Hour-a-Day April: Day Two

Today was one of those days. One of those go-go-go days where I had somewhere to be or something to do or someone to feed or someone's butt to wipe every moment from the time we woke up (an hour early) until a good two hours after bedtime (and still counting). How do you squeeze an hour of productivity out of a day like that?

It's 9 pm. I normally go to bed between 10 and 11. In theory, I could get my butt in gear and do an hour of cleaning right now. But I am just so drained. I honestly don't think I have it in me.

So, at the risk of bending the rules too much two days into HADA, I'm going to bed early, and I'm calling that my hour. Going to bed early, quite frankly, is something that I almost never make time for in my life, so it totally fits the rules of HADA. I promise, at some point, I will get to some properly productive HADA projects. Until then, I'm giving myself a bit of much-needed rest tonight.

Daily Total: 1 hour (to be confirmed in the morning - EDIT: yep)
Monthly Total: 2 hours

Hour-a-Day April: Day One

So, today was the first day of April. It was also Sunday, so I found myself slightly conflicted about Hour-a-Day April. I didn't want to start my month of productivity with a day off, but I also didn't want to take on any major cleaning projects on my day of rest. I finally decided to spend my hour today doing something restful that I almost never make time for. That seemed like a good middle ground. I told Jeremy that, once the girls were asleep tonight, I would sit with him for an hour watching whatever movie or show he wanted me to watch. And I would actually pay attention, and not play on my phone or computer, for the whole hour. We have overlapping tastes in television, so when we spend time together watching TV, we try to pick things we both like. But there are a lot of shows that Jeremy likes that I don't particularly like, like civil war documentaries. I thought it would be nice for him to get to watch something *he* likes, without having to take my tastes into account. He cheered when I told him about my plan.

In the end, he chose True Grit (the original, not the remake). I'm not generally a fan of Westerns, but I'm actually really enjoying it. He could have picked something I would have hated, but he knew I would probably like True Grit if he could ever get me to watch it, so he seized this opportunity. We watched the first hour tonight, and I must confess, I'm actually itching to watch the rest of it, but I'm going to wait, because I know how much he was enjoying watching it with me. Watching the second hour won't count for HADA, though. I want to watch it too much.

Day One Total: 1 hour
Month Total: 1 hour

Hour-a-Day April 2012

I've been neglecting my Crappy Housewife blog. There are a lot of reasons for this, but I think one of the biggest is guilt. I don't really want to be a Crappy Housewife. Deep down, I want to be an Awesome Housewife. But the blog was never supposed to be about striving for mediocrity, it was supposed to be about clever tips. And I guess I just don't have that many clever tips, when it comes right down to it. Maybe I'll add more clever tips down the road, as they come to me, but trying to come up with one every day was stifling and, frankly, kinda depressing. I have a lot more respect for web comic writers, now, that's for sure. It's not easy trying to be clever every single day.

Maybe it's the early onslaught of spring, with its open windows and lovely breezes and the refreshing energy and desire for change that comes with it. Maybe it's the new bunk beds that I got for the girls' room, which forced me to do a lot of rushed rearranging (translation: moving piles of clutter) and left me with one clean, organized room, and one room piled chest-high with boxes, too cluttered to walk across. The tail end of winter brought one illness after another into our house, and we've had colds, flus, and ear infections in varying degrees for weeks, maybe even months; I've lost track. When you're dealing with all that, it's even harder than usual to kick yourself in the pants to wash those dishes, and the baseline mess gets worse than usual.

My mom just came to visit for a week, and we did a lot of fun things, like going to the park, the zoo, and the beach. But in awesome-mom fashion, she also helped me to get a handle on some of the day-to-day household stuff that had gotten away from me. And now I am inspired to keep going.

I've started to dig out my room (which is the catch-all for clutter, and the dumping ground for everything that "needs to be sorted"). I've done about a dozen loads of laundry in the past week, and, even more amazingly, it has almost all been folded and put away. I've started purging the girls' drawers of too-small clothes, and pulling the summer stuff out of storage. I can actually walk into my walk-in closet again, and I have been *gasp* actually hanging things up again. I pulled everything out of the pantry, organized it, and put it back in a way that makes sense. I cleaned off the top of the fridge. I have a long way to go, but I'm off to a good start. Now all I need is motivation to keep going.

Which works out nicely, because it's almost April. Hour-a-Day April was such a successful experiment last year, I've decided to do it again. The original post is here, but I will post the updated rules for 2012 below.

