November 2007

My extended family all lives on the East Coast, and, while I lament the agony of traveling out there (from Berkeley, CA) with two little ones, it’s not super easy to host either. The year Holden was 7 months old, and my family came to town, I remember spending most of the day in a cold sweat over the timing or execution of some important side dish (and brining that huge bird in a toy box in the fridge).

If you have a baby and you’re hosting a huge meal this year, might I be so bold as to suggest pre-ordering all your side dishes (and maybe even the turkey!) from Whole Foods? I figured that the money we saved on not traveling could be poured into making the meal easier.

I just did it and it feels so good! Now my MIL can have her way with the kitchen, help or not help, and the basics are handled.

Check it out: www.wholefoodsmarket.com/catering

When I added this item to my list, I envisioned lazily cycling through the Italian or French countryside with cycling shorts camouflaged beneath an impossibly fresh outfit; a baguette in my basket; and my husband towing our well-behaved cherubs in a trailer (or maybe they were left at home or back at the villa, but I know I wasn’t dealing with them).

Further, I imagined a gentle breeze and stopping for light meals at adorable roadside towns. Perhaps my skin would get a healthy suntan for the first time ever and certainly, a few sips of wine at each port-of-call would not make me too tipsy to ride the narrow streets. And there would be no serious climbs.

Well, blah blah blah. My pal, Olivia, and I rode the shortest loop on the Tour d’Organics this year. Alec managed the wee ones and they met us at the various organic farm stops. It was wine country California but there was no wine. I had my first flat tire in years, but Alec found us and saved me. It wasn’t exactly as I imagined, but it was certainly a good day!

Cross it off.

Dang. Did everyone but me know that all the movies in the 60’s were period pieces, musicals, or both?! I was blindsided.

So, Thursday night is movie night. Alec goes out and I schedule a cinematic masterpiece. I’ve invited over lots of friends, Julie McCoy style, but so far it’s been just me.

7/20 Ben Hur — Wow. Epic, good. Kinda cheesy in a theatrical sort of way that we’re not used to seeing anymore. Glad to have seen it.
8/2 The Apartment — I liked it. Easy to watch. Comedy. Good times and good acting. I’m sure I’ll experience this over and over, but it’s cool seeing some of these actors (Shirley MacLaine and Jack Lemmon notably) so darn young.
8/9 West Side Story — How gay is this movie?! I dubbed it the movie that I really should have seen at the Castro theater. My friend Amanda joined me for the show and we chuckled the whole way through.
8/16 Lawrence of Arabia was cracked in half, couldn’t watch it
8/23 Lawrence of Arabia, again for real — it really seems like the 60’s were all about epics and musicals (I know that Sound of Music is coming up) — did moviegoers really have the attention span for something like this?! Truly interesting and captivating. I feel like I learned something, but it took me almost four days to get through it. It’s four hours long I think.
8/30 Tom Jones — really hard for me to watch. The sensibilities of the 60’s… hmmm, too goofy to explain. Also a period movie. I wonder if I watched all the best pics from now to then in reverse if I would have been more prepared.
9/6 My Fair Lady — A fun one to watch. Audrey Hepburn so young and in a story that I’ve known without ever seeing the movie before. Pretty Woman was clearly derived from this. Odd ending.
9/13 Sound of Music — Tried to watch this one as film rather than the movie that played on TV every year of my life around Thanksgiving. Is there anyone out there who hasn’t seen it? It’s great. And a musical. Set in the past. Surprise.
9/20 A Man for All Seasons — I gave this movie my best shot by not holding and using my laptop. Set in the past, circa Henry the 8th, it continues the streak of nothing modern. I dozed hard. I might have to give up on this one. But Alec’s dad assures me it’s a good one.
10/4 In the Heat of the Night — wow. A real good one. Current. Suspenseful. Highly recommended.
10/11 - 11/11 Oliver! — Reminds me of MFL in that its yet another period musical with songs I never knew how I knew ‘em.

