the pastor and the bartender

sleeping through the night

2012-02-23T21:10:00.000-06:00

Now that it's been happening for a week, I feel cautiously optimistic in telling you that Vicki Jo has started sleeping ten or eleven hours every night without waking. My feelings about this surprising development have kind of startled me.

It all started when Jeff had a four-week training in Kansas City to become a manager for his restaurant (the astute among you will note that "the pastor and the bartender" is now inaccurate, but "the pastor and the manager" just doesn't have the same ring, huh?). I was left in charge of baby, dog and self with him only coming home every four or five days for a night or two. As always, I was trying to keep as close as possible to a 7:00 bedtime for the young one, with frequent interruptions because she was coming along with me for everything at church in the evenings. Usually we would make our way through this routine, I would lay her down in her little cradle that Jeff's granddaddy made for him (in our bedroom), and she would sleep anywhere from a couple hours all the way to midnight or so. Whenever she woke up and cried out, I would come and bring her to bed with me. Jeff would join us later, as he's a night owl.

Over time, I began to realize that I was awakening her night after night when I came in to the bedroom and picked her up to take to bed with me. I resolved one night to see how long we could go before she woke me up by crying. My eyes drooped shut on the living room couch, and next time I opened them, it was four in the morning! She had gone nine hours! Astonishing.

The next night, I let her try again. This time she didn't wake up at all. I woke her up at six when I went in to start getting ready for the day. And this has continued to happen every night since then. She has had a couple bad dreams thrown in there, but I can manage to soothe her and get her back to sleep. She is no longer waking from hunger.

I thought that I would be ecstatic about this development. Finally, Vicki Jo has gained the ability and independence to be without me for a long stretch of time at night. I have evenings free to watch tv, read blogs, or do whatever it is adults do after seven pm. I thought there would be a sweet feeling of freedom. Instead, I felt kind of . . . useless. And a little bit lonely. I had gotten so accustomed to the baby sleeping near me that I found that I missed all the time that we had shared. And yet, when I went to wake the baby up and bring her to bed with me, I knew that she didn't sleep well. Being so close all night was starting to stand in her way.

It was my first real taste of "my baby is growing up" sadness, and it hit me surprisingly hard. As she nears a full twelve month trip around the sun, I am reminded of how tiny and helpless she was when we brought her home. I just couldn't bear the thought of being separated from her for even a moment. One year later, and she can spend half a day's time on her own, soothing herself and perhaps even enjoying a little alone time.

I do see that my few hours with her are precious. When I work all day and she sleeps all night, we only see each other for a little bit in the morning and the evening. I see how much I had relied on that time spent together at night to bring us closer together. It almost makes me reconsider my decision to go back to work, and now that her dad got that promotion . . .

in which i quit deodorant

2012-02-16T21:21:00.000-06:00

By any account, I am a world-class sweater. And no, I don't mean I'm made of softest alpaca. I have always sweated a lot. Like can't-wear-gray-in-summer sweating. Like hardly-even-need-the-winter-coat sweating. I'm usually the warmest person in any given room. I've been addicted to my Sure invisible solid unscented stick since I was about twelve years old. I thought that I would just have to buy all new white shirts every year.

My mom died of breast cancer, so I know that I have an increased risk for developing cancer myself. I know the jury is still out on the effect of aluminum in antiperspirant, but I started to think why chance it? If I could come up with something that could keep me marginally dry and non-stinky, I would consider using it. After my last stick of Sure ran out, I tried just using nothing for a week or so. Bad idea! I could smell myself by midday, and this was during the winter! I started looking up recipes for making your own deodorant. It seemed like the common denominators were coconut oil, baking soda, and cornstarch. Easy enough.

Here's how I did it:

Melt 6 T coconut oil in a small saucepan over low heat.

Once it's melted, add 4 T baking soda

And 4 T cornstarch.

Mix it up well.

At this point, I was sort of unsure what to do with it. I decided just to dump it in a little cup and put it in the fridge until it set. After it cooled, I dipped the cup in hot water and popped the cake of deodorant out. I've been keeping it in the fridge wrapped in a washcloth. I opted against keeping it in the bathroom because coconut oil melts at 76 degrees, and when we shower the bathroom regularly exceeds that temperature. I just grab it while I'm making breakfast in the morning, hold the bar of deodorant in the washcloth against my skin for a moment to soften it, and then rub it around like regular antiperspirant.

The verdict? Love it! Ask me again in the heat of summer, because I might change my tune then. But for now, it works great! Keeps me smelling fresh, and even has reduced the amount of overall sweating. Best part: no white marks on dark clothes, and no yellow stains on white clothes!

And that, my friends, is how I went from this:

To this:

fifty nifty united states . . .

2012-02-15T15:39:00.000-06:00

Anyone else have to memorize that song in school? Alabama, Alaska, Arizona . . . I still remember every word. I don't remember when or where I first heard about this, but I've always loved the idea of visiting a different state every year and taking a photo to remember it. I thought it would be nice to start whenever I got married. I'm a few years behind, but luckily we make regular trips to New York, Tennessee, Nevada, Kansas, and Illinois, so there were some stock pictures to start with! It's fun to see these photos in relation to the map, to think about what we were doing when we were there, the friends and family with whom we shared the visits, and the new states that the future holds. Of course, it also brings a tear to my eye when I see that the 2009 and 2010 photos are just me and Jeff, while 2011 show the three of us!

2009: Beersheba Springs, TN (our wedding)

2010: Long Island, NY (for my friends' Natalie and John's wedding)

2011: Lawrence, KS (two weeks after our new arrival, at our Bradley Birth class reunion!)

2012: we have a visit in the works to my dad's family in Henderson, NV - they still need to meet Vicki Jo!

Do you have any fun family traditions like this? Road trips that linger in your memory from childhood? Do tell!

meal planning (part the second)

2012-01-23T10:12:00.001-06:00

Okay, so I walked you through my basics for setting up my meal-planning chart a week ago, and now I'm back to tell you about how I fnish it and execute.

Some people only make a loose meal plan where they schedule dinners, but leave other meals and snacks up in the air. I have tried this approach and it makes me feel a little out of control. Plus it doesn't really help with the whole grocery purchasing aspect. So, I plan everything. Now whether I stick to that plan or not - who knows? But at least I have a plan. I have something to fall back on, or check in on when I feel that the week is spinning out too fast.

Something else I have to contend with is the fact that my husband works a very irregular schedule (restaurant industry), and I have frequent night meetings as part of my ministry. So, this week, for instance, I have something Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday nights. This means I don't have four hours to make dinner on those nights. Oh, and add to that a full week of office hours as well (except Thursday, my day off). Sigh. Now I'm depressed thinking about that.

Okay, back to menu planning. Once I've got the dinners all scheduled in, I look at whether I have any lunch meetings planned for the week. If so, then I'll think about the menu at the restaurant where we're going and try to get a loose idea of what I might eat, so the proteins stay balanced. If I'm just going to be doing a quick lunch break at home I usually plan to eat a sandwich or a salad. We don't have a microwave, so anything requiring a long heat-up time is pretty much out. This salad is one of my favorites for a quick lunch.

And then, finally, breakfasts and snacks. I discovered several months ago that my body doesn't like grains in the morning. They make me feel sluggish and foggy. Before that I had been on a long kick of steel-cut oats (they help milk production), and then after that a long kick of buttered toast. While both of these things are highly tasty and filling, they just weren't making me feel my best at the start of a long day. I tend to eat the same thing every morning for long stretches of time (like a month or so) before I get sick of it. It just takes the guesswork out of mornings and I love the comfort of a routine. One thing I ALWAYS have in the morning is coffee and milk (as long as there is time to grind and brew it). I believe I described my beloved Bialetti in a blog ode here. I used to be a one-cup gal, and then I had a baby. Now I drink two strong cups in the morning, with plenty of whole milk. Since my epiphany about grains, I had been having apples and peanut butter for breakfast. I recently discovered I have borderline hypothyroidism, so I'm trying to avoid goitrogenic foods (i.e. things that can aggravate this condition). Peanuts are one of them! So I guess it will be almond butter from hereonout.

I also need to do a whole paragraph about eggs. Since pregnancy and the Brewer diet, I have considered eggs a staple in my diet. Especially when I can get my hands on pastured, free-range chicken eggs (hard in the winter since they are usually in moult), I eat a lot of them. Since my newest epiphany about goitrogenic foods, I've been having two scrambled eggs every morning. I know, I know - the cholesterol-phobes would have you think that's too many. However, I had a lipid panel about a month ago as part of my ordination paperwork (you have no idea how invasive those questions are), and my numbers were perfect. I have my own theories on why heart disease occurs, but I'll keep my quackery to myself for now!

I've been awfully tangent-y this morning, but it boils down to this: scrambled eggs with coffee and milk for breakfast; fruit, nuts, cheese, crackers for snacks; salads and sandwiches (or maybe leftover soup) for lunch. Amen.

Here's my method for scrambled eggs:

Ingredients
2 eggs (try to get pasture-fed - the yolks will be an incredible color you've never seen before!)
splash of whole milk or cream
shredded cheese (optional)
butter
salt and pepper

How-to
Crack the eggs into a bowl and add the milk or cream. Mix up with a fork until it's a uniform color and texture. Add the cheese to the mixture if you're using it. Melt a teaspoon or two of butter into a small skillet over medium heat (I don't do non-stick. Teflon scares me and I don't want it in my body). Once the butter stops bubbling, add the egg mixture. Use a rubber spatula to stir continually until you reach the doneness you desire. My husband likes them more runny, I like them more solid. Add salt and pepper just before you put them on a plate and enjoy!

object permanence

2012-01-20T21:27:00.000-06:00

While Vicki Jo has had a lot of variation on the "typical" developmental milestones (usually she just lags a bit on large motor - fine motor, language and social are all there!), there is one that has hit us full-force, just when they said it would: separation anxiety.

Like clockwork, when I place her in Dad's arms, she begins to whimper and reach her arms out to me. He says that when I leave the house there's usually about ten minutes of dismay before she resigns herself to the situation. We try to brush it off and just tell her that she's fine, but she won't be convinced. I do feel kind of bad for poor Jeff, as he has gotten the cold shoulder pretty steadily for the last month or so.

My understanding of this emotional state is that she thinks that when I disappear from sight, I am gone forever. She does not yet understand that objects or people can continue to exist when they are not visible. "Seeing is believing," I suppose, is an easier way to summarize this.

So, with this latest development causing considerable angst in our household, I was very excited to see that Vicki's grandmother and great-grandmother had gotten her an object permanence box for Christmas! The object permanence box is a Montessori infant material that addresses the very concept I described above. You drop the small white ball through the round hole, and it reappears below in the tray. The infant begins to understand that objects may disappear momentarily, but will continue to exist.

I was unsure if Vicki would "get it," because she hasn't had great luck in fitting back together her peg or egg in a cup, and hasn't really shown any interest in another shape sorter we have. But amazingly, she figured it out right away! She watched me demonstrate a couple of times, then grabbed the ball straightaway and dropped it through the hole. She seemed mystified as to its reappearance in the tray, but I think she is working out the concept as she does it more and more.

This Montessori stuff truly is revolutionary. So grateful I've got family and friends who are willing to support my obsession with their gifts!

meal planning! (part one)

2012-01-16T13:02:00.000-06:00

I go through various phases with meal planning all the time. In theory, I love it because it helps me make a grocery list that is precise (especially with a little one, getting in and out of the grocery store in short order is a priority!), helps take the guesswork out of "what's for dinner tonight?", and keeps me on track nutritionally. But that is all in theory, because I married a man who loves spontaneity and frequently takes me along for the ride. So about half the time our plan is abandoned, the green beans go bad before I can cook them, and we eat Chinese on the living room floor.

And that's okay. I learned to be alright with this long ago, and to love this side of my husband because he jolts me out of my rigidity. Sometimes I can be a little too routine-bound. I have trouble "thinking outside the box," I might say in a job interview.

But I'm back to planning for the new year, because our food budget got a little out of control. I'm trying to restrict meals out (or takeout brought in) to four per week (about twenty percent of total meals per week).

Generally I just make a Word document and drop in a table with six rows and eight columns. Days of the week go across the top and three meals and two snacks go down the side. Sunday after church is always a meal eaten out or brought home with us, because the thought of cooking after my crazy Sunday mornings is totally repulsive - plus we're starving at that point.

After that I fill in the dinners. I usually try to balance the proteins we have like this: chicken a few times, fish a few times, red meat once or twice, beans or legumes once or twice. Then I go to our list of favorites and just pick a few:

- beef, black bean, or chicken soft tacos with tortillas, cheese, sour cream, salsa, avocado, lettuce (one of these days I just might share my homemade taco seasoning recipe with you!)
- wholegrain pasta with ground beef and tomato sauce, salad with homemade dressing
- my special chicken stirfry with veggies and brown rice
- roast chicken and veggies and mashed potatoes, salad with homemade dressing
- steak or salmon with vegetable, starch and salad with homemade dressing
- pork tenderloin with apples, roast potatoes and cabbage

I fill in each night on the chart first, and begin to make my grocery list from those meals. Next Munchee Monday, stay tuned and find out how I fit in lunch, breakfast, and snacks. If you'd like to nab my meal planning worksheet, click here. It's nothing fancy, but it does what it's meant to do!

And as an added bonus, find my stirfry sauce recipe below:

Honey-Glazed Chicken Stirfry
2 T honey
2 T white vinegar (or rice wine vinegar)
2 T orange juice
4 t soy sauce
1 1/2 t cornstarch

Whisk all ingredients together in a small bowl. After browning 2 C vegetables in a very hot skillet with a little oil, remove vegetables and add 8 oz chicken (cut into strips). Stir constantly until cooked through. Add sauce and stir until thickened. Add vegetables back into skillet. Serve immediately over hot brown rice.

a real dog

2011-12-28T21:13:00.000-06:00

I have written occasionally about our magnificent dog in the past. My family of origin was a cat family. I think there were some other pets that were a part of the family that existed before I was born (Mom Dad sister brother . . . that was for eight years before I came along!), but in the family I was a part of (Mom stepdad sister and brother for awhile until they went to college), it was cats all the way. Their low maintenance attitudes and aloofness seemed to suit the general demeanor of our family members.

But then, three (astonishly) long years ago, we got a puppy. Let me tell you about her background a little. Puppy (formally named Pepper) is a mutt. We know both of her parents, but aren't sure about their breeds, and it's certainly nothing pure! Pepper's mom is a fighter of a dog named Topper. Topper appeared one sweltering summer afternoon at the camp where I spent a huge and important part of my young adulthood. The camp has a strict no-animals policy (health code violations etc), but this particular dog stole the heart of my co-worker Julie. Topper was an excessively energetic jumper, and she looked like some kind of a hound - tight ears pulled back, sleek brown/black coat. Julie took her into her home. Topper became pregnant by the neighbor dog (a huge fluffy blonde lab-looking hunk . . . I might have fallen prey to him too, were I an unsuspecting young gal-dog) within six months, and had an unusually large litter of seven pups. Pepper was the only girl. Jeff prefers to have female pets, so when the offer was made for us to take one of these puppies, we went for that one. Here she is on the ride home:

This camp is in an area of the country that is extremely rural and poor, and lacks animal control services. We knew that not all of those puppies would have a fighting chance, and indeed, all of them but two perished within the first year. Topper nearly lost her life as well, as the seven puppies taxed her beyond her ability to nurse them. They were weaned early so that she wouldn't die.

Pepper was not an easy pup to raise. She refused to become housebroken and peed and pooped inside for nearly a year. Jeff and I hosed off the plastic liner of her crate on a twice-daily basis for months. You know the popular wisdom that proclaims that dogs won't play in their own feces? Somehow Pepper missed that message. She delighted in pooping, then stepping and rolling in it.

Magically, when we moved from Nashville to Topeka, she stopped. I guess she grew up or something. But she was still our baby. She slept tucked into bed right between us and needed our constant attention and presence to feel secure.

And then we had the baby.

Pepper was fairly well traumatized by the arrival of Vicki Jo. She has never, ever been aggressive or angry toward her. But she was clearly hurt and confused when we came home from the hospital. There was a huge thunderstorm the night we arrived home, and she defecated in her crate for the first time in a year. She could tell from the very beginning that she was being displaced.

She was kicked out of the bed when we decided that we would sleep together as a family. She started chewing napkins and paper towels that we left out. She became antsy and nervous, pacing often and skipping meals for days at a time.

She has slowly warmed toward Vicki Jo. She likes to get as close as possible to the two of us, inserting herself between us if she can:

The baby loves the dog. She loves touching and grabbing her silky ears. She loves feeling her paw pads and claws. She loves when the dog licks her face and mouth, giggling with delight.

And I love knowing that Vicki Jo will grow up with a loyal companion who cares about her happiness and security. I love that she has a real dog.

See, Maria Montessori thought that children needed reality as opposed to fantasy. They need real, tactile work to make them feel valued and necessary. Therefore, representations are to be as lifelike as possible. For instance, you would want this picture of a dog:

as opposed to this one:

The first one is real, while the second one is a kind of stylized interpretation of a dog.

But even better than a realistic picture is . . . a real dog! Vicki Jo will have a flesh-and-blood understanding of what a dog is. She will be able to help participate in the care and grooming of the dog, as she is ready. This is an invaluable chance to learn skills, as well as developing a close relationship with an animal.

So, I hope Pup is in it for the long haul. She has been warming up, although she still seems confused about the whole baby business. I'm confident that she will love the endless energy and playfulness that the years to come hold for her and Vicki Jo.

the doctors

2011-12-23T14:42:00.000-06:00

I was thinking this morning about the various doctors that have become very important to me in the last two years.

Education has always been a paramount value in my family. In many ways, it was the fundamental core principle around which we were raised. If school was going well, all else was pretty much negotiable. My brother and I both hold master's degrees, and my sister has two bachelors. I'm considering a doctorate, but . . . another post, another time. Seriously, though. I was largely allowed to run amok in the neighborhood so long as I maintained excellent grades.

So I tend to trust those people with letters after their names. Even though I went to a college where I saw firsthand that money tended to "create" a lot of intelligence in people who perhaps didn't have the full complement of skills for the positions they'd inherited. Even though I know that education in our nation has been inflated such that the bachelor's degree is the new diploma. Something about the sheer commitment it takes to finish a doctoral program speaks to me about a person's character.

And these particular four doctors came into my life around the advent of my daughter. I cackle to myself when I think about my ignorance just a few short years ago. Don't get me wrong - I am no parenting expert! Far from it! But I feel like, because of their research and knowledge (much of it casually dismissed when they were first producing it), I have a set of guidelines, or maybe ideals, to cling to when I'm tossed in the stormy sea of infant parentdom.

Dr. Bradley: Revolutionized my understanding of pregnancy, labor, and childbirth. And provided me with an excellent group of friends, to boot. And created a common language around birth for my husband and myself.

Dr. Brewer: Although recent evidence suggests that pre-eclampsia is a disorder of the placenta that is present from the very first weeks of pregnancy, I have no doubt that Dr. Brewer's diet protected me from an even more dangerous situation for my child and myself. Following his guidelines probably staved off the worst part of this disease for me, and kept symptoms at bay until the very end of my pregnancy.

Dr. Montessori: Following my child through her planes of development, I have Maria Montessori to thank for introducing me to a community of parents who care so deeply about the world that they want their children to become contributors to their fullest potential. My child is already capable of amazing things, simply because Montessori taught me to observe her and offer her opportunities to be independent.

Dr. Price: If Montessori helped me understand the child's intellectual development, Dr. Price helped me understand the physical development of my child, even on a molecular level. Thanks to his research, I don't feed my child cereal (she can't digest it), and I give her chicken broth to drink (it is a healing remedy for the gut). Yes, it's odd. But if you really commit and open yourself, his principles make a lot of sense. Just not for vegans.

These whitecoats have all marked turning points in my relationship with my baby. I am so thankful for coming into contact with their knowledge, even if sometimes they leave me despairing that I will never reach the full potential that their ideas can offer.

new materials for manipulation

2011-12-14T11:35:00.000-06:00

My long-time friend and conspirator Lynn sent Vicki Jo some new toys. These Montessori materials came at the perfect time for her. She is sitting up so well, and she loves transferring items from hand to hand and examining them from her new position.

She particularly loves the egg in a cup, the peg in a cup, and the interlocking discs.

Here she is pulling the peg out of its cup and checking it out. You also get a bit of the dog in the background, as she had to examine the new toys as well! Vicki Jo very much understands the concept of "emptying" at this point. She loves taking things out of baskets that I prepare for her. She is not so much on the concept of replacing things into their receptacles at this point. So the peg and egg in cups are perfect for working on this hand-eye coordination skill.

Here she is shaking the interlocking discs. Shaking and banging items on the wood floor is another favorite activity at this point! Also clapping. Percussive activity of any kind, really.

You get a better look at the interlocking discs in this photo.

And, because I didn't get a great picture of the materials themselves, here is what they look like:

Peg in a cup is great for working on the pincer grasp, egg in cup is good for palmer. I hope my photos with Vicki Jo above have made the scale more evident. They look much larger in these photos here than they really are!

The interlocking discs are a great toy to have around from about three months or whenever hand-to-hand transfer starts. They are also good for encouraging crawling or scooting, as they gently roll away from the child when pushed.

and if you should tire or cry . . .

2011-12-12T19:26:00.000-06:00

I just finished one of my favorite moments of the day. I crept out of the bedroom, turned the dimmer until the light clicked off, and pulled the door to gently behind me. Tonight was a sleepy night - not a peep.

Every night at six (that I'm home and not at church doing something), I start on the baby's dinner. She sits in her Bumbo seat while I talk to her, explaining what I'm doing and giving her carrot and celery sticks to gum (this is the dog's favorite part because she gets a lot of healthy treats that are dropped from said Bumbo seat). Whenever her supper is ready, we move into the dining room and I help her eat. And whenever we get done there, we waltz into the bedroom and I change her diaper, wipe her mouth and hands, and put on her pajamas.

Then I dim the lights, sit down in our rocker, pull her close to me, and sing. I have always had a song in my soul (I am one of those people whistling or humming all day long), and one of my dreams was to have a baby to share my song someday. And now I do! I sing the same two songs every night. One is a Billy Joel song that we sang in my junior high choir. Somehow the lyrics and melody are still seared on my memory, and it came back to me the minute she was born. It's just called "Lullabye."

The second song is very special. It was the song the congregation sang together at her baptism, and at the baptism of every baby. I sing it to her to remind both of us about the promises we made on that day:

Vicki, Vicki, God claims you.
God helps you, protects you, and loves you, too.

We this day do all agree
a child of God you'll always be.

Vicki, Vicki, God claims you.
God helps you, protects you, and loves you, too.

We your family love you so,
we vow to help your faith to grow.

Vicki, Vicki, God claims you.
God helps you, protects you, and loves you, too.

We are here to say this day
That we will help you on your way.

Vicki, Vicki, God claims you.
God helps you, protects you, and loves you, too.

And if you should tire or cry,
Then we will sing this lullaby.

Vicki, Vicki, God claims you.
God helps you, protects you, and loves you, too.

When I first started singing it, I thought it was a little strange that I would say "we," when it was just me and the baby there in the darkness. But then I thought of all the other people who were there too, their presence heavy in the room: my mom (her grandma, the original Vicki Jo), my Grandma Joy and Grandpa Bill, Jeff's dad, God's Holy Spirit (not a person, but still). We are her family, all of us.

I hope this song is embedded so deeply in her memory that nothing can take it away. No matter what her relationship with God and the church ends up looking like, I want her to know that God's love for her enveloped her from the moment she came earthside.

