Wasting Time...

...because Wednesday is the day I am supposed to clean the bathroom!

1. I am still on the dolly quest. Ben vetoed my favorite because, he says, she is not a baby. He thinks that Sofie should have a doll that is younger than she is (because clearly she could never have birthed a toddler...a baby is so much more believable!) We went to visit a few of the Corolle dollies in the store today, and Sofie happily fed this one a bottle, but I just wasn't convinced. The Middleton doll is Ben's pick and I've added a new choice to the batch. What do you think of her?

2. Planning a first birthday party on a shoestring when you have a ginormous family is quite a task! I have notoriously poo-poohed elaborate birthday parties for children and there's a great big part of me that thinks that they can really get ridiculous, but there's something about the first birthday that is uniquely momentous and deserves to be celebrated in a big way. In reality, I view it as a party for us as a complete family, marking the grand accomplishment of surviving the first year (with most of our hair even!) We are planning to celebrate with family only (Auntie Heidi counts!) but even still the list has nearly fifty people. Oy! I am trying to economize as much as possible but it is proving to be a difficult task. I thought I'd make my own invitations since I have plenty of materials on hand (and plenty of time!) but that was before I realized that our printer is out of ink. Well that and our desktop computer, the one with a decent word processing program, recently quit functioning (we think it's the video card - solvable!) Somehow all of my ideas to attempt to save money seem to end up costing me more than the shortcut would. The goal is to spend less than $100 on everything which might even be remotely realistic since grandma has a pantry that is mysteriously overflowing with party food...

3. My first attempt at once-a-month-cooking, hereafter referred to as OAMC, is looming just around the corner as the month of July comes to an end. I'm awaiting the arrival of a library book that I'm hoping will spell things out pretty exactly since it seems like quite a task to prepare a menu, shopping list, and cooking order (first cook ten pounds of ground beef...ha!) If you'd like to join me in my endeavor, there's still time! Just let me know. Sort of related, we've had two weeks of homemade bread now. The first recipe was laborious. It instructed me to knead the dough for a full ten minutes. Now, I know that doesn't sound like much, but by about four minutes in I had beads of sweat forming on my forehead. If nothing else, I would have some sweet arm muscles if I continued to bake this one, but it was a complete dud. The bread pretty much tasted like cardboard. All that work for nothing! Last weekend I tried a simple recipe, a quite simple recipe, and it turned out great. The recipe is for six loaves and there are instructions regarding how to freeze the loaves (pre-baked) that you don't want to use immediately. A winner! You can find the recipe here. Incidentally, if anyone has some nice loaf pans that they aren't putting to good use I know a certain baker lady that could really take advantage of them since hers are maybe a little bit rusty (bet you didn't know a pan could rust!)

4. Lastly, I have to brag about the kid a little bit because she is just so freaking cute these days. She has begun to sing to herself when she is winding down before bed. Usually she'll flop herself over me and begin crooning her ballad. It takes every ounce of concentration I have not to break out in hysterical laughter, the kid is stone tone deaf! Hopefully I can recruit Ben to catch it on a video soon. She is a complete snuggle bug and she often curls up on top of me and gives me pats. She is starting to give more consistent kisses, although her version is more like a head-butt, on request. Following are a couple short clips of some of her newer tricks...

Eleven Months

Oh madam what a month this has been! The first full month since your very first month that I have had the privilege of providing all of your care. It has been delightful to meet you again from this new perspective and I am honored to say that I am quite proud of the little girl you are becoming.

You began this month on the verge of walking, then took your first tentative steps, gained confidence and triumphed over longer distances, learned to pause and balance yourself if you needed to, figured out how to turn, and finally, just recently, you've mastered the last step that bumps you from part-time crawler status to full-time walker status, you learned how to stand up without the help of a prop to pull up on. Phew! As much as it feels like you've progressed through these phases overnight in truth I watched you practice over and over again so diligently every single day. It reminds me to stop and take a moment to stand in awe of the breadth of developmental challenges you are facing and tackling head-on each and every day. What a determined little creature you are. Truly amazing!

