Little Trooper

Maureen's strabismus surgery was on Friday and she did really well. She's such an angel and took everything in her stride.

We were due at the hospital at 1045AM, and she couldn't have anything to eat or drink past midnight, so I had planned to get up early to shower and eat. But then both kids woke up early. I sent Johnny downstairs to eat, with strict instructions not to let Maureen see him with food, while I stayed upstairs with her, getting her dressed and distracting her with PBS. At one point, she asked for milk and I said no and she cried, but she seemed to get over it easily.

My mom came to spend the day with Johnny, they went to see Up, then to McDonalds and the dollar store to pick out a coloring book for Maureen. I tried to sneak some string cheese in the car, but Maureen spotted me and asked for some, so I wasn't able to finish the rest of my food.

Once we were there, we checked in, then changed her into a toddler sized hospital gown that was purple with bears and rockets all over it, and the tiniest pair of hospital socks that I've ever seen. Since I was to accompany her into the operating room, I got to put on shoe covers, a surgical hat and this foolish looking jumpsuit.

Here she is hanging out with Elmo before heading to the OR.


This may very well be the last picture in which one of her eyes is turning inward.


In the OR, I held her while the anesthesiologist held a mask over her face to deliver gas. When she was asleep, the doctors and nurses took over, and I left. I passed the time by reading, and the surgeon came to see me a lot sooner than I expected.

She was groggy and disoriented from the anesthesia and cried for awhile, but then settled down and went back to sleep for a couple of hours. I woke her up when my legs started to get numb, and a nurse came to remove her IV catheter. Then she scarfed down twp packages of graham crackers and drank some juice and was discharged.

Here she is in recovery. The redness of her eyes is not from the camera flash. The whites of her eyes are blood red and will remain that way for a couple of weeks, at least. However, when she looks at me, her eyes appear to be aligned.


She was a little cranky today and absolutely hates the ointment I have to put in her eyes twice a day, but is recovering well.

Thanks to all for the well wishes and prayers!

Time Flies

Late last winter, I got into a conversation with a woman at the grocery store to pass the time in a slow moving line. She was pregnant with her first child, starting to feel uncomfortable, and looking forward to becoming a mom.

I saw her again the other day and paused to say hi and admire her baby. When I asked how old he is, she gazed at him and said, "He's two months old already. I can barely believe it."

I looked at my own babies, two and a half and almost five years, and thought the same thing.

Monday is Johnny's last day of school.

In a few months, I'll be turning 31, which freaks me out because I still haven't come to terms with 30 yet.

In three months, Johnny will turn 5, and a couple of weeks after that, he'll start his last year of preschool.

This time next year, we will have decided where to send him for kindergarten.

In 5 months, Maureen will be turning 3. She'll be in preschool in the fall too. This will be the last fall when I have both kids at home with me during the day. In three short years, they'll both be in school full time. It's too weird to contemplate right now, but it's coming and it's coming quickly.

Some days at home with little kids seem endless and when I'm changing yet another diaper or singing the Alphabet Song for what seems like the 50 millionth time, I think about what things will be like when they are older.

Other times, I notice how long Johnny's legs seem or how Maureen's face is losing it's roundness and wonder where my babies went. It's those times that remind me that while some days are tedious in their predictability, the time that children are actually children is so fleeting. If you don't pay attention, those long nights with a sleepless infant will quickly morph into a day in which you stand chatting with a stranger and looking at your children and asking yourself exactly where the time went.

I wanted to tell that new mother to pay attention to every detail. I wanted to tell her that yes, it sucks to be puked on and it's exhausting getting up five times in the middle of the night to breastfeed, but before she knows it, that two month old baby will be too heavy to pick up and his legs will be too long to fit in her lap anymore and he'll want to pour his own milk and make his own waffle and not hold her hand to cross the street. And she'll do what I do; look at him and think, "I can barely believe it."

On an unrelated note, Maureen is having her eye surgery tomorrow. Please keep her in your thoughts for an uneventful surgery and speedy recovery!

Preschool Field Trip: The Baltimore Museum Of Art

Last week, Johnny and I went to the Baltimore Museum of Art with his class.

The museum is large, so small kids probably wouldn't last to see the entire collection, but the museum is also free, so you can go back as many times as you like. For this trip, the class concentrated on a collection of miniature rooms, amazing in their detail, and the Cone Collection, which includes the largest collection of works by Henri Matisse.

We also viewed Rodin's The Thinker, and when I asked Johnny what he thought the figure was doing, he said, "Ummm...it looks like he's pooping." Leave it to a four-year-old to reduce a famous piece of sculpture to poop!