Sometimes the children of clergy can end up very resentful of the church (and God, too), because it is a demanding profession. People may be unhappy with your parent as a pastor, and it colors your whole perception of God. The church, for better or worse, is a collection of people who are simultaneously saved and sinners. We try the best we can, but it can get ugly. I pray that this is never the case for our family (and we are so happy where we are now!), but I want to make sure my baby knows that God's love for her is bigger than any pastor or any church. God loves her even if she ever chooses to say "no" to God.

And really, the song is for me, too. I need to be reminded, every night, that God loves me, protects me, and that, once upon a time, a family of faith covenanted to help me on my way. And that has made all the difference.

the packing frenzy

2011-11-30T10:12:00.000-06:00

We hit the road for the entire week of Thanksgiving. It was really a nice time, and we got to see Jeff's folks. Jeff is more family-oriented that almost anyone I know. It makes a huge difference in his mood (and thus in mine!) to be able to spend a solid amount of time with his people.

Jeff with his step-cousin Ben, who is also his best friend.

Jeff with his closest friends at our wedding. Included in the bunch are a cousin, a step-cousin, and a step-brother. The rest are like family.

Jeff with his best friend Brandon and best friend/cousin Robert/Tonto (remind me to tell you the story of Tonto another day).

Jeff with his mom Zan at our friend Julie's wedding.

So, with photographic evidence, now you can see that I'm not lying about Jeff being family-oriented.

Back to the trip. Because we are still somewhat young and mostly poor, we drive. And drive. And drive. To Nashville. It's about ten hours. We can do it in eight or nine, but that was pre-baby and frequent stops to nurse and change and just get her out of the God-forsaken seat.

The baby was actually quite a champion and didn't freak out too much. The hard part was just being away from home and any semblance of a routine that we have going on (which isn't much to speak of, but still). Trying to get her to go to bed at night was hopeless. She knew there was excitement that she wasn't a part of, and there were protestations at every turn.

Why is Vicki Jo shining like a bright angel in this photo?

We stayed with our close friends Jeremy and Kat in Nashville, and then we headed even further east to Sevierville, Tennessee. Sevierville is outside Dollywood/Gatlinburg/Pigeon Forge - a breathtakingly gorgeous area of the state. Jeff's mom (from the picture) and her family originally come from this part of the state, and they have some family land carved up and topped with amazing log cabins. We stayed there for several days, then back to Nashville, then back to Kansas.

I learned a few things. I learned that taking some time away from work and ministry makes me much more refreshed when I return (and not just a day off here and there. We're talking a week at a time to really make a difference). I learned that I still get carsick in the backseat. I learned that a baby who sleeps all day in the carseat probably won't sleep much at night.

But the real question I have today is this: does anyone else go bonkers trying to clean your house before you go away on a trip? It's the weirdest thing. I have the compulsion to do all the laundry, pack, wash all the dishes and clean the stove, wash all the sheets so they'll be fresh when we get back, make sure everything is folded and put away where it goes, scrub the sink and toilet, use up all the perishables from the fridge . . . why do I do this? What is this crazy-making instinct to leave my house in spotless shape for . . . no one? I'm not sure, but please tell me I'm not the only one who does this.

chicken enchiladas

2011-11-21T10:34:00.000-06:00

I have the great good fortune to live in a geographical area where delicious, cheap Mexican food is everywhere. Seriously. Within a half-mile of our house, I can count six Mexican joints. When Jeff and I go, we usually split something, because let's be honest - I'm full after the chips. Also, Mexican restaurants have totally given a bad name to all other restaurants that don't give you some kind of free all-you-can-eat starch.

I'm partial to cheese enchiladas. I love the soft corn tortillas, the spicy red sauce, and the oodles of cheese seeping their yummy yellow grease out onto the plate. Something tells me this can't be on my diet plan. I mean, all the elements in moderation would probably be fine, but that much cheese in one place is dangerous.

I stewed a pasture-fed chicken last week to make special broth to puree with the baby's food (no salt or spice, no veggies - just chicken and water). So, I had a ton of stewed chicken meat in the freezer waiting for me to think of something. Having recently renewed a commitment to exercise and healthy diet after a church member asked me if I was already pregnant again (ouch!, and also: why!?), I decided to go after my favorite enchiladas. Here's what I did:

Chicken & Spinach Enchiladas
1 T olive oil
1/4 of a medium onion
3 garlic cloves
1/2 pound shredded stewed chicken (whatever combination of light and dark meat you fancy)
1 cup enchilada sauce (I used this one), divided
2 cups spinach
1/2 cup light sour cream, divided
1 cup grated cheddar cheese, divided
6 corn tortillas
salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 350.

Warm the olive oil in a large skillet over medium. Add in the garlic and onion. Saute 5 minutes, stirring so it won't burn. Add in the chicken. Stir and let it warm up. Add 1/2 cup of the enchilada sauce to the skillet. Add the spinach and let it wilt down. Stir in 1/4 cup of the sour cream and 1/2 cup of the cheese. Season with salt and pepper and pull off the heat.

Spread 1/4 cup of the enchilada sauce in the bottom of a baking dish.

In a separate, dry skillet, warm each tortilla over medium for five seconds on each side, to make them pliable. As you finish warming one, fill it with a spoonful of the chicken filling and place it seam-side down in the baking dish. Place them close together so they won't come apart. Once all six are in there, pour the remaining 1/4 cup enchilada sauce, 1/4 cup sour cream, and 1/2 cup cheddar cheese over the top.

You will most likely have extra chicken filling. Eat it with a fork while you are waiting for the enchiladas to be done (kidding! Or not. Or just save it for lunch tomorrow).

Place in the oven until the top is melted and bubbly (about fifteen minutes). Serves two or three, depending on hunger level.

Sorry about these photos!! Photographing food is hard . . . and I forgot until after I ate a couple!

traying it up

2011-11-19T15:41:00.000-06:00

This blog isn't exclusively about bacon, I promise. But it is a fairly large and important part of my life. Finding quality bacon after we moved from the South was a challenge. The bacon at the store is kind of thin and bland. It curls up in the pan when I fry it (I need a bacon press). Then I decided to scope out the Farmers Market. Score! I discovered a local meat processor who made the bacon I was accustomed to: thick, nicely marbled strips of pork belly. It's not nitrate-free or organic, but when I run into the ages-old conundrum (ha!) of local vs. organic, I usually lean more toward supporting local businesses and producers. Anyway, back to the topic at hand.

As much as I love this bacon I found, I can't make it through a pound before it starts to get a little funky. So, when I get home with my pound of bacon, I take it right out of the package and start a process my husband and his restaurant friends call "traying up." I take a sheet pan, spread it out into a single layer, and pop it in the freezer. Like so:

When it's frozen solid, I pull the pieces off the tray and place them into a plastic freezer bag. This way, I the slices aren't frozen together, so I can pull out one or two when I need them and leave the rest for later. I just love when a bright idea comes to me!

counterintuitive cleansing

2011-11-18T10:36:00.000-06:00

I have been making a concerted effort of late to rid our home environment and diet of things that aren't natural and wholesome. I've done the easy stuff for a long time: cleaning with vinegar and baking soda, drinking filtered water, eating as many whole and unprocessed foods as I can. It was time to step up my game.

Toiletries and self-care products contain a litany of strange unpronounceable chemicals, and they are subject to even less regulation than edibles! For example, I recently read a whole article about how Johnson & Johnson baby shampoo contains known carcinogens. Ugh. I'm not naive enough to think that I can prevent myself or my family ever getting sick or eventually dying (won't we all?). But I do want to make the quality of life we enjoy between now and then as high as possible.

I have often wondered about how people in ancient times or even pioneer days cared for their bodies. In my Latin classes, I learned all about the baths and how olive oil was used to clean the skin. I never really stopped to think it through too much. But olive oil? Cleaning? How? My only experience with it had been to grease up pans for cooking.

On a couple of different blogs, I found out about the "oil-cleanse method." Apparently the idea is that oil attracts excess oil to itself. Also, many of us were brainwashed by Noxzema commercials when we were teenagers to think that the cure for breakouts is to remove all traces of oil from your skin. But your skin needs oil! Sometimes skin becomes more oily as an overcompensation for having all the moisture stripped from it by harsh cleansers.

So I decided to give it a try . . . and it's been amazing! It's cheap, natural, and does an awesome job of cleaning my skin while still leaving the proper amount of moisture. I've been toying with the proportions a little, because my skin tends to be on the dry side (especially as we go into the dry-heat-conditioned rooms of winter). But start with a one-to-one ratio, and see what happens!

Start with olive oil (cold-pressed is good) and castor oil (I found this at Walgreen's in the "digestive health" section.) Make a sample batch to see how it works for you: I just put 1 T of each into a spare little plastic travel bottle and mixed it together. On the proportions: the olive oil is the moisturizing element and the castor oil is the purifying one. So if you tend to be more on the oily side, try 2 T castor oil to 1 T olive oil. Likewise, if you're dry like me, try 2:1 olive oil to castor oil. It may take a little trial and error to find your perfect formula.

Massage a quarter-sized amount into your dry face. Take a washcloth and run it under very hot water. Drape the hot washcloth over your face and slowly count to ten. Rinse the washcloth and run it back over your face to remove any excess oil.

You may or may not still need a little face lotion after this. I actually haven't needed any at all, and I've been doing this every morning for the last two weeks or so.

This success gave me the courage to think about trying to make more of our own natural toiletries and cleaning supplies. Next up . . . homemade laundry detergent!

yogurt for the masses

2011-11-07T08:49:00.001-06:00

Thick, tangy Greek yogurt became a favorite of mine during pregnancy. Because it is strained and most of the whey is taken out, it is very high in protein. When I was following the Brewer diet, Chobani was my favorite brand - 16 grams of protein in 6 oz of yogurt! You can't do much better unless you're eating meat.

I toyed with the idea of making my own yogurt, but there didn't really seem to be any reason to. The brand I buy doesn't have any preservatives, and it's made with milk with no growth hormones. Then, my world was rocked by this book:

I won't go totally into it now, because it's a huge topic, but this book promotes healing from a variety of illnesses through diet. I'm not sure if I totally buy it, but I don't think that improving nutrition can hurt anything.

The author advocates yogurt (and the whey that you can strain off of yogurt) as one of the best sources of healthy bacteria for your digestive system. You know how yogurt you see in the store says "contains five live cultures!" or whatever? That's good, but you can do much better. You can multiply the probiotics in your yogurt considerably by making your own. See, yogurt you buy in the store has to be made with pasteurized milk (at least in the state of Kansas, it does). Pasteurization kills many of the live active cultures, some of which are then added back in during the culturing process. But if you make your own from raw milk, you never lose all that healthy bacteria to begin with!

I found raw milk at our local dairy farm and decided to try my hand at making some yogurt. Raw, unpasteurized milk is teeming with healthful bacteria. It's veritably alive. It doesn't take much to colonize it with good bacteria.

I just took 1/3 cup of plain whole-milk Greek yogurt and mixed it into half a gallon of raw whole milk in a large Dutch oven. I chose this brand because it had the most live active cultures of any at the store (seven!).

I took the mixture and heated it on the lowest setting my oven would reach (150). You need to maintain a temperature between 105-113 to allow the bacteria to do their work. It was a bit of a trick keeping the temperature steady. They make special yogurt-makers, but it seems a little silly to buy a special piece of equipment just to keep something at 110 degrees. So, I would set the oven, then turn it off, then set it again. You could also stick a heating pad on high in there. I just kept measuring it with an instant-read thermometer to make sure it was roughly in the right range.

And then you just leave it for a minimum of 24 hours. A crazy thing happens. It thickens and sours a bit. It starts to taste, well, like yogurt. After you're done with it, pack it into clean glass jars and put in the fridge. You can strain out the whey and make it thicker, but be sure to drink the whey or add it into a smoothie or something because it is packed with good stuff.

bacon fat!

2011-11-06T08:18:00.000-06:00

Might I just take this opportunity to say that I'm a huge fan of bacon? And bacon fat? I know that makes me sound like a total hedonist, but it's really not so bad! On the package of bacon I used tonight, two slices is a serving size, and that has seventy calories. I used just one slice, so for only thirty-five calories, I had a mouth-watering starting place for a pasta dish that was otherwise very lean and nutritious.

This was also a pantry- and fridge-cleaner outer. As I recently mentioned, we are newly recommitted to home cooking and avoiding eating out except when it's really going to be necessary and/or delicious. I have also not had time to go to the store in about ten days. To say things have been hectic would be the understatement of my lifetime. Although we went out for dinner for a friend's birthday last night, tonight I was sorely tempted to tell Jeff to bring home some wings and fries (when your husband works at the emporium of chicken wings, eating not-so-responsibly becomes dead easy). But I resisted! And it was worth it. Try this one on for size:

Pasta with Shrimp, Bacon and Tomatoes
1/4 lb of your favorite whole-wheat pasta (I used leftover lasagna noodles broken in half, but that wouldn't have been my first choice! Something shorter and more tubular would be good for this sauce.)
1 oz bacon (typically one slice), sliced crosswise into 1/4 inch pieces
1/4 lb thawed and peeled frozen shrimp
1 clove garlic, minced
1/2 14.5 oz can diced tomatoes (or scant 1 C fresh peeled and diced tomatoes)
salt and pepper

Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Cook the pasta and drain. Meanwhile, saute the bacon pieces in a small skillet over medium. When they are crisp, remove them to a plate lined with paper towel, leaving the fat behind. Add the garlic and cook for thirty seconds, stirring constantly to avoid burning. Add the tomatoes and allow them to reduce. Season with salt and pepper. Add shrimp to the tomatoes and garlic. Cook shrimp just until pink throughout and slightly curled up. Taste the sauce and add salt or pepper as needed. Add the bacon pieces back into the dish and serve! Makes one serving.

on my shelf: trust and wonder

2011-11-05T14:02:00.000-05:00

This is one of a series on books that I've found indispensable in growing, birthing, and parenting a child. If you're interested in what else is on my shelf, check out these posts.

I have given a lot of attention to the Montessori method in my book series thus far, but I don't want to give short shrift to my other, softer, more pastel educational philosophy: Waldorf. Vicki Jo and I did a six-week class at our local Waldorf School, and it was lovely. I really think that you can read and research all you want, but nothing substitutes for actually being in an environment and feeling it out for yourself. Also, it helps you understand that for both Montessori and Waldorf, broad sweeping statements are largely useless. The individual school/community/environment matters most. There was a slim little volume that went along with the registration fee for the course, and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it:

Trust and Wonder: A Waldorf Approach to Caring for Infants and Toddlers is written by Eldbjorg Gjessing Paulsen (what a name!). She has been active in both Scandinavian and South African Waldorf schools, so she has seen a variety of contexts. The book is meant for both parents and Waldorf educators. There are some sections that are more practical application-oriented for creating Kindergartens (which in Waldorf parlance can go anywhere from two or three years until six or seven), and these aren't really germane to the home-parenting audience.

Paulsen draws on her personal experience and Steiner's philosophy to describe an ideal environment for very young children: free of extraneous noise (of all kinds - visual, auditory, touch), well-ordered and attentive to the cyclical rhythms that create structure in our lives. "Rhythm and routine" was a very important chapter for me. It helped me see the difference between having my child on a schedule (which I'm convinced will never happen, even if I tried!), and following a daily, weekly, monthly, yearly rhythm in our activities. Even within the parts of the day, allowing times for the day to inhale and exhale became a part of my thought. This means that you allow for times when your child is intensely focused on an activity, and then you make sure they have time to recover and integrate their sense experiences.

Paulsen covers the all-important Waldorf concept of free play with nondescript, natural toys, and gives a brief but comprehensive background portrait of the entire philosophy (which has branches related to much more than childhood education!). She outlines what a day in the Kindergarten might look like. She discusses the inclusion of the child in the daily activities of the home (baking, kneading, dusting, sweeping - this is one area where Montessori and Waldorf largely agree: the child doesn't need structured stimulating activities. The home and the ordinary activities therein provide all the stimulation she needs).

This is a must-read if you are interested in incoporating Waldorf principles into your daily home environment. I know it has given me much to think and dream about already, and my child is only seven months old!

chili (with beans)

2011-11-04T10:33:00.000-05:00

Only somewhat recently did I discover that there is a controversy over what constitutes chili. I was raised up on one kind: tomato-based with ground beef and kidney beans. When I went to work at camp in Tennessee, I first met people from Texas. Their idea of chili was about as far off from mine as you could imagine. They insisted that it needed to be discrete chunks of meat, and no beans. I thought theirs was more like a steak soup - delicious in its own right, but not chili.

Wednesday evening was cold, windy, and rainy. I mentally scanned through the list of recipes that I go to in a pinch: tacos, pasta, stirfry? None seemed right. Then my mind drifted to a steamy bowl of chili and cornbread. Perfect!

Jeff and I have made a serious commitment to cooking more at home. We had gotten so lazy, and picking things up or eating out seems so easy. But, my waistline has stopped shrinking since my initial pound sheddage after the baby's birth, and we spent $646 (I'm not joking) on eating out last month. That's right. A family of two. Six hundred forty-six dollars. So, cooking has to become a priority once again.

I whipped this up after putting the baby to sleep on Wednesday night, and we ate cheaply and nutritiously. And I had leftovers last night. A win-win. The apple cider vinegar gives it a perfect little tang in the background. If you're wary about canned foods (and I'm really trying to reduce our reliance on them, since many contain BPA as a can liner), just use a scant two cups peeled and chopped fresh tomatoes and two cups of soaked and rinsed dry kidney beans.

Chili
1 lb ground beef (use whatever lean/fat percentage you like, but you may have to skim the fat a little if you use chuck; we used 93/7)
1/2 yellow onion, chopped fine
3 cloves garlic, minced
scant 2 C chicken or beef broth
1 14.5 oz can diced tomatoes (low- or no-salt)
1/3 C chili powder
2 t cumin
1 16 oz can kidney beans, rinsed and drained
1 T apple cider vinegar
salt
sour cream
shredded cheddar cheese

Brown the ground beef in a large Dutch oven over medium heat. Skim off some fat if there seems to be too much. Add the onion and saute until it is clear and soft (about ten minutes). Drop in the garlic and saute for a minute or so. Add the broth and use a spoon or whisk to scrape up all the brown stuff on the bottom of the pot. Add tomatoes, chili powder, and cumin. Bring to a boil, then drop back to a simmer. Simmer for ten minutes, then add beans, vinegar, and salt to taste. Let it simmer until you're ready to eat. The longer it cooks, the more the flavors come together. Serve with sour cream and cheddar as toppings. Serves four.

We also ate this with cornbread made from the recipe on the cornmeal container.

our family doctor

2011-11-01T11:10:00.000-05:00

Like many families these days, Jeff and I never had a "doctor," per se. Jeff has had myriad specialists and always has a gastroenterologist because of his Crohn's disease. I saw a nurse practitioner or midwife every year for an annual exam - as most women do - and that was it. Because I was in school for so long, I benefited from the clinics that are associated with universities. I never had to pay for these visits, but I also had no continuity of care. I saw a different person each year that I went in.

One of the things I loved about being pregnant was going to the midwife. It was like a fun little social appointment with some measuring and weighing added in. I really looked forward to those visits, and when they became more frequent toward the end my delight was multiplied. It made me realize that I owed it to our family to find a medical professional who could care for us, and with whom we had a solid, lasting relationship.

The search for a doctor for your baby starts when the baby is still in utero. They tell you to really begin calling and looking around at about six months. Most people ask some friends, check with their insurance company, and find a pediatrician who is part of a large practice that specializes in child medicine. I decided I'd rather have someone who knew our whole family, and would be able to see Vicki Jo past the age of childhood. I wanted a family doctor.

A general practitioner is surprisingly hard to find these days. Topeka is a city of about 120,000. I found exactly four family doctors. A couple were older and weren't taking any new patients. One wouldn't accept our insurance. That left us with Ryan Bennett, DO. I was curious about what those letters after Dr. Bennett's name meant. She (yes, Ryan is a she) is an osteopath. When I began researching DO vs. MD, I discoverd I much favored the approach of the osteopath, anyway. These doctors are trained in the almost-lost art of diagnosing illnesses with the hands, rather than relying so heavily on testing and analysis. Also, I loved reading that osteopaths tend to favor a more whole-person approach, finding out about mental, emotional, and physical health as part of one package.

We made an initial appointment with Dr. Bennett and it was a smashing success. I was heavily pregnant at the time, and she caught on immediately to the fact that I was quite swollen and my blood pressure was up. She was actually the first person to suggest I be screened for pre-eclampsia, just based on her initial observations.

She was also knowledgeable about Jeff's Crohn's (although, as I mentioned, he sees a specialist for that). When we explained that we were still deciding how we felt about all vaccinations for our child, she encouraged us to make informed decisions and offered resources, rather than just pushing a party line.

After the baby came along, Dr. Bennett was thorough and thoughtful. Although the baby never gained weight at the rate most doctors would have like, Dr. Bennett never freaked out on me. When we decided to slow down on our vaccination schedule, she just asked to take a look at it so she could familiarize herself. She trusted that we had done our research and found what was best for our family. The only thing she ever pushed was Vitamin D. She spends a lot of time with us at each visit, and we never feel like our baby is being pushed through a factory. I kind of love the fact that there aren't a lot of babies in her practice, because she isn't constantly comparing Vicki Jo to a million other babies in her mind and using that to judge whether she is "normal" or not.

Jeff threw his back out recently while riding the bike I got him for his birthday, and Dr. Bennett helped him regain strength and ease his discomfort through a series of stretches and exercises, rather than just prescribing him painkillers. That's the kind of thing I love about osteopathy.

All in all, I am so happy with the decision that we made. I love that Dr. Bennett can identify patterns in the health of our family, and encourage us as a unit to make better choices for ourselves. She can see if Jeff's Crohn's is making an impact on Vicki Jo's digestion, or judge whether my anxiety is causing her to have sleeping troubles. I hope that Dr. Bennett remains a part of our family for a long, long time.

evidence

2011-10-28T09:40:00.000-05:00

Here is proof that I am dreadfully ~~frugal~~ cheap. If plastic bags haven't had anything horrendous in them like raw meat or onions, I wash and reuse them:

Exhibit A.

Exhibit B.

Am I the only person on earth who does this? I guess I don't think it's that weird because my mom did it too!

crunchy granola

2011-10-27T22:01:00.001-05:00

[This post submitted to SortaCrunchy's "Your Green Resource"]

I kinda love the fact that "granola" can mean "sustainable, hippy-ish, dirty, Birkenstock-wearing" or whatever else you want it to mean. I'm kind of all those things (well, I'm definitely Birkenstock-wearing, but all the others more or less), and I also love granola! It's one of those "health" foods that can be surprisingly awful for you. My version is pretty much just oats and nuts, with a handful of dried fruit tossed in for sweetness and good measure. I like to eat it with yogurt, or even a splash of milk. My husband is a breakfast-cereal addict, and this doesn't quite cut it for him. It's a little heavy and chewing-intensive compared to, say, Golden Grahams. But for me, it's breakfast perfection!

Granola
3 cups old-fashioned oats (not quick cooking, not instant, not steel-cut)
1/2 cup raw walnuts
1/2 cup raw almonds (whole or sliced)
1/2 cup raw pecans
1/2 cup dried cranberries or cherries or raisins
1/2 cup pure maple syrup
olive oil

Preheat oven to 250. Take all the nuts and combine them in the food processor. Give the mixture twenty one-second pulses, until the nuts are chunky and similar in size. Combine the chopped nuts, oats, dried fruit, and maple syrup in a large bowl. Mix until everything is well-coated in syrup. Drizzle a little olive oil (maybe a teaspoon - I hate measuring oil because I feel like half of it stays in the measuring spoon - anybody with me on this?) on a large baking sheet, and use a paper towel or clean dishrag to spread it around and make a light film on the sheet. Turn the granola out onto the oiled sheet and use a spatula to pat it out into an even layer. Bake, stirring every ten minutes, until it is nice and crunchy (this will depend on how humid it is, how dry your nuts were, etc). Probably forty minutes is the longest I've ever gone. Let it cool on the sheet and then put into a jar or tupperware. Store in the fridge. Lasts a long time and makes a lot of servings.

extra! extra! read all about it!

