Milk Without Cookies

My friend Cara, perhaps the only reader of this blog, talked the other day about simple pleasures in life.

Being a mom, some really simple things begin to look luxurious:
*going to the bathroom by yourself
*going anywhere by yourself
*eating with two hands
*long hot baths.... after the kid goes to bed!

Thanks to my wonderful husband, I am about to indulge in the last one on the list right now. He's filling the tub for me right now, bubbles & all!

So today is the first day in about 8 weeks that I have felt normal. Morning sickness has been a cruel mistress, so cruel that I hardly knew what do do with myself today.

To celebrate I took my 19 month old son out to the park, and allowed him to play for as long as he wanted, instead of allowing him to play until I felt too nauseated or exhausted to carry-on in the sun.

We stopped at Starbucks, and I had an iced latte, while the smell of coffee a few weeks ago made my stomach turn.

During his nap, I did some light cleaning, called a friend, played on the computer, and read some of my Madeleine Albright autobiography--instead of passing out myself, praying he would sleep just a little longer.

And this is the big highlight of the day: for the first time in 2 months, I went grocery shopping, and I bought not only the things that I thought I could stand, but ingredients for actual meals. Then I came home, and made a special family meal for my husband, one that nearly brought him to tears (no kidding).

So this evening when Andrew called to say he was on his way home, I was tired, but today, it was from actually doing something, instead of from being tired and sick all day.

This may sound stupid, but really, the world feels brand new. I'm praying this feeling lasts.

It's that time again in our home. I am about 6 or 7 weeks pregnant with baby #2. I spent a considerable amount of my first pregnancy leaning over a toilet bowl (or sink, whichever was available) vomitting. So much so, that I spent a day in the ER receiving fluids via IV, and lost 6 pounds during my first trimester.

Given my significant investment into morning sickness, I did some reading last time around. What I found is that no one really knows what causes morning sickness, and given the small amount of the population afflicted at any given time, there really isn't any motivation to find out or to find a cure! Thanks, Doc!!

Here's what nobody tells you about morning sickness:

At its worst, MS (morning sickness) is not just nausea in your stomach, but also in your head, a dull dizzying ache, that seems like it will never ever go away.

Unlike other times of nausea, throwing up generally does not make you feel better.

Medical advice to eat before you get out of bed sometimes helps to absorb acid, and sometimes just gives you something to puke up. Sexy!

Eating is also pretty much the last thing you want to do anyway.

Saltine crackers have a sweet and disgusting aftertaste.

MS is accompanied by exhaustion.

MS can of course occur at any time of the day when the acid accumulates in your stomach, but for me, it's usually worst in the morning.

MS is often followed by bizarre cravings to fill the ever growing pit in your stomach: pizza, french toast sticks, hash browns, and french fries are some of this body's favorites!

Last time around the magical cure for me was a drug called Zofran. Our friend Kevin pointed out that he had to take this when he was undergoing cancer treatments so that he could keep down some nutrition. This is an expensive solution, and what pregnant woman wants to take hardcore medication anyway?

So here I am, suffering an illness that no one can or cares to cure, hoping that it won't last as long as it did last time around (like 16 weeks!). I suppose the big cure is the birth of our next baby, which is scheduled for sometime around Christmas Eve!

I wonder if this generation of women will be known as the Oprah generation.

Like her or not, this woman is a driving cultural force. She has made it her business to effect cultural change. She started with things like her Book Club, and this year, she has actually enlisted her viewers in catching sexual predators, and paid them healthy rewards for their participation.

She has been open over the years about her weight loss struggles, and recently she has taken on the Great American Debt Diet, encouraging Americans to get out of debt, and reach financial freedom.

Yesterday, her buddy, Dr. Oz was on talking about the evils of the American diet, including partially hydrogenated oils (which are in pretty much everything), enriched flour (that should be called un-enriched flour), and the American favorite high fructose corn syrup (liquid sugar).

So instead of hitting Aldi today, where I can find everything fast, cheap, and full of the above ingredients, I visited Aldi's granola big brother Trader Joe's. I bought all of the stuff the Dr. Oz recommended including Salmon, natural peanut butter, good oils, greens, etc. I was delighted to find that even the chips were free of the evil ingredients above.

