D's Birth Story

It has been a while since a post has appeared.  But I have an excuse.  A new person appeared in my life.  Here is his birth story.  More posts, hopefully about things other than how people make their way into this world, to come soon.

On my due date, Aug 5, I woke up thinking my water had broken.  Or was leaking -- there wasn't much coming out, but it wasn't normal.  I waited around most of the morning to see if I had any contractions, but I didn't.  In the afternoon, we went to the birthing center to make sure and Ros was there, the same midwife who had delivered F.  She determined that I had probably lost my mucus plug, not broken my water, but that the baby was moving down and I would likely be in labor that evening.  We called my in-laws when I started having contractions at dinnertime.  But ... the contractions went away at bedtime and I didn't go into labor at all.  Boo.

On Monday, the in-laws came over to play with F. and nothing much happened to me.  On Tuesday, however, after I had sent them back home, I started having contractions probably around 1:30pm.  At 3pm, I called my husband and asked him to come home.  At five-ish, we went to the birthing center and midwife Samantha checked us out -- she said I was dilated to 3cms, which isn't much, and we went back home.  The contractions continued.  I went to sleep until about 1:30am, when they became harder to sleep through.  At 3am, we went to the birthing center again.  Now, I was dilated to 5cm.  It wasn't as much progress as I wanted.  And the contractions were already getting very uncomfortable.

I got into the tub and managed to doze through the contractions for another hour or so.  Then I hopscotched around the room, trying out different equipment.  I was afraid the contractions were getting too powerful, so Sam gave me some herbs to calm me down.  One of the herbs was valerian root, and I think that made me drowsy.  So drowsy.  I slept in the tub again, I slept on the toilet, and I slept in the rocking chair.  I would wake up every five minutes or so for a contraction, and then fall right back to sleep.  It wasn't exactly a pleasant sensation -- I was very disoriented when I woke up and would nearly panic nearly every time, because the pain would increase so quickly.

At 8am, Ros came on duty. I hadn't had any idea she would be there, but when she saw me, she laughed and suggested that the baby and I had been waiting for her to arrive. She suggested I try to lay on the bed and labor down that way.  I could tell after a while that things were progressing, because I could almost feel the baby moving lower with each contraction.  These were very different contractions than what I remembered with F.  With his birth, the contractions were quick and frequent and powerful until I became overwhelmed -- that was transition -- and then the pushing was like a relief to my system because the sensations were so different.  This time, however, I felt immense pressure on my lower body, almost like I had to fart or poop to a very extreme and painful level, the whole entire time I was having contractions.  Basically, it was like the end or the transition of F.'s labor was the whole labor this time.  By the time the baby was laboring down and I was in the bed, I felt panic set in at every contraction.


And still, I was falling asleep between every one and waking up as crazy waves of pain fell in on me.
But Ros was onto bigger and better things, telling Ben to grab my leg back and me to dig in and start pushing.  I was not ready for this, but she made me do it.  I cried and whined the whole time, just wanting her to leave me alone (probably to go to sleep again) but she wouldn't let me.  I managed to give her three really good pushes and by then I could tell there was no going back.  I could feel him right at the edge of coming out.  Another two pushes and his head was out and I could hear him starting to cry.  I thought they would just pull the rest of him out, but Ros kept telling me to keep pushing.  The pain was intense, but suddenly it popped like a little bubble and the baby was out and on my chest.
The baby and my husband took a nap before we went home, but not me.  I was surprisingly well-rested.

I also felt like it was taking forever.  Finally, at 10am, I decided to quit watching the clock because it was just making me crazy.  My contractions were still only five minutes apart, and Ros was convinced they weren't really doing a whole lot of work.  She was ready to make me work it out -- I could tell when she came to check my progress that she was going to make me walk around the room or something
dreadful.  But instead, she said I was 9cm and asked if I would like to try an experimental push.  She still 
had her fingers wedged up there and I think she helped break my water at that point.  She said the baby was right there, his head already molding -- and that was a good thing, I remember thinking, because that meant he was actually in the birth canal part way and maybe I would only have to push him part way.


We named him D. and he weighed 9 pounds, 1 ounce.  Ros declared his feet looked like a 39 week baby, not a 40plusafewdays baby, so I guess I just need to cook them a little longer.  He looked a lot like F. looked when he was born, just fatter.  He pooped all over the place in the minutes after his birth. His fingernails were so long we had to trim them that same night.  He had four sucking blisters, two on each hand.

A Birth Story

I've been inspired, now that I am expecting another baby, to revisit the birth of my first.  Most of this was coming from memory, but I did make a lot of notes in the first few weeks of being a mom.  My tone in those notes was, um, a little more freaked out.  I was probably not sleeping.

