Tag: Life as I know it

Life as I know it…

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Yum to the um!

So remember how I said R’s a great cook and loves to take pictures of what he makes? Well check out what we had for dinner last night. BLADDOW!

Mushroom ragout-stuffed rolled beef tenderloin. Um, yes please, I’ll have two. 🙂 He served it with a side of spaghetti, then made some extra spaghetti sauce to go on top of both the beef and pasta. What a man!! For a beverage, we enjoyed a bottle of this:

Pacific Peak Merlot

 

It paired nicely with the beef – a smooth, easy-drinking red with none of the harsh throat-burning that some merlots can cause (i’m sure there’s a technical *wine* term for that, like it’s caused by tannins, or whatever, but i like to dumb my descriptions down to my wine level – do i like it, or don’t i like it?).

‘Twas a great way to wind down the weekend. Saturday we spent the afternoon and evening at our friends T & S’s house watching some NCAA tourney bball action and letting D play with their little girl, which was a lot of fun. Yesterday morning I got some house cleaning and laundry done while R did all the preparations for dinner. D’s cold intensified infinitely yesterday, unfortunately, so she spent all day coughing and battling snot rivers out of her nose. Poor little thing. She’d cough so hard she’d gag, which would in turn cause her to throw up anything she had in her. 🙁 Fortunately she was only up once last night and seemed a little better this morning with much less coughing, so we have our fingers crossed that we don’t get a call from daycare asking us to come pick her up today. We both were amazed, though, at how happy and playful she still was through all of it – nose wiped a million times, jammies changed 3 times due to barf eruptions, coughs to the point where you could tell her throat was so raw and sore, and very little napping.

And now here we are back at Monday again. How does that always happen so quickly?? I hope you all had a great weekend!

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Division of power

One of the radio personalities we listen to each morning declared she was going on strike in her house a few weeks ago, and it got me thinking…. What would cause me to go on strike in our house? Is there any reason I’d ever feel the need to do so?

Her big thing was that she was fed up with not getting any help from her husband and kids when it came time to figure out what to have for dinner each day (yeah, it was a real knock down, drag out fight, can’t you tell? ;)). Now, dear readers, I would never find myself in this situation because, as many of you know, I don’t cook. I don’t enjoy it, I don’t get any real satisfaction out of whipping up a whole big spread or a nice fancy dish, I don’t like following recipes and getting all the ingredients and dishes together, and I’m not particularly good at it. I mean I am certainly capable of following a recipe and producing an edible finished product, but it’s just not my thing. In fact, I often say that if you want to torture me, make me chop stuff. Yuck.

Fortunately I am very lucky to have R, who is a wonderful cook and actually does enjoy it. This obviously isn’t the only reason I’m lucky to have him, but you know what I’m sayin’. He loves trying new recipes and gets totally involved in the prep and execution. His signature meal is Thanksgiving – he’s been known to make the entire buffet line of eats, even when it’s not really Thanksgiving. It’s hilarious too – he always stages his good dishes and photographs them. I’ll have to post some pics the next time we have one. They usually involve nice big cuts of meat, so it’s a good thing I’m not a vegetarian!

He’s gotten really into making food for D as well, which is awesome. He’ll bake up a batch of sweet potatoes and puree them up to be frozen, steam other veggies and do the same, and he even boiled a couple chicken breasts and baby-food-ified them the other night too to see if she’ll try meat yet (fyi, she won’t. she gagged every little bite of chicken. not sure if it was too salty or the texture, but it was pretty funny to see. so we’ll stick to cereal and veggies and fruit for now). I have contributed slightly in the baby food department – I’m good at mashing bananas. Probably because all you need for that is a fork, not a food processor. 😉 I wasn’t kidding when I said I’m lazy; it applies to this aspect of my life, too.

One time one of my grandparents asked me if it bothered me at all that R does all of the cooking. No, of course not, I replied (i think my answer may have surprised them a little. what? a woman doesn’t feel displaced when her husband does all the cooking? heaven forbid. yeah, different generations and all. i’ll forgive them :)). You see, we have an excellent division of power in our house – R cooks, I clean. It’s a great system. For although I couldn’t care less if I know how to make boeuf bourguignon or a killer rack of lamb, I do pride myself in keeping a mean clean house. I try to get things dusted and vacuumed once every week or two, which of course R thinks is totally unnecessary, maybe because he’s often trying to play video games when I want to vacuum. Too bad, just pick your feet up for 5 seconds. Whenever he huffs about me cleaning I just keep politely reminding him that he could have much worse things than a wife who keeps a clean house.

