Lessons Learned on Halloween

 Motherhood, Uncategorized, Wallaby  5 Responses »
Nov 032011
 

Is there anything cuter than a little kid in an animal costume? When Vera was a baby, she was a chicken for Halloween. It was glorious. Last year, Vera was a bee for Halloween. Again, glorious.

This year? This year I told myself multiple times that I should figure out something for Halloween. Repeatedly visited an Etsy costume that was 80% perfect but couldn’t get over the other 20%. Made a panicked last-minute trip to Target to peruse their selection but couldn’t get over the slim choices (princess? or “sassy” princess?) and icky-cheap fabrics. Finally dug the bee out of storage, crammed it painfully onto our giant child a few days before Halloween, and we went out for sandwiches. She talked excitedly about the bee in coming days, but come Halloween it wasn’t happening.

Red lollipop, comfy sweater. Blurry cell-phone pic.

We tried Plan B, a set of fairy wings I once purchased at H&M on the theory that any well-stocked home should have fairy wings. No go. I couldn’t find the camera, I had nothing as to use as a treat bag. Time was ticking, and we were lucky to even make it out of the house — costume, camera, and treat bag or no.

We headed to a street party thrown by neighborhood merchants. Between parking spot and party, we passed a house where a lady was holding a giant bowl of candy. Walked up, Vera managed a version of “trick or treat”, and she was given a red lollipop for her efforts. Vera loves lollipops more than anything, and red is her favorite color. We went to the street party, and though Vera was too young for most of the activities, she stood patiently in line for an agonizingly long time and came away with a red balloon. Her second favorite thing in the world, after red lollipops. At that point, her evening was complete. We gave up on Halloween and went out to dinner.

Parents put so much time, money and effort into making sure kids have “perfect” — and perfectly photogenic — holidays. Certain traditions must be observed, certain photo opportunities created. Tradition is a beautiful thing to pass on to our children, but how often do parents force things out of some adult idea of a perfect childhood holiday rather than celebrate whatever the child actually enjoys? (How many toddler-with-Santa pictures involve smiles, and how many just show a terrified toddler?) I totally fell into that trap this Halloween, literally trying to force a costume that didn’t fit onto my poor child as she cried. And it turns out Vera didn’t need the costume, the door-to-door, or the huge bag of candy to have a perfect Halloween. For Vera, a perfect Halloween was a red lollipop and a red balloon.

Our daughter went as herself this Halloween. And it was glorious.

 Posted by Tara at 4:00 pm

Welcome to Club Mom: Let the Hazing Begin

 Uncategorized  No Responses »
Apr 062011
 

This is a re-post of something I wrote a few weeks after Elsa was born. For some reason, the post didn’t properly make the transfer when I moved to WordPress. But given my belated push to share our experiences with childbirth and baby-raising, seems a good time to republish….

One of the things I enjoyed about pregnancy/childbirth was the way it brought me closer to other women who have been there before.  I particularly treasure talks with my mother, stepmother, and grandmother, who described their experiences in decades past.  But even random strangers are often extra-friendly in recognition of a shared bond of experience.  There’s a Club Mom out there that I never recognized, much less appreciated, until I become a member.
But if Club Mom is a sorority of sorts, I could do without its initiation by hazing.
The Club Mom variety of hazing may not involve extreme drunkenness.  However, there’s definitely sleep deprivation, humiliation by bodily functions, and a chance of finding yourself in a public place in an embarrassing get-up (if only because you’re too wrung out to care).
In other words, I always understood that sleep deprivation would be part of new motherhood; I just never realized there would be so many other challenges at the same time:
Pain: Turns out, you can tear in all sorts of places beyond the one they tell you about.  Some of those places have an astonishing number of nerve endings.  And the area is affected by activities you really can’t avoid, like sitting and walking. Thank heaven for Percocet!
Breastfeeding: A minefield and a subject for another post.  But even when all goes smoothly (not the case for me), it’s demanding and incredibly time-consuming.
Body Image: No amount of warning prepares you to look 5 months pregnant after the birth.  My feet are swollen to twice their normal size, my fingers are too swollen for my wedding ring, and my face now sports chipmunk cheeks (all problems I largely escaped during pregnancy itself).  Small things, but even after 9 months of pregnancy, it’s disturbing not to recognize yourself when you look in the mirror.
Baby Blues: Most women experience slight depression in the first week or two after birth.  Such a cute name for such crushing feelings of hopeless inadequacy.
Lack of Information: For me, this has been the greatest challenge of the whole experience.  Medically speaking, it feels like no one out there has our backs.  Which leaves everything up to me — cue night after night of hours-long Google sessions in the wee hours when I’m up with the baby.
Obviously, no one hands out an operating manual for newborns, but the lack of information goes much further than that.  In the hospital, we were never told results of the baby’s checkups.  She needed an ultrasound to confirm a heart murmur (which thankfully turns out to be both common and mostly benign), so one day they just wheeled her away for “further testing” without a word on what might be wrong or what they were looking for.  (Leaving behind two seriously freaked-out new parents.)  The hospital’s lactation consultant never visited, despite my extreme problems establishing breastfeeding.  No one even told me about my own injuries — it took more hours on Google to find out whether it was even possible to incur the injuries I thought I saw.  (Once I gathered the courage to pull out a mirror and take a look — eek!)  And a standard OB followup is 6 weeks after the birth, which means 6 whole weeks of wondering whether this bleeding or that pain is abnormal, and whether I should really feel like this.  This morning I called the OB nurse about a few symptoms that worry me.  Her answer?  “That’s within the range of normal experience so probably nothing.  Unless it’s serious.  In which case, call me again.”  Um … thanks?  It all makes sense now.
For those of you who have been here, what was your biggest surprise or biggest challenge? How did you survive the hazing?
 Posted by Tara at 11:01 pm