One thing that I do remember was my due date: June 1.  I loved that date because it was my dad's birthday, and my husband and I were secretly talking about kind of naming the baby after him and it all had such a sweet symmetry.

But, of course, as a first time mom, people told me to expect to go past this arbitrary date.  I had a visit with the midwife the Friday before my due date and she told me that she didn't think the baby would come on time.  "He hasn't dropped yet," she said. "It's pretty normal."  My due date was a Tuesday and it came and went with no baby and no contractions.  I went back to see the midwives later that week and again, they told me the same thing.  I was dilating well, probably around 1 cm, but he hadn't dropped into position and I really couldn't expect too much until he did.

On the Tuesday after my due date, when I was officially 41 weeks pregnant, I went  back and they told me the same thing again.  But by now, they were starting to look a little concerned about it.  I was still dilating, but nothing was happening.  I called my mom and gave her the update.  She had gone into labor with me and my siblings about a month early each time, so for her, this all seemed impossible.  To her, I was already six weeks later than she had been expecting.  She was coming to visit in a week, supposedly to help out with my weeks old baby, but I told her that maybe she would end up being there while I was in labor.  I wasn't really looking forward to that.

Wednesday, I returned to the midwives where they hooked me up to the fetal monitor for twenty minutes, just to see if maybe I was having contractions that I couldn't feel.  I wasn't.  For the whole pregnancy, I never even had any Braxton-Hicks contractions.  My sister-in-law had them for a month before her baby was born, and we all thought it strange that I'd never had any.  Now, it was seeming even stranger.  The midwives conferred with each other as they looked over the printed strip from the monitor.  Not that there was anything to look at.

They sent me home with castor oil and instructions for how to drink it.  Castor oil is the age-old midwife treatment to get a labor going.  I mixed mine dutifully with a bunch of ice cream and ate it for breakfast on Thursday morning.  Nothing really happened.  One of the midwives called me that afternoon to see how things were progressing.  "Come in tomorrow," she said.

So, back I went on Friday.  It was almost mid-June and the weather was just crummy.  Hot, humid, thick.  I had gained over 50 pounds during my pregnancy.  I spent most afternoons at this point laying on the couch, the fan pointed directly at my nether regions, drifting in an out of uncomfortable sleep.  I stopped calling friends to go to lunch with me, because every time they answered the phone they thought I was in labor.  No one wanted to hear, "I'm just bored, come meet me somewhere."

Jean was the midwife who saw me that Friday.  She stripped my membranes, which meant that she got what looked like most of her forearm into my pregnant body and swished it around a bunch of times.  "I feel like I can get you to dilate easily," she said.  "I bet I can get you to four centimeters just with my hand, that's great.  But the baby still isn't really in position."  She was frowning at me when she finished and sent me home with this dire warning.  "Call me tomorrow at two.  If you're not in labor, I think we'll just have to take you to the hospital."

I cried all the way home in the car.  I had been planning to have my baby at this birthing center, with the midwives who had been caring for me during my pregnancy.  Everyone who knew about this plan thought it was crazy.  My mother still said the word "midwife" like it was some foreign language.  She thought my fears of drugs and needles and unnecessary surgery were out of whack with reality, even while she refused to read anything on current statistics.  Other friends who had children already looked at me with wide eyes, and I could see them mentally spinning their fingers around their ears: I was coo-coo.  "Why would you ever try to have a baby without an epidural?" one of them said to me.  When I replied that it can be healthier, she scrunched up her forehead, as if the thought had never occurred to her.  That afternoon, when I broke the news to my closest family, that we were looking at a hospital transfer, everyone had the same paliative response: "A healthy baby is the only thing that matters."  Which, especially right then, was not what I wanted to hear.  It sounded like, "See, we all told you this was a crazy plan, now maybe you'll listen to reason."  I felt like everyone was treating me like a child, one who was due some kind of punishment for straying into this unknown territory.

I went for three walks the next morning, trying to finish them up before the oppressive heat settled in for the day.  I could get a few cramps going if I walked fast enough, but when I fell asleep around lunchtime, they went away.  We went in to see Jean again, my husband with me this time since it was a Saturday, and she fired up the ultrasound machine.  My fluid levels were good, she said.  The baby was healthy, the placenta was still functioning properly.  She stripped my membranes again, and again she commented on how easily I was dilating.  "But it just doesn't look like he's dropped yet," she said.  Then she gave me another day.  I had until 3pm on Sunday to go into labor naturally and then it was hospital time for real.

