I am the Great Cornholio!

 

In the beginning...

I can't make this stuff up.

I AM THE GREAT CORNHOLIO!!!

And in case you wonder why Ian would emulate the venerable Beavis, here is your answer..

That kid will do anything to get Will to laugh. And I'm pretty sure there were tears, folks. I'm also pretty sure Christian was laughing wildly, shouting "I need TP for my bunghole!", and the kids were looking at him like a crazy person. Vaya Cornholio!

Ode to MNO

September is here. The leaves are actually turning colors on our trees. It's chilly in the evenings and mornings. It's been a good summer. A great one. I have melted down and then recharged myself back up. No Legos were harmed this morning. None will be harmed tomorrow.



Navigating the seas aboard the SS Thompson on a rainy day.



Um. Not really sure what Ian's doing here...

Funny story. I walked up the stairs to my yoga class this afternoon, and the teacher gave me a curious look.

"Are you here for a yoga class?"

Well yes, in fact I was.

"We don't have a class today, do we?"

The teacher smiled and said, "Well, you can practice with me. I'm just going over some ideas for a new fall class. You can be my guinea pig."

Thank goodness she was willing to let me stay, because otherwise I'd have been walking the streets of TBurg with a yoga mat strapped across my back for the next hour and fifteen minutes. No way in hell I was going back home after I'd narrowly escaped gotten out of the house for a non-standard midweek class. Not that we had a bad day or anything. Ian napped, Will napped, I napped. It was glorious. I just really needed some yoga.

As we were winding down, I explained to my teacher how the pose we were doing had been hurting me lately. Not screaming in agony, but strained and painful. She checked out my alignment. She made a small adjustment, gave me a blanket for support. She asked how it felt.

"Okay, now breathe," she said.

I breathed. In or out, I can't remember. It helped a little.

"I think that for you, it's not a matter of whether you know enough to get into the pose," she added. "It's that you need to not work so hard at it."

Oh. Now that's hard. Little did she know that this has heretofore been my mantra in life. TRY HARD. WORK HARD. Sometimes it hurts, sometimes I get lucky. But this is why I come to yoga.

"I'll try that," I said, coming out of the pose.

This past year, I tried not trying so hard. I started with making some women friends. Mothers like me and mothers not like me at all. Ever since high school I've been very wary of other women. I've always felt more at ease, more myself around guys. I've always felt not "girly enough" to be a girl.

Making friends started with participating. I had to opt in to socialize, even when I didn't feel like it. Wait -- so, okay, I did work at it a little bit. But it was the start of feeling and being more connected, and not to isolated.

So here's to Mom's Night Out (MNO). May the return of fall (and winter cabin fever) bring many more:

Whoever said "it takes a village"
Wasn't from my village,
Without a central square or meeting place.
We would meet in the backrooms of the library
Or the bar.
Or by the swings in the park.
You'd bring a blanket, I'd have a ball and she'd have always the healthiest snacks.
So we'd order another round but never should.
And someone would mention a toy, a stroller.
Something used and now unwelcome in their home,
And we would make a match.
And complain that it was way too late.
The next day we'd arrive puffy-eyed at the coffee shop,
Slipping pastries into children's mouths to drink our coffee in peace.
(Or was that me?)
We would worry if we didn't hear or see you for a while.
Or bring food if you had a newborn and a toddler and no appetite.
In the backrooms or the bars or the yards of our village.

And I'm the Beast...

I've been holding in a lot of emotion for the last few weeks. I thought I was doing okay until I hurled a handful of plastic blocks from their perch on the stairs -- thankfully not AT anyone. But they made a hella racket.

That's not all.

There was lots of yelling, mostly by me. The yelling was followed by threats, and then one day I stomped away from Will, locked the gate at the bottom of the stairs and told him not to bother me for 30 minutes OR ELSE. [Note: our enforcement of the no-nap "quiet time" was not going well.]

He didn't bother me, and I did get to finish reading one article and a cup of coffee. But I felt like crap smeared on the bottom of someone's shoe. I really did. I was so utterly, horribly ashamed. And then I baked one of these, ate a slice, and felt somewhat more calm...

Damn those blueberries were good.

Anyway, the point is that I thought I was SO handling the stay-at-home mom thing. So on top of groceries and chores and playdates. But this lasted for about, oh, almost one month to the day since my last post here. Then an odd thing happened. I lost control. It was Lord of the Flies over here. And then I got anxious. Reaaalllyy anxious. And snippy. And kind of depressed because I was like, "OMG, this is freakin' snowballing! I'll never get out from under the chaos!"