Hour-a-Day April 2012 Rules

1. Think of something that you normally have a hard time finding time for. Sewing, cleaning, painting, organizing, playing basketball, crossing things off your honey-do list, it's up to you! It can be one big project, or a bunch of little projects. For me, it's going to be mostly sorting/organizing and deep cleaning. Those are the things I never seem to get to, because any motivation I have gets used up on the surface stuff before I get to it.



2. Spend an hour every day working on your chosen project(s). Set a timer and stick to it. Kids need your attention? Stop the timer and give them your attention. You have all day to squeeze in that hour, and if your kids are anything like mine, it might happen five or ten minutes at a time. But by the end of the day, make sure you've clocked that hour. Know yourself. If the best way for you to get in your hour is to get up early, get up early. If you clean best after everyone else goes to bed, skip CSI. It's only for a month.



3. Take one day off a week. If you're religious, you may already have a set sabbath, if not, just pick a day to be your "break" day. Or don't pick a day, and let it be a floating day off, so if you miss a day, you can just say, "Oh well, that was my day off."



4. Keep others updated on your progress. Comment on this blog. Blog about it yourself, and send me the link. Tweet about it on Twitter and use the hash tag #HADA (Hour-A-Day April). Take pictures and post them to the HADA Flickr group. http://www.flickr.com/groups/hada/. Phone up your mom. Put a gold star on a chart.



5. Don't give up. Missed a day? Just brush it off and get back on the proverbial horse the next day. Even if you only do half the days, that's still 15 hours more productivity than your April would have otherwise had.



6. Don't let HADA set you back on all the stuff you normally do find time for. If you're having a hard time keeping up with the daily stuff, count some of it towards your hour (but not all of it, or the point of HADA is lost).



7. Don't let anyone or anything steal your joy and sense of accomplishment for the things you have done. HADA isn't about becoming perfect, it's about deliberately spending an hour every day tackling the projects you rarely get to. If you did your hour today, YOU WIN. Period. It doesn't matter if someone else did two hours, or if the sink is still full of dirty dishes, or if there are still 17 more hours of organizing to do. If you managed to squeeze a whole extra hour of blood from the stone of your already-busy day, be proud of yourself.



8. Celebrate when it's all over! If you live near me, let's go out to dinner together and order gooey chocolatey desserts. If you live far away, have your own celebration and tell me about it. Go ahead and splurge, you've earned it!

Kefir Instructions

There is a lot of information on the Internet about kefir, and frankly, it can be pretty overwhelming. So here is an extremely basic "how to" with pictures, written especially for anyone I give my extra grains to. I don't pretend to know everything about kefir (heck, I'm not even sure how to pronounce it correctly!), but this is my system, and it works for me. (If you want a more extensive resource on kefir, Dom's Kefir-Making In-Site is my favorite.)

Getting Started For the First Time

Gather your equipment. Here's what I use:

• Glass culturing jar (wide-mouth mason quart jar), coffee filter (optional), canning lid ring (optional).
• Plastic mesh strainer (not metal), plastic canning funnel (optional), plastic spoon (optional).
• Miscellaneous glass jars for storage, vis-à-vis wet erase marker for labeling (optional).

1. Pour two cups of milk into the culturing jar. (We use whole cow's milk, but you can use lower fat milk, goat's milk, or even coconut milk. You cannot, however, use Lactaid milk.)



Add 1-2 tablespoons of kefir grains. (You don't need to rinse them or anything, just drain the water off.) Stir gently with the plastic spoon. Cover with the coffee filter, then screw on the lid ring to hold it in place.



Poke a few holes in the coffee filter with a needle.



(Note: You can just leave the kefir uncovered while it cultures, but I have found that fruit flies like to get into it that way. A coffee filter makes a nice, semi-permeable membrane that keeps the bugs out, but allows air to circulate so you don't get carbonated kefir. I added the needle holes after I got new coffee filters that seemed to "breathe" a little less than my old ones. You may not need the needle holes.)

2. Write the day/time on the culturing jar with a wet erase marker. You'll actually want to gauge the doneness by looking at the kefir, not the clock, but it's a handy guide for knowing when to check on it, and for keeping track of when your grain population needs pruning (more on that below). Stick the jar in a dark cupboard and leave it for about 24 hours; until it is done. You can go back and stir it once or twice a day with the plastic spoon if you'd like.



