calling all amatuer botanists...

i'm thinking particularly of carrie and sarah here, but am hoping some of the rest of you will have some plant knowledge to share, as well. the wiring in our basement is being done today. once that is finished, we move onto painting (come on warm weather!) and then the replacement of the carpet. as soon as that is all done, the office moves downstairs to make room for jack's future "big boy" room upstairs. i'm dreading having to work downstairs in the basement, even when the lighting is improved. we have 3 standard basement windows that don't provide enough natural light for my taste. one thing i would like to do to freshen it up down there and make it more inviting is to have some plants or small potted trees. i know very little (okay, nothing) about plants and have had a hard time in the past keeping them alive. for this reason we have NO indoor plants at our house. so i'm wondering if any of you have suggestions for certain plants that do well indoors with little to no direct sunlight? i'm sure there isn't a huge selection for plants of this type, but i'll take whatever you can offer. my only stipulation is that they aren't spikey or toxic to cats :)

18 months

hello all. i am here to sing the praises of motherhood again. 18 months is a wonderful age! i feel like i'm taking a huge breath of relief after four months of challenging parenting. several of my posts over the last few months mentioned our lack of sleep and some of jack's tantrum problems. it seemed that the older he got, the harder happiness was to find (for us both) on a consistent basis. but magically, a week before he hit the 18-month mark, he seemed... over the hump. he started playing unattended more, threw less tantrums, and began sleeping well again. at about that time i happened to read a little excerpt out of william and martha sears' "the discipline book," which said:

"The time between the ages of fourteen and eighteen months is very hard for mothers. The high-energy toddler wants to do everything, but he still needs mother involved 'big time.' Mothers of one-year-olds need to gear up for this marathon spurt of giving, because the tendency is to think, 'Ah, now he's one--I'll be able to ease off.' You will, eventually, but not yet. Hang in there through age eighteen months, then be alert for signs that your toddler is trying to make space between you..."

Wow--reading that after the fact provided me with this "Ah-ha!" moment, that made the past several months seem much easier to swallow. So it may have all been developmental after all. If only I had read this earlier. I'm surprised none of my parent-friends warned me about this age. Maybe it's different for everyone? Months 15-17 were particularly hard for us. It's so nice now that he isn't clinging to me 24/7. I can actually finish washing a sink of dishes and he'll play with his toys. He comes in to find me frequently, but doesn't demand to be held constantly. This couldn't have come at a better time, since I had been worrying about how he'll occupy himself when I feed Benjamin several times a day. I guess it's all in the plan of the universe ;) !

Other than that, nothing else to report. I'm at 30 weeks now, which seems momentous. Our camera has been at the repair shop after I dropped it and broke the lens (but thanks to our warranty, it was fixed for free; ssshhh, don't tell them it was my fault). Now that we have it back, perhaps I can post a few photos to liven up the blog. Nothing taken yet, but here's one of Jack and his best pal from a few weeks ago:

CSA?

Hi all. I have been throwing around the idea of buying a share from a CSA farm this spring, but am a bit leery of it. I think it's a great idea, and I love the idea of getting most of our produce from local farms. I found one not too far out of the city that does only organic produce, which I love even more. It seems like a great operation: Turtle Farms. But they only offer full shares (which apparently are good for 2 adults) at $450 a pop. I don't know anyone interested in splitting a share, either. As much as I'd love to try it, it sounds like a bit of a financial comittment toward something that I imagine is hard to form an opinion on until you try it out. I think during the peak summer months it would be worth it, since we'll be getting a lot. Though I worry that we'd waste some of what we get, too, if we don't keep up with cooking it all while it's fresh. On the flip side, I wonder how much it's worth doing in May and September, when you get little more than lettuce and some root veggies. I think I would have fewer hesitant feelings if little Benjamin was going to be 6 months during the summer--then I'd be buying organic veggies in bulk anyway to make baby food for freezing. But but the time he is ready for solids, in late October/early November, some of what I would have made and frozen in July may be getting freezer burn. My parents-in-law (local--beef--farmers themselves) suggested just making more of an effort to buy from the farmer's markets each week, to assure that we get only what we need and want, and if the season is bad for farming, at least we didn't then pay for it and lose that money. So my question for all of you is whether you see a benefit to participating in CSA over buying from local farmer's markets? Have any of you tried CSA, and what were your experiences? I think if the price were lower, I would jump in for one season at least (especially because I'll probably skip my garden this summer since I'll have a newborn in tow), but for close to $500, I'm hesitant to take the plunge. Any comments are welcome!

