And it's Passover again - April 16, 2011

Passover snuck up on me this year. But I think I'll be OK for the eight days - here's what I have planned for myself. (My husband, you may recall, isn't Jewish, so he doesn't observe, though he'll eat what I make in the house and won't be rude about eating hametz in front of me. It would be too complicated to have my daughter observe this year, so she can just eat whatever.)

• Matzagna - basically veggie lasagna with moistened matzah in place of noodles. I make this every year and it's always good and always lasts a few days.
• "Sunday Baked Eggplant" from the Monday to Friday Cookbook (out of print and a mere penny on Amazon or easily found at thrift stores - you need it!). My go-to recipe - super easy.
• Baked potatoes.
• Salad.
• Passover "pasta." (Hey, if you're eating gluten free, this pasta is also GF so check for it in your favorite grocery store's Passover section!)
• The Hungry Girl "Slaw and Order" recipe (broccoli slaw as a pseudo-pasta - it's good!).
• Passover rolls - yum yum.
• Matzah and cream cheese. (Duh.)
• Matzah brei.
• Eggs. Eggs. Eggs. (Backyard chicken eggs!)
• Chocolate-covered macaroons (a splurge from today's shopping trip). Noms.
• Regular macaroons.
• Tons of veggies - I always always eat an artichoke during Passover just because.
• Matzah ball soup (vegetarian).
• Quinoa, maybe.
• I just realized sunflower seed butter may be sort of kosher - I should look into  that.

I should be OK, right? In fact, writing this out, I ALWAYS go a bit overboard and have more than enough food and then stuff left over at the end when I'm sick sick sick of matzah. But I'm going for variety since I always feel hungry during Passover. I also sometimes (feeling guilty all the while) eat kitniyot, particularly as the week drags on - soy and beans are my main source of protein alongside eggs and cheese (I won't eat seitan/wheat-based fake meats during Passover and really, I can only eat so much cheese and eggs) so I eat a bit here and there. 

Happy Passover!

A Day in My Life - April 13, 2011

Usually these types of posts have a picture for every step of the day. If that's what you're looking for...look elsewhere. Maybe someday I'll create a post like that. For now, I just wanted to document what my days are like (weekdays - weekends are another animal entirely) for those who are curious.

7:25am - The alarm goes off. We all stir. Someone hits the snooze. We sleep for 5 more minutes, give or take.
7:30am - We're all up. The kid is taken to the potty by daddy; I run upstairs and throw on clothes, throw in contacts, slap on makeup to cover the biggest problem areas (WHY am I almost 40 and still getting pimples? UNFAIR), and dash back down. Sometimes in here I lay out her clothes, sometimes daddy does it. Lately, I make sure her school bag is stocked with what she needs - most days, happily, it needs no additions from the day before. Sometimes I need to toss in a spare pair of pants and undies and possibly a cloth diaper. Sometimes (most times) those are all there, unused, from the day before - hooray!
7:45am - Grab a coffee in my travel mug (thanks Keurig!) or not. Grab the kid while daddy throws on his clothes and grabs his coffee. Ask her if she needs potty 10 times, then take her anyway.
7:55am - Hit the road. School starts at 8 and we're more than 5 minutes away, but...well, we try.
8:00am (ish) - Drop the kid off at school. That's where she has breakfast, in case you noticed we didn't feed her and thought I was really really mean. She has lunch there too.
8:15am-11:45am - This is the time I have to get everything done. I always:

• ...check the following sites: Yahoo mail, Gmail, Etsy, Facebook, Livejournal, this blog's blogroll.
• ...grab my Swagbucks of the day (survey, NOSO, daily poll, toolbar, and a few searches). I might also start running SBTV in the background for bonus bucks.
• ...check that first list again and again.

Then, I also write the articles I'm getting paid to write (I have a new gig with our local Patch and am hoping to slowly over the next few months get more work in writing/editing/proofreading), drive to the grocery store or YDFM - I have a driving phobia/issue but over the past three-ish years - not coincidentally the same amount of time I've been a mom - have managed to push myself and now drive at least once a week or more to places I need to go, with goals for improving this further this year, eat breakfast, eat lunch, do laundry, make a half-assed effort toward neatening things up, fill my Etsy orders, dink around on the Internet, wear my Snuggie, and...I don't even know. 

