Eli As A Simpson

Help!

Does anyone out there know anything about jogging strollers? I need one now that I've got to train for the Detroit Half Marathon, and I can't tell what kind to get. I'm worried that the BOB Revolution (with a lockable swivel front wheel) is too "all purpose" and won't be the right thing for running ten plus miles with, but I'm worried that the Baby Jogger with the fixed wheel will be incredibly annoying for anything but running.
Any advice?

Oceans and Other Salty Things

The other day I was nursing Eli and I thought something felt funny and I looked down and saw that he was nursing and sucking his thumb AT THE SAME TIME. Is clearly genius.

We're going on another trip this weekend for my cousin's wedding and I got some of those crazy Spanx underwear thingees to wear under my dress and holy wah. Worth every penny. I wouldn't wear them every day, but if you just need to feel more confident and less bulgy at some kind of formal event or in a fancy dress they get the job done.

This will be the first time Eli sees the Atlantic Ocean, but I've now lost count of how many times he's seen the Pacific. That fact makes me think I'm doing something right. Babies should be dipped in the ocean a lot, I think.

I'm going to run the Detroit Half Marathon and I'm inordinately excited about it. You get to run around downtown Detroit and cross bridges and run into Canada and run underwater! (in a tunnel). Now if someone would just sell me a nice cheap running stroller so I can get outside a little more easily with the boy...

Before E was born, I was slightly obsessed with finding non babyish non typical non baby blue clothes for him to wear. I bought a lot of red and stripes and polka dots. It's now completely obvious that blue is his best color. That and if he wears red you can't tell that he's a boy. That's ok though, on those days we just call him Barbara.

I've been rewatching the first seasons of Veronica Mars on DVD and it's awesome.

Just finished HP, I surprised myself, but I loved it. Because I used to work in a bookstore my feelings towards Harry are always very mixed. I've never been a rabid fan - I of course found the whole hoo ha great because it meant kids were reading but annoying because it meant I had to work at midnight and try to figure out where your name was on a list of 7 million people and if you had your correct wristband blah blah blah. So Harry will always be inextricably linked to that whole "jesus, people, calm down" feeling for me. However I do have some signed stuff and while I have no idea of its real value I have a secret dream that Harry Potter is going to buy me a house in San Diego someday. Regardless I really enjoyed the last book, and it was kind of fun to feel like the whole country was READING together. If only we could to that with more than just one book per year.

I made grilled peaches for the first time while camping. Truly delicious, and I am not one for hot fruit.

We climbed a cinder cone volcano thingee on our camping trip. When we saw it for the first time and someone said "we're climbing up that" I thought they were joking. Apparently I was picturing a smallish cinder cone volcano thingee. You know... a tourist photo op type of thing you lean up against and have your picture taken? This was...not that. This was a giant 75 degree angle beast of loose black lava. It was totally worth climbing it though because I received an excellent geology lesson at the top. Also I can't complain too much because Mr. E carried Eli in the Moby Wrap which means he toted up an extra fifteen pounds or so in addition to his giant brain stuffed with important geology knowledge. With that Moby Wrap on he strongly resembled Brad Pitt, although I really doubt Brad Pitt could give such a stunning and well rounded geology lesson at the top of a cinder cone volcano thingee. I knew I picked the right man.

Do you think it's rude to ask people in public if their baby is a boy or a girl? I could care less if people ask me, but I feel weird asking other people. Usually I just say "what a cute baby" and leave it at that.

On that note, what a cute baby!

The First Four Years

Aren't we all just looking for something?

You know the feeling. I've had it a few times in my life. I used to get it from food, sometimes. A long time ago I got it from sucking my thumb. I got it when I was just a girl and my mom would rub my back and sing lullabies to me and I would fall asleep that way, before my parents got divorced and it all fell apart. I can (only sometimes) find it with wine although I'm afraid I always do get it from the vicoprofin I used to take for my cramps. On rare occasions, it used to happen more often, Mr. E would rub my back and I would fall asleep and the feeling would be right there, just around the corner, although I would fall asleep too soon to really grab onto it.