2011-10-27T09:52:00.001-05:00

Hi my friends. I am featured today over at even one sparrow. I'm, like, totally blushing over the nice things Rachel had to say about my little project. Be sure to check out/follow her blog because she is an awesome writer, committed Christian, really into social justice, and taught me about the oil cleanse method.

multiple intelligences & god's creation

2011-10-25T11:09:00.000-05:00

I have always sort of instinctually understood that different people learn in different ways. I had a friend who made up songs to memorize facts for tests in high school. I know people who loved group work and learned best from having a peer explain a concept to them. I myself am a person who thinks well while walking or otherwise moving my body. But I didn't come to formally know about multiple intelligences theory until I took a Christian Education class in Divinity School. Our teacher introduced us to Howard Gardner's ideas, first put forth in 1983.

Gardner's thought, on the simplest level, is that everyone has a preferred style of learning. He originally devised a scheme of seven styles: interpersonal, intrapersonal, bodily-kinesthetic, musical, verbal-linguistic, spatial, logical-mathematical.

Later, some additional types have been added by different thinkers: naturalistic and existential. Think back to your experience in grade school. Was it easy for you to sit still? Did you listen carefully to the teacher? Now think to high school: were you able to synthesize thoughts well and anaylze arguments logically? If you answered yes to all of this, you probably have high linguistic and logical-mathematical intelligences, which are what our traditional educational system favors. IQ tests typically measure these intelligences and pronounce whether you are "smart" or not.

The issue, though, is that there is a whole more "smart" out there than just those two kinds. I cannot tell you the number of times I told wiggly little boys to "sit still and listen" while I was helping teach first grade. Many of these little boys would probably be convinced by eighth or ninth grade that they were "not smart" and "not good at school," because schools discourage their bodily-kinesthetic and interpersonal intelligences.

One of the things I love about Montessori education is that it encourages the child's dominant intelligence by having activities of all seven types spread about the room and allowing the child free choice to learn as they wish. The one downside is that certain Montessori classrooms may discourage interpersonal learning by overemphasizing independence.

Anyway, my main point for today is that Christian worship, by and large, doesn't address these seven intelligences. We are most likely to try to teach others by using our dominant intelligence. For me, this would probably be linguistic. I love words, they come easily to me, I love manipulating and creating them. Thus, in a worship setting, I am a person who leads with words. I give sermons, which require linguistic, interpersonal, and logical-mathematical intelligences (and a little bodily-kinesthetic in the gesticulating and musical in the cadences of speech). I pray, which requires intrapersonal, linguistic, interpersonal, logical-mathematical, and a bit of musical intelligence.

But think through your average worship service: hymns, prayers, quiet time, sermon, passing the peace. There is a little room for movement, but it is largely focused on listening, understanding, analyzing and applying ideas to your life. This favors a certain kind of learner, and this is unfair, in my estimation. My husband usually finds worship services boring and interminable. This is because his primary intelligences are spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, and intrapersonal. These are very seldom stimulated in a traditional worship service. When I'm crafting worship, I love to keep him in mind. What would make him excited? What would keep him engaged? Not a long sermon that he's required to listen to with sustained attention. Not a lot of long and elaborate hymns from the eighteenth century. Now, don't get me wrong - for some folks, these are the bee's knees. (Namely - for me!) But for too long, churches have insisted that the worship of God must be conducted in one way, and that leaves out so much of God's glorious creation.

So, I'm committed to making a change in how we view and do worship, so that more and more of what God has made so beautifully can whole-heartedly worship God together.

montessori-style solids

2011-10-23T20:28:00.001-05:00

Baby-led weaning is all the rave amongst attachment-y parents these days, and I can see why. It's low-maintenance, family-friendly, and enables you to give the baby what your family eats. For those who don't speak infant, baby-led weaning is essentially a non-practice. You don't do the baby purees and you don't feed your baby with a spoon. Rather, you just give them appropriately-sized chunks of whatever is good for them: usually fruits, vegetables, whole grains, lean proteins. You let them put everything in their mouths and gum or tooth it (trust me: at this age, everything goes in the mouth anyway, so it's not like you have to coax them to do it). You still typically follow a slow introduction schedule, where you give one food at a time for several days to make sure there are no allergies. It's not a total free-for-all. But it's a pretty easy-going way to start giving your baby some first foods.

And then there's the Montessori style. Of course, there is a method. There is equipment. It can seem fussy if you don't embrace the principles behind it. And, like everything Montessori, you can bet there are principles at play. The sensitive period for weaning begins around four months, and lasts for awhile after that. Because four months is a little young to be giving chunks of stuff, purees and traditionally textured baby foods are encouraged. Juices as well. A weaning table and chair are for the child who is able to sit unassisted (or with a little help), and give the child a more exact replica of the reality of eating successfully on one's own.

(Not my baby! Photo credit.)

Like most of my adventures with Montessori, I've done it a little half-fast. I haven't bought a weaning table and chair, but we did get a pull-up-to-the-table infant/child chair with no tray. That's a step in the right direction. We have done both baby-led weaning and purees. The baby wants to eat when we eat (one of the signs that she is ready for food), so if we're at a restaurant or eating supper, she gets little bits of whatever isn't seasoned (carrot sticks, cucumber chunks, cantaloupe cubes, etc). I happen to believe that proper nutrition is the key to almost all health (even if I don't always practice what I preach on this one!), and I have been so excited about the possibilities of introducing Vicki Jo to excellent, whole foods from the beginning. So, here's a typical meal for us (dinner tonight):

(Excuse the poor photo quality - a photographer, I am not.)

(Sugar snap peas, pureed with a little homemade chicken stock made specially for baby: a whole chicken simmered in water with no salt or additional ingredients.)

(Avocado, plain mashed.)

(Yogurt I made myself from raw milk.)

(A little cup of water to practice drinking.)

(Very important: a hungry pup to help with cleanup.)

We do a mixture of me spoon-feeding her and her spoon-feeding herself. Needless to say, more gets into her mouth and down into her tummy when I'm in charge of the spoon. However, I want her to gain experience with using utensils, so I give her an opportunity to do it herself. She is surprisingly quick on the uptake with this.

Of course, things get a bit messy.

And the yogurt, which we tried for the first time tonight, was a little tart (but teeming with amazing probiotics!).

We also practice drinking from a cup. This is a wooden shot glass I found at the Renaissance Festival a few weeks ago. I'm diverging from traditional Montessori practice here, as the suggestion would be for all materials to be real (read: breakable) to encourage natural control of error (i.e. if you drop it, it shatters.) Also, it's encouraged for everything to be clear, so the child gains understanding about the volume of containers as they are eating. I thought the wood was a good compromise as it is still a real and natural material, but not so breakable.

She really, really loves drinking out of a cup. It is probably her favorite part of the whole meal. Now, whenever I'm drinking from a cup, she demands a sip! I just have to ensure that whatever I'm drinking is suitable for her.

Overall, mealtimes have been very pleasant and fun for us so far. Vicki Jo is showing no signs of being picky. She has enjoyed all foods that we've tried this way (off the top of my head: carrots, broccoli, sugar snap peas, bananas, avocados, yogurt, chicken broth). She also has a very hearty appetite. Now, if only I had a juicer so I could give her little tastes of healthful, live juice . . .

For those who are interested in more information, here is a fantastic post and chart comparing Montessori-style weaning and baby-led weaning from the very articulate Kylie of how we montessori.

meat-starch-veg-salad

2011-10-20T22:32:00.000-05:00

When my husband describes his dream of opening a restaurant to me, I get all caught up in the recipe-planning part. I would love to be his menu consultant, or perhaps the person who figures out how many items you can make from the same basic ingredients (to cut down on food cost). At the grocery store, I pretty much always buy the same twelve or fifteen items. I try to let my imagination guide me when it comes time for dinner. This works out pretty well, except I think I miss out on recipes that require some lead time. Let me guide you through this process and how it played out at dinner tonight.

4:00 - decide "chicken, green beans, rice" (and always a salad for me)
7:15 - get baby to sleep, Jeff starts brown rice in the steamer (remind me to do a separate post about the rice steamer - like Alton Brown, I hate single-use appliances, but this one has been a life-saver)
7:30 - cut a couple slices of bacon into small bits and start browning in a large skillet
7:35 - cut a large chicken breast in half horizontally to make two cutlets
7:38 - chop the ends off some green beans and drop into a small cold skillet
7:40 - add three cubes of frozen chicken broth, salt, red pepper flakes, and a spoonful of bacon fat into the green bean skillet, put the lid on, and cook over medium-high heat
7:45 - remove the bacon from the large skillet and put the chicken breasts into the remaining bacon fat
7:50 - chop up some romaine lettuce, combine it with halved cherry tomatoes, spinach leaves, and half of the bacon bits to make my salad
7:55 - turn chicken breasts and check on green beans
7:57 - lower heat on green beans to low, as they are pretty much tender
8:00 - remove the chicken from the pan and add four cubes of frozen chicken broth to make a sauce
8:01 - whisk the chicken broth into the large skillet, pulling up all the browned bits on the bottom
8:03 - rice is done
8:04 - make salad dressing: combine two tablespoons half-and-half with one tablespoon balsamic vinegar, a pinch of salt, a grind of pepper, and a teaspoon of honey all into a small jar. Put the lid on and shake it up.
8:06 - finish sauce for chicken: add some garlic butter, a little salt and pepper, and the remaining cooked bacon into the broth that's been reducing in the large skillet. Slide the chicken back into the sauce.
8:10 - dinner is served!!

And that's how it's done, on a nightly basis, in our home. That is, on nights when I don't just cave and buy a cheeseburger at the BoBo Drive-in.

creature comforts

2011-10-17T13:25:00.000-05:00

My husband and I have both been feeling pretty unwell this week. Stomach cramps, indigestion, and I'll leave the rest to your imagination. I'm not sure if it was a flu bug, inflammation, or what, but it was very uncomfortable. We both go to very simple places, food-wise, when we're not feeling so good. Plain pasta, toast with butter, apples, bananas. Uncomplicated stuff. I had a pint of cherry tomatoes left from our last CSA delivery two weeks ago, and they were looking sad. I remembered an old Ina Garten trick: roast tomatoes that are off-season or past their prime. It will concentrate the flavors and bring out the succulence. Worked like a charm. I had my pasta with the tomatoes, Jeff had his plain with butter. We both felt a bit more soothed.

Pasta with Roasted Tomatoes
1/4 pound thin spaghetti
1 pint cherry or grape tomatoes
3 unpeeled garlic cloves
1 t dried thyme
1 T olive oil
salt and pepper
butter

Preheat oven to 350. Dump the tomatoes and garlic into an 8x8 glass baking dish, sprinkle with thyme, salt and pepper, and drizzle the oil over. Toss with your hands to coat and bake for an hour, or until they are all burst open and starting to get a bit browned.

When the tomatoes only have ten minutes or so to go, boil the pasta and drain. Drop in some butter and toss to coat. Pinch the garlic cloves between your fingers to let the roasted garlic out over the tomatoes. Divide pasta between two bowls and put some tomatoes and their juices on top of each serving.

Serves two.

tripp trapp, revisited

2011-10-14T09:42:00.000-05:00

We didn't register for a high chair for our baby showers. I wasn't sure what kind I wanted, and I assigned it to our "figure it out later" list. As I investigated the options, I became enamored of the Stokke Tripp Trapp.

I love the fact that it grows up with your child, is stylish and not "kid-cluttery" or plastic, and that it enables your child to pull up directly to the table and eat with the family. (Of course, we are still working on the whole "eating as a family at the table" concept, but what is life if you don't have areas for improvement?!)

The downside? You guessed it. It's spendy. The chair, with the infant insert you need for a babe and shipping and handling, would be close to $300. That's a major investment, my friends.

So I did what I always do. I got on Craigslist and looked around. Found a fantastic knock-off for fifty bucks and a drive to Kansas City. All I had to do was order a new cushion cover, and I had my pull-up-to-the-table grow-with-your-child modern-design wooden chair. The baby digs it, too:

couscous and dressing

2011-10-10T09:03:00.000-05:00

I unashamedly love couscous. Everything about it: the blink-and-you-miss-it cooking time, the chewy texture, the nutty flavor. It's probably my favorite starch to prepare with a standard protein-veggie-starch dinner. I have made some refinements over the years: I always cook it in chicken broth, I do it all in one pot, and I've recently starting adding a dressing.

My husband is more of a rice lover. He will eat couscous, but he complains that it's too dry sometimes. So, I came up with the idea of a sauce to put over it. He loves it, I love it, and we're all happy. Try it yourself!

1 C dry couscous
1 C chicken broth
2 T olive oil
2 T white wine vinegar
1/2 t dijon mustard
1 T cherry jam (or whatever flavor you fancy)
salt and pepper

Bring the chicken broth to a boil in a small pot with a lid. Once it boils, stir in the couscous, cover, and remove from heat. In a small bowl, whisk together the remaining ingredients, seasoning to taste. After five or six minutes, unlid the couscous and fluff if up with a fork. Pour the dressing over the couscous and serve. Makes four servings.

of water and the spirit (on baptism day)

2011-10-09T16:43:00.000-05:00

Today is my baby girl's baptism. People at church have been asking me essentially since the day she was born when we were going to have her baptized. I never felt any real rush. See, my parents never had my brother, or my sister, or myself, baptized as babies. Instead, we waited until we could make a profession of faith on our own (at about twelve for each of us). In our United Methodist Church, this is totally acceptable.

I get a fair amount of people who call me in my pastoral office, wanting me to baptize their children immediately. The youngest child I ever was called about was two weeks old. I was impressed that the mother felt like she could have an event like a baptism - I don't think I left my bedroom for two weeks after the baby was born, much less the house!

At the heart of this urgency is a misunderstanding of baptism, I think. See, I'm not having my baby baptized as some kind of insurance of salvation. That is, I don't think that without baptism God's grace doesn't rest on her. Instead I see a twofold symbolism in the water that will be dribbled down her forehead this morning: the recognition that God's grace has been enveloping and enfolding her since the moment she came earthside; and the promise that we will raise her within a family of faith, with the baptism as the inititation into that family.

I don't believe that the unbaptized are destined for damnation. First of all (whole other post), I can't say with certainty that there is a hell, what it is like, or who you might find there. Secondly, baptism isn't some kind of magic that changes the person that you are. Before baptism and after it, we continue to be people who try and fail. And get a new chance. And try harder and fail better.

But the difference is that you are a person who tries and fails and gets new chances within a community of faith that is all oriented in the same direction (more or less). You have people who have your back. You have people who show you God's face of mercy and love and accountability over and over. And you have people who can remind you that God's grace extends outward and over all of us - every part of us - all the time. Whether we realize it or not.

This is why the age of your baptism is immaterial. Does a seventy-year-old understand the mystery of this sacrament any more than a seven-month-old? The manner is also inconsenquential. Wanna be dipped? We can do that (we just have to go to a river or lake or a Baptist or Disciples church). Wanna be dripped upon? We can do that to, out of lovely little ornamental fonts. The water is just a sign. It's a powerful sign, one that participates in a reality greater than itself, but it's still just a sign.

So today, we celebrate God's grace toward all of us, and the fact that our baby will be beloved and raised in faith by this congregation, and many others, in her life. She is blessed, we are blessed, and God's grace abounds.

melbourne and the dalai lama

2011-10-08T14:17:00.000-05:00

I was not the star pupil of my Divinity School class. Those people are off doing their Ph.D.s (drool), enjoying higher discourse with the great minds of our time. No, I was solidly near the upper middle. I got a half-tuition scholarship when I applied, which helped a lot. So much that I'll only be paying off the loans for another ten years! But then, for my third year, I was offered late membership in a very special group: the Turner Scholars. Yes, Dollar General funded my education. And I'm proud. But I shop at Target. Anyway, I'm not actually blogging about the Turner Program today, although it was amazing and I got many free lunches (both literally and figuratively).

I'm actually blogging about another unbelievable opportunity that I was offered. I received a letter in the summer of 2009 that I'd been anonymously nominated by one of my professors to attend the World's Parliament of Religion in Melbourne, Australia, that December. Oh, and did I mention that it was all expenses paid? Flight, meals, registration, lodging - everything except souvenirs and alcoholic beverages. The Henry Luce Foundation (aka the "Time Life" people) wanted to pay thousands and thousands of dollars so I could go listen to delightful lectures. The funniest part was at the bottom of the letter, where they asked if I wanted to go or not. The only thing that would possibly have barred me from going is if I was pregnant and due to deliver during that week. Did I want to go!? Yes!!

All throughout that semester I read up, had meetings, researched, and took a class on Comparative Theology to prepare for this experience. I quickly discovered that the Dalai Lama was to be the keynote speaker of the plenary addresses. This was truly the chance of a lifetime. When else would I be within spitting distance of a man who is arguably the greatest religious leader of our time?

We boarded the plane in Nashville on a cold November morning. The itinerary: Nashville to Raleigh, Raleigh to Los Angeles, Los Angeles to Auckland, Auckland to Brisbane, Brisbane to Melbourne. Ouch. My strategy was just to set my watch to the local Mebourne time from the second we stepped on the plane and then take sleeping pills to put my body on their schedule. It actually worked pretty well! I read three books in the twenty hours from Los Angeles to Auckland. I was traveling with three other students and a professor, and we made sure to get up and do stretches regularly.

An aside: we traveled Qantas Air from Los Angeles onward, and it was amazing. Free unlimited Australian wines, excellent food, good movies, kind servicepeople. Loved it.

We stepped off the plane in Melbourne and the heat was astonishing. I had left Nashville dressed in pants, sweater, scarf, moccasins. I quickly realized this would be unsuitable dress for the opposite season! We made our way from the airport to the hostel and started to get our bearings. Hostel is kind of a misleading name for the place we were staying. It was more like a hotel where you share bedrooms and bathrooms with people. Liz, the other gal who had come from Vanderbilt, and I shared a room with two lovelies from Union Theological Seminary. We were really near the city center of Melbourne.

Thus began the dual adventure of attending the Parliament and exploring Melbourne. Melbourne is a fantastic city. It is new (as is most of Australia - younger than the East Coast), having been born of a gold rush in the mid-1800s. Aussies were like the perfect mix of British properness and American entrepreneurialism. There was none of the aloof British snootiness that we had (rightfully) incurred as American visitors there during our honeymoon. Rather, the Melbournians I met had a kind of curious admiration of the American way of doing things, but didn't seem willing to go as far as America had in sprawling suburbs and business ventures. They also had the biggest and best open market I had ever seen, and the largest operational network of trams as public transport.

When I wasn't skipping sessions so I could soak up all of Melbourne's early-summer amazingness, I was inside the convention center listening to people from around the world divulge the essences of their religious experiences. It was mind-blowing. I heard from Christians, Jews, Muslims, Sufis, Sikhs, atheists (who picketed the Parliament, which I found ironic), Buddhists, Hindus, scientologists, Shintos, and so many more that I've already forgotten. I spent a lot of time in a conference of other seminarians, where we helped push one another to think more fully about the possibilities of global religious education and comparative theology in the future. It was a perfect environment for germination of ideas and friendships.

I've been wanting to take Jeff to Melbourne, but the cost of plane fare alone is enough to put me off for another decade. Also, I never quite learned how to order coffee correctly. But I will always be so thankful for this opportunity that dropped onto my lap and into my life. Whenever I see a Time magazine, I pause for a moment of gratitude that the sales from this publication helped send me on one of my finest adventures.

r-12 and saying goodbye

2011-10-05T09:17:00.001-05:00

Growing up, we were always a cat household. There was a stray gerbil here and there that I thought I could handle after keeping the class pet, but they always died of wet tail within a few weeks. I think I got some fish and tried to keep them in a tupperware . . . once again, didn't work well. (It didn't help anything that Pet World was three blocks from my house.)

We had Madison first. We got her at the shelter and she was the sweetest cat. She was gentle and loving and she got hit by a car near our driveway. This is the price you pay for having an outdoor cat near a busy street, I suppose. I think her burial was the first time I saw my stepdad cry.

Then, we got Cleo because my childhood friend Jessie had gotten her mother a bunch of kittens for Mothers' Day as a surprise and her dad said she had to get rid of them all or he would drown them (true story!). So, I showed up at home with a little white kitten, explaining that I would take care of her and no one would even notice she was there. Needless to say, it didn't exactly work out that way. Cleo may or may not have some kind of congenital birth defect because she is totally antisocial, terrified of being held or petted, and not very bright.

Cleo's plight worsened when Minnie came to live with us. If I remember correctly, my mom got her from a lady whose child attended the daycare where my mom was treasurer. The lady lived out in the country and a bunch of feral cats had been born in her barn. This particular kitten had been shaken around by some farm animal and had to go to the vet for nerve damage. She couldn't recuperate well at the farm, so we took her in "just for a little while." (Something like thirteen years later, she still lives with my stepdad and his wife, as does Cleo.) My theory on Minnie is that the nerve damage never healed well, because she is mean as hell. She doesn't like being touched, frequently claws and bites, is aggressive toward other animals, and gets this twitchy thing in her lower back and tail when she's agitated. She has made it her main life's mission to aggravate Cleo: stealing her food, batting her tail, chasing her around the house. If Cleo was already neurotic and a little "off," living with Minnie has pushed her over the edge into full pathological behavior.

My stepdad really likes giving Minnie and Cleo whipped cream out of a can, and tends to feed them whenever they're "hungry," as opposed to on a schedule. As a result of this, Minnie grew to epic proportions after I left for college. Cleo got even skinnier, because Minnie was eating her food too. I never saw it, but my stepdad claims that Minnie got so fat that she couldn't even stand up to eat anymore. She would lay on her side with her face in the bowl. The picture of this is so mind-blowingly funny to me that my husband and I talk about it on a near-daily basis. However, my stepdad took this as a sign that it was time for an intervention, and put her on a diet. Now she's down to probably somewhere around twenty pounds.

I tell you all this because I like thinking about the cats, and I think they're funny, but also as a preface to the story of R-12. Once upon a time, my husband was the property manager for the camp where we met (he did lots of other stuff too, but overseeing one of the camp properties was in his portfolio). He lived in a trailer on the edge of the property, and one night he and his roommate heard some meowing. It sounded like it was coming from under the trailer. They ignored it, but it continued for a few days and was driving them crazy. So they peeked under the trailer, and found that a cat had given birth to a litter up inside the insulation under the trailer. The kittens had been abandoned, and were crying out for help. Jeff and his roommate Pat decided to keep one of them. They named her R-12, after the grade of insulation in which she had been found.

R-12 is an absolute beauty. As you can see below, she is prone to doing all that cat stuff that is so cute. Through a series of misadventures, she came to be Jeff's cat after he left camp, and then she was our cat after we were married.

Unfortunately, R-12 is also a feral cat. She domesticated pretty well, but she didn't like being touched much, went into frequent crazy spells where she would attack anything, and after we got the dog . . . well, she was never quite the same. The dog loved chasing her around and taunting her. The cat usually won because she still had her claws, but she was antagonistic toward all of us after Pup came around.