11:55am - Pick the kid up. OK so sometimes we leave a bit later.

12:30pm-3:00pm (approx) - The hard part of my day. She's usually crabby but lately is refusing to nap consistently. She wants to watch Signing Time but...NOT THAT ONE OR THAT ONE OR THAT ONE or she only wants to watch the special features or the sign review or something. She asks for bed, but when we get settled she's kicking and waving and signing things to me. Most days she does eventually nap or settle and play with her toys. Upon waking she's often crabby all over again. During her nap I answer emails or something.

Alternating Mondays (hopefully every Monday soon), we have physical therapy from 3:30 to 4:30.

Wednesdays for the next few weeks we have Kindermusik from 4:30 to 5:15, and today as I type this I'm planning on going there at 3:30 because it's held at a bouncy place and I think she'd like to bounce around for a while.

We used to have chiropractic appointments but we are discontinuing that for the time being - another post for another time. 

Sometimes I take her for a walk into town, where we visit the bookstore at which I used to work and play with the train table, get frozen yogurt, and wander. The library used to be a great destination, but now she wants to touch the computers and tantrums until I drag her out, blushing. Sometimes we go to the playground - there are three options, and all have pros and cons. Sometimes - like right now - daddy emerges and takes her and plays with her for a bit. Very rarely I brave the car with her and we go to the farmer's market (a far easier task without her but she loves going and it kills some time and is the best place for vegetables anyway). (PLEASE if you read this do NOT offer me suggestions of what to do with her. It's very likely that we either have considered it, have tried it, or can't. Trust me on this. I won't even approve your comment, but I'll probably be annoyed for the day.) I'm thinking of seeing about going to the work-and-play cafe on Thursdays if they're consistently on the empty side in the afternoons, although that could get expensive. But it would be good for both of us and would force me to...drive. 

5:00pm-ish - Daddy starts dinner. We eat. Then Daddy takes her and they play, she usually gets a bath, and he takes her out - to the mall to practice walking, to the music store to play keyboards, to the pet store for whatever, or just...out. They bond, it's good. I do not usually get anything done in this time period. I watch TV, I read, I sometimes fill an Etsy order if it came through in the afternoon, I play online, I am tired.

9:30/10:00 pm - Bedtime. It's late but it's what works. I go to bed with her. 

oy.

I was going to add some links in this entry but now...I'm not. So there.

It Only SEEMS Like I Haven't Been Blogging - April 11, 2011

No, really, I actually have been blogging. I just haven't hit "Publish Post" lately. I don't know why I'm feeling skittish again - but I am. I have a few posts that are more emotional or that discuss having a child with special needs, they're just not ready to come out just yet. But maybe soon.

Also, we just finished a very long Spring Break week of no preschool. For some, Spring Break is an exciting time full of fun and parties and perhaps even a trip. For us, it was a week with no break at all. Fewer therapy sessions (private PT and speech, but that's all). And lots of racking our brains figuring out what to do to entertain a kid with a short attention span (but what kid doesn't have a short attention span?)? It makes things oh so much more fun that I have to carry her most places and she's over 30 pounds now.

So, for example, going to the bouncy castle place one day meant me carrying her from castle to castle, trying to help her climb the biggest one (of course that's what she wanted) while neurotypical older/bigger kids raced all over us, trying to keep her from knocking other kids down or being knocked down. Playgrounds? She'll sometimes happily swing for a half hour - other times she wants to switch the swing she's in (I wish I knew why) over and over, will cry and cry until I take her out of the swing only to point back at it and sign please and go in it...lather, rinse, repeat. I envy every parent who can take his/her kid to one of these places and sit on a bench while the kid...plays.

