From the Archives: SUMMER

 Hello, friends. We are traveling for the Thanksgiving holiday and then catching up from traveling, so I am posting a favorite post from the first 8 years of Harry Times in my absence.

This post was originally published on Saturday, June 28, 2014

Thank you so much for your comments on my last post-- it was so helpful to read them all! We are going to meet with her on Monday and take it from there.

 Speech issues, Harry's current effusion episode, ANOTHER sore throat and fever for Cooper (we see the ENT again next month), and the stress of managing our online classes aside, we have been having a fantastic summer.

Lemme show you a few pictures.

I am really enjoying low carb eating, but I could not bring myself to cut out fruit because I am cutting out processed sugar, and I need something sweet.  I say "am cutting" because it is a process.  Jack and I have had movie nights the last 2 nights, and I have definitely eaten a few M&Ms.  But still.  I am eating so many more vegetables and have been scrambling egg whites with arugula, onions, and tomatoes for breakfast, and OMG SO GOOD.  Since we still have strawberries, this is my typical lunch (blue cheese crumbles and poppy seed dressing).  Whole food is so pretty.

Dorothy got a bikini.  As you can tell from the lip prints on her face, it makes me want to eat her up.

A little post-hockey, pre-rehearsal football.

Dorothy mastered the art of eating a popsicle.  We;re so proud of her.

She looked too cute on her way to the doctor for her 15-month well-check.  She's great, BTW.  50th percentile for weight and a freakish 80th for height.

Could I have picked a less attractive place to photograph her?  Not possible.

Even though she has a huge personality, she sure is tiny.

This was another delicious low-carb meal:  nachos with red peppers in lieu of chips.  I HAVE LOST 2 POUNDS THIS WEEK.

This?  Is the mess of a single ice cream cone.

But this?  Is from a few measly M&Ms.  I thought they were supposed to melt in your MOUTH.  Also do you love her dive ring hat OR WHAT.

She's a risk taker.

Baby yoga.

Jack and I had fun at movie night.  SO MUCH FUN that we are doing it again tonight.  I can cross Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2 AND the Croods off my movie bucket list.  Phew!

Ridiculous pool selfie.  I have spent so much time at the pool that I have read 3 books in 2 days. 

Love this!

And this!

The best part?  There's still so much summer left.

From the Archives: Looking forward to a time in the not so distant future when my thighs no longer rub together

 Hello, friends. We are traveling for the Thanksgiving holiday and then catching up from traveling, so I am posting a favorite post from the first 8 years of Harry Times in my absence.

This post was originally published on Friday, February 8, 2013

As I type this, the elastic sleeves of the summer dress I have stretched across my body and paired with maternity skinny jeans that have just about lost their will to stay up over my belly mound are cutting into my massive upper arms, reminding me that I should rummage through my closet for a sweater that looks like it might still button over me to hide my arms before I leave the house.

 If I leave the house.

(Not that I will button the sweater, but it has to look like I can if I wanted to.)

Yesterday, the chafe marks from my tights lasted for hours after I changed into yoga pants and a nursing tank (looked as dreamy as it sounds).

On the up side, my chocolate chip cookie craving has subsided, and I cannot stop eating salad-- two big tubs of Earthbound Farms organic spring mix this week by myself.

This morning, we blew up the bouncy house before school

Ben spent a refreshing 45 minutes shoveling the driveway AGAIN after shoveling it last night because it won't! stop! snowing! here.

Cooper was unsupervised long enough to go into the boys' room, get this stool, bring it back to the family room, set it up, and climb.  But the joke's on you, baby, because that dimmer switch doesn't do ANYTHING.  I seriously don't know why we have it on the wall, and I met with the electrician about switches, that I do remember.

Harry did 100 jumping jacks and then some sit ups.

There was much wrestling

They really wanted to sit on it while I unplugged it, just like they do with the air track at Little Gym.  Whatever.

The other day in my rhetoric of reproductive rights class, we were reading about the Voluntary Motherhood movement at the end of the 19th century, and a lot of the rhetoric of that time exalting motherhood (for middle class white women) sounded to me like the mommy wars rhetoric of today, so I asked my class about it.  This turned into a fascinating discussion about childcare situations/SAH parents from their own lives.  Right after a student talked about always being the last kid picked up at daycare and having all of her earliest memories set in a child care center-- which she loved and credited for her own outgoing personality-- another student made a comment about having a SAH wife because he didn't want to drop his kid off at daycare for someone else to raise where they would probably only change the baby's diaper five minutes before he got picked up to look like he was being taken care of all day.  To ease the tension, I said that my own baby would probably be changed MORE OFTEN at a daycare center than he is by me and and Ben.  He'd probably be learning stuff there, too.  

At home with us (Ben 2.5 days and me 2.5 days), he hangs out in his PJs, is rarely changed if he's not poopy, and plays by himself an impressive amount of time.  Today he read himself a pile of books-- "This?" he asked himself on each page and answered "This!"-- and sang along to his Sesame Street alphabet bus, for example.

He also drinks coffee.

And about 10:45 every morning, he passes out wherever he is.  On the couch enjoying chips and salsa with Ben, sitting up against my ginormous belly while we both lay on the floor and read, or in a pile of chaos of his own making.  We can only let him sleep for a few minutes because we'd rather eat our own arms than screw up his one and only nap (i.e. the only chance I ever have to work out and take a shower), but it's one of my favorite parts of the morning.