Seriously, I couldn't help but wonder how many of the other members of the shopping throng were influenced by Oprah's show yesterday. It seemed awfully crowded for a Tuesday morning.

Sometimes it's a little unnerving to hear our 18 month old son build his vocabulary so quickly. Around Christmastime, when he was about 14 months old, it was like someone turned on a light switch and he started talking. Baby, bye-bye, hi, mama, dada, and a few other common ones were among the first. Pretty normal, I guess.

So lately, he has been repeating a lot of words. In the past few weeks he has learned cookie, Elmo, eyes, nose, mouth, and has mimicked other words here and there.

One day while he was watching A Bug's Life, he picked up on a scene in which the little bugs create a mural depicting the warrior (circus) bugs' defeat of the grasshoppers. They added a death, just for dramatic effect, yelling, "Die, die!" during their presentation of the painting.

So now, one of our son's favorite phrases is "Die, die!" which he repeats with the same cadence as the little bugs. Nice.

Seriously, what the heck is the deal with this crappy show Deal or No Deal. I think it is the lowest of the low in terms of American entertainment. My husband and I are innocently awaiting the beginning of The Apprentice and we are being exposed to this, the crappiest of the crap!

If you enjoy this show, maybe you can shed some light on a game show that asks no questions, and has no point except to depend on the excessive greed and overly acted personalities of its guests. I mean, at least on Who Wants to be a Millionaire, there is some semblance of accomplishment.

Why are kids so cool? I think it's because they are so honest.

The above photo is a picture of my son enjoying his lunch consisting of pre-packaged peanut butter crackers.

When was the last time you enjoyed something so much that you wanted to just make a mess while eating it? And then when your friends joined you, you couldn't wait to share it? This is exactly how my son eats something he likes. It's just so real and so honest, as are all the emotions of a 1 year old.

Sometimes he is frustrated because he can't get something he wants, or misses me so much he cries. I feel these things sometimes too, and it must be nice to just let loose at times. It's also great as an adult to have control of these emotions. But the raw honesty of a child discovering his world just knocks me over some days.

This is the subject of a daily email that I receive (by choice) from an online group called www.flylady.net. Flylady is a resource for stay at home moms, career moms, or anyone who wants to get a handle on the clutter in their homes, cars, offices and lives.

Kelly, the Flylady herself, encourages us to embrace routine as a way of overcoming the overwhelming task of keeping house and caring for a family. Hence, the daily question about laundry.

So where is my laundry? Well, before typing this, it was on the bedroom floor, and the laundry baskets were full. There was some in the dryer getting wrinkled and a few items on the drying rack downstairs. Now it has all been gathered, a load is washing, and the dryer contents are sitting next to me, crying out to be folded and put away (hate that last part).

But the point is that if I keep up on the laundry every day, it won't come to a head on Sunday morning, when I'm looking for my black pants and something to put on the baby. This seems simple, but hundreds of my flying friends know that this is something that is easy to put off, and then it becomes overwhelming.

Another routine is the daily swish & swipe in the bathroom (figure it out for yourself), and shining the kitchen sink. I love both of these routines because it prevents these areas from becoming disgusting so that I really DON'T want to clean them, but have to because someone could catch a disease.

It's possible that this all sounds crazy. But it really is one of the most sane things I do. I was upstairs completing my morning routine which includes getting dressed to my shoes, and I felt so good about myself. As a stay at home mom, it's easy to put things off until you can get them done just perfectly, but when you have a screaming one year old, that time is NEVER going to come.

Flylady reminds us that cleaning your home in 15 minute bursts, as well as you can in that moment, is just as much a blessing as doing the task "just right". With flylady at my side, I can see a light at the end of the crazy mess tunnel, knowing that I can do anything for 15 minutes, and then get back to all the other demands of my day.

It has been a strange winter in Chicago, bringing, most recently, a vicious cold front, at a time when we most desire the sun to show his face.

But today it is close to 60 degrees, even though it is quite cloudy. This allowed my son & I to meet our friends at Cosley Zoo, where we saw various animals, including chickens, ducks, and doves, goats, bunnies, sheep, coyotes and even a couple of llamas.

The stroller-moms were definitely out today, and the place was pretty packed, even though we arrived right when it opened. So this must mean that spring is finally here, and we will finally be able to get our rambunctious boy out of the house more often, so that he feels a little less like a caged animal himself.