20 Life Lessons I Discovered in the Dark

So, for those of you who may have missed it, Georgia has had two snow and ice storms this winter (that groundhog knew his stuff this year!). Atlanta seemed to have the worst time of it during the first go-around but Augusta was hit pretty badly with the second storm. The second storm was mostly ice and was much worse than the first for us in the eastern part of the state because of the damage it caused.  There were tens of thousands of people without power for days. Trees littered the streets (and still are piled high in yards waiting for the county's promised free disposal). Ice and snow pretty much never happen down here in Augusta, especially not to the extent it did this time.  In fact, the closest thing we get to something resembling a natural disaster are bad thunderstorms (not impressed? you shouldn't be...).  As a result, our trees are never pruned by Mother Nature. So the ice surprised them as much as it did us humans. Here's some images of the chaos that ensued.

Down Town Augusta even had trees uprooted

Walton Way in Augusta, GA

My little family was without power for 48 hours before we decided to give up the pioneer life of chopping firewood and boiling water in the fireplace and turn tail and run (to my parents of course and just in time to miss the next thing thrown at Augusta...an earthquake!). But not before I learned some great life lessons.  I thought I'd share them here with you:

1. Your hand goes instinctively to the light switch when you enter a dark room, even on your second day into knowing that nothing is going to happen when you flip the switch.
2.  You think that it's hard to find the random things your toddler hides from you when you have power?  I'm here to tell you, it is impossible to find something like a bath tub stopper that your child crawled away with when all you have is a flashlight (even if it is an industrial one).  You might as well get creative and use something else to plug the tub!
3. My husband can actually get tired of splitting wood and starting fires! (I never thought this would happen! Not until pigs fly and the moon turns blue.)
4.  You still have hot water if your boiler runs on natural gas.  This seems like an obvious fact, but it felt like an amazing gift when I was soaking in a tub of hot water after shivering all day!
5.  Mens' socks work as DIY babylegs.  Just cut the end off for little feet to slide through and voila! another layer to keep your baby from freezing. (You may want consent before you cut....oops!)
6.  People always talk about disposables having the drawback that you can run out and have to run to the store...well, with no power, the cloth diaper stash started running low.  Forget the milk and bread and buy some disposable diapers when a storm is headed your way!
7. When there is no power, the warmest place in the house is by the fire.  So, this naturally becomes your living room, kitchen, baby room, etc.  And the changing pad belongs on the coffee table right in front of the fire, of course.  Coziest changing table on earth!
8.  My son refuses lukewarm formula (he spews it from his mouth! Well, that may be a little dramatic but he wouldn't drink much).  Even boiler warm water is not adequate.  He likes his milk hot!
9.  On that vein, you can actually boil water by placing a pot near the fire in the fireplace.  We have a metal ledge around the edge so this may have helped by heating the pot from below too. (And the plastic lid handle never melted, thankfully!)
10. Chinese restaurants are always open.  Always.  They will find a way to have power and open even when nothing else is open.
11.  Nothing tastes better when you are cold and it is dark, than hot anything.  Hot chocolate, Chinese take-out, soup, s'mores... we tried it all and loved it all.  Every single bite and sip. (See #9 and 10 for how to obtain these wonderful things.)
12.  USPS actually does deliver in rain, snow, sleet, and ice.  These four situations are ones I have personally witnessed.  Liam's Valentines Day diaper's arrival was even more exciting in the midst of nothing else to be too excited about.
13. Duck down blankets are a must for survival planning for a home.  It actually feels like you have the heater on full blast when you're under that thing and you fall asleep so easily after shivering all day because you just feel warmth hugging you all over.
14.  My cats fear my son more than cold.  They chose to spend the majority of his waking hours in the coldest room in the house (safely on the other side of the baby gate) to avoid him, far away from the warmth of the fire.
15.  Back-up power supplies are not meant to run space heaters, even for a minute. They make a horrific noise because the circuit is instantaneously overloaded.  Honestly, they are useless in a power outage that lasts more than a few seconds.
16.  More of your neighbors have generators than you may think.  (Really.  Mine do and this is hardly a rich neighborhood.)
17. When all else fails, run home to your parents.  (This is a great life lesson in general!)
18.  Georgia weather is like a pregnant woman's mood swings...it can actually be in the 80s the week after a crazy ice storm. (It really was.)
19. Sago palms do not like ice storms.
20. Baby gear for really cold weather is adorable!