I called my mom and told her not to come, even though my parents were already on the road to my house.  I asked her to visit my sister for a day and said she could come on Monday, when I expected I would be in the hospital, hooked up to various IV's full of induction drugs.  On Sunday morning, I took more walks and was able to get a few contractions going.  But by the time we were in the car to visit Jean yet again, they had faded to nothing.  We were pretty quiet in the car.  We had our bag of baby stuff for our stay at the birthing center, but now I was rethinking everything.  We hadn't packed for the hospital; we didn't have a birth plan.  I looked at my husband and said, "If something happens, promise me you'll stay with the baby no matter what.  I'll be ok, but you have to stay with him.  Promise me."  He promised.

The birthing center was dark and quiet and we had to search through the hallways to find Jean.  She did another ultrasound, checking fluid levels again, and then she laid out our options.  We could go to the hospital right now, get some pitocin and see if that jump-started things.  She said she would come with us.  We could break my water at the birthing center and then, if that didn't work, go to the hospital at the end of the day for pitocin and more regulated monitoring to keep an eye out for infection.  "You have about a day to have the baby if we break your water," she said.  "If it doesn't work, they may want to give you a c-section as soon as you show up.  The longer we wait to go over there, the more chance you have of going right into surgery."  I said we might as well try breaking my water first to see what happened, and then head over there later if it didn't work.  I was pretty calm when I reached this decision.  It was true that I had been fearing and obsessing over an unnecessary surgery for months, but by this point, I felt like we had literally tried everything we could think of to get the baby out ... if this last ditch effort didn't work, then maybe surgery wasn't going to be unnecessary anymore.

We moved from the exam room to a birthing suite.  Jean set me up on a big comfy bed in the afternoon sunlight and explained everything she was doing as she broke my water.  Then she made me a castor oil milkshake, dosed me with a tincture of herbs, and hooked me up to a breast pump.  Within minutes, I was sick to my stomach and wanted to get out of bed.  The breast pump was making me feel like throwing up.

I walked the halls for about an hour, chatting with my husband and looking at the pictures of new babies tacked up to the bulletin boards.  He kept track of my contractions, which started to come about every five minutes.  They were crampy and uncomfortable, and a few of them gave me pause.  We watched a movie, but about halfway through I found I couldn't concentrate on it anymore.  I spent ten minutes or so in the bathroom, sitting on the toilet, feeling nauseous again.  Jean tried to get me to lay down, but every time I did, I threw up, so I just kept walking around.  I heard her on the phone with another midwife, saying that I was having contractions, "but not the real doosey ones."  I didn't believe her.

It grew dark outside.  My in-laws arrived with dinner for us, but I couldn't deal with seeing anyone so my husband talked with them in the kitchen for a few moments.  While he was eating his dinner I asked if I could have a tiny taste of a cookie.  I threw it back up.  I had a drink of water and threw that up, too.  Jean went home around 8pm and another midwife, Roswitha, came on duty.  She had just spent the previous night at the hospital with a difficult birth, so she went to lie down for a while.  She checked on us about once an hour, sometimes scolding me for sitting down or my husband for dosing in his chair, sometimes reminding us of the equipment we could use: the birthing chair, the exercise ball, the shower.

Because my risk of infection was greater since my water had been broken, no one checked how dilated I was until about 11pm.  Around 9 or 10 at night, things started to get very difficult for me.  Jean had told my husband that maybe, just maybe, we would have a baby by morning and I couldn't get those words out of my head.  Maybe by morning?  I would have to do this all night long?  I sat on the birthing stool until it didn't help anymore, then I sat in the shower until that didn't help anymore, then I leaned over the excerise ball propped up on the bed until that didn't help anymore.  Finally, I was leaning against the back of a chair while my husband pressed inward on my hips.  Until that didn't work anymore.  And by work, I mean, these things stopped even easing the pain.

It was getting hard to concentrate on anything.  I felt claustrophobic.  I wanted to take a break from my body.  I wanted things to slow down, I wanted them to speed up and be over.  I wanted to go somewhere away from the pain, but my legs didn't work like they used to and moving was so difficult, I don't think I could have gone anywhere even if that would have helped.  I burrowed into myself.  I thought my hip bones were breaking from the inside out.  The room was so still.  It was the middle of the night and I was all alone, leaning against part of the bed, trying to imagine how long it might be until morning, until the baby came, until Jean said maybe he would be here.  My understanding was limited to about five minutes into the future; everything farther away than that was just blackness that I could not comprehend.  I kept telling myself that I could make it for five more minutes, until all of a sudden, I knew I couldn't even do that.  Maybe I could make it three more minutes.  Maybe one more contraction.  If someone had offered me an epidural, a c-section, a pill, ANYTHING, at that moment I would have taken it.

