We spent Memorial Day with my husband's best childhood buddies and their (lucky for me!) amazing wives. We have been taking variations of this same trip -- to one friend's house near South Lake Tahoe -- for over a decade, but the dynamics have shifted considerably as we have gotten older, gotten hitched, gotten pregnant. What was once a party house full of dudes and the occasional girlfriend is now a (mostly) civilized portrait of four couples, a dog, an infant, and a Cars-obsessed toddler (that would be mine). Where we once trucked down to the lake at 2am, Coors Lights in hand, for "polar ... [READ MORE]
Keepin’ up with the Joneses
May 20, 2011 by Leave a Comment
To listen to our breakfast-table conversations lately, the most anticipated event of the summer in our household is NOT the arrival of our second child. No, the most anticipated event of the summer is the release of Disney/Pixar's Cars 2 on June 24th. Actually, for me personally, the most anticipated event of the YEAR is the release of Cars II on DVD sometime in the Fall, so that I can finally halt the endless loop of the original Cars film -- and, when enough TV is enough, the Cars motion picture soundtrack, or even just Babyman's running narration of the entire Cars plotline -- in our ... [READ MORE]
Cookbook Love
May 18, 2011 by Leave a Comment
Is it ironic that the mark of a really wonderful, well-loved cookbook, is when you don't open it anymore? My first real cookbook was Jamie Oliver's Naked Chef. It was a first-apartment gift from a friend of my mother's who was living in London when rakish Jamie had just burst onto the BBC scene back in 2000. The spine of the book is so faded you can't read it anymore in a line-up of cookbooks. I have not made every recipe in there, but I have probably made most of them with varying degrees of success, and what I have learned in the intervening decade is that most of the Naked Chef is ... [READ MORE]
On Elmo the Dentist and Other Marketing Perils
April 1, 2011 by Leave a Comment
Babyman ran to me when I picked him up from school, so excited he could barely get the sentence out: "Mommy, may you -- may you -- may you please put Cheetos in my lunchbox?" Huh? For a brief, hopeful moment I assumed he meant the cheese-flavored rice cakes I've been packing lately, until his teacher explained: Babyman's lunch buddy gets Cheetos at tea-time every afternoon, and Babyman is hell-bent on getting his hands on some of that neon orange goodness. I looked at the teacher and murmured, "I'm afraid that would be something of a departure for me." Even as the words escaped my ... [READ MORE]
Ch-ch-ch-change it up!
March 10, 2011 by Leave a Comment
Babyman is off yogurt. This happens from time to time; he'll devour something for months, then want nothing to do with it for a while. Of course eventually it works its way back into his heart...provided I keep offering it every so often. Some of these hot-n-cold foods don't really pose much of an issue (sweet potatoes, squash, bananas) as they are easily substituted or concealed somehow (usually in muffins or oatmeal). Others are a big pain. Yogurt falls in the latter category, as it is one of my breakfast-lunch-snacktime staples, easy to transport, and fun to mix with other ... [READ MORE]
Me Time, Tea Time
February 9, 2011 by Leave a Comment
My Facebook feed the other day contained two articles about the disenchantment of parenthood: one analyzed how little "me-time" the average parent gets in a 24-hour period (90 minutes), and the other discussed the cognitive dissonance of parenthood, i.e. that we delude ourselves into thinking that this whole enterprise is rewarding in order to cope with the stress. Hmmm. I can't help but wonder what purpose is served by these types of studies. Is the human race to stop reproducing? Should we be focused on the endless pursuit of personal pleasure and ignore an innate instinct to propagate ... [READ MORE]
Bakin’
January 22, 2011 by Leave a Comment
Mealtimes are once again a battlefield. This is a cyclical occurrence. Sleep and food are the two things Babyman can control, so when he is transitioning through a hard-core Testing Twos phase, nap strikes and high-chair tantrums are his tools of choice. They are effective, too, when it comes to cutting a parent off at the knees. Both are deeply psychological weapons, as the parent knows what even the toddler himself can't grasp: that an infuriating mealtime or a missed nap is but the first phase; it is invariably followed by the Exhausted and Famished Toddler phase, a phase in which all ... [READ MORE]
