"Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned."

Lately, I've been thinking about my relationship with Addison and what it is now and what it will be in the future. Currently, I don't have a strong passionate need to keep her safe from emotional harm, because really, no one can harm her with crappy comments or hurtful things yet. I have a desire to protect her phyiscally, but not emotionally yet.

Last night I talked to my brother on the phone for quite awhile and after our conversation ended and it was time for me to crawl into bed my head was spinning and I wasn't even remotely tired. I had a memory running through my mind that I couldn't get rid of.

When we were kids we rode the bus to our elementary school. We we're one of the last pick ups so it wasn't too shabby of a deal because we were never on the bus for more than five minutes. I believe I was in fifth grade and Keith was in second the morning that my memory is from. We boarded the bus as usual and started walking to find seats. We walked by a girl who was in the sixth grade and was a brutal bully. We're talking, absolutely, positively brutal. She went to our church and we knew her outside of school and I HATED her guts. I was terrifed of her. I mean, I think adults were even scared of Joie. Have I conveyed how much I hated her? Well, as we walked by, Joie, as loud as she could, screamed, "Look! It's Christa and her brother Dumbo! Look at those huge ears!" Of course the entire bus erupted in laughter. It was the longest five minute ride of my life. I wasn't embarrassed, I was furious.

I had never felt such a rage towards someone before. You would have thought that my little, scrawny ten year old body had erupted into that of the Hulk. I wanted to crawl over the seats, grab her by her long blond pony tail and make her pay (with as much physical pain as possible) for making my brother feel bad about himself. How dare she?!

I don't know if Keith even remembers this or not. But as I was laying in bed last night, I still had the same anger and hurt balled up inside of me about the event. I think I could still physically hurt her for that morning that happened almost fifteen years ago. I stalked Joie on Facebook from my phone while I was trying to fall asleep to see where she was at, what she was doing and so on. And without totally bashing her, let's just say the Willson kids are living a MUCH better life. I believe in a little bit of Karma.

I've had these unbelievable chest pains/anger bursts about situations that have come up with my dad and Paul too.

I wanted to punch an 80 year old woman in the jugular a few months ago for bad mouthing my dad and not thinking that he would hear about it. He heard about it. And so did I and I about went through the roof.

And before I even knew Paul, back in the day, his high school friends stood him up and he ended up sitting through a movie by himself. Alone. In the dark. He is friends with most of these people still today and I like them all, mostly, but talk about an anger I have buried inside of me. There are times I've wanted to pop off some nasty remark about how crappy of people they are for that one moment.

I've hurt for my mom before, but have never felt like I needed to do something about it. She takes care of herself and quite well might I add. She doesn't let people walk on her (not that my dad, Keith or Paul do. I just have some kind of protection reflex for them).

So I know this will come for Addison. I know that the physical protection I already feel that I need to provide for her will morph into an emotional one when we get to the stage. But it'll probably be 1000 times more intense.

This is your heads up people. If your kid hurts my kid, lock your deadbolt.

in my purse today...

Let's play a game shall we?
Let's play, what's in Christa's purse!
Ok.

Today, in my purse I have:

Two cans of Infant Enfamil Formula
A handmade doll that Addison's aunt Jenn made her
A dirty pair of Addison's pajamas (with embroidered super cute whales)
A pacifier
A gold necklace
Chapstick
Lip Gloss
Lipstick
Two red pens
Two blue pens
Two black pens
A planner
A small notebook
A Lean Cuisine
A can of Coke
A bag of tortilla chips
My wallet
My cellphone
My keys
A screwdriver
4 Allen Wrenches
A small box of extra screwdriver heads
Command picture hanging strips
My library card
Paperwork from Addison's doctor's appointment
And a pair of sunglasses (Did you sing that like "And a partridge in a pear tree." Because that was the goal...)

Oh, and an empty wallet. Because you never know when you'll need one (that was sarcasm).

cooking for an infant

Addison had her four month wellness check up today and she checked out great. She's in the 25th percentile for her weight and head circumference and in the 50th for her height. I find that odd because she's looking a little chunky to me. Not bad chunky, baby cute chunky of course.

She's also doubled her birth weight and has been eating rice cereal lately like a champ. We're going to keep that up for another month but her doctor said that around the five month mark we can start her on some fruits and vegetables.