My two recommendations: I know y’all have seen Sound of Music so I won’t bother with that one, the best two that I hadn’t already seen were easily In the Heat of the Night and The Apartment. Both are selling for less than $5 on Amazon right now so if you have a movie collection, go for it!

My big take-away from this exercise: if you really want to get to know a year (or a decade), it’s probably better to watch all the nominees rather than just the winners. But as for me, I’m ready to take a break for a while from all this ummm… culture / homework and settle into the new TV season and watching Weeds on DVD.

I very quickly read The Breast and the Brightest: Does nursing affect your kids IQ? on Slate and wanted to share. There’s some interesting research about compounding the effects of genes by certain experiences; a sort of [Nature] X [Nurture] math equation.

Apparently if your baby has certain genes, then nursing really does give an IQ boost… and if not, well you’re doing it for all those other good reasons that keep getting touted everywhere: convenience, nurturing, guilt, shared immunities, indecent exposure, etc.

Let me know what you think.

When American Apparel first opened their stores, some of my friends and I became overly enthusiastic about the solid-colored, logo-free clothes that were suddenly everywhere for a reasonable price. My friend and boss Darci turned me on to their multi-purpose scarf, a long piece of jersey fabric that can be worn as a scarf, headwrap, belt, mini skirt, or halter top if you are super slutty, for $15.00. I loved hers when I saw it and bought one right away.

Yesterday I panicked when I realized Scarlett was ready for a nap but all of our swaddling blankets were in the laundry. I dug through my drawer to find the never-worn but theoretically wonderful American Apparel scarf, laid her on my bed and wrapped her arms down to her sides. She stared quietly at me and then went to sleep. Not! But she did sleep after I came back in the room and sang in her ear while rocking the pack and play mattress.

Friends, it has recently come to my attention that many new moms believe they should shower while their baby is napping. Wrong. Don’t waste a nap on showering.

Your baby will be perfectly happy to hang out in a bouncy seat in the bathroom while you shower.

Use her nap to do something else, such as trying on everything in your closet, moving the too-small stuff out of sight, moving the too-big stuff into a pile on the floor in the corner of your bedroom, looking in the mirror and smushing down your squishy belly to see how you used to look, and bringing pre-pregnancy clothes from the garage back into the “to be tried on” pile on the floor in the corner of your bedroom.

I feel like I’m a little late to the party to just be posting about Jessica Seinfeld’s cookbook Deceptively Delicious now, after she’s been on Oprah and all over the blogosphere and even my mother-in-law sent me the Amazon link to the book and asked if I wanted her to buy it for me. (Very nice offer, but thanks to the Parent Bloggers Network, I got to brag that I already had a review copy.)

Although I wish I could get Julian to eat more green vegetables, I don’t think we have such a veggie issue in my house as the one that Mrs. Jerry Seinfeld describes. Apparently even Jerry isn’t so keen on eating his greens. Anywhose, her simple solution is, in my eyes, a brilliant idea: Toss a little pureed veggies in anything you make in order to boost the nutritional content. Your children (and husband) will be none the wiser, and you will relieve yourself of the obligation to prepare veggie side dishes and constantly badger everyone to eat them.

I’m totally down with this plan and don’t have a problem with the “deceptive” part. And I like Jessica’s “system” whereby you do your purees on Sunday night, store them in ziplocs, and then reach for them whenever you prepare a meal– even breakfast. Since we are just a few months away from starting up all that puree business for the baby, I am sure I will find myself scooping a large spoonful of carrot puree into Julian’s mac and cheese. In fact, I had homemade carrot soup in the fridge when I read through the book, so I deceived Julian that very night with some secret sauce in his pasta. I heard no complaints. Then I hid some sweet potato in Saturday morning pancakes, as called for in her cleverly named Pancakes (with Sweet Potato) recipe. I did hear a complaint from my husband. “Too much sweet potato,” he said.