I also love when I tell him it's time to go get Jack right before lunch, and he drops what he's doing and runs up the stairs.  Today, I had to wear him the Ergo because the city didn't plow the crosswalks and curbs going to school (WTF, city?  Our snow removal has been so bad this year that I am going to VOTE REPUBLICAN rather than re-elect this mayor).  He liked it, but it killed my back.

Now Jack is back in the bouncy house, and Cooper is still wearing his pajamas, and I might not even change him when he gets up from his nap.

From the Archives: Legendary

Hello, friends. We are traveling for the Thanksgiving holiday and then catching up from traveling, so I am posting a favorite post from the first 8 years of Harry Times in my absence.

This post was originally published on Tuesday, July 24, 2012.

Still dieting.  Still kind of pissy about it.  I have lost 4 pounds, which means I am 10 pounds out from my pre-Cooper weight.  Almost a year later.  Ben is dieting with me, and he has lost 14 pounds to my 4.  He eats 2000 calories a day.  I eat 1400.  And exercise 5 days a week.  And breastfeed round the clock (because Cooper is turning out to be my best ever breast feeder-- not a supplemental drop because he will only! drink! breast milk!, but I won't have to pack a thermos of BM in his kindergarten lunch because  I can just  go across the street and nurse him.  Kidding.  Hopefully.).

But this is not about me and my baby weight.  Thankfully.

We went to Des Moines last weekend to see my grandma (who comments faithfully here as Bomma) be honored as a Playhouse Legend by the Des Moines Community Playhouse.  You can read all about it here.  It was so cool!  I have been watching Bomma in plays for years, and it was great to see her get recognition for being a wonderful actress.  Her old next door neighbor Peter Hedges wrote a beautiful letter (my favorite part was when he said he still didn't feel comfortable using her first name and called her Mrs. Silverstein), and she got a tremendous standing ovation. Then we went to Noah's, a favorite restaurant since my mom was a little kid.  We had a lovely time.


Usually when we stay in hotels, we put all the kids to bed in the bedroom, meaning Harry and Jack get a king-size bed, and Ben and I huddle on the fold-out couch in the living room.  This time, we took the bed, and the kids got the couch, and they complained that the hotel had small suites.  Ha!  They did love room service and the pool.  It is so tough to be them.

We had a terrible ride home, culminating in a horrific potty accident that required us to do unspeakable things with baby wipes and plastic bags in the parking lot of Menards.  Makes me really happy to be embarking on an 18-hour drive pretty soon.  Yum.

I had tons more pictures, but my computer sucks and is so, so painfully slow that I can't upload them, which is why my family picture blog is bunk.  New computer soon, but I can't decide MacBook Pro or Air?

From the Archives: Oh, totally forgot to mention WE BOUGHT A HOUSE LAST MONTH

 Hello, friends. We are traveling for the Thanksgiving holiday and then catching up from traveling, so I am posting a favorite post from the first 8 years of Harry Times in my absence.

This post was originally published on Tuesday, May 10, 2011.

I have been silent about it because we have been waiting on a million things-- blueprints for the basement we are finishing, the appraisal, our loan paperwork to process, a thousand trips to meet with the realtor and our designer to pick out finishes-- you get the idea. We bought the house already built, so we didn't get to pick the cabinets, countertops, light fixtures, bathroom floors, or wood floors on the main level. BUT with the exception of the counters and the bathroom floors, it's all stuff we would have picked anyway! We took our long-suffering realtor on trips to view about 64 (no joke) existing homes before we fell in love with a brand new neighborhood. We almost built a 2-story house in the neighborhood, but one day, Ben and I drove through and noticed an adorable already-built ranch with a walk-out basement. We looked in the windows for awhile then called the realtor. She happened to be driving home that way, stopped to show us the house, and bam! We bought it and designed a basement build the next week then took the kids on a hellish trip to pick out appliances, then took the kids on a hellish trip to pick out paint and carpet. Then stopped taking the kids on house errands, except for buying furniture, which is so far the shittiest thing I have ever done with kids. Today we walked through with the electrician to add 7,000 extra outlets because Ben never wants to be more than a finger-length away from a plug and a cable jack, and we took some terrible pictures. Terrible because the painters haven't come through, so everything is beige, and there is no floor in most of the house, and the basement is all 2 by 4s right now. That's me where our kitchen table will go.That's the electrician in our kitchen.Some of the great roomBen in the future playroom (I think)95% sure that's gonna be the downstairs bathroom because of that circle where I think the toilet goes?That's the guest room for sure-- I can tell because of the electrical box on the wallPart of the family roomLaundry room shelves? I took some seriously random picturesMasterMaster bathClosetMe looking out our bedroom window. The guy who lives behind us has lived there for a long time, which is good because there won't be any building right behind us and bad because he has a van and a propane tank in his yard.Randomly, here's some more kitchenDeckThis wall in the kitchen/great room will be a bookcaseKid bathroomBaby's roomH and J's roomTheir closetCute little front doorSo. Yeah. We are so excited and can't wait to close and move. Except, you know, moving sucks. Also, no. No we haven't sold our condo. Yes, that also sucks. Hopefully we do.