murphy's law

we had a very long weekend, packed with both good and bad. thankfully the good outweighed the bad by far, so it was enjoyable despite the pitfalls we encountered. we traveled to minneapolis to visit friends, and it was the longest (and far longer than we had anticipated) car trip jack had taken. let's start with the bad to get it out of the way:

we left home at 11:15am so we'd get to the twin cities before dinner. at about quarter till 1pm, with fresh arby's lunch waiting for us to bust it open in the car, we heard a horrible sound coming from a pick-up passing us on the interstate. as the truck passed, the sound didn't go away. shit. not the pick-up. so we pull over to discover that our back, driver's side tire had completely blown and shredded to pieces. goody. luckily friday wasn't as cold as saturday and sunday, because we had to take every last thing out of the back of our car to get to the spare tire. imagine mike laying on the ground to change the tire, about 3 feet away from semi-trucks traveling in the right hand lane (i now promise to always move to the left lane when someone is pulled over), and my pregnant body trying to keep all of our crap from blowing into the interstate, as well as signal to cars to get over. jack is in the car, luckily not throwing too much of a fit. once we change to the spare, we pack up and head to the nearest town: roland, ia. most likely a town of 4 people. we stop at the only gas station to see if they have a mechanic who could sell us a new tire. they tell us, "go talk to phil." Phil. as if we had lived there all our lives. after some gentle but aggravated nudging, we convince them we have no idea who phil is and are sent across the street to what looks to be a long-ago closed mechanic's shop. the guy there says he only sells one type of tire. not ours. he sends us back to the interstate, to the next exit, where there is amazingly a ford dealership. they have no tire for us, either. we are sent back 20 miles to ames, to the toyota dealership (sigh of relief; home territory for our prius), and we wait to change the tire. they are wonderful about packing all our stuff in their service station so they can again get to the spare tire's holding spot. we end up changing ALL FOUR tires at their urging. so $500 and almost 3 hrs. later, we are on our way to Minneapolis. at this point jack is ready to GO, yet we have 3 hrs. driving time left. it could've been much worse, but still was a pain in the butt. while in MN, we experienced some of the coldest weather ever: -35 with windchill. and we were out in it, too. beautiful, cold MN. the last part of the "bad" comes with us returning home on sunday afternoon with mountains of laundry to do. the second load stops spinning and the washer shows a motor error. we are instructed to turn it off, leave it alone, and call for service. service tells us they cannot get out to check it out till thursday, 5 days later. we finish the wet, soapy load at our neighbor's house, and stock up on disposable diapers for jack since no laundry will be done for awhile. a bit of a nuisance!!

but despite all the bad, we had so much good happen this weekend. we saw friends from our college days that we don't see too often. most of us have kids around the same age, and were able to hang out and enjoy catching up. jack missed his bedtime friday night by FOUR hours, yet slept like an angel and was great all weekend with the crazy schedules and over-stimulation. we visited the Minnesota Children's Museum saturday morning and had a great time with the kids. that evening, our friends arranged two family member sitters to watch all FIVE kids, from age 9 months to age 3, while the adults went to dinner and out to some (smoke-free! yeah!) bars. our friends sage and brennan took us to a fabulous, old style steakhouse in NE Minneapolis called Jax Cafe. it was great! we sat right by the piano and enjoyed a high class, adult evening :) afterwards we visited a few bars, including one that was my favorite: Psycho Suzi's. it was a tiki bar that had great decor, great food and drink, and a good mix of people. i'd love to go back in the summer and when i can enjoy one of the concoctions :) the worst part of the evening was returning at midnight and having to take jack's sleeping body out into the -15 degree weather to drive him back to the hotel. luckily he went back to sleep at the hotel easily. the next morning, before leaving, we met some other friends at redstone for brunch. des moines needs more brunch places like this. it was great food and great company, although we didn't get to catch up with wendy and jim as much as desired considering we were all juggling loud and tired children. but it was a great time and we were glad to have made the quick but fun trip. hopefully next time it will be warmer, and we'll have more time to visit.

today jack is 18 months, and a month from today i will be 30. yeek. we are all getting older (and wiser?)

