Shameless

I am not usually a big product endorser.  Most of the time I just don’t care who makes what as long as it serves my purpose.  Huggies wipes versus Target wipes?  Doesn’t really matter as long as they don’t hurt my baby’s bottom and get it clean.  Clothes from Babies R Us or clothes from Wal-Mart?  Doesn’t matter as long as they’re comfortable for her and as long as they fit.  But in the last 2-3 days I’ve found some products that I wholeheartedly endorse and after lots of online research haven’t found anything that quite does what these do and have the same benefits.

Product 1: The Method Multi-Purpose Surface Cleaner (preferred scent: Pink Grapefruit)

Reason: The Method uses all natural and non-toxic materials.  All of their cleaning materials (surfactants, disinfectants) are derived from totally natural ingredients like corn and soda ash.  Although drinking a bottle of this stuff isn’t a great idea, we use it to clean our kitchen counters and if we use it around the drying rack where the baby’s bottles are, and don’t have to worry about getting teensy bits of it on there.  Ideally, we wouldn’t get any of our cleaners on the bottles at all, but it’s nice knowing that if we do, she’ll be okay.  Oh, and by the way it’s comparable in price or cheaper than Lysol Food Surface Sanitizer.  At Target (the day I bought it) The Method 28 0z. spray was $2.99.  Lysol Food Surface Sanitizer was the same price, but for only 22 oz.

Product 2: Dove Nourishing Hand Wash (preferred type: Deep Moisture)

Reason: We’re way more into hand washing now that we’ve got Natalie home and while my hands didn’t have as bad a reaction as JJ’s did, our hands were getting really dry.  JJ’s were actually developing some cracking and rash from the constant washing.  We were using a hand sanitizer for awhile but I didn’t like the idea of us using alcohol-based hand sanitizer and then letting the baby suck on our fingers so I went out to find a good moisturizing soap.  We’ve been using the Deep Moisture stuff for a few days and already the condition of our dry, overwashed hands has begun to improve.  This one is slightly more expensive, being the same cost as other non-moisturizing soaps,  but containing 1.55 oz. less per bottle.

Products that I’d still like to try:  The Method dish soap, The Method hand sanitizer, and Dove Purifying hand wash (supposedly gets cooking smell off your hands).

A proper home

Tradition. There’s a lot of it between what JJ and I do and what his family did before I came along and what my family did before he came along. And there’s what we’d like to develop in our growing baby girl.

Christmas is over for another year and already I’m thinking about next year, and the year after that, and the year after that. Because now that we have a daughter, and now that there’s more to think of than what our families want and what we want, I’m beginning to worry just a wee bit about how we’re going to do major holidays. Let me preface what I’m about to say by mentioning that I’m sure part of it is clouded by my total disgust for traveling during busy holiday seasons. Airports are crazy and last year what should have been an 8 to 8 1/2 hour drive turned into an 11 1/2 almost 12 hour drive. I hate holiday traveling. It’s totally the pits.

In high school, we always spent Christmas at home. Then, on New Year’s it was time for friends. We didn’t party much, but we watched a lot of movies and had a lot of overnights at our friend Danny’s house. Fortunately, my brother and I had quite a few of the same friends and one of our best friends (Danny) was the same guy so we hung out with the same crowd every year. It became a routine. Our very own little tradition. I still think about them every year on December 31 and wonder what they’re doing. Usually, I still miss them. In college, I always went home for Christmas and usually left again the day after, or maybe the 27th. I always had to be back on campus within a day or two of Christmas so that I could get on a bus with the rest of the team and drive some 18 hours or so to Florida so we could train. I spent New Year’s every year with my teammates, most of whom loved to party and we’d stay up and have a grand old time. Once I left home for good, the first year, I went home for Christmas. The second year, I went home the week before Christmas so that I could go down to Georgia with JJ for Christmas since we had just gotten engaged. We’ve done every Christmas since then with his family (if I’m counting correctly, that’s 3 Christmases). This year, since Nattie wasn’t supposed to arrive until December 20 we axed all travel plans because we feared we’d still be in the hospital.

Next year, I have no idea yet what’s going to happen. I have my preference for what I’d like to happen (we stay home and begin a series of our own Christmas traditions, including Christmas Eve church at our church and Christmas morning and dinner at our house) and my realization of what probably will happen (we go to Georgia). See, the trouble here is that we don’t live anywhere near either one of our families. For us to get to Georgia we’re talking an 8-8 1/2 hour drive. If there’s no traffic. This measure is for pre-baby. For us to get to Kansas (where I have not been since 2005) we have to take two planes and spend nearly 600 dollars in airfare. It isn’t easy. Plus, for us to go anywhere means boarding or finding someone to watch Roxy. It’s not practical to take her to Kansas (“Excuse me, ticket for a canine please?”) and we can’t take her to Georgia. I’ve always wondered what people with family spread across the country do when they have children. I think they end up staying home and doing their own Christmas/holiday stuff.

