Fruit in my dessert

Electric Love Haiku

When you go away
A heating pad comes to bed
Me (feet) miss you much

Love It: Stride Rite Early Walkers

We all know that barefoot is best, but sometimes barefoot isn't possible or practical (e.g. outside in the cold or on the playground). Stride Rite's new line of Natural Motion System (NMS) Early Walkers provide protection for your little one's feet and a thin, flexible sole to help their feet grip properly. They are also somewhat environmentally friendly (made of 30% recycled rubber, water-based inks, and natural stitching).

As a member of Mommies Clique, I was given the opportunity to try out the new line. This couldn't have come at a more appropriate time. When we got the shoes, HD was an almost-walker, always-stander, and shortly thereafter he became an early walker. We received a pair of monkey shoes like the one pictured below. How cute is that? But that's not the only reason why I love these shoes.

My favorite part about these shoes, aside from their cuteness, and the detail under the back flap that actually says, "cheeky monkey," (I love when designers think of details like that, even on a kid's shoe), is how easy they are to put on HD. He has a couple of pairs of shoes of different brands, and I do like them all, but none of them are nearly as easy to get on as his Early Walkers. The tongue of the shoe comes all the way out, so he can almost step into the shoe. Then you fold the tongue back and cross the velcro strap over the top and they stay securely on his feet - even when he runs an "air" marathon in his car seat.

We decided not to get boots this winter since HD isn't really walking that much and the amount of snow and ice is so difficult to navigate even for adults at this point. Instead, we've put him in his Early Walkers with his snowsuit on our snow outings. They're not intended for this use, but they have held up wonderfully well. His feet have stayed dry and the shoes still look new after several rounds of sledding and romping in the snow.

One last note: we went to the Stride Rite store to get HD measured for these shoes. This was a great thing to do because we found out that he was two sizes bigger than we thought (meaing he was two sizes bigger than the shoes we were cramming his little feet into at the time). So, if you're in the market for shoes for your early walker, make sure to get them measured.

Atom Bomb

The other night, I was on the phone with my dad and he told me that he took a picture of an item in a store to help him with a work project. He makes prototypes for a living so he often sees things when he's shopping that are shaped or that move in a way that could be useful to his work. He'd never taken a picture with his cell phone before. I'm actually surprised he even had his cell phone with him. Like many dads of people my age, he rarely has it on him and has it mostly for emergencies. 

We spent quite a while on the phone with me helping him figure out, step by step, how to send the picture to his email, so he could see it in a larger size and potentially print it out. We worked hard together, me working as the customer service agent that you wish you had, him playing the role of very well behaved customer who was completely compliant, including going out to the mailbox in the freezing cold because his cell service isn't very good in his house. He kept saying to me, "you really enjoy this, eh?" I think meaning that he couldn't imagine being on my side of the conversation, explaining, Googling, describing, anticipating, guessing what his phone options might be, and trying new things to help him.

When we got to the part where he had to type in his email address in to the phone, he laughed. He couldn't believe that he had to type letters in using numbers and moreso, I think he couldn't believe that people do this every day and use it as a primary way to communicate. As he went along, he got faster and started not to need my help anymore. I was excited for him, and oddly, perhaps, proud. As he completed the typing and hit send, he said, "I feel like I just invented the atom bomb," and he almost meant it.

I don't know what I want to do when I grow up, and I've been thinking about it a lot lately, but I do know that THAT is how I want to make people feel.

[End note: It turns out that text messaging and photo sending were blocked on my dad's phone. Newly empowered, he stopped at a Verizon kiosk the next day and had them take the block off for him. I got a text later that day from him: "I've like entered the 21st century! Dad" Don't you wish he was your dad?]

Love It: Little First Act Discovery Toys

What happens when a company that makes musicical instruments translates their expertise into a toy line for young children? Beautiful harmony - literally.

As a member of Mommies Clique, I was recently given the opportunity to review a new line of toys from Little First Act Discovery, a division of First Act, a brand previously unknown to me, and a brand that I now love. Actually, it was HD (14 months old) and his friends that were responsible for the product testing; I just get to write up what they wanted you to know: The Drop N' Play Piano rocks!

Here are just some of the reasons that HD, his friends, MY mom friends, and I love this toy:

The Music
The music is soft and melodic and prompted many of my mom friends, unprompted, to say how great it sounds and how much different and better the sounds are than a typical music toy. In addition to four single notes, the Piano plays four different refrains (I can't really do them justice in writing, but to give you an idea):

• "Me, me, me, me." Picture a chorus of really happy ladies warming up for a concert
• "Mmm, ba, ba. Pass the bananas and the grapes and you and me good friends we'll make. Let's have an apple or a pear and you and me good things we'll share." Included with the Piano are three clear balls that have bananas, grapes, and pears in them, respectively.
• "Row, row your boat...."
• "We like to sing, we like to eat, let's clap our hands and stomp our feet."