When this happens, I tend to go into fight or flight mode. I try, try, try harder. I feel worse. I am the typical overachiever in every silly thing. Can I make the bed better than I did yesterday? Yes! I can! Can I have dinner prepped, have an educational but fun morning with the kids, and the laundry done? Yes! I can, dammit!

But here's the thing. All the DOING makes me such a serious bitch who gets annoyed at her kids for just being kids. Cause, you know, kids sometimes get in the way of all that doing. Duh. When I get like that, I even bore myself. Honestly. It makes me want to hit a Cornell frat party on the way home from swim lessons at the Y and just LET LOOSE.

And the worse part is that I stop enjoying my time home with the boys. I'm almost positive they stop enjoying their time home with me... However, the lesson here for me is NOT to do nothing, or lower my expectations (though, yeah, I need to). The lesson is that I need to find a way to make time in the day, or the week, for only caring about or doing something for ME. At the end of the week, after all that DOING, I am a mess. I need my books, my writing, my something. I need to have no one touching, or asking, or wanting from me. I need space.

Yes, this kind of space... I know for all you experienced SAHMs, this may be another "duh." But riddle me this. How the hell does one do it?*

*And not feel like crap smeared on the bottom of a shoe.

Home Economy 101

I'm the one on the far left...

It's funny how time sometimes feels like it's moving at warp speed, and then will suddenly and arbitrarily slow down to a snail's pace. Of course, this is an illusion, but it gets me every time. For example, watching the boys ride their bikes together, climb on the monkey bars together, cut paper together. Time stands still and I tear up remembering them both as soft, blubbering babies who counted on me for every need. I fantasize about scooping them up and nestling their heads into the crook of my left arm like I did a million times at a 2 AM nursing. I even, for a moment, miss it. I miss the lack of sleep and the utter simplicity of our existence. Feed, sleep, cuddle, change, feed, cuddle, bathe, sleep.

And then I take off my rose colored glasses, and laugh out loud.

Because if you'd asked me if I wanted to stay home full time with my soft, mewling newborns--and then three and six and ten month olds--the answer would have been a resounding "No." This is for several reasons. First, it is hard. Not hard like a day at work with back to back meetings, annoying clients and a parking ticket. Hard like walking 15 miles each way to school in 2 feet of snow, and then making your own steel cut oatmeal from scratch, and then hand-paving a new 6-lane highway. At least this is how it felt to me. Second, I was scared. Postpartum depression and anxiety (it's evil twin?) had made me even more unable to make decisions than normal--and this was before I got help for it with my second. I felt deep down that this 24-7 childrearing thing needed a professional's touch. I was also deathly afraid of screwing them up by yelling, or not feeding them homemade meals, or by having a messy house.

So I skipped off back to work full time after Will was born, content to know he was in good hands at daycare and happy to be with me after work and on the weekends. It was fine. But I had twinges of doubt. I pushed them down. I had worked so hard to get where I was. Wasn't it just as important as raising my kids? Didn't I deserve to have a career, a life outside of children? So I proposed and got a two day a week telecommute option to help ease our hectic morning/evening routine--which stressed me to no end.

Fast forward (as life does), to Baby #2 and another round of PPD and anxiety. Big time. But this time I started back to work part-time, to ease back into things. Even then, I felt I needed to cherish this time (but really didn't know how), since Ian would be our last child. I hemmed and hawed. Searching for more balance, I eventually negotiated a part-time schedule. This is when things came to a head.

You know when people wag their fingers and tell you 'the grass is always greener...'? Well, those people are annoying because they are right.

Working part-time, much to my surprise, was worse (how could that be possible?) than working full-time. Worse for me mentally, worse for the kids and their schedule. Worse for my husband who picked up the slack. There are a lot of reasons this was the case for me, and I acknowledge that this isn't true for many others who work a part-time schedule. I'm not big on blaming right now, so I won't go into details. Suffice to say, after almost 8 months of a 20 hr week from home (yes, I had it that good), I upped my hours to 24, all from the office. I figured the answer was to work MORE, not less. I also had something to prove--that I was a worthy, smart, effective employee.

