J'Espere

    Snow days in the South are perfection.Because they happen so rarely we treat them as the glorious gifts they are. Snow days mean pulling out rusty sleds, checking the supply of marshmallows, and cleaning the grocery stores out of milk and bread, though I have yet to figure out why.  What are people doing with all that milk and bread? Or is it that the milk truck doesn't deliver when there's impending snow? Questions that cannot be answered here, unless you know and want to share.     We got the first snow days in a few years here this week. Sunday it was in the 50s and sunny and bright. Monday it went up even higher and Sweet Pea and I took a long walk to prepare for what may or may not be several days inside. Tuesday was freezing and schools dismissed early or didn't open at all (though there was no snow, there was a gridlock situation in 2005 that left people stranded for hours or overnight at schools around the county. Ironically the same thing happened ...

Today, as I was rushing around getting ready this morning,  M. told me to look over at the baby, who was happily entertaining herself before her morning bottle. I did and saw her reading. A book. That’s right. The librarian’s baby was reading herself a book. Everyone thinks their baby is an advanced genius who might save the world or become the next great humanitarian, and I am one of them. I thought since I was in education I could be somewhat more objective but it turns out I can’t be. She’s brilliant. I watched in awe as she lifted the book to examine an illustration and then…tried to eat it. Mouth working over time wondering why that orange fish wasn’t fitting into her mouth.  A reminder that she is still just a little one. Mornings are the hardest part of our day, and the sweetest. Sweetest because SL is usually in a good mood, laughing and smiling and cooing up a storm.  Hardest because I’m running around like crazy pulling together everything so I can leave her ...

                It sounds like a teenage girl’s diary. My first thought was that the second sentence should be “Ken wants to study for the algebra test together. Should I?” But in this case,  I wasn’t worried about Ken, or about the cupcake per se. Sure, cupcakes have more calories than regular food, but I worked that out with marathoning.  What I worried about was SL.  Nursing has brought its own struggles but the real injustice has come from being able to eat so. Much. Food. But not being able to eat dairy.  During the holidays I applauded myself on restraint. Christmas Eve dinner was ridiculous minus the mashed potatoes, rolls, and 5 layer red velvet cheesecake made from scratch (it was seriously an exact copy): . I had fruit.  My plate held a piece of meat, peas, and cherry jello salad- we’re Southern, so jello somehow made it into the same category as vegetables.  And it’s not like the Polar Expres...

Not for me. I actually love my job, though I have momma guilt every day I leave sweet SL and travel five miles down the road to make not much more than what we pay her babysitter. But 10 years ago, I would have jumped on this job so fast they wouldn't have had time to post it. Here it is: Cup of Jo Seeks Editor Cup of Jo is one of my favorite blogs to read and I think getting to work with her would be amazing. When I lived in NYC all I wanted was an opportunity like this. Of course, I loved what I was doing at the time, but also understood that it would come to an end, as all introductory jobs do. And I also understood that I would probably run out of money before that. True prophecies. But what strikes me as most interesting is that I can actually check off most requirements for it. Blogger? Check. Experience with Photoshop/photo resizing/html? Check. Ability to scout out things? Double check. Reading this blog post made me really homesick for New York. Reading about how I w...

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...