Roswitha came in shortly after this, probably around 11 or 11:30.  She grimly helped me onto the bed and did a cervical check.  I think she was planning to tell me that we had to go to the hospital now that midnight was approaching.  But instead she beamed and patted my leg.  "Good girl," she said, "you're at nine centimeters.  You can get into the birthing tub now."

Oh!  The tub!  I'd forgotten there was a tub!  Jean had told me I couldn't use it since it sometimes slowed down labor, something I couldn't afford.  I got excited.  Water birth!  Something new to make the pain go away!  I heaved myself across the floor with lots and lots of help.  I managed to get into the tub and Ros turned on the water for me.  I braced myself against the side of it, and before the water was much past my knees, something changed.  "Something's different," I called out to Ben and in that moment, my voice dropped about three octaves.  I think I may have mooed the end of that sentence.

A birth attendant showed up and turned off the water.  Ros was there, trying to tell me how to brace myself against the side of the tub for the pushing that was coming next.  It was difficult to get leverage in the water, so out I came again, and up I went on the bed.  The pushing was very confusing to me; I didn't understand what was going on.  The contractions felt different, they didn't feel painful anymore, but like a rising in my chest, like adrenaline or that moment when you go down a roller coaster.  Ros was yelling at me to keep pushing, but I couldn't do it as long as she wanted me to.  The birth assistant was very encouraging and my husband was holding my hand the whole time, telling me that I was almost done.  "One more push should do it."  He told me this about twenty times.  When the baby began to crown, they left me feel his slick little head.  I could feel my face going red with all the effort.  It was so hard to use the right muscles, all I wanted to do was kick out my legs.

But finally the baby's ears came out and then the rest of him.  Then they were heaving this creature onto my stomach, still covered in birthing goo, and I was holding him.  He cried and then he calmed down and he looked at my husband who was right in front of his face.  We were covered in blankets to keep warm while Ros and the assistant finished up.  They gave me a shot of pitocin to get the afterbirth to come out; my contractions faded away immediately after the baby came out, even though my husband said it seemed like I was too distracted to keep working.  He cut the umbilical cord shortly after that.  It was a little after two in the morning.

I had a first degree tear and although Ros offered to sew me up, I was done with people messing with that part of my body.  They said it would heal up in a week or so, as long as I took it easy at home.  They showed me the placenta and Ros said it was a very good one.  They pushed down on my puffy stomach to get out some blood clots.  Then they rubbed the baby and me off and settled us under a comforter while we nursed a little.

The baby was born with a tongue-tie and Ros told me a little bit about what that meant.  Not a birth defect, she said, just something that happens sometimes.  Then she said that she didn't think my due date had been right.  The baby, she said, didn't look like a post-term baby at all.  She had noted the amount of vernix covering his skin and had counted the wrinkles on his feet.  "You said you were sure about his due date," she said.  "When did you actually take a pregnancy test?"

I had thought we had gotten pregnant in mid-September, my last period had been at the end of August.  But when I told her I had taken the pregnancy test the first week in October, she declared that I had probably gotten pregnant around October 1.  "Those tests work a lot faster these days," she said.  "You can get a positive result very soon after it happens now."

As the sun came up, the baby was weighed and measured.  Eight pounds even.  We filled out his birth certificate information and made little baby footprints on a piece of paper.  We took pictures and texted everyone.  Then, the three of us laid down on the bed together and fell asleep.

UPDATE: The midwife noted in my chart that I only pushed for 45 minutes.  I swear it felt like 4 hours.

Free DIY Toddler Toys

I'm cheap, especially on the subject of toys.  Sometimes, it's just really hard to know if your kid is going to love that thing they want at the store.  I'm sure we have all been burned on this before.

My son is almost 2, so these are toys for toddlers.

1. Cars through a tube.

You do need to have some cars on hand for this one, but we seem to collect them without much trouble.  If you really can't find any you can afford, then ask someone who has older boys if you can have or borrow two or three cars.  This could also work with other toys you have around -- small bouncy balls, small plastic figures, etc.

The tube is a photo tube we got in the mail when we ordered a large print from Snapfish.  I like it because it is sturdy and has caps -- so, we can clean up by stashing all the cars inside the tube.  But, a wrapping paper or toilet paper tube could work, too.

Putting cars through a tube is about 800% more fun than playing with cars when you do not have a tube.  It's a tunnel, a slide, or a thing to look through depending on the mood.  Also great fun at the park, where you can half-bury it in the sand or dirt, or just stuff it full of mulch.

2. Pennies into the slot.

My son loves to put money into the piggy bank, so I made him this toy so we could do it whenever he wanted, instead of whenever we had change on hand.  Technically, this toy requires some pennies, but consider it a 10 cent deposit, since you can have them back later.

