SAHM: Kitchen Helper

One of the first challenges I've had to face as a new stay-at-home-mom is simply: how to get basic household chores done when I have a little helper who insists on doing her part? I don't want to discourage her from being involved in what I'm doing and I haven't found a satisfactory distraction technique. So most of the time I try to find a safe way to let her give a hand, even if the hand makes the job take much, much, much longer.

When cooking, I used to be able to set her up with a pile of tupperware and some spoons and she was happy doing her own thing while I prepared a meal. Now she wants to be right in the middle of the kitchen with me. But there are hot things and dangerous items in the kitchen, oh no!!!

Well, I've decided to approach kitchen safety like gun safety. If I teach her how to use the kitchen properly so that she is comfortable with it and aware of the dangers, instead of simply telling her she can't touch anything, she is much less likely to get hurt. (Don't worry, the guns are still locked up around here...this is just what's called an analogy ;-). Hence, you see that the burner to Aurelia's left in the picture above is red and hot. And she is happily cooking "chicken" or "rice" or "fries" or "soup", whichever her imagination alternately conjures up.

I also let her help me open the oven door when we bake something, showing her where it is safe to touch and where she would get burned. So far, so good. And I believe that allowing her a small level of independence makes it easier for her to accept when she really can't help with something, like actually taking something out of the oven or cooking with hot oil.

Fitness Friday: Wiiiiiii

Due to diabetes raising its ugly head in her family, Brenda has resurrected "Fitness Friday" over at the Family Revised. While I'm sorry for the reason behind this, I'm also excited about the timing. We're finally settled enough down here on the Emerald Coast that I can seriously start to work back towards my normal size 8 self. I do not want to tell you what size pants I finally gave in and purchased last night...but I will, because Fitness Friday is about honesty, accountability and encouragement. Size 12.

It's not the number itself that bothers me. As I recall, the average woman in America is size 12, so I have plenty of company. But it's not a healthy weight for me and I feel very unsatisfied with my fitness level. I'll never be a slim, trim maiden again after having two wonderful children, but I do want to feel comfortable in my skin and comely for my husband.

My original plan was to join a gym with childcare, but after considering the practicalities I realized it would take up 2 hours every day in total. That's just not going to work for me right now. I'm still learning this stay-at-home mom stuff and I don't want to overload my schedule. So yesterday I sold our XBox 360 and bought a gently used Nintendo Wii with Wii Fit. On the advice of friends, I also bought the Fit Plus for an extra $10 at Target.

So now I'm going to set it up and give it a whirl. I'll let you know how it goes, ladies!

Wifey Wednesday: The T word

Anyone who has been near me these past few several months knows what the T word is. And Tired really doesn't begin to cover it. Over at To Love, Honor and Vacuum, Sheila Wray Gregoire is talking today about what to do when you're too tired to be intimate with your husband. I'm too tired to walk straight, so you can guess how I feel about desire right now.

In case you need some help, I'll expound: If my beloved husband was wearing Indiana Jones's hat, made me laugh with George Clooney's charm, oozed with James Bond-esque suaveness and spoke with Russel Crowe's accent...I still wouldn't be at a "Zero" on the spark-o-meter.

Sheila offers some GREAT advice on how to rejuvenate, but really there is only one solution to my sleep deprivation, and that is for Baby Blaise to start sleeping longer than 2-3 hours at a time. Or for him to take a bottle more consistently. So I guess that's two solutions.

Right now the only thing in my power to control is to let my husband feel more of the consequences of this sleeping problem. At first I shielded him from the lack of sleep because he was working 20+ hours a day finishing his dissertation. I just focused bleary eyes on the day we were moved and his new job started so he could take a feeding in the middle of the night, as we did with our first baby. Somehow I've found myself taking all of them again -- mostly because of the bottle problem but also because I want my husband to get more than six hours of sleep.

But you know what? If he can get up at 5am so he can go to the gym for an hour every day, he has room in his schedule to help me get more than five hours of sleep broken into three or more chunks.

Other than that, if anyone has a magic solution to getting a 4-month old to sleep longer, please let me know what it is.

Wifey Wednesday: Easy tip for adding spice! (And I don't mean cooking!)

It's Wifey Wednesday over at Sheila Wray Gregoires awesome blog, To Love, Honor and Vacuum. Today's topic is a dare to do little things to spice up the romance in relationships. I just want to share one of my favorite tools for keeping the conversation interesting with my husband (of almost 9 years! Where did the time go?): TableTopics.

The couple's edition is obviously a good place to start, but all of the conversation starter sets are really great. I bought a set for our anniversary last year and we went through half the cube over dinner; we were having so much fun answering the questions and discussing our answers that my husband barely glanced at the college football games on the restaurant's televisions! Maybe I should e-mail that selling point to the good folks over at tabletopics.com, eh?

Anyway, the point is that after being together for so many years, sometimes it's hard to think of something new to talk about. Especially if one of you spends most of the day changing diapers, doing laundry and figuring out what to cook next. (And we all know that you're not supposed to talk about your children on date night! :)

Oh, and when you're done with a set? Pass it along to another couple in need!