Every once in a while I get it from just the right manicure or pedicure (when I'm not worried about how much it's going to cost) and I've gotten it from lying under a sun so hot I can feel sweat splash off my eyelashes and there have been sun dappled afternoons in the car with maybe elvis playing on the stereo as the trees flashed by and I just felt like putting my whole head out the window of the car and lapping at the breeze like a dog. Music, drugs, backrubs, booze.

I suppose it's called relaxation.

I never feel that way anymore. Maybe after a long really good run.

You feel scrubbed out. Tired, but free. Weightless. Calm. The things you say are funny. The world loves you. You can breathe.

And I look at Eli with BOTH fists shoved in his mouth and I think damn. That feeling's something he's going to spend his whole life chasing too. I feel sad about that. And I wonder how to make it so that he doesn't have to look for it with drugs or booze or food. So he's not thirty years old and still chasing it like I am.

I thought about this for three or four days and worried over it because that's just how I am and also I thought I had pretty much figured out the secret of life. That we're all just trying to get even maybe back to the womb or since we can't do that, we;'re just trying to find some comfort, some peace, some relaxation, even five month babies are just gnawing away on their own fists trying to get high and feel happy. And so yesterday over pizza and beer I looked at Mr. E sideways and said "Do you ever think we're all just looking for something in life that we can't ever find, do you ever think in this life we're all just searching for a peace we can never quite grasp, and we're just trying to get back to our childhoods because that was the closest we ever got?" and as I said the words I realized the full import of what I was telling him and how I had finally figured it all out and how now he would finally realize just how fucked up I was and the world was and how his son would be someday be too and he looked back at me and just said. "Duh."

And so amazingly sometimes I do find that peace I am looking for, right there across the table from me, in this person who doesn;t take me and all my seventh grade angsty shit too seriously. And who really does know how fucked up I am and who doesn't care. Who even likes it. And loves it, and loves me. Not just anyway. But also because.

Happy Anniversary, Mr. E.
Thank you for being in this together with me.

Summer in the Central Valley

This whole batch was $5.00!

I don't much care for canned peaches, and we don't eat a lot of jam. Not a big fan of cobbler/crisp/crumble.

Any other ideas?

Five Months Later

I finally put up a set of pictures of Eli's nursery on Flickr. You can check it out here, if you want.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/e_and_e/sets/72157600783059731/


(Note to self: Never refinish another piece of furniture for as long as I live.)

Freedom

Breastfeeding has gotten so much better. To the point that Eli will be six months old in about 45 days and I don't think I could give it up that soon, I think I'd be sad if I had to stop at six months. So we're aiming for the one year mark and I am looking forward immensely to my one year of breastfeeding are you insane reward I picked out.

And I'm pretty much over my whole judgement thing. I don't think much about whether or not other people are breastfeeding their kids, I really don't care. I'm glad I chose to breastfeed, but I'm not so concerned with other people and their choices right now.

I'm not sure why this is. Partially I think it's just that now that I am better at it and Eli is much better at it and I am much more used to it, it's not so incredibly soul sucking anymore. I love that I have an immediate and never failing way of comforting my child when he is upset. And I appreciate that breastfeeding forced me to slow down, to chill out, to sit down and shut up and bond with my child already. And to be honest it hurt A LOT until about three months into it and when it finally stopped hurting that made a big difference. So breastfeeding is not something I hate to do anymore, and although I still don't love doing it in public once you've had to breastfeed in the Detroit airport sitting on the ground by a trash can, you learn to get over yourself and you just do it.

Awhile back after I posted about breastfeeding and weight loss and judgement Mr. E and I were talking about how I was worried that my post had been misunderstood. Because I certainly understand that there are many many reasons why people don't breastfeed but understanding those reasons was not helping me feel less bitter about how much it sucked for me and that bitterness was spilling over towards people who don't even TRY.

However in the course of our discussion once again I was reminded of something I seem to have to learn over and over - since I was raised in a cloud of constant judgement I struggle with this a lot. Because the fact is that breastfeeding is not a moral issue. Losing weight is not a moral issue. You are not a good person because you breastfed or didn't, anymore than you are a good person because you are fat or thin. You are not a good or bad person because of these things. You just are.

Don't get me wrong. I'm still chained to the sucking succubus known as my son and there are some days I feel as trapped as ever by the breastfeeding. But I have let go of the moral judgement thing and truly, that's also when I started to feel free.