I used a container we got at the grocery store with some bulk raisins, so technically we did pay for it.  But, they have them there for free, and if your grocery store doesn't have these, you could also use a cheap tupperware or cardboard box. I used a kitchen knife to score the top on both sides and then popped out the slit in the top.

3. Color matching game.

I got this idea from Pinterest.  That user got really cute Disney color cards and them modge-podged them onto cardstock.  I could not find cute Disney paint.  I went to Home Depot and was planning to get some of the paint chip/sample cards and cut them up, glue them to cards, etc.  BUT, when I got there, it turns out that they have these fancy extra large color-saturated paint cards that are perfectly fine to use all by themselves, no gluing or anything.  Just get two of each main color: red, orange, yellow, etc.  Yes, they all have the name of the color written on the back, but I figure by the time my son can read this game will be long gone anyway.

The best part is, he has gotten excited about naming all the colors since we started playing this last week, so he is learning at the same time.  Yay!

4. Stacking cups.

These cups were left over from a party we had last year when we catered in some food from a BBQ place.  Any plastic or paper cups will work; they do not even need to be the same size (although, if you want clean up to be neat and tidy, it helps).  We have others from an annual beer festival, and a few from nearby restaurants ... if you don't have anything on hand, ask around.  At my old job, the kitchen cabinets were full of these from business lunches and no one ever remembered to use them.

Simply begin stacking them into a pyramid and your child will be drawn to the need to kick it or smash it to the ground.  If they get bored of that, let them stack them up and you can smash them down.  Endless fun.

Fireplace Into Book Nook: A Plan

Our house was built in the 50's and at some point, someone added on a room to the back.  It's nice because it adds onto our square footage, but other than that, I feel like this room is pointless.  Whoever added it on did it with some mysterious purpose in mind that I haven't been able to figure out (pool table?) and every time I try to figure out how to use it, I run up against problems.

The placement of the doors and windows, plus the fact that there are several built in cabinets, makes it impossible to put furniture in it.  There's room for a couch against one wall ... and other than that, everything else has to be in the middle of the room.  Irritating.  The wall outlets are in stupid places, the light switches don't go to anything, and then there is the fireplace.  The stupid, stupid fireplace.

We've built a fire in it exactly once, because it's hot where we live and fireplace worthy days that fall on a weekend are truly once-a-year things.  The rest of the time, it just sits there, unused, and because whoever added it to the house was a jerk, it takes up an entire corner.  As for why the hearth juts out to the left halfway along the wall, making further unusable space, I have no answers.

Last weekend, we converted it (or finished converting it) into a play room.  There's nothing else to be done with it.  We moved a few toys in, including the beloved train table, and added a bookcase.  Note that the bookcase has to go in front of a built-in because there's no other place to put it.  That cabinet is full of Christmas stuff, so we don't need to access it all that often.

I want to turn to fireplace into a reading nook.  Or, a nook for any purpose, really.  Anything will be better than a fireplace.  First I'll have to figure out how to remove the screen, and then deal with how filthy it is.  I would love to tack up some fabric and be done, but I'm not sure how a person attaches fabric to bricks.  I welcome any and all ideas on how to figure this out.

What I Learned About How My Kid Eats

1. You don't have to buy baby food in jars, or in pouches, or in anything.  You can make your own.

2.  You don't even have to make your own.  Baby-led weaning is way easier and lazier.  Mush up a banana, avocado, or baked sweet potato if you want to give it a try.

3. If he likes something right now, he might not like it later.  Avocados, we had fun, maybe we'll see you again someday.  Ditto, sweet potatoes.

4. Some fast food places have actual child-friendly halfway healthy food.  Whataburger is not one of these places.  I don't even think the one we stopped at on our way back from the beach had milk.  We never really eat at these places, especially with the baby, so I had no idea how bad it was going to be.

5. The day you buy a five pound crate of oranges is the day your kid refuses to eat them.

6. Most kids need to try a food twenty or thirty times before they will decide they like it.

7. Getting food into his mouth, even if he spits it right out again, is a victory.

8. Someone else's snacks are always better than your snacks.  See also "someone else's toys."

9. If my kid won't eat anything, I take the exact same stuff to the park and he'll eat it with gusto.

10. Having a good eater is kind of like having a good sleeper.  They are rare and often exaggerated and if you have one of them, you probably feel like bragging ... even though you probably didn't have much to do with it yourself.

Cure Your Ugly Feet - For Cheap

I am the owner of some sad, sad feet.  I wear sandals every day in the summer, and this makes them dry, calloused, cracked, chipped -- I mean, they are just terrible.  I enjoy a good pedicure, but I have been unable to find anyone willing to really scrub off all the old, dead skin.  I have tried explaining to the nice pedicure ladies, "please keep going!" but I still don't get what I want.  Meaning, when I leave, I can always scrape a fingernail along my heel and come away with more skin that needed to be removed.  Disgusting, I know.