Changes

June was a crazy month, and I don't mean that lightly. A part of me is glad that I was (am) so sleep deprived that I'm not likely to remember much of May/June. A new baby, Jon finishing his dissertation, moving across the country and a thus-far-futile attempt to complete my own graduate degree have left me reeling. Right now I should really be sleeping, or at least unpacking another box. But I feel like I need to claim a minute for myself. So here I am. Ready to focus on the much-anticipated new month and a new start.

I love the house Jon found for us to rent, and he is really enjoying his job. Actually, we're all enjoying it since he gets to come home for lunch every day and his amazing flex-time options mean we get him home an extra day on most weeks. It is really great to be just a couple minutes from the beautiful beaches of the Florida panhandle (no oil here yet!). Aurelia would live in the surf and sand if she had half a choice in the matter. She might come out for some ice cream or to play on a slide. Blaise...well, I love his chuckles and smiles, but that boy still needs to learn how to sleep. Let's not talk about that though -- I'm almost as sick of thinking about sleep as I am from lack of it. (By the way, lack of sleep/new parent jokes are not even remotely funny. Really. They're not.)

Boxes and half-assembled furniture fill most of the rooms still, since our "stuff" arrived only a few days ago. Sometimes I look at the piles and think we'll never organize everything again. Then I just open a box and start working...unless a diaper needs to be changed or food needs to be cooked or a mess cleaned up or the dryer just went off...haha. I think I'm done with the kitchen, unless a box made it to the wrong room. So that's progress!

Money has been fun for the past month. Transitions are ridiculously expensive. We get our first new paycheck in 3 days. If I've calculated everything correctly, that's almost exactly how many dollars we'll have left then. Fortunately chicken and rice can carry a menu plan a long way on the cheap. We break it up occasionally with tilapia and tater tots. And broccoli. Because clearly those three things go together.

Which brings me to an aside (as if the rest of this post is perfectly coherent): living in a house with just some camping gear for over a week really shows you 1) how little you really need to get along just fine, and 2) how nice a real bed is! And a changing table. Oh, and a place to sit.

And with that, I think I'm out of random thoughts on our recent life changes. More will come later, along with some more pictures from the professional photo shoot I won back in Washington. Gayle Sholtz photography, thank you!!

Casually Feminine: You wear it EVERY day

I'm a day late in giving my input for "Casually Feminine Thursday" at The Family Revised, but I'm living in "newborn" time so I'm sure you'll forgive me. The topic this week is The Face. As a former Mary Kay consultant, the first thing that comes to my mind on this topic, at least right after how lovely a smile makes a face, is skin care. As my lovely and wonderful mentor once told me, you wear your face every single day. So doesn't it make sense to take better care of your face than you do your clothes?

Now, you don't have to "do" your face every day to be casually feminine. But I really think taking care of the basics goes a long way toward looking lovely. Here are the basics: cleanse, tone, moisturize and protect. Then if you want to add a touch of color, go for it! The key is to find a skin care system that works for you and then be consistent. Personally, I prefer the Timewise system from Mary Kay. It's very simple: I use the 3-in-1 cleanser in my morning shower and then moisturize just before putting on a light foundation and finishing with some powder. It takes less time than brushing my teeth, and I feel put together and ready to face the world when I'm done.

Once I've taken care of the basics, I also add a touch of bronzer to my cheeks, a soft color to my lips and a quick swipe of neutral eyeshadow and mascara so my eyes don't get lost behind my glasses. That takes care of my everyday look, but how far you take these extras depends on your definition of casually feminine.

L&D and the Garden of Gethsemane

I'm convinced, after my second pregnancy and childbirth, that there are few experiences that make us more Christ-like than delivering a new life into this world. Choosing to carry and give birth to a child requires complete sacrifice of self -- and involves a level of courage, blood and agony that a man who has sweated blood can relate to.

Jesus knew what he was facing as he prayed in the Garden, and begged to be released from what had to be done. How many mothers-to-be have uttered similar (if not quite so eloquent...or coherent) prayers as they entered the last stages of labor? For myself, I know the end is near when I start asking if there's any way to opt out of the pregnancy after all. But then I start reminding myself -- the only way out is through, and the end is worth the effort.

I think the blurred weeks that follow childbirth also bring us closer to understanding Christ's loneliness in Gethsemane. “Could you men not keep watch with me for one hour?” Yes, I think Jesus understands the lonely, sleep-deprived hours a mother endures out of love for her new child. There are certainly radiant moments of joy in gazing down upon the face of an infant lying comfortably at the breast, even after getting only an hour of (interrupted) sleep. But there is also a sense that the rest of world, as it keeps on turning, has forgotten you completely.

Finally, did you know that "Gethsemane" literally means "olive press"? That sounds like an apt description of labor. And I'm sure my newest little 10 and half pounder would agree, given the bruises on his poor head!