Seriously?!

I just got this whole formula feeding thing down and I'm good at it. Like really good at it and keeping up with it. Now you want me to figure out how to start serving solids, and displace bottles and get my child to turn into a normal human being who eats regular food one day?!

Fuh-reak-ing out.

The plan has been and is to make her baby food. Paul and I got ourselves back in the kitchen at the beginning of May and have been truly enjoying cooking our food again. We were tired of the restaurants we had been frequenting and we we're tired of the effect they were having on our wallets. So, we want to consciously make Addison's food too. We'll know what's in it, how long it's been "fresh" and it'll be cheap, cheap, cheap. And since she eats like a little bird, the cheap, cheap, cheap part seems quite appropriate in more ways than one.

Back when I was pregnant, I swore that I needed one of these babycook do-dads. But now that it's actually getting to be close to time to start this whole process, shelling out $145.00 for yet another kitchen appliance seems ridiculous. Considering we own a steaming pot, KitchenAid blender and Cuisinart food processor. Oh and our kitchen is the size of some people's powder baths and storage space is limited.

So, I've decided to forgo the fancy little steamer/pureeing combo and use the ridiculously expensive appliances I already own. Oh darn.

OK, so I know what I'm going to use, however I have no idea what to do with them. This cannot be rocket science.

I started googling for baby puree recipes and did you know there are entire baby food cookbooks out there? Genius, sort of. Most of the first food recipes say things like, "Steam one cup of carrots. Place in blender and puree. Serve and freeze."

Yea, OK, I know how to do that. I don't need a cookbook for that but I do need one for things like Pumpkin Banana Puree and Banana Avocado Puree. I mean the whole point of making her baby food is to watch what goes in her body right? So I don't think letting someone whose never made baby food before, just whip up whatever she wants and shovel it her kid's mouth is accomplishing the same goal. So I do want a little direction. Mock me if you must.

Here are the ones I've researched online and want to check out at B&N or BAM before I buy:

I know, you probably think they all look ridiculous but I'm at least going to check them out.

The only other question I'm working through is how to store, carry and keep this food. I know a lot of people use ice cube trays to freeze the food they make and that works, but we currently have two ice trays, and we use them for, wait for it, ICE. So I could go buy one, but why buy an ice tray when you could buy one of these puppies:

My only beef with the Beaba trays (above) is that they don't have a container that their little frozen food will fit in perfectly like the same shaped Tupperware or jar. So while it will be fine when we are feeding her at home, it's not so convenient for daycare, trips, etc. 

I know a lot of people also buy 15-20 jars of baby food at first and then reuse them to store the items they make. But I'm not a huge fan of glass jars. I do know Gerber has been making their packaging a BPA free plastic container lately. The only thing I'm not sure on is if they are re-usable, dishwasher safe and if the lid snaps back on tightly. I guess I could buy one and check it out.  

Anyone use these before and know if they are re-usable?

Exterior Updating

We are finally biting the bullet and painting the house.

The Sunday afternoon we pulled up in front of the open house almost six years ago (without any intention to buy it) I said, "Cute, cute house. Needs a new paint job though. The colors are a little whack."

That night we put an offer on the house, whack colors and all.

Every time I showed someone photos of our new house I made sure to preface the entire conversation with, "Oh, this is the color now, but we'll be painting it soon."

And here we are, five and a half years after owning this house and it's still covered in the light blue siding, crayola Kelly green trim and pinky tan brick.

But not for long...

Here is the color palette I put together and that we both agreed on. Finally.

For the last five and a half years we've pulled color scheme after color scheme together, all of them being fine and looked right for our home but without a plan to paint, who knows what I did with all of those options. So when our neighbor recently had their house painted and the painter gave us an amazing deal to do ours too, we had to start all over again selecting colors. We tried probably 50+ different combinations. Everything from light blue, red and gray to a monochromatic blue scheme. One day shortly after I had returned to work and didn't have a project to work on yet, I Sherwin-Williamsed our house and messed around with colors until I came up with these.

So, in a very crude rendering, here is where we hope to go. (Note: the photo is from 2004 and our shrubs and tree are now huge and block too much of the house for me to use to test paint schemes).

