A Stranger's Handbags

Today we woke up to dark clouds and lots of rain. It was one of those “stay inside in comfortable clothes” days. Looking for something to entertain Kate, I got out my purses that I keep in a plastic bin in the closet. Since I’ve had Kate I mostly use my diaper bag as a purse so I haven’t looked in these purses for some time, probably since we moved from Manhattan. Kate loved putting them on her arms and walking around the house. We started “cleaning them out” and I felt like I was going through a strangers things. Who was this person that wore these bags? A few things I found:

A Mamma Mia ticket stub
An invitation to a Christmas Gala
My business card and pay stub (I used to make a salary?)
Metrocard
Black furry earmuffs
Coin purse from Chinatown
H&M, Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s receipts
New York Stock Exchange VIP pass
Key chains and pens from pharmaceutical reps
My infertility cheat sheets
lots of lip gloss
fabric swatches from possible furniture selections from our old apartment
a Counting Crows ticket stub

Did I really live such a glamorous life? Now in my purse you would most likely find: cheerios, diapers, toys, sippy cup, infant Tylenol, Kate’s hairclips that stay in for 30 seconds max before she has pulled them out, board books and goldfish. The only similarity would be that I still carry lip gloss and my receipts are now from Target and Trader Joe’s.

Life has changed! Though after looking through all of my old things and watching Kate play with them, I can’t imagine life without her. I am no longer that person who used to carry those purses. I will never go to a concert or walk down the street without thinking (and maybe worrying) about my little girl. What was life like before her? It was probably a little easier and maybe a little more carefree, but certainly not as complete and definitely not as joyful.

Bread Recipes, Anyone?

In our efforts to make more of our food from scratch I’ve been on a bit of a homemade bread kick. Ideally, I’d like to be able to bake bread every week or so instead of buying it at the store. Nothing fancy, just a few loaves of whole wheat bread for toast and sandwiches. Bread also happens to be one of Kate’s new favorite foods as of late. My first attempt was a disaster. Inedible. Gross. I think I killed the yeast or something. Bummer. My second attempt was at homemade whole wheat pizza dough and it turned out great! Relatively easy, quick and tasty. Today I attempted baking loaves again. It started at around 3:30pm and the bread finally came out of the oven around 9:30pm. There were several moments of frustration in between and I’ve got to give Paul credit for coming to my rescue. (I think he has secret skills he’s not fully disclosing to me.) All in all, a success--the bread tastes good, but the process was a little too long. Is my goal for making our own bread too lofty? I’m on the search for a fairly straightforward recipe for a whole wheat bread, maybe even an oatmeal or honey whole wheat recipe would be nice. Recipes, Anyone?

p.s. I don’t have a bread maker… and if possible I’d like to avoid adding another appliance to our kitchen.

Spring

Living in a climate that has varying seasons causes you to really relish the spring! Winter is over and it’s finally time to go outdoors and enjoy the sunshine. Today we took a drive to the apple orchards and had an impromptu photo shoot. There were bumble bees buzzing everywhere pollinating the trees and the blossoms were abundant and so pink. It’s amazing to see the cycles of the seasons and we are looking forward to going back in the fall to pick the apples off these same trees. Kate is so mobile and loves running around. She finds joy and amusement in the small details of things like the broken branches and small flower petals. One of the greatest pleasures of parenting so far has been seeing the world through her eyes and taking note of such simple things. Yes, we love her.

Happy Earth Day!

Spring is a great time to celebrate our Earth. It’s especially easy when the sun was shining like it was today. We went to the park, took lots of walks, played with rocks in the back yard, tried to eat the flowers (kate) and had a nice salad for dinner.

In honor of Earth Day Kate donned her new red shoes. Well, not really just on Earth Day, she has been trying these on every day for some time now. One of her favorite activities is to “clean out” her shoe and sock drawer and she always pauses when she gets to these red shoes. She’ll bring them over to me and put her foot out and then stomp all over the house looking down at the red shoes. She must be my daughter…she already loves her shoes. Now I’ve got to teach her that the red shoes probably don’t match with her yellow dress and pink BYU socks.