Then I saw this article about how to cure cracked heels and I got excited.  I am a sucker for DIY with "household items you have on hand!" and I have gamely followed just about every suggestion for around-the-house products down the rabbit hole.  I tried their solution and it did seem to be on the right track, but they left out a few key steps.  So, here is a revised "How to Cure Cracked Heels:"

What You Need:
- shaving cream or hair conditioner (I use free sample size hair conditioners, the little packets you can get in the mail ... they are impossible to open when you're actually trying to wash your hair, but they are just the right amount to treat two feet)
- listerine
- warm water
- a big bowl
- two hand towels, big enough to wrap each of them around one of your feet
- a pumice stone or a heavy duty foot scraper thing like this
- maybe some help; this whole endeavor requires some dexterity
- 30 minutes or so

Combine equal parts (like 1 cup of each) listerine and warm water in a bowl.  Soak two hand towels in the mixture.  Slather your feet with the shaving cream or hair conditioner, then wrap in the soaked hand towels and rest for half an hour.  When your time is up, use the hand towels to wipe off your feet a little and then go to town with the pumice stone.  You can also take the cuticle trimmer on a nail clipper to trim off your cuticles at this point; they should be nice and soft, too.

The article I originally read said to let your feet air dry in order to prevent fungus from growing on them.  But I am a fan of finishing up the whole thing with a heavy layer of lotion and clean socks.  I mean, my feet air out all day every day, that is kind of the problem.  You should only do this treatment once a week or less, since it removes a fair amount of skin.

My "Open Door" Policy

My husband has a thing about "stuff."  He hates it.  He doesn't like things that are without function and he especially hates things that are made just to sit on a shelf.  Every Christmas, my mother complains about this.  But I have grown into it.  There is something to be said for a house that picks up easily, where there is room for everything you have, simply because you don't have that much stuff.

Having a kid, though, seems to fly directly in the face of this.  Kids need a lot of stuff.  The stuff they need is constantly evolving.  When you find cool stuff for your kid, you want to keep it around in case you need it again, like maybe if you have another kid someday.

Much to my husband's chagrin, I'm sure, I decided pretty early on to have an "open door" policy about kid stuff. Meaning, if you have something to get rid of, I will take it off your hands.  I tell most of my friends about this if it ever comes up in conversation.  "Even Barbies?" a good friend of mine asked.  I have a little boy who does not seem like the kind of kid who is going to be into Barbies -- but I said yes anyway.

I'm glad I did.  The Barbies came in a bag with some clothes her own son had outgrown, some books, a child-sized mop and broom, and a red plastic fire fighter hat.  Score!  Maybe if I had turned down the Barbies, we would have gotten all this other stuff anyway, but maybe it was just easier to put everything in a bag together and give it to one person.  She had mentioned she had some clothes, but the broom, the mop, and the hat were all extras.  Extra awesome, if you ask me.

My open door policy doesn't mean I keep everything.  I couldn't.  Our house is already full without taking in spare Barbies that need a home, or jeans with holes in the knees, or the 12-month-old santa suit I found in the back of the closet not too long ago.  I don't know who gave that to us, but someone will think it is awesome, right?

I give away a lot of the extra stuff that doesn't fit with what we need.  I tend to keep the clothes I think we will grow into, and toys that look like they will be a hit (somewhere, I have a playmobile dollhouse that I am only marginally convinced will ever get any action, but I keep hoping).  I belong to a few local mommy listservs and I have a wide circle of friends with kids, so I feel like I can almost always re-home something if I need to.  Right now there are two large boxes of infant clothes in the living room, ready to ship out; and this morning I gave some worn out pants to a crafty friend of mine because she said she likes to convert them into shorts.

Garlic Lemon Sauce

When my friend Heather moved away, she gave me a fridge full of veggies she wouldn’t be able to finish.  I ended up with an entire crisper drawer full of beets and another full of carrots.  I like beets and carrots just fine … but there were just so many of them.  I probably eat beets once a year.

I roasted them in the oven, the beets and carrots together, as I love to do.  It really is the best most foolproof way to make veggies taste good.  While I was at it, I wrapped a head of garlic in some tin foil and threw it in.

When the veggies were done, I took the garlic and pureed it with the juice of one lemon and a good squirt of olive oil.  The result was even more than I had hoped for.  It’s the kind of sauce you can put on anything and it will make it taste heavenly.