Best. Picture. Ever.

Which Is Better For You?

At first I hated yogurt.

Then I started WW and discovered that Yoplait Light fruit flavored stuff and I loved it. It was the perfect midmorning snack at work and it was only two points (or around a hundred calories). And it actually tasted good to me, so it was kind of like having a treat, but not one that was a bajillion points and that was going to make me fat. It also contains a bunch of fake sugar and high fructose corn syrup and I'm sure the milk it's made with comes from cows that are fed every hormone under the sun. But again, six ounces, a hundred calories, no fat.

Then this weekend we bought some Organic Plain Whole Milk yogurt because Eli has started eating solid food and the operating instructions that came with him suggested yogurt as a good first food, and he's supposed to have a lot of fat in his diet and also, if I worked this hard to breast feed this kid for all this time you had damn well better be sure that yogurt is going to be organic.

Eli is not overly fond of the organic whole milk yogurt, but I freaking love it. I would never have ordinarily bought it, but now that I have, it's making me rethink things. I mean, this yogurt came with a layer of CREAM on the top about a half inch thick. It's got 180 calories and 9 grams of fat in a cup. So while it has a lot of fat in it, it also has no hormones, no pesticides, no fake sugar, no high fructose corn syrup, no sugar at all, in fact.

Last night I had about half a cup of the full fat yogurt with some raspberries and this morning I had some with some peaches. It was delicious, it kept me full for ages afterwards, it didn't upset my stomach like ice cream, it got me eating real fruit, and best of all, it didn't give me that itchy "what else sugary can I eat now or should I just eat some more of this" bingey feeling afterwards. I just felt satisfied.

So now I ask you...can this full fat organic plain yogurt really be worse for me than than the non fat fake sugar yogurt?

Wouldn't I rather be eating something healthier than so obsessed with a number on a scale that I am willing to eat anything as long as I think won't make me fat?

Wouldn't I rather be a slightly larger size than hating myself no matter what size I am?

Also, who knew anyone could write this many words about yogurt?

Ordinary World

I have long held a deep seated fear of becoming ordinary.

Back in the day before we got married sometimes Mr. E and I would talk about why the idea of marriage and living out our days in Michigan and living an ordinary life just like his brothers and sisters and every else in his family freaked me out so much and all I could say was "don't you sometimes see us just lining up to be exactly like your aunts and uncles a generation later? Do you really want to be just like they were, only a generation removed? And doesn't that give you the creeps?"

And one of the reasons I didn't want to have a baby for a long time was that it seemed like something that such ordinary boring people would do. It seemed like something that EVERYONE did. It seemed to lack imagination and I really didn't want to be like everyone else, popping out kids and blogging about their poops and taking them to see "The Little Mermaid 4: The Awakening".

And for some reason I was also hesitant to mention here that that last week I emailed my father and a very tentative and slight olive branch has been extended. And I think it was because it just felt like a cop out to me. Like, everyone hates their parents but most poeple try to get along with them anyway and I was the one who had drawn the line in the sand and NEVER talked to my father, unlike EVERYONE else.

But somehow along the way ordinary snuck up on me - maybe it's just a part of getting older or maybe I just don't have time to care anymore. Now I find myself WISHING and HOPING that we turn out JUST LIKE Mr. E's big group of aunts and uncles, who seriously exemplify raising a village together and who love each other like crazy and who have been through it all together and have become this amazing tight knit group of people where for example the divorced aunts are still just as much as part of the family as anyone else, if not more so.

And the thing with my father has actually turned out kind of nice, I have to admit. He has been, I don't know, friendly. It feels sort of...good not to be all consumed with hating his guts and drawing lines in the sand and not speaking and announcing how long it's been since such and such where my father was concerned.

And as for having a baby. I am sure it is such an ordinary experience, it is one that everyone who has children goes through, I know. But to me it feels unique, like the most singular experience of my life. The other day we fed Eli "solid food" for the first time and he gummed around some oatmeal flakes and breastmilk and rubbed it all over everything and Mr. E took pictures like the loser first time lamer parents that we totally are, and people, it was amazing. And it felt as though we had discovered the moon or climbed the Eiffel Tower or performed some other outrageously wondrous and amazing feat.

Feeding the baby. Who knew it would be so special.