Versatility
Unlike HD's other musical toys, we've never turned this one off, but if you wanted to for any reason, the toy can still be played with by putting the balls in the hippos' mouths, and/or taking them in and out of the drawer, both of which amuse HD to no end. When the toy is on, in addition to the music, the hippos actually make munching noises when you put a ball in any one of their mouths (my husband's favorite feature). How cute is that? The balls can obviously be used with the toy, but for a boy who loves balls, he can carry them all over and use them everywhere he goes, with or without the hippos.

Look and Feel
It's sturdy, compact, easily portable from room to room, and has a drawer for those balls to be put away in the right place at the end of the day for all of my fellow OCD moms out there. The colors are bright without being TOO bright and the hippos are as cute as plastic hippos with their mouths wide open could ever be.

Other Tidbits
The Piano is labeled for six months and up. There are a variety of toys in the line that are appropriate from six months through the preschool years. Each instrument/toy comes with a tip card to give you ideas to extend your child's learning with the toy.

Little First Act Discovery was awarded two Greatest Products of 2008 by the iParenting Media Awards group for their Crawl N' Go Drum and Shake N' Stack Instruments, two items that are part of the line.

In case you need another reason to buy a musical toy for your child, there is a continuously growing body of evidence that supports music's positive benefits in other areas of learning, including math, reasoning, language, and stress reduction. If only playing with these toys could help eliminate MY monotone-ism.

Hope is simple

Today, hope has come to the White House. Hope has come to my house, too. I think hope is in a lot of places you couldn't see it yesterday. But, I've been thinking about it and I actually think hope has been here the whole time. It's just been buried underneath a lot of disappointment and gobble-D-guck. That man from Hope left eight years ago and he took a lot of other people's hope with him. This new guy isn't from Hope, but he's filled us with more hope than anyone could ever have imagined one person could do. I certainly didn't imagine it before. Did you?

I hosted a play group with a bunch of moms and one-year-olds for the inauguration today, so I haven't watched all the proceedings uninterrupted yet. So far, this is my favorite clip, part of the benediction given by The Rev. Joseph Lowery, a leader during the civil rights movement and former president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference:

"We ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to give back, when brown can stick around, when yellow will be mellow, when the red man can get ahead, man, and when white will embrace what is right."

This quote and the sentiment behind it are simple. Like hope. Humans are born hopeful. You have to beat us down repeatedly to make us give up hope, and even then, we just need a glimmer to get it back again. It's the other stuff that's hard. The follow through, the work to make statements like those of Rev. Lowery more than just sentiment that rhymes. So, let's hope. And for the next few days, let's be sustained by that hope, but after that, let's get to work. Let's make it real. Let's make it life.

Oprah would be disappointed

We took HD to the doctor this afternoon because he has just not been right for the last week. He hasn't been sick or had a fever, but he's been extra whiny and not sleeping well. And, when he doesn't sleep well, we don't sleep well. It's been a rare co-sleeping week around here and while both BH and I enjoy a good cuddle with HD and love to watch him sleep when we get the chance, we're not big fans of being kicked in the face or having to lay in one position all night to keep him penned in, which causes all sorts of parts of our bodies to fall asleep...except, of course, the parts that should be sleeping. BH does better with this arrangement than I do, but I am not hyperbolizing when I say that BH can sleep standing up, while laying down is just the beginning of my sleeping needs.

We'd convinced ourselves that it was teething...we're pretty sure the molars are headed to town, as are his eye teeth. Fun times. But when no amount of medication seemed to keep him comfortable in his favorite spot of late in between mom and dad, we decided to take him today. And, he has an ear infection. I'm bummed. It's his third in three months, but the doctor actually thinks his infection from November never completely left, so we're calling it a resistant ear, rather than multiple infections, which is some kind of music to my ears. So, of course I'm bummed because he's been in pain and not getting the medicine he needs, but I'm more bummed because I didn't listen to my instinct.

My gut told me a week ago that it was an ear infection. But, he wasn't so unhappy most of the time, and he had some good nights of sleep when he was in with us, and some good naps. But my instinct wouldn't let it go. It made me ask BH what he thought several times throughout the week (he didn't think it was an ear infection). It made me call my sister, a mother of three more than once (she didn't think it was an ear infection). It made me question myself in the middle of the night, and, more than once, to tell myself to call the doctor in the morning. But I didn't call. It wasn't until last night, when none of us were getting any sleep, that we decided to call this morning. And, even then, BH called.