Almost five years after my first son was born, I finally decided to quit my "other job," and stay home with my boys. I'm an outlier, for sure. Most mothers I know do the exact opposite. Stay home while their kids are infants and until preschool, then slowly start edging back into the workforce. Not me. I'm the one who takes 5 years to make a freakin' decision. Two weeks in, I don't feel the fear I thought I would. It's hard, but hard like running a marathon each day. Not like running two. The hardest part for me is losing my "identity." And then I remember, I have no identity. I am not me. I am not who I think I am. I am a collection of parts. Move on [thank you Sarah Napthali].

So, what to call my new  job. A stay-at-home mom? A full-time, stay-at-home mom? These don't ring true to me. After all, was the choice between staying with my children and leaving them, abandoning them? Not for me. And wasn't I a full-time mom before, when I left the house to work and then put in "my hours" at home? Plus, many women and men work from home these days. Like my husband. What is he? A work-inside-the-home dad? Sheesh.

I'm leaning toward some old-fashioned monikers. Like homemaker. Or home economist. These names at least capture the essence of what's going on. Women who work outside the home can make a damn good home for their families. I know this. But I also know that for me and my family, my being at home with our kids full-time--and frankly, managing the bajillions of details of our home lives for the family--will make OUR home a slightly less stressful, chaotic place. And I like that. I also like cooking meals from scratch but hate cleaning and grocery shopping.

As the one who manages those bajillion details, my new role does impact the economy of our home. I don't mean financial economy, like savings from me not drycleaning my suits and buying new high heels every fall (ha!). I mean the other definition: "sparing or careful use of something." That something is the time that my husband and I have on this planet with our children and each other. For us, the financial economics allow me to make this decision. If this weren't the case, I would use my time carefully to support our family. It's not either/or. It just is. For now.

I baked a mean apple pie in 9th grade Home Ec class. And I was proud of it. I should have known.

A memory

Baby #1: trial and error...

I'm sitting on the examination table at my doctor's office, crinkly paper under my legs. My wonderful midwife is asking me questions about the baby. I'm nodding. I'm saying things.

"And is he eating okay, having wet diapers?" she asked, hopefully.

"Oh yes, he's gained almost 8 pounds already! He's doing great..." I flashed what I hoped looked like a smile.

Then I looked in her eyes. Her sweet, all-knowing eyes, and my own started to tear up.

I blurted out, "But I'm not doing so good..." I was crying now. I couldn't help it anymore than I could help breathing.

She looked at me again and asked softly for me to tell her what had been going on. I let it out like the waters pouring over a levee, cresting over the earth. I told her about how I wasn't sleeping, and how the baby still refused to latch on. How I was pumping every 3 hours around the clock. He was only six weeks old but I felt like I had been doing this for a hundred years. I was anxious and tired and not eating and not sleeping and angry and guilt-ridden.

And it felt so good to tell someone that. I waited on the table expectantly. Waited for the suggestions and the "try this" and "try thats." But mostly, I waited for my midwife to finally crack the code on WHAT WAS WRONG. She had experience, after all.

"You know," she said, leaning in conspiratorially,"I hear way more stories like yours than the opposite." I stared at her. Was she putting me on?

"Women just don't want to talk about it, so everyone thinks it's usually easy and comes naturally," she continued. I nodded, Yes, I know.

"You gave it your best try. You worked hard," she said, holding my gaze. "And you have a healthy, thriving baby. Now you have choices. You can continue pumping exclusively, you can pump occasionally, you can quit altogether."

And this is why I'd really come. My mother could say it, my husband could say it; my best friend, sister-in-law, and even my father, could say it. But until my midwife said it -- until she gave me permission to stop trying at all costs -- I couldn't hear it. She gave me permission to choose a direction that would make my life easier, not harder. Make my nights easier, not worse. And she reminded me that all of my decisions, all of those choices, were the best for my baby--no matter what others might say.

Fast forward six more weeks. Six more weeks of pumping exclusively. I made a choice I could live with, but it cost me. And then the weekend before I went back to work full-time, that 12 week old baby latched on just to show me who was really in charge. My first lesson as a new mother, writ large on my body.

Here we go...

Hold up, wait a minute...

Ian just turned 2 years old!

So happy about the storebought Go Diego Go cake.

Are you shocked that I'm just getting around to posting the fond, icing-coated memories and reminisces? Not I. Let's say, for the sake of simplicity, that things have been a wee bit busy on our end lately. But who am I kidding? The second child pretty much always gets the shaft (gasp!).

UNLESS ...

His parents finally plopped down mucho bucks for a much better, faster camera last Christmas in order to catch the whirling dervishes that are their sons -- in SPORTS MODE.