We spent some time in the sculpture garden too, and enjoyed the beautiful weather. We'll definitely go back this summer to picnic in the garden and enjoy other sections of the museum. Access to the museum and sculpture garden are free, although parking is not, and getting to the museum is an easy trip up I-83.

Here's Johnny in the garden.

An upper view from the tiered garden.


Johnny took this picture of me. He didn't want to stand next to the flowers because of the risk of bees.

We enjoyed our trip to the BMA, and we'll definitely be back!

My Daughter, The Fashionista

Johnny has never been the kind of kid who really cares what he wears. I mean, yes sometimes he wants to wear snowboots in August and sometimes insists that a certain sweatshirt "feels funny," but for the most part, he'd happily get dressed in a paper sack.

My first clue that Maureen wasn't going to be the same way was when we walked into Payless some time last winter and she shouted "SHOES!" and ran towards the shelves.

Last week, I watched the two of them sit on the floor, playing trains. Johnny wore jeans and a t-shirt. Maureen wore a pair of frilly pink shorts, the top to her jammies, a tutu, a red velvet slipper on one foot and a bear slipper on the other, and Johnny's bike helmet.

Today, she let me pick out her dress, but then she chose her own accessories.

Here she is, sporting the belt to Johnny's construction set slung around her neck like a necklace, the bear slippers, and the hat we got at the circus.


If you look closer, you can see she also opted to take her purse along while walking her baby.




Baby, however, is naked. I guess there's only room for one fashionista in this household!

Tiny Talk Tuesday: What's That Plant?

One of Johnny's favorite activities is helping out in the yard. He's gotten quite good at identifying the seedlings from different seeds that he has planted, and it really amazes me that he can look at a tiny leaf sticking out of the ground and say, "Don't pull that one up, Mom, it's a sunflower." According to my husband, it actually IS a sunflower.

Anyway, last week Johnny helped me plant some herbs, then we tackled weeding the flagstones in the yard. He told me, very seriously, "Mom, we need to pull up ALL these weeds. Weeds take water and nutrients from the other plants." When I asked him who told him that, he said, "My teacher."

Later, he said to me, "Mom. My teacher knows a lot about weed."

Wait...I thought those seeds that came with my Mother's Day gift were for Sweet William!

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Speaking of garden stuff, now that the weather is a little warmer and gardens are starting to take shape, plenty of people are also dealing with little invaders. Ants. You can read my post on natural ways to deter ants here. I've had much success with cinnamon, but this year also discovered that tea tree oil works well too. After a heavy rain storm last week, I found ants in my kitchen. I killed them all, made sure my cabinets were free of anything that might attract them, then placed a small bottle of tea tree oil in the closest cabinet with the lid off. It's been almost a week and we're still ant free.

China's Terra Cotta Warriors: A Must-See Exhibit

As the daughter of an avid museum goer, I've been to my fair share of museums, including several Civil War battle fields, the Smithsonian in DC, the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, the B&O Railroad Museum in Baltimore, and many more. With so many museums in the Baltimore/DC area, it's entirely possible to visit a different museum every month.

Museums are great places to take kids too. My four-year-old is fascinated by trains, boats and construction equipment and heartily enjoyed the Mystic Seaport Museum in CT last summer, and my two-year-old was stopped in her tracks by the dinosaur bones at the Natural History Museum in DC. Many museums are free, and they are a great place to go when it's too cold or too hot to be outdoors.

As much as I personally enjoy the nature and science museums, I've always been most fascinated by ancient history. Seeing relics from the past, learning how ancient peoples lived, what they believed in, how they worshiped, their rituals dealing with death and the afterlife, have always been an irresistible draw to me. For that reason, one of my favorite parts of my honeymoon to Italy was the tour we took of the ruins in Rome. Standing among the remains of the Coliseum, the Pantheon, and the Arch of Constantine, and seeing how the modern city surrounded the ancient one, was an experience I'll never forget.

If you're in the Baltimore/DC area, mark your calenders for this fall for a special museum trip to the National Geographic Museum for the exhibition Terra Cotta Warriors: Guardians of China’s First Emperor, November 19, 2009 through March 31, 2010. The exhibit will include 15of the life-size Terra Cotta figures that are among thousands that were crafted centuries ago to accompany China's first emperor into the afterlife. The figures were discovered in 1974, and I saw them at the Walters Art Gallery over ten years ago. This exhibit may be your last chance to see the warriors on US soil.