I know it's only an ear infection. I know HD will be okay really soon and that the meds are on their way to fixing what ails him as I write this. The guilt will slowly dissipate, or at least, mix together with all the other mom guilt I have about enumerable other things. But, it is a good reminder. Listen to your instinct (also known as your inner voice, intuition, gut, etc.). Listen to it early. And act on it. I clearly haven't been watching enough Oprah lately.

Mind on my money...money on my mind

Money comes and money goes, where it stops nobody knows.

Okay, enough with the rhyming. I wish I knew who created the Money Worry Gene and more importantly, how I could remove it from my body. I know I got it from my parents. You can decide the nature vs. nurture part for yourself. I worry. About money. A lot. Before you get out your checkbooks, don't - except you Gram - your money is always good here. BH is employed and makes what I would call, especially in this economy, very decent money. We're decades away from that Net Jets membership he wants, but I don't even know if, country-wide, we'd even be considered middle-class anymore. So why do I worry about money and why do I worry about it now? Here's my answer to myself.

1. Control. Like so many things, money is about control. Knowing when it's coming and when and where it's going is very important to me. BH recently became a full-time contractor, which means he has to bill his employers to get paid. This seems simple, and I think it will be, but he sometimes has a hard time submitting things to get paid and submitting in general - wait, no, that's me. BH does not have the Money Worry Gene. I think he might actually prefer if the world worked without money so he could just do what he loves at work, buy what he wants at the store, and call it a day. I think he would really prefer it more because it would mean I would stop worrying about money AT him.

2. No income. So, while BH's income is very decent, when we had HD a year ago, we went from DINKs (Double Income No Kids) to OIOKs (One Income One Kid - I think I made this acronym up; nice ring to it though, right?). I am now considered a SWAT (Smart Woman with Available Time), but I'm not actually sure what "available" is supposed to mean or I how I can better capitalize on that, so I'm mostly a SAHM (Stay At Home Mom) who doesn't spend a ton of time at home. I have done a few consulting projects over the past several months, which should cover at least a dozen trips to Whole Foods and diapers for a while, but we had gotten to a point as DINKs where we could make choices to eat out, travel, buy gifts, and get our hair cut without thinking about it. I had finally allowed myself in the year before we became parents to let the Money Worry Gene take a vacation for a while. Now I need a vacation from him - yes, the Money Worry Gene is a boy. A girl would never passively make me this angry repeatedly and get away with it.

3. Change. Change of any kind is hard. Apparently, having a baby enter your household is one of the hardest kinds of change, so much so that on Dr. Oz's (and Dr. Roizen's - who is maybe even cooler than Dr. Oz, but doesn't get the same publicity) RealAge test, they ask if you've had a baby in the last year on a list of traumatic events that could impact your health in a psychologically negative way. I think that's pretty progressive and awesome of them. Anyways, our new money situation, though not dire at all, is definitely new, which makes it scary.

4. The Economy. I don't watch much TV. Okay, that's a lie, but I don't watch real TV a lot, the kind with news on it, and a chyron running across the bottom of the screen. I used to have a job where I had to watch that stuff all the time and then actually went to work at a cable news network for a while, and I'm not sure I'll ever recover. Plus, my BH is kind of like a chyron for me sometimes (I mean that in the best possible way). But I do read. And I do talk to people. And I don't live under a rock, even though I am a SAHM. So, I know about the economy is tanking, and even though it has not resulted in anything dramatic in my family yet, I'm scared somehow it's like a monster that attacks in a movie, and the people who think the attack is over and go on living their lives like the monster is dead, get killed in the last scene. And you're sitting there screaming at them through the screen to pay attention, but they can't hear you. I don't want to be one of those people - so I'm constantly looking for the monster. And it's exhausting.

5. Nurture. Mom, you should stop reading now. So, I'm sure there's a little bit of nature in here too: I am extremely detail oriented, all my ducks in a row, don't want to miss a thing kind of girl. But, I have very vivid memories of my mom's enormous desks at home in our basement, right next to our play area, where she seemed to spend a LOT of time "doing" money. My dad was (and is) self-employed most of my life and that created some extra work for sure, as well as some extra anxiety about money - I didn't realize until I was much older why some Christmases were like the heavens opened up and rained down on us and others were, um, not like that. My mom was always very organized, but it definitely seemed to stress her out and definitely caused bunches of arguments between my parents. And could you blame them? They had both come from less than we ever had, worked their arses off to make ends meet, and when they started to be comfortable, she didn't want it all to go away, and knew, like all of us with the Money Worry Gene do, that it could all be gone in an instant. And he didn't want them not to enjoy it. Sound familiar? I only wish they had enough now, or we did, so they could retire the nasty MW Gene for good in their house. They deserve at least that.