Also in honor of Earth Day we have started to compost our food scraps. (I know, another reason for my family to tease “organic Jill”). It really is amazing to see how much our garbage has decreased over the past few weeks. We combine scraps with our neighbors on the 2^nd and 3^rd floors of our house and I must say we have quite the compost pile going in the backyard. Now I’ve just got to start that vegetable garden…

And finally I talked Paul into trying out Cloth Diapers. I’ve always wanted to try cloth diapers, but have felt too overwhelmed by all the options. I found this trial package that lets you try a few different types out, keep them if you like them, or return them and only pay shipping if it doesn’t work out. I’m not making any promises here! Just giving them my best shot for 2 weeks. My main motivations are 1. Cost 2. Environment (Did you know a disposable diaper takes 500 years to decompose in a landfill!?) 3. They are actually pretty cute. Everyone I’ve talked to that has used cloth diapers has had a positive experience… so here goes.

And yesterday we went with Becca and Peter to the renowned Stew Leonard’s in Norwalk, Ct. (This would have been a great earth day activity—minus the traffic.) It’s a very unique grocery shopping/farm/garden experience. Kate loved see the dancing puppets and moo-ing cows. I loved the free samples and chatting with Becca on the way home while Kate and Peter slept in the back seat. Hooray for sleeping babies!

How did you celebrate Earth Day?

Arnold the Governator Tackles Climate Change

So yesterday Yale hosted the governor's summit for climate change - three governors and a bunch of other big shot state government guys convened to sign an 18-state committment to reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2015. Gov's from NJ, CT, and CA were there. Lucky for us our good friend Becca did us a huge favor and took Kate on short notice so we could go check out the scene in Yale's largest meeting hall (think Harry Potter style). I go to a lot of these talks during the week, but it was really nice to have Jill to keep me company on this one. The first hour or so was pretty boring, but once the speakers started going, it got interesting. An indian guy who won the nobel prize with Al Gore for climate research was there and his main message was that we need to act now to reverse our carbon footprint. His forecasts project we have a 7-year window to reverse the growth of our emissions or the world will end! Just kidding, but yeah, he was pretty adamant about how urgent it is to prevent sea levels from rising, precipitation patterns to be permanently altered, and some endangered species to continue.

Anyway, the highlight was definitely Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. He's a really good speaker and started comparing environmentalism to how body building used to be. I guess working out used to be shunned in society, but major strides were made after his book Pumping Iron came out. He also talked about how the answer to reducing emissions shouldn't involve trying to make people feel guilty. I actually really agree with this. At risk of boring you, I'll include some quotes:

"So someone the other day just
showed me a cartoon that was of a car salesman in a showroom talking to this
couple. And the car salesman pointed at the car and said, "This car runs on an
ordinary gasoline-powered engine, and then when it feels a little guilt, when it
senses guilt, it switches over to battery power." Now, that’s funny, it’s a
cartoon. But let me tell you something; there’s a lot of truth to that. For too
long the environmental movement had been powered by guilt. But I believe that
this is about to switch over from being powered by guilt to being powered by
something much more positive, much more dynamic, something much more capable of
bringing about major change. You know the kind of guilt I’m talking about; the
smokestacks belching pollution that are powering our Jacuzzis and our big-screen
TVs, and in my case powering my private airplanes. So it is too bad, of course,
that we can’t all live simple lives like the Buddhist monks in Tibet. But you
know something? That’s not going to happen.

So ladies and gentlemen, I don’t
think that any movement has ever made it and has ever made much progress based
on guilt. Guilt is passive, guilt is inhibiting, and guilt is defensive. You
remember the commercials a number of years ago, the commercials specifically of
a Native American who sees what we have done to the environment and then a year
runs down his cheek. You all remember that? Well, let me tell you something;
that approach didn’t work, because successful movements are built on passion,
they’re not built on guilt. They’re built on passion, they’re built on
confidence, and they’re built on critical mass. And often, they’re built on an
element of alarm that galvanizes action."

Kate update and Picture

So just an update on the fish mask breathing treatments for Kate -- we've done them for a week now and we're going to stop tomorrow and see how it goes. Her cold symptoms seem to have gone away, so we're hoping we're done with sickness for awhile...

Here's a picture of Kate in her new homemade dress for those of you who don't make it over to to Jill's sewing blog.