Don’t get me wrong, housework is not something I consider *fun*, but I do feel great once I have the house cleaned, the laundry done, and the rest of my weekend to enjoy the lack of clutter and piles of junk from the week and dust bunnies running around the wood floors. While we were remodeling it drove me crazy having entire rooms’ worth of stuff packed into other rooms (i swear we didn’t get to use our dining room as an actual dining room for a good year at one point), plaster dust all over the joint, and certain uninhabitable areas of the house in general. But now that we’re all put back together I do love seeing clean dust-free furniture, crumb- and dirt-free floors, and shiny tile kitchen counter tops. Call me crazy, I can take it.

So what are things like in your household? If you’re married or live with someone do you have a similar divide and conquer system, or is one or the other of you responsible for the brunt of the chores? Any of you feeling like you need to go on strike yet?

I guess to answer my own original question, I can’t really think of any good reason that I would tow the picket line at home in this regard. Our cook/clean division of power is a well-oiled machine, so I’ll stick with it. Plus one of these days I’m sure R will teach D how to find her way around the kitchen and I’ll show her how to help Mommy use the dusters. 🙂 R is notorious for turning his closet area into a massive clothes monster, but instead of striking and refusing to clean it up, I just go in there every so often and put the pile away. And just remind myself that I could have much worse things than a husband who throws his clothes on the floor. 😉

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Help!

Ok guys, I need some assistance. Our 5 year wedding anniversary is coming up in just a few weeks, and I have NO IDEA what to get R. I mean I’ve got nuthin’. My mind is completely blank on this one for some reason. Usually I can come up with something pretty decent, but every time I try to think of anything now I just get tumbleweeds rolling around in my brain.

Any ideas?? What do you get the guy who gets everything he wants for himself? He’s the one that knows all about the latest tech stuff and gadgets, so that genre is hard to sneak past him. Plus he knows WAY more about all those gizmos than I do. I’d also lean towards getting him an “experience”, if you will, as opposed to a “thing”, since we have very little room left in our house for more things that just sit there and look pretty.

We are going out to a really nice dinner to celebrate, which we agreed would be a joint present, but I’d still like to have a little somethin’ just for him. I have already warned him, though, that I’m lost on this one and not to expect anything (which he said goes the same for me, and with which i am TOTALLY fine), but I’d still feel kinda bad giving him nothing. 5 years seems like a big one.

The 5 year gift is wood. Umm…. wood? Let the brain-wracking commence….

I am open to any and all suggestions. Thanks in advance!

Love, SM

*I really hope this isn’t the day R decides to check out my blog!*

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Top o’ the mornin’ to ya!

Happy St. Patrick’s Day! Is everyone wearing green? 🙂 Not me. I realized this morning that I have zero green clothes that aren’t t-shirts, so I had to settle for shamrock socks for my touch of Irish today. And I have a little shamrock pin on my jacket that I’ve had since I was a kid (same one as in that picture). Maybe I’ll have to work on an emerald-colored wardrobe addition for next year.

Even though I’m not Irish, St. Patrick’s Day has always been fun for me. Decorating the house with leprechaun footprints and cards for our youngest sister when we were kids, the good spirit everybody seems to be in on this day (much of that may be green beer-induced, but hey, that’s fun too ;)), the start of March Madness, and one of my personal favorites, the annual treat of Shamrock Shakes. My birthstone is emerald and R and D’s is peridot, so those fit right in today, too.

The best part about this St. Patty’s Day so far? It was 50 degrees on the temperature gauge I see each morning, climbing to a high of 60! Wahoo!! And check these out:


You see those? Tulip sprouts!

 

And these:

Buds on one of my lilac bushes!

 

Tulips and lilacs and crocus, oh my! Has Spring finally sprung? I don’t want to jinx anything, but I think maybe it has. The forecast is calling for 40s and 50s for the next 10 days so far, so keep your fingers crossed. I might even try to drag my out of shape butt outside today for a jog after work to take advantage of this balmy spell. Who cares if there’s a little rain shower? It’s gonna be 60! And did you notice what’s decidedly missing from those pictures above? Snow!!

The Badgers play their first-round bball game tonight too, so hopefully Belmont will end up being the easy opponent everyone is expecting. R is making some delicious reubens for dinner, and we might have to pick up some Guinness to add to the Irish spirit.

Slainte!

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Oops!

That is not the title I was planning for this post, but it’s now quite apropos seeing how this morning started off… Saturday morning I had set my alarm forward 45 minutes and completely forgot to change it back to my normal time last night. Nothing like having your first thought in the morning be “Oh shit” when you realize that mistake. And so much for remembering to set the clocks ahead for daylight saving time, since I woke up 45 minutes late today anyway. Oops!

Then I had to scramble to get ready this morning so I was out of the bathroom in time for R when his alarm goes off at 6:30 (I didn’t get up until 6:15, so getting ready in 15 minutes is a world record for me!). I got D changed and dressed in a flash and fed her so she was all set for daycare, but didn’t have time to pump the other side before work. So I’m now all lopsided and feeling ready to explode. (sorry, tmi, but it’s no fun being me right now) Double oops, or ouch, I should say!