I look for three things to judge whether my kefir is ready for straining:
a) It smells like kefir,
b) It starts to separate or get little channels of whey throughout it, and
c) It moves as one mass when I tilt the jar slightly.
You'll get to know how sour you like your kefir with time.

Ready for straining:


Daily Routine

The first time you use grains that have been dormant, they may take a little longer to culture your kefir (2-3 days rather than 1-2 days), but once they get going, I like to get into the habit of straining my grains and starting a fresh batch every day at about the same time. This is my daily routine:

1. When kefir is cultured to your liking, take the lid off and stir it gently with a plastic spoon. Sometimes curds like to accumulate around the grains, and stirring before straining helps loosen things up to make straining easier.

2. Balance your strainer and funnel on top of a storage jar, and pour the cultured kefir through the strainer. To speed things up, you can use the spoon to gently scrape along the mesh to help guide the thicker kefir through the holes.



3. While the kefir is straining, wash and dry your culturing jar. Be careful to dry it very well if you have chlorinated water, because chlorine and kefir grains don't get along very well. Add two cups of fresh milk to your clean, dry culturing jar.

4. Once the kefir has drained completely, you should have a little pile of grains sitting in your strainer. They might still have a little bit of kefir clinging to them, but that's okay, it will just mix into the new batch. Use your plastic spoon to transfer the grains to the fresh milk.



Note: Kefir grains multiply as they culture your milk. After you have been making kefir for a while, you will start to notice two things: 1. The kefir is done too quickly, or is too sour for your liking, and 2. Your little pile of grains keeps getting bigger. When this happens, it's time to prune the grain population. (Details on how to do this below.)

5. Screw a lid onto the finished kefir, label it, and put it in the fridge overnight. (This improves the flavor, increases the nutritional content, and reduces the lactose content.) Screw the coffee filter and lid ring back onto the culturing jar, label it, and put it back into the cupboard.

Uh Oh, I Have Too Many Grains, What Do I Do?

Once your kefir grains get going, they will double in volume approximately every week. You will need to prune the population when this happens. You can do a couple of different things when this happens. (Ranked from easiest to hardest.)

1. Scoop off the extra grains and eat them. (I haven't done this myself, but apparently, they are really, really good for you.) You can also blend them up and add them to a bunch of different recipes. More about this option on Dom's site.

2. Divide your grains between two jars of milk and give one to a friend, along with instructions on what to do when the kefir is done culturing. (Feel free to print this page to give to your friend, if you'd like.)

3. Scoop off the extra grains and rinse them really well in distilled water. Agitate them gently, pouring off and adding new water as necessary until the water stays clear. It might take 5 or 6 tries to get it to this point. Store the grains in a small amount of distilled water in a jar in the fridge. I'm not sure exactly how long they can stay like this, but I know I've kept grains in this "dormant" state for several months, and they still work fine. It might take them a few days to get back to their full potency, but I've never had grains die on me when stored like this. This method is my preferred method of storing extra grains.

Still cloudy, still needs few more rinses:


Rinsed and ready for storage:


4. Freeze them or dehydrate them. I have never done either of these, because frankly, I'm just too lazy, but if you'd like to try it, here are Dom's instructions.

Taking a Break

Sometimes, we just can't seem to get through 2 cups of kefir every day, even when we have smoothies every morning, bake kefir-wheat bread and spread kefir cheese on our toast (recipes below). And sometimes, we go away on vacation. And sometimes we just get bored of having the same thing every day.

Well, the good news is that you can take a break from your kefir anytime you want to by just sticking your culturing jar in the fridge. I usually do this right after I do my daily routine - If I put my freshly cultured kefir in the fridge and notice that there are already a couple jars in there waiting to be consumed, I just stick the culturing jar right in there beside them. You can leave it there for up to a week (or even more - you probably won't want to drink the kefir if you leave it for too long, but the grains will likely be okay). When you're ready to start culturing again, just pull it out and leave it in the cupboard overnight. Your kefir will be ready for straining in the morning.

Recipes

Okay, now you have 2 cups of kefir to consume every day, and as hard as you try, you just can't seem to drink it all? I'll confess, I've been making kefir for a couple of years now, and I still don't like the taste of it plain. These are the three things we typically make with our kefir:

Kefir Smoothies

Ingredients:
• 8-10 ounces kefir
• 1 banana
• a couple handfuls of frozen fruit/berries

Directions:

1. Pour kefir into a blender (we use the wide-mouth cup that came with our immersion blender, instead). Add one whole banana. Add enough frozen fruit/berries to bring the level up to 2 cups. Blend well. Share with the kids if you're feeling generous.

