J'Espere

Everyone does a wrap up blog. It's important, right? To kind of review where you've been going the last year, and figure out how to keep the readers (and yourself) happy. So this is my wrap up. Things we did in 2013: 1. Bought a house. 2. Did major renovations on said house. I promise the pictures are coming later this week. 3. HAD A BABY. The Johnson & Johnson ads aren't kidding- a baby changes everything. Which is why I can do my year end wrap up at 6 p.m. on New Year's Eve, because it's probably going to be just me and Carson Daly (and maybe Matt) tonight. 4. We moved. Massive undertaking. 5. Began to have fantasies in which I slept for 8 hours, got up, ate a hot breakfast at a table, then went to get my nails done. 6. Wondered how I got to exactly this place. What I went back to, and what I always go back to, are 3 New Year's Eves that were important to me. The first was New Year's Eve 2000. It was the first NYE I actually got invited to awe...

Dairy free and holidays don’t go hand in hand. Actually a dairy free lifestyle is a fascinating creature to me. If you know me, you probably know that I’m lactose intolerant naturally- so I don’t eat ice cream, or drink milk, and try to keep cheese to a minimum (which is REALLY HARD BY THE WAY). So when someone suggested I go dairy free a couple of months into motherhood in the hopes that it would help SL’s reflux, I thought, Sure. I’ll quit eating yogurt for a while. So. Wrong. Dairy free is not the same as lactose intolerant at all. Dairy free is a complicated process that involves reading labels like it’s your job. Which is awesome since you have so much free time to analyze the differences between monocalcium sulfate and polycalcium sulfate. And it’s really awesome at a restaurant, when you have the opportunity to make a waiter scurry back and forth to the kitchen. Maybe that’s why I’ve only been out to eat once since SL was born. Sometimes it feels like my whole world is wrapped...

Our tree is finally up. It was a debacle of sorts that started at Thanksgiving. On the way to Thanksgiving dinner we passed one of those lots that is essentially a strand of lights surround some fir trees. "We should get a Christmas tree." I commented. "We should get one geographically close to our house." was M's response. On the way home from Thanksgiving: "You know, Christmas is coming pretty soon. We should get a tree." "We should wait not get a tree from there." - M pointing at the same tree lot. In his defense it would have meant driving most of the way home with a tree across our car. Fast forward a week and there is still no tree in sight. "We should get one this weekend. We should all go out to the Farmer's Market as a family, maybe have breakfast...and pick out a tree." That was me living in my fantasy world. Saturday we had a wedding to go to, and SL was a hot mess most of the morning and it was freezing an...

We celebrated our first Thanksgiving. I’m going to give you the same spill I give my students during this time of the year. Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. Inevitably everyone wants to know why Christmas isn’t. It’s the gift thing. I love presents (if you are married to me and reading this I LOVE presents) but I really do love a holiday dedicated to the showing of gratitude, coming together of family, and dinner around a softly lit table with everyone sharing their thanks. That’s my fantasy world. In reality, it’s a very different thing. Reality was waking up Thanksgiving morning and realizing there was no way in hell we were getting anywhere close to my parents before noon. First feeding went well, but instead of organizing and packing the night before, I’m not sure what Matt and I did, but it probably involved watching Netflix way too late followed by me having to get up with sweet SL, followed by me begging Matt to hang out with her for just an extra 20 minutes while I show...