the wonders of zinc

I am here to profess the wonders and miracle works of zinc losenges. Even my drug-cautious husband agress that they really work. I am now using zinc losenges for the third time in about 4 months to ward off a cold/tonsillitus/flu bout I feel coming on, and so far it seems to be working. I am restricting myself to no more than 3 losenges per day since I don't want to overdose on the zinc during pregnancy, and yet it still managed to work beautifully the last two times. I have had a bad history of tonsillitus in my lifetime, and the last time I saw my tonsils covered in white spots I began sucking on zinc losenges. It was the first time in my life that they got better instead of worse, and I escaped the next few days of sore throats and misery that usually follows those blasted spots. So for those of you who are skeptical or have never tried them, I highly recommend those losenges at the first inkling of illness. Mike says the key is to start using them before you are full out sick, since they work best by coating your throat before the germs or virus does. So on that day before, where you don't quite feel sick but know it's coming :) And take it from me, the generic losenges work just as well, but don't taste as good as the name brand Cold-Eze. (Though both will leave a weird metallic taste in your mouth for most of the day.) I'm hoping they will rescue me this time from a cold, since we are leaving for Minneapolis this Friday and I want to be well, well, well!

89 days??!!

whoa. i just checked in with the blog today for the first time in a week and a half, and see that the baby gaga tells me there are 89 days to go. what??! i knew that yesterday marked the point of 3 months till the due date, and i guess if i had thought of it, i would've realized that's roughly 90 days. but seeing the number in the double instead of triple digits really snaps me into focus. we are going to have a BABY (another one) in 3 months, give or take a few days. hopefully not earlier. i will gladly take a larger, slightly overdue baby in exchange for all the worry and heartache that comes along with another premie. so, wow. good thing we are starting to create a list of things to get done before mr. benjamin arrives, and have begun to do them. first on the list is my dissertation: i need to get cracking as much as possible before i hit another hiatus. so we've hired two drake students to begin babysitting on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons for 3 1/2 hours so that i can work. this, coupled with mike's wednesday night shift (where i can work in the morning), and the possibility of my mother-in-law coming once a week to play with jack, will give me 3-4 days a week, 3-4 hours each of those days, of working time. no, that's not a full-time job, but i think it will be a nice in between of me still staying home with jack and yet getting some working time in. i guess i'll do what i can in that amount of time and then go from there.

next on the list is the basement. it's ugly, it's dark, it's cold. we need to get new wiring and lighting, paint the walls and ceiling, new carpeting, and move the office furniture down there. once that's done, the room that is now our office will become jack's future "big boy" room. i already have the quilt set and wall colors picked out :) once we have THAT done, it's onto the backyard: re-seed the grass hawkeye tears up each summer, clean out and re-fill the sandbox, and try to get a bit of landscaping done. that last part may not happen before benjamin arrives. but it's on the list. someday we want to build on a 4-season porch, and re-build the deck. so maybe we'll skip the landscaping until we decide how the rest of that will go. anyway, we have a lot to do once spring comes. i imagine we'll have a month, maybe two, of warmer-weather-house-upkeep time to work with before ben makes his grand entrance. yikes!

speaking of house up-keep, i'm sure you fellow home owners out there will understand what i mean when i say that owning a home is a money PIT. it's money well-spent when you consider the investment, and the fact that you are building your home the way you want it to be, but holy wow does it drain the finances. we had wanted to replace our two sliding glass doors with french-style doors before the next baby comes, since the energy company audit guy told us that old sliding doors are a drain on energy. we had a few window/door companies give us quotes, and in the midst of those quotes, we come to find out that our master bedroom window frame is badly damaged due to leaking water. enough that it has leaked behind several pieces of siding, and is now leaking into one of the sliding doors down below. beautiful. we can't afford to replace both doors AND a major window, so we forget about the doors and move onto the window replacement. those of you who have never had to replace windows may be surprised to find out, as we were, that one window replacement (ONE) cost us $2,200. oh my god. and we aren't talking a picture window here, or anything fancy. a 60x60 bedroom window. i know it was necessary, but we hardly notice the new window! i admit i would much rather have enjoyed spending that amount of money on a trip to the caribbean or something. at least there you know where the money is going, and enjoy watching it go. this was just an unplanned, house thing. thank you seashore-ballard for helping fund our window replacement. sigh. okay, no more ranting. just needed to vent a little.