Please Pardon the Dust

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Jan 312011
 

I’m busily working on a switch over to WordPress in time to start banging out new posts on Tuesday.  I was excited to switch to the new site, but everything is only half done — please excuse us if we’re a bit disheveled in the meantime!

 Posted by Tara at 3:49 am

Wait, I have a BLOG??!?

 Uncategorized  1 Response »
Jan 212011
 

Sorry to keep disappearing on you, my friends.  Illness continues to reign around here.  But I’m itching to get back to sharing with you ASAP.  

I have declared February the Month of the Unfinished Post.  All the drafts in my editor, all the half-scribbled paragraphs in notebooks, all the big ideas in my head … it’s going onto the blog in one form or another in the coming few weeks.  Writer’s block is always worst when I actually have something to say, so look for lots of useful information and/or pointless ramblings on parenting, illness, and life.  See you soon.

[And P.S. … I’m taking a deep breath and attempting to move this blog over to a new host in the next week.  Please bear with me if you find the blog format doing anything weird in coming days!]

 Posted by Tara at 10:50 pm

#reverb10 Day Five: Letting Go

 Uncategorized  2 Responses »
Dec 052010
 

Today’s question is “What (or whom) did you let go of this year?”

And I’ve got nothing. It’s a thought-provoking question, and I could go on and on about the ideas and issues it raises for me….

But instead I’ve decided to just let go of the question.

See you tomorrow!

 Posted by Tara at 9:50 am

Um … Never Mind

 Uncategorized  8 Responses »
Oct 092009
 

(image source)

About those upcoming posts … hopefully they sound interesting enough that you’re willing to wait a bit?

I’m going through a bad spot.  May be medication side effects, may be post-partum depression, may be quite a few things.  But long story short, I’m not functioning well and could use a couple of weeks off.  Hopefully everything will look better soon — I promise an update when it does!

 Posted by Tara at 6:51 am

Floral Inspiration

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Nov 072007
 

I don’t remember where I first came across the blog housemartin.  But I know I started reading it for home and design — it wasn’t until recently that I learned the author is also a freelance floral designer with amazing talent.  I am not generally into flower pics — they all sort of look the same to me — but something about her designs appeals to me tremendously.  I can’t stop admiring the photos on her blog!&nbsp Here are a few favorites from the floral designs she has showcased in recent months :

Emberglow

Exotic

Loops_med

Sorbetti

Meadow1

Her floral design studio, Ink & Peat, is located in Portland, OR.  She’ll also be starting a shop under that name in Spring 2008 — hope there’s Web shopping, ’cause I can’t wait to see it….

(P.S. Clearly I’m particularly slow, as I just discovered that both Mrs. Bee and Mrs. Lime already posted about Ink & Peat earlier this year. But you can never have too much inspirational eye candy!)

 Posted by Tara at 4:06 pm
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