Soaked Kefir-Wheat Bread

This bread is our "everyday" bread in our house right now. I made a few variations, but the original recipe can be found here.
Note: You can also halve this recipe quite easily, to make only one loaf of bread.

Ingredients:
• 2 to 3 cups kefir
• 5 cups whole wheat flour (I often replace 1-1.5 cups with ground oats)
• 2 tsp salt
• 2 Tbsp brown sugar
• 2 Tbsp oil
• 1 Tbsp molasses

1. Put 2 cups of kefir in the bread machine bowl. Add remaining ingredients.

2. Turn on bread machine to dough cycle. Watch the dough and add up to another cup of kefir to make it the right consistency (it should feel sticky to the touch, but not stick to your finger - like normal dough).

3. Let dough cycle finish, then unplug the bread machine. Let it sit in the machine for about 24 hours.

4. Punch dough down and knead a few times on a floured surface. Divide dough in half. Press each half into a rectangle to get out air bubbles. Roll into a loaf shape and place in lightly greased loaf pans.

5. Cover and let rise for 3-4 more hours.

6. Preheat oven to 350°. Cut several slashes into the tops of the loaves so they won't crack. Bake for 45-55 minutes, or until they sound hollow when tapped.

7. Remove from pans and allow to cool completely before cutting.



Kefir Cheese

Ingredients:
• some kefir (start with twice as much as you want to have in the end)

Directions:

1. Balance a colander on top of a bowl. Put a coffee filter or cheesecloth inside the colander. Pour in kefir.

2. If desired, cover with plastic wrap and put the whole shebang in the fridge for 8-24 hours.

3. As the kefir sits, the whey will drip away into the bottom bowl, leaving a thicker, slightly less tangy yogurt behind. They call it "kefir cheese", but it's really more the consistency of cream cheese or mayonnaise. You can spread it as-is on toast or bagels, or use it on a sandwich in place of mayonnaise. You can also eat it with a spoon like greek yogurt, maybe with some honey and granola or pureed fruit added to it. (There are many uses for the whey, too. For example, we use it when we soak beans to reduce their gassiness.)

Bonus Recipe! Lemon-Lime Kefir Ice Cream

We don't make this regularly, but everyone gobbles it up when we do. It's a very tasty way to use up extra kefir!

• 3 cups kefir
• 1/2 cup of your favorite sweeteners (we use 1/4 cup honey and 1/4 cup sugar)
• juice of one lemon
• juice of one lime
• zest of one lemon
• zest of one lime

1. Strain the kefir for a few hours (using the technique described above for making kefir cheese) to remove some of the whey.

2. Add honey, sugar, and juices. Blend until well-mixed.

3. Add the zests. Mix well, but don't puree your zest to death. It's nice to keep a few flecks in there.

4. Put it in the fridge for a couple of hours, to get it nice and cold. (My ice cream maker can't handle room temperature ingredients.)

5. Transfer to an ice cream maker, and let the ice cream maker do rest of the work (about 25-30 minutes).
Alternatively: Put it in a freezer-safe bowl and stick it in the freezer. Take it out every hour and stir it. (Warning: the alternate method will take all day, so start in the morning.)

Local Consignment Sales - Spring 2012

I've started assembling a list of local consignment sales for Spring 2012. If you know of one that I am missing, please let me know in the comments, and I will add it to the list!