Your communication skills have undergone a similar explosion. I have distinguished eight words you use appropriately (Hi, Eye, Yuck, Yes, Hot, Bye-Bye, No, Heh?) and I'm growing more convinced each day that you are attempting a garbled Thank You and Did It! as well. You are also learning a few key signs and frequently use the signs for milk and more. You continue to be a nursery rhyme enthusiast and you know that I will begin to recite Patty Cake or Itsy Bitsy Spider if you start doing the hand motions and usually "request" that I repeat them several times!

You have become quite independent and you play on your own for much of the day. You can spend a solid fifteen minutes pulling the books off of your bookshelf and flipping through the pages. Once in awhile you'll bring one to me and we'll read it together. You've learned how to put things away and you find it quite interesting to put your toys away and then pull them right back out. Your toys, however, don't impress you very much. You're much more interested in the world around you. Some of your favorite discoveries this month have included peeling the skins off the onions, pulling wipe after wipe after wipe out of the container, disassembling daddy's wallet, and removing his socks and underpants from their drawers.

Sofia, I tend to create lofty expectations for myself and my thoughts on motherhood are no exception. I am sometimes disappointed by my failure to maintain the quality of mothering that I want you to experience on a daily basis. While there are certainly areas that could stand some improvement I want to admit that I'm very proud of many of my mothering instincts. Most of all I'm quite proud that I often ignore the little voice in my head that says, "You shouldn't let her do that!" This month you practiced blowing out matches, proudly brushed your own teeth after a preliminary sweep, and gleefully splashed water out of the bathtub. Today we walked outside, you toddling near me but on your own, and you stopped sporadically to pick up rocks and leaves (your little knees are perpetually filthy!) You found a bit of a wrapper from a sucker lying on the ground and it was quite clear that you had found yourself a treasure. That little bit got away from you several times but each time you stopped to pick it up and continued on. Perhaps I should have taken that piece of trash away from you, but instead it accompanied us home, even found its way into the bathtub with you for a swim. I'm so proud of that Sofie, my ability to allow you to see treasures where I see trash, to separate your experiences from my own and to be delighted by you, not when you choose what I would have chosen, but when I see your eyes light up. As long as you chase fervently after your passions you can never ever disappoint me. I love you!

Reading List

Perhaps you've noticed that I've added a reading list to the ol' blog. The library has always been my first stop post-finals and reading was my first true love. I have been thoroughly enjoying my free-time in the evenings after Sofia is asleep devouring books. Currently I'm reading Flux: Women on Sex, Work, Love, Kids, and Life in a Half-Changed World and it is resonating so deeply. I couldn't have found a more timely and appropriate book to help me deal with the current "issues" I'm riding regarding being an intelligent, driven, and powerful woman and learning to balance those traits with my home life in a meaningful way. Just had to take a moment to be appreciative...

Late Breaking News...

Bear with me here...this is what becomes "prime time" news when your daily conversational partner's vocabulary is limited to, "Hi! Eye! Yuck! Hot! Yes! Bye-bye! No!" and the sign for milk...

We are all too quickly approaching Worm's first birthday. Everyone knows that one of the best parts of being a parent is picking out toys for yourself er...for your kid I mean. So I have been daydreaming about what to give Sofia for birthday number one for quite some time. On the top of my list is a baby doll. I am quite excited over the prospect of picking out Sofia's first doll, and I have been embarrassingly nervous for months now that someone might give her one as a gift and take away what I view as a very special rite. Lately I've spent more time than I'm willing to divulge browsing the Internets for the perfect doll.

...and here she is...