Cloth Diapering? Insane! (Or So I Once Thought)

This literally summed up what I once thought about cloth diapers: "Those moms are insane.  Cloth diapers are definitely not for me.  This is the 21st century, after all!"

Where did this strong fervor come from?  Probably my mother's stories of cloth diapering my brother back in Hungary in the early 80s.  The basic story goes something like this.  Cloth diapers were not pockets or all-in-ones.  They were squares of cloth that were folded into a triangle shape (with each use), one corner pulled up between the baby's legs and the other two at the hips.  A rubber outer cover was then pulled over the previous layer and tied at each hip.  This obviously would not be an easy process with a squirming baby.

 But worse was the washing.  There was an order to the whole ordeal.  And lots of buckets.  First was the soaking bucket.  After the soiled diaper had all of the solids knocked off of it into the toilet (or dunked if needed), a bucket filled with bleach and water was used for soaking. Each day, the diapers from the previous day were removed from the soaking bucket and placed into the washer.  The washer had no centrifuge so after the wash, the dripping diapers were moved to the bathroom for further rinsing.  A wooden plank was set up across the tub on which a series of buckets of water were arranged.  The diapers had to be dunked and kneaded in clean water 4-5 times to be considered rinsed from the bleaching process and safe for baby's bottom.  Then these diapers (once again dripping) were placed into a centrifuge to remove excess water.  The centrifuge could only hold about 2-3 diapers so this step took some time (and perseverance).  After each had been centrifuged, the diapers were taken outside and pinned to a line to dry.  Once dry, the inserts had to be ironed.  The rule was to iron both sides until baby was 2 months old and then only one side for the remaining months that diapering was needed.

Then came the worst part. Her mother-in-law (my beloved Nagyi, Katalin who was a wonderful woman but VERY particular) would come over and criticize my mom for the poop stains on the cloth.  This was unacceptable, she said.  She told her she would teach her how to do it right and started washing the already clean diapers all over again, this time by changing the soak bucket to one filled with boiling water and bleach (if you recall, we began with just cold bleach water).

My mother says cloth diapers make her feel sick to this day. (And who can blame her?  Entire days of her life were spent folding and tieing and soaking and rinsing and rinsing and rinsing and carrying and dripping and centrifuging and hanging and pinning and ironing...)

With such stories racing through my head and disposables heralded as a sort of women's lib item, one can hardly blame me for never even considering cloth diapers before my son was born. I even remember a discussion I had with a daycare worker a few years before he was born. It was during a rotation in which we spent some time observing in the hospital's daycare.  I remember  discussing fervently how "crazy" one mom was for sending her baby to daycare in cloth diapers. Why scrape and dunk and wash and stain when you can remove and toss?  Who wants to touch poop over and over if they don't have to?!  They must be insane!

But then, very slowly, after I became a mom, I started to open up to the idea.

I saw friends using cloth diapers (friends who weren't insane, if you were wondering).  And the diapers they used were so cute!  I realized how quickly we burned through those $40 boxes of disposables from Sam's Club.  (The trash was also smelly and enormous in quantity.)  I also realized that I dealt with my son's poop outside of his diaper more than I had imagined prior to becoming a mother.  I rinsed the wonderful yellow breast milk goop off of more onesies than I could possibly begin to count.  The thought of dealing with it inside of a cloth diaper became less horrific over time.

I started researching and I came across a wonderful blog post.  One Lazy Mom's Guide to Cloth Diapering. It spoke to me.  I highly recommend it to anyone on the fence about cloth diapering. This post made me feel ready.  It made me feel like I could do it.  It also made me feel like it was ok to try, even if I ended up deciding it wasn't for me.  I suddenly wanted very badly to try.  After all, if a lazy mom can do it and love it, maybe I could too...and save us some money in the process.