Then when I took the floor mats for the car out of the dryer on our way out the door I discovered that a) they still weren’t completely dry, and 2) they had gotten dirty, muddy water all over the dryer that was now caked on the drum. Fantastic. The car wash shampooed them yesterday with just a big pressure washer/vacuum hose but warned that they wouldn’t be totally dry, so the cashier recommended putting them in the dryer to finish the job. Obviously their shampooing system isn’t the greatest, and putting floor mats in the dryer isn’t exactly efficient. Triple oops!

So you see, Monday morning strikes again, ugh.

But on to what I really wanted to write, which was a little weekend recap. Saturday morning I tested the waters in my first swim practice since D was born. It went well, probably because I swam shorter distances than everyone else and got out early. Hey, I can. 😉 But it was great to see everyone on the team again, and it always feels good to stretch out the flippers after a long break out of the pool.

That afternoon the second of our friends in this string of Ron Dayne 33rd birthdays celebrated his, so we went over to their house for a couple hours before everyone headed off to the bars on a pub crawl. D doesn’t crawl yet, so we headed home at that point to clean the house. Ooo-wee! Yes, very exciting. I must admit, though, I always feel great when the house is clean and laundry is done. Nerd, I know.

We have such a great circle of friends, and it’s so much fun getting out and about again with everybody. This coming weekend will make 3 weekends in a row of many of us being together, which is practically unheard of. We said that probably hasn’t happened since a bunch of us lived downtown within a few blocks of each other a couple years ago. Too bad it also means we keep spreading our winter germs around and getting each other sick each week. Ah well, c’est la vie. 🙂

Yesterday R watched D for a couple hours while I ran some errands, which were nice to get done. My final stop was at the Coach store near our house to take advantage of the 25% off offer I mentioned last week. And yes, I did end up getting that swingpack I’ve been eying. They were sold out of the one I wanted online and at the store, but they were able to order it for me and have it shipped directly to our house. Kudos to you, Katherine at Coach. So someday this week I should have a pretty little package waiting for me when I get home. It’ll be just like Christmas! Ok, or maybe St. Patty’s. 😉

I wrapped up yesterday afternoon with a little of this, which adds a bit of wonderful to any day:

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To kid, or not to kid?

That is a question I guess most everyone must answer at some point in his or her life – do I want to have kids, or do I not want to have kids? And if I do, in what way will I begin that process?

It is a very personal and sometimes very private decision. And I know for many it is not always that simple; some who so very badly want children are unable to have their own. It can become a very heart-breaking struggle, and in no way, shape, or form do I want to give the impression that I am making light of anyone who has had to endure such hurdles in building a family. I just want to share a little of my own tale…

Never was I the type of person who thought, oh I can’t wait to be a mom! Not that I definitely didn’t want to – I always assumed that someday I’d probably have kids – but more that it just wasn’t something I really thought about that much. I was always more of the vein, “Oh your kids are really cute, but you can keep them over there with you.” 😉

Even once R and I were married, baby fever never set in like it does for a lot of people. We didn’t really discuss kids either – when we wanted to start having them, if we wanted to start having them, how many, etc. I think we both just figured we’d have them eventually. I knew R wanted kids for sure, but I still wasn’t 100% convinced that being a parent was right for me.

Fortunately we never got the “So when are you going to have a baby?” prodding from either of our families, so I never felt any pressure to hop on that train.

I loved our life as a couple – we could do whatever we wanted, whenever we wanted, we could go wherever we pleased, and we could do it all with very little advance notice or planning. We had a ridiculous amount of fun, and it was just the two of us. That was my biggest qualm about having kids – I didn’t want to share R. Oh yeah, I’m selfish, too. 🙂

Then I turned 30.

Ugh.

The big 3-0.

Some people are like I’m 30, woo hoo, let’s par-tay!! I was like I’m 30, barf, I’m old, it’s the worst thing ever. I honestly wouldn’t have been surprised if the world ended on my 30th birthday, that’s how much I was dreading the day.

But it was also a biological turning point. I thought well, I’m 30, if we’re going to try to have kids, we’d better get started because I’m certainly not getting any younger.

I really believe it was not having a 2 to start my age that was the baby catalyst for me. Kind of like oo, 30, that’s very adult-sounding, you’d better have some kids soon if that’s what you want to do. Hmm, typing it out like this makes me sound more like a weirdo than anything, but that’s pretty much what my thought process was.