My brother-in-law and his wife and my niece and nephew have a totally different situation. They live within two hours of BOTH sets of parents. I think that what happens at their house is that they do Christmas morning at their house, then drive over and do Christmas with my brother-in-law’s family, and at some point they also do Christmas with my sister-in-law’s family. We do not have that option. Period. We cannot make both families within 24 or even 48 or 60 hours’ time. It’s not possible.  Which leaves us with the perpetual decision of which set of parents (now grandparents) get us (but let’s be honest, we mean get the granddaughter) for Christmas.

This year, my whole immediate family came down for Christmas so next year it’s easy – we’ll go to Georgia.  But after that, then what?  By then Natalie will be 2 and she’ll have some understanding of how exciting Christmas is, she’ll know the difference between being in her house and someone else’s house, she’ll know how we do things around here and how things are different when we’re gone.  By the time she’s 2 I’m hoping that we can start settling into some sort of Christmas tradition at our own house.  It isn’t that I don’t love spending Christmas with family other than here, but there’s something about waking up in your house, in your bed, on Christmas morning that makes it extra special.  At my parents’ house in Wichita, Nattie would probably have to sleep in our room in a pack-n-play which I can’t imagine is that comfortable for, especially at 2.  At my in-laws’ house I’m not sure a pack-n-play would fit into the guest room, so that leaves my niece, Genna’s, room, or the room attached to my in-laws’ bedroom.  However, I’m also hoping that by 2 Nat will be in a “big girl” bed and out of a crib so I don’t even like the idea of a pack-n-play as a crib to start with.  Plus, I’ll be honest, Christmas without Roxy just isn’t that great.  Having the dog around makes life way more enjoyable for me.  I wonder how the whole thing will turn out.

Who knows.  Those of you out there with in-laws that span the distance of half a continent, I’m welcome to solutions.  And asking them to move closer is not one.   *sigh*  People weren’t kidding when they told me that kids complicate everything!

Round of life

Today is a momentous day.  Well, for me.  You might not care at all.  BUT … I am back in pre-pregnancy clothes!  Today I am wearing, for the first time, ALL pre-pregnancy clothes.  Including pre-pregnancy jeans!  And my baby is going to be 4 weeks old tomorrow so it’s been (technically) less than 4 weeks.

I have a goal of losing 30 pounds over the next 6 months, which is totally reasonable.  They say to not try and lose more than 1-2 pounds a week and 30 pounds over 26 weeks is definitely within that range so we’ll see how that works.  I also have a goal of losing 50 over the next year but we’ll just have to see how the first 30 go.  After my doctor’s appointment in January I’ll have a better idea of what I can do workout-wise since right now not only can I not do anything other than a lot of walking, but I also can’t do any isometric stuff like Pilates or weight training because of the surgery so at the moment it’s all weight that’s coming off from just the fact that I’m not pregnant anymore.  Still exciting though.

Everywhere you go

Does anyone else find it shocking that Christmas is on Tuesday?  I know it’s partly because I’ve been at home for several weeks and that the world has been going on outside, but it’s also partly because growing up my idea of Christmas was icy cold weather and at least a chance for snow.  Near 80 last week is not my idea of getting ready for Christmas.

Today is the kids’ last day of school so they’ll be having their usual Christmas party this afternoon.  I have Christmas presents for them so I’ll be there a little later to give the kids their presents.  I should have individually wrapped and labeled them but it didn’t really work out that way.  See, I gave my mom my class list and she wrote all of their names in Chinese on bookmarks and then my friend Judy laminated them for me.  But they’re still at school so I haven’t had a chance to wrap them.  Boo.  Somewhere in our house is a box full of Christmas cards that I was hoping to write for each of my 12 students but alas, can’t find the box.  I think it’s true – having a child makes you forgetful!

In other news, I’ve been reading the gospel of Luke, and as I was reading the Christmas story and then kept reading and read the story of Jesus presented at the temple.  I was reading the Message translation and Luke 2:49-50 says:

        He said, “Why were you looking for me? Didn’t you know that I had to be here, dealing with the things of my Father?” But they had no idea what he was talking about.

And it made me think about Christmas and how people forget about why it’s celebrated.  Even I, instead of thinking about ways that I could tell the Christmas story and celebrate with my kids, was obsessed with “What do I get them for Christmas?  What should we do for our Christmas party?”  How many people who are out there “celebrating Christmas” have no idea what the holiday is all about?  Even if we, as Christians, tried to explain would they know understand the miracle that took place?  As a child, Jesus had a perfect understanding for why we should be doing things.  Didn’t he say “I had to be here, dealing with things of my Father.”  Shouldn’t that be what we’re doing this Christmas?  Forgetting everything else and dealing with the things of our Father?  I’ll be honest, I’m not good at dealing with things of my Father.  Frankly, I can’t sit still long enough.  But last night, reading about the child Jesus made me think that I should probably give it a shot.

Nattie is still doing great.  She’s become a little bigger and a lot more verbal.  It’s not exactly talking but she definitely makes noise in her sleep that comes out of her mouth.  She’s also gotten a lot better with her hands and has ripped my glasses off my face on more than one occasion recently.  She has also taken to having what can only be described as bad dreams.  She’s sound asleep and then suddenly starts to scream (which is really unusual for her – she only cries if she’s hungry or wet) and when I get there, she’s still sound asleep but has tears running down her face.  I pick her up and within seconds she’s relaxed and sound asleep again.  It’s not something I’m worried about at the moment, but definitely going to ask the pediatrician about that one.  She also eats like a champ.  My little piggy baby.