Mainline MOMs
February 25
Drexel Hill, PA

Cozy Tots
March 9-11
Bryn Athyn, PA

The Clothing Tree
March 9-11
Quakertown, PA

Valley Forge MOTTC
March 10
Oaks, PA

St. Luke's UCC MOPS
March 16-17
Trappe, PA

WeeUsables Children's Consignment Event
March 16-17
York, PA

Kool Kids
March 16-18
Levittown, PA

L'il Angels
March 16-18
Bensalem, PA

Bucks-Mont MOMs
March 17
Lansdale, PA

Mommy Market @ Bridle Path Elementary
March 17
Lansdale, PA

Mommy Market @ UGFD
March 17
Lansdale, PA

Bitty Bee's
March 17-18
Kimberton, PA

Just Between Friends - Reading
March 22-24
Reading, PA

Spring Chicken Sale
March 23-24
Havertown, PA

The Clothing Tree
March 23-25
Allentown, PA

All Children's Sale
March 23-24
Wayne, PA

Just 4 Kids
March 23-25
Maple Shade, NJ

Chester County MOMs
March 24
Downingtown, PA

Mother's Market
March 24
Calvary Church, Souderton, PA

Growing Express
March 24
Ambler, PA

Branch Creek MOPS Mom2Mom Consignment Sale
March 24
Harleysville, PA

Smart Moms Sale
March 24-25
Eagleville, PA

Simply Kids
March 30-31
Pottstown, PA

Just Kids Stuff Yard Sale
March 31
Eagleville, PA

Best Dressed for Less
March 30 - April 1
Burlington, NJ

Just Between Friends - West Chester
March 31 - April 1
Glen Mills, PA

Just Between Friends - Western Main Line
April 12-14
Oaks, PA

WeeUsables Children's Consignment Event
April 12-14
Lancaster, PA

The Clothing Tree
April 13-15
Wind Gap, PA

Just 4 Kids
April 13-15
Maple Shade, NJ

L'il Angels
April 20-22
Northeast Philadelphia, PA

Growing Express
April 21
Blue Bell, PA

PVC Fort

When I saw that a company was selling giant plastic tinker toys as a "blanket fort kit", my first thought was, "Why didn't I think of that?" followed quickly by, "How can I make that myself?"

The fort kit I saw for sale seemed pretty flimsy, so I went for 1/2" PVC pipe for my fort frame. You could go for 3/4" or even 1" if you want an even sturdier fort. Once you have the fittings, you can buy more sizes of PVC to make different sizes and shapes of forts, too. The 4'x4'x4' fort we made is actually pretty big, a 3' cube would probably have been just fine. You could also make any measurements you want, just make sure you have 4 pipes for each dimension (so, for example, to make a 3'x4'x5' fort, you would need 4 3' pipes, 4 4' pipes, and 4 5' pipes). We spent about $25 on materials for this project, coming in at about half the price of the retail fort kits, and twice as sturdy.

Materials Needed:

• 12 4' segments of 1/2" PVC pipe (We bought 6 10' pipes and had a friend cut them for us with his circular saw. This left us with 6 2' segments, which I use to make a smaller fort/tunnel.)
  Cost: 6 * $1.68 = $10.08 Link


• 8 1/2" side outlet elbow fittings
  Cost: 8 * $1.18 = $9.44 Link


• 8 1/2" male adapters (The elbow joints we bought had threading on one outlet, so we had to get these to make a non-threaded outlet.)
  Cost: 8 * $0.31 = $2.48 Link


• Blankets/sheets to cover (We used three twin flat sheets, one tablecloth, and one queen flat sheet.)
  Cost: free from our linen closet.

Total Cost: $22.00 (plus tax)


1. Assemble the frame. Make sure the longer sides of the joints are all pointing in one direction (ours are all vertical), so that they don't throw off the lengths of the sides.





2. Drape the smaller sheets/tablecloths over the sides. (This gives a little bit of "grip" so the roof sheet doesn't slide off too easily. I may add some velcro strips one day, to add to the grippiness.)



3. Drape the biggest sheet over the top as a roof. I didn't bother making a door, because the girls were content to enter and exit via the corners.





4. Collapse and store in the closet when not in use. When disassembled, the pipes only take up a few inches of space in a corner.

Notes:

• I have seen fancier PVC playhouses elsewhere on the Internet, but I really was shooting for the simplicity and modifiability of an old-fashioned blanket fort. If you want to keep it assembled as a semi-permanent structure, you could make panels for the sides, more like this PVC playhouse.


• These pictures were taken outside because there wasn't enough room in my house for me to get pictures of the whole thing at once. This really is designed to be an indoor fort, however. If you want your fort to be used outdoors on a regular basis, you will have to secure the sheets somehow, otherwise your sheets will keep blowing away. I know this from experience.

Casserole Club

Some friends and I recently started a Casserole Club. The concept is simple: One night a week, you make two casseroles for dinner, and you take one of those casseroles to someone else. And one night a week, you don't have to make dinner, because a hot casserole will be arriving at your door, ready to eat.