What, you don't know it? Sports mode is how sports photographers catch the world's greatest feats of physical prowess and showmanship with an expertly-timed click of the shutter. It's also how we catch our children doing things like: smiling at the camera without snot trickling down their noses, being cute and angelic, and other similarly impressive -- and fleeting -- feats of physical prowess.

Observe ...

Ian: pre-flight routine

Will: mid-flight!

Or, for example ...

Watch the golf ball -- IN FLIGHT, heading toward C's head

But maybe the most fun are those silly moments caught in sports mode that deserve a closer look. Like Ian very seriously trying on my winter hat (Rastafari!), or Will caught in mid-kick while jamming out to some guitar rock on Rhapsody.

So, as Ian turns the corner into his second year, I really only have one lingering, burning question.



Question Authority Boy

How did we go from here ...

To here ...





In only two years?

Thank God for sports mode, that's all I can say. Without it, I might have blinked and missed it.

The Limit

I've finally reached my limit on being cooped up indoors with several feet of snow outside and several feet of dirty laundry inside. The nasty stomach bug is on the wane--what did we do wrong, God?--and I repeat to myself over and over how lucky I am NOT to be a single parent. What would I do if I had no one to help? I shudder to think.

And once this limit has been reached, I approach near insanity with rapid-fire thoughts about what to clean first, cook first, organize first, throw away first. Of course, because EVERYTHING MUST GET DONE NOW!

Whatever. Truth is, nothing will get done today except some snow shoveling, bathroom cleaning (we've reached critical proportions), and perhaps coffee / hot cocoa drinking at the local coffee shop. For if I create a swirling mass of intensity around myself for the next two days, I will continue screaming at my preschooler for no reason ("How much tape does one person need??!!!"), and telling my poor toddler with a chapped bottom to "Come on, stop whining."

Who is this person? A shadow of my former self. And I blame it all on Old Man Winter and his minions.

And now, as Jon Stewart would say, here is your TBurg Thompsons moment of zen...

Snow on twigs.

Snow leaves.

Ian on top of the world.

Will snarfing snow.

Our lovely abode.

The sun is back there, I swear!

Ian snarfing snow.

Um, maybe they were hungry?!

To Be a Child...

Ah, to be a toddler. The endless curiousity, boundless energy, passionate activity. Complete lack of self-consciousness. Not feeling the need to hold in your feelings. Hugging a lot. Snuggling. Playing...

"Say Freeeezzzzeeee!"

Taking a nap wherever you happen to be, even if it's in the middle of a frozen glacial lake face up on a plastic sled. Yes, that's Ian SLEEPING on the sled. Apparently Nina was pulling him along as Will and she tromped on the ice, chatting up several ice fishermen. Ian started whining, telling her he wanted to "go night night," so she told him he could just rest on the sled. And voila. Amazing.

But at first glance, he does kind of look dead... It was a brutal expedition.

In case you're wondering, this is what we do up here in the frigid north. Take our small children for long walks on frozen lakes when it's a balmy 20 degrees. Hey, the sun's shining, isn't it?

Come on spring, come on.......

Meet the Meat Muffins

What do you do if you want your toddler and preschooler to eat something?

Make it into the shape of a muffin! (Or a pie slice -- more on that in another post.)

Since I'm on a recipe roll, I thought I'd post my (in)famous Turkey Meatloaf Muffin recipe. Or, as we call them in our house, Meat Muffins. Frankly, the best part of this recipe is that I can tweak here and there for a different dish. And it's stupid easy and fast. Also, this recipe started as a bulk recipe for the scratch cafe I used to work at, using 10 lbs of ground turkey. Obviously, I've modified a bit -- but you can still make this into a loaf. It just takes longer to cook.

So without further ado, the recipe:

Turkey Meatloaf Muffins

1 lb ground turkey (80/20 -- pls, don't use the fat-free version. It's no good.)
1 small onion (or ~ 1/2 cup), very small dice
1 garlic clove, minced
1 egg
1/4 cup plain bread crumbs
~ 1 TB Worchestershire sauce
2 TB ketchup
2 tsp salt (I use Kosher salt)*
1/4 tsp black pepper
1/2 to 1 tsp poultry seasoning

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Saute the onion and garlic in a small amount of olive oil until they're soft and translucent. Cool slightly.
3. In a bowl, combine turkey, breadcrumbs, egg, ketchup, Worchestershire, salt, pepper and poultry seasoning. Add onions and garlic, and mix until just combined (don't overmix).
4. Spray the bottoms of a 12 cup muffin pan with Pam spray (precautionary). Plop blobs of meatloaf into cups, trying to evenly distribute. Flatten tops slightly.
5. Cook muffins in oven for 25-30 mins, or until instant read thermometer reads 170 inside a muffin. (In my experience, 25 mins. really does it, since these are pretty small muffins. You'll only fill each cup halfway, if that.)
6. Cool slightly, then remove from cups and rest on paper-towel covered plate to soak up excess liquid (water, fat). Serve with more ketchup and enjoy.