The last obstacle was my hesitance to eat the cost of a stash in case I really did hate cloth diapering. $20-30 a piece is quite an investment for us right now.  And I'd need more than one or two for sure.  Minimum four I figured so...$80-90.  Too much  (I would never hear the end of it from the hubby and I would feel quite guilty as well).  Then my friend introduced me to Alva Baby Cloth Diapers.  Not American economy friendly but wallet friendly.  Cheap Chinese diapers for $5 a piece.  I had my in!  I could afford to try them!

So I bought two. (And, yes, I agonized over choosing the designs.  There were so many adorable ones!)

They arrived in 2 weeks in great shape (despite some scary reviews I had read).  It was love at first sight. So I bought four more.  Then four more.  For a few months, 10 was all I had and all I needed since we only used them when I was home so mostly on weekends.  There was a learning curve, but I was hooked!

I had some difficulties with leaking as my son and his bladder grew (more on this in another post) so I broke down and bought a BumGenius 4.0.  I chose them because they are conveniently available at Buy Buy Baby (for which I get tons of coupons) and I had read great reviews.   $14 I could live with now.  I knew I'd use it enough times to more than make up for the cost. The question was, whether they were worth being almost triple the cost of Alvas?

They definitely are!  I've never had any trouble with leaking and it comes with two microfiber inserts.  I use the newborn insert to double up the Alvas so that I can keep them in service (despite that large bladder). I now have a stash of 7 BumGenius 4.0s, 1 Bumpkin, and my original 10 Alvas.

We cloth diaper day and night, any time we are home. (And the hours of a fourth year medical student are much more lenient than they were in third year.) One of the many reasons I can't wait for my year-long stent as a stay-at-home mommy is so I can cloth diaper full time.

Each disposable we use now feels like a waste. We continue to use them though because I just don't have the heart to force the daycare to use cloth on my son.  Because I really do get where they are coming from.  I've been there...."Cloth diapers?  Insane!"

To Moms Whose Babies Reach Milestones "Late"

I've been reading a lot of these "letters" to mothers, wives, etc.  This letter is to me and all the moms who have struggled with their babies having "late" milestones.  I hope mothers going through a similar experience will find some encouragement.

To the mothers whose baby met every single milestone "late"; to the mom to whom on some days Facebook feels like just another painful reminder of how far "behind" your baby is; to the mom who actually has had a daycare worker ask you if you are holding your child "too much" or somehow preventing him or her from sitting/crawling/walking or whatever the current "late" milestone may be; to the mother who worries every day despite being told not to worry by other mothers who've gone through the same thing; to the mom who cheers her child on even louder and prouder than other moms because instead of dreading the new stage that reaching a developmental milestone brings and mourning the loss of another "baby" feature, you're proud (and relieved) that finally, finally your baby has learned to do something that you've both been working on so hard together.

Let me start by saying: you are not alone.  I am struggling with this and all the emotions that go along with it.  My son turned 15 months yesterday.  He can't walk. In fact, he can't even stand without holding onto something.  He cruises and crawls like a champ but so did all the babies in his daycare class at 10 months old.  

He has been 3+ months "late" on each and every physical milestone (except throwing a ball overhanded, which he did at 8 months :).  He rolled over front to back at 5 months, back to front at 8 months. He sat at 7 months.  He crawled at 10 months.  He (finally) pulled up at 11 months.  

And at each and every milestone I worried.  I'm a mom.  I can't help myself...it's hard not to worry when I see babies more than 3 months younger than mine walking.  

My husband reminds me often that our baby IS "normal" and healthy.  And I know most likely everything is fine and I shouldn't worry because milestones are just averages.  Standards set like lines drawn in the sand.  There is something inherently artificial and generalized about them.  Your baby does not have to necessarily fit these perfectly.  Development ranges widely, naturally.  

My cousin reassured me that it must be genetic because her 3 kids did the same thing.  They were behind, every time.  Her youngest didn't crawl until 12 months!  She's 2 and a half now and running around like all the other kids.  You'd never know any of the 3 had any differences in timing of milestones as babies.