This is such a great arrangement. It's not that much more work to make two identical casseroles, and one night a week, I don't have any cooking/prep dishes to wash! It's also great motivation on those days I don't feel like making dinner - I might be lazy and order pizza if I'm just cooking for my family, but when someone else is depending on me, I will roll up my sleeves and make a real meal. Casserole Club means that even when Mama is feeling lazy, the family gets two solid dinners every week (plus leftovers for lunch!)

I'm really enjoying my Casserole Club, and I thought I would share my "rules" with you, in case you wanted to start one of your own. Feel free to tweak and personalize these rules to fit your own needs. And let me know if you start one of your own, I'd love to hear your experiences!

Organization

Start with a small group of like-minded people who live fairly close together (no more than a 15-minute drive). We have three families in our Casserole Club, but I think anywhere from 2-6 would work well. Choose a coordinator.

Have everyone fill out a brief survey and send it to the coordinator. This is the survey I used: Name, number of family members, address (and any details people might need to find your house), phone number, dietary restrictions (including allergies and preferences), what time you normally eat dinner, what nights work best for you (list at least two, Monday-Thursday only).

The coordinator will then make up a weekly casserole assignment schedule. I made a little grid with the members and their availability, to visualize it, then I matched them up. It might take a while the first time, but once you've figured it out once, it's easier to make the schedules for subsequent weeks. Since we have three families, and I want everyone to get to cook for everyone else, I have two base schedules: Week One: A cooks for B on Tuesday, B cooks for C on Wednesday, and C cooks for A on Thursday; Week Two: B cooks for A on Tuesday, C cooks for B on Wednesday, and A cooks for C on Thursday.

I email out each week's assignments on Saturday for the following week. When I send out the assignments, I also include the relevant survey information (addresses, phone numbers, dietary restrictions) to the assignees. If anyone has to make any changes to their availability, they need to let me know by Friday night, so I can incorporate the changes into the assignments. Anyone can opt out of any given week (if they are going on vacation or something) as long as they email me by Friday to let me know.

Have everyone buy the same casserole dish. We chose a basic 13X9 Pyrex dish with a lid, but it doesn't really matter what it is as long as you all have the same one. That way, there is no concern over returning dishes - you just always make your Club meals in the Club dish.

The Rules

On your assigned day, make and deliver a casserole to your assigned family. As a courtesy, you should contact them when you are on your way so they know you are coming.

Deliver it by 5:30, hot and ready to eat, unless other arrangements have been made (e.g. dropping off a cold casserole earlier, with baking instructions).

All casseroles should be a complete meal - with a protein, a starch, and a vegetable.

Meals don't have to actually be cooked in the casserole dish, you can prep them in the crock pot or any other way you'd like, but use the Club dish to deliver them (to keep things simple).

Each casserole should have at least six servings. For smaller families, this will mean dinner plus leftovers for lunch, for bigger
families, this will just mean dinner, but it's more fair to everyone if everyone always brings the same amount of food.

It's not required, but it's nice to let people know with a short email if you enjoyed their meal. It's good to get feedback!

Variations

If you don't have enough friends who live locally, maybe you could make more casseroles at once, then meet up at a midpoint and swap. If you had five friends do this together, you could have a week's worth of frozen meals in one go.

If you're cooking for one, maybe you could divide your casserole up into single servings, and meet up and swap with some other single friends.

If you know someone who just had a baby, (or surgery, or an injury) maybe you could make three casseroles at once - one for you, one for the Club, and one for the new mom.

Open Letter to Everyone Who Knows a New Mom

I know you mean well. I know you're just trying to make conversation. But please, please, please stop asking new moms if their babies are "sleeping through the night" yet.

Yesterday morning at my local La Leche League meeting, we were having a discussion about sleep habits, and how anytime you mention sleep problems, well-meaning folks (from pediatricians to nosy neighbors) seem to jump at the chance to suggest formula (or formula mixed with rice cereal) to help them "sleep better". I said, "You know, if breastfed babies don't sleep through the night, and breastfeeding is the biological norm, then maybe 'not sleeping through the night' is also the biological norm."

And that got me thinking, and I have been thinking about this a lot since yesterday's meeting. Instead of accepting babies as they are, and adapting to that, we focus all of our time and energy on changing our babies into this unrealistic ideal. Formula companies spend millions of dollars developing (and marketing) milk substitutes that will sit in your baby's stomach and keep her asleep longer, and there are entire aisles in every bookstore devoted to teaching parents the magic cure to their babies' sleep woes.