When we found out we were going to have a baby, I pretty much knew R-12's days with us were numbered. She didn't do very well with adults who knew how to act around animals. With a baby, or a toddler? I feared the worst. She is not what I would call a good "family pet." The final straw came when I brought home a bag of groceries when I was about seven months pregnant. She jumped up on the counter to sniff them, and when I went to pet her, she reached up and stabbed me in the hand with her claws. It drew quite a bit of blood. If she had done this to me, a human she had known for years who was just trying to give her an affectionate rub, what would she do to a little human pulling her tail!?

So, we took her to the shelter. I was not optimistic about her chances of being adopted, because she is the kind of cat who pulls back into the cage and hisses at you when you try to get her out and play with her. With heavy hearts, we said farewell and went back home to just the Pup. The next day, our good friend Lauren mentioned that she would have taken R-12 - she was looking for a cat with claws to be a playmate for her cat Hank. So we enthusiastically told her to call the shelter and go pick her up - I was absolutely certain she would still be there.

Lo and behold, she had already been adopted!! Sad for Lauren and Hank, but I was overjoyed that someone had taken her into their home already. I hope it was a sweet old cat lady who bends over backward to make R-12 happy. I could never have done that for her after the baby came along. It was hard to say goodbye, but having a little closure on the whole experience made it easier. And we still have all the darling pictures to remember her by.

on vaccinating

2011-10-04T11:39:00.000-05:00

I have been kind of putting off writing this post, because Jeff and I didn't do the best job in completing our homework on vaccinations before Vicki Jo was born. I was traditionally vaccinated as a child, as was Jeff. There are no "obvious" side effects of these immunizations for us . . . whatever you may think those side effects may be. People seem to think that vaccinations cause everything from hyperactivity to autism to sadness while watching those ASPCA commercials with abandoned kittens. However, Jeff does have a wicked case of Crohn's Disease, and we both suffer from seasonal allergies and some probable food sensitivities that we aren't rigorous or committed enough to be able to pick out of our diets.

What link do all of these things have? Immunizations, Crohn's Disease (which is an autoimmune disorder - very similar to rheumatoid arthritis except limited to inflammation in the gut), seasonal allergies, food sensitization? Nothing, I thought. Allergies are just part of life, right? Sometimes people develop terrible life-altering illnesses that cause them acute pain . . . it just happens, right? Then, after creeping around on some blogs that advocate natural parenting, I discovered this book:

I bought it soon thereafter and have been devouring it

This author is highly trained, has tons of experience operating a clinic for children with disorders like autism and hyperactivity, and the book cites research out the wazoo. So, I'm inclined to be a little more open to her views than some other kooks out there.

The essential hypothesis is that the center of immunity and health is the gut. That is where we have our first line of defense against everything the world throws at us: bacteria, stress, toxicity (like car fumes and stuff), etc. If our gut is healthy and the lining is well-sealed, we are able to eliminate things in the way we need to, and nothing bads get into our bloodstream. If it's not, then we get into trouble and all kinds of things can start to go haywire. What causes the gut lining to become leaky? Eating a diet high in processed foods, which throws off the delicate balance of good bacteria that keeps us healthy. Bad bacteria and yeast start to take over and colonize us more because the good bacteria aren't there to keep them in check. One of the symptoms of this kind of colonization is a crazy sweet/starch tooth, because that's what yeast needs to survive and multiply. I see this in Jeff big time. He is nuts for breakfast cereal, candy, rolls, breads, pastries, you name it.

Anyway, what does this book have to do with vaccinations? Well, our traditional vaccination schedule is probably fine for a healthy immune system. Breastfed babies tend to be a lot healthier gut-wise than formula fed (tons of vital health-promoting bacteria in breastmilk). If things are operating the way they should in the digestive tract, the insult that immunizations throw at an immune system can be dealt with. But if your baby is sick with a cold, has eczema, is fed formula without added probiotics . . . then the viruses in immunizations can get out into the system. I don't claim to know what kind of harm (if any) this can cause, but I figure why risk it? Also, multiple vaccinations at once (like the MMR) can be really hard to deal with, because our bodies weren't meant to get measles, mumps, and rubella all at the same time.

Up until now, we have followed a somewhat traditional immunization schedule with the baby. We declined everything at the hospital, and luckily I was negative for Group B strep, so didn't have to worry about all that. At two weeks, one month, two months, and four months, the baby had a number of shots. Sometimes she had as many as five immunizations at one time. I realize in retrospect that that was probably too much. She is primarily breastfed, but she gets a bit of formula. After the four month shots, she slept all day. This to me is a sign that her immune system was working very hard to deal with whatever was going on.

We go this Friday for her six month well-baby appointment, and we are once again scheduled for a number of shots. I have decided to change our plan. Our family doctor (an osteopath) has been supportive of any kind of vaccinating (or not) that we want to do, but I just didn't feel I had good information, so we went with the status quo. Now, I certainly don't know everything, but I feel like I have enough of a handle on it to make some changes. We will delay the schedule that we're on and finish only those series that have to be done within a certain amount of time to retain their effectiveness. Then, we will probably wait several more months for any of the vaccines that can be put off. We will still have everything standard done, just not on the standard schedule. This way, we can be sure that our baby's immune system is functioning at its top level when she goes in for these shots, and that we aren't overloading it with too many things to process at once.

The blogger over at sortacrunchy has really done her homework on this, and I'm following the vaccination schedule she did with her girls: http://sortacrunchy.typepad.com/sortacrunchy/2007/11/our-delayed-vac.html.

I do want to say that I don't know if I believe wholesale in everything the GAPS book promotes. I haven't tried the diet myself, but I'm anxious to once I stop nursing (she recommends not going through the introductory phase of the diet while nursing because the toxic off-loading of the body into the breastmilk can be harmful for baby). I know I'm venturing down the road into crazy pseudo-medicine, so I want to keep my wits about me. And I also know I'm not an expert. I only know my family and my baby, so those are the decisions I will make for us. Everyone has their own circumstances and stories, so just consider my opinion as information for the public domain.

basic beef stew

2011-10-03T10:19:00.000-05:00

Now that we're pretty well into fall, the evenings are cooler and I'm enjoying soups and stews again. Stew is really one of the only leftovers I enjoy, and it seems to get better with time as the flavors come together.

This stew features pretty standard ingredients, but the beer is special. I used the Josiah Miller IPA from Free State Brewery, where I go about once a week and refill my growler with whatever looks good on tap. Hoppy beers are rumored to be excellent for milk production, so just another round of ammunition for me!

Beef Stew
1 slice of thick-cut bacon (1-2 ounces)
1/2 pound stew beef (I used eye round), cut into 1 inch chunks
1 T AP flour
1/2 large yellow union, chopped fine
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 cup ale
2 cups chicken or beef stock
1 t dried rosemary
2 carrots, sliced into 1/2 inch coins
1 large russet potato, sliced into 1/2 inch chunks
salt and pepper

Cut the bacon into 1/4 inch strips horizontally and put into a dry Dutch oven over medium heat. Allow it to render its fat and become crisp. Pull out onto a plate and leave the fat in the pan.

Put the beef into the Dutch oven in a single layer and let it form a crust (don't mess with it until it releases itself from the pan). Turn it and let it get nice and brown on all sides. When it's all browned up, pull it onto the same plate as the bacon.

Put the onions, garlic and rosemary into the fat and meat juice left in the pan. You may have to lower the heat to keep everything from burning at this point. Let the onions and garlic get really soft - leave them for about ten minutes, stirring sometimes.

Sprinkle in the flour and stir it around. Let it cook for one minute.

Add the beer and broth and use a wooden spoon or whisk to scrape up all the brown stuff on the bottom of the pan.

Once it comes up to a boil, add the potato and carrots and slide the bacon and beef and all the juices on the plate back into the pot. Taste it and add as much salt and pepper as you think it needs. After it boils, turn the heat down to low and let it simmer about half an hour.

This is really a full meal in a bowl. I served it with some of Jeff's favorite rolls. Recipe serves two.

I promise, one of these days I will start taking pictures of my food! I just always eat it all before I remember.

on my shelf: the womanly art of breastfeeding

2011-09-30T20:09:00.000-05:00

This post is part of a series on the books I have found absolutely necessary in growing and raising a child so far. For others in the series, click on one of these links.

I always knew I wanted to nurse my child(ren). It makes sense to me on every level: cheaper, more convenient, a great bonding experience, better for baby, etc. I knew from our Bradley class, and from just general mother-online-chattering, that it wasn't always as easy for us as nature had intended. See, our society has pretty much made any exposure of the breasts a terrible, awkward, sinful, immodest . . . well, you get the picture. Add to that some extremely effective and expensive mind manipulation (i.e. marketing) by formula companies, and you come up with my level of exposure to breastfeeding before the baby was born: I had never (even once!) seen a woman feeding her child in this way.

So, it's no surprise that things were rocky for me. I felt totally unsure of what I was doing, and my baby was losing weight rapidly. When she did start to gain weight, it was never as fast as the charts demanded. Even now, six months on Sunday, she weighs just about fourteen pounds. Being a new mother, with all the stresses and strains that go with even the "easiest" baby (which my baby would be classified as on the "frequent screaming" end of that spectrum), and feeling like you are not able to give your baby the important fuel she needs to grow, is crazy-making.

Enter La Leche League. I called for help in the first few days, and a kind leader talked me through my situations and listened sympathetically. She offered assistance, followed up frequently, and just generally made me feel like I wasn't completely insane for wanting to continue with this endeavor. So, I got the La Leche League book.

The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding is way more than just a manual on how to nurse your child. It's a full-blown parenting resource. I devoured it. The book is subdivided into age groupings (birth to two weeks, two weeks to four months, and so on), and I anxiously counted down the days until Vicki Jo made it into the next age category so I could start reading all about what to expect.

And now that we're getting ready to start trying some real foods, there are helps and guidelines on how to do it healthfully for your child. There are suggestions on sleeping, there are little vignettes and stories from women who nursed their children. I will remember some of them forever, I think. Sometimes I was angry at the book because it portrayed nursing as easy and fun, when it was neither for me for a long time. But still, The Womanly Art was always there for me.

I don't think I could possibly have made it this far without this book. And that's why it stays on my shelf.

eat at joe's . . . he kneads the dough!

2011-09-29T14:08:00.000-05:00

Long ago, when I was a little child, my mom was the business administrator for our church in downtown Lawrence. Then she became the treasurer for the childcare center that was housed in the church. To say I spent a little time at church would be a drastic understatement. After I went to junior high, I walked to the church every afternoon to meet her before we went home.

When she didn't feel like cooking (which was often!), we would stop at Joe's Bakery on Ninth Street. Joe's was a little hole-in-the-wall shop that primarily sold doughnuts. They also had cookies and a wide variety of prepared sandwiches. We always got the egg salad on wheat. The bread was a little mushy from sitting in a plastic bag all day, and I loved that quality.

Fast forward fifteen years. You may have read where I posted about the Brewer diet before. The premise of this diet is that a pregnant woman needs to provide her baby and body with excellent fuel full of protein, calories, and salt. These three elements provide for a healthy expansion in blood volume and help to ward off pre-eclampsia. Eggs are an especially important part of the diet, because they provide essential minerals and vitamins and lots of protein for the calories (6 grams in 70 calories. I will never, ever forget those numbers!). Women are instructed to eat two eggs daily, cooked any style.

Now, don't get me wrong. I love eggs. I don't like raw eggs, but I'm down with eggs any other style. But two times a day for forty weeks? That's a lot of eggs. And there are only so many styles: scrambled, over hard, in sandwiches, quiche, huevos rancheros, hard-boiled. I had a fried egg sandwich just about every other day for lunch. And egg salad . . . boy, did I ever have egg salad. Probably three or four times a week. I perfected my recipe, which is simple. Every time I ate it, it took me back to Joe's:

Egg Salad
1 hard-boiled egg
1 sweet miniature gherkin
1 T mayo (or Miracle Whip if you're so inclined)
1 t dijon mustard
1 t pickle juice from the gherkin jar

Cut the egg in half. Pop out the yolk and put it into a bowl. Chop up the white finely. Chop the gherkin to the same dimensions as the egg white. Mix the mayo, mustard, and pickle juice with the egg yolk in the bowl. Stir in the egg white and pickle. Serve on wheat bread, untoasted, with a few leaves of lettuce.

I went on kind of an egg revolt after the baby was born. I felt like I could never see an egg again and be just fine. But I've slowly been working egg salad back into my lunch rotation, and now it takes me back to two times in my life: eating at Joe's with Mom, and the time when I was becoming a Mom myself.

my uniform

2011-09-28T09:25:00.000-05:00

As the time of Vicki Jo's birth drew nearer, I realized I was going to have to give some thought to this whole nursing thing. I had been so focused on having a healthy pregnancy and natural birth that my train of thought had kind of ended there. I read what Dr. Bradley had to say about the first few days after birth, and I knew La Leche League would be a good resource, but so much of it seemed just like pregnancy - every woman (and baby!) is so different. Would I need nursing pads? Would I not? Would a Boppy pillow help me, or just get in the way? Did I need a rocking chair? I chose to go with Jeff's approach on these matters: wait and see (very unusual for me!).

Turns out I didn't need any of that stuff. The one thing I ended up needing, loving, wearing daily, was this tank top from Gilligan & O'Malley:

I have two in white, one in gray, one in black, and I'm about to buy another one in black. They are a steal for the number of times I've worn them: $17 at Target. This tank doesn't have the weird yoke-looking piece in the front that many nursing tanks have that always pops out and looks awkward. It just has a hook that links the fabric into each strap. It is cut generously and hasn't shrunk in the wash. It is convenient and easy. It is my daily uniform: I wear it under a sweater, shirt, or dress every single day. This tank and my rental pump have been the only two things I needed to nurse my baby for the last six months.

more waldorf and montessori

2011-09-27T11:25:00.000-05:00

I posted some of my initial thoughts about Waldorf, Montessori, and the general issue of private schooling for children here. Since then, I've delved into a self-education program about the differences and similarities between the two methods/philosophies, and I think it all boils down to one word: freedom. As a pastor, a Christian, and an American, this jives with what I like to view as the essential theme of my life. Freedom from persecution. Freedom to pursue an abundant life. Freedom as the ultimate gift given to me without cost. Freedom from fear and anxiety.

And for Rudolph Steiner and Maria Montessori, the freedom of the child (who then becomes a free-minded adult, contributing free thoughts to society) was the end goal of education.

The ways they get there, though, are like divergent paths leading through a dark woods and arriving at the same waterfall. Steiner thought that the child needed to be protected. The world of fantasy should be preserved as long as possible (age seven is kind of a magical transition from play to academic learning). Children are free through play, and their minds are allowed to grow in whichever direction they seem inclined.

Montessori, on the other hand, thought that the freedom of the child would be achieved through independence. Reality was very important. Children needed to shed the world of fantasy and become engaged in the world of work. Their work would make them feel valuable and authentic.

I've toured the Montessori school nearest my home that accepts infants beginning at five months. It was bright, spacious, very new, and full of clean lines. The children were working independently but also interacting with grace and courtesy. In the infant room, the babies were friendly and each one was left to his own schedule. State regulation does not permit floorbeds, but they had open cribs with mirrors inside to encourage movement. The school gave me a feeling of peace and industry. It also gave me the feeling of a bleeding wallet - the infant room costs $1095 per month! Ouch. Guess it will remain a fantasy for the time being.

The baby and I have also been doing an eight-week Sweet Peas Garden course at the local Waldorf school. It has been lovely. You can't compare to spending a good amount of time in an environment to see what impression it leaves on you. Ms. Monica, the teacher who leads our time together, is so thoughtful and open. She has given us many articles to read on the nature of Waldorf schooling and also about some of the contrasts between Montessori and Waldorf. Some of these articles are more or less subjective, so I always read with a grain of salt (and the understanding that every child is so very different). I'll post a link to an article I thought was very helpful below. We gather together, make a simple craft while the children and babies play, share stories and songs, discuss our readings for the week, and share a wholesome cake, apples and tea before going home. The environment is fully of softly filtered light (the use of colored silks is important to shield sense impressions), organic and natural shapes, and toys that are nondescript and can be used for many styles of playing.

The thing that both of these enviroments had in common was that everything was accessible to the child. Nothing was off-limits. These rooms were designed so that you don't really have to tell a child "No! Don't touch!" Conflicts can be resolved easily because there are multiple areas for children to play, and different iterations of toys so fighting over an activity is minimized.

The Waldorf school is also expensive, although they offer tuition assistance and a sliding payment scale (which the Montessori school does not). You can't really compare the two, however, since the Montessori facility included year-round, full-day childcare. The Waldorf school was a school - September through May, and accepting children for the "Kindergarten" at about three years.

All in all, both schools made me salivate at the possibilities for growth and development they presented. Both left a bad taste in my mouth with the high cost and lack of diversity across the socioeconomic spectrum. I suppose these are the challenges we face in educating our children.

A helpful link:
http://www.oakmeadow.com/resources/articles/montessori-steiner-dr-joy-coulter.php
In this article, Dee Joy Coulter reviews the intrinsic relatedness between Montessori and Waldorf, and how she sees them balance each other.

five ingredient fix

2011-09-26T10:38:00.000-05:00

I've made my ambivalence about Claire Robinson known before, but you can't argue that the Food Network vixen has a catchy concept. Five ingredients for every recipe (not counting water, salt and pepper). She comes up with some really good stuff, and the simplicity is attractive. Who loves going out to buy fifteen items to make one dinner?

So, in the spirit of Claire Robinson, and because I've started to get chard back in my CSA box, I share my very own five ingredient recipe for today's Munchee Monday.

It starts with egg noodles. Back when the CSA was giving out eggs like no tomorrow (this had to inconveniently come six months after I no longer needed the Brewer diet), I got four dozen. One was included in the share, they gave me another two as a prize for making the drive out to the farm to pick up the shares, and then someone didn't come to get theirs, so that makes four. I know that eggs keep for a long time, but they were dominating valuable fridge space! So I made quiche, ice cream, omelets, and egg noodles. Noodles are so simple and freeze beautifully. Here's how it goes:

2 beaten egg yolks and 1 beaten egg
1/3 C water
2 C AP flour
1/2 t salt

In a small bowl mix the eggs and water. In a large bowl whisk together 1 3/4 C of the flour and the salt. Make a well in the center of the mixture and drop the egg mix into the flour mix. Stir together thoroughly.

Sprinkle kneading surface with flour. Turn dough out and knead until smooth and elastic (about 10 minutes - smooth and elastic feels nice and plump, and when you push into it with your fingertip, it slowly springs back rather than staying indented). Put back in the bowl, cover and let sit for 10 minutes.

Divide kneaded dough into four equal parts. On a lightly floured surface, roll each portion into a rectangle about 12 x 9 inches wide (or if you have a fancy pasta maker, roll it to 1/16 inch thickness). Let the noodle sheets dry, uncovered, for about 20 minutes. Lightly dust dough sheets with flour, and then roll each one into a spiral, making a log shape. Cut with a sharp knife into 1/4 inch strips. Shake them out into long noodles and cut into shorter lengths if desired.

Boil immediately if you want to eat right away. They will cook really fast, like two minutes. If you want to refrigerate, they last about three days. I usually nest them up into five little portions and freeze in a plastic bag. That way you can get out just one portion at a time without them freezing all together. Frozen noodles cook in about five or six minutes. This recipe makes a pound of noodles.

Eggs and flour: ingredients one and two.

Then I took the noodles and made them into a dish with bacon and swiss chard. You can substitute any hardy green you have on hand (collards, spinach, cabbage, kale). If you don't feel like torturing yourself, or you don't have forty-eight eggs to use up, you could certainly just buy a package of dried egg noodles as well. The inspiration for this dish came from one that my old roommates Steph and Julie used to make. Julie is a vegetarian, so there was no bacon, but cabbage and buttered noodles was always an amazing dinner and cost like four dollars.

Egg noodles
1 small bunch Swiss chard
1 ounce bacon (about one large slice)
1-2 T white wine vinegar
salt and pepper

Put a pot of salted water on to boil. Cook the egg noodles until tender (they don't take as long as regular pasta - maybe just four or five minutes.) Cut the bacon into little bits (like 1/4 inch horizontally). Place in a dry pan over medium heat. Once it is crisp and has rendered its fat, pull out onto a plate lined with a paper towel. Drop in the chard and let it wilt and cook in the bacon fat. Once it's tender, drop the heat to low and put in the vinegar. Season with salt and pepper. Put the bacon back in the pan. Toss the drained noodles into the pan. Enjoy! This recipe serves just one.

on my shelf: spiritual midwifery

2011-09-23T21:20:00.000-05:00

This is the third in a series called "On My Shelf." In this series, I talk about the books I have found indispensable in growing and birthing a little human. For other book reviews, check out this, this, and these three links.

Today, it's time to get serious and talk about Ina May.

My midwives were very uncomfortable with me keeping up my normal pace as the end of my pregnancy neared. I wouldn't say I was quite put on bedrest, but I was instructed to stop working and spend as much time as possible laying on my left side. This helped ease some of the load on my kidneys and keep the fluids circulating around my body a little better. I didn't really mind (especially because none of my shoes fit anymore and that made it hard to go anywhere!), but I also didn't really heed the advice. I still worked half-days, and I still left the house pretty much every day. I hadn't totally made the connection that the stress that permeates my life and profession had crept from my mind down to my body, and was making my womb a less-than-perfect environment for my little one.

One of the places I went frequently was to the library. Topeka has a fantastic newly-remodeled public library, and I decided I would take advantage of all this free time I had on my hands all of a sudden to read books I'd always been curious about. Ina May Gaskin's books were on that list. Ina May is somewhat of a hero in natural childbirth circles. She's a lay midwife who began her training when she and her husband Stephen traveled around the country in a caravan of buses, seeking an alternative lifestyle "off the grid." They finally settled in rural south central Tennessee and created The Farm. When we lived in Nashville and worked at camp, we were very close to The Farm, so I always felt a special kinship when reading about their adventures in that part of the country.

Ina May learned how to deliver babies from delivering babies, and from old obstetrics textbooks. Over time, she trained many other midwives. Her rates of intervention, cesarean, and extreme pain in childbirth were remarkably low. In my opinion, this was due to a number of factors: the low-stress alternative lifestyle advocated by Farm members; the excellent nutrition and care that pregnant women received; and the lack of fear that surrounds the experience of birth in their culture. She even invented a special position called the Gaskin Maneuver to help ease a "stuck" baby's shoulder around the pubic bone.

Her amazing book Spiritual Midwifery is part history, part textbook, and part testimonial.

She explains how she came to be a midwife, how women who want to learn how to deliver babies should treat their patients, and she allows women to tell their stories. Reading all of these positive birth stories was the perfect curative for the anxiety and impatience that were wracking my brain as week thirty-seven dragged into week thirty-eight into week thirty-nine. Plus, you can't help but get a kick out of their special Farm dialect: everything is "groovy," "far out," "orgasmic."

Reading this book helped me realize a few things during birth. Her main emphasis is that the feelings and movements that get the baby in are the same ones that get the baby out. She encourages physical closeness and touching between father and mother during the birth. She wants the mother to embrace her own power and strength in bringing new life into the world. She also claims that all of the different sphincter muscles in the body are connected in a way. If you keep your mouth loose, your cervix will loosen faster. I found this to be true in my experience. As long as I kept my mouth and jaw loose, things progressed well. (The pitocin didn't hurt either.)

If Dr. Bradley was like my funny old-fashioned but forward-thinking father, Ina May was my braid-wearing, patchouli-scented earth mother. She told me I was capable of this thing I was about to do, and she kept it real. Women who complained during birth or who said they were scared were often labeled "chicken s**t." I loved that kind of grittiness. It was like, "Yeah, this hurts. Let's get past that most obvious fact and talk about the beauty and power of it."