I've gotten some mixed reviews about it, but I like it and Paul likes it, so it's what we're going to do. I mean, when you're the person living with it and paying for it, it should be something you like, right?

We are going to keep our existing house numbers that are to the right of our front door:

But the mailbox could use a replacement. The mailbox we currently have is dated and looking worn. I want something simple, clean and cheap.I'm thinking one of these two:

And speaking of mailboxes, have any of you priced them lately? I have and let me tell you what, I think I could convince my mail man to stand on my front porch and personally hold my mail in his hands every single day until I got home for less than some mailboxes cost. Geez Louise.

The light fixture is fine, and technically I don't think we're allowed to replace it without going through some historical preservation hoopla. So it stays.

The doorbell has been broken for about a year. One day it just stopped working. It's the old school bell, none of this new age chime stuff. The bell is in our kitchen next to the back door and we have no idea what caused it to quit ringing. Paul's going to take a look soon. When he does and he figures out how to fix it, because he's Superman and all, I'm going to have him replace the button with this one:

We have two large ceramic planters that are a good mixture of the blue and green that we selected for the house and have that paint drip effect going on that are currently on the two brick ledges that protrude from the house. We'll put those back out and I'm going to save up for a super tall planter to go in the corner to the left of the front door. We're talking like hip height tall.

The furniture and swing on the porch will get a good wash down, the white should pop off the brown/gray and the cushions/pillows will be tweaked (possibly) when we get done.

Things are buzzing around our block.

re-evaluating

via Quiltish who got it from Making Things Happen

Paul and I have been re-evaluating for about a month now where we are and where we want to go. It’s a frenzy of current home location, financial, occupational and spiritual re-evaluations.

Apparently we don’t like to take things one step at a time. We like to cram the entire steak in our mouth and chew on the entire thing at once instead of cutting it up first. Don’t judge, it works for us. Plus, every situation we are evaluating lends itself to another and then another and they are all so interconnected, splitting them up would do us no good.

Making a decision about our future location within this massive city has huge implications on our jobs, our church, Addison’s child care, our finances and our lifestyle.

Our finances have a huge impact on location, me staying at work or not, etc.

And so on and so on.

We haven’t been able to make a decision about anything yet because there are so many variables to each decision and there really is no rush.

What we did decide, however, was that we had to start planning now so that a year from now, or two years from now we aren’t cursing ourselves for not taking any action at all.

everyday defining moments

Last night I had one of those, “this is your life,” kind of moments.


I don’t find those moments daunting or bad. In fact, I rather enjoy them.

The only other one I remember vividly happened a few years ago (ok, ok, maybe 6-1/2 years ago) when I was driving to work. It was December, freezing and dark. I was a freshman in college and I was driving down Bryant St. listening to the new Death Cab for Cutie album when it hit me. “You are a college kid.” Everything about that moment for some reason personified what I had expected college to be like and I had arrived.

Last night after we had put Addison down for bed I had an urge to scrub down the kitchen. So in I went, bleaching counters, polishing marble, scrubbing the sink, dusting, loading the dishwasher, etc. I was a machine.

Side note: If you have a black shirt you’ve been wearing a lot lately and you are wondering if you look as good in it as you think, accidently dousing yourself in a bleach/water solution while wearing it and cleaning is probably a sign from God that in fact you don’t look very good in it. I’m not sure if it is ruined or not. If not, I’m taking that as a sign that it does look OK.

Paul had just gotten finished with folding the towels and was relaxing on the couch watching some television when I looked up from the sink and saw my reflection in the window. We we’re a family. We’d had dinner together, looked over our budget for the month, played together, put our daughter down for bed and then we went about doing what families do to prepare for the next day. I loved it.

Sometime last year, the girls in my bible class had a bible study and Tara, the one leading it, had asked us to think of three moments that defined who we were. Only three. I thought all day long about them and my first thoughts were things like my wedding day, graduating with my degree, etc.

But the longer I thought about it, even though those events and moments were big, they weren’t necessarily defining.

My marriage was not defined by the day that Paul and I said I do. Even though that meant that we were married, it had nothing to do with what marriage was about for us. What defined me us as a married couple was our experience in the Dominican Republic when we lost a baby and I had to have a D&C in a foreign developing country. We rocked as a married couple.

