the unexpected stay at home mom

10 things i've learned as a SAHM (in the past 3 weeks)

i've survived 3 whole weeks as a full-time stay at home mom. i took care of two kids. everyday. all day. by myself. for 3 straight weeks! and no one gave me a medal. oh right, it's my job now. i don't get any special award for merely doing my job. but i do get lots of hugs and kisses throughout the day. i suppose that's a nice perk that's not readily available at other workplaces - except for that one company where i used to work, and often felt like i was a wallflower at a college fraternity/sorority mixer... (here's my linkedin profile - you guess which one).

i know there's the perception that being a SAHM is a cushy, privileged job that most mothers would love to have, but it just doesn't come naturally to me. this is the only job that i've had that i haven't excelled at from the start. but it's a challenge. and i like challenges so i'm going to try approaching it with that lens. i am learning and adapting as i go.

here are 10 things that i've learned as a SAHM in the past 3 weeks 

1.  there is no need for an expensive gym membership while caring for a 23 lb baby who is teething and wants to be held ALL the time - i am now 5 lbs under my pre-pregnancy weight and my arms are more toned than they've ever been.

2.  contrary to popular belief, you cannot literally scare the crap out of someone. i tried and it didn't work.

3.  barney is a very educational TV show. and i'm not just saying that because i've backtracked on my strict no-TV during the week rule. really.

4.  i hate the crunch of cheerios under my bare feet on the hardwood floors.

5.  i no longer care if aspartame will give me cancer or make me grow 3 heads. i need my daily diet coke fix.

6.  the kids don't care about my schedule. one or both of them will inevitably sleep in only when we have to be somewhere at a certain time.

7.  i need to choose my battles. does it really matter if my kid is wearing a pink striped shirt with green floral capris and rainboots? yes! <sigh> i mean... no.

8.  my daughter is just like me. and that's not always a good thing.

9.  my hubby would be a better stay at home parent than i am. if only i could convince him to take the job.

10.  we didn't pay our former nanny enough.

windowsill garden

maggie received 4 little garden starters in a favor bag from a birthday party we went to a couple weeks ago. just $1 each at target, each kit includes a clay pot, a peat pellet and a packet of seeds. we planted red bell peppers, mini tomatoes, burning love and forget-me-nots. according to the labels they are "guaranteed to grow", but i must admit that i was a little worried that i was going to end up with a very disappointed toddler on my hands. well, i shouldn't have been such a skeptic...

 

rainbow cupcakes

 

i was searching for st. patrick's day crafts and came across this recipe for rainbow cupcakes on the family fun website. maggie absolutely loved them. but then again, she's never met a cupcake that she didn't love.

we had fun making them, but they were pretty time-consuming. you have to mix each of the 6 colors in individual bowls (lots of dishes to clean up!) and it took me over 30 minutes to pour and spread the layers for 12 cupcakes. plus maggie wanted to "help" and as you might guess by looking at them, these cupcakes require more precision than what a 2 1/2 year old is capable of. but i told her that she could do the purple layer and she waited so patiently while i did the first 5 layers, her hand gripped on the spoon in the purple bowl the entire time. and of course i had to let her add sprinkles too. because no cupcake, or cookie or sundae for that matter, is complete without sprinkles.

p.s. that issue that i posted about yesterday... it resolved itself the minute i pretended to stop caring.

happy st. patrick's day. now let's talk about poop.

3.5: number of days it's been since maggie last pooped.

4.2: cumulative number of hours i've spent in the bathroom with maggie in the past three and a half days trying to persuade her to poop in the toilet.

i was going to post about some st. patrick's day activities that i had planned for the kids today. but that was before the great poop stand-off of 2011. i should probably apologize about talking so candidly about poop, but this is a mommy blog and if you're reading this then you presumably have kids, too. and what self-respecting momma isn't slightly obssessed with her kids bowel movements (or lack thereof)?

maggie is typically a very regular girl, if you know what i mean. i know that constipation is not uncommon in babies, but she literally had not gone a single day of her life without having one (or more) BM's - until about 4 or 5 months ago. and then all of the sudden, she started holding her poop. i think it may have started after a particularly painful BM. maybe it hurt so much that she was afraid to go again. but also, she was still in diapers at the time and i think the dirty poopy feeling started really bothering her. so i thought that potty training might help the issue.

