J'Espere

Over the last seven days, these are actual thoughts I have had or things that I have said, that I think directly connect us to both the joy of Christmas and the stress that goes with it. Merry Christmas! 1. (happened in Target): In the event of a sudden onslaught of zombies, what are my weapon choices? Ahh, the wooden Advent Calendar marked down 30%. 2.  (Harris Teeter) How did I leave without milk? How am I in my car, full of groceries, without the @!)$#K milk? 3. Maybe it's time SL drank more water than milk. 4. Did I really just ask the guy behind the counter to help me find a "lighter oolong tea"? Who am I? 5. I'm going to go for a run. Nah, I'm going to take a nap. 6. Did Mary stress over Hannukah gifts for Jesus every year? 7. There is a Prius with a "I'm a Conservative" sticker. Right next to an Elephant sticker. Oh, irony. 8.  "Yes, I'm looking for fresh cranberries. Not canned. Well, would you mind going and looking?...

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...