We did find that a local "work-and-play cafe" is VERY welcoming of my kid and I plan on taking advantage of their services in the near future. A year ago I wouldn't have even considered checking it out but she IS more stable and more communicative and more social thanks to preschool, and she took to the playspace and the staff there immediately. So perhaps that will offer some relief for the summer.

The...summer...with no preschool for two long months. I can't even wrap my head around it. Camps don't work for us - she's either not disabled enough (she doesn't need medical care or nurses, she wants to be playing) or too disabled (most camp offerings). Give it a few years and we'll find our way through that dilemma, I'm sure, but this summer creeps and crawls its way toward us laughing, "How many days can you go to the pool, really?" The pool, the library, the farmers' market, walking around town...and then I'm not sure. (I have a driving phobia - isn't that CUTE? - that I'm working my way through and improving upon every single day, but it still limits some of our options.)

I didn't mean to get into all of this today. I just meant to assure you all that I'm writing, you just can't see it. You all = all...10 of you? Ah, the blogging life.

A-thrifting We Will Go - March 31, 2011

How....is it almost April? How? And how is it that Massachusetts is getting snow? (It's going to be in the 70s here. Sorry.)

Today I escaped and ran away and whatever you'd like to call it, and I visited with my amazing thrifting friend and got to do a bit of shopping with nobody to answer to but me me me (well, and her, but not a kid or a husband...). It wasn't enough time but then again I've found that after two thrift stores I start to get a bit antsy and overwhelmed and books start to blur together so it's OK.

I apologize, but there are lots of pictures about to fly at you.

This is in backwards order - so...LAST, we went to an independent-ish Humane Society store that had excellent prices and...THIS.


Five. Dollar. Brand. New. Snuggie. DELUXE even. It seems to be missing the (crappy) book light but I haven't unsealed the Snuggie itself, so maybe it's in there... I have ALWAYS wanted a Snuggie but I wouldn't pay whatever it costs ($20?) for a cheap piece of fleece. FIVE DOLLARS and to a good cause and sealed in a box = win.

Of course I also bought books...


Hardbacks were a dollar, paperbacks were 50 cents. That book in the middle is called Edison's Eve: A magical history of the quest for mechanical life. I cannot wait to read it (although the new Jean Auel book is waiting for me at the library, and the new Diane Ackerman book should be in my hands soon, so all this has to go in the ridiculously monstrous to-read pile...). The Chococat cell phone holder (because I have a plain old tiny little non-fancy-Internety cell phone - I have an iPod Touch, and that's enough for me for now and also all I can afford...) was a quarter. I gave them a bit more than that for it as a bonus donation.

And they had T shirts. For 50 cents each. FIFTY CENTS EACH. I am using lots of capital letters because I never go thrifting and FIFTY CENTS FOR T SHIRTS IS YAY.


I believe in Blueland! (Go Thrashers!)


Funny thing. My husband just bought a t-shirt with cassette tape images on it. We'll be all cutesy old skool matchy. Or...just old. This shirt is really soft. <3

 
I was a Brownie once! Also this shirt is huge.


So look. I'm old. My friend and I thought this shirt probably didn't mean anything and just had a wacky design and was from a mall store. But if it means something...tell me in the comments? Particularly if it's offensive or ridiculous or something so I don't make a fool of myself in public, OK? It's super soft so if it fits (I haven't tried it on yet) I would like to wear it.


For my daughter. Adorable.


Also for my daughter. Also adorable. Has a stain I didn't notice, but it was 50 cents so I don't really care. She'll likely stain it far worse - and I'll try some voodoo on it before she wears it to see if I can get it out.


She actually IS a social butterfly. Her IEP noted several times how social she is and how she has to say hello to everyone. That's my girl.


I squealed at this one. Kid Shirt Woot! And her size and everything! I have a Woot shirt from thrifting as well, with the upsetting image of marshmallows crying as they're being roasted or something. It's great.


Back to stuff for me. Italian touristy shirt. Love.

In the middle, we went to a brand new Big Lots. I was hoping to find K-cups, but instead I found that they'd marked down most of their books to FIFTY CENTS. There goes all those capital letters again.