Ina May still practices midwifery at The Farm, and my dream is to be able to birth there with her or another one of the midwives someday. I'm not sure they'll ever take me, since I now have a history of borderline pregnancy-induced hyptertension. (Part of what keeps their rates of intervention so low is that they really only accept perfectly healthy women to give birth there. But, to their credit, this protects the safety of women who truly need the hospital to give birth safely.) But a girl can dream, right?

multiply life by the power of two

2011-09-20T21:02:00.000-05:00

Jeff and I were really the first ones out of all our friends to get married. Apparently 24 and 25 are very young ages to tie the knot these days. In my family, I was by far the youngest. My sister and brother were both closer to thirty before they chose to take the leap with their partners. Part of that was foisted on me by this ordination thing I'm trying out (ha!), which prohibits any "marriage-like living situations" for me as a pastoral leader. Part of it was just knowing that Jeff was the end of the line for me.

A lot of our friends have asked us at one time or another what marriage means, or what it's like, or why we chose it for ourselves. It's kind of a hard question for me. I don't believe in love at first sight - at least not for me. Maybe for someone else. And I don't particularly believe in soulmates. Again, not for me. I don't think that Jeff is the only person on earth that could possibly be my mate. I just haven't met any of the others!

But there's something I realized around our second anniversary. There's a different kind of soulmate: the one you grow into, rather than just always being. Jeff and I are growing into those kind of mates. We will continue to do that for the rest of our lives. We weren't born knowing each others' thoughts or finishing each others' sentences. But we do it a heck of a lot more now than we did eight years ago.

To me, the best thing about being married is that someone is always in your corner. There's an old Indigo Girls song that talks about the beauty of a loving partnership:

So we're okay, we're fine /
Baby I'm here to stop your cryin' /
Chase all the ghosts from your head /
I'm stronger than the monster beneath your bed /
Smarter than the tricks played on your heart /
We'll look at them together then we'll take 'em apart /
Adding up the total of our love that's true /
Multiply life by the power of two.

That's really how I feel about Jeff. He is the ultimate problem-solver, helper, brainstormer. He helps me understand other peoples' points of view. He gets me to see alternatives to sticky situations. He gives me comfort and camaraderie when I feel like I'm all alone. There are still many ways that I'm my own person, and I'm sure there are parts of me he will never know and understand (and vice versa). But being with someone and experiencing life through a kaleidoscope that multiplies every joy and divides every sorrow is the most unbelievable blessing. I thank God for it.

the whole chicken!

2011-09-19T09:34:00.001-05:00

[This post featured at Sortacrunchy's "Your Green Resource"]

Like most of meat-eating America, I used to gravitate toward the boneless, skinless chicken breasts at the store. They were neat, lean, easy to cook . . . and they cost more than any other cut. Additionally, because I'm a freak and always wanted to make sure they were totally cooked before eating, I would cook them until they were tough and dry. I would cut into them repeatedly during the cooking process (to see if they were still pink) and release all the juice from inside the meat.

My husband has always favored dark meat. It's juicier, usually more tender, and it's more forgiving when you cook it.

And a whole chicken? I thought that cooking a whole chicken was insane. Don't you have to wash it first, and spread icky chicken germs all over your ever-loving kitchen? Doesn't it take eighteen hours to cook? Isn't it a huge amount of meat?

A few Christmases ago, though, I asked my family to gift me with cookbooks. My brother and his wife gave me one called The 150 Best American Recipes.

I have never really had a dud of out of this cookbook. Some of the recipes are fussy, requiring specialty ingredients or tricky techniques. But some are so blissfully simple.

One of the recipes I tried was for a salad with chicken from the famous San Francisco restaurant Zuni Cafe. It was one of the afore-mentioned fussy recipes. There was a bread salad, and greens, and you had to roast a chicken and then wait for it to cool to shred and put over the bread salad. I skipped the salad part and decided to just make the chicken. It was magic. Here were the main pointers that converted me into a whole-bird person:

* Buy a small chicken! Most of the ones you will see at the store are like five or six pounds. Dig around and find the smallest one. Don't go above three or three and a half pounds.

* Let the chicken dry in the fridge first for the crispest skin. This sounds bizarre and illness-inducing, and it's not for the squeamish. But if you salt a chicken and then leave it uncovered in the back of your fridge for like a day, the skin will tighten and dry out and when you roast it it will be so deliciously crackly.

* Roast it at the highest heat you can muster without totally smoking out your kitchen. They recommend 450, I think, but we don't have a hood vent. So I usually go around 400 or 425. This cuts the cooking time down a lot.

* Use a thermometer to check the internal temperature of the chicken! Don't just cut into it over and over. You're looking for 165 when you stick it in between the thigh and body.

So here's the "recipe," which is really just a way to do it.

1 2-3 lb chicken
Sage leaves (optional)
4 garlic cloves
salt and pepper

A day or two before you're going to cook the chicken, uncover it, work the skin up around the breast and thighs, and stick a whole peeled garlic clove and a sage leaf or two between the skin and meat on each side of the breast and each thigh. Season thoroughly with plenty of salt and pepper, both inside and outside the bird. Allow it to sit, uncovered, in the fridge until you're ready to cook.

Preheat the oven to 425. Take a cast-iron skillet and let it get very hot on the stove. Drop the chicken in breast-side down, and let it cook for two minutes. Then flip the bird using tongs and transfer to the hot oven. After ten minutes, flip it over again. After ten more minutes, flip it again so the breast is up. Leave it for five to ten more minutes, then check the temperature. Let it cook, breast side up, until the internal temp is 165. Pull it from the oven and let it rest ten minutes, then carve and enjoy.

This recipe will really only serve two or three people. So, if you have more than that, roast another chicken at the same time.

I love this recipe. I make it probably every other week. I save the carcasses after we're finished and use them to make chicken stock:

chicken carcasses
three carrots, unpeeled
three stalks celery (you can skip this - I personally hate buying celery because I never use it all before it gets all limp and weird)
one whole onion
three garlic cloves
salt
peppercorns

Cut the carrots and celery into two inch chunks. Cut the onion into quarters. Put all ingredients into a large pot or Dutch oven and fill with enough water to cover everything. Bring to a rolling boil, then cover and reduce to a simmer. The longer you simmer, the better. Don't tell the fire department - I often leave it on low and let it sit overnight. Once you're satisfied with the taste and seasonings, let it cool completely. Strain out all the solids and discard. Put it back in the pot and let it sit in the fridge for several hours. Most of the fat will rise to the surface. Skim it off with a spoon and discard. Then you can use it, or I freeze it in ice cube trays and then pop out the cubes and keep them in a plastic bag in the freezer. Each cube is usually about two tablespoons.

There you have it - a two-for-one on Munchee Monday. Really, though - if you have never considered becoming a whole chicken person, try it sometime. It's not really that hard, and you make a statement to the poulty industry that you're not interested in breeding and genetically modifying chickens so they have Dolly Parton breasts.

on my shelf: husband-coached childbirth

2011-09-16T22:15:00.001-05:00

Today I will give the second installment of those books that I've found indispensable in birthing and raising a child thus far. To see some of my other book reviews, check out this link and these three links. But today, we're going back to the start.

I first got turned on to the crazy genius of Dr. Bradley way back in my first year of Divinity School. The wife of a fellow student posted a flier advertising for her Bradley classes, and my interest was piqued. This was a woman whose prowess in child-bearing and -rearing I really respect, and I knew that she had done it naturally and was embracing a similar kind of lifestyle to what I hoped for our family someday. So I started poking around on our great big internet, and found out the basic facts.

Dr. Robert Bradley was an obstetrician who practiced in the mid-twentieth century. He had grown up on a farm and was convinced from watching animal births that birth didn't have to be the painful, frightening experience that our culture insists that it is. Animals appeared to give birth without pain, after making careful preparations and entering into total relaxation. So, he started practicing with low-income single mothers and the results were astonishing. By teaching some very specific techniques and fulfilling six basic needs of the laboring woman, the vast majority of women under his care were able to give birth without any medication or intervention. So, he passed on his knowledge to a family called the Hathaways, who really became the big Bradley evangelizers.

Jeff and I found a Bradley class in our area that was starting up right at my twentieth week of pregnancy. The class goes for twelve weeks, two hours per class (although our chatty class frequently stretched into three hours and more!) - making it one of the longest and most comprehensive childbirth preparation classes. It was the best choice we made in all of our pregnancy. Our instructor, Amber, was so deeply knowledgeable and passionate about birth and maintaining the health of the pregnant woman.

The book that goes along with the course is called Husband-Coached Childbirth. Say what you will about the title (old-fashioned, not everyone who has a baby has a husband, etc), but the book is fantastic.

The book is charming and kooky. Dr. Bradley starts to feel like your slightly crazy but brilliant great-uncle. He has theories on why women shouldn't wear underwear. He encourages husbands and expectant wives to continue their intimacy with enthusiasm (and detail!). But when it comes down to it, he reduced his rate of intervention and surgery to what was absolutely required by the biological statistics. There are situations where a cesarean is absolutely necessary, but only about three percent of the time. That was his rate.

He outlines nutrition, exercise, all stages of labor and birth, and what you can expect emotionally and physically in the period immediately following birth. His was the book that I made sure I had on my nightstand as the baby and I were recovering in bed.

And, as I've noted elsewhere, the class really bonded us together. Jeff and I got closer, he became totally sold on the notion of natural childbirth and became my greatest supporter and coach, and our class has enjoyed some great times together and continues to meet regularly for playgroup and cookouts. Because of the nature of the class, the moms that I'm now friends with have great insights for me. And we owe it all to Dr. Bradley!

Seriously, if you're at all interested in returning to some of the biological roots of childbirth, and birthing in relaxation and total knowledge of what is happening, read this book. Take a class if you can, but if you can't, at least read the book. There will be parts that have you shaking your head and giggling, but you will walk away with an incredible foundation, and wonder why your doctor didn't tell you this stuff.

the clutter murders

2011-09-15T12:25:00.000-05:00

For those who are not fanatical Kansas natives (called Jayhawkers - there's your crossword trivia for the day) and don't know about the horrific Clutter murders of 1959 in Holcomb, Kansas: the Clutters were a well-off farm family. Two marauders were convinced that they had bunches of money and valuables hidden in their house, so they broke in, held them hostage, then savagely axed the whole family to death. Turns out there were no valuables. Oops. The murderers were found pretty immediately, tried, and neatly dispatched (hanged). Truman Capote came to Kansas and wrote a little story about called In Cold Blood. I'm sure he shocked the hell out of Southwestern Kansas with his gayness.

My mom grew up not fifty miles from Holcomb, and all she would ever remark on this incident (that happened when she was eight) was that that was when they started to lock their doors at night.

But, happily for you, this post isn't actually about the Clutter murders of 1959. It's about the clutter murders of 2011. That's right, folks. I'm taking you on a tour of the dark bowels of my home. These four areas that I'm determined to clutter-bust before the year is out.

Don't know about you all, but clutter makes me feel chaotic. Watching "Hoarders" is scary. Some of my relatives have been on the line of problem "collecting," and I've had to clean out too many great-grandmas' and grandparents' houses to ever, EVER become a packrat. Unfortunately, my husband hasn't had the same experiences, and loves to come home with new little tidbits of junk.

We moved homes every year from 2007 through 2010, and moving is an fantastic motivator to get rid of all your old crap so you don't have to U-Haul it anywhere. I've made it my mission to only have one of anything, so Goodwill has benefited mightily from my prunings. Alas, we've been in our home in Topeka for almost fifteen months now, and some detritus has begun accumulating.

First: Jeff's closet.

We have a bad habit of just leaving things in the big plastic Rubbermaid bins, rather than storing it more attractively. This is a symptom of my frugality, as I'm hesitant to buy shelving even though we need it. This just needs a good once-over.

Next up, the pantry:

Our house is old and funny and has lots of nooks and crannies that are perfect for tossing junk when you're in a hurry. The pantry sits under the staircase, and extends its entire length. We use the top shelf for food, and the bottom for the stuff we would put in a garage if we had a garage (dog food, Jeff's tools and milk crates, charcoal for BBQ, etc). I'm not totally sure how to solve this space issue until we have a garage, but I can at least neaten it up.

Then, upstairs:

This one is really Jeff's to deal with, since for some reason he absolutely despises putting his clothes away after I launder and fold them. But he won't do it until I twist his arm, so I just need to get started on the arm-twisting.

And this. Kind of like the pantry-garage, this is the stuff I would put in the basement if we had a basement. Old journals, baby and maternity clothes I'm saving for next time (!), art supplies. Instead of a basement, they live in a corner of our giant upstairs loft-bedroom. Again, just need shelving to neatly store this stuff. In fact, I'd kind of like to see if I can't consolidate it into the pantry-garage and use this corner for the baby's "prepared environment."

Wish me luck! I feel like to really complete this endeavor, I'll have to take a few days off work with the baby at the sitter. And there's the small matter of getting Jeff on board . . .

cold weather cooking

2011-09-14T10:24:00.001-05:00

[Note: This post was submitted as part of Sortacrunchy's "Your Green Resource."]

Our weather has finally turned to fall. Today is gray and wet, and it won't top 70. I don't think we'll turn the air on again. Foremost on my mind: how will I keep my baby warm this winter? We are on gas heat, and I typically keep the thermostat at 65 (yes, I hear your gasps. Don't act like I haven't told you I'm ridiculously cheap). Young baby might be in mittens and booties all winter long!

After I get finished thinking about that, my mind turns to recipes. When it's hot, I loathe turning on the stove even for a few minutes. When it's cold, I want things to simmer away all day. My mom used to make ham and beans with cornbread on winter evenings, so I have a memory imprinted of that smell. This recipe is a good back-burner bubbler. Soaking the beans ahead of time is key.

Red Beans & Sausage
(adapted from Everyday Food)

1 lb spicy andouille sausage
1 lb dry red beans
1 onion (we were out and I used like 2 T onion powder), chopped fine
2 cloves garlic (we were out (what!? It was a hard week and I didn't make it to the store) so I used 1 t garlic powder), minced
4 1/2 C water or chicken stock (I used a mix of the two)
salt and pepper

Rinse and drain the beans and pick through them for any little rocks or shriveled beans. Fill a bowl with beans and water enough to cover by two inches. Soak beans for at least six hours - overnight is even better. Drain beans.

Cut sausages in half lengthwise, and then into chunks. Place into a large Dutch oven on medium heat. Allow to cook until crisp and plenty of fat has rendered out. Pull sausage out and drain on a paper towel-lined plate.

Place onions and garlic into Dutch oven in sausage fat. Cook until quite soft - maybe seven or eight minutes. Add drained beans and water/chicken stock. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer, covered, until beans are tender. This depends on your water quality (hardness or softness), how long they soaked, and the alignment of the stars. Just test one after half an hour and see if it's good.

Once beans are done, put sausage back into the pot and cook until heated through. Serve with brown rice or cornbread and hot sauce.

same faces, new places

2011-09-12T09:39:00.000-05:00

Do you ever feel like there are only so many faces and personalities in the world? Like, there are platonic forms of people or something? Somewhere around college-aged, I started to feel like every new person I met reminded me exactly of someone I already knew. I have had the good fortune to meet a lot of different people, but it seems there are only about fifty actual people in the world, and they each have fifty variations.

If I can't figure out who someone reminds me of, it bugs the bejesus out of me until I can place them. It's like not being able to remember a word that's on the tip of your tongue.

Just this last weekend, I was doing a wedding. The best man was delayed in Milwaukee and wasn't able to make it to the rehearsal. So, when I met him just before the wedding on Saturday, he immediately struck me. It was John Hodges, a guy I'd been to Divinity School with. Only it wasn't John Hodges, it was Robert Glaubius. Robert Glaubius = John Hodges. Of course, I don't know either of them well enough to identify them completely as one person. But the aura they gave off: the way they looked, talked, smiled . . . it seemed awfully similar.

Just another day inside my strange thoughts!

on my shelf: in a montessori home

2011-09-10T15:39:00.000-05:00

I want to write a weekly series on books that I have found formative and informational for our growing family thus far. These are the books that make up my the "parenting" section on my shelf. Some are long, some are short (some even have pictures!). Some of them disagree with one another, but the thing that keeps them all on my shelf is that they made me have an a-ha! moment about my baby and her relationship to our family.

First up is a very short volume called In A Montessori Home. This was recommended to me by the talented April of Goose Designs. She is a Montessori Assistant to Infancy, and helped me understand how to apply some Montessori principles to our home life.

I bought it through the website of the North American Montessori Teachers' Association. It is by Sarah Moudry. It is primarily composed of pictures of various ages of children in their home settings. The book focuses on children aged 0-3. What I absolutely love about it is the resource lists. Moudry tells you exactly where to look for Montessori-inspired furniture, clothing, diapers, toys, feeding equipment, and more. It is a very accessible book, and could be a first read for anyone looking at making some changes in their home environment. It is also quite inexpensive. This is the one I had my husband look at when I went on my little Montessori bender, because I knew it would keep his attention and offer some quick talking points. Also, it's not very dogmatic. Some of the Montessori stuff I run across seems very rigid - like if you get the tiniest detail wrong you might as well not be trying to implement any of it. Moudry is accommodating, and offers solutions that will work for lots of families, rather than insisting that you scrap all your baby's stuff and start from scratch.

However, for some of you, this book might just whet your appetite. Moudry doesn't go very in-depth, rather, she recommends some heavier hitters at the end in a "further reading" list. It did help my imagination, though, to see what different people have done in their homes with this philosophy.

All in all, a keeper.

my main mug

2011-09-09T09:53:00.000-05:00

We have a lot of coffee mugs in our church office. I could probably choose from about sixty. But this is my mug. I just wanted this mug so badly that I walked all the way to the parlor and the dishwasher and retrieved it. Something about this mug makes me happy, and a little nostalgic. It makes me want to get things done. As you can see, it sits atop my to-do list, which I hope will shrink to zero items by the end of today (fat chance). It also perfectly holds eight ounces of coffee and four ounces of milk, which are proportions of magical renown for my productivity. How did I ever stop drinking coffee for ten months again?

the year of magical children

2011-09-08T10:28:00.000-05:00

. . . (continued from yesterday)

So, while I was awaiting my Peace Corps country assignment (that never materialized), I knew a needed a job. As a side note, those three-odd months I spent unemployed were the worst. That was the longest I'd been without a job in years, and it drove me absolutely mad to have no shape to my day.

I looked on the USD 497 employment website and found that I was eligible for some jobs as a paraeducator. This is a really fancy name for a teacher aide. I applied, interviewed, and was accepted at Hillcrest Elementary. Working at Hillcrest was kind of a blast from the past. It wasn't my elementary school (sadly, Centennial closed while I was in college), but I knew lots of friends from high school that had gone there.

Most of my job at Hillcrest was to be a general assistant to Kim Walker, who taught first grade. I rotated around a bit, sometimes helping in kindergarten, sometimes in second grade, and always monitoring recess. I also spent some time each week one-on-one with a boy named Ziad who has autism. But the lion's share of my time was with these amazing small people:

Hillcrest is very close to the University of Kansas, which is a large public school that attracts many international students. Naturally, some of those international students have children who are also international. Thus, about two-thirds of the children you see above were learning English as a second, third, or fourth language. Hillcrest has a special focus as an English language learning school.

I had been quite apprehensive about taking this job, because I'd never really seen myself as a "kids" kind of person. I am the youngest in my family by a stretch, and I never babysat or put myself in situations where children were around. I didn't know if I would be able to reach the children, or if I would be able to communicate in such a way that they would understand.

It ended up being the most positive experience of my life to date. The year I spent with those kids was truly magical. I say magical because they were like a tonic for my soul. Their optimism, the freshness of life for them, their zest for learning and fun . . . it was like being a little kid again for me too. Best of all, the job was one where I could work all day and then completely leave it at the school. I mean, of course the kids were on my mind, but I didn't have to make any lesson plans or have meetings or go to conferences. I just did what I was told and enjoyed myself.

That year, I focused on healing from the death of my mother (and helping my stepdad work through some of that as well), working out, yoga, writing poetry, hanging out with really good friends, singing, and being around young souls. And I began to hone in on what God seemed to be saying to me about my life's work. I had been denying a call from God for some years at this point, and without a lot of the noise that had been in my life previously, I was really able to hear it clearly.

Sometimes I wish I could go back to that year, but it is a moment frozen in time. They say you can't step into the same river twice, and I know that's true. But the lessons I learned from teaching first-graders stay with me: work hard, then run it off at recess. Sing silly songs. Ask if you don't understand. Keep your hands to yourself. And the kids gave me a great gift: feeling confident in the knowledge that I could handle one of these myself someday:

peace corps

2011-09-07T09:47:00.000-05:00

At the beginning of my final semester of college I went into a panic. I had no clue what the next step was, and I had neglected to take any of those pesky tests that you need to do little things like go to law school or business school or anything school. I was graduating summa cum b average, and I certainly hadn't applied for any fellowships. My majors - Religion and Creative Writing - left me few workable skills, and I had studied Latin, which gave me no useful language experience.

So what did I do? What any right-minded Democrat who enjoyed helping people would do! I applied for the Peace Corps. I also applied to be a New York City Teaching Fellow. And, finally, to hedge my bets, I applied to the one type of school that didn't require a GRE: Divinity School! I applied to Union Theological Seminary and Vanderbilt Divinity School. I was accepted to both, so that left me a little cushion.

I was also accepted to teach in a special-ed classroom as a New York City Teaching Fellow. Making the decision between the two adventures was one of my hardest. I could stay with my best friend of all time Amanda in the City, creating new and wilder adventures than ever, or I could go off by myself across the seven seas and a life of total immersion in a new culture. What to do?

I chose the Peace Corps. It seemed so exotic and fun. Also, I was attracted to the sort of accessibility and standard-issue feel of the program. I went to their New York recruiting and training office, I had interviews, I had blood tests (they took sooo much blood. It was like a quart). I learned that I have no health impairments or chronic illnesses! Yay! Curiously, my one strange result from the blood tests was that I have high iron, which is extremely rare for women of childbearing age. I was all ready to go. I set aside my fears of being a woman alone in a strange land, and I steeled myself for the shock of going to a place where I was not part of a majority group.

I waited for my country assignment. We graduated! And I kept waiting. I moved back in with my stepdad in Kansas (very temporarily of course). And I waited more. I went and worked for what I thought was my final summer at Mountain TOP. I kept waiting. Jeff and I prepared for an ultra-long distance relationship. Then, finally, I heard the sad news: I had no real skills for the Peace Corps. They wanted people who had science or math or medical backgrounds, who spoke French or Spanish, who knew how to teach people English or design water filtration systems or organize community health projects. I knew how to diagram Latin sentences and write papers on Hindu cosmology. I was told that there would still be a placement for me, but it would be a long time coming.

I was advised to get a job in the meantime. So, I scanned the web and found openings for the local school district. I could be a para-educator in an elementary school. I had never really been around kids much, so it made me nervous, but I needed a job! . . . . (to be continued tomorrow!)

how i came to love bad tv

2011-09-06T12:04:00.000-05:00

When Jeff and I were first married, and lived in our lovely tiny apartment in East Nashville, we had no cable. We had those terrible bunny-ear antennae and the then-new HD converter box. The antennae quickly lost their "stick" and would flop from side to side. It was a real technical skill figuring out how to tweak them juuuusstt so, so they would stay in place and you could get a signal. And this was in the middle of a large city. I can't imagine how one could achieve this in a rural area.

Then, as now, Jeff worked many nights. I was going through kind of a hard time, so I indulged myself in mindless vegging out on the couch. I had the puppy for entertainment, but we watched a lot of television. We got about eighteen channels, twelve of which were televangelism. Sometimes I watched those and tried to make sense of them. Mostly I avoided them. That left me with: NBC, ABC, CBS, CW, Nashville Public Television 1 and 2.