Kathe Kruse Kikou Sina Doll

She has the perfect soft weighted body, sweet face, and fun outfit. Unfortunately, she also comes with an exorbitant price tag. One that I can't seem to justify paying. Not even for a super-special first baby doll:(

So...I have been trying to find a reasonable alternative. Somehow everything else is paling in comparison, but here are the distant runners-up...

Middleton PlayBabies Little Hailey

Corolle Calin Laughing Raspberry Doll

What do you think?!

And just for kicks, Baby Bobbie, on this page, was my first baby doll!

A Day in the Life...A Video Blog

Find something new and interesting to discover...

Visit with Snook (a rare treat to actually see him on the big screen although we do watch his music videos on pbskids.com quite often!)

Practice walking in the obstacle course you've created...

Let daddy teach you new tricks!

Throw in some tasty meals, a nap or two, a trip to the pool, and a few chores and you can pretty much call it a day!

Goofus Maximus

Pteradactyl?!

Caught mid monkey face.

With that strategically placed tree vine and those little tooth nubbins and scrunched up nose I can't help thinking she's bearing a strong resemblance to a rat!


...and this one's not so goofy, but man-oh-man does she remind me of Lillian in this picture. I guess you just can't deny those genes!

Personal Goals

• Make the bed everyday.
• Use reusable bags on 90% of shopping trips.
• Make homemade bread weekly. (Of course you're invited!)
• Get out in the sunshine everyday.
• Drink more water.
• Find a way to recycle. (All we have is a dumpster!!)
• Eat out twice or less per month.
• Throw away less, give away more.
• Do a better job at keeping in touch with friends.
• Write a children's book.
• Make time for art projects.
• Start running again.

How about you?

Perpective

I just finished reading Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America by Barbara Ehrenreich. The topic of the book is approached quite interestingly as Dr. Ehrenreich actually tried to live the life of the working poor by taking various 6-7 dollar an hour jobs (sometimes two at a time) and tryibg to make ends meet. The book was quite good, and very near the end was the following paragraph, written in regards to how the middle and upper class should feel about the working poor, which I found quite insightful:

"Guilt, you may be thinking warily. Isn't that what we're supposed to feel? But guilt doesn't go anywhere near far enough; the appropriate emotion is shame-shame at our own dependency, in this case, on the underpaid labor of others. When someone works for less pay than she can live on-when, for example, she goes hungry so that you can eat more cheaply and conveniently-then she has made a great sacrifice for you, she has made you a gift of some part of her abilities, her health, and her life. The "working poor," as they are approvingly termed, are in fact the major philanthropists of our society. They neglect their own children so that the children of others will be cared for; they live in substandard housing so that other homes wil be shiny and perfect; they endure privation so that inflation will be low and stock prices high. To be a member of the working poor is to be an anonymous donor, a nameless benefactor, to everyone else."

Consider that the next time you find yourself ready to derail "those people" out there living it up on your tax dollars, abusing welfare. Perhaps we're the ones who are abusing them...

Frugality

I love a good challenge!

Ok...so staying home with Sofie is going to require our family to make some budget cuts. There has never really been much extra room in our budget to begin with which means that those cuts will need to come out of our gasoline and food allowances.

I am no longer making a commute to and from work each day and Ben recently bought a small motorcycle so we are already experiencing some big savings in the gasoline department. There is a little bit of room for me to cut out unnecessary trips out or piggyback them to conserve even more.

As far as food goes I have intentions to cut out most of our dining out (Just wait'll Ben gets wind of that!) and...here's the important part...I would like to try an idea that came from the Pettyjohn family. When they were living in Ohio they collaborated with a few other families to prepare a month's worth of dinners at a time. The dinners were stored in the freezer for quick preparation (half an hour or less). The method obviously has convenience and time-saving benefits, but additionally the cost worked out to around $100.00 per family. I realize that groceries have become quite pricey recently but even if this could be done for $150-200 a month it would definitely save our family money. I suppose it would be possible for us to do this on our own each month but it seems like it would be much less overwhelming and quite a bit more fun to do it with a few others. Anyone interested?