Life goes on

My dear friend Laura from college called last night and we chatted for a good 20 minutes or so about life in general and how things are going.  Laura and I don’t always have tons and tons of time to catch up but we gmail chat every once in awhile and if we happen to catch each other, we’ll do a brief phone call every now and then.  After we hung up it suddenly dawned on me that life goes on.  That might sound silly but it’s something that I’ve learned over the last 3 weeks.

I’m the type of person that doesn’t have priorities.  What I mean by that isn’t that I ignore things that are important and go off and don’t tend to my needed duties.  What I mean by that is that  everything to me has always had equal importance so grading those papers was as important and cooking dinner for my husband which was as important as feeding the dog which was as important as getting enough sleep.  You get the idea.

After Nattie was born and I was officially on maternity leave I got a few phone calls about things that needed to be taken care of at work.  Some of them were even before I was discharged from the hospital!  I had been home for 3 days and been called 4 times before I realized that I only get to be Nattie’s mom once, I only get to spend this uninterrupted time with her once, she’ll only be a week old, 2 weeks old, and so on, once and while I love my job and I know my job is impacting lives out there, was it really fair to my daughter to be pulled in so many different directions, with only one of them being her?  I decided that it wasn’t.   I set up some ways to deal with the work stuff and although I still have to deal with a lot of it, I can now do it on my schedule, rather than being called whenever, and I trained myself to think, “It’s okay if I don’t answer my phone right this second.”  Behold, life goes on.

My friend Maureen said to me the other week, when I was so frazzled from giving birth and dealing with work stuff, and trying to do tons of other things (all the while recovering from surgery and caring for a newborn), “You know, sometimes people have to understand that life happens.  Like, not just to them, but to us, too.”  Life goes on.  Even when our priorities change.

Because

I look at my little girl asleep (which is what she does for about 20 hours a day right now) and I wonder what she will be someday.  I wonder how she’ll see the world because in the last week, my world has changed.  It’s easier to see the whole world the way it’s supposed to be seen when I imagine my little girl growing up in it.  Did you know that it’s easier for me to see her, my baby, inheriting the kingdom of God, than it is to believe that I will?  It’s easier for me to see how much her daddy loves me (and her) than it was before her.  It’s harder to understand why things like the injustice of rape happen, and I look at her and swear that if I have to, I’ll die trying to make sure that nothing like that will happen to her.  Ever.  It’s easier to appreciate Christmas for Christmas, and not be clouded by crass commercialism, because she doesn’t care about presents or who gets what, or who got how much.  All she wants is mommy, daddy, and a clean diaper once in awhile.  It’s easier to see the future because even if I’m unsure about where I’m going to be in a year, I know that God-willing, she’ll be there.  JJ will be there, too.  It’s easier to appreciate the wind, the sky, the sun, the nighttime, the cold, and the glory of God’s creation because I get to share it with her.  I get to teach her that the whistling sound is the wind, that the blueness of the air is the sky, that the stars come out at nighttime, and that everything was created by a good and glorious God.  It’s easier to feel God’s love because of her because even though she’s done nothing for me, has put me through pain and discomfort, has forced me to do things I hate, and sacrifice things that I love, I still love her.  So I can better understand why God would love a wretch like me.  I wonder if someday she’ll see that I see the world better because of her.

One

Day 8 of mommy-dom – my baby is 1 week old.  And I have to say, so far, not nearly as bad as I expected.  Let me put it this way … I am more stressed out by unfinished stuff at work than I am by the fact that I have a 1 week old in my house.  On the other hand, I’m well aware that the behavior of my aforementioned 1 week old isn’t quite … normal.  She sleeps well, eats well, doesn’t cry often, and is up twice a night for feedings and less than 30-40 minutes later is sound asleep again.  Thanks to my mom, who is visiting us for a month, JJ and I have had time to take naps in the afternoon and we’re still getting 6-7, sometimes 8, hours of sleep a night.  Now the sleep is all broken up because of feedings but not dramatically so.  I think this is a serious instance of God knowing that if He made it too difficult that Natalie would be an only child.  Not that we wouldn’t love a kid who was fussy and screamed every 2 hours, but … well … let’s put it this way … God knows that a stressed-out Angela comes from too little sleep, overstimulation, and worry and I think He made some adjustments on this one before she arrived.  Praise the Lord for meeting me where I needed Him to.

Look mom, no hands!

So of all the mundane things that all parents ooh and ahh over (yawning, blinking, waving of hands), JJ and I have, of course, done the same thing.  However, there was one incident this morning that I thought was worthy of blogging because it is, as far as I know, reasonably unusual.  My 3 day old daughter held her own bottle this morning.  No joke.  The first thing I did when I noticed (after remarking, “My daughter is a genius!”) was go, “Get the camera!”  It’s captured on film here.  My 3 day old daughter can hold her own bottle.