I can't remember when it was, but a few years ago Jill and I were talking about our goals and one of hers was to become a "domestic diva." I'm very proud of her recent work and I'd say she's well on her way to accomplishing her goal.

Breathing Treatments

During Kate’s first year of life she never got sick. Not once that I can remember. Then she turned one and everything changed. It seems these past few months we have had cycles of runny noses, upset stomachs, fevers and coughs that seem to come every few weeks. This last bout of sickness was lasting longer than I’d like. Kate had been waking up a lot at night crying almost inconsolably. It was a little scary (and tiring). On Tuesday I finally took Kate to the doctor. Turns out she was wheezing and the doctor says she was probably uncomfortable and scared because she couldn’t take a full breath. The doctor wanted Kate to do a breathing treatment in the office to see if that would help the wheezing to go away. Not sure what to expect, the nurse walks in with this nebulizer treatment. Basically a little mask that hooks up to a machine and steams out albuteral—the medicine in most inhalers. Kate was already a little cranky from being sick and tired and was NOT happy about having this breathing treatment. I get instructions to hold Kate still and upright while holding the mask on her face for 8 minutes. Then the nurse leaves the room. It must have sounded like I was torturing her in there, Kate was screaming so hard. She was kicking and flailing and trying with all her might to get that mask away from her face. I tried singing and telling stories but nothing was working. My arms were getting tired (she is strong!). Kate was mad. Really mad. We left the doctor’s office both traumatized and with orders to do the breathing treatments four times a day for a week. Great.

Luckily with two of us—one person holding her down and the other person holding the mask—it was a little bit easier. We added some Dora the Explorer in the mix and Kate would still cry but not kick and scream as much. The past few days she seems to be used to it and will put the mask up to her face all by herself! She knows how to turn the machine on and if I leave it on the floor she’ll start to play with it. I’m happy to say that she is feeling much better and breathing clearly. Only a few more days and we’ll be done with this. I think she might even miss her little fish friend on the mask. At least she got a new toy out of it.

Stonyfield Farm

Today Paul and I had the chance to listen to Gary Hirshberg, CEO of Stonyfield Farm, the organic yogurt company. He came to Yale to talk about his company and also his new book Stirring It Up: How to Make Money and Save the World. It was a really interesting talk. His main idea was that a company based on sustainable and eco-minded principles and practices should be able to operate with lower costs than a company that’s not. Initially the cost of renewable energy and sustainable practices may be more, but with the increasing costs of oil (this morning it was at $112 dollars a barrel) fossil fuels will end up costing more in the long run. Some interesting points from his lecture:

-A study was done on children and organic food. 75 children were fed a completely organic diet for 90 days and then a conventional diet for 90 days. While on the conventional diet, the children had 6 times the amount of pesticides in their urine than when eating an organic diet.

-UPS saves ~ $9 million annually by changing their delivery routes so that their trucks no longer make left turns. Idling while making a left turn apparently wastes a lot of gas.

-In Brazil the price of organic sugar is the same price as non-organic sugar. This trend is predicted to spread to other foods as well. With increasing fossil fuel prices, it will be more expensive to produce the fertilizers and chemicals needed for conventionally grown crops. Check out this article in the NY Times.

-He founded Climate Counts, a non-profit organization that gives companies a score based on their environmental impact and efforts.

Those are just a few of the thought-provoking points he discussed. But what does it mean for us? We have already committed to organic milk and are fans of Stonyfield's organic yogurt (Kate especially loves her YoBaby) but are we willing to take it a step further? Being on a student budget (thus having virtually no income) we try to be frugal in our spending and organic food can be pricey. We’re trying to eat out less—it’s much cheaper to buy groceries and cook your own food at home! We think joining a CSA or food co-op is a great idea and plan to once we reside somewhere a little more permanent. I like the idea of going in with other families on a grass-fed steer. We also are trying to save money by cooking more vegetarian meals (not that we desire—or intend—to become one). Does this resonate with anyone else or are we turning into crazy East coast liberals? What have you and your family done? Have you noticed a difference?

Sick Day

It’s been a sick day. You know, the ones where you sit around hanging out with Elmo, trying to not throw up your crackers and water (we’re 1 for 3 so far) and watch way more TV than you should be. Because playing with toys, or doing anything else for that matter, is much too difficult. Hopefully tomorrow we can keep our crackers down.