I've also got visions of craftiness, yard sales, and odd jobs floating around in my head to contribute to the budget. Please share any ideas or suggestions that have worked well for you!

Crossroads

So, after an eventful weekend out of town with my good friend Heidi, which you can read about here (and incidentally the only pictures I took were of Worm and the PJ dog, Willow!) I think I have finally made some decisions about my plans for the near future that I feel peaceful about. It has always been much too easy for me to become caught up in everyone else's expectations of me and unfortunately I often allow the expectations of others to cloud and distort my own. Some time away from my everyday environment, spent with solid old friends who remind me that my worth is not measured by the number of abbreviations that follow my name, was exactly what I needed.

I have been wrestling quite mightily between my strong desire to be a stay-at-home mama and the sense of obligation I feel towards my profession. The former is fueled heavily by the fulfillment I've experienced over the past few weeks and the sinking feeling that has come with the realization of just how numb I allowed myself to become in order to get through the past ten months. Along with the latter comes the fear that choosing not to pursue a career right away might seriously hinder my ability to pursue one down the road. Additional factors to weigh include the fact that realistically Ben's salary is not quite enough to responsibly make ends meet long-term and the expectation that we will be making a big move in the near future.

After much contemplation I've decided that the knots that I'm satisfied will tie these loose ends together include the following:

• The clinic has graciously agreed to allow me to continue to gain experience in the subspecialty that I am passionate about pursuing, cochlear implants, on Mondays. This will allow me to keep my skills fresh and up-to-date.
• Rather than seeking short term employment here I will concentrate on networking in Colorado over the next six months to hopefully find a position that I feel good about accepting. (Part-time working with cochlear implants in some capacity.) We will plan to move around January. (This will allow Ben to complete a year in his current position.)
• For the next six months I will stay home with Sofia Tuesday through Sunday. Yay!!

I can't begin to describe how relieved I feel to have made some decisions that resonate for me and I am ridiculously excited about the blessings and the challenges I expect to encounter in the next six months!

Sprout's First Swing

I took Sofie to an outdoor playground today for the first time to try out the baby swings. As you can see she tried a couple of different options...

Goofball thought the swings were sort of fun and sort of scary for a few minutes and then the novelty wore off...inspiring her goofball mama to take her on a ride down the swirly slide. Whee!

Exhibitionist

I suppose, technically, that someday she might claim that her parents encouraged her to dance naked from a very early age...!

Hi There...Who Are You?

So...when I created this blog I chose not to allow blogger to share it through any of their various clever ideas for sharing blogs through little blog feed things and I chose not to have it appear as a result of any web searches. I did this figuring that it would limit the amount of folks that ended up here completely randomly to read all about Sofia's life. So...as far as I know the only people that know about this here blog are the folks that I've shared the web address with and maybe a few others that have landed over here through another blog that we're linked on.

Perhaps you've noticed my little google map there in the right upper corner which logs a little red dot for each person who comes to visit us here. Some of those dots are small...meaning that they probably just accidentally landed here once...and others are larger...implying that they've stopped back several times. I was just noticing today that some of you "regulars" are coming from states where I don't think I know anyone...

...so...

...hello there in North Carolina-ish and you there in Southern California! Greetings to you in Nebraska/Kansas. Who are you? I'm flattered that you've found something that's interested you here and I would love to know a bit more about you and how you arrived here to meet Worm!

Tricks!

"I knew this PDR would come in handy someday."



Next up: Certainly! Maybe later... and Absolutely not!

We weren't fortunate enough to capture the first intentional steps last night. This video from earlier tonight will have to do! As you can see we are quite proud...

Big Helper

Helping make some extra space for The Wiggles.

"This is about how much daddy likes to use, right?"

Helping alphabetize the bookshelf.
(This one is filed under "Things to show the prom date.")

Helping put away the dishes.