Although the exhibit doesn't open until November, tickets are on sale now for just 12 dollars, and advance tickets are highly recommended. Don't miss your chance to see this amazing exhibit before the warriors return to China!

*photo courtesy of Wang Da Gang

Reputation

My regular readers and family members are already aware that I'm choosy when it comes to what foods I feed my family. The reasons are many. For one, when the kids eat better, I eat better too. When I eat better, my weight stays stable, I have more energy, I feel better and am a better mom and wife. When the kids eat better, things from how they sleep to how they behave improve. Probably the biggest one is that growing bodies need good fuel to stay healthy and strong. Plus, the other day I was listening to a radio show on which a doctor was blaming high rates of cancer, obesity and other diseases on the vast amount of chemicals that are present in our lives. Of course, he was also trying to sell something, but I think he's got a point.

Anyway, while I avoid certain foods and ingredients like the plague, I'm not the kind of mom who starts lecturing when another mom produces a bag of cheese curls and passes it around, nor am I the mom that makes her kid eat tofu and an apple at a birthday party when all the other kids are eating pizza and ice cream. If someone offers my child a snack, it's fine. I'm not going to scrutinize the list of ingredients before saying okay. I figure if they eat well enough at home, there's room in their diets for other stuff.

A few weeks ago, a few of us moms headed over to the playground after school for some extra rollerskating practice. We stopped at home first, so I could feed the kids a snack and change Maureen's diaper, and the other moms went straight to the playground.

When we got there, the other kids were still in the midst of a snack, and one mom offered Johnny a granola bar, which he happily took.

She turned to me and said, "It's not organic, it's not all natural, it's just made by Quaker."

This is the thing, though. I have never, to my knowledge, discussed my food preferences with her. So was it a random comment? Or how would she know how I feel about certain types of sugar and fat?

Then it hit me. Practically every week at school, I sit at the table of parents and eat a cold salad made with quinoa or bulgur, chickpeas, vegetables and feta cheese. And when I had jury duty, she picked Johnny up one day and took him to ice skating. I sent his lunch with him. The lunch consisted of a box of Horizon organic milk, a Kashi cereal bar, an organic yogurt tube, and a homemade peanut butter sandwich, made with what my mom calls "textured" bread. Think dark wheat with seeds and stuff in it. Definitely not white bread.

I guess actions speak louder than words.

But I still let him eat the granola bar. And when he didn't finish it, I ate the rest myself.

ShopRite Review And Gift Card Giveaway!!

As the main cook and grocery shopper in my household, I've become increasingly familiar these past few years with the pros and cons of various grocery stores. While I'm by no means 100% store loyal, there are a few stores I return to again and again, and other stores I won't set foot in.

I'm always open to more options, so when I was offered the chance to check out the ShopRite store in Bel Air, formerly Klein's, I said yes!

Kids in tow, I headed out last week to the store. It's taken me this long to post my impressions because I was soon after struck down by that horrible chest cold that's going around.

Things I Liked
ShopRite offers a refund of five cents per reusable bag you bring. I had seven bags. Thirty-five cents might not seem like a lot of money, but it adds up. Over the course of a year, shopping once a week with seven bags would save me about 16 dollars.

Among my purchases were several ShopRite brand items, such as apple juice, frozen vegetables, eggs and cheese. I was pleased with the quality of all the items. In fact, the Muenster cheese was so good, it was gone in a day and a half. My kids know cheese, and if it isn't good, they won't eat it. I couldn't discern a difference between the store brand veggies, eggs and juice either compared to brand names. Buying store brand items is an easy way to cut grocery expenses, but not all stores offer good quality options. All the ShopRite items I bought were worth the money.

I also found the prices for meat (but not chicken), to be competitive. I'm a chicken snob and only buy Perdue chicken, which was priced too high an over 5 dollars a pound.

The selection of various brands was good, as well as option for organic or healthy foods, such as the Bob's Red Mill steel cut oats I came home with, or the Kashi frozen waffles.

Things I Didn't Like
I'm picky about milk, but also don't like to pay for organic milk. So when store brand milk says that it's not from cows treated with hormones, I'm thrilled. The ShopRite milk didn't have such a designation. I bought two gallons anyway, because we needed milk and I wasn't about to stop at another store, but would vastly prefer that the ShopRite milk be free of added hormones.

I also wasn't thrilled that most of the green leaf lettuces cost more per pound than plain romaine. Romaine is a little bitter for my taste, and I almost always buy red leaf lettuce, but at the ShopRite store, it cost at least a dollar more per pound than the romaine. I'm puzzled by this, because at every other grocery store I've been in, all the leafy lettuce varieties cost the same per pound.