I had never had a TV in college. I mostly just watched whatever anyone else was watching when I lived with the roommates. I had never been "into" the popular series on the major networks, and I fancied myself very cultured and above such things.

Before I knew it, I was sucked into the nightly routine of switching from channel to channel, watching one-hour blocks of "That 70s Show," "The Office," "90210," and worst of all, "Two and a Half Men." After dinner, it was time for "Family Guy."

Charlie Sheen still makes me feel really greasy, especially after all his recent antics. But the rest of the cast became my friends.

And don't even get me started on "That 70s Show." I love it! I feel like Donna Pinciotti was my real life friend. How many freaking seasons of "That 70s Show" are there? I watched an hour of it every night for like two years, and I don't think I ever saw a repeat.

And "The Office"! Oh, "The Office." I went from not really "getting" this show to absolutely loving it. I have been known to actually laugh out loud at this show. My favorite character goes back and forth, but I think it ends up being Angela. She's so genuinely awful. I have trouble when I see Angela Kinsey (the actress who plays Angela) in those Nice'n'Easy hair color commercials. Is she being facetious? Is she being snarky? Is she trying to be genuinely girlfriend-ish to the ladies who need hair-color help? I have so completely identified the actress with her character that I get confused.

"Family Guy" and "90210" are other guilty pleasures. I think it's so funny when people act like "The Simpsons" or "Family Guy" are like the downfall of polite American culture. Or they act shocked that a pastor (of all people!) would watch such tripe. I agree, it's not "Mad Men," but hey - I need entertainment too!

When we moved to Topeka, we got 124098132580 channels included with the cost of our rent. It's been a mixed blessing, at best. The worst part is that the Topeka syndicates of the major channels don't offer those one-hour blocks I'd been used to. I still get a good dose of "That 70s Show," but "The Office" is a rarity. Now you know my bad television secret.

weeknight workhorse

2011-09-05T20:40:00.000-05:00

For today's Munchee Monday, I want to share more of a method than a recipe. This is something you can adapt to a very wide variety of veggies. I've done it with broccoli, summer squash, carrots, green beans, snowpeas - basically any vegetable you might want for a side. It's a very quick method, so it's ideal for a weeknight when you may be crunched for time.

You need salt, pepper, olive oil, chicken stock, and your vegetable of choice. I'll post my recipe for home-made chicken stock here sometime (again, not much of a recipe), but you could use storebought as well. I like to pour it in ice-cube trays and then pop the stock cubes out and store in the freezer in a plastic bag to make it last longer.

Place 4-8 ounces of your vegetable into a pan with a lid. Add 1 tablespoon oil, salt and pepper to taste, and 1/4 cup chicken stock. Turn heat to medium. Put the lid on. Leave for about five minutes, or until vegetable is tender (this time will vary, depending on what kind of veggie you're using). Then unlid and allow any remaining liquid to steam off, moving the vegetables around in the pan. Depending on what you're using, you might finish with a squeeze of lemon.

That's it! I seriously do this three or four times a week. I like how it eliminates the need for a separate pot for blanching or steaming, and it produces very consistent results.

guest post: ordinary time

2011-09-04T08:18:00.000-05:00

My friends, welcome to the stage Jacquie Hauth. Jacquie and I met when we started together at Vanderbilt Divinity School four years ago. I have always been impressed with the precision and depth of her thought. She also blogs over at Constant Conversion. I asked if she would write a little bit for us on what "ordinary time" means for her. For those who are not living and breathing the church calendar, ordinary time represents two LONG stretches from Pentecost until Advent, and then from Epiphany until Lent. It eats up well over half of the year, as you can see:

Church leaders sometime struggle with what to do in ordinary time. Do you stretch out Pentecost and Epiphany and act like they are seasons, rather than just days? What do you emphasize? In what direction do you drive the life of the church, or your own personal spiritual pursuit? Here are Jacquie's reflections.

******************************************************************************

Ordinary Time

Does the church year really mimic the academic year, or has my experience lead me to that conclusion?

For nineteen years of my life, I have had my seasons dictated by the school calendar.  It is hard to suddenly think of the 

year beginning in November instead of late August (or for that matter, January).  But this isn't meant to be a reflection on 

the start of the year, but the middle.  Or rather, the first long stretch.

The Christian year begins with Advent, and then comes Christmas and Epiphany.  Soon after, Lent arrives to mark the road 

to Easter.  Easter comes and goes, then begins the even longer season of Ordinary Time.  Unlike Lent, Ordinary Time is 

not marked by a sense of anticipation or special longing.  It is the first long stretch of time in the church year when there is 

nothing hovering just along the horizon.

In my academic career, Ordinary Time has always coincided with summer--vacations and blissful forgetting of all the lessons 

learned the previous year.  When I was growing up, this was a season of low attendance at my church.  No one said it aloud, 

but I got the impression that it was acceptable to miss some church in the summertime because nothing really "important" 

was happening.  Jesus wasn't being born, baptized or executed, nor was he rising.  Mary wasn't waiting patiently, and we 

weren't fasting or feasting.  Instead, it was a time for parables and summer reading lists.  Not terribly exciting.

But now that I have been outside of the academic pattern for over a year--and I haven't had the ending and beginning of a 

school year to approximate Ordinary Time--it's starting to sink in just how odd this understanding of this season really is.  

Ordinary Time is by no means unexciting (as a time devoid of other more thrilling things) but this popular perception fails to 

recognize just how exceptionally ordinary the rest of the year is, too.  This is the first season of Ordinary Time in which I'm 

not gearing up for some new beginning: I've just been chugging along in my life at the intersection of love, worry, work, and 

food.

How much of my life really is wrapped up in those four things: love, worry, work, and food--even and especially in those 

other more exciting seasons of the church (even in those other more exciting semesters of schooling).  And now that I don't 

have a new semester or a new thrill to look forward to, I'm beginning to fully realize it.

So perhaps this is more a reflection on how much my life's seasons have been dictated by the school year rather than the 

church year.  Or perhaps this was a chance to muse over how much I love Ordinary Time's insistence that the everyday 

matters just as much as the exceptional (otherwise, why devote a whole season to it)?  I rejoice in the ebb and flow of daily 

life... in the knowledge that this first long stretch of the church year is in many ways more like our everyday lives than the 

other seasons: the long quiet stretches when we get to practice life without glamour or pretense or any other "event" to 

make life meaningful.  It just is.  And that's the wonder of it.

In a way, this is a season for me to regret all the past seasons of Ordinary Time that were nothing more than filler between 

things that I thought were more exciting.  It is a time to give thanks that--despite all the imbued glamour we give to other 

seasons of the church--life itself is fantastically (miraculously) ordinary.

homemade diaper wipes

2011-09-02T10:50:00.001-05:00

[Note: this post featured on SortaCrunchy]

When we switched over to cloth diapers at home, I'd been investigating different avenues for homemade baby wipes as well. I mean, the point stands to reason that you're doing small loads of laundry very frequently, so you might as well put the wipes in there too. I found a recipe or two for homemade disposable wipes, including the ingenious cut-a-roll-of-Bounty-in-half method. But that didn't solve the disposable dilemma.

Then I saw some reusable wipes from Thirsties that were like 11 bucks for six. I thought I could do better on the price by going a renegade route.

So I went to Target and bought a pack of plain white washcloths and cut each one in half when I got home.

I also bought a plastic spray bottle in the wall of sample toiletries. I love that aisle because I hate committing to a new product without trying a little first. (I love the fact that Aveda does this as well!)

And I got a little sample size of aloe vera gel.

I already had some lavender and tea tree oil mixed together at home (my friend Stephanie gave it to me because it kills the itch from bug bites).

I put a cup of hot filtered water, two tablespoons of aloe vera and a drop of the essential oil into a bowl and whisked it up well. Then I poured it into the spray bottle.

I just keep the wipes dry and spray the baby's skin with the spray bottle and wipe it off with the rag. It's so weird that she doesn't seem to mind having a cold spray on her nether-regions, and yet the bath is a major catastrophe. (Also weird: she likes cold bottles of milk.)

I've been using this about two weeks, and I'm only halfway through the contents of the spray bottle. The sixteen wipes have been far more than I've needed between loads of laundry. I'm pleased with the results. Vicki's skin is soft, clean and smells good. I should add that she hasn't ever had sensitive or irritated skin, so I didn't really have to worry about textures or ingredients that may sting.

Hope you enjoy! Yet another area of money- and earth-saving baby hygiene that was simpler than I was building it up to be in my mind.

true life: i met an olsen twin

2011-08-31T09:01:00.001-05:00

During my first year at college, I lived in a building called Hartley. Hartley is the site of the Living Learning Center, which sounded really great in theory. Groups of thirteen or so residents, of mixed age and gender, would live together in a suite, share a kitchen and two bathrooms, and receive funds to do cultural stuff together. You know, like eat Indian food or watch foreign movies or go see a Japanese art exhibit.

It never quite worked out that way. Mostly we tried to figure out ways to launder that money so we could buy kegs and have parties.

I digress. There were two football players who shared a room in my suite in Hartley. They were both from California. One was a surfer dude, one was from LA. It took only a few days after we all moved in for word to circulate around the suite that the one from LA was in a relationship with Ashley Olsen! Yes, THE Ashley Olsen.

The one we all grew up with as Michelle on Full House.

As the fall wore on, it became clear that LA dude and Ashley Olsen had a pretty typical late-teenage romance: lots of fighting, lots of making up, lots of existential angst. Ashley was still in high school in California at this point, so they were long-distance as well. Until she came to visit!

Her visit was unannounced, so I was shocked to walk out of the bathroom with my hair dripping wet, and come face to face with a celebrity! I smiled, but she didn't smile back. She looked kind of sad. I may have just been projecting or imagining things, but she looked like she was sick of everyone looking at her. As much as I hate celebrities who complain about people wanting to know about them (ooohhh, being famous is soooo harddddd . . . then don't be famous, or just move to Idaho like Demi and Ashton), there was a palpable sense of wariness and heaviness about her.

If I remember correctly, that visit was when LA roommate and Ashley finally broke up for good, so I never saw her again. But I do have our one little chance meeting as my claim to fame!

working mama

2011-08-30T11:57:00.000-05:00

I have always thrived on a lot of activity. As my stepdad says, "I like to really pack it in there." I've had at least one job since the time I was fourteen. Frequently, in college, I had three jobs in addition to five courses in a semester, as well as involvement in a sorority, singing group, etc. I'm also the primary breadwinner in our family, so there was no real plan for me to stay home for an extended period after the baby was born. I would take eight weeks off, then be back and ready to go! Things would work themselves out, right?

Ummm, well, this motherhood thing is BY FAR the most time-consuming, energy-eating, long-day-making, confidence-off-kiltering job I have ever undertaken. Don't mistake me as saying that it's not worth it. The smiles, hugs, growth and development of a tiny human who kind of looks like me (!) also offer rewards that are unparalleled by any other job I've had. But I do feel like I've finally reached my limit. I could not possibly add one more regular commitment into what I'm currently juggling and maintain my sanity.

So, how does it work? Good question. Some days it doesn't! Most days it does. Three days a week, the baby stays with a sitter for eight hours. We absolutely love our sitter, and I have no qualms about the amount of time the baby spends there. I also like the fact that she gets some exposure to other children (the sitter has three of her own, and watches one older baby). The time in a mixed-age setting is beneficial. One day a week, Jeff has the baby at home. One day a week is my day "off," which means that I'm with the baby all day. Saturdays I'm with her, Sunday mornings Jeff keeps her at home or I bring her to childcare at church for the morning, and Sunday afternoons I'm with her. Two or three nights a week (on average - sometimes it's more!) I have meetings at church in the evening. The baby either comes with me if Jeff is working, or she stays home with her dad.

Recently, in an uncharacteristic move, I admitted that I couldn't do everything, and hired some housekeeping help to come twice a month and do the floors. I am famously cheap, so this was something I had to think about for a long time. But it has been amazing so far. I just couldn't look at another clump of dog hair in the corner, staring at me and taunting me about my inability to keep my house together. I could - just barely - get everything else done (kitchen, bathroom, laundry, dishes, etc). But the floors . . . no way. It just took too much time. And time is something that is so very scarce right now.

Pastoring is a notoriously demanding profession. People always need you, and there is no limit to that need. There is only a limit to your time. Parenting is remarkably similar. The baby always needs me, and the only limit to that need is her sleeping time. Sometimes I get overwhelmed by feeling so needed all the time. I am a person who, in the past, has liked to spend significant amounts of time alone, sorting out my thoughts and feelings and rebalancing myself. This is a sector of my life that has been totally decimated. I don't think I've been by myself for more than five minutes (in the car) since April 2. The lack of alone time has taken its toll on me, as I feel a little off-balance most of the time, and my actions and words are sometimes more impulsive or less well-thought-out than they have been in the past. My husband, who bears the brunt of this, is beyond understanding.

Some days, all that keeps me together is the thought that I will long for these days with a tiny baby to come back. Other days, I feel like I am capable of anything, and that this working-mom thing is a piece of cake. All I know is, when I spent those eight weeks at home with the baby, it was the hardest work I have EVER done. And that's saying something.

real simple . . . not really simple

2011-08-29T10:35:00.000-05:00

The magazine (and, more recently, website) Real Simple has captivated me for years. The clean, bright layout. The mixture of food, fashion, culture, and decorating advice. The lithe and lovely models. Jeff will tell you, I salivate at new issues on the Target magazine shelf.

When I was in Divinity School, a mom and fellow student saw me reading a Real Simple and commented on how ridiculous the title was. Like, to make your life more simple, you need all this stuff that we recommend. The irony of this consumerist myth had never struck me before. It began to color my perception of the magazine, and I did realize that I had been sold on a vision of life that would never quite materialize for me.

Additionally, has anyone noticed that the recipes have gotten really bad? They used to be hit-or-miss, but you could get at least a few good dinners and sides out of an issue. Now, most of them don't even sound appetizing, and I haven't had success with one of their recipes in months.

These days, I prefer my public television cooking shows. America's Test Kitchen, Everyday Food, and Cook's Country provide me with a wealth of recipe ideas. In fact, after watching Everyday Food Saturday morning, I'm inspired to add roast chicken tacos, meatballs and garlic bread, and red beans and sausage to my menu this week. Anybody have recipe sources they just love that they want to share?

guest post: the pace of life

2011-08-28T07:55:00.000-05:00

Gentle reader, please find below the thoughts and musings of my very best friend, Amanda Rose Smear. We met in 2002, shared many misadventures, laughs, and tears, and now we are separated by 1260 miles. I came thisclose to staying in New York with her before my life pulled me in another direction. She is a talented and thoughtful person, so enjoy!

**********************************************************************************

Just before I sat down to type this "guest blog post" I did something that no New Yorker - or at least no stereotypical psychotically productive maniacally driven blackberry-addicted Manhattanite like me EVER does: I prepared myself for 48 hours of nothing. Calling my life "fast-paced" would be an understatement. I often describe my work schedule as frantic, frenzied, aggressive. I'm in a constant fight against the clock...appointment, conference call, meeting, site visit, deadline, emergency, site visit BOOM it's 11pm. And that's how every day goes until I catch 5-6 hours of sleep wake and do it again, sometimes pressing pause for a 6:30am yoga class. So to tell myself today at 3pm than I will literally do nothing other than kill time until Monday morning (or longer) is a little eerie.

As you may or may not know, NYC as well as the rest of the Northeast is preparing for what may be a very windy/rainy day. Some are calling it a "hurricane". I'm skeptical but nevertheless did the practical thing and stocked the fridge with bottled water, groceries, skittles, Kettle Popcorners, you know...The necessities. I'm not being completely honest. Paul wanted to buy enough snacks to last the entire armageddon. MY mission was to find an open Starbucks, caffeinate, and possibly find the motivation to do something. To my shock and dismay, Bloomberg had frightened every shopkeep and restaurant manager from opening today and not even STARBUCKS was there for me. Normally I could get 5 Frappucino Lites on the way to work (15minute walk) without having to go out of my way. Today, at least lower Manhattan is utterly Starbuck-less. I came back to the couch without my normal fast-forward jolt of espresso and proceeded to do nothing.

Why does it take a natural disaster to force us to slow down? Take a siesta...maybe NOT work for a few hours (or even a few days!). Why does everyone have to call your cell phone if you don't immediately answer your land line? Why do we doubt someone likes us if they haven't replied to our text or email within 5 minutes of hitting send? Why do we let ourselves go go go until we physically shutdown and are incapable of normal human interaction by Friday afternoon? And by we, I mean me.

I'm most aware of how quickly life is moving when I look back at old files- for me, files that contain all the details about a past party I have planned. I remember the client, how we interacted, what random bits of drama they brought into my life and if I felt it was successful. I looked at a folder two days ago and was horrified to realize that the party had taken place SIX YEARS ago. I remembered every detail of this particular party like it was yesterday. How did so much time go by so quickly?

A few months ago Maria and I were talking about a song we had danced to at my epic 80s 25th birthday party (2.7 years ago!) and were shocked that my mom had no clue what song we were talking about. "I was really busy in the 80's" said my mom with out a hint of sarcasm. It was true! She had 4 kids between April of '76 and January of '84 and an entire decade had passed before she knew it. A flurry of diapers, packed lunches, soccer practices, play rehearsals from morning to night.

Anyone who knows my mother knows what a notorious night owl she is. Maria- a relatively new mom with a rambunctious 16 month old told me she totally understood why. As a mom, each day is like a marathon. You are constantly "on" - under a microscope. Baby baby baby all day long. When else do you have time to attend to yourself - (shower? read? eat? relax?) besides after dark? When I see my sister being pursued relentlessly by the needs of her little Ella I am actually amazed. "No day at work is ever as hard as every day with a baby" is another famous quote of Ria's. Wall St. guys and race car drivers may think they've cornered the market on "fast-paced" but can anyone even hold a candle to the mothers of small children?

Hats off to you ladies. Because while Hurricane Irene has me wine-drunk eating skittles on the couch surfing the Facebook, I'm sure my sister, similarly housebound, is working her ass off chasing a baby and swiffering up after a messy snack-time. And my darling Emily is somewhere changing a dirty diaper even on Saturday, a day of universal repose. I'm gonna enjoy this day of pure laziness because who knows how many more of these I'm going to get in my life?

my other bebe

2011-08-26T11:02:00.000-05:00

This is a photo-memory of an amazing night with my best friend Amanda. She is affectionately known as "Bebe" by all her friends and family. We were at her brother and sister-in-law's wedding reception, and they gave out the white sunglasses as a favor. It was the very first wedding I ever had the privilege of officiating! (So far, my track record is good - 0 divorces!) Amanda/Bebe will be doing a guest post here in the very near future . . . keep checking back and you might just find it.

a story of youth and foolishness

2011-08-25T21:42:00.000-05:00

In summer 2001 (age: 16), I took a class trip to Europe. We went to London, Paris, Morocco, Spain, Portugal, and probably somewhere else I'm forgetting. I have particularly fabulous memories of the Costa del Sol, where I experienced my first European-style topless beach. Wow. I remember what really impressed me was the Spaniards' lack of self-consciousness about body type and shape. Everyone from little kids to grandmothers was running around without their shirts, and no one batted an eyelash.

Anyway, in Spain, we visited a piercing salon. I decided to have my right eyebrow pierced, and the guy did one heck of an awful job on it. He didn't go deep enough, so the too-large barbell stuck awkwardly out of my skin. It didn't particularly hurt, but I didn't take very good care of it. By the time we returned to the States, and my mother's look of exasperated disapproval (good thing I'm the youngest!), the piercing was looking raw and red.

A few weeks later, I went to be a part of the leadership team for the area United Methodist youth summer gathering. As the team and I were walking around the Baker University campus late one night, a little gossamer cobweb hanging down from a tree limb cottoned onto my face. Without a second thought, I reached up and used my open palm to swipe across my face - pulling my eyebrow piercing plumb out! Oh, the blood and the fear! I thought I had somehow been blinded by the spider or something. All week long I had to wear a bandaid over my eyebrow, leading to some fun comparisons with Nelly.

I still have a little scar in my right eyebrow. It makes a nice conversation starter. One thing I will always remember about that trip is something I learned about Portuguese culture. They have a long tradition of what is called "saudade," or a mode or feeling of deep longing. There are songs and stories and paintings that convey saudade. When I learned about it, I felt I finally had a name for something I'd been feeling my whole life. A kind of emotional exhaustion. A yearning for a different time. A reminder of youthful days gone by, when the top of my list of worries was my mother's face when she picked me up from the airport. I still feel saudade every day.

the sacred and the mundane

2011-08-24T10:48:00.000-05:00

I haven't had a dishwasher in almost three years. I love to cook, and we eat at home frequently. My husband doesn't do dishes. Thus, I spend a lot of time washing dishes.

I have a secret. Shhh, don't tell anyone . . .

I like washing the dishes.

There is just something about pulling on my rubber gloves, getting the dishrag soapy, and diving in that makes my soul feel peaceful. The immediacy of the results (I can see the clean dishes stacking up so quickly!) helps me feel like I'm really accomplishing something. And the fact that I don't have to use my higher brain to do it frees me up for a little daydreaming. Since we've been without a dishwasher, we've always had a window above the sink. So I get to spend a little time gazing into middle distance.

As I was washing some things last night, my mind drifted back to a great book. I spent some time in a hard winter in 2005 reading this with the fabulous Prof. Bender:

Eliade helped me understand washing the dishes as a sacrament. Not a capital S sacrament, like baptism or communion, but the same concept carries. "By manifesting the sacred, any object becomes something else, yet it continues to remain itself, for it continues to participate in its surrounding milieu."* When I pray over the bread and cup, "Let them be for us the body and blood of Christ, that we may be for the world the body of Christ, redeemed by his blood,"** I am asking God to help me recognize the dual nature of what appears before me. Bread and grape juice = profane. Body and blood = sacred. At the same time!

And so washing the dishes is my daily sacrament. It is such a profane, mundane act. But it is more than what it appears. It transports me to a different place in my mind, and allows me to unlock thoughts that may remain hidden otherwise. I participate in a double reality when I was the dishes. And I don't think I ever want a dishwasher.

*Eliade, Mircea. The Sacred and the Profane. New York: Harcourt, 1957. P. 12.
** The United Methodist Book of Worship, p. 38.

a place to grow

2011-08-23T16:34:00.000-05:00

We spend a lot of time in young adult-ish clergy-esque academia-like groups talking about what is wrong with the church. Too many expectations. Too much rigidity. Too much defensive posturing. Too old. And, at different times, a lot of that is true. You don't need to be a genius to figure out that the mainline Protestant denominations are declining fast. And that Americans don't like losing at things. At the risk of sounding defeatist, I struggle frequently with the sense many churches have that if they cease to exist, God will cease to work. But anyway, today, I want to talk about some stuff that is going right.

I have been so blessed, as I have tumbled through this whole seven-years-minimum ordination thing, to end up in congregations that have accepted me and taught me. Blakemore United Methodist Church nurtured my skills, cheered me along, and blessed me in my engagement and marriage. The pastors I worked with taught me so much about ministry, and about giving your life to something more than yourself. They taught me in both word and deed, and sometimes they showed me what not to do.

And now, Countryside United Methodist Church ("a place to grow") is giving me a chance to flex and strengthen my ministerial muscles in so many ways, every day. Rather than disregarding me because I am young, or female, I am included in making important decisions. I work with an amazing senior pastor who is not afraid to let me preach frequently, attend the sacraments, and lead in the ordering of the church. This church has embraced me and helped me grow my daughter (both inside and outside my body!).