Garlic Lemon Sauce:

Ingredients:

One head garlic

One lemon

¼ to ½ cup olive oil, your call

salt and pepper

Drizzle garlic head with olive oil, wrap in tin foil.  Roast for 60 minutes in a 350 degree oven.

Cool garlic in the fridge or freezer until you can handle it.  Puree with the juice of the lemon and stream in the rest of the olive oil.  Add salt and pepper to taste.

Pour over veggies or pasta of your choice.  Really divine on root vegetables.

Getting Some Help

The kiddo helped me clean the bathroom today.  Ok, "helped" as in: he stayed out of my way and quiet until I was finished.  But it was great anyway.  How did I do it?  I put a few trains in the bathtub and he was so tickled to play with them there.  Must remember this for the future ... the same toys in a new place sometimes are like a new toys altogether.

Review: Crayola Outdoor Colored Bubbles

It appears that I entered a contest on Facebook and won a bottle of new Crayola Outdoor Colored Bubbles. They arrived at my door yesterday.  Now, I'm not one to sneeze at free stuff for my kid, but I did find it hilarious that the box came with a set of instructions AND A LETTER that repeated the instructions, in case you were planning to skip reading one of them.  Just so you know, this product is for outdoor use only!!  It might stain stuff!!

Also, it's supposed to be used by children over 3, so this review will basically be off-label use.  My kid is not even 2.

My child loves bubbles.  Most kids think they are fascinating.  The best bubble purchase I ever made was a bottle of "unspillable" bubbles that I found on clearance at Target for less than fifty cents.  The kiddo can play with it and drop it and whatever, and usually only a tiny dribble gets on his hands.  Of course, once he shakes it up real well, the bubbles don't exactly work, but I don't care.  He's happy just trying to eat the bubble wand, you know? (Unspillable on the left, Crayola Colored Bubbles on the right:)

But with these colored bubbles, I made sure I was the one in control because the stuff is the color of grape juice.  It's the same consistancy, too; it's like playing with a bottle of grape juice.  The minute I opened it, I had a feeling of panic -- I just felt like I needed to do something about the giant, crazy stain risk I was taking as it dripped all over the back patio.  Maybe it won't really stain; per the instructions (both sets), it will wash out of most clothing, but you might have to pre-treat it and you probably don't want it on your light clothes.

I feel like the instructions should say something like "for bathtime only, when everyone in naked."  Because really, you're going to spill this stuff.  It's going to happen.  It's going to get one your shoes.  Here it is dripped all over the floor.

However, after a few minutes, it faded to nothing.

The bubbles, yes, came out purple as intended.  And ... I don't know, I was not that impressed.  They are still see-through bubbles, just with a purple tint to them.  They look like regular bubbles, just a tiny bit more purple and A LOT MORE MESSY.  You know how when you spill regular bubbles you don't care because it's basically soap?  This stuff is not going to make you happy.

My vote is still for the unspillable bubbles.

The Water Table ...

The water table became a jungle gym today, so after removing my child (and a few other children) from the edge of it for the fiftieth time, I took off the legs.

Now it is some kind of zany wading pool with a slide for all the matchbox cars.  I'm not sure if you can see that very well in the picture, but the kiddo sure crammed as many of them in there as he could.

The Benefits of Being Lazy. I mean Waiting.

The question of toys bothers me. My son is not in daycare/school/whatever you call it, and so the only educational or creative stimulation he gets is what I can give him. We play outside a lot, where I feel like learning will happen with or without fun toys, and we go to playgroups with other kids, but sometimes when I see something cool, I feel the "I want it" desire well up. Good toys teach all kinds of thing -- just think about blocks and musical instruments and sand boxes and water tables and, and, and, that's kind of the problem. There are only 8 bazillion really awesome toys in the world. And at times, I have wanted them all.

There is also the question of time and as a first time mom, this one really gets me. How long will toy X be fun and interesting and cool? Sometimes, it's only for a few months (tummy time mat, anyone?) And when your child finds an interest, you just can't always know if it will be something that lasts. Even when I can ask him, I doubt I'll ever get the right answer to the question of, say, whether or not we should get a piano. So, what do you do? Blow wads of cash on everything he finds exciting and craigslist all the duds?

Well, I am here to talk about the benefits of lazily waiting around. Don’t buy your kid everything.  The first rule of thumb is to only buy them stuff you know they will like.  Wait until you’ve seen them love it at someone else’s house two or three times; then figure out if you really need your own.  Case in point, this cart from Ikea.

Finn loves it and I am not bringing him his very own and he will be ok.  Personally, I am tired of having it rammed into my ankles.  The second rule of thumb – make friends with your neighbors.  And third, let everyone know you have an open door policy to accept anything they want to get rid of.