I was very lucky, too, that R was so chill about the whole thing. Like I said, he’d already revealed that he wanted to have kids, but he never pressured me either. So when I finally decided I was ready and asked him what he thought, I will never forget the sweetest words of his reply: “I’ve just been waiting for you.” ::melt my heart::

And when I told him that the biggest roadblock for me was not wanting to share him and missing having “just us”, he said, “It’ll just be a bigger us.” Well ok, now that you put it that way, it doesn’t sound quite so scary.

And so it began.

Now, I’m the type of person who likes to know exactly what’s going on instead of just leaving things to chance and seeing what happens. So I started tracking everything I could to figure out what my body was doing and how things were shaping up to make this happen. I had gone off the pill about 9 months before we really started “trying” to try to get my body back on its natural track. I was on it for roughly 10 years prior, so I was afraid I’d messed something up on the inside in that length of time.

Fortunately that wasn’t the case, and even though my natural cycles ended up being pretty long, I got pregnant on our second real attempt. D was starting to bake.

Fast forward just under 39 weeks, and we had a baby girl. Yikes!! Now what?

Utter and complete infatuation and love like I’ve never known, that’s what. As soon as we were out of the delivery room and trying to comprehend that we were now a family of 3, that’s when my baby fever set in.

I was in heaven.

It was the craziest thing I’ve ever experienced – in seemingly an instant I was a mom and it felt oh so right. Never in a million years would I have thought I would enjoy this, let alone love it. But I do. D is the most amazing thing we’ve ever done, and R was right – it is just a bigger “us” now.

Now here’s what’s been on my mind a lot lately. How do you know if/when you’re ready for more?

You’ll think I’m nuts, but as soon as D was born I immediately wanted another baby. I just really thrived being a new mommy and knowing that every single thing she needed came from us. That automatically became my #1 job – take care of and protect her.

And these past 7 1/2 months have been awesome. She is a beautiful, hilarious little person, and spending time with her just makes my day that much better. And I know we definitely want more kids, but I’m kind of back to my original question – how can I possibly share D with another child?

Will it be unfair to take time away from her to care for another baby, even though it will obviously be necessary? I certainly won’t ignore her when another one comes, but will she see it that way? Will she feel like Mommy loves the new baby more since that’s the one that will need so much attention at first? How long should we wait before trying for another, and how do we know what age span between the two (or more) we will be able to handle? And how can I possibly love someone else as much as I love this little girl?

I guess I just have to keep remembering that with each child I won’t be losing space in my heart or life for everyone else, I’m just expanding it exponentially for the newcomers. So, god-willing, hopefully we can add a few more to our brood and Mommy will be ok. Well, maybe not a “few” more, but hopefully at least one. 🙂

Stay tuned for D v2.0…

A mother is not a person to lean on but a person to make leaning unnecessary.  ~Dorothy C. Fisher

 

 

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Do you?

Happy Lent! Don’t often hear people say that, now do you? 😛 Probably because you either associate it with a time of restriction of some sort, or you associate it with nothing, really. I happen to fall into the latter camp. Lent has never really affected my daily life for these 40-ish days one way or another (I know, I know, but I’m just being honest!). I am not Catholic, so I don’t feel the religious pull to give up something for Lent, or try to do something better during Lent, or not eat meat on Fridays, or whatever. Not that Catholicism is the only religion to practice that, but I have noticed that those “rules”, if you will, apply predominantly in that faith. And not that all Catholics follow that regimen, but I think you catch my drift.

So I’m curious – do you do anything differently during Lent?

When R and I first started living together out east, I did try to tag along during the pre-Easter season (he’s Catholic, but not really a practicing one. even he’s since given up on the Lenten rules.). He was foregoing the Friday meat, so I tried to turn my back on sweets for the duration. Now, let me clue you in on something… I rarely go 40 hours without having something sweet, let alone 40 days. But I gave it a shot. If everyone else can do it, why can’t I? And I must say, I was doing a damn good job of quelling my sweet tooth….

Until that fateful day, 1 week before Easter, when R’s mom sent us Easter baskets overflowing with candy. Oh.my.god! There were jelly beans and m&ms spilling all over the box, and I lost all control. I couldn’t let them suffer and melt in there, strewn all about like nobody loved them! So I proceeded to trash the previous 33 days of dessert-free progress and gobble up that candy like I’d never seen a Cadbury egg before. 1 week to go! Geez, epic fail, SM. That was the closest I’ve ever come to succeeding at giving something up during Lent, so I just don’t bother trying anymore. 🙂 And to be perfectly honest, it doesn’t concern me in the slightest. Call me a bad Christian, call me weak, call me what you will, but that’s just how I roll.

So for those of you who have begun a month and a half of giving up a few of your favorite things on this lovely Ash Wednesday, hopefully you enjoyed your Mardi Gras celebrations yesterday and aren’t suffering from too terrible a hurricane-induced hangover.