“What am I doing?” I began to wonder. We eat sweet potato as a side dish all the time– with no fussing. Why am I hiding it? Julian will eat edamame, carrot sticks, avocado chunks, and a few crisp green beans at a time. Sometimes he’ll eat cherry tomatos, and he’ll eat pretty much any fruit. It’s unlikely, therefore, that I’ll be wholeheartedly jumping in to the DD system.

My father-in-law wondered, “Haven’t moms been doing this since the beginning of time?” since his wife, Julian’s grandma is constantly adding wheat germ, flax seed, and chickpeas to whatever she cooks. Hmmm, he might be right, but the thing is that my generation of moms has not been momming since the beginning of time, so we have no idea. We need to learn how to cook from Oprah’s guests. Enter Jessica Seinfeld.

The design of the book is very cute, and of course, since the Seinfeld’s have a little boy named Julian, who — from the illustrations — looks pretty much like my Julian, I was instantly charmed. Mostly however, I find the concept of the book inspirational, so even if I never get around to using her recipes step-by-step, she’s already taught me a few tricks. Anytime there’s a puree laying around, into the dinner it will go. Thank you, Jessica.

Links:
> Marketing Mommy actually tested the recipes
> The What’s Cooking blog ponders if this idea is actually too deceptive
> Buy Deceptively Delicious on Amazon.com

My pal Whitney always knows what to wear. Or at least she knows what I should wear. After all my public bitching and inability to let go of my borrowed maternity jeans, she put me on a plan.

The Plan
She said:

I have come up with a list for your What Not To Wear project. It consists of 14 items you need. If you buy them all, you’ll have five tops and five bottoms, enough for a full week of work.

Since three of the items are shoes, I was thinking you could try to buy one item per week and start with the shoes to buy time until you get to nine months (my self-imposed waiting period before spending $$$ on jeans). Tell me when to start on the details or to-do list.

Here’s the list:

1. button down shirt with fun details [boden pictured]
2. black slacks [bitten]
3. brown slacks
4. dark office jeans
5. wrap dress
6. a-line skirt
7. ballet style shoes [bitten]
8. boots [miz mooz pictured]
9. femmy low heel shoe [naot, maybe]
10. pull over sweater
11. cardigan sweater
12. casual blazer [bitten]
13. conservative tank top
14. dressy tshirt

She offered to meet me at Anthropologie one day during my lunch break so I could pump in the dressing room while she put shirts over my head. Sweet offer, but we haven’t done that yet.

My Status
I think I’ve been doing pretty well. Even though — just yesterday — I called her in tears to complain that I still look 12 weeks pregnant whether I’m in tight clothes or baggy clothes, I do feel like I’m making good progress toward the goal of sensibly updating my wardrobe.

As my first order of business, I ordered a cute shirt online from Boden but the fit isn’t all that great on me. I’ll call it #1 and move on.

We had a very successful shoe buying spree on Saturday afternoon. I got some high red boots that I love and some low brown boots that I like very much (sorta like these). I think that covers #8 and #9.

I went on a Big Adventure with my friend Olivia Monday night. We drove over about 90 minutes roundtrip to find the one mall in the Bay Area that carries Sarah Jessica Parker’s new discount clothing line, Bitten.

We pushed around a shopping cart piled high with under-$20 merchandise and twice I had to shimmy back under my fitting room door because the teenaged employees were off doing something else. Good times.

I walked away spending far less than $100 and with a silver pair of ballet flats (#7), a black corduroy blazer (#12), and some too-tight brown cords (#3) along with four $8 shirts that probably fall back into the “what was I thinking?” bucket (ummm, do I really need three new polka dot shirts?!!).

Our friend Alissa sent her two kids out as a pink poodle and Super Why and got to show off in the online parade of homemade costumes on the Poop.

So much fun!