So, do you have the Gene? If so, what do you do to control it? If you don't have the Gene, do you have any advice for me or did you not even get this far in the post because I'm speaking another language? If you have REAL money trouble, do I sound like a big baby? Okay, actually, don't answer that.

I'm off to go prepare a healthy dinner for my family that I bought during a $100, 2 bag shopping trip to Whole Foods, which I refuse to call Whole Paycheck, but man.

Now, forget about this post, and worry about people who really don't have money and need our help to make it. Here are some ideas:

Modest Needs: Give small grants to individuals in need to help keep them out of the cycle of poverty, or to a small nonprofit or community organization that just needs an extra hand to help others.

USA Service: Answer President-elect and Michelle Obama's call to service for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. Want to serve another day? Check out Volunteer Match. Visit AmeriCorps if you want to serve for more than a day. I was an AmeriCorps VISTA for a year ten years ago and it changed my life forever.

Sometimes I miss

BH has a meeting tonight so he wasn't home for dinner, bath, or bed for HD. He was away the first two days of the week so he missed them then too. I'm a little extra tired, but okay and do love - even through the tired - doing the bath and bedtime story with HD.

Before HD, on a night like tonight, I would have worked late and left at a time that would have coincided with the end of BH's meeting. We would have planned out our schedules to meet up on a subway platform somewhere between where he was and where I was. If we weren't getting on at the same stop, the person who got on first (usually me) would try to be as close to the back of the train as possible and stand near a door as the train pulled up to the station where the other person would get on the train. There would be a moment of anxious anticipation: Will he be there? Will I have to get off and wait? Will he see me? As if we hadn't just gotten out of the same bed that morning. Our track record for meeting up was pretty good - although he did have to wait for me way more than I had to wait for him...usually at least one train went by without me on it. He never got frustrated with me for it. Then, on the train, he would pull out the NYT crossword and we would do it together on the way home. If it was Monday, there might not be much left for me to help with, but he would let me take it away from him so I could get my fill. We raced through it to try to get it finished by the time we got off the train. By the end of the week, and depending on how late we were headed home, not much got done on the crossword and we would drift into conversation about our days or the dreaded question, "What should we have for dinner?" Neither of us was ever good at answering that one. Now we're better at it, but only because we have to be.

Sometimes we went out to eat, but mostly we scrounged: fruit, cereal, pasta, takeout, leftover takeout. We'd plop down on the couch and watch a show or four and go to bed.

Sometimes I miss that.

Playing Telephone

I decided I was going to try not to talk on the phone today. I tend to do that. Talk on the phone for no particular reason. Try to think of people to call during those moments when HD and I have been playing for a while and I just need a little interaction with someone who can say more back to me than "Daddaaa, ish, yesh." So, I was doing really well and we were working on installing the new Boon Frog Pod that I got for BH and HD for Christmas before HD's afternoon nap (an item I was convinced into buying by one of my three dedicated readers). And then, as it often does, my plan went out the window.

The phone rang. Unavailable. 800 number. I picked up. I was feeling desperate. It was Angie's List. I'm a long-time member. They were trying to fill their review coffers and wondered if I'd had any services recently that I hadn't had a chance to review on-line. Well, yes, in fact, I did. And, I need to let the tub wall dry completely (by waiting at least 10 minutes) before I can complete my frog installation (I didn't actually tell them that part). Let me tell you ALL about them.

For the next 13 minutes, I talked to the nice young man from somewhere in the middle of the country, and told him all about my positive experiences with my local Sunoco service station where we get work done on the car, my horrific experience with Empire Today! carpet - which he eagerly listened to but didn't record since I didn't actually have work done by them. When I asked why he didn't cut me off to tell me that, he kindly said that it was an interesting story. Maybe he likes being on the phone too. Then I told them about my fabulous pediatrician and OB/GYN - my first medical service provider reviews since they've added that section to the site. He thanked me for my time, I stopped myself from thanking him for his, and I finished putting the frog together while HD continued to entertain himself with all sorts of dangerous non-toy objects around us.

Maybe someone exciting like the bank will call tomorrow to see how I'm doing. I have lots to say to them.