But maybe we're trying to fix something that isn't broken. First of all, did you know that the medical definition of "sleeping through the night" is sleeping a five-hour stretch? So if your baby is going to sleep at 7 pm and waking up at midnight, just as you are finally winding down for the night, guess what? Your baby IS "sleeping through the night".

Expectations are everything. When Valerie was a baby, she would wake up to nurse every 60-90 minutes, day and night. (If I had known then what I know now about breastfeeding, I would have diagnosed my milk oversupply issue much sooner, and her sleep habits might not have been so bad, but that's another story.) When Dorothy was a baby, she had more "normal" sleep habits - she would sleep a 4-5 hour stretch at the beginning of the night, then a couple of shorter stretches before morning. I thought I had won the sleep lottery! It was amazing! People would ask me, "How is she sleeping?" and I would say, "Great! She sleeps until 2, then she nurses again at 5 and 7, then we're up for the day at 8!" And they would give me this horrified look as if I had just told them she sprouts horns at night and claws out my entrails, then they would bite their tongue and try to say something "nice" like, "Well, if you're okay with that..."

Now, before you jump in and say, "My baby sleeps for 12 hours every night, and I never had to do anything to make it happen, that's just the way she is," I will admit that some babies seem to be magically endowed with the ability to sleep for 12 hours every night, without waking up once. Consider yourself lucky. There are three-year-olds who have the ability to memorize the entire Quran, too, but we don't expect that of every three-year-old. If you have an amazing kid, great, enjoy it. But it's unrealistic to expect that kind of extraordinary behavior from every baby.

And I'm going to cut a bunch more of you off right here, too, before you jump in and say, "I trained my baby to sleep through the night using Dr. So-and-So's Amazing Method For Getting Babies To Sleep Better, and it totally works!" I'm not going to tell you how to parent your children, so if it worked for you, great. But something has always bugged me about all those "make my baby sleep" methods on the market, and it wasn't until today that I really realized why.

SIDS. Every parent's biggest fear. What if my baby dies in her sleep? We know the risk factors (formula-feeding, parents who smoke, sleeping on her front, etc.) but we still don't know exactly what causes it. Babies just die in their sleep and we don't know why. It's terrifying!

And as I have been mulling over my thoughts from yesterday, that maybe sleeping through the night is not the biological norm, I realized that the two could be connected. We invest all this time and energy into making our babies sleep for longer and longer stretches, and what do they do? They sleep for longer and longer stretches. And then one day, they just don't wake up.

Now, I'm not trying to point fingers or assign blame. I am NOT saying that if you sleep-trained your baby, and they died of SIDS, it's your fault. Let me repeat that: I don't think SIDS is your fault. And I'm not saying you're a bad person for sleep-training your child.

Here's what I am saying: It is normal for babies to wake up several times a night. Normal and healthy. There is nothing wrong with your baby if she is waking up several times a night. Your baby is normal. So please, can we stop placing unrealistic expectations on these perfect little people who are just doing what they are biologically designed to do? Can we stop trying to fix what ain't broke?

At the same time, I am also not saying that you should just suffer silently if your baby truly does have trouble sleeping. Sometimes there is an underlying problem than needs to be addressed (like my oversupply issue with Valerie), and as babies get older, there are things you can do to gently guide them towards age-appropriate sleep habits. Work with your baby to make things the best they can be. But check your expectations at the door. Assume that your baby will wake up several times in the night, and find a way to make that work for you. It's better to be pleasantly surprised by a baby that sleeps more than you expected than to be devastated by a perfectly normal sleep schedule that is less than you expected.

And, back to you, well-meaning friends/doctors/neighbors/strangers: Please, stop asking us how our babies are sleeping as if it was the only thing that mattered. Stop acting like a baby sleeping 12 hours every night is the norm. Stop acting like our perfectly normal babies are broken. If you want to make polite conversation, why don't you focus on the positive? "Oh, what a sweet baby, don't you just love cuddling her and watching her coo?" You can't go wrong with something like that.

Language Acquisition

Lately, Valerie has been watching Sonic the Hedgehog on Netflix. (Yeah, yeah, I'm a terrible mom, I know.)