None of the actual experience had anything to do with the bible study actually, it was taken a different direction which was really cool but all of that was to say that what some people would consider everyday life or circumstantial moments are what define me.

The day we had Addison changed our lives forever. Yes, we became a family that day and it meant the world to us.

But last night, scrubbing my kitchen in my 97 year old house, while my husband watched some television and my daughter slept soundly in her room, we were blowing being a family right out of the water.

man on the moon moment?

How many blog posts started with "Osama bin Laden is dead" this morning? And you know all those people who didn't start their blogs with that line sure wanted to. They either thought it would made them look cool to not write about it or something but honestly, it happened and it was sort of a big deal.

Not earth shattering big like the people celebrating in the streets would have liked you to believe.

People celebrating in the streets. Chanting "U.S.A." and singing the national anthem at the top of their lungs outside of the White House.

Who are we? It was strange to watch, knowing it was happening within our borders. We don't celebrate like that. That's what we see on TV when other countries celebrate.

And Twitter. Twitter was all over the place. "Ding Dong the Witch is Dead", "Obama is announcing that he is coming around all 50 states to hi-five everyone", "Breaking News: Chuck Norris returns from Pakistan."

I told a friend of mine this morning that when the announcement was made that Obama would be addressing the nation and we found out that Tinker AFB had heightened it's security we flipped on the TV and everything in my living room felt very 1960's-ish. We we're in our pajamas and we we're about to listen to the President address the nation on national television. Was this going to be my "man on the moon" experience? Septemeber 11th was intense, and we watched television for hours at school but this felt a little different.

It might have been that man on the moon moment, if CNN, Fox News, MSNBC and every other network that has live capability hadn't beaten the story to death in the hour we were waiting for the "official" word. I understand needing to alert everyone that needed to know but by the time the calls got to those people, CNN had already told them and so had Twitter and Facebook.

Social media has changed the game.

new business cards

Today is my first day back at work and I'm having mixed emotions about it.

On one hand, I will only feed Addison 3 times a day instead of 6. I will only change 4 diapers instead of 8 to 10. Her upset fits won't seem so exhausting when I wasn't the one who had her all day when she wouldn't nap. Things feel familiar around here, my desk is clean and I know where everything is. It's kind of nice.

But on the other hand, there's somebody else reading to my baby everyday. There's somebody else singing to her and teaching her and watching her grow. There's someone else watching her talk and laugh and that sucks.

I did really well with all of this this morning. I was a bit rushed and in a frenzy and didn't really have much time to think about the fact that I wasn't at home. And it was day one, I knew it would start to hurt on day 6 or 7 more when it had set in. Everyone was glad to see me back, they brought in breakfast and everyone ooed and awed over me and the picture of the baby.

But then 1:00 pm hit and I hit a slump. I wasn't at home and more importantly I wasn't with Addi. I was done playing Interior Designer and was ready to go back to my real life, her.

I was given my new business cards today. The person giving them to me was either full of crap or knew that if they didn't make every single thing positive about being here that I'd get right up and leave. I'd never seen such a huge smile on someone's face over a 2" x 3" piece of paper. And one that looks much worse graphically than our previous ones might I add. Everyone else's had been handed out a month ago, I was the stragler. All I could think was, "Wipe that grin off your face, this isn't exciting."

Three years ago when I was given my first box of business cards, it WAS exciting and new and meant so many things. Like, I was an adult, and I had arrived.

But today, the box of 400 business cards snapped me out of my first day back frenzy. I was back in the office, working. Funny how a 2" x 3" piece of paper can make you feel a little trapped.

I know that things will settle down and we'll get in new routines and that much thought will have to go into any and every decision we make and chances are that I'll continue to work but right here, right now, with this tiny little piece of cardstock in my hand, I feel like this totally sucks.

February 3rd

I can barely remember what I had for dinner last night, but February 3rd and the events of the day will forever be burned into my memory. I never knew how much detail I could retain until it involved our daughter.

It was Tuesday, February 1st and Blizzard 2011 was rearing it's ugly head. I was stuck in my house with my in-laws and husband watching a ridiculous amount of TV and eating food we were not hungry for but we we're bored and there was nothing else to do. My mom was trapped in a hotel room five minutes from our house cooking meals for after our babies arrival. I was about to go finish packing for the hospital because we we're headed there at 5 am the next morning to be induced to have our first child. Nerves were high.