There are two books about meat in there, and I'm a vegetarian. Go figure. And a book about Neil Gaiman that I bought at a different Big Lots for a friend for a whole $2 or something. And potty book for the kid (who is doing really well on her own but it was only 50 cents and has stickers so why not...). And a book by the wonderful creator of Mutts, Patrick McDonnell. And a book about a woman with a son with CP called Blue Sky July.

Then I was really excited to find this...


Liz Rosenberg was one of my college professors. Nice. $3.

And I bought some snacks and then some things to fix my teeth after the snacks...


Sno-Caps are my favorite movie candy ever ever ever. Yum. Not pictured, Goldfish crackers (cheap) and spicy Cheez-its (healthy!).

We also went to Goodwill...


The three baby/mommy books were $1.50, the Good Housekeeping amazingness was 75 cents. Mothering Multiples is being donated to my local La Leche League group to be part of their library. :)


I never find jeans that fit me. NEVER. And these were a fluke - not my right size nor my usual style. And yet...they fit, so I bought them, hooray! $5-something and worth every penny. At least...they seemed flattering in the fitting room...


And finally, super-soft gray jeans for my kid. $2-something and adorable.

I used to go thrifting weekly and now I get to go once every few months (or more). I miss it, but I'm hoping that will change over the next few months. Or years. Eventually it will change, I know.

We Will Miss Her - March 29, 2011

Today I got an email from my daughter's current physical therapist letting me know that her first PT (both in home through Early Intervention and, later, in school) passed away last week from breast cancer. I won't name any names because of the wild and wacky world of Google, but this woman was the co-owner of a large pediatric therapy group and worked with hundreds or maybe even thousands of children. When she was our EI PT, my daughter couldn't sit unassisted, couldn't crawl (she rolled), and had no diagnosis. The PT held my hand through the early days. She helped me understand what doctors were saying and what the MRI really meant. She helped me wrap my head around a diagnosis of "mild cerebral palsy" when the words were clanging around in my consciousness but not making any sense.

And she got my daughter to sit. To crawl. To thrive. She gave us hope and strength, and I looked forward to her visits for many, many reasons.

When she had to resign from being our PT the first time for health reasons, we said our goodbyes as if they were our last. (And she set us up with another amazing PT who continues to see my kid outside of school to this day.) It turns out they were, but that was two years ago (more?). Imagine our surprise when my daughter started preschool and we found that her therapist in school was this same woman. We were thrilled, but we never managed to connect with her in person. We sent notes, I sent a Christmas card/gift, and we made sure the teachers and aides passed along how happy we were to have her back in our lives.

A few weeks ago she abruptly (at least to us) had to stop seeing kids again. A new PT was hired at the school. We heard rumors of health concerns, we were told of surgery, and the last I'd heard she was doing OK, getting her own therapies, and putting off seeing kids again for a short while. And then this. So while it was not sudden nor unexpected, it totally was at the same time.

Her memorial service is this weekend. My kid is simply a terror at things like that, so I'm not sure if we'll go. I'll make a donation as her family requested and I'll keep her in my heart. I will always tell my kid about her, and we'll always remember her.

Her official obituary.

What Are Your Kitchen Staples? - March 23, 2011

I'm procrastinating writing some book reviews for you all (I know, thousands of people are waiting for those - or maybe...no people) so instead you get this entry. I'm on a diet - and I've said it before and I'll say it again, my "diet" is that I try to watch what I eat and don't have ice cream. Oh. Ice cream. I haven't had any in a long, long time and I'm sad about that. And it hasn't really helped me so maybe I should switch tactics and go on an ice cream diet... Anyway, here's a list of what I always like to have in my fridge/freezer/pantry. Maybe you'll get some ideas or share some of your ideas with me? Note that as you should know anyway because you totally read my intro post, I'm a lacto-ovo vegetarian and I avoid artificial sweeteners and trans fats/partially hydrogenated oils as much as I possibly can.

Also, I'm going to name brand names. Nobody gave me anything to say this stuff, but hey, if you're a company and you found me by Google Alert and you want to give me free stuff/coupons, get in touch!