she's been doing really well with potty training since we started in mid-january. she still has psychological hang-ups about poop, but again, i know that it's not uncommon for kids to refuse to poop in the potty at first. until recently i've been able to coax her to go with bribes rewards of candy or cookies. but now she absolutely refuses to even try and melts down into a crying frenzy if i so much as touch her while she's trying to hold it in. how do i know when she's holding it?

this is the maggie 'i-gotta-poop-but-i'm-not-gonna' stance. legs crossed, butt cheeks clenched, arms locked, face red. it's actually kind of funny. i would laugh if i didn't think she were doing herself physical harm. i keep telling myself that i shouldn't let it become a power struggle (errr... too late) because that's the thing the professionals warn against in regards to potty training. her doctor said to give her miralax. it's definitely giving her the urges as you can see from the above photo. but the girl is so stubborn. she's determined to not poop.

what goes in must eventually come out, right? that's what has me really scared for her. sorry to be so graphic, but she hasn't slowed down her eating at all... and it's been almost 4 days... and... well, you know.

argh. nap time is almost over. oh well. now is probably not the best time to share about the st. patty's day cupcakes we made anyway. with all the poop talk and all. maybe tomorrow?

weekly planning

i am a planner by nature. i crave structure and organization, and i need to feel productive. these qualities were great for my career. not surprisingly, they're more difficult to achieve while home with 2 young kids all day. but that doesn't stop me from trying. each sunday, i create a calendar that gets posted to our fridge for the upcoming week (monday - saturday). as a side note, i used to be strictly anti-magnet clutter on the fridge, but that was pre-kids.

my weekly calendar consists of the following:

at-home activity - i try to have a pre-planned craft or educational activity for maggie everyday. some examples are: decorating cookies, making and playing with homemade playdoh, learning new words in korean, st. patty's day handprint art.

daily outing - we aim to get out of the house everyday, even if it's just a quick trip to the grocery store. since it's been so cold or rainy lately, we've been spending a lot of time at library storytimes and COSI.

chores - i schedule one or two small chores for myself each day rather than trying to do it all in one big chunk. but since giving up our housekeeper, the house is never clean as i would like it to be. i'm still trying to figure this one out. i admittedly don't stick to this part of the schedule very well.

errands / to do's - this line is pretty self-explanatory. i have a million and one to do's at any given time, so i try to prioritize and set realistic goals for the week. for example, this week i need to finish our tax return, plan our spring garden and order seeds for it.

dinner - i do meal planning for the entire week and grocery shopping on sundays as well. i usually cook 5 nights, leftovers 1 night, and takeout or eat out 1 night.

so what do you think? over the top? probably. but don't worry. as much as i like to plan and stick to a schedule, i've realized that often the best and most memorable times are the ones that just happen, like..

sitting at the window watching the cars drive by and playing 'i spy'

spending a rainy morning snuggling together in bed with pillow pets

dressing up in tutus over pajamas

an impromptu lesson in shoelace tying, followed by a game of hopscotch

who doesn't love a pink camel?

one of my bff's from college, jenny, is starting a new venture making custom designed cookies (and other confectionaries). she was talking to maggie the other day and asked her what her favorite color was. no brainer, "pink"! and then she asked her what her favorite animal was. maggie answered, "camels"! um... yeah. i think that threw jenny for a loop. she was expecting to hear dog or cat or maybe even a duck. but camels? seriously?

well yesterday we received a package in the mail containing... a pink camel. it unfortunately got injured in transit from nyc, but still so cute and so appreciated. thanks jennay imo!

don't you just want to squeeze him?

believe it or not... this is not a naked baby shot - there's a fluffy diaper under there!

best $1 i've ever spent

maggie with the remains of what used to be an enormous butterfly-shaped sugar cookie

i used to be that mom at the grocery store. you know, the one who unabashedly pulls a bag of goldfish crackers off the shelf and directly into the hands of her whiny kid in desperate hopes of diverting a total meltdown in aisle 4. how tacky is that? to open and eat food in the store before paying for it?

but no more! enter the giant eagle kids cookie card program. you pay just $1, which gets donated to a local children's hospital, and your child gets a free cookie from the bakery each time the card is presented (1 cookie, per child, per day) for the entire year.