okay, i should be a good worker and get to my interviews. today is day#1 of babysitting, and jack is downstairs flirting with a college girl. so i should get to it. we are paying for her time, after all. so i should make the most of it. ta ta for now.

don't trust the shrimp

mike and i are recovering from a horrible food poisoning experience on friday night, and i have to say that i found food poisoning to be one of the most miserable experiences ever. we went to an asian food restaurant near our house that we had been to many times before, and have always liked. we didn't get sushi this time, but the chinese. it was piping hot, so unlikely to be undercooked. but 6 hours after our meal, we both got violently ill at the same time. mike had it worst than me; he actually vomited about 20+ times by the time we "got up" in the morning. i had some vomiting, but my probem was...on the other end, i guess we'll say. thank god jack slept like an angel the whole night, so we didn't have waking baby to juggle along with our misery. and thank god we have two bathrooms within running distance of our bed. needless to say, our weekend off of "no plans" turned into a weekend at home, full of fatigue, dehydration, and nausea.

on the happy side, we decided to tread into solid food territory again today for lunch at the drake diner, where i ended up receiving one of the most treasured compliments i've ever been offered. as a woman and her husband were leaving the restaurant, she stopped at our table and said she had been watching us from across the room. she said, "and i just have to tell you, i just loved watching you with your baby." she went on to say something about it being apparent how much i love him, and that his face shows he knows he's loved very much. mike thought it was a little weird; i thought it was beautiful. i've been feeling very exhausted with life in general lately, but it's hard to feel okay about talking about it. when other people complain about their jobs, it's usually seen as normal or par for the course. but when a stay-at-home parent expresses feelings of being overwhelmed or the need for a break, she or he is often the receiver of "suggestions" from others that maybe it's not for them, or maybe they should try daycare a couple times a week. of course i'm speaking from personal experience only, but it seems to me that popular perception is that a full-time parent has to love their "job" every second, or at least portray it that way, or else they are seen as falling short. like they aren't appreciating the opportunity to be at home, or that they are sending the message that it's not fulfilling. i'm starting to find that every job, even that of a parent, is overwhelming at times, and people just need a break once in awhile. i wouldn't have it any other way, and i absolutely love being jack's primary caregiver. some days are harder than others, and many are tiring. but when he runs to hug me, or looks at me in certain ways... or when a total stranger professes to see how much love i have for him, it makes it 110% worth while.

anybody else hate bureaucracy?

today i am reminded of the reasons i do not miss being a part of university life. the politics, the competition, and the bureaucratic hoops students (and faculty) jump through in order to survive there are too stressful to take for long. yesterday i received a letter from the university of iowa graduate college reminding me that "a considerable amount of time" has passed since i completed my comprehensive exams, and "reminding me" that the graduate college stipulates a maximum of five years from the completion of comps until a student must finish and defend their PhD. this was surprising to me, as i remembered it being 8 years. i looked through the graduate college manual on academic policies, and cannot find any writing about this 5 year maximum rule. nevertheless, i'll work with it. i email the grad college and point out that i was on an *approved* leave of absence for the entire year of 2006 (broken arm, NICU stay, maternity leave), and questioning whether this year of leave qualifies me to extend my 5 year maximum by one year; thus, giving me the same amount of time other students are given when we take out that year off. i hear back; it does not. i'm still expected to graduate by the end of this year. if i cannot? my adviser must ask our department to petition the grad college to allow me to extend my stay. minor problem: my adviser left UI last year to go to U. of Illinois. hmmm. now, my goal for the past 2 years has been to graduate in december of this year. that's still a dream, but now with a 2nd baby coming i'm hesitant to lay any guarantees on that line. if i do, then none of this will matter. if i don't, i'm worried about the process to extend my student stay.

my 2nd problem is that in the time it has taken me (and many, many other students) to finish my PhD in anthropology, many of the faculty members who have been on my committee have since moved onto other universities. of the 5 people on my doctoral committee, only one is still a current faculty member in our department. youch. i have no idea if this will affect me when it comes time to defend the diss. if it will, i'd like to know now so i can start adding new people to the committee before having to scramble at the last minute to find professors who like my project enough to sign off on it (who have no previous knowledge of the past 5 years of work i've done on it).

