My Poppa Wrote This!

Its an Op-Ed for the NYTimes (woohoo!) about how the Republican Party is acting CRAZY and remarkably like elephants in musth.
I'm very proud of him, and sadly, not them.

Playing with a crazy elephant is dangerous.

What are they thinking!?
Oh yeah, they aren't thinking, that's the problem!

Crawling Can Take Many Forms

It's a seal!
It's a caterpillar!
It's a tiny breakdancer!
No....
It's SuperIsaac!
Floor-flying across the living room!

Watch out world, here he comes!

Love and Marriage Certificates for Everyone!

Oh, this just makes me so happy!

The New York Times has photos of  Lots of Happy Couples in NYC

Big smiles, big smiles.

Goose is smiling too, you just can't tell.

Same Book, Bigger Baby!

July 17, 2011

February 13, 2011

Isaac is now big enough to look over the My Big Animal Book.
Jeremy still hasn't shaved his beard.
It's supposed to be 100 degrees on Friday.
And, we're out of ice cream.
Entropy!

Surprising Food For Baby Bellies

Isaac is 10 months old now, and my momma chef-of-mush days are limited!
I am both happy and sad about this, but rather than dwell on the inevitability of babies growing up, I will share a few exciting and important baby food components you may never have considered, but should!

1.Full Fat Organic Plain Yogurt: Makes everything creamier and yummier, besides adding lots of protein and calcium.

2.Silken Tofu: It's nicest when you heat it, has lots of iron, and is fun and jiggly.

3.Peanut Butter: Frightening at first, but they say these days early exposure is better than no exposure!  I swished it in my own mouth first the first few times so Isaac's belly wouldn't think it was a foreign invader. 

4.Maple Syrup: Just a touch adds instant deliciousness and its a good alternative to the (danger-ball) honey. Grade B Maple Syrup has lots of B vitamins to boot.

5.Frozen Spinach: Thawed first, of course.  Blended with bananas, your little one will open their mouth wide for green mush.
That is very good since spinach has got loads of Protein, Phosphorus and Zinc, and a very good source of Dietary Fiber, Vitamin A, Vitamin C, Vitamin E (Alpha Tocopherol), Vitamin K, Thiamin, Riboflavin, Vitamin B6, Folate, Calcium, Iron, Magnesium, Potassium, Copper, Manganese and Selenium.

6.Goat Cheese: Mixed into warm mashed sweet potatoes; shoot, I'd eat it!

7.Pesto: I like to try to turn his food green however I can, and this is already in a mushed form. Woohoo!

The soon-to-be-post-mush Isaac, hard at work:

concentration face

and it's in!

boy, that was great.

What will he inspire next?
Stay tuned!

Huge Family, Small Spaces

Or, Why My Little Apartment Doesn't Seem So Little Anymore.

Jeremy sent me a link to Annie Ling's photographs from the NY times:
A Bed and a Key at 81 Bowery

It does look cheerful in there; though my goodness, it must be loud.
Lots of cooking smells and hot too. 
I can't help but like all the colors, and just focus on that.

stroller envy

Stroller envy is real.  Talk to a momma and see if she's felt it; you'll notice she's not listening if a super cool stroller is passing her by.
I feel the envy: I want a Bugaboo Bee, though my punk rock side would be way too embarrassed to trot down the street with a $650 set of baby-wheels.  My husband clearly states while frying potatoes, "There is just no way we would spend that much money on a stroller."  So I say, "Maybe next year on craigslist?"
Oh the bee: cute, compact, very upright, and ever so slightly tough.  Lots of room underneath too.

bzzzzzz

I've discussed stroller envy with my friends.  I say it comes from how you can't have your kid do everything you want them to do, so instead we gotta have the stroller that does everything we want it to do.  And then when we find out our dream stroller doesn't make our lives perfect, we think another stroller will do the trick.  Its a classic grass is greener situation.

Fellow momma Micaela says that we feel like if we had the perfect stroller, our kid would never cry.  You could bring 'em anywhere and do anything, and they would just be happy.  Yeah, right. 

I began strolling with an old city mini I bought it from my friend Molly.  Her kid is really cute and smart and I was hoping that her stroller would impart such qualities to my little kid. When we came to pick it up she told me she hoped Isaac will be okay in it. Her son had screamed and screamed whenever she took him out in it for the first few months. Uh-oh. What was I supposed to do?  It was a winter evening and my little one started screaming too, on 5th Ave and President St., 20 minutes away from home.

I felt bad listening to him cry.  Sad and worried too, because I couldn't see him, (the Bugaboo Bee can be turned so your face your baby while strolling) and his little 3 month old face was out there exposed to the world without me to filter the bad stuff out.

The city mini barely lasted the winter. I wanted every other stroller we walked by that looked cute and comfy.  Pushing the city mini with one hand and carrying Isaac with the other aching one made those times especially hard.

He did look cute in there, all bundled up.

Technically speaking, I think he didn't like the city mini because it set him far back, in a jogging stroller sort of way so that when he turned his head side to side, as he likes to do, he couldn't see anything except for the inside of the stroller.  I think that is what brought him to such despair.  He did try to sit upright, but then he bumped his head on the front bar, which brought on a different kind of despair.

Enter the 2011 Uppababy G-luxe: I read about it online, saw this photo and thought, "this is the one."

cute, cheery, yet technologically advanced, yes?

Its "the most lightweight reclining stroller on the market." though I mostly liked how it looked.
And it inspired action: a trek to Mini Jakes, the home of very cute (and pricey) baby stuff, to give it a spin.  My first disappointment was that the cool electric orange of the photo, was more of a muted pumpkin.  I was a little bummed, but still hopeful.  I put Isaac in and noticed that the crotch strap was a little tight, but I ignored it because I didn't want it to be too tight.  He didn't cry, and that cemented the deal. We left with a black one, to please his papa and match his clothing.  I was happy until we got to the car and I tried to fold it.  Wrestle it to the ground would be a better description.

Life has not been perfect since buying the uppababy stroller.  The crotch strap is still too short (make sure your kid is skinny and/or doesn't wear cloth diapers before buying this one!) and I still break a sweat trying to get it to fold. There still are times that I carry Isaac with one breaking arm, and push with the other.  But he can see side to side now, the wheels roll deliciously smoothly, it's given my friend Micaela her own case of stroller envy, and its the one we got, so I'm now going to stop complaining.

Checkin' out the sides!

Tired

This is a tired that I never knew before becoming a momma. This is an aching, slouching, dizzy kind of tired where I can't read a book without it becoming my own bedtime story.
This is also the kind of tired that only cookies (those biscuity ones with dark chocolate on top seem to do the trick!) seem to assuage.

for him, I fake not being tired

What to do!?  How do I see, and talk to my husband, wake up with the little guy, and work a bit all in the same 24 hours?
I'm sure there are many books on the subject, but alas, no energy to read 'em.