seriously, this is the best $1 i've ever spent. with just one cookie, i get about 40 tantrum-free minutes to shop in peace. the first 20 minutes is the lead-up. i tell her she has to be good or no cookie. and then when her patience has hit her limit, we head over to the bakery to make her selection (it's a huge production that involves weighing all her options, but she always ends up choosing some form of a sugar cookie). after that, i have another 20 minutes of silence while she savors every single bite. only problem now is that she wants to go to the grocery store everyday.

cord cutting: how we got rid of cable

even before we became a one income household, it pained me to pay the $115 monthly cable bill. it always felt like a pretty big expense given how little tv we actually watch. so when it came time to tighten the budget in preparation for me becoming a fulltime SAHM, we didn't hesitate to get rid of cable completely. we still get internet through the cable provider, which now costs us $50 per month, so our savings is $65 per month or $780 per year. that's not including the value of the time we've gained by not watching so much crappy television.

however, that does not mean we don't watch any tv at all. we actually still have the ability to watch every show that we previously watched. that's the beauty of the internet. we are still in the stages of experimenting, but we currently have two different set-ups.

set-up #1
46" samsung LCD TV
xbox 360 with live subscription ($60/year. hubs already had for gaming)
xbox 360 remote (we already owned)
netflix watch instantly unlimited subscription ($7.99/mo)
HDTV indoor antenna ($10-30 one time cost. we already owned)

how set-up #1 works: we add movies and television shows to our netflix instant queue and stream it through the xbox. we can also watch live tv on the major networks via the HDTV antenna. we don't currently have it hooked up, but when we did we found that we got great hi-def signals for ABC, NBC, FOX and PBS. from what i recall, CBS was a little flakey. we also got decent lo-def signals for a couple other channels like WB. but the signal and coverage will ultimately depend on where you live. obviously, this set-up isn't the greatest for current tv watching unless you don't mind watching it live without the ability to fastforward through commercials. in other words, there's no DVR so you can't record and watch the latest episode of grey's anatomy. but you can, for example, watch the entire 1st and 2nd season of dexter via netflix instant - in one weekend if you so desire. and you can watch the superbowl live in crystal clear HD (but unfortunately no instant playbacks or pausing for bathroom breaks).

set-up #2
samsung 46" LED TV
dell PC
25 ft HDMI cable
high-speed internet access ($50/month)

how set-up #2 works: our 2nd tv is on our third floor office/family room. our desktop pc is conveniently located less than 20 feet from the tv so we connected them with an HDMI cable, and the tv is essentially an extended monitor. so you open up your web browser on your tv/monitor and you can watch anything that is on the internet, such as netflix ($7.99/mo for instant only), hulu (free with commercials or $7.99/mo for hulu plus), amazon on demand (free with $79/yr prime membership), youtube, joost, or if you have itunes (pay per show/movie). i'm giving you all the options, but we only subscribe to netflix and will occasionally purchase on itunes if we absolutely cannot wait for it (hello, true blood). however, almost every network's website (abc.com, nbc.com, etc) streams full episodes of their most popular shows for free with limited commercials. so that means i can watch grey's anatomy whenever i want, in HD, for FREE.

potential add-ons to set-up #2:
- right now we're using a regular bluetooth mouse on the TV but it's awkward, so we're considering buying the loop in-air mouse that is made specifically for tv's connected to computers. it's pricey at $79, but if you consider that the cost is just over what one month of cable formerly cost us, it's doesn't seem so bad.
- we haven't had time to play with it yet, but we plan on trying boxee. it is a free application that you download to your pc to manage your internet video content. what that means is that all the things you want to watch from netflix, hulu, abc.com, etc is accessed from this one program. basically, it becomes your own personal video library.

so... that is how we cut the [cable] cord. it's been great so far. we get to save some money, discover new content, watch less trash overall, free up some quality time and tinker with new technology. i do have to warn, though, that if you are an avid sports watcher, this experiment is probably not for you. in fact, canceling your hubby's beloved espn without consulting him first may qualify as grounds for divorce. but if anyone else is interested, please feel free to contact me with questions!

daddy's juice

daddy, what you got?

it's daddy's juice.

what kind of juice?

daddy juice.

what kind of juice?

daddy juice.

is it beer juice?