I scoured the internet and (as you would expect) found an incredible number of differing opinions and stories. But one mom's words to another mom who has a 15 month old son (just like me) who isn't walking, really helped me so I thought I'd share them. 

Your son is totally normal. I understand how you feel though. My daughter just started walking at 15.5 months. She was slow with all of her physical milestones. At 12 months, her Dr. sent us to physical therapy, which was incredibly scary to me. The PT told us that she was totally normal and that she would walk when she was ready. So, that was our first and last visit. One night after dinner, she was cruising around the furniture and then just let go and started walking, practically running. It was SOOO exciting. Looking back, I feel like I was lucky to have a late walker. She was more baby-like for longer. Now, she is a full-blown toddler, with things to do and places to go. And remember, it is totally normal for kids to walk from 12-18 months. ~mom who's been there 

                                       

So, I wanted to remind moms like me that, like anything else in life, waiting for something longer makes it that much sweeter. And, people like that daycare worker who, knowingly or not, make you feel as if you've "messed up" in parenting somehow because your baby reaches milestones later than other kids their age, are totally out of line.  (Since when is it ok to make someone feel bad for something they have no control over anyway?!)

Don't let anything (or anyone) take away your joy and your ability to soak up these precious "baby-like" moments. Relish in the fact that you were given the gift of just a few more of these beautiful memories. That's what I've decided to do. After all, my son wouldn't be doing things like holding onto my legs in order to follow me around or playing "hide-and-seek/crawl all over mommy when you find her" anymore if he could walk, would he?

They grow up too fast already. They certainly don't need us rushing them. 

Why My Christmas Tree Has No Theme

 

I like things with character...personality.  It's hard to explain but I'm the kind of person that loves mismatched forks and spoons because there's just something about things like that that makes a house feel like a home. It's as if things that are too perfect feel stiff to me.  It's something I've yet to figure out how to explain in a way that makes someone get exactly what I mean, but it is just a feeling I've always had (one that my husband appreciates very much and indulges by adding to my mismatched silverware on occasion ;).

When I was a little girl, I would sit and dream about my future Christmas tree.  I hated the plain ball-shaped ornaments, especially the kind made out of thread (yep, we had those and they always unraveled and got tangled in EVERYTHING). They were so...generic.  Like they could be anybody's Christmas ornaments. And there were dozens of the exact same one, which I found very boring.

I loved ornaments that had meaning...special memories behind them.  But even if they didn't have specific memories, I at least liked unique ones. I won my mom over to this way of thinking slowly.  I made or bought my family members ornaments as presents each year.  And each year when we pulled out the Christmas decorations, less and less of the plain balls made it on the tree (the string ones are now so rare that you have to dig deep into the left-over newspaper that we use to pack away ornaments to even chance finding one).  We made a habit of reminiscing as we pulled out our eclectic assortment of decorations:  a cross-stitched snowman I'd made in junior high, a glass snowman on ice skates we got at Opryland in 2001, an angel made out of a coke can by one of my Mom's mentally challenged patients, and many many more.  My brother's kindergarten picture inside a felt wreath circa 1985 and a reindeer I made from a clothespin circa 1995 were some of my favorites.  I love this tradition to this day.

I vowed as a child that my tree would have even more memories nestled on its branches someday.  My husband and I have been married since 2011.  Considering that we've only had our own "family tree" for 3 years, I think we're doing well on keeping my childhood promise.  (It definitely helps that my Mom gives me ornaments each year now too ;).

I thought I'd share a few of my favorites with you.

The ornament on the left was made for me in high school by a friend.  It was the first decoration given to me to save for my own tree.  I love that my initials have changed since I was given this.  It is a happy reminder of how much I've changed since then.  The one on the right is a relic of the days in which I still had time to wear perfume and make-up.  I was obsessed with the Very Sexy scent by Victoria Secret so my mom got me a mini bottle that came with an ornament one year.  A wonderful reminder of how far I've come in being secure in myself and my body (oh, high school girls!).

I was given these ornaments in college.  I was a Freshman and lived in the Ford Buildings which we at Berry College lovingly called the castles.  Each year, they have a celebration called Christmas in the Castles.  These bring back sweet memories of my first year "on my own" and of all the friends I made there.