sigh. and all this administrative b.s. is keeping me from actually working on the diss., to get it done. this crap makes poopy diapers and sleepless nights seem like a good deal in comparison. i don't even want to consider the publish or perish mentality i'd be facing if i were teaching in a tenure-track position instead of staying home with my babe.

the democratic process (oh yeah, and bags)

it's 7:45pm and since i'm sitting at the computer, you can guess that i'm not caucusing. i'm bummed about that. i had every intention too, but then life happened again. i've never been, and was looking forward to participating in the process for the first time. i was even willing to forfeit my status as an independent. mike's work schedule changed and he had to work tonight, so it was going to be me and only me taking jack. seeing that his bedtime is usually 7/7:30ish, and the doors to the caucus closed at 7, i had to make that decision between taking him and dealing with the sleep consquences or skipping. i skipped. now that i watch the live coverage on t.v., i am glad i made that decision. talk about a madhouse. i see no kids there, either, even though i was told repeatedly that people bring kids. i see people sitting and reading magazines, waiting for the time to end and the votes to be counted. that would not have gone well for me and a 16-month-old. so, once again, i'm at home waiting to see the results of everyone else's decisions. i guess that means i have to give up bitching rights if i'm unhappy with the results.

on the happy side (i should provide a warning right now, the remainder of this post will be greatly uninteresting to all but a few women who are new or expecting mamas), i received my long awaited diaper bag today. when i found out i was pregnant again, i knew i would need very little in material terms, especially with having a second boy. so i made a small list of "luxury" items i wanted to get before baby#2 arrives. i received one at christmas: a Moby D wrap in black with black and red Asian brocade silk (ooh). one of the other top items was to get a new diaper bag that would be large enough to carry around sets of cloth diapers for 2 kids, but sleek enough that it wouldn't feel like taking a bulky suitcase on short trips to target or grocery shopping. this is a hard compromise to make in the world of diaper bags. i researched well (not quite to the extent of researching i did on cloth diapers, but it gets an honorable mention in the research category), and finally decided between a skip hop bag and a ju ju be bag. price was a major difference, but ju ju be had some of the extras i really wanted. until skip hop came out with the new deluxe editions to their bags--ahhh, all the upgrades i wanted. no more loud RRRIIPPINGG velcro, and instead, new magnetic snaps throughout. bonus. no more black lining on the inside of the bag so you feel like digging through a black hole to find little crap; new light lining to make it easier to find stuff. and finally, my biggest concern with skip hop, the new edition is 30% larger than the old, so i finally have a bit more room for packing, but still get the sleek design that won't bounce off my hip when walking with kid(s) in arms, like our current boxy shaped bag. yeah! and being that we confirmed we are having a 2nd boy, i was able to get my coveted blue camoflouge bag. i think if we are going to build a rowdy, testosterone-filled family, we might as well do it in style :)


(see, i told you that would be waaaay more info. than anyone other than a new or expecting mom would find interesting).

happy eats, terrible sleeps

hi everybody. i'm using up the last few minutes of jack's naptime today for blogging. i should probably be sleeping, but i needed some downtime that doesn't involve a bed. our lives have been hectic lately, and just aren't getting better. nightime around here has turned into a battle ground, with jack refusing to sleep for unknown reasons. last night, for instance, it took me an hour and a half to get him to sleep, and then he woke up 1/2 hour after being put to sleep. once we got him to sleep again, he woke up another 1/2 hour later. this went on till 2am, when mike got him to sleep next to him on the matress on the floor in his room. i'd like to think it's teething and thus will pass, but he's fine during the day and it doesn't seem likely that it could be teething every evening. nothing seems to work--not sleeping alone in his crib, not sleeping with us, not rocking in the chair.... it's insane. i haven't had more than 3 hours of consecutive sleep in a month. i'm worried about how unhealthy this is for my pregnancy, knowing that good rest is essential to avoiding another preterm labor. i just hope we can kick this soon.

on a happy note, my darling husband surprised me with some wonderful little gifts at christmas. we had agreed to not do gifts for one another, and instead just buy a king sized bed. he broke the promise, but i had to forgive him since i got such great stuff out of the deal :) two of my gifts were things that i miss from new york: junior's cheesecake and alice's tea cup tea. i received a sampler cheesecake from junior's (gone as of yesterday) and a year subscription to the tea of the month club at alice's. so now i can eat and drink and think of what i miss about new york.