Which means we've been roleplaying a lot of Sonic the Hedgehog. The first few times she asked to play, she told me, "Mom, you be the blue head." Which was a logical way of referring to Sonic, since, well, he has a blue head. Sometimes, she would call him "the blue super bear," so I think she didn't know what a hedgehog was. She knows porcupines (and pygmy marmosets and naked mole rats - Thank you Philadelphia Zoo!) but I don't think she's ever seen a hedgehog before. And, to be fair, even if she had, Sonic doesn't look much like an actual hedgehog.

Then she started calling him "Yonic", which was amusing to me in a nerdy, "Ha ha, my daughter is using inappropriate words that are way beyond her realm of understanding" kind of way. Then she started calling him "Onyx", which is a simple shuffle of the "s" sound from the beginning of the word to the end of the word ("onics"). "Onyx" is also the name of a horse on another show that Valerie likes to watch. I have noticed that, when faced with a new word, Valerie will often replace it with the closest word she already knows. When I offered her a poncho the other day, for example, she called it her "pom pom".

Then, a few days later, Valerie asked me to be "the blue head jog". That's when I realized that Valerie may have known what a hedgehog was after all, but Sonic wasn't a "hedgehog" to her, he was a "jog" with a blue head. A "blue head jog". Say it out loud.

But these adorable Valerie-isms don't last long. Because after she hears it the "right" way a few more times, she usually stops doing it. Sometimes, it takes a lot of self-restraint on my part not to reinforce her adorable misconstructions, but I know it does her no good in the long run to sacrifice accuracy for adorableness. I don't correct her, but I do say it the right way myself, and eventually, she abandons the cute alternative. (Although sometimes she spends a lot of energy beforehand arguing that her way is right. She just finished watching a new show called 64 Zoo Lane, and as the credits ended, she said, "Mom, it's called Zixy Call!" I said, "Oh? Sixty Four?" and she said, "No, Zixy Call, listen to the song!" and then she started the show again so I could hear them singing the Zixy Call theme song.) Her pom pom became a poncho within a few days, and I know Onyx will suffer the same fate sooner or later. Yesterday, Valerie said to me, "Mom, you be the blue super bear... er... hedgehog."

Watching her learn is pretty adorable, too, though.

New York City!

I spent the day in New York City yesterday with a 13-month-old strapped to me, a three-year-old in and out of a stroller, a big, heavy diaper bag, a camera, and a friend who was also pushing a stroller with a ten-month-old inside. New York City is awesome, and there are so many things to see, and we walked as much as we could, but sometimes, you just have to take the subway. And for every subway entrance in NYC with an elevator, there are about 20 that just have long, narrow flights of stairs.

As my friend and I were fumbling with our children and our strollers at the top of the first of these flights of stairs, a helpful man came along and offered to help. He took the bottom of Karla's stroller, and helped her carry it to the bottom of the stairs. And as he was helping Karla, a helpful woman came along and took Valerie's hand as she was about to slip on the wet stairs, and helped her to the bottom.

I thought, wow, that was neat. Two helpful people in this city that is renowned for its rude, rushed population. We thanked them profusely, and went on our way.

But then, we came to another flight of stairs at our destination. And two more helpful people jumped in, and this time one of them helped me carry my stroller with my 30+ pound kid STILL INSIDE. And it happened again, and again. At every single subway station, at least one, but usually two or three, helpful people rushed over to help us with our strollers and our children. When my coat fell off the back of my stroller, the person behind me picked it up and handed it to me as soon as I was at the landing. (And, in one particularly awkward moment, an older gentleman actually picked Valerie up and carried her to the bottom of the staircase. I was a little too stunned to say anything, and at least he was carrying her towards me, but it was still rather uncomfortable.)

On almost every subway train, somebody noticed the baby on my back and offered me their seat (which I politely declined, since it's not very easy to sit on a subway seat with a baby on your back, but I appreciated the sentiment). I thought back to the time I came to NYC when I was pregnant with Valerie, and I never had to stand on a subway once, because someone always jumped up to offer their seat to the pregnant woman. And once, when I arrived at a bathroom with a long line, the women in line unanimously bumped me to the front of the line because, "You're pregnant! You can't wait!"

I'm sure there are rude people in NYC, but there are a lot of people in NYC. As a percentage of the population, there are probably just as many rude people in your hometown.

I want to make a television commercial for New York City. It will have a hipster standing in Times Square, saying, "Yeah, we used to be rude, but then it got so mainstream." And then he'll see a lady struggling with a stroller and rush off camera to help her. Anyone have half a million dollars and a hipster they want to give me?

Thank you so much, people of New York City. We had a great time!