These are from 2011, our first Christmas together as a family.  I love the picture on the left of our first dance.  It is beautiful.  It makes my heart and mind go back to that day we became husband and wife.  I'm one lucky woman!  I love the ornament on the right for the exact opposite reason.  This picture is not a professional one but it captures our excitement for our first Christmas as a new family (as well as our love for our furry babies).   It has a "rough around the edges" appeal for me that brings back a lot of memories of those first few months as newly weds.

In 2012 we became a family of three.  I am a mother so of course I will always melt when I see a picture of my newborn baby.  He was so tiny and new this time last year.  It always makes me stop and remember how quickly time flies and that I need to treasure each moment I have with my angel.

And these are this year's additions.  Of course, it is conjecture to say they are some of my favorites but I'm hoping they become that.  That I will look at these ornaments in years to come and remember the fun (and crazy) time that we had making the ornament on the right and marvel at how much our little guy has changed since our family picture on the left.  I hope I always remember this wonderful month of December in which I got to play stay-at-home mom and how much I loved it!

I understand that my tree will never be featured in Better Homes and Gardens for having some amazing theme but honestly, even though many of these "perfect" trees are beautiful, they aren't my style.  A tree is a beautiful display of a family in my opinion.  It should be filled with character and memories.  I can't wait until my kid(s) can make their own ornaments to add!

Not So Picture Perfect

This is our family picture for our Christmas card this year.  We look happy, smiley, together, and in my opinion, the cutest little family I have ever seen. I love this picture!  Don't get me wrong, I am blessed with the two best guys out there!  But, believe me, we are in no way as perfect as this picture seems to suggest.  Last night reminds me of the truth that we never know what lies behind the pictures we see on blogs and social media.  People aren't as picture perfect as they seem so there's no use feeling like you don't measure up!

I was thinking about this as my husband and I tried to address and stuff the almost 30 Christmas cards of this picture to our friends and family (and this was the shortened list because I knew this would be no easy task).  My husband, always the letter writer in the family, was meanwhile hand-writing short notes to each of his aunts and uncles.  It sounds like a magical night during the Christmas season.  Mommy, Daddy, baby boy and holiday traditions (and don't forget the beautiful picture on the cards!).

In actuality, the scene was anything but picture perfect.

My son, in between pulling my hair and attempting to prevent me completely from writing, scattered an entire bag of Christmas candy across the living room and threw each and every item (envelopes, cards, paper, stamps, return address labels, my list) from the coffee table to the floor (multiple times).  Every few seconds my husband or I seemed to throw out a half-hearted "don't eat that!" "that's not yours, Liam; put it back" "there's no reason to whine" "play with one of your toys" or "let Mommy write, PLEASE."

We barely managed to address and label 3/4 of them (which became my goal for the night part-way through because one can only handle so much crying!).  There was no drool or serious folds in any of them (who knew that could feel like such an accomplishment?). Liam had multiple tantrums/crying fits and there was snot running down his face by the end of it.

I really wish I had a picture of our living room and his face.  It was in stark contrast to the pictures we sent out today, but, you know what?  I wish I had a picture not only because it would be fun to share it with you, but also because that is a memory I know I will cherish (and laugh about) someday with my husband.  "Remember that time when Liam was one and we tried to get our Christmas cards together just a bit too close to his bedtime?"

That memory isn't quite as pretty as the card we sent out, but isn't real life better anyway?

This hits home for me because I often find myself comparing myself to other moms.  Craftier moms, ones that make pancakes in the shape of snowmen and a sandwich that looks like Rudolf.  But, you know what?  There's more to every story than what we see on blogs, Facebook, and Pinterest.  We don't know what's behind all those pictures.

I want to challenge us mothers to be real with each other. That's how we can best help each other through this crazy beautiful mess called motherhood.

Parenting is messy, stinky, slobbery, urine-soaked, snot-covered, and in general, just not picture perfect.  But it is beautiful, fulfilling, heart-warming, love-filled, kiss-covered, and snuggly.  Now, tell me, what could be better than reality???