We don’t know everyone on our block; we don’t have time.  But just from the folks living right next to us we have scored countless freebies.  We always talk about having everyone over for a party or for dinner or something as a thank you, and it’s never happened; but we still get stuff from them.  Sometimes it’s plants for the garden, veggies that will go bad when someone leaves on vacation, that kind of thing.  And sometimes, gloriously, it’s toys.

Sandbox: it was old and gross and muddy and they were going to throw it away; we cleaned it up (hosed it down and left it out in the sun to dry) and bought some new sand.

Little Tykes car: they were tired of tripping over it, and they threw in some baseball bats, balls, and buckets.  OMG the buckets are a huge hit.  That one came out of left field, I was unaware of the wonder of buckets.

One of these things that was a death trap on our driveway.  I gave it to another friend.  You’ve got to spread the free stuff around.

And we have a small pile of crap that my son has picked out of their goodwill bag, which they keep in the carport and let him rummage through.

The sandbox and the car are two items I desperately wanted to buy for my kid about six months before they showed up in our yard for free. The sandbox, I figured, would be so educational, great for sensory play. The car, well, he just loved it every time we saw it at someone else’s house. I didn’t realize that these two items are everywhere. Everyone has one; no one is going to drive across town to buy one from you for five bucks off craigslist. Likewise, if you’ve ever caught yourself looking at a Bumbo chair in the store Stop Do Not Buy It.  Even if you don’t really know anyone with kids, there are so many of those things kicking around the world that you will be able to find one, probably for free.  They, like so many other things created for our kids, just hang around and hang around.

I'm pro-laziness.  Sometimes it pays off.

DIY Thyme Anti-Acne Facial Tonic

Have you heard of this study?  Thyme may be better at curing acne than prescription creams.  More specifically, a tincture made from thyme killed more of an acne-causing bacteria known as Propionibacterium.  It was better than benzoyl peroxide, the main ingredient in most acne creams.

Here's how you can make a tincture to try this for yourself.  You will need:

- fresh thyme
- vodka
- a strainer
- a small, clean glass jar
- two weeks

Wash the thyme and combine it with vodka.  I just stuffed a bunch of thyme sprigs from the garden into a small jar and covered them with the vodka.  Put in the fridge for two weeks and then carefully strain out the sprigs, leaving you with an alcohol-based thyme tincture.  Dab it onto a cotton ball and swipe over your face.

I'm trying it out right now and will report back how it works.

Handy Guide to Taking Bluebonnet Pictures

It's a tradition I knew nothing about until I had a baby.  In central Texas, in the spring, you're supposed to find a patch of wildflowers, of bluebonnets specifically, and take pictures of your adorable child sitting in the middle of them.  It was like the day I learned what brisket was or that you shouldn't pronounce the "e" on the end of Guadalupe Street, or that in July, you can scald yourself with the seat belt buckle if you aren't careful getting into a hot car.

Facebook is lousy with these bluebonnet pictures.  Seasoned parents know where to go.  And you might get some help if you ask around, but really, the best patches are secret.  Some of them are hard to get to, some of them aren't there every year, and if you procrastinate even a weekend or two, you will miss your chance for a whole year.  These pictures, especially for the parents of small children, are guerilla missions into the wild.  So, here are some tips:

1. Start a little before spring break.  Don't know when spring break is because you are blissfully unaware of the local school schedule?  It's probably sometime in March, so aim for finding your own special spot of flowers around the beginning of the month.  By April, sometimes the grass grows so tall that you can't see the bluebonnets anymore.

2. Wildflowers grow in sunny, untended areas.  You'll see them along the highway because they are left there on purpose instead of being mowed down, but do yourself a favor and DO NOT STOP on the shoulder, shuffle your kids onto an embankment during rush hour and try to get a few pictures.

Instead, as March rolls around, take the long way home a few times.  Drive on the street next to the highway, or on the far side of town.  The flowers will be mowed down in parks and yards and grassy hills next to commercial buildings.  You are looking for a flat space, maybe, where a new building might go sometime soon.  Look for the corners where people put up election signs or "Land for Lease" signs.  If you've ever thought to yourself, "Someone could drop a dead body out there and no one would ever find it," that's a pretty good place to start looking.

If all else fails, the Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center in Austin always has a spot specially created.  You have to pay admission, but it's always there.

3. Keep your camera in the car for a few weeks.  The time might hit you when you least expect it.

4. If you find a good spot, hit it early in the day before everyone has spilled all over their clothes.  Plus, it will be cooler and since you might have to take a walk to get to the right place, you'll be glad.

5. Wear shoes.  I've never run into a snake while snapping wildflower pictures, but I've seen lizards and snakes just seem inevitable.