So, ask me on another day, and I can tell you everything that is wrong. I can give you all the doom and gloom you care to indulge in. But today . . . I'm so grateful for a place to grow.

tomato love

2011-08-22T08:56:00.000-05:00

My diet recently has been a disgusting morass of Bobo's Drive-In (at least I'm keeping it local!), Chipotle (but they say the pork is free-range!), and Hardee's (no excuse here). I was despairing that I would have nothing to share with you for Munchee Monday today! Then, I remembered the insane amount of tomatoes we've been receiving from our CSA share. One of the challenges and highlights of eating seasonally and locally is that you get dumped with one crop at a time - and have to figure out what to do with it. My goal is always to use, freeze, or preserve everything before it goes bad. I've done . . . okay. I give myself a B+.

Let me pause here to tell you the saddest fact in the world. My husband hates tomatoes. Something about the texture, blah blah blah.

So, I've been left to work alone through no less than three to four pounds of tomatoes a week for the past month. I eat them raw, in sandwiches, in BLTs. I make salsa, tomato sauce, and tomato paste. Tomato paste is especially handy because it uses many tomatoes and boils them down to almost nothing.

One thing I hate about making tomato sauce and salsa, though, is peeling the tomatoes. What a waste of time and a senseless steaming up of my kitchen. So instead, I've started making the sauce or salsa without peeling and then pureeing it all in the food processor. Works like a charm! I've currently got four quart-size jars of this tomato sauce in the freezer. I'm still afraid of canning, and buying a huge vat to give myself a steam bath in the kitchen sounds really unappealing.

Tomato Sauce
1 T olive oil
4 cups tomatoes, hard stems and cores cut out, chopped
1 medium onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, chopped fine
1 green pepper, seeded and chopped
1/2 C water
6 oz tomato paste
1 t dried basil or as much fresh as you want
1 t dried oregano
1 t red pepper flake (less if you don't like spicy)
salt and pepper

Saute the green pepper, onion and garlic in the oil in a large pot or dutch oven over medium heat until very soft and translucent. Add the tomatoes, water, tomato paste and spices. Bring to a boil, lower heat, and simmer, covered, for a long time - up to an hour. Then unlid and simmer for another half an hour. Check the seasonings periodically and add salt and pepper to taste. I usually cut the heat after awhile and just let it thicken and come to room temperature for several hours at this point. Then, puree in the food processor in batches and pour into a jar. Makes one quart-size jar. 58 calories per half-cup serving.

proper names

2011-08-20T08:48:00.000-05:00

Have you ever noticed that there's a power in the naming of things? I remember having crushes on boys when I was quite little, and saying their names was like a sort of incantation or something. My mom had lots of weird little nicknames for all of us, including "sister Susan" for both my sister and myself, pumpkinface, EB (my initials before I was married), Em, Emmy, and more that I can't recall right now. There was very little proper name calling unless there was anger involved.

Jeff and I seem to have carried on this tradition. We very, very rarely use one another's names in our conversations. Instead, we are both "babe" or "baby." Or "babu," which came into heavy rotation after an auto-correct mess-up. I realize this is probably nauseating for anyone who has to spend a significant amount of time with us. Again, proper names only come out when the dialogue takes a serious or frustrated turn.

We have a dog, and we had a cat. They both have proper names (Pepper & R-12). What do/did we call both of them? Puppy & Kitty.

And now we have a baby. Her name is Vicki Jo - we named her for my mother. No, it's not short for anything. I can verify that on my mother's birth certificate it says "Vicki Jo." I'm sure, at this point, you can guess what we call her: Baby, or the Babe. It almost sounds weird to me when people say her actual name. I suppose I'm going to have to get used to it - when she goes to school, they won't be able to put Babe on her desk tag! Sometimes I worry that she's not going to recognize her real name when the time comes.

My theory on this is that proper names are a little bit too powerful. It's akin to the hesitation in certain Jewish circles to use God's special name revealed to Moses (JHWH). God collaborated with Adam to name every single creature on the earth (or so the story goes) - I wonder if he felt the power of that privilege?

new toys!

2011-08-19T09:38:00.000-05:00

As I've written in some recent posts, I decided to start from scratch on Vicki Jo's toys. All of what she previously had were gifts, and many weren't suited to her developmental level and hand size. It's almost magical to see her interact with a toy that matches her horizon - when we took the grasper out of the box in which it came, her eyes lit up. It was like she immediately knew that it was something she was supposed to play with. All of these toys have been getting heavy use, but we try to keep it to one or two at a time. Clockwise from twelve'o'clock: Haba fish clutching toy; Little Alouette wooden rattle; perfect pacifier; Little Alouette wooden teether; Manhattan Toy grasper; Haba clutching beads. If you know anyone expecting a baby - any of these would make fantastic gifts!

a successful transition!

2011-08-16T11:57:00.001-05:00

[This post submitted to Sortacrunchy's "Your Green Resource"]

When we first started doing all our registering and buying for our little-one-to-be, I knew that I wanted to use cloth diapers. Jeff took a little convincing, but once I told him he wouldn't really have to touch any poop (I knew this was a white lie, but I reasoned that he would have to touch poop whether we used cloth or disposable), he was for it. I love when Jeff gets convicted about something, because he loves to spread the righteous word to all his friends and acquaintances. I have heard him on the phone telling his friend Jeremy about how they're cheaper, more environmentally friendly, and better for baby's skin. I believe this is what I mean by "making him think it was his idea." Anyway, I digress.

I won't rehearse all the in-depth reasons for cloth diapering, since mine are largely the same as everyone else's. Basically:

1) Cheaper over time. A little investment, but you can reuse them with multiple children.
2) Better for the environment. Less in the landfill.
3) Baby has soft and cuddly material next to her skin, not weird gel-bead-ultra-absorbent stuff.
4) Water bill is included in the cost of our rent. Disposable diapers aren't.

And a fifth I've added since my obsession with Montessori infant parenting began:
5) Montessori infant training advocates cloth diapering because natural, real fibers are superior to synthetics. I'm not sure that this holds for me, since the micro-fleece and PUL (polyurethane laminate) diapers we use are just as synethic as any disposable. The only difference is you can wash and reuse them.

When I actually starting researching cloth diaper options, I had a minor anxiety attack because I don't do well with a lot of choices. There are literally hundreds of options. Prefolds and covers? All-in-ones? Contoured prefolds? What the hell is a snappi? I asked a few moms I knew were into cloth diapering, and got the recommendation to go with Fuzzibunz. So, mostly for the sake of just making a freaking decision, I registered for them. And Jeremy and Kat (the afore-mentioned friends) got them for us! Here is what we ended up with:

Here's what they look like from the inside and the outside:

What you see above is the outer shell, made from a waterproof material and lined with fleece. They have a pocket between the fleece and the PUL outer fabric:

And the "soaker," or the thick pad that absorbs all the moisture and keeps it away from the baby's skin, looks like this:

It's made of suber-absorbent fleece as well, and it gets stuffed into the pocket I showed you above.

I ordered all "one-size" diapers, which are kind of ingenious. They have an elastic-and-button system where you can adjust the size of the leg holes and waist as your baby grows. I did a couple pictures of how this works:

This part is kind of a pain in the butt, as you have to go back and pull the elastic out of its hidey-hole, wrestle with it for a few moments, and then repeat with all your remaining diapers. But this is also the part that makes it so cost-effective, as they can grow with your baby up to like 35 pounds (or potty-trained, God willing!).

So, back to our story. I ordered these diapers, received them as a gift, got really excited, and then the baby was born. She was so wee, I couldn't make the leg holes small enough! So we had to go with disposables for awhile. And then she got bigger . . . and we still went with disposables because I felt overwhelmed by having a baby and didn't want any more laundry. Finally, I was shaken out of my disposable stupor by reading Montessori from the Start, and busted back out the Fuzzibunz. Baby is about thirteen pounds now, so she fits into them really well.

Our babysitter isn't into cloth, which is totally fine. So we still use some disposables. I just get the Target generic brand. I think they work as well as anything else. Also, I didn't get any fancy special detergent for the cloth diapers. All the cloth diapering websites say this is tantamount to ruining your diapers, but so far the Target brand unscented detergent has done just fine. I think part of my initial panic about the whole cloth diapering process was because there seemed to be all these rules: you have to use a dry/wet pail; you have to use Charlie's soap; etc, etc, etc. In reality, like with everything else about having a baby, you figure out what works for you and that's what you do.

We have eight Fuzzibunz now, and that's about right for laundry every other day with disposables at the sitter and at night. I might get six or so more, just to stretch it a little further. However, I don't want to let the dirty diapers sit too long, or I worry about mildew setting in!

So, my message to you about cloth diapering is: don't be afraid. It is simpler than it sounds. Just pick a system, go with it, and don't be afraid that you're making too many missteps. I really like Fuzzibunz, and no, don't be ridiculous, they have not paid me for an endorsement!

rip bialetti

2011-08-15T13:09:00.000-05:00

The first week I was off at college I knew I needed to get a job. I was eligible for work-study funds, and in order to cash in on that grant, I needed a qualified employer somewhere on campus. In the stairwell of my residence hall, I saw a flier for the Italian Academy. It was the first thing I'd seen advertising for employment, so I called them up and got an interview.

I ended up working there for all four years of college. The Italian Academy for Advanced Study at Columbia University in the City of New York (this is actually how I had to answer the phone . . . every time) is a cooperative endeavor of Columbia University and the Italian government to house and stipend post-doctoral fellows for a year of research. It's a beautiful old Italianate building on the Columbia campus, and it became my second home. Some of the perks of this unbelievable job:

*a film series every fall and every spring. I got paid to show up of an evening, sip Prosecco and eat chunks of Parmiggiano-Reggiano cheese, and take money from people. Then I continued to get paid to watch an amazing old subtitled Italian film in a stunning teatro. Did I mention I got paid for all of this?

*I got to work at events like the following: the Italian Prime Minister came to speak with both his wife and his mistress. There was lots and lots of Prosecco for all. I also got paid for this.

*Long lunch breaks, wine in the afternoons (this is an Italian custom . . . enjoying a glass of wine at your job!?), getting sent down to Little Italy on the company Metrocard to pick up the Italian films from Evergreen Cinema. I really learned the city by doing all the little errands for the fellows and the staff.

*Learning what it means to work in a professional environment. I had to wear business casual, I had to offer guests Pellegrino or espresso and take their coats. I am embarrassed to say that I regularly showed up in sweatpants for my first semester there. After a stern talking-to by my unbearably chic supervisor Olivia D'Aponte (a half-Italian Brooklynite who ended up leaving to travel around the world with her fiance), I straightened up my act and got some suits and heels.

*When I finally did graduate and leave, they gifted me with the most generous surprise: dinner for two, whatever we wanted, at a spendy Italian restaurant down the street - charged to the Italian Academy's account. I took my very good friend Zack, and we had a meal to remember. We finished up with an affogato, which is basically like an Italian espresso float. A scoop of vanilla gelato drowned in rich, strong espresso. Yum.

When I graduated and set up house for myself, I knew I needed an espresso maker. I had no funds to buy a nice big electric one, so I got a Bialetti. This is a trusty Italian-made stovetop espresso maker. It works somewhat like a percolator: you put water in the chamber below the pot, fit in a filter basket filled with ground coffee, screw the whole thing together and put it on the heat. The water is forced up through the coffee and into the pot, and you pour it out into your cup once it's all done. It's brilliant and elegant in its simplicity.

It was my way of bringing a little bit of the Italian Academy into my home. I have used it nearly every morning for the last five years. So, the other day, when I took it apart to wash, I was so saddened to see this:

The inner rubber fitting has melted! It's time for a new Bialetti. It's not the cost I'm worried about - these little suckers are only about twenty or thirty bucks. It's just that I'm sentimentally attached to my Bialetti. It's been with me through some hard times. But I suppose all things must come to an end. Arrivederci, Bialetti.

theory on pregnant belly-touching

2011-08-14T14:00:00.000-05:00

One of the things that is hard to adjust to when you're expecting a baby is that your body enters the public domain. People feel free to say things to you that they would never, ever say to someone who wasn't obviously pregnant: "wow, you're huge!"; "you look absolutely miserable"'; "you're even more swollen than last week!" People also take a kindly interest in your story: I often joked that I needed a t-shirt that explained my stats. 36 weeks. April 7. Girl. Vicki Jo. Yes I'm fat and miserable. That way, people wouldn't need to stop me and ask about all these details.

My theory is that this interest we (as a society at large) take in pregnant women is a sort of indication of the shared responsibility that we feel for raising children in our culture. It is for this reason that I didn't get too irritated with people who wanted to know more about the child I was having. Our culture seems to thrive on radical autonomy rather than community, so I'm all for encouraging the impulse to care for another as much as yourself. We tend to see ourselves as separated (as in, "your health care problems shouldn't be mine to pay for," or something like that) and the things that we do as having no effect on others. But we still care about our babies.

We see babies as our next generation - as the ones who may save us from some of the messes we got ourselves into. So we have an interest in making sure that they are produced in the best possible conditions. Although not many people randomly touched me on my belly when I was pregnant, it probably would have made me mildly annoyed if more did. But I would also have been a bit glad to see that there are still some things that we can all agree upon.

that old green-eyed monster

2011-08-13T13:26:00.000-05:00

At every major transition in my life - going away to school, getting hitched, moving, having a baby - I have gone through a little crisis of confidence in myself. I think this is entirely appropriate, as I'm establishing new routines, new expectations, and getting my feet under me in each experience. I've always wanted these crises to end as soon as possible, as they feel uncomfortable. I always feel like I'm catapulted back to adolescence, with an awkward unsureness about myself and my decisions.

One way that I naturally try to get my bearings in these situations is to compare myself to others. I look around and think, "Wow - nobody else seems to be experiencing these feelings. What is wrong with me!?" The internet has allowed me to telescope in even further on others. After I got married, in particular, I developed an unhealthy obsession with The Pioneer Woman (Ree Drummond). She had chronicled the story of meeting and falling in love with her husband (it's now being made into a motion picture!), and it all seemed so peachy and picture-perfect. I wanted my life to be like that! I felt like life with Jeff was messy, and it was hard during that first few months. We were setting new boundaries, learning new things about one another, and adjusting to a major life transition.

So, when I had a baby, I started to do the same thing. I scoured the internet as I stayed up late at night with Vicki Jo. I felt like every step I took might be a misstep, and I just wasn't sure about myself as a mother. Despite hearing time and time again, "you know your baby best," I just wasn't convinced that it was true. And I compared myself relentlessly to the mothers I found online. Why wasn't my baby holding her head up yet? Why wasn't she reading? Why wasn't I able to keep my house clean or my laundry done? Other new mothers seemed to be able. Plain and simple, I was jealous. I wanted my life to look like the ones I saw online.

I've always been able to use this competitive, comparison-making streak in myself to my advantage. It's one reason I've always done well in school and at many other tasks that I set out to do. I tell myself that I can do it better than (or at least as well as) someone else.

But the problem with this tactic for improvement is that you don't spend much time focusing on what you appreciate about yourself or others. You don't spend time reveling in the moments that can't be reclaimed. And you don't allow yourself or others to just be what you're meant to be, regardless of what anyone else is capable of.

And the problem with comparing myself to what I find online is that it's not a global view of someone else's life. We all know that we are able to present the side of ourselves and our lives that we want others to see when we're on the internet. We don't share the darkest details, or the most unpleasant stories. It's like having a flashlight to shine where you want on your life, as opposed to natural daylight exposing both flaws and perfections.

So, I've decided to cut back on my internet browsing. And I won't compare myself to what I find when I do look around. Because my life, my husband, my baby, my house - it's enough for me. And I want to count my blessings while I still have them.

uncle chase and the premonition

2011-08-12T09:28:00.000-05:00

This is Uncle Chase, Jeff's step-brother. He was born exactly four months before Jeff, and they grew up together from a young age. A funny thing about Chase: he has premonitions and dreams that sometimes predict the future. He called Jeff on April 1, six days before our baby was due, and told him that he's had a dream that Vicki Jo would be born that day. At the time, Jeff and I laughed it off, as there were no signs that the baby was even close to making her way into the world. I wasn't laughing later that night, when I tripped down the porch steps, went to the hospital, and came back with a baby two days later.

trouble in paradise

2011-08-11T09:57:00.000-05:00

Well, the time has come sooner than I anticipated! To help facilitate some changes in the dynamic of our relationship, Jeff and I have agreed to transition the baby to her own bed.

(Cue massive stress-induced headache.)

Because I'm a Montessori neophyte, I want to do the floor bed. I think it makes sense. Giving your child freedom in a prepared environment seems like a positive thing, plus I give a little freaked out thinking about Vicki Jo somehow getting stuck in the crib or pulling up on the side and toppling out onto her head. (Yes, the authors of Montessori from the Start used this as a scare tactic, and it worked on me.)

Our baby is not really mobile at this point. She can roll from front to back and then back to front with maximum effort, and then needs a nap to recover. She can sort of "swim" on her stomach, but she can't move more than a few inches. So, I have some time to prepare our environment and ensure its safety. I went to Michaels craft store yesterday and bought a bunch of baskets, framed prints, and other supplies to help transform her space. (Look for a post on Nursery Take Two in the near future.) But for now, I'm just focusing on the bed.

So far, the baby will sleep in three places: attached to me, in her carseat while the car is moving, or in her swing. This is for all sleep - nighttime, daytime, and any other time. What I just did when I put her down for her nap was to lay scrunched up on the crib mattress on the floor with her nursing until she fell asleep. I rolled sneakily away, and she's still sleeping 22 minutes later! (I spoke too soon. I just heard a squawk from her room. Sigh.)

I have a sinking feeling that this is going to be a real undertaking for us, as Vicki Jo does not fall asleep peacefully even when I'm in full body contact with her. She is what I would call a "sleep fighter." She also has some night terrors, which are truly disturbing.

Parents out there: is there a gentle way to help your baby sleep by themselves? Do you have to let them cry at some point? How would you recommend that I go about this process?

counting grams and ounces

2011-08-09T14:14:00.000-05:00

We just had our four-month well-baby visit and shots (more on vaccinations at a later date . . .), and I am so overjoyed to report that we have reached the 15th percentile for weight and the 20th for length!

I know what you're thinking: most parents would be concerned that their baby had fallen below the average. But not so for us. This is a triumph! Something we have worked so very hard for.

Vicki Jo was born exactly on the middle mark: 7 pounds, 1 ounce. Half of all babies weighed more than her when they were born, and half weighed less. I tend to think her weight was inflated a bit because of the intravenous fluids I received during labor and delivery, but it really couldn't have added more than a few ounces of water weight. After a day in the hospital, she was dropping weight fast. This is normal, up to a certain point. Babies are born with stores of fat and water to get them through a few days until their mother's milk becomes available to them.

Another day, and she had dropped even further! The doctor at the clinic was becoming concerned. She had lost over 10% of her birth weight. Supplementation with formula was recommended. I was so stubborn on this point. She was so young, and everything about her was fresh and new. I didn't want to introduce any foreign substances into her body. Instead, I went into overdrive: feeding her every two hours at the very least, and pumping with a breast pump after every feeding (this is what is recommended by lactation specialists - the more stimulation you receive, the more milk you produce . . . supposedly). It didn't help that this was also Vicki's "don't put me down or I will kill you with my screams" phase. I was under so much stress, and, although she gained weight slowly after about day four, she never grew fast enough for all the medical people to be satisfied.

She didn't come back up to her birth weight until week four - two weeks after "they" want this to have happened. After going to the breastfeeding clinic literally every day for five weeks, they finally told me to try a last-ditch effort: domperidone. Domperidone is a medication that is prescribed for patients with slow-moving digestive tracts due to things like chemotherapy. It helps to move things along, if you will. Lactation is a happy side effect. (I often crack up thinking about the poor men who are struggling through chemo and are prescribed this medication without anyone telling them about the lactation . . . until they wake up with milk on their sheets!) During her sixth week of life, I started the medication. I had to return to work in a couple of weeks, and I told myself that I couldn't maintain this level of freaking out. If things hadn't improved by week eight, I was weaning her and going to formula. And hating myself for the rest of my life.

Lo and behold . . . the medicine worked! Suddenly my milk was ample. She gained weight rapidly, shooting up nearly an ounce per day for weeks at a time. When I went back to work, I was able to pump pretty much all of what she needed. She still gets a bit of formula because I don't produce as much for the pump as I do for her, but no more than 4-6 ounces three times a week. That, I can live with - sans the self-hatred. When I'm able to be on vacation or on my days off, she doesn't need any extra formula at all!

Although she gained well after I started the domperidone, she still never busted through about the 10th percentile. I was convinced that she was just going to be a small thing, and that was fine. She is supremely healthy, has never had so much as a sniffle, and is very strong and happy. She was tracking along just fine at her 10th percentile line when we went to the doctor yesterday. There, she was 12 pounds and 10 ounces! 15th percentile! OMFGosh. I was literally over the moon.

We still go to the breastfeeding clinic every two weeks. I'm such a regular at the place that all the nurses know us by name. I even became one of their first ever patients to need two cards to record all the weights we had taken! I love it there now, because I receive so much positive feedback for sticking with a truly difficult breastfeeding situation. I know it's not a nice thing for them to say, but when I hear, "Anyone else would have given up," and I know it might be true (and after all, they would know because they see TONS of lactating women daily), it just makes me so proud of the first collaboration at which my baby and I were ever successful.

perfect steak or salmon

2011-08-08T11:14:00.000-05:00

I have fussed and fiddled with recipes for cuts of beef or salmon steaks for so long, and finally just found that this method is the best. It yields the kind of meat that I want: crisp outer crust, with a not-too-done interior. It's a double-heat method, starting with a hot pan on the stovetop, and then finishing in a hot oven. It's fast, to boot!

1/2 lb steak or salmon fillets
salt and pepper
2 t cooking oil

Preheat oven to 450. Season the meat or fish on both sides. Heat a large skillet (I use cast-iron - just make sure it can go in the oven) over medium-high heat. Add cooking oil, then place meat or fish in the pan. (If using salmon, place it skin side up.) Let it cook for three minutes. Flip the meat or fish, then immediately place in the oven. For salmon, do it four minutes. For steak, depending on the thickness, leave it for five or six minutes. Serves two.

To finish this meal, I like to add a salad and a vegetable, as well as a starch like a baked potato, rice, or pasta. Jeff also really loves dinner rolls. (He has a sick obsession. He will eat like five dinner rolls in a meal.) The steak or salmon is nice with a little compound butter on it: take a few tablespoons of softened butter and mix in a little lemon juice, a pinch of salt, and some herb or spice. Salmon is nice with grated ginger, and steak is good with sage or rosemary.

the reality of God

2011-08-07T18:13:00.000-05:00

"You are beyond my understanding
But still You speak where we can hear."
(Jen Whitson, an excellent friend and songstress)

One of the first questions asked on all my ordination exams and papers is, "How do you know that God is real?" I think it's the hardest question we're asked in the whole rigmarole. You can't just say, "Because I know," or, "Because that's what I was taught," or, "Well, I just believe it to be true." The question, in essence, asks for a kind of apology (Christian theology term for a rational defense of the faith).

I feel this question hanging in the air with my contemporaries. In this age of disillusionment with the church (most of it well-deserved for a church that hasn't adapted to changing mores and a much larger horizon), people want to know why I would hitch my horse (my very, very young horse - I'm looking at a minimum of forty or so years until retirement) to this behemoth in the midst of a slow bleed-out.

John Wesley, my main man, held that you can't look just to nature for a defense of the faith - it's not specific enough to Christianity. But I do know that God is real because of this:

(A country road ending in Clinton Lake, a place where I spent many precious moments discovering myself and others.)