In a hurry: Skip the sauteing and use onion and garlic powder instead. But easy on the garlic powder -- it's got a fake garlicky taste if you use too much. I'd use maybe 1-2 tsp onion powder, and no more than 1/2 tsp garlic powder.

Italian Meatballs: You can sub ground chicken if you want, but not necessary...

• Increase ketchup to 3 TB.
• Leave out the poultry seasoning. Instead, use Italian seasoning, or just dried basil and oregano (easy on the oregano), or basil and parsley.
• Add about 1/4 to 1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese or Romano.
• Grate the onion using a box grater or food processor.
• Increase garlic up to 3 cloves.
• Form small meat balls with your hands (yes, your hands). Brown the meatballs in olive oil on all sides, then finish in the oven for ~ 20 mins. until done.
• Plop meatballs in your favorite pasta sauce and heat through.

* Ok, I'm admitting I have a salt thing. This amount is conservative, folks. I like well-seasoned food, and after working in a restaurant kitchen I like it even more. That said, I've found that the key to cooking ground meat concoctions (e.g. meatloaf, meatballs, hamburgers) is salt -- and sometimes a shockingly large amount of it. With raw meats, you COULD cook a small amount to test and then adjust. Or, you could just do like me, and err on the side of hypertension...

Warm Up

Holy crud -- almost three months and no new posts! It's not that nothing has happened.

It's just that I'm lazy. And freakin' cold.

So, instead of mustering up the energy to write some deep thoughts, I'll post a recipe I made last night for dinner. C and I ate it with some Bisquick drop biscuits -- but I would have loved some chapati instead. Maybe in my next lifetime...

Side note: I'm always trying to find decent recipes for my crock pot. And by decent, I mean "does not taste like cardboard mixed with broth and vegetables." I find most crock pot recipes are not, IMO, decent. And, it's because the ONE step required for decent, tasty soups/stews is generally omitted from crock pot recipes because, well -- it adds an extra step to what's supposed to be an easy, one-pot meal. Sheesh. A double-bind if I ever saw one. What's that ONE step, you ask? Browning your meat (if using) and sauteeing all your veggies and aromatics and spices together in a pan BEFORE adding to the crock pot. Anyhoo, if you wanna be really efficient, just go ahead and drop $400 on the All-Clad Deluxe Slow Cooker. You know you want it. I do. Every. Single. Day.

Lunch ... finally.

Bastard* Mulligatawny Soup in the Crock Pot

2 TB butter
1 med onion, small dice
1 med carrot, diced
1 large sweet potato, peeled and diced
1 apple (any firm variety), peeled and diced
4 cloves garlic, minced
~ 1 TB curry powder [less spice = less hot, so vary amounts for the kiddos or whatever]
~ 1 TB garam masala
1/8 tsp ground cloves
~ 2 TB flour

Salt and pepper to taste
1, 15 oz. can diced tomatoes (with liquid)
3 cups chicken broth
~ 2 cups chopped or shredded cooked chicken (I used rotisserie chicken, white and dark meat, with skin removed).

1. Melt butter in a saute pan, then add onion and garlic. Cook until soft (don't let garlic burn).
2. Add other veggies, cooking for a few minutes into starting to soften. Season a bit with salt and pepper.
3. Sprinkle spices and flour over veggies, cook for a few minutes until raw flour smell is gone.
4. Add canned tomatoes and their liquid, stirring pan to scrape up all spice bits. Taste, and season again with salt if needed. Turn off heat.
5. Dump veggies and tomatoes into crock pot, then add chicken and broth.
6. Crank pot to High and let cook for about 4 hours. Serve over basmati rice (yum), or eat alone.

Have to say, this was the perfect dinner for a cold January night in the 'Burg. Leftovers for lunch, here we come...

* I call it "Bastard" because I cobbled this together from two different recipes, one specifically for the crock pot, the other using traditional stovetop methods. Plus, I couldn't seem to find any two recipes that are alike for this soup. Oh yeah, and the whole "No Soup for You!" thing...