• Laughing Cow cheese wedges. My everyday favorites (which I use instead of cream cheese) are the Garlic&Herb and the Light Swiss. The French Onion was the gateway drug, and I still love that on crackers. And the Light Queso Fresco & Chipotle is divine when melted. I get twitchy when I'm out of these and far too excited when a sale + coupon = $1 a package. I still can't figure out why Velveeta is gross to me and these are not, but there you go.
• Arnold Sandwich Thins. I've tried several brands (including Trader Joe's house brand) and these are my favorite to the point where I'm not even swayed when another brand is on super sale. They taste the best to me, they don't break when you pull them apart, and they have a good ingredient list.
• Kale. Which sometimes goes bad in the fridge but sometimes gets made into Kale Chips or thrown into smoothies. I prefer organic but the conventional is WAY cheap.
• Frozen veggies - spinach in particular. I throw these into everything - pasta sauce is a big one. Yay sneaky veggies. For these, Trader Joe's is my favorite source. Organic and inexpensive.
• Frozen fruit - organic strawberries in particular. Same as above - great for fast smoothies.
• Almond Breeze in Unsweetened Vanilla. I learned about this from Hungry Girl and now am addicted. I stock up when it's on sale and I use it in my coffee and smoothies. I tend not to drink it straight, though, and I do still drink cowmilk all the time.
• COFFEE. K-cups and ground coffee to use in my Solofill (usually whatever's on sale).
• Vitatops in Deep Chocolate. Pricey but worth it. You can get better prices ordering online on occasion but when they go BOGO at Publix...that's the best thing ever.
• Gardein - the frozen kind, not the refrigerated kind, though those are good too. My favorite mass-market fake meat product. It tastes the best and has the best texture. I was really upset when my favorite Publix didn't have a spot for it on the shelf a few weeks ago. I hope that was a minor blip, but Kroger and Whole Foods carry it too. Seriously, noms.
• Tofu. Because...tofu. And seitan, TVP, and tempeh. I love soy (and wheat) and I don't care what you think about that.
• Tofurky slices. Hush, they're good. Also, that's a brand name, but I do tend to go for the turkey-ish version.
• Smart Dogs by Lightlife. I eat them cold with ketchup. My husband taught me that, so blame him.
• My friend's chickens' eggs. I wish everyone was as lucky as I am to have access to backyard chicken eggs. I've met the chickens that lay my eggs. That's amazing to me. My friend also is a beekeeper so she also sells me honey. YUM.
• Fresh fruits and veggies because I have to say that, but it is true.

I am sure there's something I'm forgetting, but those are the basics that I always have around. You?

I Hab a Code in By Doze - March 21, 2011

I feel icky and sleepy thanks to the kid bringing home a lovely cold from preschool. And yet I have so much to write about...

• I need to write a full, well-thought-out review of the book Home/Birth by Arielle Greenberg and Rachel Zucker. It was a beautiful book about birth, homebirth, motherhood, and more. I owe you a better writeup than that.
• I'm the new sponsor at Blacktating! Well, my Etsy store/button biz is.  Elita is fantastic and she's bringing issues of race and breastfeeding to light when not many other sources are. Plus she's funny and bad-ass.
• I bought some adorable new art for buttons, mirrors, necklaces...I can't wait to make new things!
• I'm incredibly angry at the website Franklin Goose for ripping the rug out from under me and many other mamas who were expecting the credit we earned in the promotion last year. The promotion was poorly handled and the customer service has been terrible throughout this fiasco. Learn more here. My personal experience? I wrote a few reviews for products I knew about. I then, on their suggestion, banked the credit I accrued figuring I'd earn a bit extra and that I'd use it when the big rush for products had died down (and when more things were in stock). Just as my credit matured, I was told that all credit would be banked for the near future while FG figured out what to do. And then...poof, I was told that I couldn't use it at all. Disappointing.
• My kid is driving me crazy. Perhaps sometime this week I'll have time for a real, non-bulleted-list entry.