, we're all genuinely not feeling well which is not my fault, but I have to admit that I have discovered the solution for sleeping: this child will sleep almost indefinitely if we just co-sleep. Part of me wants to give in to the inevitability of that -- and come 5am I will, fear not -- and another part of me wants to find something he likes as much so that I can sleep without being completely stationary all night long.

And finally:

7. Almost an hour of nursing and diaper changing later, he's showing signs of being ready to be chucked lovingly placed back in his Rock'n'Play so I can snatch another four minutes or so of sleep. Au revoir, mes amis! Please wish me ALL THE LUCK and comment below with your magical tips for baby sleep.

#whywemarch

Today is the 42nd anniversary of the legal travesty that is the decision in Roe v. Wade. That means that today was the March for Life in Washington, D.C., which is a mere metro ride away.

Unfortunately, I was unable to attend because I have a three-and-a-half-week-old baby who nurses every half hour or so and who obviously couldn't be out in the January cold (although it was a relatively mild day today, it's still January in the mid-Atlantic region). This year marks, I believe, the second March for Life that I've missed since something like 1996. (I missed one year in college when I was attending winter session and had an exam that day.)

So instead I stayed in, nursed continuously, did some preparation for Declan's baptism this Sunday (dear Jesus, please take it easy with the snowstorm that's predicted for this weekend so that his godparents can actually get here!), and found some stuff on the Internet to share with y'all.

Here's a news story on the March that's actually complimentary!

Here's a moving testimonial from one of my favorite journalists about his own adoption, three months before the Roe decision, which also touches on the failure of Congress to follow through on their promise to pass a 20-week abortion ban because they are USELESS and SPINELESS.

Another perspective on the USELESS and SPINELESS.

An explanation of the ways in which artificial birth control is REALLY not good for your body.

Finally, I spent a while today thinking about planned and unplanned pregnancies. Both of my pregnancies were planned to heaven and back, and longed-for, given my struggles with infertility and need for Clomid assistance to achieve said pregnancies.

I was my parents' first planned pregnancy after two surprises. My sister just found out today about her second surprise pregnancy, several months before she intended to start trying for another baby. (Hooray!)

As a person who has struggled with infertility, I take abortion to be a personal insult. There are so many people out there dying for a baby. Adoption waiting lists are long and can feel insurmountable. We hadn't yet reached the point of seriously considering adoption when we achieved our own pregnancy, but I was dreading it because it's so expensive and potentially heartbreaking. And yet, so many women just throw away the precious gift of a baby.

On the other hand: I've prayed for friends who were dealing with pregnancy scares, I've had family members go through teen pregnancies, I've endured my own nightmare pregnancy moments -- hyperemesis gravidarum is no picnic, y'all. On some level, I can actually understand women who abort. This is awkward for an unequivocally pro-life person to admit, but if I'm being honest I must: if I had been as sick as I was with a baby I didn't want, I can understand the impulse to make it go away.

But if I had been dealing with a crisis pregnancy and had an abortion, I would have missed out on so much. A two-year-old and an infant are quite a bit of work (I can hear the laughter from y'all parents of seven or eight), but I wouldn't give them back for the world. I wouldn't even lend them out to someone else for a weekend because I would miss them too much (much to the displeasure of my mother-in-law, I must admit).

Babies are awesome. That is #whywemarch. And I intend to be back marching again next year.