The front of the store was a little cramped. I had to wait in line to get a store card before shopping, and there were two free standing displays between the checkout lanes and the Customer Service counter. I felt like no matter where I stood, either the employee at the counter couldn't see that I needed help, or I was blocking someone who was trying to get by. When we did check out, I got stuck in a bottleneck of shoppers all trying to fit one way or the other through the narrow space.

The final thing is something small, but a cashier from another lane came over to see my kids, and not only did she comment on my daughter's eye problem, she removed the pacifier from her mouth to try to get her to smile. Maureen was tired and not herself, and this could have led to some serious screaming. Luckily, she (and I) was too surprised to do much other than stare.

Overall, my experience with ShopRite was pleasant.

The Good News
The good folks at ShopRite have given me a $25 gift card to give to one lucky reader!

To enter, leave me a comment and tell me what you use grocery store gift cards for. Do you put them towards ordinary purchases? Or do you use them for more luxury purchases, such as fancy nuts or expensive seafood?

This contest will remain open for one week. Next Friday, May 15th, I will choose one winner at random.

Good luck!


edited to add: Congratulations to Emily, commenter number 1, on winning the ShopRite gift card. Enjoy your seafood!

A Family Of Three. By Choice.

Thanks to Jessica in Harford County for the next installment in my guest blogger series on family structure. She's not a blogger, but feels strongly about this issue. You can read part one and my intro here. If you are interested in being a guest blogger, please send an email to the address in my sidebar.

She's two and a half. Actually, she's closer to three now. Wow. Time goes by so quickly now! Anyhow, we couldn't be happier. She is the light of our lives and our heart. She has completed our family. She, my husband and myself...a very happy family of three. Yet, so many other people ask us, "So when you do think you'll try for the second?" or, "Do you think you'll be trying for a boy soon," or my personal favorite (heh), "You CAN'T just have one child!" Often, "one child" is whispered and said with a sad tone that would imply "one child" were more akin to some terminal disease. And so I ask, "Why? Why can't I just have one child?" "Because." That's the answer I get. Because. Well, I think I CAN have one child, by choice no less, because, too.

Because, while I know every pregnancy is different, the one I had with my daughter was pure hell for me. Every day was spent throwing up, combating depression and generally hating life. I hated every last moment of it. There, I said it. I despised being pregnant. I hated the person I was, I hated how I felt. Magical experience MY ASS. And while she was most certainly worth it - worth thousands times more than that - I just don't have it in me to do it again. Sure, the next time around could be easy, but what if it's not - what if it's worse? It's just not something I want to find out - I have a happy healthy child. I am happy with that. More than happy and I feel so lucky to have that.

Because, call us selfish, but there is so much my husband and I want out of life. And not only for our daughter, but for ourselves too. We had a chance to live overseas before our daughter was born, we moved back because I was pregnant and scared and needed to be home. But now we are starting to think about going back. We know we want to. We know we can do it with her. We think she would love it. But more kids? Then The Dream becomes more like a dream - a far fetched dream. I know that may sound selfish to some, but here's how we see it, we don't want to raise her to be afraid to take risks or to follow her dreams, no matter how "crazy" other may say they are. I want her to experience how wonderful taking a huge risk can be - even if it doesn't totally turn out the way you planned!

Because there is SO MUCH we want for our daughter. So much we want to be able to give her that was given to us, and of course the things we didn't have. It's The Great Parental Dream, right? For our kids to have a better life than we did, and to be able to provide that for them. Well, that's how *we* feel. Having one kid, this is much more achievable for us. And I'm not just talking monetary items - I'm talking about time and patience. Like all of us, I want to give my child the very best of me. And honestly, when I take a good look at it, I think if we had more kids she and the other child(ren) would get shortchanged. Shortchanged out of time, affection, patience. I felt that way too often growing up. And, I just can't do that to her. To me.

My reasons may come across as selfish or shallow to some. I understand that. I have wrestled with guilt over this choice my husband and I have made. I have wondered is this really the right choice for our family. Does she really NEED a sibling? Will she feel lonely like some only children have said they had felt growing up? Will her father and I be enough for her? But then I ask myself what can I handle, what can my husband handle? And, I know it sounds selfish but deep down, and not so deep down, I know I can't do it again. So call me selfish, but in my mind, I'm doing the best thing for our family. I'm giving my girl a happy mom.

Everything fits and just feels right with the three of us. We are all really and truly happy. And I could not ask for more.