And this:

(This is a Tibetan artisan monk. I had the privilege to watch him create a sand mandala in Australia a few years ago. I will write about it sometime.)

And this:

(This is my very best friend Amanda on the right. I will write a lot more about her someday.)

And this:

(This is the pastor and the bartender.)

And this:

(You know who this is!)

God is real to me because God is incarnate in people, just as God was in Christ. God truly does speak in a way that resounds most clearly to each of us, and for me, it's people - with all their mess, all their demands, all their needs. God is beyond my understanding, and beyond my proving, but I know that God is real.

Montessori from the Start, III of III

2011-08-06T22:05:00.001-05:00

Okay, last post on this book. In the first iteration of this post, there was just too much. So, for now, I'm just going to do subject headings, and expect a full post on each of these topics to roll out sometime in the near future. To read more about the book, and get a citation from amazon.com, read this post. To read Part II (my respectful beefs with the book), click here. Today, the practical application: what I'm going to change around our house and around my brain because of reading Montessori from the Start.

Conveyances
Conveyances are anything that holds the baby's weight without her having to use her strength to do it: swings, strollers, front carriers and wraps and slings, strollers, car seats, and probably other stuff that I've never even seen before. The Montessori verdict on these appears to be a no. They take away from the child's freedom of movement. Polk and Lillard, in fact, say that only a car seat is really necessary (and then only if you live somewhere where you have to drive to live), and that you should "think carefully" about what other conveyances you bring into your child's life.

Bottom line for us: we're keeping our swing, but trying to reduce our reliance on it. Slings/wraps/carriers don't seem to present such a problem to me. Obviously we have a car seat. We have a stroller but our use it pretty much limited to the time I'm exercising. I'm trying to get the baby more on the flat floor, so she has a chance to use all her muscles!

Pacifiers
This one was a big no from La Leche League as well. Michael Olaf has an opinion that seems to match Polk and Lillard on this one: pacifiers that the baby can't control are a sort of "put a sock in it" overture. But we did it anyway. After being bound and determined that we would get breastfeeding figured out for good, and that Vicki Jo wouldn't get a pacifier no matter how much she wanted to suck, we gave her one after about ten days. I can literally see the relaxation flow into her body when I give it to her sometimes. Again, I'm trying to reduce her reliance on this one. I do realize that it's probably harder for a baby to form good speech patterns early on if she constantly has something in her mouth. And this varies by baby: some babies are not so into comfort sucking as she is.

Baby's Environment
This will be a big change for us. We are moving to a floor-bed once Vicki Jo starts sleeping by herself (someday!), and will need to entirely childproof her space (something we haven't done yet because she is still immobile), so that she can be in there playing independently without constantly needing an adult hawking over her. This means our crib is probably the single most expensive useless gift we've ever received! Oh well. We use it for a kind of changing table currently, and will just continue with that.

Toys
We have bought nary a toy for our baby. She has received so many gifts, we haven't had to. But with so many gifts comes a lack of control over what you bring into your child's environment. So, I've decided to pare down. This means giving many gifts away, but that's okay. After consulting with some Montessori teachers online, we will be starting over fresh with toys that are meant to go into a child's tiny hand: a rattle, a wooden teether, a grasper, wood and leather grasping beads, a bell and a hoop on a string tied to an elastic

Cloth Diapers
All right already! We're going to start using them at home. Our sitter is not a fan, which I can understand, so we will definitely be doing a disposable/cloth combo, but we have the damn diapers, I just need to get off my lazy bum and start using them!

Okay, like I said - some fairly sweeping changes. But all in all, doable. One of my gripes about Montessori from the Start is that it seemed hard to me. Or maybe just a little idealistic. Or maybe just like it required a different kind of person. I found myself wishing I could start over - we could move into a new house, be more spare in our furnishings and possessions, and carefully select items for the baby over time. But that is just not how life works - at least, not our life together. So, for me, it's about letting go of some of that idealism as well.

If you're reading, and any of this makes sense, feel free to leave a comment!

circa 1973

2011-08-05T10:02:00.000-05:00

Mom and Dad.

Not sure of the year, but it had to be before my brother was born in 1975. The painting behind them was done by my dad's sister Martha, and still hangs at our apartment now!

we women

2011-08-03T08:59:00.000-05:00

My friend Betsy is great about posing questions to me about Scripture and Christian culture. Lately, she sent me an email saying, essentially, "What do you think about all that stuff Paul said about women not being in charge? And there being categorical differences between men and women beyond biology?"

I had to think long and hard about my response.

I used to be really incensed by Paul's attitude, and a more general stance in Christianity, that women and men had different capabilities, and that women needed to submit to men. I still totally disagree with the last part about submission, but being pregnant and having a small child has changed me. Struggling through the fact that, despite modern advances in medicine, carrying and delivering a child is something that can kill you. And then, the continual weight you feel in being solely responsible for the feeding of a tiny being who could conceivably die if you don't do it right. These things tend to change a person. I am no exception.

I was always one who had more guy friends than girl friends. For some reason, I've always been drawn to the company of men. I like the way that they joke, they don't fuss at each other, and the way that plans seem to come together more effortlessly than with a group of women. I have always struggled to find a good group of girlfriends (one of the reasons I joined a sorority - one of my favorite surprise game-changers in conversation with people!).

So, when I found out I was pregnant, there was so much I wanted to talk about . . . and guys just aren't the right audience. No one was rude, or told me I was gross, but there was just a mismatch in the conversation. After all, no men had any experience they could offer me firsthand. And as things progressed, I needed women even more. As I was scared about the complications at the end of my pregnancy, made it through the travails of labor, and went through some dark times in establishing good growth for my breastfed baby, I mostly just felt like I needed my mom.

But that wasn't possible, because she had died six years earlier. So, enter this woman:

This is my sister, Nelle (on the right. That's your truly on the left). She is seven and a half years older than me, and has a son who is almost four. She also had a baby on January 1 (the first baby born at their hospital in the new year . . . she got so much free stuff), so we were able to compare notes. We talk and text daily, and she has coached me through this whole motherhood thing with ease and grace. She's also a registered nurse, so she has medical expertise to add to sisterly caring. I could not have made it to this point with any sanity if she wasn't around.

And enter these women:

This is our Bradley birth class - after we'd all been through the marathon we trained for together! Amber, our teacher, is on the far right. Amber truly became more than a teacher to me. She was there to address all my crazy questions and fears no matter what time of night. She offered continually to come to my home and help me work through plans for labor. She is someone who is deeply invested in making sure women know the power they have in bringing children into the world. And the other women in our group have become such a great support for me. With the addition of other members with young babies from La Leche League, neighborhoods, and friends of friends, we have a fantastic playgroup that meets weekly for advice, sharing, and just being there for one another. My baby is the youngest of the group, so I get lots of hand-me-down clothes, as well as a good dose of "it's going to be okay my baby went through that phase too."

So, although Mom isn't here with me now, I know that her spirit comes to me in these other women. And my mind has changed a little bit about Paul. Women truly do experience things that men can never know. It doesn't make us worse or better, but it makes us need one another.

a theory

2011-08-01T09:55:00.000-05:00

I have a theory - a highly developed, well-researched theory - that all babies look a lot like their fathers. I think this is an evolutionary response to assure fathers that their children are actually theirs. After all, no one can question the identity of the mother if they were around for the birth! But fathers need a little reassurance. This ensures that the family unit stays together to care for the child. I just wish I were an evolutionary biologist so I could say this with any real certainty! Here is my casual observation on this theory:

That's all for today! Enjoy your Monday, world.

cheap, healthy, shelf-stable

2011-07-31T13:47:00.000-05:00

Back when I was a student (for so, so many years), I needed good, healthy dishes that I could take with me in the morning and didn't necessarily need refrigeration. Buying lunch can really add up quickly, and I've always been so frugal (Jeff calls it miserly cheap). Now that I have a refrigerator near my office, I don't even need it! I usually go home for lunch. But still, this is one of my favorite meals to make for one, especially when I'm ready to take a break from a meat-centered repast.

Tip: to keep a bunch of parsley fresh for a long time in the fridge, I treat it like a bouquet of flowers: put up on their stems in a cup of cold water and change the water frequently. I've had parsley last as long as three weeks like this.

Couscous and Chickpeas

1/3 C dry couscous

2/3 C chicken broth

1/2 C canned chickpeas, drained and rinsed well

1 C chopped spinach

1/4 C chopped parsley

1 green onion, chopped finely

1 T olive oil

salt and pepper

wedge of lemon

Boil the chicken broth, then remove from heat, add the couscous, stir and cover. Let sit for five minutes while you prepare the rest of the ingredients. Fluff the couscous with a fork and turn it out into a bowl. Add chickpeas, spinach, parsley, and green onion and toss. Dress with olive oil and lemon juice, and season with salt and pepper. 516 calories altogether.

Montessori from the Start, II of III

2011-07-30T11:04:00.001-05:00

This is the second in my three-part series on Montessori from the Start, by Paula Polk Lillard and Lynn Lillard Jessen. For part one, and a little background on the book, click here. Today, I'm going to discuss some questions the book raised for me, and some recommendations I'm probably not going to follow.

First, scheduled feedings! No! This book was last edited in 2003, so there is no excuse about outdated advice. While they strongly advocate breastfeeding, which I love, they also make some assumptions about how nursing will be used to create order in the child's life: "By the time of weaning at approximately six to nine months, the baby is most often on a schedule of five meals a day, usually at six and ten'o'clock in the morning, and two, six, and ten'o'clock in the evening."* Hello!? Have you met my child? She likes to eat all the time, and at four months, she's nowhere near a four-hourly schedule. And I'm not trying to push her there. Scheduled feeding has been linked to failure to thrive, to which we've come dangerously close in the past. Thanks but no thanks on this one.

Second, the quote above references another sticking point I'm having: early weaning. Now, let's be straight about what "weaning" might mean. To some people, it means the introduction of any other food or drink besides breastmilk. So, in that case, because my baby gets a tiny bit of formula three times a week, she might be considered as already in the weaning process. To others, it mean the cessation of breastfeeding altogether. Lillard and Jessen are talking about the latter. Current medical advice on this is a minimum of one year of nursing, if the nursing couple (mother-baby) is capable of that. In fact, the World Health Organization advocates two years of breastfeeding.

But here is the quote on weaning: "Now at nine months, mother and infant are challenged with a new mission - that of separation . . . weaning from the breast is a move toward independence from the mother and represents the child's further embrace of the world."** There seems to be some Montessori wisdom at play here, about the sensitive period of the child for weaning, but I've worked so very hard to establish a good nursing relationship that I'm probably going to carry on for as long as the baby wants to. At least a year is my goal. Check in with me in another six months!

Finally, there was a whole section that was essentially on sleep training. This is, of course, a controversial subject among parents, but my child and I sleep together. This is primarily a convenience for night feeding, but now we are also both reliant on the closeness of one another to sleep well. "Sleeping through the night" seems to be of paramount importance: "It is essential to work toward this nightly sleep pattern from the beginning. Otherwise a 'wake up' nighttime habit becomes firmly established."*** I'm left wondering why this "wake up" habit is so objectionable. "The sooner you can get the baby into a nighttime sleep patter, the sooner you can be a better parent. If by three to three and a half months, your baby is not on a stable schedule, it is time to get seriously to work on it."**** Uh-oh! I'm in trouble. They also reference Weissbluth's Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child, which is not necessarily totally against bed-sharing, but is not the most avid supporter. So, I'm leaving this recommendation behind altogether. I know there is a Montessori principle behind it (encouraging the independence of the child and confidence in sleeping alone), but I suppose I'll choose to follow the child on this one.

All of these divergences seem to come from the attachment parent side of me, and there is a long-standing dialogue between Montessori adherents and attachment parents about how the two philosophies can work together. In any case, I feel confident in my decisions about these matters. I may be inexperienced, but I know enough about my baby at this point to make these adaptations.

Next Saturday I'll wrap up the series on Montessori from the Start with my final take-away: the changes I'll be making in environment and approach to support my child's development.

*Montessori from the Start, p. 137.
** Ibid., p. 136, emphasis mine.
*** Ibid., p. 124.
**** Ibid., p. 126.

11 pounds 12.2 ounces*

2011-07-29T09:21:00.000-05:00

of pure strong baby muscle!! look who is holding her head up like she's been doing it all her life:

*that was her weight last Saturday, so hopefully she's more than that now!

one wintry cold evening . . .

2011-07-28T11:30:00.000-05:00

Today, let me tell you a story. This is one of Jeff's and my favorite tales of misadventure. We were doing a grand loop of the Midwest during one of our winter breaks (when we still were students and had winter breaks . . . sigh). We were still living in Nashville at this time. We had been to Lawrence to see friends, my brother and sister-in-law, and my stepdad and his wife. Then we turned northeast and headed to my sister's in Illinois. We had left a bit late, so we knew we would be finishing the six-hour-drive by about eight or nine that night. It was New Year's Eve and we wanted to be in Taylorville in time to celebrate the ball dropping in Central Time.

Jeff had recently been given the use of a GPS unit by his job, and we borrowed it for our trip. The GPS was trusty, and we enjoyed having it point out alternate routes on these well-worn paths for us. After all, the wheat- and cornfields of Kansas, Missouri and Illinois can provide only so much excitement. We traveled east across Missouri on 36 Highway. We crossed through Hannibal, birthplace of Mark Twain/Samuel Clements, and onto I-72. As we got to the far side of Springfield, we decided to use the GPS to provide a fun rural road. We turned off as the sun was setting behind us. We went through small town after thriving small town. Did you know Illinois has a large amount of non-ghost, apparently non-meth-addled small towns?

We gathered that we had made a wrong turn onto the blacktop that would take us through the final stretch to Taylorville. Rather than make a U-turn on the road, Jeff opted to turn left onto a dirt road that the GPS told us would connect back to the road we wanted. It was dark and we couldn't see well. Suddenly, we realized that we were on a farm access road! This was not even a legitimately constructed road to hold the load of his pickup and the two of us. By the time we understood that we needed to get off this road and quick, we were stuck in the side of a huge mudpile. It was probably eight'o'clock.

Jeff tried to free us by rocking the truck - rhythmically gunning the gas to try to get a little traction under the tires. We didn't budge. He had a few spare lumber scraps in the truckbed (don't ask), so we wedged them under the tires to make a platform. No luck - the tires pushed them out of the way with their spinning before they could gain any purchase. We were starting to get desperate, and the reality set in that we were miles from any recognizable road on New Year's Eve. We saw a house up on the hill - I figure it was the people who owned the field we were in - and there was a light on in the window. We had no cell phone service, and the only option was to trudge up the steep hill, coated in mud from the trek from truck to gravel road, and knock on their door. I felt certain that this was the moment I was going to be murdered by serial killers.

We got to the top of the hill, knocked timidly on the door, and were welcomed by some fine farmers to step only onto their welcome mat inside the door because we were absolutely caked in wet mud. They were understandably puzzled about why in God's name we had turned onto their farm road, but they brought us their cordless phone and gave us the number of a tow truck service. Our hopes were low because it was a holiday night, but there was an answer! We told the guy where we were and he said he would be out in half an hour. We spent the next awkward thirty minutes standing on a two-foot square area while making small talk with these elderly rural folk.

The tow truck man finally arrived, and amid our profuse gratitude about coming out on New Year's Eve, we hopped in his truck and took him down the hill to where our truck was stuck. We thought this would be a quick job and we would be on our way. He backed his truck onto the mud road, hooked a thick tow chain to the underside of our pickup's bumper . . . and proceeded to get his truck completely and hopelessly stuck in the mud as well. So now we had our truck hooked to a tow truck - both mired in the mud. The tow truck man called his girlfriend. We all hopped in his truck and listened to tunes while we waited another half-hour for her to arrive. She was a sweetheart, and we thanked her relentlessly as she explained that she was missing her bowling league's championship game. We really felt like a couple of idiots at this point for driving into an access road in the dark. She drove us into town, dropped the three of us off at the tow truck man's house, and we all hopped into his truck to drive back out to the two stuck trucks.

While we were at his house, I was sure I was going to be murdered by serial killers for the second time. Instead, he offered any of the old American Pickers-type antique stuff he had in his garage to us for free. What a nice guy. We arrived back at the farm road, hooked his truck to the tow truck, and each of us hopped in one of the vehicles to steer. After a few false starts and some wiggles, His F-150 singlehandedly pulled out his tow truck and our S10 back onto the gravel road. We jumped for joy! We were free! This whole project had taken about four hours. The tow truck man charged us only $75 for this whole ridiculous experience, but we insisted on giving him a hundred. We raced back to the main highway, vowing to never again follow the GPS into oblivion.

We arrived at my sister's house at about 11:53. Her sleepy son emerged from his bedroom to find us completely covered in dried mud like a couple of chocolate-dipped bananas. He looked so confused, and then he just turned around and went back to bed. I don't remember anything else about that night, but this remains one of my all-time favorite stories to this day.

the efficacy of prayer

2011-07-27T11:46:00.000-05:00

"Very often the spontaneous prayer is an ordinary conversation with somebody who is called 'God,' but who is actually another man to whom we tell things, often at greath length, to whom we give thanks and of whom we ask favors." (Paul Tillich, The New Being)

I lost my glasses last Saturday. I only need them for reading (actually I need them all the time but only wear them for reading), so I wasn't too concerned. However, as Sunday passed, then Monday, my eye-strain and headache increased apace, and finally on Tuesday I was getting desperate. I didn't know when to draw and line and call the eye doctor and get some new ones.

I'm a spiritual-religious type, naturally, so I began to pray about it. God, help me find my glasses. Nothing. God, if it's in your plan, allow me to find my glasses. No glasses. God, give me a sign that I need to call the eye doctor. The heavens didn't part.

I found my glasses on Tuesday night, and I did thank God for it briefly. And then, as so often happens in an everyday situation like this, I thought about the absurdity of it all. Does God hear these prayers and chuckle? Does God give a damn about my glasses? There are starving people and wars and floods. My headache is nothing serious.

Then my thoughts turn to the existential: what is prayer? Doesn't God know everything about me - know me even better than I know myself? How can I reveal anything to God that isn't already known? Am I giving messages to myself, then? God isn't somebody with whom I can have a conversation. God can never be "object," is a grammatical sense - God is always and only "subject."

I don't have a real answer for any of these questions, but a favorite passage of Scripture helps me along. "Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness, for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words. And he who searches the hearts of men knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God." (Romans 8:26-27)

If you have trouble praying, or feel silly doing it, understand that you are in great company. People of immense faith, and even pastors like myself, wonder what the value of prayer is. All I can say is that I continue to do it, and hope that the Holy Spirit's sighs can inspire me.

cold supper

2011-07-25T09:36:00.000-05:00

Yesterday was the final day of a scorching heat wave that settled over Topeka and the entire Midwest. The "heatdome" killed my appetite, and making dinner every night became a real chore. I often had to remind myself that I'm nursing a baby, so skipping meals isn't a good idea. My sister and her son and daughter are visiting for a few days, and her remarkable (almost-four-year-old!) son will eat anything. I'm not kidding - the child will eat an entire tomato like an apple. I love when he comes to visit because he clears out my veggie drawer. This nice cold pasta dish was made with him in mind - chockful of chilly veggies and chicken and feta cheese. We all enjoyed it and it made one of my favorite dinners: the kind with no leftovers!!

Greek Pasta Salad
8 oz rigatoni
4 oz chicken breast
1 medium cucumber, chopped into bite-sized pieces
3 oz cherry tomatoes, quartered
2 oz feta, cut into quarter-inch cubes
2 T olive oil
1 T white wine vinegar
salt and pepper

Cook pasta in boiling water until al dente. Meanwhile, pound the chicken breast thin or slice horizontally into two flatter pieces. Season with salt and pepper and cook over medium heat in 1 T olive oil. Combine tomatoes, cucumber, and feta in a large bowl. Drain pasta and rinse in cold water. Add the the bowl. When chicken has cooked and cooled a bit, cut into small bite-sized chunks. Add to the bowl. Add 1 T olive oil and white wine vinegar, salt and pepper to taste. Serves four on a hot evening with low appetities. 343 calories per serving.

Montessori from the Start, I of III

2011-07-23T08:08:00.002-05:00

As I discussed in an earlier post, I'm interested in both Waldorf and Montessori approaches to child development, and particularly in how they can affect the parenting of my infant (sixteen weeks today!). One book that was continually recommended to me by Montessori instructors, blogs, and websites was Montessori from the Start, by Paula Polk Lillard and Lynn Lillard Jessen. As you might have guessed from their names, they are a mother-daughter pair who have been deeply influenced by Montessori education, founded a Montessori school in Illinois, and are committed to helping others learn about it.

There were some things I really liked about this book, some things I'm questioning and might disagree with, and some changes that I'm going to make in my approach to parenting based on it. Because I have a lot of reflections, I'm dividing the review into three parts. Bear with me!

The main point that hit home with me, and seems foundational to the whole Montessori philosophy, is helping the child find appropriate "work" for herself. No, this doesn't mean suit-and-tie office work. The concept of work for an infant relates mainly to observing and exploring her environment. Because she has an "absorbent mind," the environment provides pretty much all the stimulation that she will need. There's no reason for bright, flashy, fancy toys - in fact, they can be overwhelming and difficult for the baby to assimilate.

Like many babies, my daughter Vicki Jo is sometimes fussy and angry. Like most parents, I struggle to understand what she needs. One of the things this book helped me discover is that she could conceivably be bored when she is fussing. I hadn't yet incorporated boredom into my list of reasons (wet, cold, hot, hungry, uncomfortable, sleepy were pretty much it!). But the whole point is making a match between her development (which changes practically by the hour) and the challenge provided. So, for example, I wouldn't have given her a rattle when she was six weeks old - or at least, I wouldn't have expected her to have any idea what to do with it. But now that she is sixteen weeks, and is grasping things with intent and pulling them to her mouth to inspect them, I will give her rattles and other small toys that she is capable of holding. This is going to the edge of what challenges her at this point. This will keep her engaged, and hopefully forestall boredom and aid in her hand-brain development.

The next point that hit home had to do with the baby's struggle, and how much to intervene. Again, as a first-time mom, I'm still finding my way in the whole discipline area. Part of me says, "How could a three-month-old do anything with intent? There is no such concept as discipline for her yet." But then another part of me says, "I'm setting expectations, limitations, and boundaries that will last a lifetime. She can pick up on my tone and attitude, so she can understand firmness." So, I've done her a disservice by being inconsistent: sometimes I pick her up right away when she fusses, because it makes me squirmy. But sometimes I let her fuss, because I'm busy, or don't think she has a legitimate reason to be upset. Lillard and Jessen helped me see that sometimes fussing is struggle. If she is being challenged, she will struggle. But is the struggle manageable? She still needs my help in everything that she does. I have to decide when she has struggled hard enough. I'm still definitely not in the cry-it-out camp, but I feel like my footing is a little surer now.

Finally, I appreciated the emphasis on natural materials and real human interaction that the book provided. Vicki Jo has just begun to be entranced by the television, and this might be the biggest lifestyle change that Jeff and I have to make. We are those people who just constantly have the tv on in the background. We have 300 channels, but frequently "nothing is on." Jeff is also a total video game addict. But this statement rung true for me: "Children whose lives are filled with the overstimulation and entertainment of television, computer games, and endless plastic toys inside the home, and an action-packed daily schedule of events outside of it, have trouble developing the concentration required for forming the will and thus a disciplined approach to learning."* Yes! I feel the ennui that has grown within me as the television has been my constant companion from young childhood. But do we get rid of it altogether? (Jeff would kill me.) No, that seems a bit Luddite. It's about discipline, I think.

Stay tuned for Part II . . . my divergences from the book's ideas.

*Montessori from the Start, p. 217.