And then the phone rang. And it was canceled. Our daughter wasn't coming and I was crushed. I was stuck in a house, my mom was stuck in a hotel so close by, and our daughter wasn't coming.

I spent the afternoon crying in our room, embarrassed at how childish I probably appeared to my in-laws. I wanted to meet her more than anything and because of the blizzard, she wouldn't be coming.

I don't remember anything about that evening but I do remember waking up on the morning of the 2nd and laying in bed, depressed, again, because she wouldn't be coming. I got up for the day, went on about my business and tried to be happy. They'd rescheduled my appointment for Saturday, she was still going to be here but Saturday seemed like it would take forever to arrive. I didn't want to have her on Saturday, I wanted to have her on the 2nd.

As the afternoon wore on, I started feeling a little funny and thought that maybe my water had broken. It was definitely not the gush I had envisioned but something was going on. I put on fresh clothes, laid down for a nap and woke up to find that that something that had been going on was still happening. I got dressed, packed the hospital bag and we braved the snow covered roads to get to Labor and Delivery.

My water had not broken, they weren't really sure what was going on, it didn't seem to be anything of concern. But since I was there, and they had space, and if my doctor OK'd it, they'd go ahead and admit me since I was supposed to be there anyways. The doctor OK'd it and we we're going to have a baby.

Heart beating out of my chest.

I had come into the hospital wearing winter clothing, they put me in a hospital gown and wanted me to get down the hall to the room where I'd be delivering. I was in a hospital gown and black Ugg boots. I felt strange, unprepared, especially in my boots fearing the whole time my backside was exposed to the world. We got set up in our delivery room, Paul kissed my forehead, went to get my mom, some lunch and our hospital bag from the car.

It was happening.

They tried inducing my that afternoon but the first medication hadn't been placed properly, I wasn't progressing so they stopped, let me eat some greasy Pizza Hut pizza as a last meal and gave me an Ambien to sleep through the night. Paul slept next to me in a recliner and before we knew it, it was 5 am on Thursday morning and in less than twelve hours we'd be meeting our daughter.
   
We woke up slowly, lazily. Only to find the hours we're flying by. Paul spent some time walking around, grabbing himself some food and talking with me. I was dilating about a cm an hour and the rest of my family had shown up to see us.

Things we're going good. I was calm and relaxed. Baby was sounding good and my blood pressure was pretty outstanding.

It was about 2:30 in the afternoon and my nurse Krystal had come in to check on our progress only to find out we had gone from 6 cm to 9.5 cm in about 30 minutes. My doctor was informed, things we're to start being prepared, she was going to run across the street, come right back and we we're going to have a baby.

After about 30 minutes, my doctor's resident and my nurse decided to get me to do a practice push. It worked, things we're rolling and that practice push turned into real pushing. Pushing that was harder and more life sucking than anything I had ever imagined. I'd had an epidural, I wasn't supposed to be in so much pain and so tired. But I was. It was the hardest thing I've ever done and twice laid my head back and told the three people in the room that I couldn't do it. It was hard.

I remember being told, "this will be the push, if you push hard enough." I pushed with everything I had, felt the strangest sensations and heard the most beautiful cry in the entire world. I was exhausted, Paul was crying, my baby was crying and there were more nurses in my room than I knew what to do with. Everywhere I looked there was someone doing something. It was organized chaos and I couldn't focus on anything for more than two seconds.

And then everything slowed down. Like way down. And I was in the room, with my baby and my husband and my life was forever changed.

returning

Holy Hannah.

That's all I can think to write. It's about all that I can say to sum up the past two months and what I am feeling today.

I really have no idea what to say.
No, I have a thousand things to say, but nothing that runs together in a coherent blog post. It's looking a little something like this in my head right now:

I had a baby. I love her more than anything in the world. I am back at work today. I wish I was eating some buffalo hot wings. We should have friends over for dinner on the patio soon but not for hot wings. I need to finish painting Addion's wooden chair. I have a dentist appointment next week and I don't think I've flossed since November. Seriously, Paul and I made the most beautiful baby (while looking at her photo of course). 581 blog posts to read. Seriously?! 581? Did I fall off the face of the earth or what?

See. Chaos.